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Watching a stream from Eve Fanfest, a talk from a guy working at JPL (NASA) came up. At some point he accidentially (?) refered to astronauts as Kerbals Start here: https://www.twitch.tv/ccp/v/62099406?t=04h08m25s KSP reference here: https://www.twitch.tv/ccp/v/62099406?t=04h35m15s

I was curious about other people's perspectives on fairings, either stock or addon. I personally only use KW Procedural Fairings, because the stock ones horrify me with the lack of smoothness and the way they basically implode upon jettison, not to mention the current bug they have. KW is a go-to with every install. If I do anything unmanned, the payload absolutely has to be under an Egg-Shaped clamshell fairing. This is all personal taste, and has to do with my love for aesthetically-pleasing rockets. Sorry if this is on the wrong topic, I just figured it's not about any specific addon. What's everybody else's take on fairings?

The article on the full story of doing a TED talk The video )It's not on YouTube yet) Enjoy, I sure did

Soooo... This little rant has come about after playing some RSS/64k career games but the points I make are also applicable (less so, admittedly) to a stock game. I've found the reliance on IRL engines in any realism overhaul games highly irritating. There are always niches that I really want to fill but can't because of a dearth of RL options (this is most notable with small engines, lander engines, and engines with poorly represnted fuels like methane.) To that end, I'd like to propose a (hopefully) reasonably easy to implement way that someone with some degree of modding ability might go about making a procedural engine mod as well as some game balance considerations. Each procedural engine would consist of two meshes, an engine housing, and an engine bell. Housings would be a fixed shape--just scaleable. Housings would also include any turbomachinery, pumps, etc. Only the bell would be procedural with 3 general options: surface, vacuum, and low-profile. Again, bells would be modified mostly by scaling. This offers interesting game design considerations. For example: -Low profile engines would have worse TWR and ISP (bells not ideally shaped, machinery compacted in awkward ways). -In RSS, choices of pressure fed, turbopump driven, control over the number of ignitions, throttleability, etc. -Integration with KCT and similar to reward desgning vehicles with a common lineage--each procedural engine would have to be discretely represented. -Balanced tradeoffs between TWR and ISP would be interesting ways to distinguish engines -Because stock is much simpler there's less need for a mod like this but if it's pretty enough there'll always be uses I feel like this is a relatively low-effort way of getting procedural engines without a really involved procedural system. The real trick is game balance.

Hello everybody. My name is Dr. K Kerbal. I only started this account today and I am really enthusiastic about KSP. I am really good at making close versions to NASA's real craft such as the Saturn V rocket, the SLS, space shuttle and much more. I realy enjoy people liking me and love giving out information and solving troubleshooting. I really like reviewing mods and cant wait to get a few subscribers to my account!

Every once in a while you'll get a contract asking you to build a space station in a solar orbit. These pay ridiculous amounts of money, more than something like visiting frickin Duna. And this wouldn't have been a problem if a solar orbit wasn't one of the easiest things in the game. Cluster a bunch of SRBs, build whatever silly station they want, launch it straight up, escape Kerbin's SoI and you're done. Then delete it because you hate yourself and you hate this silly mechanic but you didn't want to grind meaningful contracts that barely pay anything just so you could unlock the next level of science labs. Ugh.

The new MK I cockpit is awesome! Love it. I also love the previous version on the Mk I cockpit. For jets and planes the new Mk I is perfect. However, I would prefer to use the previous version cockpit for spacecraft/ space-planes. [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/Abh4j4L.png[/IMG] Is there any reason we can not have both at our disposal? PPPLLLLEEEAAASSSEEEE.

FYI because someone complained about PSAs, but I hope they just don't hate TLAs If you accidentally activate your parachutes, before they semi deploy you can right click on them and select disarm... at which point the menu option changes to deploy again. A very useful change if I do say so myself....

I'm having issues with the Kerbalizer and I am not sure where is the right place to talk about it.

