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when i was digging through the files i went into squadexpansion and i found out that Breaking Ground wasn't always called that it was originally called Serenity and i thought it would be a cool thing to talk about tell me if you knew this or you didn't feel free to ask me a theory about it

There was another Starship debate over on a Discord server today, as seems to happen every couple days like clockwork, and I came away from it with somewhat of a new perspective on the Starship program. Many of the criticisms of Starship ultimately come down to the idea that it is too ambitious, that SpaceX has bitten off more than they can chew here. Well, that and taking off the cuff remarks by Elon (for example 1m per flight, 1000 passengers in p2p) as gospel and using them to show why the program is obviously stupid and the whole thing is a scam. But the first one is more interesting and what I thought about a lot today. Ignore HLS for a second, I'll talk about that later. I think a lot of people would have liked to see SpaceX originally take (or pivot to) a more conservative approach to a next generation launch vehicle as a stepping stone to a fully and rapidly reusable launch vehicle rather than skipping straight to something with Starship levels of ambition. Like, for example, a fully reusable but not rapidly reusable vehicle, or a very large partially reusable vehicle. But why? The obvious answer is that it allows them to create something that blows Falcon out of the water for considerably less effort than Starship would take. ...But why? They have the market completely cornered. Nobody can compete with Falcon, even discounting Starlink. Everyone except possibly Blue Origin and Relativity is stuck trying to create a rocket marginally competitive with what Falcon 9 was a few years ago. Serious competition is at least 10 years away. SpaceX doesn't need to do a thing to completely dominate the space industry for the foreseeable future. They can sit on their hands, maybe make Falcon block 6 if Relativity is looking threatening enough in a few years time. Basically do what ULA did. What could they do with a Falconlike SHLV that they could not do with Falcon? Large stations if anyone was interested, maybe small scale medium-high cost Moon missions, being the de facto Artemis launch vehicle. But not much that is commercially viable. Not many people are going to pay 120 million for 100 tons to orbit. There would be a market, but as we are seeing with Falcon Heavy, not a huge market. SpaceX does not want to launch a handful people to the Moon for tens of billions of dollars. They don't want to sit on their hands and accumulate wealth. They do not want to keep making minor improvements to Falcon 9 forever. Whether or not you agree with this goal, SpaceX wants to create a self sustaining city on Mars, or at least, create some of the prerequisite technologies required for that to happen. It is not a financial goal. It is an emotional goal. SpaceX is fundamentally an emotionally motivated company, and while finances can't be ignored, they are a means to an end. If money was the primary goal, Elon would have created sensible businesses with the PayPal money. instead, SpaceX was created out of spite for the Russians and frustration with the state of the industry. Since then, they have plastered windows on things with no business having windows on them (Cargo Dragon, I4 dome, doubling down on Starship having a huge window), dragged the space industry, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century, with many of the major advancements financed on their own dime, made Dragon 2, their spacesuits, the crew access arm, the launch tower, and much more look stylish and cool (depends on taste), arguably at the expense of a small amount of functionality, and strapped a meme payload to what was at the time the most capable operational rocket in the world. I rewatched the IAC 2016 talk today, and while almost all of the details have changed, the core architecture has remained the same. That talk laid it out clear, this core architecture was designed with Mars in mind. In order to create a self sustaining city on Mars under reasonable economic conditions, a rapidly and fully reusable vehicle must be mass produced, and it must use propellants practical to produce on Mars, and orbital refilling must be utilized. While an incremental approach to developing such a system does have some merits, if there is a proper time to dive in headfirst into the onslaught of engineering challenges associated with such a ridiculously lofty goal, it is while they are a decade ahead of everyone else. In order to succeed, everything known about rocket building needs to be challenged. Anything short of a high performance mass producible rapidly and fully reusable rocket is not an acceptable stopping point, and SpaceX has made that clear with how often they threw out things that weren't working. They tested every assumption about rocket development made to date, knowing full well most of them would be reinforced, but a few would give way to unexplored potential. They threw out carbon fiber after investing a ton of money into the hardware to produce 9 and 12 meter tanks. They threw out the Florida starship site (for now at least). They made a water tower fly, and then threw out the next six prototypes for not being good enough. They built or partially built 26 starships and 3 boosters before getting something that might get to orbit, each of which had major changes from the previous, and then threw B4/S20 out practically on the eve of flight. They tried a new launch pad, and when that didn't work, they threw it out and tried something else. They tried a new form of staging, and when that didn't work, they threw it out and tried hot staging. They tried hydrolox Raptor, and