RSwordsman

I think randomness to the solar system is a cool idea. Not sure how you could reconcile it with the existing system, however. Maybe have it as a check box before you start a game, whether you want the standard one or "surprise me"? I'd support Kerbin staying the same, but the other planets could have randomized names, orbits, and science yields, and limited-randomized diameter, density, and terrain topography/colors. Unmanned flight first seems like a given so I'll agree to that too, but I don't have enough info to comment on researchers. People are still arguing over how to make space stations useful for science lol.

On space station science, I'd suggest that designated "station modules" (ones that are designed specifically to be orbited long-term) generate a finite amount of science over time. Once this amount is spent, you have to replace the Kerbal(s) manning it with new ones fresh from the KSC. The "old" ones must be recovered on Kerbin before they can be sent back up to do more science. ^^There could be multiple sizes for science labs, maybe housing 1, 2, and 3 Kerbals for increasing science gains if they remain freshly crewed and powered. I feel that this is a way to make station science effective, as well as necessitate crew rotation without being able to cheat it somehow by keeping the old crew in space.

Personally I'd LOVE warp drives and other 90% fictitious parts, as long as they are physically plausible and balanced in some way. Not to mention space travel won't be really interesting until we find a way to go faster than light (and it might go against the grain of KSP's focus on orbital motion, but there are lots of little hacks proposed to get around Newtonian behavior). But, as always, there are mods for that I suppose. What I don't want? The possibility of permanently screwing yourself over. If budget is implemented, there has to be a periodic "federal grant" that gives you X Kredits per time period no matter how little success you have. The ability to go totally broke from failures ups the ante, but overall would be the cause of save-scumming.

Nifty idea, but I think that along with having monetary cost, this idea is totally unnecessary. Besides, part of the essence of Kerbal engineering is that it's all slapped together with no undue deliberation.

Good catch there; sorry about that. I get a similar feeling when landing also, but that's more relief as well hehe. "Whee! We didn't die yet!"

the thrill of getting a successful orbital rendezvous never gets old. I mean, you're whipping around the planet at thousands of kilometers a second, and you're attempting to exactly match altitude, eccentricity, and inclination, AND timing, with limited fuel to boot. Although I have mostly gotten the hang of it to where it's a routine procedure, I always feel like the king of space when I pull it off. Anybody else have otherwise normal situations where they are just wowed by the events they are directing? Space travel is amazing.

That is one sexy shuttle.

Aah, you had to go advanced. I've got it, thanks.

I thought it might be an issue like this. I have yet to test it, but I'm confident it will work. Thanks for the responses. EDIT: Must have been a glitch; it works now no problem at all. It's safe to change this one to answered if I knew how lol.

So I just went straight from the tracking station to my probe on an Eve transfer orbit. Problem is, on its current trajectory it's going to miss the planet. But when trying to adjust its course, I found out that I couldn't rotate it. At all. (Before you ask, yes it has power.) Even with an inline reaction wheel, all it did was flex a little between the reaction wheel and the part above it. Same with Q and E rotation. Thinking it was some mistake in design, I started a minute burn in order to use the engine gimbal to change its orientation. But even that didn't work. Is there any reason at all why a probe would REFUSE to change attitude under torque? Could it be some sort of bug?

I don't think you can aim flags actually. As far as I can tell you can point the Kerbal in any direction, but they just rotate automatically to give you the same issue. I've gotten lucky a few times though, with *slight* sunlight showing the flag's face.

I think the observatory (and space telescopes-- one can hope) would be very awesome to use in discovering new planets. However, we already know about the ones which are already there, and can safely say they're the ones the ancient Kerbals with their ridiculous balloon-fart flying machines knew about. So that leaves to discover any additions, as well as asteroids and comets? There's tons of stuff out in space that can be seen from the ground (with an accompanying science gain for finding) if we look hard enough.

I've had vibrations of the nodes like that before even getting to 1m precision. I don't worry about any eccentricity where the difference is less than 1km, because even if it wiggles like that, you know it's circular enough to start a transfer burn from anywhere without undue loss of efficiency.

The moon's craters don't bother me, despite having claimed a ton of landers and rovers. The only thing I don't like is having to pick landing spots based on Kethane distribution.

^^I've used the drop tank method on a few designs. It's not quite as efficient as asparagus because you lose thrust-mass ratio, but it seemed to work alright.

I never have unintentional collisions, as I immediately delete any debris that I leave up there from missions. Not for gameplay reasons though, as I'd love the realism. Does letting your debris pile up have any noticeable effect on the game's performance or disk space requirements?

Mining various resources for money would be freaking sweet. I can see mineral/Kethane? collection being there in addition to government grants for scientific discovery. That said I'd be relieved to see that no science potential can be lost forever if you do things the wrong way. Because I'm so far terrible at the game AND playing with Deadly Reentry, so trying to bring back a capsule and science module on a ballistic trajectory home has not been very fruitful.

With flags, minimalism is usually better. Personally I'd take off everything except for the flame itself and center it, maybe have some sort of designs in a circle around it but no more.

People have some twisted ideas XD Personally I'd stick them in a base either on Kerbin or some other body and have them do ongoing research projects.

Science report upon putting a cupola into LKO: "I can see my house from here!"

The others have it pretty much right. CoL behind CoM is a good start, but you also need the wing area and speed. All the control surfaces in the world won't help you if you're going too slow and at too steep an angle of attack for them to work well.

Reason to me would dictate that you don't actually score points/science until your information is received by the KSC. So if for any reason your pod doesn't make it home and never transmitted remotely, the experiment may as well never have happened.

I know about shift already, but I haven't tried using c. Thanks for the tip. I've always been hesitant about this because it feels cheaty, but an exception may be in order for structure and wing parts.

This question came about after ogling the beauties in the SSTO showcase thread. A lot of people manage to make not only wings with wing pieces, but sort of skins for their craft for aerodynamics and/or aesthetics. This one is a simpler example, but even more elaborate fuselages made entirely out of wing pieces have been made to completely encase the guts of the ship. I have tried for a while now, and I just can't get the parts to work like I want them to. I always end up wildly guessing at what the WASDQE keys will do to a piece, yet if I finally figure something out, adjusting its position only minutely on a structural element might totally throw it off. Is there a method to the madness, or is it something you just have to tinker with until you can work some magic?

This is the one I designed for my out-of-game fictional military, the Entente Space Corps. Quick question: How do you get the draped cloth effect to stay? I see it in the VAB/SPH, yet haven't tested it for deployable flags and I see some people can post the complete image on here. How is it done?