Madrias

If someone could make that kind of cab, it'd be awesome. Huge visibility, and it'd be my constant go-to train cab. Granted, this is still pretty fun. Base experiments have been going well, and I've come up with a 1.0.5 design that seems very stable... If you put your free-rotating docking washer so that the pivoting center-point is basically on the line that would be your rear axle (or in between your rear-main group, if you're doing multi-axles at the back), a straight-dragged trailer will quite happily follow your cab unit. And this can be extended out to surprising lengths and still be very controllable. I'll try to get a screenshot of my trailers later.

I'd be up for trying to break things again. I've got more ideas in mind this time than previously, and I'm thinking some of them will put Kerbal Foundries to the test. Especially because I'm being tormented by not being able to use enough wheels with stock KSP...

Aw man. I didn't even get the chance to light the boosters in the brake van this time.

Well, until the mess with wheels is fixed in Unity 5 KSP, I'll try land-trains in 1.0.5. I keep blowing up before I even get near the coast because I've yet to figure out the best settings with these new wheels, even with the Buffalo wheels (to be fair, the Buffalo wheels are good, but I'm spoiled because I've been using Kerbal Foundries wheels and tracks in 1.0.5 for just about any craft that needed self-powering wheels...) But, I think I'm making progress. Still not sure what cab I want, other than I want good forward visibility.

I might have to give land-trains a try. Getting a little bored of surface skimming with aircraft over Kerbin's terrain, although it's a rush flying no higher than 200m above Kerbin's surface, diving between mountain peaks, and seeing how low I can go without touching the ground. Land trains could be an exciting way to explore terrain I already think I know in a way that proves me dramatically wrong.

When you finally get your SSTO design working, and you use that design as your basic shuttle to do crew transfers to your space station.

Honestly? Because I did a lot of my launches retrograde in that save (was kinda my personal challenge, to make things go up the hard way) and so my station, naturally, was in a retrograde orbit. I think it was a 200x150km elliptical orbit (I didn't care too much about making my orbits neat, so I just got them close to nice numbers), and had plenty of things attached. Then I stopped playing that save for a month or two while I focused on other things. So when I came back, I looked at my map view, saw I had a space station already, and so I planned to build a new one (having forgotten the first was retrograde. If I'd have remembered that, I would've put the new one up backwards as well), with an orbit of 200x150km with two intersect points, so that they'd always be on opposite sides from one another, and at no risk of collision. I built my station in the best of ways known to 0.90: I built it all on the launchpad and yanked it up to space on a massive donut of fire, so I wouldn't have to waste my time with docking maneuvers. It went up fully crewed, had provisions for docking, and ended up in space without much fuss. Of course, I get to the point of finalizing my orbit, checking my map to see that both stations were on opposite sides of Kerbin, and decided to sit back and relax. Figured I'd sit there and watch the random space junk whizz by. Which is when I started remembering what save I was on, as most of the stuff I saw was really moving quite quickly as I saw it, and was hurtling in my direction against the planet's rotation. And after enjoying a near-miss from a mainsail-double-orange booster that had been discarded, I saw something large approaching quite... well, rather fast. I suppose the only reason I got an impact out of it was that the two stations are very large parts, and thereby when physics sputtered its way through "There's about 2200 parts that just loaded in, along with 1700 parts we were already watching, and they're going to crash" a couple frames must have had bits of station colliding. Got a big explosion and a lot more space junk. So, I figured I'd go try to rescue at least some of the Kerbals. Sent up a rescue shuttle, got fragged near rendezvous by retrograde space trash. Sent up a second rescue shuttle, got fragged near rendezvous by prograde space trash. Stopped playing that one because there was no way to clean up that mess other than deleting way more debris than I wanted to do just to make a rescue mission possible, and for significantly less Kerbals returned safely, because there were a lot of Kerbals in labs and hitchhiker capsules. But, I learned from that one: Learn the orbital rules of your current save if you've not played it in a while before putting anything in orbit.