So we were on a bit of a tangent in the LS thread last week and began talking about the broader sections of the game that don't feel fully ironed out yet. There were some, Regex and Klgraham included who felt career mode was disjointed and grindy enough to prevent them from using it. While I disagreed with their broader assessment, I do have to agree that at the moment the fun process of building rockets and gaining rewards and earning new parts is missing something. I've played a good deal in stock career and found that at least for the amount of time I can reasonably set aside for KSP (probably 6-8h/wk) I generally have to set reward settings rather generously to progress without feeling like Im bogging down. While there are many aspects of the game that are obviously incomplete, experience and building tiers for instance, I've grown to feel the most established but lagging component to the game is the Science system. Squad made a nice pass on the Tech tree, which was great and helped, but I think didn't address the fundamental issue. I don't personally have a problem with the general concept of experiments producing points which then can be spent on a tech tree. It's simple enough to understand and broad enough to accommodate most play-styles. One problem, I think, is that the actual act of planning and conducting experiments isn't actually very exciting. Another deeper problem is that for many players the Tech Tree is the objective of the game, so once its complete the reward structure ends and they feel like the game is over. There are a few reasons for this, which I thought we could consider as we offer ideas on how to improve the system. 1) KSP is a rather unique game, wherein not only craft but play-styles are near infinite. This means that any science system has to be flexible enough to let people play the way they want to play and still set clear rules and incentives for progression. Additionally players start careers with varying levels of experience, so any successful science system needs to not only serve as a tool for introducing new parts and concepts to first time players, but remain fun and challenging for veterans. 2) KSP isn't a game with a "win" condition. Its a creative building game with costs and incentives, much like Simcity. This means that the scaling of the tech-tree and the meaning of science points once its complete is more difficult to gauge than in most games. When stretched thin the game becomes a grind, and when condensed things become too easy and players max out quickly and no longer know what to do. Strategies were implemented in part to deal with this, allowing players to exchange mountains of excess science for funds for instance, but once a player has a maxed out tech tree and a million bazzillion funds they are essentially playing sandbox. That seems an odd end-game reward. 3) And this is important, KSP is at its heart an indie game that bats way above its weight. Its incredible what they've achieved, but Squad is a small company and development time is desperately precious. What I think would is most helpful is sussing out the precise issues causing problems and finding succinct corrections that would address them. I laud people's ambitious ideas, but let's try to think realistically about what changes really could be made to improve the system and the game. I have my own ideas, but I'm interested to hear what others think.

Right now a lot of unity 4 based games like KSP, are converting over to Unity 5; and the ones that have done this already you can get a good idea of the performance enhancements. I just want to say I'm very hyped for the change. In some games (don't want to advertise) they have seen increases up to 400%!!! and are most likely just hype training it up. But does anyone have some more concrete evidence or want to talk about their experience with playing games that have updated to unity 5? that way we can have a better idea of how it'll affect KSP.

This guy: This guy has produced some wild bugs in some of my designs. Anything from inexplicable balance issues to being teleported into a black void when trying to revert a flight, with engines firing that I didn't stage. My latest ship to use them I can't even load the ship file anymore. As soon as I added them none of the VAB buttons would work and all the parts wouldn't adhere to stages. Even after a VAB reload. It's a wild ride. Anyone have any designs just completely marred by this thing? I'm impressed, frankly. Here's the ship file in case anyone else has never experienced this: http://www.filedropper.com/structuralpylonsmyass

Asthetic differences between the Mk-1 and Mk-1-Mk-2 aside, what we really need are entry level pods. The ones we have now should be developed mid-career. Better variety of cans, capsules, and cockpits is warranted, amirite?

There is a LOT of great stuff going on in Fanworks and Mission Reports now, with some new stories and some continuing ones. Some are all text, some are text and screenshots, and there are at least two graphic novels. I've had some good conversations with other writers in PMs and thought it would be nice to have a thread where we can talk about things like characterization, canon/fanon, plotting, tone, things to avoid, etc, etc. If I may be so bold, I propose a few ground rules to start: All of the Forum and Community rules apply. They apply VERY much. Don't criticize another writer's work unless asked to--and then, only criticize those aspects about which the writer asked for help. When criticizing, above all be constructive. "You did this wrong, this is how you should do it." is not helpful. "When you did this, I had this reaction, which I'm not sure you intended. If you intended the reader to have this OTHER reaction, you might try doing it in this way." -- that might be. But... If you asked for criticism--take it. Try not to argue with the critiquer. Is he wrong for feeling what he felt when he read your work? Maybe, but he did feel it, and writing is about the reader's perception more than the author's intent. Find the kernel of truth in the critique and do your best to learn from it. If you get angry about a criticism--stop posting, make peace by PM, move on. Let's not post drafts of works-in-progress for commentary on this thread. I was thinking this one could be more about general topics and idea sharing. Interest? Ideas? Other directions for the thread? Thanks all.

