Arsonik

Sounds like a death sentence to a company with an open modding scene unless they plan to begin work on a new game as soon as 1.0 is released, killing off all development on KSP. However I purchased in March when steam early access opened up, and with 729 hours in I've heard no mention of such a deal. Even if it is true, they can honor that and still give people the option to pay for add-ons. As I said previously, its really just a glorified donation that would get you something in return. I paid something like $12 for this game. I would gladly give squad another $38 and some change for the many hours I've enjoyed now. And if they are scrapping things that were on the feature list before, I think they can forget about their promises of free DLC now anyways. I'm sure many people upgraded from the demo to the full game under the premise that they would eventually get features that are now no longer planned for the game. Thats the problem with releasing a planned feature list for an early access game if you don't intend to complete all of those features. I'm sure many people would gladly pay $20 for a new universe with resources in an expansion pack. Myself included. Due bear in mind, even if we forget everything I previously just said, they can release expansion packs and DLC for $$$ and still honor their promise to early backers if what you say is indeed true. Minecraft had a similar launch platform. I know because I was a early backer and remember hearing people whine later on about it. There is no reason you can't be served a free download while joe shmooe who just bought the game yesterday would have to pay.

I prefer to come in as shallow as possible to most planets/moons in Manley style as CobraA1 put it. Burning off all horizontal velocity to as close to 0 as possible and then doing a "baby" suicide burn the rest of the way down. For perspective, on the Mun this usually means coming in between 8-12km for an equatorial landing (give myself some margin for error), and then waiting until around 3-4km for a landing burn. I'm fairly good at this these days, but in practice I typically drop my speed to between 30 and 50m/s by the time I am at 100m altitude, and then drop throttle down just enough that I can keep burning and kill all my velocity just before touchdown, so only 1 engine restart for the whole process. Lately however in my new .23 career, I've taken a less then optimal tech path this time around opting for more aerodynamics and rocketry then science parts. This has stifled my development later in my career and I'm still battling with less then optimal 2.5m parts. I've made my first pancake 3man lander under these conditions that is a 4 stage launch. I do a single burn to direct munar injection which drops the first 2 stages back into atmosphere. The 3rd stage is used partially for landing and then when emptied is ditched to crash into the Munar surface. It gives me a good idea of true ground level altitude as well, should I be landing on the dark side (not yet, not with this mission anyways). When I hit 16km altitude is when I begin said 3rd stage landing burn. Velocity is usually ~800m/s at this point. The 3rd stage brings that down to ~200m/s. Then the lander completes the... landing.... and return. Hooray!! I have no idea if this is efficient at all. It is highly practical for me however provided the tech level I current have, and very fun as well

Personally I see no reason why the final product cant be monetized further. When we have 1.0, add a cosmetic shop. I'm sure tons of people would pay to skin their Kerbals or their Rockets from a selection on a store page. Even larger overhauls like the universe replacer. Some people would see this as trivial because all of this and more is already possible for free with mods. However it is a nice way to make a donation to the dev team without actually hitting a donation page. Do note I'm not suggesting that cosmetic mods shouldn't be allowed, but just that the two can co-exist. So if you wanna throw ten bucks at the devs, you can come out with a nice new space suit for your Kerbals or something. And I'm sure they can release at least one expansion pack without it being received poorly.

I think this is something we are more likely to see after stable client releases of the game (1.0 and up). Do to they frequent updates required to keep up with the vanilla games dev cycle, and the unknown time frame until feature complete vanilla, it is unlikely. The amount of time spent collaborating would be obscene I imagine.

Surely with such a big ship, you would have enough low ranking colonists aboard to just start shoveling people into the black hole. Interstellar population control anyone?..... Anyone? No......? Ok......

I'm hoping for a small asteroid sized space brothel/night club in low kerbin orbit. I will at least settle for some vending machines to refill my snack and drink compartments in the mean time until we can all agree on what music to play at our space disco.

