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The Story So Far: Prior to KSP v1.0, mass ratios of tanks varied wildly. For some fuel types, there was a consistent progression across tank sizes, for others, there was not; and across fuel types, there was no consistency at all. In KSP v1.0, Squad made the decision to standardize all the fuel tanks in KSP to a mass ratio of 9:1 - meaning one ton worth of tankage holds 8 tons worth of propellant. All the fuel tanks...? No! A small holdout yet remains in the northern reaches of Gaul in the form of the xenon tanks. Their mass ratio still sits at 2.2727:1 - meaning one ton of tankage holds just 1.2727 tons of propellant. It's almost a fifty-fifty split between dry mass and xenon! Why It Matters: The rocket equation consists of two parts that are multiplied with each other. One is the effective exhaust velocity, which we know in the derivative form of specific impulse (Isp). The other is the vessel's mass ratio. Therefore, the mass ratio is at least as important as Isp for the performance of a rocket. You can argue that it is even more important, because while Isp only defines the rocket's dV, the mass ratio defines the rocket's dV in the same way as Isp does, and in addition to that, also defines the rocket's TWR. A better mass ratio gives you both more dV and shorter burns. Another consequence of the mass ratio going into the rocket equation lies in the maximum dV any given rocket stage can achieve with a specific engine (more precisely, with that engine's Isp). Because even if you add the entire observable universe's mass in terms of fuel to a rocket that somehow weighs zero kg despite having an engine and other stuff, you could still not exceed the mass ratio of the tanks you are using. Therefore there's a hard limit of dV you can never exceed with any given engine, and it depends entirely on the tank's mass ratio - and the way it curves towards that limit with increasingly diminishing returns depends on it, too. Why It Should Be Addressed: In real life, the mass ratio of a fuel tank depends on a great many factors, including the physical properties of the propellant itself. So you could argument that it is realistic that different fuels have tanks with different mass ratios. However, for xenon specifically, real life tanks are not anywhere near that low. In addition to that, as mentioned above, Squad made the conscious decision to remove all tankage mass ratio differences from the game (except xenon, which as it would appear was forgotten). And there's good reasons for doing this, reasons I've experienced myself multiple times while helping out with the mod Near Future Technologies. One pack in this suite of mods introduces new engines, which run on several different new fuels. I'm doing the balancing of those engines, and over time, I've tried various different approaches. Among them were approaches that had all the fuels at different tankage mass ratios. Although this offered increased freedom in assigning stats and part niches, it also made everything a whole lot more complicated to manage and balance properly. But that's not the main reason it was a bad idea. No, the main reason is that none of the players noticed it. None whatsoever. Not a single person who hadn't followed the dev thread discussion ever admitted to being aware of these differences. And, I mean, why would they? Fuel tanks are just fuel tanks. When you build literally any other spacecraft in KSP, you plop down the payload, you plop down a number of fuel tanks, and then you sit down and start comparing engines for thrust and Isp. Engines, not tanks. So the only thing those players noticed was: some engines just had better stats than others, no matter how you turned it. And these players then came to the mod thread and complained that their favorite engine was underpowered, or that another one was really broken, and that our balancing was super bad. All in all, mucking with tank mass ratios turned out to be unnecessary complexity that didn't add any depth, only confusion. Squad, I wager, knows this full well, for they have a forum full of active users who love to discuss engine balance while equipped with many different variants of