Scramble

I think it does not have to be either-or, if you can accept a little cheating. Here is the idea, launch a few comsats yourself, enough that you get to try it out and show you can do it, as long as it is fun. After that, instead of repetitive launching after you get bored, just use HyperEdit to place remaining satellites. You will still have to plan your comsat network and build the satellites, so the strategic/tactical aspect is still there. I don't think I will be using RemoteTech in my career mode game(s), but look forward to the 1.0 release and would love to play around with it in sandbox mode. And will happily use HyperEdit whenever I want to simulate that "someone else in my space agency handled that launch".

True realism should not be a target for the stock product. Why? Because you as a player would have to become NASA. Real space programs are not run as a part-time activity by one single person. Even if you quit your job or studies to do KSP full time, you could never run a full space program. You don't design a truly realistic space shuttle as a non-expert as an evening project. There is no question there is a balancing between realism vs fun. For instance as OP is asking for true aerodynamics, does that mean there should also be truly realistic weather effects with seasonal variations? Would you want to cope with having to use complex weather forecasts to plan launches and landings, and having to land your already barely stable airframe with unstable crosswinds and near ground turbulence by using the not so realistic "pushing asdqwe keys" control method? How would you eyeball how to enter the atmosphere in order to get where you want based on what is supposedly going on in the upper atmosphere? Miss a launch window due to bad weather and wait a few years for the next opportunity? And should KSP be updated to include a autopilot module, which you would have to program yourself to do automatic landings as is my understanding is what the real shuttles did? I do appreciate high levels of KSP realism, but for that I let Scott Manley get paid from YouTube ads to install various mods and do all the heavy work, and just enjoy the added complexity by watching some of his videos.

What I think? Four things. (1) I am not worried how things are going. (2) If you want devs to listen, then stating devs don't listen to the community is not likely going to give you a more positive reaction. There is a difference between not listening, and following the forums but not going along with or commenting every single suggestion that comes up. (3) If you scan through the forum, I expect you will find existing threads on all these topics. They are not "new ideas". Having some experience with SW development, I can tell you that any dev team needs to prioritize - plus there is also a trade-off between simplicity for the end-user vs adding more features. I would not be surprised if there are some players who prefer not having access to delta V numbers, as it forces them to do things the intuitive trial-and-error way - which may be more fun for some people. (4) There are excellent mods which provides various functionality that you are requesting.

IANAL and I don't know whether there would be a legal problem with this mod. What I do know is that for copyrighted or otherwise legally protected (e.g. patented) work, there is no universal right to distribute infringing works just because you're doing it for free and avoiding use of trademark names. It does not matter what alternative name you stick on the product or whether you are charging for it. You see this discussion all the time with open source software. It is important not to confuse the fact that you personally would like it to be something which can be freely distributed, with the objective fact whether it is actually something which according to law can be legally distributed or used without permission from rights holders. I would be careful with this one; releasing this type of mod is IMHO not worth taking any personal risk. Also I am guessing that you would not get permission to do this by asking Lego. Why? Because Lego has nothing to gain from saying yes, and there is no incentive for the receiving person to say yes. Actually, saying yes could get you fired if some managers later find the mod to be a problem - "who is the idiot who approved this". It's just corporate politics, nothing personal. So in order to do this, you should plan on doing it without "permission", because you know you are not violating any legal rights (globally - there may be different rights held in different countries/regions depending on how the company has used legal protection and differences in copyright law), and you are not afraid of getting a phone call from Lego. Also, one question I would ask myself, is whether using a Lego-style logo (which nobody would think is not intentional) to market a Lego-like product, is a good idea.

Came across this video today, which shows how several Earth/Mars gravity assists were used for the Rosetta mission to rendezvous with a comet later this year. Yes I know it is not Kerbal, but looking at the animation it might as well have been, so I thought it belonged in the general discussion thread. After watching this, my current ad-hoc interplanetary no-gravity-assist KSP maneuvers feel very simplistic ...

One minor feature request; when using HyperEdit to replenish all resources, it will also replenish unwanted resources from other mods. In particular, with KSP Interstellar it will bring Waste Heat to 100%, which causes immediate solar panel shutdown. It would be nice if it was possible to configure that certain resources would not get replenished, alternatively to configure that those resources would be drained to 0% rather than bringing them to 100%. For me, doing this in a config file would be an acceptable solution, so not something that would necessarily require a menu option or additional GUI programming.

I just discovered HyperEdit, and I think it is a great tool. Real space programs don't have one guy running everything, plus the people in the program actually get paid for it. I only get to play every now and then when I have some spare time, so I'd rather do whatever in-game activities are more fun, exciting and challenging. Which does not include repetitive tasks or non-challenging "dumb" activities. For me, getting a number of satellites into such perfect orbit that they won't drift, and keep checking on and repositioning those satellites - beyond getting them reasonably close to a good orbit - is not fun - it is work which nobody pays me for. So I just learned to use HyperEdit to manipulate orbits so I can tweak things a bit after I feel I did enough work to be challenging yet not boring. Simulation. Real space programs would simulate their missions before they actually go there. They don't build an untested lander, put it on a rocket, go to Duna, and just see what happens. With HyperEdit you can simulate a landing by magically placing the lander in orbit there, and try it out. Then afterwards, you can go and do the real mission. I would argue that never using HyperEdit is less realistic than simulating a space program without it. Real space programs are not one man shows. If you want to just magically place a satellite somewhere that you know how it would get delivered there and feel competent you would have been able to do it if you had the time, it just means that "some other guy did it instead". Because you were too busy mining kethane, building a space station, going on a manned mission to Eve, or something else fun.

