Duke23

Agreed. I think I could live without quicksaves as I have been trying to cut down on them anyway but I mostly use revert for "simulations." If you can't simulate launches then this would get really expensive really quick. Even with the quicksaves though, sometimes I screw up something small that (I feel) just shouldn't break an entire mission that's been in planning for kerbin months or years.

True. I kind of enjoy doing that but of course I would probably change my mind after 20 flights. That's why I'm hoping they will make an option to click a button if you're at KSC that would bring a menu for refuel and add payload, like VAB or spaceplane hangar but without the full cost of relaunch. If that makes any sense. There's really a lot of room to mod that portion of the game. Maybe I'm being a little wishful but it seems like a logical path...

You can already land and refuel and use docking ports or KAS to reattach payload. In the budget system that equates to not paying for another plane / rocket and I imagine they'd also reimburse a certain amount for recovered parts / ships?

I'm curious about this as well, thinking of picking up a SSD but I can't convince myself it will be worth it. Load times don't bother me as much as framerates...

I'm kind of embarrassed to say... I heard about KSP a couple years ago and when I read reviews I thought "no way, that sounds too good to be true. I bet it sucks." but I left it in the back of my mind and a few months ago it popped back up again somewhere on a top games list. I still hesitated for about a week and finally got the demo... Within about 5 minutes and two unsuccessful rockets, I was scrambling for my bank card to buy the full version. It took me another couple of design changes to finally get to orbit and I knew from there it was going to be a wild ride. To learn the game I mostly went by trial and error but I also looked up info on orbital mechanics and sometimes watched a tutorial video.

Show off! Lol... That's pretty impressive. The craft you used to bring it up there is what intrigues me... I would have built something to winch the asteroid under it, at first instinct. But that looks like it worked pretty well. Edit: my asteroid fiasco should be at the top of this page (I can't get a direct link on my phone for some reason) and a few posts down I made something better than the trailer, but a little more explodey to be honest.

I built an ssto just for the challenge of flying it mostly, but I thought it would help once budgets are made in the game. Often I have a relatively large reusable interplanetary ship that physically can't land. So to get the science data back to the surface I either have to hijack the attached lander assuming it has chutes or the escape pod if equipped (and send a replacement) or send up another rocket just for the purpose of a quick rendezvous and deorbit. A functional ssto makes all that much easier. I can leave it fueled and docked to a station then run over to the big ship to grab data then take it home, refuel again, and send it back up for next time without tons of stages and tons of fuel wasted for no reason. Or just send it up as needed if the large ship is close enough, but usually I leave them in a much higher orbit so I'm not wasting fuel and time next time I leave kerbin orbit. I mean right now technically none of that matters much, but budgets will have a huge impact imo so I'm trying to go all reusable for frequently used or expensive to operate ships. Theoretically it would cost a lot less for me to run fuel up to the large ship than to send up a new fully fueled ship. Even more benefit if I can ever get my refueling ssto off the ground.

I think Whackjob has officially pushed Kerbin into climate change. This thing makes me ask questions, lol. I wouldn't dare ask "why", I mean more like... Is it possible to see something in orbit from Kerbin's surface? How the heck are you going to fuel it up before you head out? How many minutes will it take for your computer to draw one frame with the finished product?

Seriously this. I do like a good open world game (GTA, Elder Scrolls series) but being able to create is the best part. And of course the space exploration aspect itself... Seeing something I created blasting a little green guy into orbit for the first time was all I needed to have a full blown addiction. It's a winning combination of themes I have to say.

I see! Saving that link, thanks. I might wanna try a couple of those when I get home today.

Makes sense, but I thought I read somewhere that onion and asparagus staging were words for the same thing when the concept first appeared... Don't know.

In my current save, I put Jeb Bill and Bob in a hitchhiker container that I later made into a crappy fueling station and left them there. Why? To avoid the whole "omg Jeb is so awesome" thing from my last save. I don't know, it just started to rub me weird. It also makes the game more interesting knowing that if my "best pilot" gets killed he won't immediately respawn for the next mission. I have killed multiple Kerbals with the "quickloading causes them to violently fly off of ladders and break parachutes" bug. I leave tons of debris in stable orbit of Kerbin. Usually empty orange tanks. In my last save I purposely stranded a Kerbal on Duna and Eve. A rescue mission was sent for the one on Duna... 3 Kerbin years later. I use Mechjeb on a lot of my ships, not because I can't fly, but because I get frustrated with turning large ships and doing long (over 2.5ish minute) burns. Mostly I just use smart a.s.s. and the execute next maneuver button. I don't use "true asparagus" because on larger applications I always screw it up. Instead I use something similar that usually involves dropping concentric circles or x-patterns of center feeding tanks.

With the SSDs it probably wouldn't be as big an issue but unless something has changed that CPU should get you slightly better performance than my FX-4350 as far as KSP goes. Which still leaves a little to be desired on high part count ships and stations not considering still running Windows... I wouldn't personally run any game in a VM unless I absolutely have to because there always seems to be a performance loss even when the VM is 98se or something. Then again a lot of that is probably due to the way the CPU and GPU especially is accessed by the VM so maybe you wont have that issue depending on your setup. I've found a dual boot system often runs games much faster on the Linux side though, even if you have to cheat with WINE. I just fear that running it in a VM may get rid of that benefit...