it didn't work, they threw it out. Large scale ITS Raptor, thrown out. Raptor 1, 1.5, etcetera, thrown out. Raptor 2, on its way out because Raptor 3. There's even been talk of a different engine altogether. They have produced hundreds of Raptors by now and they haven't even gotten to orbit, that's more than the total production of most other rocket engines. ITS re entry configuration, thrown out. Two strakes, thrown out. Tripod with two flaps and a rudder, thrown out. Body flaps, modified numerous times. Initial tiles, thrown out. Bare metal, thrown out. Transpiration cooling, thrown out. Back to tiles because that might actually be the best option, several iterations, throwing them out until they are good enough. Can't land on the launch mount? Can't crane a ship from a landing pad to the launch pad fast enough to colonize Mars? Throw it out, try landing directly in the crane. They are pushing the envelope in all directions trying to find anything that will get them closer to their goal and they can and will throw out any design, no matter how firmly entrenched, if it falls short of their goals. They have created the largest satellite constellation ever (okay, if you're gonna be that guy, project West Ford was indeed way bigger) just to finance the rate at which they throw stuff away. Even that satellite constellation is designed to be thrown away and replaced every five years. This whole time, also pioneering the early stages of mass production necessary to make the city on Mars a reality. But this city can't be built alone. A rocket such as what Starship aims to be is a prerequisite for a Mars colony, but not sufficient on its own. So every so often, SpaceX will put Starship out there to get people thinking about what such a revolutionary rocket could do in fields it isn't even optimized for. A Moon base, gigantic space stations, crewed missions to the moons of Jupiter, probes ejected from Earth at insane speeds with refueled expendable upper stages, and even point to point. Some of these are more realistic than others. If enough people start thinking about what this could do, some of them will start trying to make it a reality, and some of them might just end up producing Mars hardware in a few decades time. Then, SpaceX decided to go "Hey, NASA, Starship can also be used as a Moon lander!" And in a move that was unexpected to most external observers, and may have even been unexpected internally, NASA, strapped for cash and with the only other status quo choices being "expensive consortium led by a company with no orbital experience" and "oopsie daisy, negative mass moment", saw a chance for an incredibly radical future, and went "Okay. You have four years. Show us what you can do." Of course, this is where it all went a little sideways. You can fiddle around with your revolutionary side project all you want when your only limiting factor is how long it takes other space companies to catch up with you. There are no customers to complain when it takes twice as long as planned, or keeps blowing up over and over and over again. While HLS has been great for emphasizing Starship's legitimacy and getting even more people thinking about it, now SpaceX can't just keep throwing stuff out ad nauseum, it actually has to deliver results in a reasonable timeframe. Granted, some of this is the government's fault, selecting a lander in 2021 and expecting a landing in 2024 was never a realistic goal no matter who is doing the design. But now, a program with the single constraint of "Get lots of stuff to Mars, toss away everything that can't do that" has to be made to support the most important human spaceflight mission in decades in relatively short order. It must be safe and with a relatively frozen design, and the tankers must be produced and rapidly launched with not much more tweaking. I don't know yet whether the added cash and legitimacy is outbalanced by the conflicting requirements. These conflicting requirements seem to be where a lot of the conflict is coming from. Since HLS, Starship is both a vehicle that needs to be chaotic in the near term in order to be revolutionary in the long term, and stable in the near term in order to get us back to the Moon. I don't know if they will make it to Mars, much less build a city, but if anyone can do it in the next hundred years, it is probably going to be them, and they are not going to stop trying to reach that goal until they go bankrupt or the CEO dies and doesn't get replaced with a like minded person. That was a lot more than I intended to write. TLDR: SpaceX is emotionally/ideologically motivated. Their ultimate goal is to colonize Mars. If their goal is to make money and remain competitive, they already have that, no reason for something Starship level. Something in between Falcon and Starship also does not make sense if their goal is merely to remain competitive. Starship makes sense viewed through the Mars lens, its other applications are byproducts. I suspect long term an optimized Lunar architecture will look a lot different. SpaceX will not design themselves into something that cannot be evolved into a rocket capable of creating a city on Mars. This means a lot of throwing out stuff that doesn't work, pushing boundaries, and lots of failures. Starship won the HLS contract, which is not a contract you want to have rapid iteration, boundary pushing, and frequent failures on. The two conflicting aspirations for what Starship is supposed to be are causing some amount of conflict and debate. In the time it took me to write that, the news that the ship firing today was a single engine maneuvering burn test arrived. This is completely unrelated to the above wall of text, but given how small LEO maneuvers will be (I'd guess this is simulating a de-orbit burn), that static fire might have actually been full mission duration.

