Baleur

Inspired by the success of the recent interplanetary initiative by KSP, where a brave kerman being was lost while setting first foot on an alien planet... .. the team at KSP decided it was time to reach Duna, as organized and properly as possible. First they needed some sort of staging area in Kerbal orbit, a refuelling and restocking station. The first segment of the KISS was launched. Fully outfitted with solar panels for electricity, plenty of auxillary 'just in case' oxygen tanks and a large inflatable habitation module. The blue light indicates the "top" part of the station, where the crew hatch and the main ladder running up to it can be found. Boosting it into a circular orbit while entering the night side. The red light indicates the "bottom" part of the station, reserved for sensory equipment and the link back to KSP. The final rendevous as the second station segment was launched, identical to the first. Docking was tricky business, the RCS thrusters were barely enough to maneuver the slow lumbering beast, but success at last! A brave kerman investigating the docking procedure, checking the seal, confirming the completion of the station. Ladders extended on the first station on the right, one of the habitation modules on the left. As the automatic guidance system radiates near the docking ports, the fellas over at KSP are pleased. Jim Kerman is as well. The first mapping satellite is launched, launch stages seperated! Mapping Kerbin has begun, a step on our own world, to reach the others. Another satellite launched at the Mun. Anomalies detected, cows mutilated, movies obsessing over black rectangles are aired. The next more advanced satellite headed for Duna, finally, is seperated. The nuclear engine boosting its way to Kerbal escape velocity, overheat at 40% and holding steady. Full thrust. Upon arrival in Dunar orbit, the KSP engineers convince mission control to run a pass around Ike. "We might as well map 2 balls in one go, eh?". Easier than expected, mapping the small moon was quick and effortless with an orbit of 60 degrees inclanation. Final thrust towards Duna once more. Orbit adjustments for a 70 degree inclanation, the red planet fills the cameras. Seperation of the satellite itself, the interplanetary stage is now left to eternity in orbit. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.. -Spuknil Surprise visit from KSP, due to an uncommon disregard for public awareness, neither the launch nor the launch vehicle was recorded! (sorry about that, i was so excited i forgot to take screens of it!). The Dunar lander makes its appearance to the world known. Equipped with a rover below the capsule, a sensory instrument dish above the capsule, solar panels, oxygen supply to last a week and three fuel pods designed to assist in landing along with three heavy duty parachutes. The fuel spent to get this somewhat heavy vehicle to Duna was too much, more than expected.. As such the three lander engines had to be used for deceleration and orbit adjustments to a nearby anomaly detected by the mapping satellite. Braking maneuvers initiate, it's time for final descent! When disaster strucks! The fuel readout was ignored in favor of "ooh"s and "aah"s over the ever closer surface. With an apoapsis of 81.000km and a periapsis of 50.000km, there was simply not enough atmosphere to slow the vehicle down! Joefred knew he had come this far, and there was no way back. He literally went out and pushed. Each successive pass at the apoapsis, a new series of pushes. Close disaster strikes at the final push, after bringing the periapsis down to 37.000km, Joefred is almost spun out of control into deep space, but quickly makes a recovery! Admiring the view, he recedes back into his chair in the capsule, knowing that all that remains now is to wait for the aerobraking. 30.000km. As he's getting ever closer, his heart beats stronger as the predictions put his landing trajectory into the night side of Duna. This was never planned. 24.000km. Fuel tanks empty, RCS tanks empty, he had nothing to rely on besides the parachutes. 21.000km. 10.000km, his nerves can take no more, the darkness of the rusty dust below him plays tricks on his depth perception. He deploys the parachutes early. After an excruciating minute of free fall, it seemed as the parachutes would fail.. And then they deployed. Thank the gods of Kerbol! Turning on the landing lights, the empty terrain below looms closer.. The air is filled with a rusty hue. No Dunians in sight, no canals in sight. This was a dead planet. Touchdown, relief at last! Turning off the landing lights, and switching to the rover lights, exploration can commence. Jettisoning the trio of well served parachutes and descent engines, Joefred drives off some distance to test the rover. Obligatory rcs-jumping exercises. After a few minutes sprint back to the descent engines, he decides to check who to thank for weaving those life saving parachutes. "DANGER", seemed to be the individual responsible for saving Joefred's life. "Danger Kerman, i owe you my life." he thought quietly to himself. A quick rcs-jump back to the rover, his exploration senses run wild. It turns out that 40km/h in free rcs-jumping-flight can knock a kerbal landing on his feet out cold for several minutes. Eventually, he recovers and makes it back to the rover. Being too excited, too reckless, he starts picking up too much speed. 60km/h on a downhill slope, the rover starts to tilt.. Disaster strikes!! Joefred Kerman, we hardly knew you. May your head forever rest in the sand. So say we all.

