soldieroffilth

This mod should also be stock-a-like and not add any new resources. Mostly I am just looking for more and better engines to research after all the other stuff in the tech tree is done. I have tried KSP Interstellar but I don't like the plethora of stuff you have to do in order to make everything work. If you know of such a mod please let me know, I have searched three different KSP mod sites for something like this and can't find anything.

I couldn't do a video of this as this craft really bogged down my CPU but I thought I would share the screen caps with you all here. I might post the .craft file later after I refine the vessel a bit. http://s902.photobucket.com/user/Jovian_Dior_T/slideshow/Destiny%20Space%20Program

Thanks!

Am I missing something? Do the science labs with this mod actually generate science or are they strictly for aesthetics?

I dont know the first thing about coding for KSP, about as much as I know in any programming language at this point is cout >> "Hello world!"; Also I just started back with classes and wont have the time to work on this, these ideas always seem to come to me at the most inopportune of times.

Originally designed as a command capsule to take a Kerbin to the ocean floor, it was deemed a failure as there was no way to return the entire module to the surface. Looking for a redesign of the system after having dumbed an obscene amount of funds into the project, kerbal engineers decided they could theoretically cut a portion of the probe off and fit it with a hard drive and a large battery that could carry data to the surface via a built in air pocket, and once at the surface transmit the data on the hard drive using any of the three antennas already in existence, if attached. PART A: designed to deliver the probe and subsequent science equipment to the bottom of a body of water. Ensure you have parachutes attached. PART B: contains a 40 mits sized hard drive and power enough to transmit up to 40 mits of data. detaches from the main body and floats to the surface where it can transmit its data. This is as far as I can take this project, I leave it available for anyone who wants to take it from here. All I ask is that you give credit for the model. PM for the model, it comes as two OBJ files.

Sometimes I listen to Tyson or Kaku when playing KSP, classical or Trance on occasion.

Has anyone else noticed an inclination change in Mun or it just me?

Looked at some info on the actual SLS and it says that the proposed SLS would be capable of putting a 170 ton payload into low earth orbit in its largest configuration. Numbers from KSP show this to be about the same, altitude dependent of course.

I am aware of light does when the human eye reacts to it. My statement was in regards to how it would happen inside of the game engine. Simply changing the skybox of the environment based on certain conditions.

What if space in KSP reacted like space IRL and went pitch black when the player was in sunlight?

What if the new more powerful engines are squads way of secretly signalling to us all that there will be something added that is even further away than Eeloo, and that those new engines, or a big honking rocket of ridiculousness, is the only way to get there?

How baout an Oort Cloud with procedurally generated comets we can visit with the new powerful rockets?

Another good example of challenge is the "single burn to Duna" challenge that was suggested in Scott Manleys GDC interview with the KSP devs. Why not a single burn to Jool challenge? The thing to take away from this is that we need to make our own challenges instead of asking the devs to make them for us, that has sort of been what KSP is about. How far can get on this single stage? Whats it going to take to get to Eeloo? Whats the heaviest thing I can lift in to space? From where I am sitting the intent behind KSP from day one was to provide an environment for players to explore, but it would be up to them to figure out how to get there. Big engines like the SLS just mean that setting up a colony on Laythe is now a bit more practical. Personally though, I play KSP for the mission planning and less for the space flight, so the SLS is nice addition, especially for low end laptops like my own. IMO, the rockets and Ion engines are fine, they accurately emulate the natural progression of rockets, the history of KSP is actually a pretty accurate portrayal of human rocket science history.

So there are a couple of people complaining about the new parts and how they "throw the balance of the game off". This might be true in sandbox mode but I think that some of us have gotten too used to judging the games balance based off of sandbox mode. We have career mode now and that is really about the only point of balance that needs to be worried about. Sandbox is a testing ground to try those things out that we are not sure if they will work or not because eventually, career mode will probably irrevertable consequences. Now if any of us sat down and played this game only on career mode, I imagine that we would have a sigh of relief once we unlocked the SLS, or even the new ion engines.

Because that would take the fun out of it being a game. That is where the realism can be used as a game mechanic. However, realism that requires a player to get out of bed, make breakfast, eat the breakfast, put clothes on while juggling a cup of coffee, and then execute an hour long commute to the office does not make for a fun game but rather a simulator. It is like the difference between Call Of Duty and Arma or Operation Flashpoint. One is a military shooter and the other is a military simulator, and both play types play immensely different despite their similiarities.

I have been playing KSP for over a year now and have vested over 500 hours into it. Absolutely love this game, and just out of curiousity I wanted to see who all still uses mechjeb. I will admit I still use mechjeb from time to time. Although as I have gotten beter at rendevous and landing I only use mechjeb for certain things. My number one use for mechjeb is the Smart A.S.S. which I use pretty extensively for maneuvers and docking alignment. I use the landing guidance every once in a while when I need to put a lander next to a base or something else that I want within a 20 to 30 meter distance. I think the Smart A.S.S. is about the only thing from MechJeb that I would like to see implemented as a tool into the game though.

I am just going to start by saying that there isn't anything in the new update that you can't already get in a mod from the Spaceport. Personnally I think it is nice to see some of the mod inspired parts coming into vanilla. I love the fact that Ion engines are now significantly more practical than they were. As a prospective game designer myself I understand the whole, "realistic isn't always fun" thing and so developers do have to find a line between gameplay and realism. KSP is ultimately a game, not a simulator, if you want a simulator, go play Orbiter. The new SLS is awesome, it will take some getting used to but now that we have the SLS I can pul KW rocketry off my computer as the SLS is easier on my CPU, RAM, and GPU than KW Rocketry was. If having the SLS make it too easy, then don't use it. In the end though, this game has yet to see completion and wont for some time yet. Lets give it some time before we start saying things like "KSP is broken".