I had to pay already for the privilege of play-testing and emit feedback, why would I also perform the job of a paid position on top of that? I can design you a science mechanic, come back to it with a presentation, multiple docs, spreadsheets about balance, and whatever you ask, but we've gotta talk money first. If you want stuff for free, there's plenty on the thread.

I really have to ask this question every time I see one of these, "This is stupid, get rid of it!" /Feedback/ posts.. How would you do it? Seriously, how would you design it? What do you want? Describe the form of gameplay you want. Describe your design, step for step, let's have it. Also, if you're going to talk about science in KSP2 from a point of "realism" , you do realize that we launch probes in to space that just sit in space and follow commands sent to them to just take pictures and gather data from sensors yeah? Ya know, like SOHO, JWST, MRO, LRO, Artemis, MAVEN, Trace Gas Orbiter, etc....

Flight 1001 (KSC - Island Airfield): KJ-119-1 Crew: Jeb and Bill The KJ-119 is the first jet airliner built by Kerbal Spaceless Program to use more than 1 engine. In this case, it's a Wheesley and a Juno. ----------- Jeb: Good morning all Kerbs, welcome aboard to Trans Kerbin Airlines! We will be taking off shortly. Bill: Wow, they even put a second engine on this one! Talk about safety first! The Wheesley spooled up and spat to life. The Juno? Not so much. Bill: Jeb, I think the Juno failed. Hopefully we'll make it to the Island Airfield. Jeb: SIlly old Gene making us fly test planes with passengers on board. Bill: Wait a minute... you left the PA on! The passengers immediately began screaming. Jeb: Calm on guys, we've almost landed. After the landing, the passengers made their way of the plane and the other unsuspecting group of passengers entered the plane. Luckily the flight went relatively smoothly. As the passengers left, they made sure to leave their positive reviews. "They didn't even have seat cushions!" - Bingus Kerman "Where are the in-flight snacks, and why am I able to open the plane's windows?" - Doofus Kerman "This flight pulled more G's than I ever did in the Kerbin War!" - Rofel Kerman The KJ-119-1 was immediately sent to the SPH for repairs for the Juno. Hopefully this ends well.

I have played and adored nearly all of Chris's mods and they are absolutely brilliant. I don't always agree with him though when it comes to gameplay. I think efficiency and simplicity are really important but I'll return again and again to the chess vs checkers example. What makes good gameplay is not absolute simplicity, but maximizing the ratio between input rule complexity and total output creative gamespace. Sometimes a very large investment in dev work results in a very small increase in creative gameplay. Sometimes a modest investment in dev work results in a HUGE increase in creative gameplay. Every smart developer is playing these odds. I happen to think there were some decisions in KSP1 like instant scanning on polar orbit and not incorporating biome maps that were huge missed opportunities, and across the board when you talk to folks who used SCANsat the verdict is pretty unanimous that the mod did it better. Thats because it hit that sweet spot leveraging a bit more complexity in design to capture a much more robust gameplay experience. I think avoiding LoS, real-time mapping, time-based mechanics, and life support are similar kinds of missed opportunities where a modest investment in development time could leverage a much more dynamic set of design, planning, and navigation puzzles for the game.

I support this and agree with @Pthigrivi. That being said.. I feel like the devs read and listen to player opinions, but they don't confirm it. Slowly I see that gameplay decisions are made, the items on the wishlists are getting added and some things seem to be well thought out. We're all starting to have an idea about what this game wants to be. But the dev - player interaction is minimal at best. Good thing we have the CMs to talk to. Anyway, when you as a player feel like life is not fair.. remember that @Nertea's Discord handle is Destroyer of Fun. That should tell you everything you need to know.