Struggling with the low thrust of the vehicle, and the Isa Mapsat attached, Jebediah set sail for Dune. Having exhausted most of his fuel, the jury-rigged propane cans strapped to the outside of the lander helped push that final distance around Kerbol. It was time to detach, the new planet was not to be mapped, but Jebediah's dream was not to be abandoned. With a tenth of the tank remaining, he cheered at what the onboard map computer revealed, a Dune orbit was within grasp. Fuel exhausted in an attempt to slow down enough to let Dune catch the ship in its embrace, Jebediah turned off the radio, ignoring the pleas of the command center for him to wait for a rescue mission. He knew he had one last chance, his jetpack. Despite a remarkable deviation in trajectory, it was not enough. As Dune slowly drifted past Jebediah's eyes, both sadness over the lost dream and terror of the knowledge that his oxygen is running out filled his mind. T_T *SADFACE* ;'( I adore these parts, but i really, really must ask for a version balanced with vanilla values (especially now in 0.17). I understand that you wanted it to be more stable, more realistic and graceful instead of wobbling around. But please, release a version with thrust & weight values equal to the other parts out there and vanilla. I'd love to be able to use this as my main rocket, but as it is now, it's nearly impossible. Overall, amazing pack. Keep it up. Moar!! edit: mods, it'd be nice if common spoiler tags worked, or if there was a button in the reply screen to tell you what it is. Feel free do add it as i have no clue how besides trying

Still my absolute favorite pack of all!

What........... are those pivots?

Goodie Also keep in mind that any body with open water, especially one with +90% of the surface in the form of liquid water, will ALWAYS have an atmosphere, however thin. This due to the fact that liquids always 'evaporate' slightly near the surface. Even if the temperature is just barely enough to keep it from freezing over, you can't have water without also having a thin layer of water vapor above it, by pure automation. I think this is true even for other liquids like methane or even metals, there will always be a minute haze of the gaseous form of whatever liquid there is below. At least that's how i understood it in chemistry class.

Great, finally a semi-collection of links and info not spread out over 100 pages.

The gamma ray burst would have to be aimed specifically at the planet or sun, for it to actually eradicate life. You could have dozens of gamma ray bursters surrounding your solar system and still have life evolve and thrive, just by not being cosmically unlucky enough to be hit by them in the 0.1 degree of the sky they affect or whatever it is. Heck you could even live in a galaxy where the central core is a massive active quasar, as long as it ain't aimed at your star system (in which case it's called a blazar). Also consider that our only example is our own planet.. Perhaps we don't exist BECAUSE it is a quiet section of the galaxy, perhaps our lucky existance simply means we can have the luxury of sitting here thinking about it in the first place? In a sense, it is quiet Because we exist, so far, we don't exist because it's quiet. As for how to do binary systems in KSP, i don't think it would have to be that hard. Think simple. 1 invisible object in the assumed centre of mass for both stars. Acting as the sun as in the Kerbal system now. 2 "planets" with the mesh and glow of stars orbiting in excentric orbits around this invisible centre of mass. Their orbits overlapping like a figure 8, but timed so they never intersect (star A is at the periapsis when star B is at the apoapsis) Other actual planets simply orbit around the invisible centre of mass as well, far enough out to never get too close to the star so your ship won't be affected by it while near the planet (like Kerbal is now, quite far from the sun). It's really quite simple, if you think about it in pure gameplay design terms, faking reality, rather than obsessing over n-physics that will never work with the Unity engine. The end result is the same, a binary star system that works and behaves as you'd expect with a common centre of mass, where your ship gets captured by either star as it flies close, just as it would if you fly close to a planet or moon in the Kerbal system.