half the data. And with the introduction of such things as the monoprop engine, and the move of the LV-N to be liquid fuel only, KSP moved rapidly towards a situation where engines could not be directly compared to each other anymore. So they made LF/Ox, LF-solo and Monoprop tanks all have the same mass ratios. Voila, engines could now be compared again! Except, you know, the often-forgotten Dawn ion engine. What The Actual Effects Are: The Dawn has so wildly different stats from all other engines, both in thrust and Isp, that comparing it to other engines is fairly straightforward on the surface: the dV you get is simply just "higher", and the thrust you get is simply just "lower". It clearly gives the Dawn its niche. However, if you sat down and compared the actual stats, you'd quickly discover that this engine doesn't perform the way you think it does. Namely, it always significantly underperforms compared to what your on-paper math says it should do. And the more fuel you add, the worse it gets. To illustrate, I've done some math on a vessel that is comprised of 10 tons of dry mass, including a Dawn engine. I've added enough fuel to hit several different propellant fraction targets (percentage of vessel mass that is fuel). At each of those targets, I determined how much more dV and TWR the vessel would get if its tank mass ratio was 9:1 instead of 2.2727:1... and then converted that into how much less "effective Isp" and "effective thrust" the Dawn gets compared to a hypothetical LF/Ox engine with the same stats. I also calculated the difference in total mass between the vessel with the LF/Ox tanks and the vessel with the xenon tanks. Spacecraft mass is important when designing your lifter, after all... and that difference is the extra mass you have to lift just because you're using xenon (in addition to being responsible for the drop in effective thrust). Base Stats 4200 s 2.00 kN n/a Propellant Fraction Effective Isp Effective Thrust Vessel Mass Difference 15% 3739 s 1.80 kN 1.38 tons 20% 3564 s 1.73 kN 2.09 tons 25% 3378 s 1.66 kN 3.04 tons 30% 3175 s 1.59 kN 4.36 tons 35% 2952 s 1.53 kN 6.29 tons 40% 2703 s 1.46 kN 9.44 tons 45% 2417 s 1.39 kN 15.45 tons 50% 2072 s 1.33 kN 31.50 tons As you can see, the Dawn effectively drops to barely half the performance a player would infer from looking at its stats alone by the time the propellant fraction hits 50%. This is not the Dawn engine's fault. It's the xenon tank's fault. What I Propose: Simply put, adjust the dry masses of the xenon tanks to fall in line with all the other fuel tanks in KSP. I've even gone ahead and calculated the numbers - you just need to put them into the configs: - PB-X50R: 0.03143 becomes 0.005 - PB-X150: 0.055 becomes 0.00875 - PB-X750: 0.4125 becomes 0.065625 Meanwhile, doing this obviously results in a massive buff to the Dawn engine. But consider the following: because of the poor xenon tanks currently in the game, the Dawn engine needs to have artificially inflated stats (in both thrust and Isp) in order to deliver the performance that it is designed to have in typical usage scenarios. As such, there should be no problem with adjusting those stats down once the tanks are no longer killing it. Since the Dawn engine is a direct nod to the NSTAR ion thrusters on NASA's Dawn spacecraft, currently in orbit of Ceres, why not take the Isp directly from that? Instead of 4200s, it would now have 3120s. Looking at the table above, that falls pretty much straight in the middle of what you effectively get right now anyway, on average... a perfect fit. The thrust could be set at 1.5 kN, a nice round number that's also reasonably near the average effective performance today. 1.6 kN would also be valid, but from my gut, I'd choose the lower value. Xenon-fueled spacecraft are already getting another stealth buff in requiring less lifting power to put them into orbit. In Closing: From my amateur viewpoint, I consider this change to be simple, straightforward and requiring only little testing - it doesn't affect many game systems, and the required changes are so few and simple, a ModuleManager script could do it. I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts and comments on it!