Not necessarily! The wiki software (MediaWiki) have all the tools the community needs to afford this thing. KSP has a community waiting to massively restart to write the history of the game. It's already happening. For example: Kerbin (like duna Duna, the Kerbol System and other) already has a single main page about the concept of the planet with different sections about the KSP1 and KSP2 differences. The community did a wonderful job with KSP1: let's them to continue. The risk is of dispersing the know-how. KSP1 nad KSP2 specific pages can of course exist for example for Easter eggs or parts lists, the community will (they are still doing) find the right way! EDIT: i mean: we could already have this talk in the talk pages of the wiki!

First off, I would like to say that For Science! has made the game massively more playable, fun, and performant. I appreciate the hard work and dedication of IG when some of the player base (myself included) went from not just critical, but skeptical that we would even see the promised features. The science update proved that skepticism wrong, and I want to sincerely thank the IG team for their persistence. I say this because while part of this post may sound negative, it’s coming from someone who’s genuinely a fan of the game, wants the game to succeed, and appreciates the massive step forward this last update was. All that said, after playing it long enough where I feel I can give a solid opinion, I must say For Science! still hasn’t reached the tipping point of being fun to play for fun’s sake yet. As a tester, and an EA player seeing the game grow, yes. But KSP1 remains more fun at this point. I really would like to share my feedback on the game, but it’s hard to do with the specifics of future features still largely unknown. For instance, how much are resources going to affect the early, mid, and late game restrictions of exploration mode, if at all? There’s a lot of feedback I can give here, but without details on the roadmap beyond just the highest level concepts, most of that feedback is meaningless. KSP1 had a lot of janky complexity. I loved it dearly but career mode was hodgepodged together for sure. KSP2 (seemingly so far) didn’t so much streamline the complexity as outright remove it. It’s rather simple to get to anywhere in the system without unlocking any tech nodes as there’s no restrictions on size, part count, or funds/resources. (I personally prefer no funds and the limiting factor to be resources, as I believe to be the plan.) How I feel those restrictions could be added in an engaging game play loop is something I’d love to talk about, but currently it’s unclear if any such limitations are even being considered. The new and zombie bugs did also sadly affect my gameplay, both with the resurgence of the orbital decay and the loss of orbital lines. Those I see have been clearly communicated to the devs and it is clear they are a priority. I would personally, at this point in development with a “game” now in the sandbox game, rather they focus on bugs for a bit. My larger point with this thought though is that bugs can be clearly communicated, and then addressed. Larger framework decisions and feedback much less so without knowing exactly the plan for interstellar, colonies, and isru. The devs have clearly asked for feedback, and I’m happy to provide it. I just feel it’s hard to give good, actionable or even considerable feedback with so many unknowns for the player community. Had KSP2 launched in this state into EA I feel there would’ve been much less criticism. The game, while buggy and feature lacking, has clear potential, details of quality in the surfaces of the planet, audio design and other areas. Most EA games are very clear about the development process, and I fully understand why they went so quiet with the harsh criticism they were receiving. They knew the only way to win back trust was to deliver, and while there’s still a ways to go for me personally they delivered a great update that won my trust. Now that we have that trust, I feel like it is the time to open up more about the specifics, and then recieve, consider, and implement as they see best fit player feedback. This would include the plans changing slightly as the game progresses and in response to the feedback, and trusting the community to be understanding of that. Again, I don’t want to be too negative. My pessimistic outlook was solidly proven wrong, I’m excited and passionate about KSP and am way happier now having my pessimism be proven wrong and having a fun KSP2. I just please ask that now that trust has been rebuilt some thought is put into how much of the specifics of the coming features can be shared with the community so we can give quality feedback.