Personally I do a little bit of cheating. I use RemoteTech and so getting the satellite network properly set up is particularly important. I have managed to get satellites nicely spaced into a (almost) synchronous orbit, but getting the orbit completely perfect has been a bit of an issue. Even with the tiniest RCS burst, I have not managed to get it 100% right, even though I make fully retrograde/prograde aligned burns at apoapsis/periapsis. The problem is the satellites will start to drift, and with a bit of time warp e.g. after going to other planets, the satellites end up all over the place. So what I ended up doing in the end is I cheat a little. I take the time to get the satellites into orbit as perfect as I can get it with a reasonable time investment, and then I let my "control center guys" take it over from there. I.e. I figured out how to use the HyperEdit mod to manipulate orbits using the Advanced tab, and for me that is about as real as it gets. Real world space centers don't have one guy running everything. I am perfectly happy to cheat a bit to simulate not having to micro-manage everything. Means I can spend time on something else I'd rather do ... it's a game after all.

If you ever wondered what might be the fate of one of your stranded Kerbals ... you might want to check out "The Martian" by Andy Weir. Heavy on quick thinking on-your-feet MacGyver type engineering solutions. If you want to read a book where the engineer is the hero, this may be the book for you. Whether it offers "accuracy" depends on your point of view (do you want real world science, or plausible sci-fi world science immersion), however the book is certainly immersive and heavy on technical details.

Would be nice to have some symbology on the "navigation ball" around the edge, to tell you which direction you have to rotate in order to locate the various symbols. Some times after setting up a maneuvering node and with a bit of disorientation, I have no idea where the blue maneuvering node cue for directional burn, is supposed to be located. It would be nice to have a small blue dot around the edge when the symbol is not visible. Perhaps something similar for the other symbols.

What better way to celebrate the end of the holidays than to launch your christmas tree into space. Inspired by the christmas rocket which showed up today in the KSP pictures thread, I thought I might mention that it's already been done, with . Well, it did not get too high up in the atmosphere, and the launch looks a lot like some of my failed KSP rockets. But I still give these guys points for creativity.Language is Norwegian, but if you just mute the sound I think the pictures speak for themselves. The video is by the way from a series called "don't do this at home" where they do lots of fun stuff. Put rockets on various things and see what happens. Paint the living room by putting explosives in a bucket of paint. Deep frying a whole frozen turkey. Etc.

Just got started with KSP and having great fun with the sim. Career mode is really nice, and gives the sim a sense of purpose. I started again from scratch with 0.23, and I like having limited access to technologies. It makes things a bit simpler in the beginning. After a couple botched attempts at not only going to the Mun but also returning, I watched a bunch of videos and did some googling, and ended up aiming for Minmus instead with a better rocket design. Which has been loads of fun, and I just completed my first Minmus rendezvous including low-orbit scientific measurements with a return trip and safe landing at Kerbal. And all that science really helped getting some technologies which should make a Minmus landing more viable, and eventually that trip to the Mun. Discovering that the command module has built-in SAS was a big help. It never occurred to me to try hitting 't' as I thought SAS had to be researched. Made flying a whole lot easier :-) Figuring things out is part of the fun. But could maybe a bit hard for some on career mode? I've done a lot of Googling. As there is limited science to work with in the beginning, figuring out a reasonable sequence to research technologies, is one big question. E.g. from videos I inferred (maybe wrongly) that getting fuel lines is important in order to enable the asparagus design. Not so obvious for a new player ... and you also don't get to "peek ahead" in the tech tree. Encountered a couple bugs/features. The rocket designer doesn't seem to faill on ctrl+z "undo" for some operations. If I clicked the wrong place and deleted that piece in order to undo it, then undo does not work (at least not for me). Had a nervous moment earlier when returning from Minmus, when I decided to tab through objects before doing my return trip burn. At some point neither tab or shift-tab worked anymore (by the way shift-tab is a bad choice as it conflicts with Steam keyboard overrides; I had to remap that to something else on Steam), and I was stuck with a view from some remote location. Then a bit later, it worked again. Also, as I did a bit of shift-tab later on, I did not realize that thrusters were coming online as I was holding shift while tabbing - so I did a major burn which brought me completely off course. Twice! Luckily I had enough fuel to revert the effects when I discovered that problem. One feature that would be really nice, which I thought of after I was a bit eager to fast-forward to get to my first Minmus encounter and overshot because I did not slow down in time ... would be some kind of "fast forward to x minutes before maneuvering point". E.g. I like to re-orient the spacecraft around 2-5 mins before the maneuver, and check again about 30s before the maneuver. It would be nice to have a "skip to -2 mins" and a "skip to -30s" key. Probably going to ramble more about random thoughts and ideas in some other post. Having great fun with the sim and getting quite worked up about it, so gonna start following the forum. I teach physics, and am really looking forward to some type of school-friendly version of the game (e.g. some sort of licensing that makes it possible to buy the game for installing on students' laptops). Would have loved to let my students play around with it. For now I am going to just show them one of the tutorials on YouTube which shows how to build a rocket to go to the Mun, land, and get back again. There's just so much physics we can cover in terms of what is going on during that video, that it easily fills a lesson. Thanks for a great game, look forward to spending more time with KSP!