Kerbart

Localization is hard. Language is hard. Your incorrect use of the word "only," an insult to those who have spent countless hours on localization over the last few months, is a testament to that.

Your questions are leading. Question 2 and 3 imply that "no" is not an answer. How far along are we with self-sustaining bases in the Antarctic? How well are we getting along with reversing the expansion of the Sahara desert? We've been really succesful in combating that drought that's been terrorizing California over the last 10 years, right? Each of those projects is about 10,000,000× easier than terraforming Mars. And we've come not even close in succeeding, despite trying (except for the Antarctic, because it's "impossible." Still millions of times easier than Mars). So, no. Not going to happen. Ever.

It's doing a lot better now than a few hours ago. Instead of all flights going horizontal, a few now go vertical. The neural network (?) still has a hard time figuring out a compromise between the two.

Do you remember that you could do a reentry at a 90° angle to the Kerbin surface doing 4000 m/s, and still slow down for a controlled landing without burning up?

...because?

It's only unfair when you assume that you have to agree to pay now. By the time Squad starts selling the expansion you know: What date (because that's when they start selling it) What price (because they'll be selling it for that price) What's in it (because we'll hear that from those who bought it) So given that you will know the x amount, the release date and what's in it, it will not feel unfair. Problem solved!

Not to toot my own horn, but yes, there are many potential benefits: ( @Badie are you paying attention? ) High ranking pilots do have a purpose, even in late career. Surely you can add a hi-tech probe-core to your vessel for accurately holding retrograde etc, but only a true Pilot can figure out how to raise your orbit from 100km to 300km all by itself. Mechjeb-like functionality to create and execute waypoints (change orbit, rendez-vous, even docking) is no longer "cheating," as you only get that functionality after proper "training" the pilot for it. It now makes sense to have a pilot on board over a probe core! Even for boring refuel runs, standard rescue missions and whatnot. New part: the Simulator. Put two Kerbals in there, and you can transfer a skill from one Kerbal to another. Gronkblib Kerman might be an experienced pilot but he has no experience landing a lander on Duna. However, during the 8 month trip he'll accumulate enough time in the Simulator together with Jeb, to land your lander flawlessly anyway. To transfer skills, the receiving pilot may need a minimum level (along the lines of: orbit transfers; 2 stars, rendez-vous, 3 stars, docking: 4 stars, landing 5 starts). So now we have a part to go with the expansion. Who'd want an expansion without any parts? Skills increase accuracy. A 2 star pilot will get you to that 100x100km orbit with a 2km standard deviation, but a 5 star pilot will nail it with a 20m standard deviation. Are you sure you want your 1 star pilot perform the docking without your supervision? Because he might "dock" at 10 m/s! (hilarity WILL ensue) And in similar fashion you could apply this to scientists and engineers. Scientists may automatically perform experiments or clear experiments, and I'm sure with some creativity we can add incentives for better engineers as well. And the beauty is that it doesn't affect the base game; you don't have to buy the expansion. It just makes the game more fun to play.

It's Kerbal Space Program, not Simulator. Maybe it's semantics, but certain flights do become routine and are no longer an exciting challenge. What if you could "teach" pilots certain transfers? The expansion could feature a "logbook" for each pilot, which can open contract-like certificates. So you start a "Kerbin-Mun" certificate where you have to meet certain goals in the right order (kerbin low orbit, mun low orbit). Once completed (multiple times) you can activate the "mun transfer" task which will be executed mech-jeb style. Pilot rank will affect accuracy, DV budget, etc.

It is supposedly optimized for UWP ("Universal Windows Platform", App store) games and Microsoft warns that regular Win32 games as found on Steam will not benefit very much of it. This article shows a KSP screenshot but doesn't mention how it fares under Game Mode, but it notes that there's very little benefit for other games, and mainly on computers that are already pushed to the brink. So if you're short on memory it might help.

8 - 7 = 1 GB. It all depends on your definition of "much room" Back when I was a little punk I'd write programs that fit into 500 bytes. Barefoot. Uphill. And I liked it!! (It's amazing what you can do with 500 bytes of memory in Z80 assembler)

Except that the forum is not KSP's main product. It's working, maybe not as easy as we want it, for the vast majority of the users. yes, it's perfectly fixable by ditching IPS. At the cost of KPS development. Is it that important? "If you care about your user community..." Again, most of the user community are fine with the way it is, but all will suffer from fixing the problems that only a minority encounters (and it's not like they don't have access to a PC either, or they would not be playing the game). "just fix it" "nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself"—my dad.

I'm not sure “it's falling on deaf ears.” It’s more that it's an IPS problem that, from where Squad is sitting, is not solveable. Same for BB code, IPS does not support it (at least not when I researched it). Going back to the original forum software was not an option, unless you like the idea of the KSP forum being an attack vector for virusses and bots. Could Squad change the forum software? It being a game that is predominately played on PC's and laptops, the mobile environment represents a small group (and yes, I am typing this from an iPad, so I am not a biased PC snob who is bagatelizing your problem). Surely Squad could dedicate resources to implement a new forum. At the cost of KSP development. And apparently (and I am not against that) that was not something that the powers that be wanted.

