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Pecan

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Posts posted by Pecan

  1. 3,000 hours of anything means you aren't a rookie.  Around now perhaps you are even entitled to worry about why NASA lets all those amateurs mess about in the Space Station.  At least they keep the real rockets on autopilot so the kids can't break things.  (Poe's law indicator: I'm kidding).

    On the other hand you have to be honest with yourself about what you've been doing during those 3,000 hours.  If you've been building submarines, 'planes and/or trains you may be awesome with the building tools but how are you in space.  At the other extreme, you might be confident of landing on any body people name but have never designed an aircraft.

    I stopped playing KSP somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 hours because I'd never play anything else if I didn't make the effort.  I'd also achieved everything I personally wanted to.  In the end, that's the only judgement that counts - can you do what you want to do.

  2. Corporate Espionage, also known as industrial spying or, in KSP, starting a sandbox game so you can develop, test and improve your vehicles for free, only 'stealing' the most cost-effective designs to launch in your career save.

    Really good to hear how well you're doing though.  Hope you're really enjoying your hard-earned skills :-)

  3. 14 hours ago, Humongusfungus1 said:

    Please give me the pros and cons of either, justify the price, and give a final conclusion based on the information known.

    KSP 2: Pro, it'll be newer than KSP 1, include interstellar travel and more colony-building.  Con, it doesn't exist.  Price $60 can't be justified.  Buy it if you want the new shiny stuff with new shiny bugs, don't care when it comes or what it costs.

    KSP 1: Pro, It's been constantly improved for 5 years, has thousands of hours of content and more thousands of mods, including interstellar travel and colony-building.  Con, the graphics have never been leading-edge and it's still a bit buggy.  Price $30, plus DLC, is hard to justify to be honest, but it's often on sale for a lot less.  Unfortunately, you've just missed a 75% discount in the Steam sale, for instance.  Buy it on sale for everything time and the modding community can do to polish it then decide in a year or two if you want to upgrade to KSP 2 - by which time it should also be on sale.

  4. 1 hour ago, burn boi said:

    Huh never knew that was a thing

    It's not like the files are locked in some magical way, just that there's no readily-available reader that makes them easily comprehensible.

    Compliments on the avatar image.  A fine looking yacht.

  5. 12 hours ago, Sasuga said:

    only mapped 3% of Mars' surface,

    That would come down to what he means by mapping and to what resolution.  It's in the same category as asking what the length of an earth coastline is (coasts are fractal so you get a longer and longer answer depending on the amount of detail you look for).  By the same token - would that person say we've "mapped" the Amazon basin?

    Yes, a single satellite in a (near) polar orbit will cover an entire body, as long as it isn't in a resonant orbit (orbiting 'in time' with the body, which would mean it keeps covering the same paths).  It does usually take several orbits though, depending on its field of view - the amount of the surface it can 'see' on each pass.

    Then there's the matter of what type of mapping you're after.  For instance, I used to be friends with one of the team who were radar-mapping Mars.  Does a complete height-map count as 'mapped'?  Would a complete set of ordinary photographs count as 'mapped' if they were at 10km resolution?

    Anyway: +1 for Scansat in KSP.

     

  6. On 11/17/2019 at 2:50 PM, Space Nerd said:

    This is so helpful! I did my first manual docking after reading this!(always used mechjeb auto docking before that)

     

    Did you use Navball Docking Alignment Indicator ?

    There are, as my old Sergeant Major told me, no extra points for doing it the hard way - I'm just asking what you thought of the mod, if you used it.

    Just for anyone who isn't aware, it's one I always recommend, as Snark does.

  7. 22 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

    Jesus I'm 30, am I somehow on the younger side of this games audience?

    At 30 you're on the younger side of all computer games players (just).

    Eg; Polygon (2016 but I haven't got time to look for a newer figure) "The average guy who plays games is 35; the average woman is 44" (https://www.polygon.com/2016/4/29/11539102/gaming-stats-2016-esa-essential-facts)

  8. @Laie has completely covered it for every rocket you will ever build, not just asparagus.  Except that it's all a bit more complicated for a launch vehicle (everything is).  i) Only your first stage will use sea-level ISP and thrust so if you're trying to be completely accurate ... have fun, no one else is.  ii) Drag, especially with very wide designs (more than one tier around the core), iii) Steering losses on gravity turn

    But there are slightly easier ways ...

    • Just build it and believe what KSP tells you in the VAB
    • Use KER/MJ and believe their estimates
    • Make-up a 'dV to orbit' figure, launch your design and add the remaining dV in orbit to the number you first thought of
  9. Which save?

    Peter Pan?  Day 0 - lots of saved vehicles, test flights
    Career?  Day 116 - meh, you need to look at the contracts/tech tree sometimes
    Net?  Year 2 - 74 flights in progress
    Contest? Year 64 - a christmas challenge a couple of years ago took until year 45 and I've sort of been accelerating time from there ... (nothing very special, really)
    Stack?  Year 124 - 270 flights in progress.  I haven't looked at it for a while, it makes my head hurt

  10. Yeah, I like that too.

    There are many games that let you specify per-save mods, although different versions of KSP itself might be tough to do.  I'd particularly like it if I could at least load ships with missing/invalid parts so that I can edit them, instead of having to start from scratch.  On the other hand, I can see that this is both hard to do and adds hard to justify - you don't get new sales from backwards compatibility.

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