Flight ????: KJ-099-1 Crew: Jeb and Bill Passenger: 1 TKA Flight Inspector The KJ-099 is the first passenger plane the KSP developed. With a passenger capacity of 4 kerbals, the KJ-099 is perfect for use for flight inspections (establishing a new flight route). The first test flight is to send an inspector about 20 km out above the ocean and fly back safely. Morty gives a little pep talk: Bill: Whatever, starting up the Wheesley... Jeb: Fly safe? That's not something we're good at! Flight Inspector: What'd you say? Jeb: Nothing... With a bit of struggling due to the bad landing gear placement, the KJ-099 somewhat flopped into the air. Luckily it seemed to like flying, so that should be okay. Flight Inspector: Why does my metal seat have no cushion? Bill: Uh... it's for cooling purposes since we don't have an air-con vent back there... Flight Inspector: I hate my job... Jeb: All kerbals please fasten your seatbelts. This landing may not be pretty. Jeb: Try to flare it a bit... Jeb: Nailed it! With the success of the first flight, the KJ-099 is immediately sent to the SPH for improvements, notably the bad wheel placement. A few days later... Flight 1000 (KSC - Island Airfield): KJ-099-1 Crew: Jeb and Bill Passenger: 3 TKA Flight Inspectors Bill: Can't believe they woke us up at 2 for this. Flight Inspector 1: Well get on with it, can you? Jeb: I think they're complaining about the legroom again. How are they so awake? Bill: I suppose it's the jet-lag. Now that the jet has arrived at the Island Airfield, the Inspectors get off to negotiate flight deals. And before long, the KJ-099 is off again. The wheel placement improvements certainly helped with takeoff. Jeb: "Friendly reminder that you are not allowed to have food fights in the cockpit" Gene knows us so well... Bill: So how'd you enjoy the landing? Flight Inspector: At least it was better than Kyanair... Now with a place to fly planes to, the KSP begins building a larger plane...

Welp, I don't have KSP 2 at the moment (current hardware can't run it and I really can't afford it). But skimming here tells me the KSP 2 gamesave system is confusing some really good KSP players. Whether it's UI or something internal or both, it's not quite right. And it really isn't explained to the player, when its complexity indicates it should be explained. That's not making KSP 2 look good to me. Talk about barely being alpha grade, but KSP 2 has been released (even if Early Access), but a save/restore system is a core game mechanic that shouldn't be in this state at this time.

What makes an RCS thruster good is closely correlated to what makes a rocket engine good, but the engineering requirements of simplicity, storability, fast start from cold and repeatability change that. Low specific impulse can be forgiven if the rest of the hardware is simple and lightweight. Cold-gas is used, even though it's not that powerful or efficient, because it fulfils all those requirements. If we talk about solid propellant, monopropellant, bipropellant, arcjets and resistojets, we'll be here all day. Instead, if you want to dive deep into about 5,000 different substances used on one satellite or another: On the selection of propellants for cold/warm gas propulsion systems

I'm pretty sure it's not weird to talk about the very next step of the roadmap. Especially when the devs have claimed the time between major updates will shorten.

When you attach an XS engine to an S fuel tank and then add and S decoupler under it, the fairing becomes a cone. It would make more sense to size the fairing to the S fuel tank so the shape of the rocket is consistent and decouplers become regular interstages. At the moment, you have to add an extra payload fairing underneath the decoupler to acheive the same effect. I can think of no advantge to having the decoupler size to the engine you are attaching it to and not the surrounding fuel tank sizes. Maybe even an option in the parts menu to choose a fairing size. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

I mean out of the other roadmap items: Multiplayer was always gonna be last because having to QA both singleplayer and multiplayer with each major update would be a huge increased weight on dev time/resources. Interstellar ready engines have been stated to require resource gathering if you want to build them in career mode Resource gathering has been stated to no longer be ISRU and require Colonies and trade routes So... unless anything new has come up, the OG roadmap was already arranged in the order of "the order things need to be developed in" anyway. Probably not a bad idea to assume it'll still be more or less in that order. Although given the talk of the imminent upgrade to using HDRP, I could see that getting a major release update number.

