Algiark

Seems pretty weird to me that after you're able to go to the moon, you can go straight to other planets simply by building bigger rockets and go for it. You might need to research bigger and more efficient engines, but that's that. There's no accounting of the cosmic rays, meteoroid impacts, or the effects of prolonged zero-g on kerbals. And this isn't even about life support like food, water. Of course, all the command pods could be said to already have the technology to counter those problems, but that sounds like hand waving to me. I know that going to other planets is hard to begin with, so maybe if it should be more difficult, it should be reserved for something like the 'hard mode' of KSP. Do you think long journeys could be or should be more difficult and complex, or is it better to stay as it is?

If by "alien culture" you mean "collectible easter eggs that serve no purpose other than providing bragging rights", I'm all for it. But if it's literally alien culture that somehow get weaved into the lore of the game... no. It might be more lore-friendly if the story goes that the current Kerbal population is a remnant of a once mighty Kerbal Empire which ruled all of the Kerbol System, and they left marks on all the celestial bodies in it. But a mysterious disaster wiped them all, save for a small population of astronauts and rocket engineers on Kerbin. Slowly they start to rebuild society, albeit a fraction of what it used to be, and started to investigate the cause of the disaster told in ancient tales from generations ago. You get clues as how this mysterious event happened as you gain science and discover artifacts on planets and moons, each giving you a better understanding of the long gone Kerbal Empire.

Maybe the planets could start off in some sort of 'fog of war' and you roughly know the location of the planets, but no other information whatsoever apart from their shapes. At first only the larger planets are known, but as you develop better observatory or send a probe to the planet, whichever first, you discover the smaller moons. From there, it's just a matter of mapping the celestial bodies you want.

Don't forget about technological and financial limitations, especially if deadly re-entry, life support, and other realism add-ons is implemented in the final game. It means that at first, you can't just send your kerbal on a decade long journey around the sun, and you have to settle for a few hours of orbit around Kerbin (or if you have the balls, around Mun). From there, you will slowly and naturally progress within the restrictions provided by the technology and budget available to you. No need for story missions or restrictive objectives, just that if you want to send kerbals to Duna, you might want to spend some time around Kerbin doing things to increase your tech and/or available budget.

The monoliths could be some kind of rare collectibles. When you discover every one of them on every celestial body, it would trigger a super-secret ending, unlock advanced technology, or give another huge reward to be used for your future missions.

Progressive objective kind of limits the gameplay, in my opinion. I prefer if there's no real objective per se, but there are rewards for doing certain things which contribute to the gameplay as a whole. Of course, naturally some things should be done prior to other things, such as setting communication network, but let the players decide how they should progress. To encourage sending probes *first* to celestial bodies, simply have a penalty for losing kerbals, or make sending probes a much cheaper alternative than sending kerbals (actually that's the reason real world space agencies send a lot of probes to everywhere - because they're cheap). Let the technological and financial limitations be the boundary of your progress, I say.

So I was thinking, TAC Life Support could be a colony add-on on its own. It could be similar to Kethane, only instead of Kethane, you would have to scan for & mine water. Water on a celestial body can be converted to other resources and as long as you have access to water, you can survive indefinitely. Because when people say we are going to Mars, they don't say "we will go there and be back as soon as we can", they say "we will settle the [sUNSHINE] out of that planet." Just a suggestion

About the part designs... I'm no 3D modeler, but I can make some concepts, does that count?

Make it a super-secret ending, like getting to the Galactic Core in Spore. This way, it won't count as another place to explore, but simply as an achievement you could do in Kerbal Space Program. Probably with massive rewards to prestige and budget in career mode.

Isn't this how real airlocks work anyway?

Something like this? http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/haystack/

You have de-suggested your suggestion.

Who needs replay when you can just replicate.

In gameplay terms, what is the purpose of the Cupola anyway? Aside from having a pretty view from the IVA?

So basically it's Sporepedia with spacecrafts...

Kethane already has something like that.

There's already something on that

Replace 'Kerbal' in 'Kerbal Space Program' with 'Human' and you'll see why international politics doesn't suit the game.

Reusable craft is its own reward. When budget is implemented, you'll be grateful using expensive rockets is not the only way to get into space.

So this is not necessarily gameplay question, but I'm running a game with quite a lot of add ons, some are parts, some are gameplay altering mod like Deadly Reentry and RemoteTech, the rest are things like Protractor and MechJeb. The game runs fine at first, no lag whatsoever, but after 2 or 3 flights, if I enter the VAB or SPH, the framerate drops significantly to something like 10-15 fps (but only in VAB or SPH, the normal game runs fine). Sometimes the texture of the building is missing, or the building model may not be loaded at all (so it's just the background and some frozen kerbals). After this point, the game is very prone to crashing to desktop, especially during SOI transition or timewarp. Is it because of the add ons? Is there a way to prevent it?

How will add ons affect career mode? Career mode is supposed to be a challenge of its own, but the addition of mods and add ons might alter the challenge offered by career mode. Some makes it easier, some harder, and some provide completely new ways of doing things. What are your thoughts on this? Should add ons be allowed in the final version of career mode, and if yes, how?

Basically everything you mentioned could be done on a rover without wheels... And rovers aren't rovers without wheels.

Whenever I'm map view, particularly when I'm in interplanetary space and going to another planet, I have to do a really long scroll between zooming out to see the position of the planets, zooming in to set up a maneuver point and zoom back out to see where the maneuver will take me. Also related to this, whenever I'm setting a maneuver point that's really far away from anywhere, I have to zoom in or out and rotate just enough so that the maneuver point is right in front of my view. So basically 2 suggestions here: -Give the zoom feature of the map screen a preset. Something like 1st level zoom is the whole planet/moon, 2nd level zoom is the planet to the farthest moon, 3rd level zoom is whole planet SOI, 4th and 5th level is for the Sun SOI (because it's so damn big). This will save time and hassle of 5 seconds of scrolling in and out, and make interplanetary travels much more comfortable. Of course, you can use something like fine controls to zoom in the traditional way, if you like. -A 'click and drag' mode in map view. This will make setting and adjusting maneuver node much easier because you don't have to guess how much zoom you need to do from a center point and rotate the camera until the maneuver node is right in front of your face. Once you're done, you can double-click on something to revert back to the old mode of view.

Make that EVERY first crash on each of the celestial bodies. Some sort of Die-O-Rama, if you will.

What if the lab module acts modular; that is, many parts can be put together for extra science? However, this makes it very heavy and/or fragile and therefore unpractical to be landed on the surface of planets, so it's best to leave it on orbit while your lander gathers the samples. Of course, you could just create a really heavy lander and do the science on the ground, but that's just another way of how things can be done.