[Is it true that most KSP players never go interplanetary?]

On 2016-05-25 at 8:30 AM, Van Disaster said:

The other thing is, you don't have to use nukes

Indeed!  Doubly so since we have ISRU nowadays...

[Kraken drives: are they still possible?]

Landing legs still cause phantom forces, it's just different than before.  They don't have to be clipped now..

 

[Would you have preferred Squad go on a 3-week vacation without releasing 1.1.2 at all?]

3 minutes ago, Armisael said:

I can't speak for him but I have 8x as many hours in TF2 as KSP - and that was part of the orange box.

Meh.  I don't play multiplayer games unless I'm close enough to punch the other players.  Keeps civility up (see 'Greater Internet F-Wad Theory'), and is a far more effective anti-cheat method than VAC or EAC or PunkBuster or whatever

So I haven't played Team Fortress since it was a Quake mod, and thinnet LAN parties were a thing... and not sure it's really fair to compare a multiplayer-oriented game's time to a singleplayer's, either.

[Think I have the fluctuating orbits thing figured out]

...I'm a lot more concerned about the phantom forces that landing struts seem to create than any tiny orbital decay.  I've been making reusable landers with cubic octags for legs for a while now, and it's getting a bit silly.

On 2016-05-28 at 10:26 PM, Geschosskopf said:

Basically, the whole RT thing is doomed due to inherent limitations of digital computers trying to approximate analog math.  And that's before you consider anything involving Unity or Squad.  And this has me utterly and completely terrified of the impending, possibly game-breaking bomb on the horizon in the form of some sort of mandatory communications network becoming stock.  I really, really wish that whole idea would go away.  If folks want to mess with such things, let them use mods.  But don't force players to need something that the inherent limitations of the game prevent from ever having long-term stability.

I suspect the "Stock RT" thing will be more like "Stock AntennaRange", FYI...no need for GPS-like constellations of satellites, just something with a long range antenna nearby.   I'm cool with that (and otherwise agree with your rant about RT )

[Would you have preferred Squad go on a 3-week vacation without releasing 1.1.2 at all?]

Where's the "I really miss the PreRelease cycle.  Bring that back plox~" option?

Also - the premature conclusion of the PreRelease cycle kinda renders any 1.1.x stuff moot in my eyes.  If the PreRelease had been carried forth until the simugamulator (or whatever it is) had reached an acceptable level, we could have avoided this "hotfix dance" entirely.

It felt like there was some sort of deadline looming...
 

2 minutes ago, sormi said:

KSP is nowhere near the most best value product I have on my steam account and I can say to you there's no other game in my library I have spent nearly as much time debugging the game as I do with KSP.

Oh, really?  What are these high value products that have otherwise evaded my notice on Steam?  I have a fair sized library, and none of the others are over a thousand hours, let alone FOUR.  I could definitely use another couple of really long term games to play with..

[Space Shuttles, For and Against]

Once I was inspired (or rather, de-inspired) by the painstaking NASA-like engineering hells that were showing up in twitch streams, so I built a rocket-plane of my own.  It was vaguely like one with two tanks for balance mentioned earlier in the thread, only mine had three tanks.  I placed 'em in three-way radial symmetry, with one centered on the bottom.  That placed the other two above the fuselage to the left and right of the vertical stabilizer.

I also combined the drop tanks with SRBs for hybrid-y action (with some careful fuel flow calculations quick data-entry into a tiny script so that the solid fuel and liquid fuel in the boosters would run out at roughly the same time).

I'm not sure which install it was in (it was in a FAR-based one for sure though), so no pictures - but it flew quite well.

Since I can't find a picture of it, here's another wacky plane just for giggles from roughly the same era:

(it was used for some sort of test, I forget what.  I wanted a long, one-piece fuselage, so I drained an SRB of fuel ...)

[Electric category in the editors]

On 2016-05-07 at 10:17 AM, Snikersnee said:

I don't understand why the + sign is so annoying.

Because it's entirely too easy to accidentally click that stupid little + while concentrating intently on a new design being put together, and then this damned "Add part to category" popup happens, breaking the workflow and distracting concentration.