Here you can discuss it, analyze it, or say how you solved it (or if you did not). I go first. The Frenemy: Let's call him Dave (not his real name) This guy has a reputation for being kind and helpful to those he is friends with on the job already, but also someone who will harass or make fun of anyone he thinks is not pulling their weight on the job. The Past: Intitally I was not as good at my job starting out when I began years ago, and he did not like me much. But he did notice I tried hard and gave me unsolicited advice that actually did turn out helpful when I followed it (which I thanked him for). The Present: We get along for the most part, and he is even friendly on occasion. Which is why the latest incident at first I did not take seriously... until I did. The incident: My work involves being on feet and a lot of walking and lifting. My feet are sore at times and I walk with a limp occasionally (especially after just getting out of my vehicle from break or lunch). I can walk normal, but it's easier to limp if my feet are just "waking up" again as it were, until I am fully active and going full steam ahead again. Whenever I limped in the past he would ask why and I told him. I remember once when I asked him why he cares he said the sound of sliding of my soles on the ground annoys him. This happened on and off for months. So just a few days ago he sees me limping coming back from a break or looking for a guy I was supposed to work with and he says "Is walking like that fun?" Since I was on my way to try to find somebody else I brushed aside his sarcasm with my own. "Try it!" "No, I know how to walk." Dave said with a hint of bitterness. "Still can!" I said with a shrug, but sensed all was not right so after walking away came back and asked him if my limp bothered him. He said he does not like the sound of it. I said if my foot hurts it's going to happen so he's just going to have to get used to it. He replies that as many breaks as I take my feet should feel fine. Now I realize he is serious and I likewise take on a serious demeanor. "That was unnecessary." "No, it was'nt." With that I walked off, since I had work to do and this guy was stalling me. It was not as if I answered to him since he holds the same job title I do, nor should I have to explain my comings and goings to him. It's none of his business if I am looking for someone I need to work with who has paperwork without which I cannot start my assignment (the guy I was looking for I later learned was on break). It's none of Dave's business if I have to use the toilet during my work shift, we don't even work in the same area, he just happens to work near the exit, so he sees anytime anyone uses the bathroom or takes a break. I will admit some days as of late I had to go to the bathroom more often due to a runny nose from the cold weather, or worse case scenario use the toilet, but this is not something I do always. I never take more breaks than assigned but he obviously thought I was goofing off or being lazy. Since I recently learned I had to wait for the guy I was looking for to return from his break, I returned to Dave to deal with him, since I have had to before, and if I did not correct this it would continue and I am not one that will tolerate anyone talking to me rudely on the regular or with acceptance. His back was turned as I approached so I said "Dave?" He turned around and I continued sternly "I don't want to hear you tell me about that again, and if you do, this will become an office matter (meaning I will report him to the boss)." "OK." "That's harassment. I won't tolerate that." And with that I walked off. Strangely... the next day he tells me good morning (he never does this usually since he usually only talks if I talk to him first UNLESS he is either trying to be helpful or is harassing). I told him good morning back, since I try not to hold grudges. He even said good hustle as I worked (I tend to work harder and faster if I am angry even if only a bit, which I was). Of course, my personality type is an omega, and I really don't need anyone's praise or complements or even approval, especially anyone who feels the need to judge me when they should focus on what they are doing rather than others since they are not a manager and just the same as the rest. I said nothing in reply and just kept working, and later when work became slower he engaged me in small talk and I wished him a happy holiday. Analysis: Part of me kinda felt like saying "I accept your apology." Since this was his attempt to make amends I could tell even though he never gave an apology. The reason I did not is because he is a frenemy who has helped me in the past on the job, and I see no need to rub salt in a wound since what good does that do for peaceful relations? None. He already realizes he wronged me, and is obviously trying to make nice, so I saw no need to bring up or force an apology. So ultimately I am glad he has enough maturity and humility to to try to make amends when he has wronged someone, since not everyone does (even some far older than him). Even so, I am marking the date on my calendar, so when and if he screws up by harassing me on the job I will report him the day it happens. Since I will not tolerate that. Nor should anyone. He can try that mess and may even get away with it with some, but not with me. Regardless if others know my worth I have always felt I had it and deserved as much respect as any average person.

Also I don't recall NASA having to string together a road of relays between Earth and the Kuiper Belt in order to talk to the Voyagers (or any other distant probes), and probes that have to land on the far side of objects tend to be smart enough to do this autonomously. Point being, I think probes being 10x more reliant on communications than any real probe is silly, and I would much rather Commnet just be a mod or set to off by default.