My suggestion is to change the Instrument Based Experiments, or IBE's, so that they yield science at all times during their activation so long as an antenna is present to transmit the data, and the power requirements are met. This could be easily done with a series of true/false statements that check to see if 1)power is present, 2) the module is active, and 3) the antenna is active. If all are true then they passively generate science whether the craft is being actively flown or not. To avoid stacking for quicker science rates, each probe can only generate 1 point of science for each IBE type on the craft. This is because with two or more IBE's of the same type on the same craft they are only double checking their results. However in order to generate more science in the same biome another probe with the same or similar equipment would have to be active and transmitting as well. As a probe moves through each biome the IBE's generate science in regard to how much science is available in that biome, if all the science in that biome has been done, they will generate no more science. If going to , say Duna, you will generate science from being in the solar biome, Duna high orbit biome, Duna low orbit biome, Duna atmosphere biome, and ultimately the surface of Duna, and how much of the science cap you pull from depends entriely upon how much time you stay in each biome. This works especially well for rovers and can extend their mission life span as they will need to move from biome to biome in order to get science from those biomes. It could even be setup so that you get science for day and night side conditions of each biome on a planets surface. Now arguably this might be abused at this point in time of the KSP development by using time acceleration, but once the budget and reputation mechanics are implemented a player wouldn't really be able to do so as using time acceleration at any point in time during career mode as doing so might upset other time sensitive operations and contracts where a player needs to be doing something other than time warping to increase science gain. Abuse of time acceleration can be also be avoided by adding deprecation values to equipment, whether it is micrometeorite impacts or prolonged exposure to radiation, equipment will eventually begin to fail and sensors will fall out of calibration. Adding this value can ensure that even if a player does decide to time accelerate to increase their science gain rate, that rate will fall as time goes on until it reaches the point where it is no longer useful. Depreciation of the IBE's results is expressed this way through time instead of limiting how much science can be achieved, after all if a probe is sending nothing but raw data, that data can be resent over and over until the full set of data is attained, which is more or less the basis of the suggestion, but the hang up is that no probe is going to spend enough time in a biome to collect all of the data unless specifically commanded, or flown, to that biome and set up so that it stays there. This would also increase the mission life span of all probes, Voyager 2 conducted several experiments to several planetary systems during its life span and continues to collect data, however because our own tech tree has expanded and given us more options for research we have found that we are still sending probes to locations that Voyager 2 has been to, and not just to get newer types of data but to also get a better look at what Voyager 2 was only able to give a glimpse of.

This is an even better idea, as it gives some of the reward right off the bat and then requires the unit to stay in place in order to finish the experiment, this is perfect because getting to the location to do the experiment is only a part of the process. Although I dont agree with diminishing returns, if your not going to give the player something then you may as well not include it in the game.

All obstacles are an annoyance when getting to a reward, but it is not the reward that counts but rather how the reward is achieved, do you reward the player for their hard work and patience with diminishing returns or do you reward the player with increased capabilities until the reward is expended. A completionist is someone who will go so far as to mark every anamoly with a flag and set up manned stations on every planet things like this arbitrary achievements. When you are talking about a resource in a game like science points in KSP a player needs to be able to expend all available sources of that resource around them there by motivating them to send probes to the more difficult places to gather more science points. This could even stress more strategic thinking in the consumption of those resources as it changes the mentality from "Oh ill just go here and grab all of these science points" to "I am generating 2 science per minute with a grand total of 200 which means that in roughtly 1 hour, time acceleration dependent of course, I will be able to get those new engines that I was looking". One of the reasons I suggest passivey generated science is because once the budget is implemented for career mode, it is not going to be financially advantageous to send probes out to go and gather 5 science. At least if you can gather that science passively and totally, then you know that you have expended that resource for that area, meaning you really do have to go to laythe and set up a probe there and in doing so your not wasting time and money on things like pocket change science. Passively generated science, gives an advantage in terms of nearby celestial bodies like Mun and Minmus, but when you start speaking in terms of sending probes to Jool, the time it takes to get there almost overwhelms the advent of the reward. So why not make it so that if you only want to do one trip to Jool to gather negative gravioli data, you can do that, but if you want to send 5 probes to assist in gathering that data, you can do that too, either way you are going to expend that resource totally one way or another.

Apparently you refused to read the rest of my post where I explained that the more probes you put into that area, the faster your science goes up. In all seriousness as it stands right now, it is significantly more annoying to have to fly multiple missions doing the same experiments for diminishing returns. If a player is going to be required to put multiple probes out doing the same job, then at the very least the game should reward them for doing so by increasing their resources gathering rate until it is depleted, not diminishing it until there is only a handful to go after.

Technically it would be difficult but as one person already stated, the interstellar mod has already done something similar to this. As fun is concerned, I think it would enhance the fun, as it would allow you to do more things within the game all at once. So you go out and put two probes in solar orbit, they are taking radiation readys and slowly sending that data back, you still had to fly them out there, but now that they are out there and doing there unmanned job like they are supposed to, you can go on and do other things. The only way I can really agree with actively doing science as opposed to passively generating science with probes that had to be actively put into place, is if by doing science that required me to be flying the vessel I could conduct research that would affect my decision making process on whether or not I send a probe, a rover, or a manned mission to that location the next time around. As it stands science does little more than advance the tech tree.

Before anyone steps in with an arguement about realism, it is a known fact that what is real does not make a good game, I have experienced this first hand from my time in the military.

I disagree, this game in and of its self was once thought to be impossible and yet here it exists. I am sure the developers could find a way to make it happen. After all someone pulled a multiplayer mod out of their ass when it was said that could not be done and from my experience operates fairly smoothly for something in the alpha stage.