If it was like an alt-click or right-click to add a part to a category, it wouldn't be so bad.  Still doesn't address the "Utilities is basically random garbage spam" issue.

[Does anyone else do this? KB remap]

I generally keep my keybinds stock, except that I usually add "stop timewarp" to "X" (not replacing "/", nor replacing the chop throttle), and I remap staging to tab.

I might do some minor remapping for docking mode (which seems to be mostly working again, but is using slightly different keybinds than what EVA kerbals use for some reason) in the near future..maybe.

[Mobile Processing Lab is OP]

14 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

I love this idea. I'd also like it if any Kerbals in a ship with an MPL get credit for their XP gain as if they had returned home. Then it'd be not so much a mobile science lab as a mobile "home base".

Now THAT would be a reason to bring one to Jool.

For full disclosure, @Jacke gets credit for this idea as well - we were kicking this around in PMs not too long ago. 

I like your XP gain credit idea - that would definitely help too.  Would make the MPL very powerful and desirable without causing it to overcome the entire science tree heh.

14 hours ago, fourfa said:

Not if you're limited to 30 parts!  Three engines, three octags, one orange tank = seven parts vs one.  For some strange reason I find working around constraints like that to be fun.  Otherwise, yeah, great points.

True - if you've got a T1 VAB, the part count of octaging Reliants will be extremely punishing.  By the way, if you like the challenge of dealing with strict restrictions, you might want to check out BTSM (if you haven't already).  It's got a smoother progression for restrictions (it's tied to the tech tree AND facilities and occurs in smaller increments), and imposes a lot of challenge.   The downside is that it's mod-unfriendly and is still (currently) based on 1.0.4 instead of 1.0.5 or 1.1.x.

12 hours ago, Streetwind said:

Do keep in mind though that the Twin Boar is the highest TWR liquid fuel engine in the entire game - it has almost twice the raw TWR of a Reliant, some 32 versus 17, IIRC. That's a lot of extra dry mass you're adding through the Reliants by comparison. And the Twin Boar also has twin gimbals, for full three axis control authority. That's why people call it "OP"... because it pushes extremely hard, weighs next to nothing, saves parts, and has that multi-gimbal, while combining all of that with a price point that is far below the curve of all other tier 2 stuff. Heck, the skirts at the bottom even act a little bit like guide fins!

Of course there are situations for which it is not the right choice, no question there. But if you're doing anything at all with 2.5m tanks in your launch stage, you'd be a fool to not at least consider it.

If you leave aside price, it's definitely the better engine, but huge clusters of Reliants can lift the same rocket for less funds (it costs about as much as 10.22 Reliants if you take away the price of a Jumbo64 from it), plus you might not need all 2000kN of thrust, so you could cluster fewer Reliants for even more savings (especially if you use some SRBs in a parallel Shuttle-like configuration - some of my lifters have 3-5 Reliants under a Jumbo64 with the SRBs handling the bulk of the load until the fuel has drained enough from the core for the liquid engines to take it the rest of the way).  And the Twin Boar basically commits you to a Jumbo64-sized tank whether you want it or not... The part cost is less of a concern once you have a T2+ VAB, as these engines are generally bottom-stage affairs and ditched early.  The TWRs in question are 17.533 and 31.365g for Reliants and Twin Boars respectively.

The biggest victim of Reliant clusters, of course, is the Skipper - three Reliants is only 5kN short and cost like 2k less overall - a 40% savings.  The only advantage the Skipper has is vectoring, and that's pretty poor consolation when you can sneak a Swivel into the Reliant cluster for only a small increase in cost..  The Mainsail also falls victim to this, but then you're getting into scales where the Twin Boar is starting to get more competitive, so I'd actually classify the Mainsail as being victimized by the Twin Boar more than the Reliant clusters...doubly so since clustering more than 6-8 Reliants on a 2.5m-something can be a bit uh, tight.

12 hours ago, RocketBlam said:

Engines coming in different tiers than the fuel tanks that go with them...

Yep.  Especially considering how clunky engine clustering is in stock.  I don't think there's a specific solution for 2.5 engines being clustered under 3.75m tanks (partly because of "attack of the tank butts", but also partly because 1.25m doubles to 2.5m, but 3.75 is only 1.5x 2.5 ...).