While I love the work of @Porkjet, I think the Mk3 passenger module could do with some improvements. This has been on my mind since .90 Its extremely large for only holding 16 kerbals and no other functions, it has allot of wasted volume. first idea: I would cut it in half (2 windows) and only carry 8 kerbals allowing you to just squeeze in 8 more peeps to your shuttle without cutting out cargo space. if you need to move more than 8 kerbals then add another one OR just put loads of seats in a cargo bay. (this is the most efficient way to move kerbals) second Idea: add service bays above and below the cabin. like this: this way you could add extra RCS, Fuel or science parts, even a small rover or escape pod. *edit: if the doors opened as pictured above, you could put landing legs in there!!! *editedit: or vtol engines! or wheels! oh my! thoughts?

I suggest that it is obligatory to include the date of the last version of the Add-On (Mod / Plug-In / Parts) in the title of the thread. Most threads have only the version, having no reference to the day it was updated. This makes it difficult to view and search for new versions of mods, considering most users do not have to write down or memorize all versions of installed mods. PS: If this post is in the wrong place, please move it.

Hi guys, I've been playing KSP since 0.9 and I truly love it. One of the only games in my life I can say that about. Theres been a couple of occasions I've left the game for a while, but I've always came back with the same original excitement. When 1.1 PreRelease was released I came back after a few months (6-7) away and I'm in love all over again...except the contracts system STILL sucks sweaty balls. My main issue is that theres no depth, no substance. No POINT (other than science) to do missions. They don't feel like they're PART of my Space Program, more like little add-ons. What I want is the "Space Program" part of "Kerbal Space Program". There are some mods which attempt to address this and most do a decent job, but its still only surface deep. The closest mod to creating a true space program I feel is Strategia. This is a step towards making a realistic space program in game. At the moment the contracts seem totally random, unstructured events - and I'm sure thats because, they are! In real life, when Kennedy said the USA was going to the Moon, the NASA Space Program became ALL ABOUT the moon. Every thing they did was geared towards this goal (generally, I'm sure they did other things, although I'm not sure testing a parachute while splashed down was one of them). In Strategia, you get to CHOOSE a goal for your space program. For example, "Plant Flag on Mun" - this gives more incentive to land on the Mun, while penalising any other planets / moons you land on while this goal is active. This is kind of a start, not ideal but a start. What I suggest is implemented, and I don't think this would be too much work as its just a rejig of the current system: 1) We choose our Space Programs Goal (lets say landing on the Mun). From that point ALL contracts are geared towards that goal. Lifter tests, Kerbin Orbits in the proposed Lander etc. 2) We can have a few different categories of Space Program Goals - Exploration, Probing, Terrestrial for example - Exploration is our chosen goal to explore somewhere, The Mun for example (as in point 1). Probing is our goal to send a probe somewhere (maybe unlocking that location for a possible Exploration goal once complete) like Duna. Terrestrial goal would be getting data from and around Kerbin. 3) While science is great for unlocking the tech tree, I would like to see it linked to unlocking future goals also. For example, we can't choose Duna as an Exploration goal unless we have enough science from Kerbin, or the Mun etc. In practice this is how I see it working: Beginning of the game, we can only choose a Terrestrial Goal: Get to Orbit. This will give us contracts like, test Lifter, test Launches, Test Launch Escape System, Leave Atmosphere, Get to Orbit. GOAL COMPLETE. Now we're in space we can choose an Exploration Goal and a Probe Goal. Exploration Goal would be Land On Mun. Contracts then appear like, Build Lander, Test Lander in Kerbin Orbit, Fly By Mun, Orbit Mun, Land on Mun. At the same time our Probe goal is active which would be to build a probe to get to Duna with contracts such as Design Probe, Test Probe around Kerbin, Test Prove around Mun, Put Probe into Orbit around Duna. Im sure you get the idea, but overall id LOVE to see this or something similar implemented for Career mode because all it feels like now is a Grind for Science without any real targets. Yes we can create self imposed goals, but we can do that in Sandbox. Anyway, thanks for reading this far!

I like the main idea of Science mode. It gives you a path of progression from limited simple parts up to the fancy stuff, but with less restrictions than full-on career mode. The problem is, doing science experiments is not a particularly fun part of the game for me, and probably not for a good number of other people as well. I don't like designing ships around the science parts, biome exploitation is time consuming and repetitive, and "timewarp for science" research labs are silly. My suggestion is to expand the scope of activities that can count toward unlocking parts. Bring in some elements of Career mode - instead of just experiments, make it possible gain science by World Firsts and Contracts. The simplest thing would be to just set up conversion factors to translate the Funds and Rep rewards of existing contracts into pure Science, and remove all deadlines and penalties. Balance it such that experiments are still useful, but not required. Not only would this give more options for progress, but adding those options in the form of Contracts and World Firsts would give more objectives and more sense of reward.