You are supposed to switch to the science package for its return, to clarify. Even though I stated this clearly. I guess maybe your not replying to me?

I'm assuming your trying to drop the packages from a relatively stable orbit. At your apopapsis, drop your periapsis to ~30km. Decouple one probe immediately after, and then raise your periapsis back to 70+km. Now you can switch to your science package for its return! This will avoid any science packages disappearing. It requires a bit more time and fuel... But mostly time. Changing orbit by 80km should take less then 100m/s dV. More then worth it for some juicy science. Probe or debris, makes no difference in atmosphere. In the vast expanse of space things won't despawn in this way. A uncontrolled vessel on a suborbital path is assumed to be doomed and gets deleted. This is why the above method is ideal for you.

I don't understand the gripe? Send a lab to the Mun or Minmus. That way you can do several landings on either planet without having to do multiple returns to Kerbin.... I will admit it is some time investment to set up a functional space station/science lab in orbit around another celestial body. I've barely dabbled in even Kerbin space stations before .23 because they were literally useless to ME... However it is quite feasible and very rewarding ( again to ME ) after you finish. I haven't finished my tech tree yet but I'm more then half way unlocked across the board, up to the row with Sr. docking ports and Nuclear engines. This is roughly how I've progressed so far, with minimal headaches and spaced across the two or three(?) days since release. Starting out the same I would in .22, I did 2-3 suborbital flights in various directions from KSC to hit as many biomes as possible. I followed this up with a moon flyby. I went for a Minmus flyby next, but as my Minmus flybys usually end up, I found myself with just even fuel at periapsis to turn the flyby into a landing and return. Literally, I landed back at Kerbin with less then 1 unit of fuel in the tank, one of my my proud missions now. Anyways, following that I went for a Moon landing. Now I went for ANOTHER Minmus landing knowing that Minmus now has biomes! Normally around this time I would proceed with a Solar orbit and return. It worked out that when I launched for my Minmus landing it was quite late and I was quite low on give a $*&@. And this far along in my game I had not made a single Kerbin orbit, I had been eyeballing out single burn transfers. Well I screwed up and put Minmus on the wrong side of my takeoff. So I did a solar orbit (just barely leave Kerbin SOI, do your science, and then burn retrograde until you are back home ). Upon my return to Kerbin SOI, I had already set my Kerbin periaps low during my "injection burn" from solar orbit. But I came very close by Minmus, so I said what they hell and did another Minmus landing as well! Bear in mind by now I had 400 (and maybe 800) unit 2.5m tanks and a poodle engine unlocked. After all that was said and done, perhaps before that even, I unlocked everything I needed to start my science lab. But it was kind of intimidating me. I had small mono tanks, I had standard docking ports, lander can, etc etc.. But any space station I've done in the pas was with Sr. ports, nuclear engines, 5 way RCS, etc etc.... None the less I figured I may as well give it a shot because I was getting to the point you are at now where science was not coming in fast enough doing a landing and return over and over. So after much tinkering in the VAB this is the system I devised, and put into orbit last night. No landings yet however. - Built my LAB module, launched it probe controlled. Basically a lab, with panels and propulsion. Orbited it... I built the lab before I knew what modules I wanted to attach to it so I left it in Kerbin parking orbit for awhile (yay finally kerbin orbit after 5-6 missions!...). - Planned and developed 2 "main" modules for the station. -- A 3 man capsule with a crew cabin. Same barebones style as the lab. Propulsion, panels, mono.... -- The Lander! Duh! It has all the science I