Speaking about clustering - I'd like to know why the pre-fabbed cluster parts (bi-coupler, tri-coupler, etc) don't have an extra node for attachment below to continue the stack...

10 hours ago, Warzouz said:

You assertion about scientist is false. They are VERY useful for stripping science out of a planetary body. They can reset jucy science experiments (Goo and Lab)

Scientists are TOO useful... That reset feature should only apply to the lab (which requires scientists so they'd still be useful)...

8 hours ago, cantab said:

Currently it may be too *much* of a reward, and there are a few oddities especially with multiple labs, but I think Squad got it right with the general idea.

It's a good CONCEPT: having the MPL being useful, to encourage base building and infrastructure, but I've highlighted MY problem with the current design.  It's madly "OP". 

[Mobile Processing Lab is OP]

I think a nice solution to the MPL would be to make it a "return point" for science like KSC is.  As in, processing science there is the same, and suffers the same limitations as, returning the science to KSC.  So you can't send a second MPL to process new reports from the same old biomes, no multipliers, etc.  Also, I'd take resetting experiments away from scientists - having them being the only 'class' able to staff the MPL should be sufficient to justify their existence, especially since it would be the only way to re-use goo pods/science jrs (also contrast their usefulness against pilots).

By the way, in case people are curious about the numbers, here's what my research indicates for surface(-only) science:

Minmus: 690 per landing total (based on a return of a single result per type; Seis/Grav/Baro/Thermo/Crew report/EVA report/surface sample/Goo/ScienceJR) x9 biomes = 6,210 science

Mun: 552 per landing total x15 biomes =  8,280 science

Total: 14,490 science

Science tree size: 16,918 points total (including ALL nodes)

MPL factor: 5x if not at same world, 6.25x if at same world (plus there's a 10% landed bonus I think) - Giving 51,750 for a Mun station@Mun orbit and 38,812.5 for a Minmus station@Minmus orbit (total 90,562.5)

A second MPL in the same region can use experiments even if they've already been given to an MPL before.  And a third.. and a fourth.  I actually had a stupid vision once of attaching the MPL via a sr. docking port and trashing it once it was "used up" and sending a lightweight replacement...

23 minutes ago, wumpus said:

My problem is that the difficulty sliders in KSP don't change the difficulty.  They should just be labeled "grind sliders".  "Difficulty" sliders would increase the heating on re-entry, scale down the ISP of engines, and in general make the game harder.  What they actually do is make the game more tedious.

Agreed.  I'm playing a hard mode @ 20% sci save (in parallel to a 'normal' difficulty with RT, but that's just practice for fine orbital adjustments heh), and it's quite grindy.   The MPLs though are still powering through the tree, however.  Just takes longer to fill 'em up.  That 6.25x multiplier is completely negating the 20% sci penalty.  I'll probably have ALL of the non-fluff nodes before the Duna window opens up, and I only have one MPL per mun. 

Life support and the advanced RT-like (actually it sounds like it's more like AntennaRange-like) comms thing that was supposed to be in 1.1 would also increase difficulty (plus also make advanced bases more useful if they could be used for LS resupply).

NB: Reducing Isp to 80% would only really be a difficulty increase of about 1.25x.  Isp is a linear part of the equation..

14 hours ago, Leeman said:

So whats my point that I try to do here? If you believe it to be "Overpowered" and don't like it.. Just simply don't use it.. I have nearly unlocked all the techtree yet I only visited two Biomes on Minmus and one Biome on the moon and only orbital science of Kerbin. So it looks like to me, that you can fill up the tech tree completely or at least quite far without interplanetary travels and without the Mobile Processing Lab so in the end.. All fair game again

The "simply don't use it" argument has never been a valid one.  It's basically just sidestepping the issue - which is fine for a temporary workaround, but not for something that looks like it's a permanent and unbalanced part of the core game.  I've been avoiding using those (until very recently) in protest of their overpoweredness, and I'm no longer able to use them for their older functions, which were more fair and balanced (resetting of goo/science jrs, before scientist kerbals could do that)

Also "the current tree is broken" doesn't negate "the MPL is overpowered" argument at all.  Nor does "scientists are broken".  All of those need to be addressed for a more interesting experience.

