Franklin

no but seriously, thanks for not sexualizing the model, squad. every dev update the last month has been a much-needed banger.

Yeah, this is gonna be an interesting update.

exciting notes, last few weeks' have been bangers. the next couple updates are gonna be somethin

Over-analysis of the drill structure aside, some of us have been griping that there's little reason for our Kerbals to ever go EVA aside from science bumps. I'd love more EVA interactions for the Kerbals, and the drills would be a good start. As it is they're just another kind of science part, which are dull as dirt right now.

little boys will be little boys

Yes they do. Because they're divisive and speculate on demographic value when really there's no need for 'accuracy' beyond being happy KSP is a game everyone can feel comfortable playing. - - - Updated - - - honestly, the amount of tribalism that comes from meaningless definition like "who plays this game" is completely unnecessary and only stands to pin stars on some players shirts and others not.

i don't know who started the game<>simulation tangent, but they're an idiot. within the context of video games, game:medium, simulation:genre, and that's how 99% of people use the term within the video game context. if you're at an aeronautics development centre and you're in their effing lab and you use the term simulation nobody there would respond, "woah buddy, none of this is a game, stop calling it that." games can encompass many genres, including the simulation genre, which KSP encompasses very, very greatly.

asking this question on a video game message board is like asking this question at the urinals. you're not sampling the most neutral demographic. but like many have said here, yes, we know women who play KSP.

all the aspergers kids who argued that kerbals had no defined genders, so nobody had logical reason to want female models, are probably dumbfounded at the news - - - Updated - - - also, with the news of female kerbals, re-entry danger, and new aero all i've got left to complain about is the lack of life support elements. good progress, squad.

I really hope it's closer to ISRU than some works-because-of-magic drill/scoop part that turns ??? into fuel. I'd consider that the lazy route if they're just gonna cop some Kethane system. Give us an actual interest/use for EVA beyond ticking contract boxes. Pipes, extraction, filtration, make it interactive. Please.

what does explore mean when all the planets are dead and empty. i want squad to flesh out the bodies we have than give us more coloured rocks to orbit our junk around

The science is boring as sin. The game rewards picking rupies out of the grass style science rather than any sort of actual experimentation and study. It's awful.

Squad thinks life support is too much of a fun barrier for players, I can't imagine they'd support having to explain satellite networks and signal delay in a way that isn't frustrating/exhausting.

i assumed this is why the small inline reaction wheel was moved up in the tech tree

Perhaps, but he gave the impression that he doesn't actually want to play career, and just jump right to the end-game sandbox.

Cheat. Clearly you have a target in mind and aren't finding the game between where you are now and where you want to be fun enough to want to do it, so just cheat your way to the balance you need and move on. edit: Doesn't actually seem to say on the wiki page, but if you hold down alt for 5~ seconds on the Cheats tab it'll open up funds/science cheat buttons.

but yeah water's also an ugly blue sheet of concrete right now. and long-term orbitals have little purpose. stations/satellites need a reason to exist beyond gas stations and contract camping.

FAR or NEAR

god, damn it. i need to get this mod pack

Yeah the game really should allow for "spillage" if the mass beyond 18t still rounds to 18.0t. It's such a marginal discrepancy and saves on headaches.

I'll admit before part costs were introduced, this was an afterthought, but now we have the issue of being unable to recover dropped stages. Hopefully Squad does address this, because dropped stages are expensive when you can't recover a single one. It's one thing to want to simultaneously de-orbit two ships, that doesn't happen often, but to want to attach chutes to a dropped tank? It happens all the time.

Depends, are you working with a mod that takes advantage of satellite networks? http://i.imgur.com/p0hlg41.jpg But the physics "sphere" isn't about on land, or in an atmosphere or anything like that. Just distance from the active ship. So really you're just asking to make the physics "sphere" [much] larger, which can capture many, many ships for a number of players. Essentially anything outside the active ship's physics sphere is put "on rails" in that it's physicsless, but will maintain the trajectory it held at the time it was put on rails. If that trajectory was an orbit, it'll remain in orbit. If that trajectory was a de-orbit, it'll "crash" (be removed by the simulation).

The biggest issue is with Unity, not Squad. It's how Unity handles the physics simulation. All the calculations are done single-core, and while the original example of 2 tiny ships in-atmos isn't a huge issue, many-multiple stages with many multiple parts, all with their own trajectories, drags, joint stresses, etc. creates exponential computation. All on a single core. I mean the game already is pretty damn laggy. That said, the [long-running] rumour is Unity 5 will have more multi-core options, giving Squad more options when it comes to how the physics are handled, and Squad's eager to jump on it. It was supposed to be available in beta around this time(?) but we haven't heard anything so I assume Squad hasn't got its hands on it yet. I mean with the engine we have the solution to OP's mission (at least going by his screenshot) would've been to've sent up a probe ship with an empty pod and rescued only the stranded astronaut. That or roll the dice on having both ships de-orbit together (maybe he can tangle their landing legs on the way down?) and fire the chutes as close to the same time as he can, and hope they stay within the 2.5km sphere. I think he can still deploy chutes and raise their deployment height without power, so I think the de-orbit shouldn't be too far before they deploy and then they should stay pretty close to one-another.

I can barely find a reason to name most of my builds in career mode since it'll be scrapped and a new one will be made for the next contract. Obviously some cases require a re-usable build, like putting up satellites, and landers, and rescue missions can all use a similar build, but part testing is usually unique enough and quick & easy enough to build some cheap rocket that all my rockets are never named.

Along with what GJ said, so how does someone who has a consumer-version of KSP get some of these outputs? I'd like to see force arrows and the functions as I'm playing, they sound really fun. Hell, I'd like some learning scenarios, too.