had available to me and all the fancy gizmos I could fit in.... For mid-level tech Just a single man lander but with enough fuel to do a couple Minmus ascents and rendezvous before refueling (from full tank). - Sent each module to Minmus separately and docked there. (I'm getting quite proficient at docking now that I've done a few careers. Not the headache it use to be!) - And thats where I am now... Going to fire up the game and play a bit before bed after forum lurking a bit more. The lander IS a manned lander so I will be doing sample returns. I don't want to transmit them however, which is why I designed the 3man + crew compartment module. I will load that sucker up with dirt from all over Minmus and then ship it back in the shuttle to rendevouz at Kerbin and then return to KSC in a yet-to-be-designed re-entry vehicle. Which will probably be a part of a refueling station which is also yet-to-be-designed. I do have future plans with the station however. Since I waited for reasonable tech levels to build the thing, it SHOULD be re-useable at other planets. I've never transferred to another planet from MINMUS orbit before, but I imagine its hella easy!!!!! So once I've milked Minmus for all its worth, it will be off to the Joolean system, or Ike or Gilly or something Minmus-alike. Somewhere during my mess of missions and before building my station, I to did a Duna landing. It was a probe mission with 2 goo's, 1 materials, and a thermo and atmo detector. Now, compared to 0.22 mission, you are right. It was USELESS! But not really... 400 something science if I recall correctly. I built the goo canisters and materials bay into the injection module so I did those experiments around 8km altitude during aerobraking and then ditched that garbage after promptly transmitting. The thermo and atmo detector are reuseable so I "spammed" that as much as the game would allow, whizzing over the planet above orbital velocity. I captured and landed over the north pole and did my last science transmission there. The fun part of this mission (seriously the only fun part too, I hate interplanetary burns......) was desposing of the probe lander after it was done. It fell on its side during landing, so I tried taking off up the hill it tipped on. Needless to say it never got more then 5m off the ground, but it flipped around lie a bucking bronco for a good minute (40 some fuel on 2 ant engines). I managed to bury the nose into the ground like in that background splash screen from the games Menu (Mun or bust). I got a screenshot I may upload later, probably not though . It was really cool. It is literally buried nose first and can't move anymore since it somehow clipped into the planet. That and the battery died since the solar panels broke *didnt fall off though!*. I gotta brag here a bit as well... This Duna mission was no exception to my no Kerbin orbits 'rule'. It was the first time I eyeballed the phase angle or whatever the technical term is, by doing timewarp on the launch pad. And indeed I blasted off and rendevouzed with Duna in ONE BURN from Kerbin for the first time ever! Any other planet for that matter. Now THAT felt good It was 27,000km separation but it was something like a single 10dV correction burn to drop periapsis under 10km. The intent of my post is just to say I think science progression is just right now, nearly 'perfect' in my opinion. The game actually has a nice pace to it now and incentivizes building space stations and other engineering marvels. And the engineering is where I find the most nerdy gleeful joy. Sure it could be better I suppose... But its good enough for me. If anything they should just make careers more player defined in the next update to sort all of these problems out. Difficulty levels if you will. Let the player decide how much transmissions are worth, how many times they can be done, how much science you start with, etc. Hopefully this was a coherent post. I typed it all up fairly quickly and without proofreading. I had posting on forums these days to be completely honest. To many years of forum activity across the web. Cheers