21 minutes ago, fourfa said:

Re-entry heating *is* a difficulty slider.  Maybe you haven't looked into the Custom difficulty options?  Easy is 50%, Normal-Moderate-Hard are 100%, it can go as high as 120%.

Yeah, it is, but it's 100% for almost ALL the settings, so it's not really a thing outside of Custom Difficulty (Easy wasn't a necessary mode dammit).

21 minutes ago, fourfa said:

Difficulty, grind, tedium - hard to put absolute values on those.  For me, the lower science and funds rewards in a Hard mode career mean I need to be more creative to get around the part and size limits in the lower-tier buildings.  Being stuck with the small docking ports for most of the career imposes interesting limits.  Operating cash-poor meant really learning to cut margins (building, and piloting) to the bone.  Hard Mode taught me a whole new appreciation for the Twin Boar - in Normal, I never had a use for it, but in Hard it was my mainstay lifter for most of the career arc.

Maybe all of that sounds tedious rather than interesting?  

Twin boar is no match for some well-greased Reliants!  They're about 195 newtons per funds, whereas the Twin Boar is only about 177 even after subtracting a Jumbo64 from it.   The Twin-Boar is definitely better than the Mainsail (115) or Skipper (133), but it's often overpowered for many uses, whereas a cluster of three Reliants mounted on cubic octags is lower thrust and MUCH lower cost.

Default hard mode is only 60% science, so it's hardly much more grind at all.  Try in the 10-20% range...

20 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Do not see the problem, the lab is heavy, sending an lander with MK1 pod with scientist and the basic instruments, 360 fuel will let you sample all but the polar biome on Minmus. 
Unlock rest of the science instruments and wheels and send an rover to Mun, two landings give data from 10 biomes, if this don't unlock the rest an follow up mission to Minmus and the reminding biomes on Mun should solve this nicely. 

Actually, my MinLandX-M system can hit ALL the biomes, including the polar one (starting from an equatorial orbit nonetheless), for about 180 fuel.. Orbital rendezvous is still king.  Anyhow, just because scientists are stupidly overpowered doesn't mean that the MPL is NOT.   It's just a bit less overpowered.  And this thread is about the MPL.

Anyhow, the whole damn tree needs to be looked at, reorganized, tiered, and fixed up.  It's currently mostly insane.  Many of the top nodes are fluff (that 2.5m sized probe core is basically worthless outside of RemoteTech, for example - it's flimsy and floppy and has a tiny battery and huge power drain, mass, and costs a lot, so I never buy that node (outside of RT anyhow) until it's the very last one, and only then for completion factor), and the order of parts is often weird (the two-way stack decouplers usually come after the one-way decouplers, but the 0.625m one comes first?), and part costs/tiers are wacky and I feel that a number of opportunities are missed...

UPDATE: Uh crap that's a wall of text - TL;DR version: NO, U!

[A belated #BringBackTheBarn thread... with a TWIST!]

5 hours ago, dewin said:

I've had a mod concept that would do precisely this for awhile -- the idea being to replace the current building upgrade system with something akin to the tech tree, but unlocked using funds (and/or possibly other prerequisites) instead of science.

It'd also allow you to upgrade building aspects independently and add in some integration potential with other mods.

This actually sounds like a pretty cool idea.  That would let you spread out the upgrade costs by effectively giving smaller tiers, and better control too.

[Does anyone actually use the first level runway?]

On 2016-04-12 at 3:52 PM, 5thHorseman said:

I like the multiple runways idea. I also like having runways and airports scattered around Kerbin.

When they first introduced upgradable/destructible buildings, I thought that was going to be the next step.  Being able to buy additional launch sites.  That would have been awesome.

[Are thrust reversers too powerful?]

Just now, Xyphos said:

...and a magical garden hose that defies the 2nd law of thermodynamics in which it can transfer unlimited amounts of fuel without restrictions.

right, that too

[Are thrust reversers too powerful?]

1 hour ago, regex said:

I don't see what the problem is.  You're complaining about how unrealistic an engine's features are in a game that has magical reaction wheels and treats all wing shapes as ideal at whatever speed on a planet that is impossibly dense due to having the same gravity in 1/11th the radius of Earth.