So, I was wondering if you could make the forum topic adder/editor have it so that you can choose different methods of inputting text and crap, like, there would be the default in the first tab, HTML coding in the second, CSS in the 3rd, and JavaScript (or other html compatible coding languages) . this would help us make our forum posts unique, and appealing (only if you have knowledge of such coding languages) The main reason why I think it's a must-have feature is because I'd like to be able to add custom graphics into my forum posts, and, be able to do other stuff like animations on the forum post. If I could use CSS/JavaScript on the forum, I'd be able to make a REALLY nice forum post, and be able to present the information even better . Final Thought: You should make it so that people have to have had their account for a certain amount of time AND for each rank in the forum, be able to add more features. Thank you for reading my post, I hope you consider soon...

I mentioned this in another thread I started, but I really wanted to push this idea, since it has grown on me a lot Has it ever seemed weird to anyone else that if I want to send 1 Kerbal to Moho and back (depending on your specific mission architecture) the love-able breadbox with a paint job that doesn't match anything else in the game and a window smaller than -insert your own jokes here- known as the Mk1 Command Pod is the best option? I love the thing, but let's be honest: it's not pretty, it's not got a cool IVA, and it breaks my immersion (hoorah buzz words!) So I have come to request the creation of a new- no, RE-creation of the Mk1 Command Pod. As a mod, we can surely rebuild it, better, stronger, faster. Or at least prettier, which is of course what actually matters. My idea was fairly simple: Leave the general dimensions the same, give the pod an even white paint job like the Mk1-2 and Mk1 Cockpit, and replace the window with one in the Gemini style (aka, inset and forward facing). Then add a matching IVA that's actually full like every IVA EXCEPT the Mk1 Command Pod's, add it as a new part called the Mk1A (for Advanced), and Viola! Now I say that like it's simple, however I am wholly incapable of doing any of that, and don't have the time to learn. That's why I'm making the request If ANYONE with the skill to make a model/texture/IVA/drag-all-that-together-in-code has an interest in the idea, please do give it a try, because I'd love to use one of these. Can you imagine flying a little cargo tug up to a station with your one Kerbal staring out at it in that IVA? Would be way more immersive and aesthetic (ooh, more buzz words!)

Would it be workable to implement an archive of progression, akin to the existing Science Archives? There is the stack of alerts for the World First Milestones, yes, but those are a) unwieldy to navigate, and b) prone to being inadvertently deleted. A separate, persistent archive would prevent this record from being lost, allowing the alerts to be safely cleared and preventing new alerts from becoming buried in the rest of the stack.

Hi all, I know it's out there. A mod that shows more info about the science, like situation and transmit procentage...plz help Also there is a mod for better description of the range of the antenna and dishes...plz help Thanks in advance

Hey all, Shower thought for the day What would happen if your science return for an experiment was dictated not only by the number of times you'd run it in that biome, but also the number of times you done it on that body? E.g. first Mun surface sample gets 100% (of current setting), second gets 50%, third gets 25%. This would stack up with same-biome diminishment. Reason for thought These forums are full of people who maxed the tech tree in Kerbin's SoI, and I'm not convinced that's "fun"TM Sure, you can dial science gain down to 10%, but that ultimately pushes players to repeat, repeat, repeat the same thing. A diminishing return strategy would reward firsts and encourage players to get out of their comfort zone - which generally works out as a good thing. And yes, I know we can just be disciplined and promise ourselves that they'll only do n landings on any particular body, but ultimately most of us don't have that level of willpower. Sooner or later, I'll realise I need just 50 more science points for a thing I want, and I'll crack and send a cheap expedition to Mun rather than designing a massive Jool mission for it. Just because it's easier and I can Just an idea for discussion, if anyone's of a similar mind Edit; alternative as raised further down the thread: The first time a specific experiment is transmitted/recovered from a particular body would reward double, or even triple, science.

