klappertjes

Computationally, modelling a rope is very expensive. It's essentially a chain of sticks with hinges, the more sticks the closer to reality. Is that worth the processor real-estate just to have prettier EVA?

Possibly it's a safety measure. Accidentally hitting X (as I have done often) doesn't do anything most of the time, and if it does I can easily start my engines up again and keep firing in my chosen direction. But what if you're in deep space with your perfect encounter and you acidentally hit Z (or whatever button that is)? Instantly your engines go full throttle, most likely in some random direction that's hard to reproduce and cancel out. Bye bye encounter.

Thanks for the support Though I was hoping we could not drag China and "what system is better in the real world?" into this. I fear this thread might go Godwin on us pretty quickly :/ Let's not. I'm having fun. For me it's just a nice thought experiment how a humanity analogue with different primal urges and priorites might differ in their society from us.

As said before, with the notion that it can have basically infinite amounts of fuel and thrust (enough to go 0.99999999999c within at least the timeframe of a hohmann transfer) then this is a non-issue. Go as the photon flies and head pretty much straight for your target. In my layman's understanding, if we did this on Earth going to Mars, the trip would be 15-45 minutes. Mars won't have moved enough for us not to hit its "SOI". Maybe lead it jsut a tiny bit to be sure. There you go, fastest you can get there. Since the one main driving force behind KSP's game mechanics are arguably fuel and thrust management, and we've taken those away, what are we discussing that's a problem exactly?

I find it interesting that many people here tend to think of kerbals as having democracies as complex as the real world ones. But many also agree that kerbals are non-violent and somewhat averse to class differences. Maybe we're really hard-wired to think that true democracy is the only acceptable way, even if it's really neither here nor there in this case. Now I realise it sounds like I'm of some anti-democratic political persuasion. I'm not. My instinct is the same. I'm wary to think that my perfect society of green men isn't democratic. But then I project humanity's imperfections on them. For our naturally peaceful and selfless kerbals something like a "benign dictatorship" might work. The administration would still have everyone's best interest at heart. No need for checks and balances since they're not like that. Dictatorships are great at making decisions efficiently, that at least can be said for them

I always view the Kerbal race as having no real concept of war or intetional violence. They haven't even invented weapons (based on that those will never make it into the game). I've never given much thought to the geopolitical situation, but now I do I don't see how there can be proper different nations beyond administrative entities (towns, provinces ...) for practicality sake. If there were other nations they would have built their own launchpad. The one thing we know for sure is Kerbals really REALLY love space. It'd be top of the budget priority list. And assuming a multi-national space program, we see no signs of national identity anywhere. Look at the ISS. There's flags left and right. We humans just can't help ourselves. If Kerbals are, dare I say it?, better than us and don't care what hill they were born on, then what's a kountry other than a practical local government?

I see two flaws with capturing: 1) Who would be stupid enough to make anything manned? Probes can't be captured so they're much better, and without RemoteTech there's no advantage to manned missions. 2) Even if you make it manned, by filling up all seats it's immune since you're not allowed to control enemy crafts and can't send the kerbals on EVA to put in your own. I guess there is the grabber. So perhaps that could work for capturing?

So is it one launch per week or as much as you can pay for? Even a small probe can turn a spacecraft to splinters if it just goes fast enough, since KSP's node system means breaking the right part will spit it in two. So a dilligent team could wipe out the other team pretty quickly. Kessler syndrom would become pretty hilarious though if anyone bothers to "conquer" orbit (with high enough debris setting) Come to think of it, what constitutes "destroyed"? If you manage to bomb a solar panel off a base it's hardly destroyed, is it? But I've never seen a safely landed or orbiting craft be exploded into non-existence by collision. It just breaks apart into smaller pieces. So being called "destroyed" is not straightforward I think. Just some thoughts

I even go a little stricter on "living space" so that the longer the mission the bigger the space needs to be, but it's mitigated by the fact that I count any structural parts that look like they are accesible to the kerbals, not just literal hitchhiker modules and labs. RCS can't hit solar panels and other fragile stuff like that. I'm less strict about more sturdy parts, but if it can be helped ... Building a rocket or plane takes 7 days. Technically, refurbishing a plane takes ([Cost as per KER]/10,000) days if I can be bothered to do the bookkeeping on that one.