Don't forget a turbofan engine that pretends to be a SCRAMJET with a 23:1 thrust/weight ratio.  And 2kN ion engines.  And little tiny bolts that have more drag than a parachute.  And little green men who can live forever in space with no support at all.

 

[A belated #BringBackTheBarn thread... with a TWIST!]

I'd just be happy if there were more levels, even if they didn't have graphics associated with 'em.

30 parts / 18 tons is extremely tight and squeezy, but then once you upgrade, boom, I'm launching Moho missions off of T2.  I've never even needed the T3 barn VAB at all, aside from the million space bucks action groups (I prefer ships to be < 120 parts and use multiple vessels for large-scale missions typically - not uncommon to have a fleet of 7 to 9 ships in a giant MIRV-style mission to another planet.  Thank the Kraken (and TriggerAu) for Kerbal Alarm Clock, heh).

Having more tiers would let us spread out the cost more too.  More, smaller increments, rather than fewer, larger ones.

 

[Should KSP have a Delta-V readout?]

Random aside: The VAB now has a three decimal place mass indicator, so you can now do calculations by hand for even small craft.   Kudos to Squad to listening to community feedback
 

[Electric category in the editors]

2 hours ago, Snikersnee said:

It's not that hard. Here. Made a tutorial for you. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=679786943

Yeah, I've used that before, but you end up with this annoying little "+" on each part icon, which is quite annoying when you're used to rapid, large scale construction that never involved having to click in a specific part of the durned part icon.

:/

In the old days, when the part categories went across the top, limiting the number of categories was required, but we have a LOT of unused space.   Also note that the actual part directories (folders) DO have an "Electrical" directory, as well as a "Thermal", "Wheel", and "Resources" directories.

The vertical list uses about 320 pixels of vertical height, ~100 are unavailable, and there's 9 icons.. so they're what, 35-ish tall and we have room for about 19 at 1024x768 (I believe that's the default and minimum rez?)...on top of which that list scrolls.

So we could pretty much just categorize for those four directories, which are pretty much what @Alshain suggested for a minimum.

 

[Dres Plus Development Thread]

1 hour ago, WillThe84th said:

It's more in between. the pressure at the surface is 1.3 ATM, but it doesn't extend as far as Kebin's.

Ooh - the more I hear, the more I like it.

I'll never like the original Dres, but I'm loving this new and improved Dres.  I'm definitely going to include it in a number of my career playthroughs.

[How do you deal with all the shortcomings of the game ?]

2 hours ago, Enorats said:

While you have some points regarding stat imbalances (which I have to point out are VERY easy to fix yourself by editing the part files, even a total beginner can do that)

I'd recommend ModuleManager for that.  End users can use it too y'know, it's not just for mod authors

[Aeronauts , what are your biggest gripes with the stock game/physics?]

20 minutes ago, Wallygator said:

5 - huh? Fuel drain on rockets should behave that way. This assumes multi-stacked tanks are actually one giant tank. 

No, they don't.  Bipropellant rockets usually have TWO tanks in each segment that drain at the same time, one above the other, so the CoM doesn't shift quite as dramatically as it does in KSP with a similar layout.  The top tank (be it oxidizer or fuel) will help keep the CoM up.  We get a nasty end-swap tendency in our KSP rockets due to the top tanks in a stage draining first.  Well that and some weird drag values and such.

(ex. Shuttle external tank, Saturn V - S-IC / S-II / S-IVB)

I'd actually hazard a guess that the CoM wouldn't shift at all (relative to fore/aft) if the tanks were laid out horizontally in those rockets.

 

[How do you deal with all the shortcomings of the game ?]

15 minutes ago, NikkyD said:

4) have you ever looked closely at the weight of the stock components ? Some are so rediculous. The smallest wheels weigh 50 kg, same as the bigger ones... WHY ? Both extendable ladders weigh 5 kg but one is twice as long ?!

Batteries however. An average car battery weighs a good 10 kg and in KSP the smallest disc-battery weighs the same. What a bargain! All the parts... it's like 5 years ago someone quickly scribbled some numbers together, late for dinner or whatnot and BAM they made it into release and have never been touched again, EVER.