Like in Star Trek at impulse power you can see stars moving by. Totally unrealistic but something I want. Anyone done it yet? I am guessing just a lot of tiny spheres that are light colored.

I'm a youth who loves space. Looking for anybody preferably in my age range, but I don't care. Don't care if you're male, female , both or even if you're a cow! Talk with me about space! I just don't have many friends as interested in space as I am. My dream is to have a privately owned company that goes into space mining asteroids, sending probes to planets, and hosting space tourism . Contact me by email first and if I'm sure you're not a total creep we can message other ways of communication! [email protected] or reply to this thread if you are interested in chatting about space!

Hello, 1. As most of you already found out, parachutes are, well, powerful. Too powerful even when half opened. However, does anybody know how to modify the parts database drag cube of the chutes to make them a little more realistic? The numbers in the part configuration file don't seem to do much. 2. Heating up is easy. Losing heat isn' t. Even when the craft has touched down and is sitting still (or floating in the ocean), the temperature still rises happily. Any ideas? 3. Atmosphere pressure curve: below 25k, it's definitely there and will kill you when going > mach2+, and above, it's nearly gone, leaving your capsule returning from the moon with > 3000 m/s nearly untouched. Meh. Any quick fixes for someone like me who doesn't hesitates to edit a cfg file?

As a returning player, I seem to have forgotten all the numbers except to make your gravity turn at around 10km. Now I think even that has changed due to the new aerodynamics so now I'm completely lost. I didn't even play 0.9! So I'm wondering, what are all the new numbers; gravity turn altitude, maximum speed you should have during liftoff to avoid wasting fuel, dV to orbit Kerbin, the mun, the furthest planet, what engines are good for what etc etc. Perhaps people can post they're data and new things to know about 1.0 below for noobs and returning players in one spot. Much thanks!

This is going to be a very heartfelt thing for me to talk about, so sorry if I stammer a lot. As many of you might know, at least the old timers on here might, I had tried to make a movie project by the name of "Kerbal Space Program - Rise of the Kraken", back in the Summer of 2013, man it's been a while. But the project, fell under, I never finished it and gave up, deleting the original files. But before that, I had tried back in the era of 0.17, obviously I gave up on that too. Making it about two and a half years since I originally came up with the idea. And since then, things have changed. It was back in February of 2014, I hit that punch of inspiration again, and I wanted to finish ROTK out-right. In the next three months, I worked myself hard, recording about two and a half hours of video, about enough for an hour and a half movie. But again, I've lost motivation. The project is still on my Hard Drive, just sitting there. Two and a half hours of perfectly good video shot back in 0.22, just, collecting dust. I've slowly been working on it a bit since then, but I only have two of the twenty-six scenes edited, making progress slow, but I could so do it, I just don't have that passion I once had. But the sad thing is, I still do. ROTK is such a huge part of my life now, I've spent three years thinking about a dream movie I could make, but I just can't drive myself to do it. I've put heart and soul into the story, and at this point, I've planned an entire trilogy's story out, I have story material for three movies, but I can't be motivated to fulfil my wishes. To make the movie about the game I love so much, for the community I hold so dear. My old shots I spent months on at the time are now, outdated. From a relical version without the Strategy Center, from a version without volumetric clouds, from a version without asteroids or ARM's, or anything we hold true to KSP now. This old footage may not even be new enough if I edited it. And I don't want to start again. ROTK's third attempt is going to be the last one I try. It's story needs no more revision, no more changes, no new footage, no new anything. It's me vs. myself. And I want to deliver the movie I always wanted to you. My Magnum Opus, my true work, is being held back by myself. So I want to ask you all something, I really do. More than ever, I want an answer to my problem. Should I... 1. Finish the movie with it's current footage, at the risk of it being outdated, old, and without current features. 2. Reshoot the entire movie, a fate I may not be able to go through with. 3. End it all, and let the Kraken stay unrisen. Never finish the movie. I'm sorry for asking this, just, I've never been in this much of a slump.