Hang on, even if it is in geostationary orbit, there would be massive atmospheric drag, turbulence and winds. Since the atmosphere of a planet does not rotate with the surface but rather somewhat delayed (or sped up due to temperature differences blah blah blah), that's why we get winds and weather. Unless, it does in KSP? Ah, i see. God i can't wait for aerodynamics in KSP.

Such as, sci-fi nerd droolmaterial. Neutron stars, Pulsars (obviously with a visible lighthouse pulse flashing a nearby planet, for the coolness, perhaps disrupting RCS or SAS with each sweep), Black holes (which could manipulate the time acceleration as you make a slingshot, making the universe & planetary orbits speed up as you get closer to the black hole, while your ship remains "in normal time".) And i frankly can't wait for other star systems, with binary & trinary systems (pretty please?! binary systems are after all the most common, more so than single stars) and vastly different star scales. *imagines landing on a distant rocky hell hole with a red giant covering half the sky at sunrise* I suppose my question is, how varied and exotic will the universe be? Somewhat as varied as in real life, or will it take more of an "easy & safe" route to keep most systems fairly similar?

Well yeah, i love these things too. But in KSP it's like..... The point of the game is to build rockets and vehicles, and find your way to pilot them to the other planets or stars. With stargates, you'd just have to pilot to the gate, you wouldn't have to worry about the trajectories to being captured by another star anymore. It's like, putting a gate on Kerbin Space Center that instantly teleports you to Minmus. What would be the point of the game then? If the game does evolve in a way that does conform to such things however, i'd love to see it added. Perhaps as easter egg connections to the other side of the galaxy without first having to research warp drives or whatever. Then i'd love it too. But as KSP is TODAY, it doesn't fit at all, given how limited the universe is. I could see one thing though, if the tech level system in KSP advances far enough into the realm of stargates, perhaps we could BUILD stargates, and maneuver them to a distant star. Then once we built 2 and put them in place, we could use them as a shortcut for easy colonization or whatever on the other end. THAT i can agree with, because then the whole kerbal building element still comes into play without having the thing just be a "cheatmode" to reach distant places.

In total, from hitting the small bump, to landing, it took about 6 minutes. Looks great! But i must ask, is that lens flare REALLY going to be left in? It's extremely obtrusive and rough. I won't argue about my distaste for lens flares in general as they are just silly and stupid to intentionally add in games, but at the very least make it softer and more subtle, if a lens flare has to be in the game. Something more along the lines of this.. Or this

I know right. It really is up to the game itself to tell us these things, especially when they are essential things for designing your rockets. They really need to start adding simple tooltips or "Hey! New hotkeys, do this to blabla" when starting the game after an update.

Only thing missing is a few floodlights so it can be seen from orbit

I do agree with previous replies that they should have more than just 1 color, especially some of the gas giants should have 2-3 shades in their belts (cloud belts, not asteroid belts), such as jupiter has irl. As for rocky planets, same thing there. Some subtle shade differences in color or darkness. I mean look at Io, Titan with it's green & orange tint or Ganymede, callisto that looks like it is full of stars, or enceladus that has blue tiger stripes. Color is very important to distinguish similar objects. But of course i also agree that pure 255 green is not a good idea to use under any circumstance, there must be some swayroom for the lighting engine to do its part. But that does Not mean it should be reduced too much to 155 green (random example). Just a mere 20-30 points reduction is enough to get a more natural palette of shade. Even our moon in real life has some color, although desaturated of course. I think a slightly over-saturated depiction of real life is what suits this game perfectly, such as this edited image of the moon to better bring out the (still real) colors within.

