Algiark

Is there any guideline to help you decide whether you should suggest the devs to implement something in the game or just request some modders to add it in?

Then go play Spore.

Yes, by farming I meant using a greenhouse module. But I think farming infinitely should only be possible on the ground, to make a settlement on a planet a necessity. Otherwise it's just weird.

Excuse me sir, can you spare a moment for Spore?

Situation: Currently the stock game doesn't have any life support gameplay mechanics, and the available life support add-ons can be seen as a bit too advanced for a casual user who just wants a bit more realism without much calculation and planning (e.g. me). Question: How do you make a life support gameplay mechanics that is simple, fun, yet doesn't stretch too far from reality? Problems: Multiple resources (food, water, and air) requiring different approaches to each. Hard to know and visualize when and where the life support for the current vessel will run out. Figuring out when to resupply, to orbital stations for example, is not cool. Especially when you're focusing on a year-long mission to Jool to do science on all the moons and suddenly your Eve station cries with only a day's worth of supply left. And I'm not gonna figure out myself when I should do a resupply mission. In situ resource generation (a.k.a. farming) presented by life support mods are complicated, with their multi-level resource conversion (i.e. "mine this and process it to that, which can be combined with this to make that"). Proposed solutions: Condense all life support into a single "life support" resource that will be drained as time goes by. Granted, it's not that realistic, but considering in many games, health loss from broken bones, stab wounds, debilitating disease, and deadly poison (which all affect the human body in very different ways) can be recovered by using the same recovery item, this seems realistic enough. (As the devs said, "Game first, simulation second.") To visualize where the life support will run out, a marker can appear on the orbital path similar to apoapsis and periapsis, and when selected can display how much time left before you reach this point and how many revolutions (provided you are in a stable orbit) it will take before you reach it. To make resupplying easier, you can use an automatic calendar interface. Specify a vessel to be resupplied, and the calendar will determine how often and when you should do resupply mission, with adjustable time to account for mission length. Example: supplies in Eve station runs out every 300 days. Getting to Eve takes 200 days. The calendar will remind you to fly to Eve 200 days in advance before the supplies run out, every 300 days. Now you don't have to worry about forgetting to feed those hungry stations! Also works for near-Kerbin stations. To make farming simpler, get rid of multiple resources. When you land on the ground, you can start the farming process immediately, no fuss, no muss. As long as the farming module is active, it will restore life support to full. However, it will consume electricity, and the farther you are from the sun, the more electricity it will use (so there's still some planning to be done - bring those Gigantors when you're traveling beyond Dres). To help with this, an interface will help you with how much electricity the farming module will consume in each of the celestial bodies, so you can design your ship to suit your destination. Of course, to prevent newly formed space programs from abusing this technology from the get-go (rendering the previous solution moot), you must pass a certain point in career mode or unlock a node far in the tech tree to use it. What do you think? Edit: by "farming" I mean "using a greenhouse" way, not "go out in the field and plant crops" way (although it might be cool).

Moons can have moons... They just have to be a lot smaller than the moon they're orbiting.

Yes please.

I like Sun River. Very "you will not go to space today"-like.

So, been playing ARM some time now, seen all kinds of asteroids (haven't successful capturing all of them though) and one thing crossed my mind: they all look pretty much like a typical asteroid, the boulder or the potato kind. With this itself I don't have much problem, but I see one potential gameplay element that could come out of this. Since asteroids has certain element of randomness to it, why not add a rare asteroid? Instead of just categorizing them based on size, there should be also a categorization based of composition and shape. Not all asteroids are boulder-shaped, some could be in weird shape like Kleopatra, and could made of different elements like titanium, iron, and water (which at the very least should give them a cosmetic color difference aside from being dull gray). These rare asteroids could give higher science than common asteroids, and while we're at it, maybe when budget is implemented, you can safely land them on Kerbin or mine it in situ and sell it for money? I hear asteroid mining could be quite lucrative...

Tried this a lot of times, didn't work. Turned out it's the asteroid that have to be clicked...

It was often mentioned that you can get scientific data from asteroids. But how does one actually perform science on an asteroid? Is there a particular way I missed?

Indefinitely? How about definitely. First time, this amount of science. Second time, half that amount. Third, quarter that, and so on until basically there's no science left. Prevent infinite science farming.

Which is exactly what I had in mind when I started doing this!

Now all we need is a steampunk EVA suit...

Dammit, looks like my idea was a bit late

A steampunk take on Kerbal Space Program http://algiark.deviantart.com/art/Kerbal-Steam-Program-438989476

Or if you know you're going to use a particular launcher or whatever you could pre-order a certain subassembly in bulk and get a discount

If time-based experiment means 'x amount of Science per y amount of time,' then no. But if time-based experiment means 'this science experiment will finish in x amount of time,' then yes.

Suggestion: don't make the tech tree more difficult, add more things to research beyond parts that require gargantuan amounts of science.

Someone already did that.

Crew reports can always be transmitted with 100% value, just like EVA reports, so there's no need to carry all those reports. Although it is weird that you can store multiple EVA reports but not multiple crew reports...

Weird, because all of those perks are not determined by the astronaut's skills, but the engineer's.

We all had those times when we want to move lots of kerbals from one ship to the other, sometimes through quite a distance, one by one, rigorously and meticulously (or not, but surely troublesome). Wouldn't it be simpler if we can just move a lot of kerbals together? My suggestion is using old-school RPG party stacking method, where you can merge many kerbals into one kerbal when they are on EVA, and unmerge into the original number of kerbals when you want. This way you only need to do one EVA trip, instead of repeating the trip for each kerbal. Also, entering a ship or a rover requires you to unmerge first, so you can't cheat and use a one-seated rover for 3 kerbals

Something like this? http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/protractor-for-ksp-0-18/

What you're suggesting here is like a helicopter and a plane in a game that's set in the Renaissance simply because the concepts for it have existed back then. If getting to another solar system is the point, it would be more sensible if it were like the science victory in Civilization games, where you have to assemble a spaceship capable of reaching another star (I wonder why they don't start with other planets?), and after that the credits roll. And then you start a new game in that newly unlocked solar system.