This may be the most important thread you will read all day :Y the virginan opossum is one of the few known north American marsupials and have many unique anatomical properties, including: hands with opposable thumbs feet with opposable thumbs a large ratlike tail resistance to all kinds of snake venom and rabies pouches that give them the nickname "clockbellies" (ill let ya work that one out ;P) large mouselike ears big pink noses I love these ratty lil garbage babies and id like to know if anyone else has some cute possum pictures or perhaps a pet opossum my favorite repository for all things opossum -->http://www.opossummypossum.com/

I know this is on the no-no list, but since the devs are chatting about reviving it maybe we could offer ideas on how to implement it? If no mods feel free to lock. I think at present the devs are right to consider how life support becomes something fun, easy enough to understand, and scalable for new to veteran players, and not just an extra thing to accidentally go wrong. This especially becomes a concern when people have many multiple flights in progress, and warping one may exhaust resources on another. Worst case would be sending a probe out to Dres or Jool, and accidentally killing all your kerbals in SOI. To some degree this could be helped by an alarm clock, but even this would have to be somewhat sophisticated to be useful in order to let you know life support was running down in time for you to do anything about it. Even under decent conditions, you could end up in a very tedious place if for instance you had a crewed station around Kerbin and a flight en-route out Jool, and had to constantly break warp on your Jool ship to go back and resupply at your station. Sorting out these issues and balancing everything is no trivial task. My thinking is if it is going to work, it has to be both simple enough not to be tedious, and complex enough to still be challenging and fun. I also think it might be a good idea for the consequences of failure not to be quite so dire as to cause major rage if things go wrong. Updated 1/7/2016: So as this has become the default life support thread I'd like to open this beyond my personal musings on the topic to whomever might have fresh thoughts on how it could be included. We've discussed the topic on in this thread and others at length, the various pros and cons of TAC, USI-LS, Snacks, and what type of scheme might make sense make stock. To summarize our consensus as best I can, any stock life support system ought to: 1) Be a single, simple, LS resource that can be understood at a glance. 2) Be toggleble in the difficulty settings, and offer a less serious consequence for failure like going on strike or hibernating as well permadeath. 3) Offer a 3 to 30 day grace period, either in the form of 'hunger' as in USI-LS, or as a small standard stock for each pod to cover most Kerbin SOI missions. 4) Include a prerequisite mission pre-planner with mission time estimator and alarm clock functions so players could plan ahead and stay informed of each mission's LS status. The exact mechanics of extending and/or regenerating LS are more flexible, but the goal generally ought to be to make a system that is as simple as it can be while still asking players to consider trade-offs in terms of cost, weight, and logistics. Such a system could potentially add an important new layer to the game in which players need to think carefully about time as a cost, as well as adding the tension and urgency of surviving in a harsh environment. What follows are my own ideas on how such a system could be executed: Let's say we stuck to a single main resource: Life Support - Measured in "days" and slowly slides from green to red based on the number of kerbals on board. Different crew capsules could have different stocks, but let's assume each starts with 3 days worth for each available seat. There are however a few ways to extend this: 1) Life Support Tanks - Generally these are sized so that each kerbal consumes 4kg per day by default. Visually they could be designed to look like they hold air, water, and snacks. Tanks don't