Often? No. However, I have had it happen a few times. I've had 3 incidents in the entire time I've played KSP. One: Spent rocket booster from my shuttle through the solar panels of my space station. Replacement solar panels requested. Request granted, then resources reallocated to the munbase project. Two: Retrograde + Prograde space station collision. Resulting debris caused rescue shuttle to explode, adding to space junk. New Universe created after incident. Three: Crashed spacecraft on Minmus. Debris reached orbital velocity, damaged solar array on space station. Debris proceeded to deorbit and crash on Minmus' surface. But you specifically asked, "Do I suffer from space junk?" The answer is simple. No. I enjoy every moment of it. That spent booster lingering somewhere around a 105km x 240km orbit is just waiting to get its chance to ruin some Kerbals' day. The smashed space station debris ring around Jool is an ever-present reminder of why you don't aerobrake a station to slow it down. A lone wing segment with one solitary OX-STAT solar panel on it spins ever so slowly in the darkness above Eve, a relic of a forgotten era. And there's plenty of other space debris in my saves, because lately, I haven't bothered playing 'clean up' with my space program. The closest thing I've done to that is the fact that, when possible, I try to deorbit nuclear engines into either Eve or the Sun. Usually the sun.

I also had the originality fade. Without things to explore on the other worlds, there's no real reason to go to them. So what do I do? I fill up on mods, give myself propellers and rotors and flying things, and I fly around Kerbin. Why? Because I'm having more fun playing Kerbal Flight Simulator because there is some challenge to be found with it. Flying through all the bridges around the space center is stupidly hard, but you don't have to travel more than 5 km to enjoy it. Flying through the hangars at the old airstrip is fun, too, and more challenging, in my opinion. Going to space would interest me more if there was something to actually do on those planets for those of us in Sandbox mode.

And here I sit, one who likes both British and American steam locomotives equally. I think the British knew what they were doing in the looks and functionality departments, with big trains for their location (People, keep in mind the size of the countries here for a moment. A 4-6-2 in American terms is small, but then look at the size of America versus Britain, and suddenly that 4-6-2 is huge.) and those big trains looked awesome pulling coaches behind them. They pulled big trains for the distances they had to travel, and those big trains needed big locomotives. On the flipside, the Americans built trains for their country: Huge expanses, large plains, massive mountains. Looks were secondary, performance was everything. It's why you see trains like the Union Pacific Challenger, the Big Boy, and some of these massive 4-8-4, 4-8-2, 2-10-0 arrangements. We could afford the space for the huge turning circles of these locomotives, and we needed to haul more people from coast to coast. We had to haul more cargo from coast to coast. It wouldn't have been cost effective to use four or five smaller trains (each with their own crews) to do the job that a bigger locomotive could do better. As for diesels, well... They all look the same, don't they? Sure, some are built for freight and are boxy and ugly, but super functional, but any passenger diesel looks about the same.

Haven't tried it without the launch flag set, but I'd assume that it does have a benefit: -force-opengl typically uses less memory, which means you can fit more mods into KSP without hitting your physical memory cap.

I knew about the right-click and reduce the main engines, actually. I'd rather bind two different action groups, because otherwise I'll forget to turn up one of my two, three, or six engines, then spend half the trip wondering why I keep going sideways. Instead, I can press 2, then 3 and disable my main engines, enable my ant maneuvering thrusters, and make a careful adjustment to my orbit. Another trick I like to use on smaller ships is to carry a set of sepratrons up with me as deorbiting retro-rockets. It's heavy, but they're a great last-resort when you've used up all of your monopropellant, all of your LFO, and you're not willing to play 'get out and push' for the next half hour. Point yourself retrograde, press stage, and you'll usually end up deorbiting yourself rather easily. I'm also fond of deploying airbrakes on my spent boosters. Less burning of my ship with sepratrons, more overall control over where the silly things go, and less gratuitous explosions from smashing the boosters together. Also, airbrakes make great drag-fins for slowing your reentry speed. I've found them useful for deceleration to speeds my drogue chutes can deploy safely at, which allows me to deploy my over-abundance of parachutes to actually land the rest of the ship.

If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing. My little rule with parachutes. After all, it makes sense that the slower you fall, the safer your landing will be. So, why not put 8 parachutes on as cheap insurance against losing your science data and your pilot? Probes are a good friend for non-pilots. Always hide one in your ship somewhere. Then when you accidentally put two engineers and a scientist in your three-kerbal ship, you still have all the pilot controls, like SAS. A locked fuel tank is a great way to save yourself a few extra delta-v. I don't mind carrying up one or two of the donut tanks as 'spare fuel.' Ant engines are great precision orbital LFO engines. I've done plenty of dockings with Ant + Reaction Wheel combinations. Put your solar panels on in 3 or 6 symmetry. You'll almost always have at least one peeking into the sun. Always put at least 3 of the little fixed-mount solar panels on your ship. They don't require deploying and they might just save your hide if you find yourself dangerously low on power and needing to deploy solar panels.