I used to try to wax eloquent for my landing sites but after doing so many it's often more like "East crater" and "landing #4358" and "I hate Minmus" and "screw this hill" etc On major missions I still try to write something interesting or tell a small story ("after nearly becoming a tiny green splat, Jeb became the first kerbal on Duna at this spot" or whatever)

lol, someone already did (except it was actually pretty awesome)

Who needs logic when you have a large truck and an abundance of winches? (related to this post) Six winches to be exact (5 in the back) and seating for 5 kerbals as well. Raises the front wheels off the ground to load cargo. I really wish I had this yesterday... And yes, apparently I'm going through a 6-wheeler phase. If you're wondering where the other fuel tank is from the roid deorbiter (you're probably not), me too. Earlier I went to get all that stuff with the smaller truck and trailer and as I was playing around with the stray tank, everything just fell through Kerbin into some kind of kraken hole. I wigged out and terminated the game's process and when I went back the tank was gone.

I parked a class-b in Kerbin orbit and winched a hitchhiker container to it, I have a lone Kerbal living on an asteroid. Then I dropped a class-a nearish to KSC and brought it back on a truck I built. Now they're both just kind of sitting there until I figure out something interesting to do with them. I thought I might build a really big crane and set the landed one on top of a tower I would build to make a monument, but I'm not sure I can build a (stable) crane that tall without a few more parts that I don't have access to yet. If only you could hollow one out, strap engines to it, and put kerbals inside... Or fuel.

Well since the forums were down I had to actually play the game... It got pretty interesting. If you lurk the Facebook page you may have seen some of these already. Found a class-a asteroid and decided to bring it down instead of parking it in orbit. Transferring to the deorbiter with Anfield, my best and ballsiest pilot, at the helm. He's been to the Mun several times, landed on Duna, and miraculously survived all of my prototype SSTO designs with some pretty close shaves, so I thought he'd be perfect to send up for something like this. Wheeeeee! Oh look I'm not gonna make it to KSC, darnit Anfield I just got through saying what a good pilot you were. Oh that's right you landed way off target on Duna too. Chutes got the whole rig down to a little less than 10m/s before touchdown. Allow me to preface this with "duh, I should know better." At first I tried to hang on. The asteroid rolled over onto the ship and broke some of it. But I had a decoupler on the claw for this exact reason (drop the asteroid near the ground then gently set the ship on that little strut that's, err, sticking up in the air). The game had different plans though... When I quickloaded to try the original plan, I had no chutes and I was darn lucky I was pretty close to the ground already. I blew the decoupler and landed right on top of the asteroid and bounced. It wasn't pretty, but Anfield survived and that's what matters. Well I'm stuck 25km out from KSC now what do I do? Build a truck of course! I pulled this design for an asteroid hauler out of my rear and put it through some cursory testing. It's front heavy on purpose, so if you hit the brakes while unloaded it does some entertaining rolls. I'm not sure what I was trying to accomplish with the winch in this shot. You may already see what my problem is going to be. Problem was I was so busy being excited about cross country asteroid trucking, I didn't actually consider the size of the asteroid. Err, yeah this should work. Not. It's horribly unstable, keeps breaking struts, can't phys-warp or go over ~12m/s, and constantly forces the truck to turn one direction or the other. But I did get it back to KSC where I realized that even my largest crane that I normally use for carrying planes and other junk I leave laying around, wasn't big enough to pick it up without the stabilizer legs down. It's okay though, I got this. I'll just build a trailer! (This is one of the prototype designs that got rejected) Unfortunately my crane operator, Lembin, lost his life during trailer tests. He was standing on a ladder that's connected to the trailer to attach KAS pipes, and the winches plug mode got flipped from docked (clipping into the trailer) to undocked, which pretty much made everything go boom. The trailer bucked, the asteroid and Lembin both got tossed into the air; he obviously went farther and made a disturbing little poof sound when he hit the ground. Apparently that's something you don't do. That particular design wanted to bind with the truck, and it was narrow enough that it would start to roll if you turn too hard. Research was continued and after a couple more mishaps but no more loss of life, I was able to make one that worked surprisingly well.

Ah, spaceport... A good idea with the least intelligent search feature in the last decade. -search for "docking port" -18 overpowered custom ships pop up, plus a weaponry mod and something I can't decipher that has been downloaded once, ever. I eventually gave up and learned about mods through word of mouth on the forums then searched for their respective threads.

I remember last time this came up someone mentioned a mod that "welds" all the parts together. Just throwing it out there in case it's useful... If anyone ever figures out a relatively easy way to do it (I know almost nothing about 3d modeling) I'd love to get a couple of my ships 3d printed as well.

Definitely dual boot if you're serious about performance... You're still dealing with all of Windows' bloat with a VM. I'm partial to Linux Mint, it's functional, easy to use, and looks good. I switched when Ubuntu went to that ugly netbook interface and didn't look back. I just started messing around with KSP on that machine since it's older and doesn't get used much so I can't really advise on that, but it was easy to get up and running from a pretty much fresh install of the OS.

You are a brave brave soul. No way I'd try an Eve return mission in the foreseeable future. Best of luck to you sir. I've seen it done but... Damn. Just, damn.

Looks like my .23 save as far as debris goes... I wasn't very "green" and often left 6-8 large pieces in stable orbit per launch. I made a lot of launches. In all seriousness though, wow. They really need to clean that up or we're gonna have a Gravity type event pretty soon, I think. That's just a bit insane.

When I'm regularly having dreams about docking procedures and disastrous aerobraking maneuvers or ill conceived launches... When my few friends who play think I'm an a-hole because of the things I report that I've accomplished, which are miniscule compared to the things I see fellow forum members doing...

I think whenever one crashes and dies, all the individual pieces grow into brand new Kerbals (Kermans / Kermen?). Like starfish. There's a neverending supply and no women, there has to be a reason.