empty, they slide from green to red as they become waste. Life support/waste can be pumped from one tank to another, at which point players could easily jettison waste tanks if they desired. Small Life Support Tank - (.625m inline and spherical RCS size radial) - 0.125t - 160f - Supports 1 kerbal for 24 additional days (necessary for Minmus, but not Mun missions) Medium Life Support Tank - (1.25m inline and large RCS size radial) - 1.5t - 2400f - Supports 1 kerbal for 360d, or 3 kerbals for 120d etc. Large Life Support Tank - (2.5m Inline) - 7.4t - 12000f - Supports 1 kerbal for 1800d, or 3 kerbals for 600d, or 6 kerbals for 300d etc. 2) Scrubbers - These basically increase life support efficiency at the cost of weight and power. They will probably be essential for interplanetary missions. Because their reductions are across the board, the more kerbals using one the more cost effective it is. However, adding additional like scrubbers will not reduce consumption past the first. Waste-o-matic Jr. - (1.25m low-profile inline) - 0.6t - 1200f - Draws 0.5e/s - Kerbals on-board consume life support at 50% their normal rate (worth it for 1 Kerbal after 150d, and 3 kerbals after 50d) Waste-o-matic Sr. - (1.25m materials bay size unit) - 1.2t - 3200f - Draws 2e/s - Kerbals on-board consume life support at 25% their normal rate (worth it for 1 Kerbal after 300d, 3 Kerbals after 100d, and 6 Kerbals after 50d) 3) Greenhouses - Greenhouses use energy to convert waste into usable life support. When facing sunlight they provide some of their own power and are balanced based on average daily life support output, meaning these numbers would hold at Kerbin but more power would be needed farther from Kerbol. Greenhouses can be set to continual production, stand-down mode, or daylight auto-switching, but if left without power they become defunct and will no longer produce life support. Hydroponics Bay - (2.5m science lab size cylinder, rotates to face Kerbol) - 3t - 6000f - Draws 2e/s when not operating, and 6e/s when producing - Replenishes life support equal to 3 kerbal’s consumption every 6 hours while in operation (worth it for 3 kerbals after 300d in Kerbol or polar orbit, and 600d when not) Large Greenhouse - (3.75m dome) - 4.5t - 9000f - Draws 3e/s when not operating, and 9e/s when producing - Replenishes life support equal to 6 kerbals’ consumption. (Worth it for 6 kerbals after 275d Kerbol or polar orbit, and 550 when not) All of these factors should be calculated by the game, giving a single "Remaining Life Support" number in days both in the VAB and in the vessel resources bar in flight. This way you could play around in the VAB swapping out different parts and watch the days remaining rise and fall and aid your decision making. I think until you get to greenhouses things are intuitive enough for a new player to navigate them, while still offering some fun challenges to veterans who want to optimize off-world farming. 4) ISRU - There are a few different ways to handle this. I initially leaned toward greenhouses being indefinitely self-sufficient, so if a player set up a base or station with adequate greenhouses they could consider them safe and move on to other missions without worrying about resupply. Another simple option might to use something akin to USI-LS’s fertilizer, an intermediate resource consumed by greenhouses in order to operate. If this were the case I would advocate for this resource to be replenishable by converting ore or another harvestable resource directly into fertilizer via a large resource converter so there would be some simple method of living off the land. What also might be nice in the difficulty settings would be a softer consequence to failure than mass kerbal death. Kerbals who run out of life support could go into "hibernation" or “on strike” and wouldn't be able to steer or EVA until the vessel is resupplied. They might also lose some or all of their accumulated experience. Death could still be the consequence for harder difficulty settings. Any LS system to my mind really requires some way for players pre-plan and manage missions in flight. I actually