More times than I care to count. Usually when I've expended all of my rocket fuel and all of my monopropellant, and thereby have to push the capsule back home. Usually results in leaving trash in orbit that I have to pick up later.

The control core was upside down: Also explains the wobbly flying out there: every action Ornie put into the stick had the opposite reaction he wanted. The SAS was probably the only thing that got him that far. It also explains why sideways worked: If your front and back are backwards and you're going upside down, sideways is a good option in a panicked "This isn't working, do something else!" move.

Wow. First casualty of the story. I mean, I knew it'd have to happen sometime, but I wasn't expecting it to be like that. Typically, from what I've seen, first casualties are usually re-entry problems, insufficient parachutes, or insufficient propellant to land safely. But for it to be an accident, a result of startled birds and startled pilot alike, followed swiftly by structural failures and an ejector seat that ejected poorly... I guess in the end, it had to happen, and I suppose there's more to the story than meets the eye right here. It's the risks of a space agency, after all, and accidents can, did, and probably still do happen. Just we, here on Earth, have had enough of them for safety technology to march onward. For the Kerbals, this seems to be their first major accident. A landing-test craft, by the sound of it, that ended up out of control, and a pilot who ended up paying the ultimate price in the end. So what remains to be seen is whether the KIS turns this into a push for better safety measures, or a push to do more unmanned testing. Whether someone higher up than the KIS tries to get the space program shut down, or whether they accept that accidents can happen in the course of scientific discovery. Now, the curiosity I have is that Ornie appeared to try a bit more than what I would have expected. Soon as I had it upright, knowing I had an ejector seat, I would have used it. Craft's still out of control, altitude's too low, you punch out and hope for the best on landing. But it appears he was still trying to wrestle control back when one of the thruster booms hit. Unless my perception of time is skewed. That's also a highly likely possibility. Might have been that he'd just gotten it pointing heads-up when the boom hit and trashed the ship, at which point, ejection is not likely to help.

I could see KSP with a controller (which, lets face it, is basically what a PS4/xBox One verson of KSP would be) being rather fun, honestly. One, you'd have proportional controls for yaw, roll, pitch, as well as a fairly-decent amount of buttons to work with. (I'm assuming that both consoles have analog lower triggers, which would allow for yaw control, leaving the left thumbstick controlling roll/pitch) Buttons underneath the thumbsticks... Well, right thumbstick's your camera, so perhaps have it be reset camera in external view (or possibly toggling camera mode) and when in IVA view, have that be your "Push button to Zoom" key. Stage could be one of the 6 action buttons (ABXY / PS standard 4, plus shoulder buttons). Mode switch from roll/pitch to Translation could be on one of those action buttons. Realistically, the only thing I see being potentially problematic on Consoles is that they'd need to have a mostly-finished and bug-fixed version ready to rock. While most of us on PC have been playing since very early on, and we're more tolerant of bugs, glitches, Kraken attacks, etc., I don't expect our console-using friends would be too fond of losing a save to the Kraken. Especially because of how hard it is to do backups on a console (Is it hard? Haven't used a console since the PS2, and before that, the Nintendo 64.) So they'd need to have most of the big bugs stomped out, the balance just about spot on, or at least close enough, and at the same time, have enough to the core game that console players don't get bored trying to figure out how to make their plane fly, or how to get their rockets off the launchpad. Actually, that brings up a good point. KSP's a semi-hardcore simulation game. It is rocket science, and the learning curve is, well, it's a sheer cliff in front of you, and you're rushing toward it at 100 m/s. Sure, those of us who have been here a while know what it's like, what to expect, but what about Average Joe back at home, just got in from work and is sitting down to play a nice relaxing game. One, the learning wall is hard to overcome. Two, some of the things done in KSP are exciting (making orbit your first time, orbiting the Mun or another planet the first time, your first ever rendezvous and docking,), but the majority of your time spent is either in the Assembly Buildings (making your rocket/plane), or spent staring off into space while burning toward your intended target. Plus, there's not much to do once you're on another planet. There's not much excitement in "I landed on the Mun!" past the first few steps and the mild rush from your first landing without air. Then you wander around, collect a surface sample or two from the nearby biomes, and then head back home. Then you figure, "Well, I'll try dropping a rover somewhere next" only to realize it's just about completely worthless, because the two things that give you good easy science value (Crew Report and Surface Sample) aren't available on the bucket of bolts you've dumped somewhere. Now, I'm not saying KSP's a bad game. I'm just wondering if it's the right game for the middle of the living room. I think one of my friends said it best after watching me play for a bit on my desktop, and I think he may have been butchering someone else's quote from somewhere: "KSP seems to be a game built around long periods of boredom punctuated with brief moments of panic, hilarity, and explosions, all at about the same time." Now, I understand, KSP's a sandbox game at its core, and that there's no way to play it wrong, but at the same time, I don't know if the TV's the right way to experience it. I might be wrong. In fact, I probably am. But my point is, I think the consoles are a good thing for KSP, and I'll list the reasons why below. 1: Less reliance on mods to fix problems. Consoles will need to have these problems nailed to the floor by the time they get KSP. 2: Less relying on mods to fill gaps in technology. Let's face it, how many of us have at least one good-sized parts pack in our KSP designed around something we favor? 3: Better Controller Support. Not that it's bad as it is, but it could be better. 4: Optimization. Consoles aren't exactly known for being the most powerful hardware known to man. KSP will have to be optimized to run smoothly on consoles, which means any semi-punchy desktop PC will end up benefitting as well. 5: More people playing KSP. Sure, we'll have people flooding the forums for a while doing the typical "I can't make it to orbit, can someone help?" threads. But with people playing KSP, and our fairly sturdy community, built on helping each other, they'll soon get the hang of it.

