Stormweaver

Had wonderful clear skies for it - unfortunately, Britain. By 3am mist had rolled in and I couldn't see anything. No clouds, just light pollution godamnit.

I think the goo is supposed to be a stand-in for biological samples. Like animals, just with less guilt.

In 0.9 there was a module in the code for a motorised bearing, there just wasn't any parts that took advantage of it. It might still be in there somewhere. If I recall correctly moving parts had a few issues with not saving properly, clipping and spontanious explosions.

Don't be silly, everyone knows that modern PC games don't need manuals anymore - why bother when your userbase can be forced to alt-tab constrantly to a wiki that may-or-may-not be up to date and accurate? ...I miss manuals.

Aye, building something yourself is probably going to be a better bet - even here in the UK. Pre-builts have to cut a fair few corners to get decent looking prices, and you don't want to have re-buy everything further down the line because your PSU failed and fried everything, or the supplied cooling let everything fry itself. As a general rule, if you see a pre-build with 'ultra fast' or 'gaming' anywhere in the title, I'd stay away.

Someone is working on it as a mod: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/68502-WIP-Principia-N-Body-Gravitation-and-Better-Integrators-for-Kerbal-Space-Program But as above, lagrange points just don't make sense in stock KSP physics.

1.0+ is by and far better than anything 0.9 or beforehand, but I didn't really get enough time with the different version to tell the difference tbh. 1.02 feels nice I guess. That isn't to say there isn't some funky things going on with it. I don't think they thought through the newer inline air intakes very well - sure, stick one in a cargo bay and it won't work. Stick a solid object on the giant fan on the front? A-Ok! Planes do fly like a dream though.

Aye, that's what I was testing - hence the antenna being there in the first place :3 The general reduction in altitude across the more sencible nosecone parts was the bit I felt might be relevant here.

Just posted this in another thread, it might beinteresting for the people here. I was having some trouble with the patcher, but before I gave up and downloaded it from the site I ran some tests. Then I ran some more. The above is the altitudes reached by a flea with a 1.25m flat probe, with 4 static winglets for stability, with various stuff on top. As you can see...some things were a lot more effective than others, and really shouldn't have been. Of course it's a flea, so the sound barrier was breached in all the flights (there was significant extra acceleration after breaching it iirc) but the above might give you a rough idea of the scale of the changes.

I seem to remember there was a bunch of discussion about this when the ISP changes were confirmed in a devnotes way back. It's just a case of gameplay vs realism. In reality a vessel on the surface of venus (75atm?) would have a lot of trouble with it's engines, so the engines are scaled to reflect a similar design challenge without the player having to actually wade through 75atm of pressure. In any case I expect the aerospike and the larger engines should still have thrust on the surface, it'll be mainly the dinky ones that struggle.

Yes, it rotated with the vessel - resulting in the offset being (in this case) a little the the right of center on the navball regardless of rotation. Which meant that the offset could be used to steer. At least I think that was the answer you were looking for. It was similar behavior to what we noticed with just the parachute/pod/heatshield at any rate, just slightly more exagerrated.

Well, tried using the 'offset' to steer as it were - perfectly equatorial orbit, stayed equatorial all the way down. Same thing happened having turned it 90 degrees and I landed in more or less the same place. Decided to make an offset of my own with a goo canister clipped into the side of the pod, and that steered slightly. I don't think the existing offset is large enough to be intentional.

Someone decided that the heatshields should be physicsless parts for whatever reason. It's easy enough to fix - go to your KSP folder, then gamedata/squad/parts/aero/heatshield, go into each of the three config files, find the line that reads PhysicsSignificance = 1 and change the 1 to a 0.

Right, did a bit of testing with the physics turned on, see about adressing the mat bay/utility bay re-entry. With just a Utility bay, you can re-enter just fine - you'll be offset a few degrees, but the heatshield takes the vast majority of the punishment. With just a Matirials bay, if you manage to avoid overheating the bloody thing (which can be hard enough to do on the way up, let alone on the way down) you'll need to kick SAS on once heat starts building up, but the reaction wheel is strong enough to handle it. With both...you'll be balancing it by hand, probably with spin stabilisation, and probably want spare batteries. All in all, it sounds about right. Quick edit: Had the aero debug arrows on the whole time - Saw nothing but the red 'drag' ones pointing retrograde. Not sure if there should be other ones visable.

A couple of pixels to the left of the middle of the retrograde marker? Yeah. It's like that regardless of rotation, something might be a shade off-center.

Yup, just came here to say the same thing. Also, discovered that the rate of ablation seems to have nothing to do with airspeed ala DRE - my command pod got hot on the way up, heatshield was ablating in orbit (while still behind it's fairing) as heat got transferred to it.

I can confirm - with just a Mk-1 capsule, a parachute and heatshield, the craft is stable around 30 degrees off the retrograde marker. Doesn't really matter what direction it's offset, but it won't stay retrograde without reaction wheels. Oh, and it's enough to overheat the capsule at that angle. Might just be me playing at 120% for that one though.

I flinched at "Too many constraints" - in a game with practically none - but provided the Claw's various world-destroying bugs don't make it into the final release, it wouldn't break immersion too much to pretend it's got a fuel line in there somewhere.

"A new Dimension...of Social media updates! We'll now be posting exclusive tidbits about the 1.0 release on our myspace page!" :3 Tired jokes aside, parts inspired by other space agencies would be nice.

Thanks as always for this, I keep meaning to catch the cast and...always forget.

Moving parts would be great, but there are a couple of issues that would need to be sorted before they get implemented imo. - Craft need to be able to collide with themselves, as opposed to parts just phasing through - radially attached parts that are spinning quickly need to actually stay attached instead of expanding outwards I think there's good reason why the rotor module that's in the game hasn't actually be used yet.

I'm in favour of nerfing the torque values significantly. While giving RCS a use in stock would be great on it's own, we're also getting the ISP fix and overhauled aerodynamics in 1.0. With planes actually making a degree of sense and the RCS thrusters having significantly less thrust in atmosphere, reaction wheels in aircraft are going to stick out like a sore thumb as they currently are.

It'd be more interesting to have parachutes deploy based on height above sea-level, and unlock a not-inexpencive radar altimeter some way into the tech tree. ....but where you have one, yes, it should be on the HUD somewhere.

It isn't that bad tbh. I use BTSM pretty much exclusively - that is, nerfed engines, soupy atmosphere and far heavier payloads than stock (not to mention a distinct lack of radial decoupling) - and in the end TWR is rarely a problem, since you just build beefier things to do the lifting. You end up with larger, more impressive rockets and a fondness for solid fuel boosters that simply won't happen with stock. With the Aero changes though, I doubt we'll see a huge difference in launchers before and after 1.0 hits. Just maybe a few more winglets.

I got the impression that it's less about 'backwards compatability' as you'd normally think of it, and more that Squad don't want to force players to have to scrap everything they know about spaceplanes in KSP in order to be able to build ones after the update - that is, someone who can design spaceplanes in 0.9 stock should be able to build them in 0.91 stock without having to completely change thier habits. So...habit compatability as opposed to software I guess.