think this could be rather simple, and really ought to be a component of the game with LS or without. All we really need is an Alarm Clock function in the Tracking Station into which maneuvers, transfers, intercepts and LS exhaustion dates would be listed, and a Mission Planner added to Mission control where a player might select "Starting Body" and "Target Body" and be supplied with: Time until next Transfer window: x [Set Alarm] Delta V to Orbit (100km): x Delta V to Transfer: x Time until Intercept: x [Set Alarm] Delta V to Capture (100km): x Delta V to Surface: x And repeat the process for the return journey. This could be staged into building upgrades or even expanded by completing gravoli scans of a given body. Then all a player would need to do is compare the dates from the Alarm clock with the life support rating in the VAB (with some padding) to know that they were properly equipped. Though this is wouldn't be strictly necessary for Life support, I thought a really simple, forgiving way of abstracting habitation for kerbals might be to include a secondary resource called “Happiness”. Happiness - Kerbals leave the launch-pad with 100% happiness and remain so for 25 days. After that, a lone kerbal will deplete at 1% per day, meaning they will reach zero and become “unhappy” in 100 days. For each additional kerbal on board, Happiness depletes at half the rate, meaning 2 kerbals will be happy for 200 days, 3 kerbals will be happy for 400 days, 4 kerbals 800 days etc. At the time of reaching a goal Experience pays out based on how happy they are at the time it was gathered. The whole experience system needs some major work, and obviously if this was part of it everything would have to be balanced around it to make interplanetary missions more rewarding. Aside from bringing extra kerbals, Happiness can be extended with the following modules (Percentages stack with multi-kerbal bonuses, but not with other module bonuses) Small Living Quarters - 2.5m cylinder - 2t - 4200F - draws 1e/s - Reduces happiness depletion for up to 3 kerbals by 75% Large Living Quarters: 3.75m cylinder - 5t - 6800F - draws 3 e/s - Reduces happiness depletion for up to 6 kerbals by 75% Inflatable Habitation Module - 2.5m inline toroid that inflates to approx 5m. - 7t - 11000F - draws 5e/s (while deployed) - Reduces happiness depletion for up to 12 kerbals by 75% Training Module - (inline Dodecahedron approx 3.75m) - 5.5t - 9500F - draws 2 e/s while dormant and 12 e/s while operating - Replenishes kerbals' Happiness up to 90% and allows level-up without returning to Kerbin So 3 kerbals with a small living quarters will arrive at Duna at 75% Happiness, and 6 Kerbals with 2 small or one large quarters will arrive at 97%. You could of course just bring a training module, but it would come at a steep cost. I guess this is a lot of modelling to request, but with about 12 new parts I think there's the bones of a real-feeling colonization platform. Even with a pretty simplified system like this there's a lot going on, and in practice I imagine keeping track of how much life support each vessel has left would still be a challenge. A big part of this would be showing the user when the vessel will deplete both in the tracking station and in map mode, so you can see early on a warning marker along its flight path where life support will exhaust. Also vehicles in the flight list would have a life-support bar showing how much remains and a red date of when it will exhaust. Update 3/28/2016: Here is my best estimate at one-way and round-trip durations for bodies in the Kerbol system, pretty valuable information for anyone thinking about scale/balance in regards to LS balance and scaling: Mun - One way: 1.25d, Round Trip: 2.5d Minmus - One way: 9.25d, Round Trip:18.5d Asteroid Missions - Round Trip, 25d - 215d Moho - One way: 110d, Round trip: 310d Eve - One way: 165d, Round trip: 890d Duna - One way: 300d, Round trip: 1170d Dres - One way: 555d, Round trip: 1290d Jool - One way: 1050d, Round trip: 2530d Eeloo - One way: 1560d, Round trip: 3320d Anyhoo this is my best crack at it. Love to hear others' ideas.