Well, there seems to be a lot of dev info on Discord that did not make it onto the forums. Not that I've been asking about CommNet for months without getting any answers. Such is life for second hand forum citizens.. you're either on Discord all day or you don't get to talk to the devs. I can only thank providence that Dakota is still engaging with us here. Nertea, Destroyer of Fun — Yesterday at 2:17 AM i hear there are some questions about commnet and im here to answer them if they're here Spork Witch — Yesterday at 2:18 AM yeah! I was asking about whether occlusion and vehicle links were implemented at this time. I was told occlusion / LoS is not, but that if there's a commsat in range, you'll bounce off that back to kerbin. Further, is there a distinction between transmit-only and relays? I notice we have all the old commsats, wasn't sure if they ALL function as relays now, or if there's still the same split of RA=relay, others are Tx only. Nertea, Destroyer of Fun — Yesterday at 2:23 AM Generally All antennas are relays by default, they can bounce signal back (we didn't like this distinction) Line of sight is not a thing, there is only distance as a concern Connectivity between vessels is a simple matter of ensuring that they both have antennas that have ranges that qre equal or greater to the distance between them. So if 2 satellites are 100 km apart, they both most have antennas of rating 100 km or higher to connect Nertea, Destroyer of Fun — Yesterday at 2:26 AM Commnet and occlusion was extremely forgiving by default settings in KSP1 and we didnt feel there was a significant difference between soft occlusion and no occlusion for EA launch. Lots of the depth people would want requires a set of supporting visual and planning tools that are a fair bit of work to design and build Nertea, Destroyer of Fun — Yesterday at 2:32 AM I think there's a thing I wrote in a devblog of everyone playing KSP with different goals in mind - everyone has a thing they prefer, whether it is building vessels, making comm networks, etc. We can always take player feedback into account in driving plans and make changes at that point. Nertea, Destroyer of Fun — Yesterday at 2:33 AM dev hat off, I hate commnet and always turned it off in KSP1 Nertea, Destroyer of Fun — Yesterday at 2:34 AM I mean that goes back to need - a question we always need to answer is that, given all the ways people play the game, should you 'need' to do any particular thing? That could significantly impact what someone else wants to do. It's a fine line Spork Witch — Yesterday at 2:37 AM which is why it was always a toggle, but KSP is also about education. Learning about line of sight communications, and the need to set up satellites in particular orbits is a REAL WORLD learning thing, and also an orbital mechanics one, a core focus of KSP. The easiest way to properly position satellites is to launch them all at once, using resonant orbits. Without this constraint, from occlusion, you remove the one thing in the game that would actually direct someone to learn about these things. Nertea, Destroyer of Fun — Yesterday at 2:39 AM Yep, understood Nertea, Destroyer of Fun — Yesterday at 2:35 AM I think I could say with some confidence that increasing commnet complexity has to come with more viz and planning tools Nate Simpson — Yesterday at 2:39 AM A lot of us like all the detailed line of sight/relay features in Commnet and it's definitely a thing we want to revisit, but as always we're having to balance multiple priorities. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ That being said, here are all the current antennas in the game, for comparison purposes:

everything else is hidden sorry cause i actually talked in all of those, a lot.. a lot a lot, if I wasn't commentary about what I was doing and why, Im insane.. its "prob not talk unless someone asks"... speaking out aloud on every other one ,a lot, with the only person was my mom.. yes my mom watched, the last one, and me checking if the stream was working. i felt its just not worth keeping them up cause i sound insane.. hope that helps :3