I would like to propose that in Career Mode when a mission is over, success or failure be presented in the form of a newspaper screen. It could come spinning into view like in the old 60's television shows. The headline would be regarding the failed or completed mission and the sidebars could contain information on the status of current ongoing missions. If only for such as rescues and 'world firsts' I think it would add a level of entertainment. I don't think it would be that difficult to add a little detail, ship's name, Kerbal in command any easy data collectable upon completion or failure, so that you will actually be reading about 'your' mission and not just a standard screen that quickly becomes boring and so clicked through. Perhaps most useful of all could be information about future launch windows presented as a query - Are the boys at KSP are going to take advantage of it on such and such date? I was thinking when I splashed down the other day that there should be a ship or ships waiting for me just add to the realism a bit. but I figured that there would be not much chance you chaps would go for that so I thought maybe a news headline would be doable.

Please, for the love of all that is holy, remove the needless mandatory WYSIWYG editor for forum posts. Or give us a button to switch it to plain text or something. Quoting someone, especially multi-quoting or removing centered text, things like that, is needlessly complicated by this ridiculous editor. Please, a plain text option. That's it. Mobile users will love you. Thank you.

I have done a lot of EVA. Using mods I have built stations and ships in space and bases on the ground with a kerbal. Many times have I travelled from one ship to another wearing nothing but a spacesuit and a smile. There is no first person view from a spacesuit unlike ships in IVA. There is an up and down in a spacesuit but not in a ship and of course there should be no up or down. I suggest that the spacesuit be a command pod. A separate entity. Effectively make it a ship. Then when we EVA everything can look the same as it does now except hanging in place on a ladder or other graspable will probably be easier to script. We could have a spacesuit IVA where our arms and hands are visible. The IVA avatars would all wear the same kind of KSP IVA suit but their experience and role could be added so that when you looked at your crew you could see what roles they had at-a-glance. Spacesuits could be colour coded to their roles pilot - engineer- science again making their roles instantly apparent. It would open a huge door for the modding community. To be fair, even in real life the spacesuit is basically a small space ship and I'm just suggesting that it be coded as such.

In 1.1 each vessel will have 1 CPU thread to play with. In most cases, this won't load your CPU very heavily. I'm gonna cut to the case here, what if you could have multiple vessels rigidly connected, but not considered a single merged vessel according to the physics engine? I'm proposing a type of decoupler or docking port. This could be used for: 1. Dividing space stations 2. Dividing large interplanetary ships (i.e. propulsion stage and lander) 3. (My fav) Dividing payloads from their launch vehicles. Problems/solutions: P: Any time the ships are on rails they will drift apart. S: Don't allow time warp until the part re-connects all vessels. (This could be done in the background) P: Resource/crew transfer will be impossible S: Allow the vessels to be connected temporarily through the part's right click menu, although framerates will plummet. I have no idea how this would be coded, I do know it's possible to some extent through KAS's pipes, perhaps a variant of that could be used? Discuss! (I'm writing this on my phone, later today I'll probably update this with more info)

Is there a mod that converts or creates maneuvers for low TWR burns? I forget who had the pre-calculated dV for Kerbin escape burns in their signature which is kind of what I'm looking for but that's only helpful when you're doing only-prograde burns. A lot of planetary transfers require some amount of normal/anti-normal and it would be nice (easier) to get proportionately the right amount of normal burn to get to your departure inclination. Ideally, it would be cool to set up a maneuver node (typical maneuver node procedure) that gets you the transfer you need then click a button that converts the node into multiple nodes of some lesser dV. This may be suggested somewhere else or maybe there's a mod that does it, I don't know. I looked and didn't see anything; also, it doesn't look like PreciseNode does it which was my best guess for something that might.

Though I am just a new guy here, (with only 200hours gameplay)I think there is still great potential here, and KSP could be push even further. I just tried KAS+KIS. It allows me to tweak my station in the orbit like NASA. So I guess give Jeb, Bill and Bob more capability is possible. As for now, I can just control them one by one, quite annoying. what if I can give them orders? AND maybe even multiplayer? Imagine this: I want to upgrade my station around kerbin, need help. So I send a quest to KSC with my plan. Then a contract is created with deadline for other players. Once accepted, he will replace one of my engineer on board and help me do it.