There have been a number of smaller threads addressing this tangentially, but to me this is the most under-developed element in the game at the moment. I've had some scattered ideas about how to fix it and wanted to try to consolidate discussion here. Some broad strokes: Cross-Training: This is a big one that I've seen people in one way or another request. Really I think this comes down to being able to drive a kerbal's development as a user, deciding which kerbals take on which roles, and deciding which swath of skills each kerbal will need. The problem with this is how do people feel encouraged to specialize and mount multi-kerbal missions rather than just training up a super-jeb to run all their missions with? My prefered solution was a simple Elder-scrolls like skill tree. Each new recruit starts as a blank slate Cadet with no skills. Perhaps Jeb, Bill and Bob could arrive with one free level in their respective fields. After that, new exploration will reward kerbals with Experience Badges, 3 of which will earn one level-up. The trick is that though you can level up in any one field, each skill levels linearly, so gaining access to higher level skills will encourage a large degree of specialization. Cadet (LVL0) / | \ Pilot I - SAS Pilot II - Prograde, Antigrade - Normal, Antinormal, - Radial in, Radial out Pilot III - Toward Target, Away from Target - Toward Maneuver, Away from Maneuver Pilot IV - Hold on Horizon - Maintain Velocity - Conics factor drag Pilot V - Hold Position X, Y, and Z - Circularize orbit - Advanced Flight Data Or: Engineer I - Repack chutes Engineer II - Repair Wheels, Legs, Solar Panels - Pump resources around vessel Engineer III - Repair damaged or overheated engines - Remaining Delta-V visible - Split/equalize fuel flow Engineer IV - Place Struts and Fuel lines in flight - Maintain COM via fuel redistribution - Operate Drilling Rig (after ISRU) Engineer V - Place/Remove small Panels, Sensors, Engines, RCS etc (KAS) Or: Scientist I - Collect Surface Sample Scientist II - Transmission Value +10% - EVA Report +10% - Sensors glow blue when near uncollected science Scientist III - Operate Science Lab - Process data to 50% of total recovered value - Take Core Sample from ground-scatter and Surface Features (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/107825-Surface-features) Scientist IV - "Collect Data" button gathers all available science from sensors without EVA - Load samples into Materials Bay from Science Lab (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/108153-Science-it-s-boring-how-can-it-be-made-more-fun) - Process data to 75% of total recovered value Scientist V - Place sensor for impact experiment - Perform resource richness test on surface samples for ISRU - Can Process data to 100% of total recovered value This way there's a strong incentive to get higher in a tree so you have the capability to drill for resources or do cooler science experiments, but you have the ability to give say, a level 5 scientist at least the ability to control SAS or do basic engineering tasks. Gaining Experience: I think a lot of people have found the current paradigm kind of frustrating and there's been a lot of grind planting flags. Many have been thinking of ways gaining experience could be directly linked to doing things that are in the field of that skill. I like the idea, but I think most people have agreed that there are very few non-grindy ways of doing that. Personally, I think rewarding Kerbals simply for exploration is the way to go. In my view, making things simple and visually clear in-flight would be a huge help because you could see at a glance what you had and what you are going for. I imagine rewards being distributed this way, with badges being rewarded for the first time a kerbal completes each one of these tasks. Once 3 new badges have been earned, a kerbal may level-up in-flight without having to return to Kerbin. This is pretty critical for sending Kerbals on Jool 5 missions without feeling like you have to experience grind before leaving. Liftoff! - 1 Badge Landed on Kerbin - 1 Badge Escape the Atmosphere - 1 Badge Kerbin Orbit - 1 Badge Munar Orbit - 1 Badge Landed on the Mun - 2 Badges Minmus Orbit - 1 Badge Landed on Minmus - 1 Badge (If a Kerbal has done all of the above, they would have earned 3 levels. I think this seems fair.) Kerbol Orbit - 1 Badge Visit an Asteroid - 1 Badge Claw an Asteroid - 1 Badge Duna Orbit - 1 Badge Landed on Duna - 2 Badges Landed on Ike - 1 Badges (Having completed everything in Kerbin SOI and Landing on Duna will earn 4 Levels, but not 5.) Dres Orbit - 1 Badge Landed on Dres - 2 Badges Moho Orbit - 2 Badges Landed on Moho - 1 Badge Eve Orbit - 1 Badge Landed on Eve - 4 Badges Landed on Gilly - 1 Badge Jool Orbit - 2 Badges Laythe Orbit - 1 Badge Landed on Laythe - 2 Badges Vall Orbit - 1 Badge Landed on Vall - 1 Badge Tylo Orbit - 1 Badge Landed on Tylo - 3 Badges Landed on Pol - 1 Badge Landed on Bop - 1 Badge (A Kerbal who's completed a Jool-5 will have earned 5 levels. Given how hard this is I think this is also still fair.) Eeloo Orbit - 2 Badges Landed on Eeloo - 2 Badges This is set up to make getting a Kerbal to level 5 in all 3 disciplines technically possible, but one would need to visit every planet and moon in the game and claw an asteroid to get there. To my thinking if you've done this, you're a boss and have well earned a maxed kerbal. The other nice thing about the badges is they could be a nice and clear kind of experience record of where that kerbal has been and what he/she has accomplished. Anyhoo this is long but I leave it up for debate. As I said I'd love to see a more nuanced experience system, this is just my best crack at it.