Flight computer didn't start from the sounds of it.

"Ask your parents if you didn't understand the bit about Eve." LOL Somewhere there is a young man or woman who got grounded because he asked about a fictional planet in a video game.

At the end of the video you can hear him saying he is going to get the tongs.

I saw this for this first time when it was posted to wimp.com a few days ago. Thought I'd share it here in case anyone hasn't seen it. Pretty funny. http://www.wimp.com/astronauthammer/

Booooooo that sucks. I tried landing on Jool once, when I first started playing in .18. I didn't use wiki's or any guides at the time, I explored everything for myself before I allowed myself to look at the forums even. Never again

Enjoyed the album and congrats on the milestones.

I experimented a bit with shooting Kerbals (no rocket parts) into the air at various angles after reading this post. The highest straight shot upward I managed was 6km with some KW engines. Im curious if anyone has a craft that can do better? I think I'm going to reinstall nova puch for the 10,000kN engine and try kerbal launching with that. I'd like to construct a Kerbal Kannon that can send a kerbal(s) from KSC to the island runway in one blast.

I was going to comment that the payload must be huge if those boosters only got the damn thing to 22km........ And then you go and tell us that is just 1/7th of the payload?!?!?! Dear god that is crazy.

I had this happen to a vehicle after undocking it from my station and forgetting to change its orbit. Station caught up and passed through the other vehicle at high speed.

I will be honest that I skipped to the last page and only read the OP and first few replies last night. But to address your point, as far as nVidia and PhysX are concerned anyways, you can dictate whether PhysX calculations are done on the CPU or GPU in the nVidia control panel. Since you have an AMD card I can't say for certain if that would work for you. But as I understand KSP/Unity is using PhysX for part of its Physics, and PhysX is not supported on AMD GPU's as far as I know. So no cause for concern for your laptop. ..... I'm probably wrong though.

I believe it falls under forum etiquette because it can save face for a lot of people who might not have been in the know in the past, if you will. Say someone contributed to an old topic as a newbie with bad information or something. Months or years go by and they are now much better versed in the game/topic and more well respected. So reviving such an old post could be frustrating for said individuals. Although it can be hilarious for everyone else This is why they recommend making a new topic and simply providing a link to the old topic if you must. Or that is my view on the subject anyways.

It would be nice to have an option to DISABLE music as well, rather then just turning it down to effectivley 0 volume... Unless turning the volume to 0 also disables the music, but there is no indication of this in the menu. I know many games can actually see a minor performance increase from disabling music. Just one less thing for the game to be processing. I know I know its not like this would allow you to KSP on an i486/am486 but every optimization adds up at the end of the day. As far as customizing the soundtrack, I've had thoughts of a combination of Aes Dana music (very minimalistic, ambient, almost hypnotic) for the "space" music and out-right stealing the Sim City 4 OST for in-atmopshere music. Maybe some of the finer MIDI pieces from the Ultima series for in the VAB.

Seconded on that!... I mean come on! Isn't bac9 a developer for SQUAD now? Doesn't he have 2 or 3 IVA's for his mod pack? AFAIK He made that pack for free out of his love for this game... Can't they give the guy like a day or two to make a STOCK IVA? Hell just put the B9 Mk2 IVA in the Stock Mk2 cockpit and I'd be fine with that lol!

I have a very old Logitech joy that works natively with KSP. It makes flying planes a lot more fun... I wasn't fond of using it for rockets or landers however. Anyways, being some 10 years old one of the axis (roll in my config) is going bad so I can't really use it to fly anymore. However, the throttle stick on the joystick as well as its buttons and inputs work just fine still. I keep the joy connected just for the throttle alone. And I have some 20 buttons on it that I have tied to various functions in the game thanks to the ability to bind an input to more then one key. I couldn't go back to playing without it. Throttling with shift and ctrl is to much of a fuss for me now. I don't even need the engine shutoff button.... I just flick my throttle stick down and it does the same thing. And allows for such a higher level of throttle precision. In spite of all this, SQUAD does need to better support joysticks. Linearity and other things should be added for finer tuning of joystick axis' and such. Perhaps a way to load different joystick settings for each aircraft as well. This would be a huge help, perhaps a way to save different joy settings and load them in the VAB or tie them to individual craft. This is very important because different crafts call for different levels of deadzone, sensitivity, linearity, etc. Or you will simply crash out right. As it is, the fact that I cannot even access my input settings from anywhere in game other then the main menu is a huge annoyance. I've been hoping for the ability to change inputs from in-game since I started playing in .18

As far as I can tell, Kerbalkind doesn't extend past Kerbal Space Center anyways. And I think I can duct-tape...rrrrrrrr I mean weld enough crap together to build a vessel large enough to escape all the KSC employees from certain doom. Kerbalkind lives on

There is a mod called Torodial fuel tanks or something along those lines on the spaceport with similar tanks for all types of fuels. //edit http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/46580-0-21-1-Toroidal-Fuel-Tanks-v0-2-2 Cheers