After making a series of rockets that where doomed with the jiggling disease when taking off, and placing 100 batteries in one tiny space. I watched as I played 50 hours without even coming into orbit.. I made a lot of crazy creations and, went trough a lot of beatifull and crazy moments. But after I lost the sense of progress in career mode, and none was there to share my funnt experiences, it made me quite dissapointed. There are a lot of mods, and a lot, a lot, of screenshots, guides, and videos. I sense that everyone would like to share their creations more than currently possible. The feature I want to see in future updates in KSP, to not let the game fade out, to give this game what it deserves: a multiplayer, but not the kind of suggestions i've seen before, because i feel that is a project to big, and isn't what the people want. I want to be able to share my landed rockets, and bases on outer planets, and around orbits. I want a big multiplayer game, but the only thing visible is what you share with you're friends: the basses, landed aircraft, and orbiting/landed rockets! possibly (1) you could share mods or buildings on planets, or community made scenario's; possibly (2) if things overlap you can choose whethere damage will occur or just to ignore it, or to slightly being able to change the place where it's standing. People are still playing GTA San Andres, why? because of the multiplayer, and why are people still playing Skyrim after completing it so many times? that's the same answer for making KSP a game that will never (slowly as possible) go down in history! the modding community is already helping a big deal, and the fact that you have to learn this game before you can properly play it, really helps! I made an account on this forum just to say this, because it saddend me that this game doesn't have multiplayer, and therefore doesn't get the attention it deserves.. that's my opinion atleast. I mean, you're airplane is awesome and al, but if none know about it, the creation becames less valuable for the creator. wich are we all in KSP! so please, make it you're next development plan, and it doesn't need to be big! I wish you the best of succes! and this is my personal opinion, critics would be apreciated! and i'm not from netherlands/spain so English isn't my "home-language" so forgive the weird grammar or wrong spelled words that this topic may have contained

Are there any plans to get KSP supported by the Curse Client or (preferably) Steam Workshop? I've tried using community-developed mod managers, but they haven't worked out for me. Now the game goes Challenger whenever I try to launch it. What I need is a simple mod manager. I'd like to be able to add, remove, enable, and disable mods on the fly, much like games using the Steam Workshop.

Love the game. Has totally consumed my life in spite of my short temper and lack of patience. May have already been suggested but nothing sets me off quicker than going to click on anything and the game registering (either by mistake or because I clicked on something else) that I clicked on what I wasn't trying to click on. Please give us an option during designing our space ships and space planes that enables us to, maybe through a right-click context menu option, lock an item (and by extension all it's mirrored components) in place so that it can't be interacted with any further.

I suggest, that we merge all threads in the "General KSP discussion" into one single thread. It will be great, that way, there will only be one single thread, everything will be in one place. Because of that, every new Member will immediately find all the Information about KSP, since there is only one place to look at, anyway. Sounds right? No? Well, I didn't think so either. Merging all threads into one thing is a terrible idea, because threads become cluttered, it becomes impossible to follow conversations about different topics. The threads become effectively unsearchable, because every search will turn up an overwhelming amount of seemingly related posts. But for some reason, what is pretty obvious for things like "General KSP Discussion" or "Suggestions and Development Discussion" doesn't count for the Mods section. I suggest that you look at the following threads: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/37449-105-tac-life-support-v01121-12dec/ - 3100 posts http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/51142-1051-05-4-dec-3-2015-environmentalvisualenhancements/ - 5400 posts. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/19321-105-ferram-aerospace-research-v01554-hoerner-12115/ - 12000 posts and the winner, with staggering 13700 posts: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/72032-105-usi-kolonization-systems-mksoks-03112-20151109/ All of these threads contain an incredible amount of posts. They have a lot of users, and people have a lot of questions. And the problem is: they have different questions. Often enough, those questions are absolutely independent from each other - but still, they have to be posted in one thread, because the only thing they might have in common is that they use e.g. FAR. This leads to interleaved discussions where topics can get left behind, an unnaturally active "main thread" that someone has to follow, and worst of all: a completely and utterly unsearchable thread where new users are being reprimanded for asking a question again, that was asked 58 pages back, where a search would have turned up a flood of unrelated posts. So what is my real suggestion? Ask the thread owners of the biggest threads, if they want to make a subforum from the thread. Make subforums for them "purge" subforums with little activity, by hiding them from the default views and instead moving them to some sort of "subforum for old subforums". Modders with "Mod-suites" like Nerteas NearFuture or RoverDudes MKS/USI should have a subforum for themselves. Question 1: Would this be feasible? Question 2: Do people agree that this is a good idea? Question 3: Are the Moderators willing? Question 4: Are the Mod-developeres willing?