Having played a bit of 1.1.2, I can honestly say, the new wheel coding kinda... well, it sucks. I thought 1.0.5 and prior was bad for rover destruction over terrain seams. I'd love to go back to 1.0.5's wheels. While the new Traction Control seems to help keep instant flipping death from happening when you turn, you now can't go up an incline without theatrically-unfunny front-flips into the ground. And unlike in 1.0.5, where front-flips were solved easily with weight... Adding weight now over-stresses wheels, so they break. Which, as one might imagine, is annoying when you've just tried to settle your light mobile base down on Eve and burst all the tires. Then totaled the Eve Exploration Rover going up a small hill. Then trashed the backup Eve Exploration Light Ranger going down a small hill. Which basically tells me "If it needs wheels, don't bother with 1.1.2." Probably sticking to my 1.0.5 install until I see evidence that the wheely-bad death bug is fixed, because right now, it's virtually unplayable. I didn't even bother with planes after my experience with a bad Eve trip and plenty of rover destruction. That being said, if 1.1.3 can fix that, I'm totally hyped for it.

Haven't played much of 1.1 at all yet (been playing a ton of 1.0.5 because all of my mods are there), but I'm willing to get onboard for some bugfixes. I assume there's still room for my usual spot at the back of the train, in the brake van full of rocket boosters? I brought earplugs this time so that I don't go deaf when the rockets go off.

I laughed harder than I probably should at that. Don't know how many pictures I've tried taking where I forgot to remove the lens cap first. Always makes you feel like a dunce.

[old-fart-mode] We used to call water-fueled engines steam engines back in the day. You see, you boil a big bunch o' water, doesn't much matter how ya do it, and it makes this gas, we called it steam. Used to use wood or coal or oil to boil the water, but you could probably do so with the world's largest electric kettle. [/old-fart-mode] (No, I'm not very old, just providing a nice history lesson on the use of water as a propulsion device.)

Wow! Definitely looking forward to this, then. (Personally, I find the most interesting configuration to be W engines, but that's just because of the crazy amount of cylinders you can get in a small space.) Still, I find it amazing as to what you've got planned on engine configurations.

Well, I don't mean to pry too much, but so far I've seen inline and radial. Any other cool arrangements, or are those the limitations?

I can somewhat understand it. Context gives me the rest. I could probably get one working with some trial and error and fiddling, but I think that's half the fun.

Honestly, I'd like to see some bug-fixes and general polish, but I'm not overly concerned at this time about it.