Highlighted for truth.

MANY of the values both don't make sense AND don't fit into the progression.  They feel like placeholders.  The costs are crazy too - four tailfins is about half of a Skipper price-wise.  A plastic nosecone is the cost of a small engine.   Especially suspicious are items that cost 500 (either exactly 500 or close to 500).

Also I suspect we still have the #lolstat problem of ox-stats being the best cells - I haven't run figures for them since before the last set of solar changes but I wouldn't be surprised to find out they still have the best energy generation per mass and per cost..

[Aeronauts , what are your biggest gripes with the stock game/physics?]

Just now, herbal space program said:

Well that is certainly just wrong. I'm tempted to see how removing the two struts on my SSTO14 would affect drag, but it flies so poorly without them...

Prior to the pre-release (1.0.x era), I had one spaceplane that I felt should have worked, but it miserably failed to get anywhere near orbit.  I then saw a post from GoSlash that mentioned "fuel lines and struts = bad for drag" (although it was non-specific about HOW bad) and I removed a bunch of struts and a pair of unnecessary fuel lines, and suddenly it was reaching orbit with 500 m/s to spare.

3 minutes ago, Rabada said:

I feel like I'm probably being blind and missing the obvious, but I do not see any struts on either of the craft in the pictures.

If you look REALLY close at the second plane, you'll see them attached to the main wing from the fuselage.  One's just ahead of the doge flag on the fuselage, and the other is just ahead of the flaps.   They're mirrored, so there's two more on the other side as well, naturally.

[Aeronauts , what are your biggest gripes with the stock game/physics?]

14 minutes ago, herbal space program said:

So is this excessive drag a fixed quantity for each strut or does it depend on how much strut area is exposed to the air?

I believe it's fixed per strut.  I didn't test beyond "this is wrong by MANY, MANY, MANY orders of magnitude" even with tiny struts.

Also, as an added bonus, the strut file itself has something that seems to attempt to REMOVE it's drag cube entirely, but apparently fails:

	DRAG_CUBE
	{
		none = True
	}

(The drag cube determines drag from a given facing in new stock aero)

I'm considering trying to replace the drag cube with a working one from something with really low drag.  I'd aim for zero, but I'd be worried about the code handling that badly... The cockpit-on-top plane shouldn't be 330m/s faster than the four-strut version, dammit!

 

[Aeronauts , what are your biggest gripes with the stock game/physics?]

9 hours ago, AeroGav said:

4.  excess drag from fuel ducts and struts.  Exacerbated by the fact that wing parts don't cross feed fuel

^  This.  Very much this.  A single strut has more drag than like a dozen mk1 cockpits directly exposed to airflow.  A flying brick with no struts flies faster than a sleek craft that has struts.  Counter-intuitive for the win!

With the ways things are now, you'd probably be better off with the old aero than the new aero + any significant strutting.

I attached some pictures to http://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/9210 .

This craft:

Is faster than this craft:

by about 50%.  Take those two pairs of struts off and the second craft becomes slightly faster than the first (less than 3%).

The struts actually save the plane though, it typically overheats and explodes after a couple of minutes at mach 2.9~

 

9 hours ago, AeroGav said:

5.  .... and the way rocket engines don't have a "drain evenly from every tank" mode the way that jet engines do.  So your CG gets messed up by rocket motors draining from the front tanks first.

I don't mind this so much, although I DO wish that they'd change it so that two tanks of the same connector type (that includes adapters connecting to the correct types) would partweld together into a single component.  That would reduce part counts (moar performance, less #lolflex) and help CoM for both planes and rockets.   Probably too late in development for that sort of thing though :/

[Inquiry about a clean 1.0.5 install]

Steam usually has a "beta" for the "previous stable release".  That should be 1.0.5, no?  (haven't tried it myself, 1.0.5 can die in a fire.  That's not to say 1.1 is perfect, but it's advantages outweigh it's flaws, even if my landers DO look funny with cubic octags for legs)

KSP -> Properties -> Betas -> "previous - Previous Stable Release"

(again, haven't used that myself in a long time, but it should be 1.0.5)