The issue with adding tethers IIUC is that physic-simulating a rope in zero G takes a lot of computing power. You're effectively simulating a bunch of very small stick-like parts connected by free joints. I can understand if the devs don't find that worth the processor real-estate, for the sake of low-end computers. I've always interpreted the insane amount of EVA fuel you get (250 dv or something?) as compensation for not just being able to pull yourself in. And yes, EVA takes practice but it can get very annoying. I usually blame my kerbals and their stupid budget cuts in the training program, that helps my mood through those situations a bit

I found out because a friend posted pictures of it on Facebook and I was intrigued. The very start of my learning curve was standing on the launch pad with my simple rocket and mashing buttons to see what would happen. It was great fun and resulted in unplanned rocket activation, which made me victory pump until I realised I got the staging backwards (I thought 0 was the first stage, etc.). Parachutes deploying on launch, things toppling over instantly, the works. After that lots of hilarious explosions and mishaps and shoddy rockets which got progressively better. Sometimes I long back to the time where I didn't really know how to do things It was socool getting to the Mun for the first time ...

My guess would have been "Lost On Landing", i.e. all the parts that fall off your spacecraft when it touches down (this happens to me a lot when hydrobraking (is that even a word?). Oh the time Jeb's had to go for a swim to retrieve the science from all those cannisters that came off ...

I don't see how 1, 3 and 4 would draw new players in. It sounds like these ideas would make the game massively more complex. Regardless if you're for or against that, I think it's generally agreed steeper learning curve = less newbie-friendly. The impression I get (and in this I may be wrong) is that SQUAD aims to make it easy to understand the most basic concepts of KSP (building a rocket, flight controls & orbit parameters) while not forcing players to do adhere too much to this silly thing called "realism". Hence a smaller solar system, forgiving mechanics, etcetera. Just saying they seem unlikely to listen, my own opinions aside. As for your specific points: 1: IIRC, there are limitations in the game engine they're using, Unity, that make it hard to do much about the node structure. The struts are a workaround. I agree that they're not often pleasing to the eye and that's a problem, but bear in mind that the parts of real rockets are effectively strutted to hell inside their aerodynamic shell. See 4. 2: I'm not quite sure if you mean a better aerodynamic model (which is really fluid dynamics with lower density, I've been told) or modelling the internal workings of engines. It sounds like you mean the second, and holy mother would that be awesome ... in another game ... if you know what you're doing. You're going to have to teach people the basics of mechanical engineering before they can hope to make anything worth a damn. I would almost certainly play this Kerbal Engineering Department game but it has little to do with space exploration. I think it's fair to say this is quite a bit beyond the scope of KSP. 3: This folds into 2 I guess. If we're designing systems on the smallest level then this would be a must, but should we? I'd love for SQUAD to adopt a Infernal Robotics kind of part set with hinges and rotors, but for the scope of KSP they should be modular parts, IMO. 4: I personally like the challenge of having this finite set of parts and trying to make what I want work with them. Playing with mods does not break this for me. I have more diverse parts but they still won't always do what I want with them exactly. The one procedural part I would like to see is hulls for your rockets. As it is they look like they were stripped of their hull, with struts and all visible. When aerodynamics gets fixed we'll need to do better than that. It's not unreasonable and game-breaking, IMO, to be able to mold a hull around the rocket you've built for looks and drag reduction. As for choosing materials, the way I see it, it would make building things a lot more frustrating and error prone for people that don't know you shouldn't make nozzles from copper for example (I didn't know that, but I'll take your word for it). They'll try to and their rocket won't fly worth a damn, and they won't know why because how could they, and get frustrated. The way to remedy that I guess is to give them a crash course in engine nozzle design and the characteristics of different materials. Then they'll have to figure out what this means for nozzles before they can even think of getting anything off the ground. Designing machinery from scratch could be fun, but I don't see it fitting KSP. Right now the game goes "look, here's a nozzle that works and provides this amount of trust and is this efficient. The boys in the lab tested that already. Trust us on this one", and that's fine by me for the purposes of going to space. Taking a slight left on your original ideas towards off-topic lane, wouldn't it be totally awesome if this was indeed another game and the paarts conceived there could be ported into KSP for the profit of kerbalkind EDIT: and I just re-read and saw you are proposing "a new product". It's still not clear to me if you mean KSP 2: Moar Boosters (), or an entirely different game, like I proposed? Your points seem focused on integrating it in KSP, so the first.