Hi, You may know me as an insane person that plays ksp 2, but imma cut the chase. Been playing KSP 2 For Science update, and I got a few actual bones to pick with how the missions work and behave.. Settings I play on. TLDR, Hard. but revert and quicksaving due to skill issues/bugs (many) I been playing ksp 2 new update for a while, and let me say, there is a huge hard wall/brick that comes with this update in gathering science, I play rather simply, each object I created in this save has a purpose to further progress my game. It usually does a main mission, or a side mission, if not completing a few while doing both on the same craft... So, lets get to it. i have done a few missions about 12 hours~ or so in this update ( I have about two hours I forgot to stream ) but it was just simply building and testing a craft. yup amazing, playing about 10 hours, with zero views, its a fashion statement at this point with how little traction I have. during this time progression was fine if not perfect pace for 50%, this was until I saw, and seen the big four Duna Monument Wheelin and Dealin LIL CHONKER Keostationary Orbit let me just quote my discord post(s) For me there is a huge (quite a few) gaps in how research is earned, and how main mission's skill slope is way to aggressive. as of now, I'm quite stumped as behaving as a general player trying to follow the loose primary/story missions, there were 3 steps to complete missions of getting a lot of research to progress For me, each main mission required a vehicle, so did land on X object, "weird signal" created a probe/sat, and then landing a craft near the objective, while this craft needed to also (optional) land at each biome and get science/etc. Now, with the stop of nonsense rambling There should at least 2 or 4 more missions before landing on duna for me this is too aggressive (no idea if it's like this for other missions I haven't progressed that far) Put a satellite into a high duna orbit Put a satellite around dunas moon Do a prob X parts and land safely create a Craft to go to the monument Duna, in the way mission control is set up, is the FIRST post kerbin sphere of influence, it has a Moon, Atmosphere... Why in the name of Bob Kermin do we need to be thrown directly into the duna's monument when other things should be taught / more research to be given out. As of right now with 1 secondary mission that is a little to silly Lil Chonker, 1 mission simply not working, Wheelin, And Dealing, the only option to further progress is to do keostationary orbit, or do off "story" missions.. there is way to large of a gap in what is needed to be learned when going from minmus to duna. Second talk Doing a lot of sidequests of gathering ground science, flying science etc, there is simply just not enough Science points to be given out without finding the secret POI's as also stated in my discord post.. these missions might feel fine with normal research speeds and you have loads of of SP to get into deeper into the second tech tree without not completing the first tech tree, but for me, its hard. There needs to be a way to have like camera satellites, to find POI's on certain planets something like the surface scanner, but in a few tiers, with the weakest only finding the largest/most noticeable and the strongest just finding everything as a part both slowly in days(months) in game depending on range, geostation orbit/ polar orbit/ etc I really didn't want to do this post cause I'm not feeling well and I'm going sound like a complete mad man when I have what I want to say in my head, but out loud its just me spouting nonsense/broken english. personally, I that even doing premium+ missions that i need to be very picky on what i need to further progress the game, if the game had what i said above being able to get the few extra 100's of SP needed for a competent build should need to happen let alone teaching players that after getting to X planet they might have moons, or a atmosphere etc... i really hope the rest of the main story isn't like this, i don't know what I'm going to do honestly but the aggressiveness slope is to high from minmus to duna. please understand I'm really trying to say something that my brain isn't able to process due to being sick, and well, not able to do it in the first place without like 9 English to english translators.. also if anyone is able to translate this right now into something that is more, like readable I will edit this post make it better, but there is at least some points I'm trying to give out.

Here, here. If the ISS can continue functioning with all that is happening, this forum can surely do the same. I bet they don't talk politics much on the ISS

Reported Version: v0.2.0 (latest) | Mods: none | Can replicate without mods? Yes OS: Windows 10 | CPU: i7-6700K 4 GHz | GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super | RAM: 16 GB Images talk for themselves. A pill-shaped object appeared in the KSC view after recovering a landed vessel. This "object" seems to be located at a specific place because when we zoom out, it "shrinks", but it will also disappear if we rotate the camera enough. The object seems to disable rendering of the water in the field of view, but not the land and the sky. Included Attachments:

Not a picture but a video. Finally an on topic reason to talk about cats in a spaceflight themed forum. https://x.com/nasa/status/1736900843813605759?s=46&t=Jd73T2beq0JLNtwTy1uR5A First laser transmitted ultra HD video from space (that is, sent through the space based laser comms test bed) is of a cat.

Your drag model has no power over me! Archimedes is a single-seater VTOL SSTO, capable of reaching orbit on Kerbin and Laythe with some dV to spare for docking. It's actually my remake of my friend's stock replica of my 2017 modded craft that itself was lifted off Star Citizen promotional material (talk about a crisis in creative industries...). The defining ring with contra-rotating propellers incurs unpleasant drag and breaking sound barrier is a slog, but the flight thereafter is a rapid and very enjoyable ascent. Same goes for liftoff and landing -- it's got a very low stall speed and you can easily land on a dime in VTOL mode. Powered by 2 RTGs (perfectly balanced). It's a rather useless runabout, except of course if you need to land on aircraft carriers. It's not that large and can hover indefinitely, which makes for nice landings on rough seas of Laythe. I wish I could add folding wings, but it doesn't seem that easy to figure out geometry in stock.

again, for the sake of clarity: what do you mean by "damaged" and "busted"? because i thought by "damaged" you meant "yellow", but if you instead mean "needs maintenance", then it will break. this engine is red, it is broken, it does not function, it cannot be fixed by an engineer. hence I am decoupling it and will place a new one on the docking port, i prepared those engines to be interchangeable. the drill on the left is equally broken. the convert-o-tron is yellow, also the engine on the lower right. they are broken, they do not function, but they can be fixed by an engineer. now, if you have a yellow part, it will stay yellow. it will not become red. but you talk like you do not mean yellow and red, you talk like you mean a part without color, i.e. a part that is not broken and that functions. and in that case, those parts will eventually become yellow or red.