Look at 2D printing. There's plenty of business selling 2D photo prints even though a printer can be bought for less than the price of a movie theater visit (with soda and popcorn, I'll admit). Granted, shipping & handling is a trivial cost for paper prints, and obviously not for 3D prints, but the promise of a multi-color high-quality printer (as opposed to the home models) is there, together with the issues of having a 3D printer at home (bulky, sofware, setup, etc). The dropping price is not the threat to 3D printing; it's the opportunity. Not that many people are going to order a hand-sized model of their KSP rocket for $30. But an arm-sized model for $10? Once 3D printing gets really cheap we'll see many more of these companies, and they will thrive.

Because our "excellent" is better than their "outstanding!" We don't need it!

That has not stopped Squad from introducing a bazillion airplane parts. There are submerged biomes, and a lot of manned space craft landed in the ocean, to be retrieved by ships. I'm not someone who wants to see ship parts but the arguments in favor of them are just as valid as the arguments against.

I'm too lazy to find it, but I do like to point out that when everyone told me that 64 bit would be "unlimited mod" heaven my reaction was that we would run into people who'd complain that now they're not running out of memory space, they're running out of physical memory. Can I collect my prize? Don't get me wrong, KSP's strategy to load everything into memory for perceived performance gains was bound to hit a roadbump. I fully agree with you on that.

I was talking about the amount of money required to have congress vote for whatever you need it to vote for. Those dudes are a lot cheaper than a mission to Mars and well within Musk range. If you believe people make rational decisions based on carefully unbiased selected data, then we need to talk about that bridge in Brooklyn that I want to sell to you... Seriously, filling those ships with volunteers to go to live on FRIGGIN' MARS will be at the very, very bottom of things Musk needs to worry about.

A valid point, but you are working from the assumption that colonists, effectively on a one-way trip to Mars (where an infected tooth likely will be handled Cast Away style), are expecting the same survival chances as astronauts who go a couple of weeks (or months) into LEO. Surely it is possible to send 100 people at once into space within acceptable safety levels—it's just that acceptable will have a different meaning for those colonists. “But NASA or the FAA will never accept those odds and hand out a permit for those launches” I will doubt that. You don't need extreme safety measures to overcome that obstacle, you need a big bag of money. And that Elon Musk has in ample quantities.

You mean the situation we are in right now? Let's not forget that in that case you got the game for a significantly lower price than it is at right now. And you're right, whatever the cost of the DLC is (I'm going to assume it's less than 50% of the game price) , it's worth it for supporting continuous development of the game.

And that's where opinions differ. Consider, for instance, the Flightsim market. There are many simmers who've spent 10-20× the value of FS9/10 (or Prepar3d) on DLC. And the funny thing is... most of the planes they've bought are available for free! So why do they spend $50 on, say, a P51D Mustang they can download for free? The magic words are added value; and for them the added value the DLC offers easily outstrips the price. Here's a couple of reasons: Insane quality. DLC can represent many more hours in design and build time than most modders are willing to invest in their products. Why would a modder painstakingly improve features of her mod she doesn't care about? For commercial DLC the incentive is quite obvious. This likely will not apply to Squad's DLC, although one can argue that consistency in design style and guaranteed integration in current and future game features could be considered something similar. Continuity. Love Porkjets inflatable habitats? I do! With each release they work less and less satisfactory. If you're building a long running career you will care if your mod will be there three releases from now. A modder can quit for many reasons (career, study, ragequitting due to modpacks/ckan or users in general, and so on). Commercial DLC is much less likely to suffer from those effects. No dependencies on mods that might disappear. “This mod requires parachutes X, or VarySizeY mod”—adding functionality and/or parts you're not asking for. And those mods might quit on you, one day (see above). Setting standards. If a mod/DLC is popular enough, the added functionality it is adding might be picked up by other mods. It's not unreasonable to expect mission packs based on the first DLC pack. And I'm sure there are other reasons (based on personal preferences/opinion). Are these valid reasons to run out and buy the DLC? That depends on how you quantitatively judge the added value, and on what Squad will be charging for it. Obviously $5 will resonate “worth it” with a lot more users than $25 will. But there are undeniable intangibles that offer extra value for Squad DLC over free mods and depending on the price point I expect it to sell well.

we don't even know what they're going to ask for it yet.

If promises by Squad are to be interpreted on a historic basis, we don't know if we'll see the DLC at all.

There's a subtle difference between mods and DLC: their status. Will your favorite mod be supported by other mods? Will it still work when the next KSP version comes out, or will the author have thrown in the towel for various reasons? Will it support localization from the fround up and other features to be added to the game in the future? of course there's no guarantee Squad's DLC will do that but it's not unreasonable to expect it does. That alone makes it different from regular mods. And if this is the way functionality like Infernal Robotics or KER will become "stock" in the future then I will happily pay for that, too.

This discussion will be relevant when we know the price. It might be so low that it's not even worth discussing it.

You don't need a camera mod. What you need is the navball alignment indicator mod, and then just fly primarily in map mode, occasionally switching to the regular view for things like selecting docking ports and such, but not for flying.