Out of curiosity, how did you get in the situation that you had a mod installed giving you a major game feature (life support) without realising it? Did you just install a bunch of mods without looking at what they did? Or did someone else install those mods for you? I hope it doesn't sound rude, I don't mean it to. I am actually curious how this happened.

It is my understanding that they are going to add biomes to every planet and moon eventually, but this is still 0.23.5 so we're not there yet. So far they've added biomes to a body every update (except now, because this is not a full update), seemingly in the order most players visit them. First Mun, then Minmus. If they keep with the "what body would you go to next" logic my guess is Duna is next.

Whoa. Never had this much response to a question before You all had me on "Oberth effect is not about close to the planet, but at high speed" but the rest has definitely been an interesting and enlightening read. I'll dismiss method 3 (by which I meant what Vexx32 said) as the nonsense it is, and proceed to do 1, or 2 if I'm feeling good about my timing. Thanks a lot everyone

I have a question about correct/efficient ways to go places. I'm taking going to the Mun as an example here because it's straightforward for what I'm asking but this can, I assume, be applied to pretty much any destination. I see three ways to do this: 1) Launch. Get into ~80-100km parking orbit. Fumble with manouever nodes until you get a nice encounter with the Mun with low peri and use it. 2) Wait until the Mun is in the right place of the sky (25 degrees above the horizon?). Launch. Fly straight into your Munar transfer. 3) Wait until the Mun is somewhere suitable. Launch straight up to apo at 11Mm = Mun encounter I tend to use number 1), because I've been told (mostly by Scott Manley videos) that this is the most efficient way to do it. Sometimes Manley will do it differently, and remark that [imagine Scottish accent] "... this is of course very inefficient". I trust his judgment. But I don't understand why If I get the Oberth effect correctly, you want to burn close to the planet as much as you can. Then surely, merging orbital insertion and Munar transfer (number 2) means you're doing most of the burning while still ascending, thus burning close to the surface and using Oberth to its fullest. Similarly, using method 3 would do this even more, in my head. Maybe it's a little silly for the Mun, but certainly for interplanetary transfers, launching straight up at sunset or sunrise makes sense to me. Why waste fuel getting in orbit first? I'm almost certain I'm wrong in both cases. Could someone explain to me what I'm missing here and help out a troubled soul?

Waffles, that would be the major axis. "a" is half of that, so what Horn Brain said. In fairness, I learned this just yesterday from a Scott Manley video.

I've always understood the very powerful EVA pack as compensating the absence of tethers. In the real world, astronauts are much safer from being flung off into space because they can pull themselves back. Kerbals don't have that luxury, so we get a bit more power to get around and get us back safely. If SQUAD made it weaker there would probably be as many people complaining about all the kerbals they've lost tumbling into space with no chance of return

EDIT: what the person above me said, onl my guess was that it skips through the encouunter altogether on high time warp Also this may sound snide, but you are not the first person who has basically said "I'm going to quit this game (until update X/Y is fixed") and honestly, you choose to play this game or not. If you don't enjoy it quit, otherwise stop using ridiculous hyperboles.

Excellent. Thanks a lot

As the title says. I press U for lights but nothing happens, but I've seen YouTube videos where people use them.

For re-entry the ride of the valkyris comes to mind. Or if the re-entry is especially daring (negative Pe crash course straight from Minmus with no fuel), O Fortuna. I like to think both are sung happily by Jebediah in the command pod if he's along for the trip. Bill and Bob with their hands over where their ears are in their helmets and Jeb with his arms wide in ecstasy going "Ooooooo Fortuuuuuna ..." as all you can see through the window are orange flames. A calm jazzy number for those layed-back low-Kerbin orbits

You know you're a spacegeek when the first thing you notice is not the equally obvious but far less obscure "ISS" and "MIR" (in cyrillic) but the NORAD numbers and think "easter egg!" XD But it is cool and I had noticed neither, so thanks for pointing it out

I've never had a problem with debris collission, and I think it would be cool to run into that kind of problem, so for now I really don't care about debris. I just destroyed a space station (out of rage) so that's sure to create some debris in 2000km equatorial orbit, but otherwise I'm not worried.