Franklin

Gonna sound dumb, but take a pen and balance it on your pointer finger. With your other hand, press down on the "tail" of pen so the "nose" of the pen pitches up. Shift the balancing finger (CoM) further and closer from the point you're pressing down (CoL). It should take noticeably more downward force to maintain the upward pitch when the balancing finger is closer to the pushing finger. That's the change in work your control surfaces need to deal with in your designs. It's reversed in this exercise obviously, cause you're balancing against gravity instead of lift, but it's easier (for me at least, I'm literally retarded) to see the CoM/CoL balancing game as a reverse cantilever. edit: meant to back-to-back my posts but sal got in the way. now i look obsessive. >

Can you pull your CoL back more? A tight CoM/CoL like that is going to make your control surfaces work that much harder to maintain higher inclinations (which may also explain why you find the 'bounce' happens more with designs that use canards). Spreading your CoM/CoL out further will make maintaining pitch easier on the [weak] control surfaces. edit: Fitting it with bigger wings may've indirectly did just this.

You win career mode when it becomes sandbox mode.

What's another way to progress? 100%ing science? maxing out rep? Making up your own goals isn't really progress in the sense of a built career mode, it's just personal roleplaying.

See I'd be fine with a WEP mode on engines assuming it was outlined in the part metrics and made for higher risk of damage to the engine, but KSP doesn't have part failure right now, so it'd just be a magic buff, which is silly.

The SAS control thing that keeps coming up is an even worse example of what the Kerbals could have influence over because unlike engine throttle the SAS is designed to be automated. Even the player has no input into that device, which means vicariously neither do the Kerbals. ....ty SAS control should be fixed by a patch from Squad, not flipped into a feature where a Kerbal controls it by hand. It's a device controlled by a program even within the game's logic.

As a sandboxer, as updates to career roll out that aren't "meant for sandbox mode" I just start a new career and max out my tech tree immediately and play it like a sandbox. Squad could do away with the Science Mode completely if they provided unlimited funds/unlimited rep toggles in the difficulty panel (they may already, I haven't played with it much). That way I'm not neglected the new features that are designed for career mode exclusively, but not pigeonholed into a progressive/semi-linear mode that, honestly, is kinda limp.

I think we can all agree on that, assuming it's logical.

Actually that does sound a lot easier, maybe I should dust off my controller.

I think most of us were suggesting they do scrap the proposed system, but honestly acting as totems that bless our rockets with +% buffs isn't something for the Kerbals to "do", it would just become something they "are". Squad has plenty of opportunity to give Kerbals something to "do". Like make science more engaging and less click-hunt-y with having to have Kerbals actually interact with science parts and actually do something to obtain science. Give us a reason to go EVA like introducing part malfunctions, give Kerbals some on-going needs like life support and give us a reason to make them collect it like a KAS-pipe system network and established bases. There are loads of things the Kerbals could be "doing", but buffing what we, the players are doing, isn't one most seem to like. It's not logical, and it falls short of what we've all been sold from the beginning as to what KSP is/was going to be.

If you've been reading along, most are perfectly fine with a gameplay-impacting experience system, just within the realm of logic. pilot-accuracy-based skills are far and beyond preferred to rocket-performance-based skills. That's the key sticking point. Parts shouldn't work better or worse depending on whose using them, the accuracy in which they're used is what's impacted by pilot skill. If Kerbals are in fact piloting themselves in the future then I'm down with an action accuracy-based skill/experience system, that makes sense. As long as when I decide to take the wheel the ship performs only as well as designed and the accuracy at which it flies is based on my ability as a player, not pilot buffs.

Yeah, the part not vaporizing when it hits the ground can reasonably be chalked up to the skill of the pilots, sure, right.

True, and it may be a partial redaction on the original comments with how the system will work and we may still be annoyed by what they come up with, but the engine performance was a big part of the original quip:

Honestly, perhaps they should. Work for the sake of work isn't positive gain if the majority of your customer base doesn't like what's done. I really don't see Squad overhauling what they've built, so I would guess to start we'll see a neutered version of this same experience system but have the buffs revolve around the usual science/money/rep dynamic like with the neutered admin building we have right now. Ideally there's a more elegant, engaging system that has been discussed in this thread and on Reddit (accuracy-based control coupled with actual automation), but that's more complicated and time-consuming to code, soâ€â€

Is Mike Megally Rowsdower? Kidding, Rowsdower I love you, knucklehead.

For the record I'm actually all for an element where Kerbals pilot themselves. I like the idea of having the option of being able to fly a rocket completely against my own ability and entrusting Kerbals to do it themselves other times, that seems like a fun proposal. As long as their ability to do so revolves around actual skill-based elements (maintaining max velocity, staging accuracy, over-shooting nodes, docking skill, etc.) and not rocket performance-based elements I'm all for it. Sounds fun. It just seems like Ferram has been the closest to nail it, that someone along the road decided astronauts need functional experience (why this is more important than like, a life support system or re-entry danger is beyond me) and this magic system was the cheapest/easiest way to do it.

The thing is, I looked for discussion on the proposed experience system on the bug tracker and it's nowhere to be found. And similar design complaints have been made there regarding aero, ISP, water, etc. and they've been gatekeepered away as "not bugs".

I don't think you understand how product development works.

more ferram points,

Over the last 34 pages you've been unable to grasp that it's not the skill-based ability we're concerned about, it's the physics-based functionality. And you've concluded pages back that operationally they're the same and we're concluding that functionally they're not. We can argue this further, and get into the esoteric musings of whether it's us controlling the game or us directing the game to control itself, but I don't believe it's going to get resolved on this front, and at very least the majority of the polls seem to agree you're not quite right on this matter. Functionally a rocket has a set range of ability and performance dimension, this is beyond the skill of the pilot. This ability and performance was designed into the rocket, beyond the skill of the pilot.

For those curious what the poll is excluding the null votes of indiff/wait&see: Yes (18.9%) | No (81.1%)

We [and those on Reddit] are all seasoned veterans and a small sample of the greater player base. The Silent Majority was polled on this element and they all loved it.[citation needed]

Cannot wait for the .edu chapter that shoehorns how a level-up buff system plays into astronauts and spaceflight. Maybe it'll just be a clip from an episode of Star Trek.

Roleplay is a layer on top of the functionality of gameplay, it isn't an either-or thing like you describe. Not a single roleplayer would deliberately fill his fuel takes only half-full, or deliberately disable one control surface, or deliberately make a poor landing because they're role-playing with what they see as a novice Kerbal pilot. Gameplay and character engagement are separate elements.

Ferram with a fairly solid point on Reddit,