As someone who's made a multitude of OPs for craft threads, mission reports, and even on rare occasion, mods, I've taken to enjoying the power and precision of working with the code in my posts. The new What-you-see-is-what-you-get editor is great. The immediate feedback on my formatting is invaluable, but sometimes I want to see through the formatting. The KSP community is inarguably one of the more intelligible gaming communities and I think there's enough of us who are versed in C#, HTML, and Kod knows how many other code languages that people would appreciate this. Caveat 1: This should not be the default mode. There are people who won't want this and shouldn't ever be required to use it. This is for the more formatting-savvy crowd. As a result, people who don't want this feature simply have a new button to ignore and their forum experience is not impacted at all.

I would like to suggest that Squad take a genuine look at the efficacy and practicality, both on their end as programmers and our end as users, of integrating voice activation in the future. I know that's by no means easy. Limitations are obvious, not the least of which being how many languages are enough. Thoughts?

The options that some parts have for action groups seems rather limited (or even a bit arbitrary). For example on an Elevon you can set action groups to toggle, extend and retract. But on the context menu for the same Elevon there are quite a few more actions available; state toggle (which covers the action group options), deploy toggle (inverted or normal) and a toggle for pitch, roll and yaw. The action group options "extend" and "retract" are kind of pointless when you have "toggle" and the really useful one to have as an action group (the deploy toggle) just isn't available as an action group option (the other toggle could be useful too with certain designs). In order to change deploy state in flight you have to use context menus (which while coming into land at speed can be tricky!). Looking at the small landing gear, while it has almost all context menu actions available as action group actions there is no action group option for toggling the brake (I don't mean applying the brakes, I mean enabling/disabling them on a particular wheel). So my main point is; We need more action group options available, in fact everything that can be done via context menus should be doable via action groups. This leads me to my second point, (programmer hat on) which is about the implementation logic for action groups and context menus; There is quite a difference on some parts between what's available on context menus and what's available as action group options. Obviously there is overlap, but there's a lot of difference too. It seems to me that there must be two separate definitions for what's available in action groups and what's available on context menus. That's not very DRY (coder term; Don't Repeat Yourself). There shouldn't be two definitions, there should just be a definition of what appears in context menus and the options available in action groups should simply inherit that (with the exception of any sliders). Anything that exists as a togglable thing in a context menu should automatically be available as a togglable action group. (A good, complete design should also have a option to set a flag to exclude a context menu toggle from action groups, but that should be a rare exception rather than the norm.) The current implementation implies that someone had to think about what's available in context menus vs what's available in action groups, and maybe they did think about all the insane things we may want to do. By having action groups inheriting their options from the context menu options it means that it doesn't require anyone to think about what's available; the functionality of the part defines what's needed in the context menu and that automatically takes care of the action groups. The result is more functionality available via action groups, it fulfils the expectation that anything you can do via context menu you can do via action groups and the implementation is simpler (should be less code) and less rule bound. Aside; further enhancements to action groups.

I'm by no means on the up and up with forum code, but I do know that the capability of having user specific forum themes (colors of titlebars/backgrounds/etc) goes back to the early 2000s. Why is our only option eye-sight scourging white? Is personal settings for a milder shade to the format an option or soon to be one?

I think that too much space is lost because the forum is not as wide as the old one, meaning that all fonts appear larger and you can't see many threads or posts on one page without scrolling. I think that the forum should be made MUCH wider. It would be a step towards the better style of vBulletin.