Charr is most likely a homage to Starcraft, at least it will be in my mind. Bloody brilliant choice of name As a sidenote, oh god i hope Nova doesn't listen too much to the "bohoo it must be realistic" comments people give here.. Every screenshot i've seen so far of the new planets look absolutely awesome. The colors are great. There's nothing wrong with color. Just look at how Kerbal turned out after the devs listened too much to the complaints about it being "too colorful". Just do it the way you envision the planets Nova, make this game into a wonderful fantastical exploratory experience. This is a game about huge-headed green cucumbers flying rockets. There is no need to hold back on the creative side. Go all out on it, don't hold back, i beg you. We can either eventually have dozens of solar systems with identical desaturated mars-like planets, or we can have them each be unique and interesting. We can never have as much intricate detail in a game as real-life planets have, that is why we must exaggerate slightly, either in color palette or composition, to better diversify them. In reality 2 mars-like desert planets might look incredibly different despite being of a similar color with a similar atmosphere, but in a game they will look like boring copies of eachother.

I love you.

Why do people keep making those "verb within a verb, verbception" jokes? Get a dictionary. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/inception Origin: 1375–1425; late Middle English incepcion < Latin inceptiÃ…Ân- (stem of inceptiÃ…Â ), equivalent to incept ( us ) begun ( see incept) + -iÃ…Ân- -ion Synonyms 1. origin, outset, source, root, conception. in·cep·tion    [in-sep-shuhn] Show IPA noun 1. beginning; start; commencement. 2. British . a. the act of graduating or earning a university degree, usually a master's or doctor's degree, especially at Cambridge University. b. the graduation ceremony; commencement. 3. (in science fiction) the act of instilling an idea into someone's mind by entering his or her dreams. See, number 3 is from the movie and does not actually have anything whatsoever to do with what the word actually means. Sigh. Ontopic-swing: If i launch a Märs lander from Kerbin, that is an inception of the Märs project. If i put a kerbal within a kerbal, that's not inception, that's conception.

On the ground it's fine, the problem is that as your altitude increases the color shifts to dark green and dark green-blue for the oceans, which makes no sense. It's the terrain colors / shader itself that's odd, adding atmosphere shaders will only tint it all blue from orbit. It'll still be dark. It's as if the Mün would become dark grey as your altitude increases.

Just like Kerbal itself. Sigh i still miss the old beautiful vibrant Kerbal. But everyone had to yell "amg cartoony" and it was changed to the dark gloomy post-apocalyptic Kerbal we have now. The oceans are so dark that it's as if they are made out of oil and water, the land is so dark that it's like the plants had not enough chlorophyll to grow properly. Old Kerbal, a vibrant living planet New Kerbal, a dead husk http://s10.postimage.org/4d10tyui1/KSP_2012_07_17_16_45_12_59.png I just wish the planet parameters will be moddable, at the very least the color balance of them. I'd do anything to get the old Kerbal colors back.

http://i.imgur.com/b1oHk.jpg I can't believe how awesome this is. The atmosphere and lighting looks better than i expected.

Looks amazing mate. I can\'t wait for KSP to more delicately handle craft on craft collisions. Or do you think it will be possible to use such hands to \'grab\' long trusses of other craft already? Are the KSP physics stable enough for that?

What errors will that rescale thingy cause? I really want smaller versions of these parts

I had my first 100% vanilla orbiter EXPLODE after going back to it from the tracking center, and i found one of the ladders hovering 3 meters in mid-space beside the craft, still being \'attached\'. So yeah, probably part of a 0.16 vanilla bug.

I think it should be a little brighter grey, to match the rest of the ship parts. But that texture is great And i must request a duplicate set of parts that are 50% or even 35% of the original size.. These parts are amazing for what they do, but they are way way too big for some of my plans! I tried changing Scale in the .cfg file, too bad that has no effect yet. Is there anyway you could add smaller versions of each part? Same functionality, just visibly smaller (and lower mass ofc)? Even if just in an optional 'Extras' package, it would be so much appreciated. God i wish this game was like Spore in that respect, allowing you to scale parts with your mouse wheel.

i LOVE this pack. Love the artstyle, love the functionality. In fact i almost prefer this to NovaSilisko, bloodyheck!