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All this talk of "root parts embedded in the pad" do me no good: I need craft files and saved games (for the location) as I have never experienced such a problem. Please put them in a report on the tracker (so there isn't a flood of separate reports).

Thanks it actually does. I think I am getting close... I can get the mesh back in game so it is there, but now it is using BOTH modes at the same time... oh you want to talk about overpowered...

I hate to disagree with you, because you do seem to know what you are talking about, but is this not basically the same as load spreading? The usefulness of taking the road with you is that you get stuck less easily, because you are spreading the load across a larger area. It is doing the same as the semi-deflated wheels you talk about, but on an even larger scale. Reducing pressure is the name of the game and that is a useful property when on muddy building sites, or in shot up fields of mud or loose sand trying not to get stuck and become a sitting duck. I find it difficult to divide this into two seperate qualities.

Mission 20 - Duna Overview and Assembly The Duna mission has been in development for a long time with various systems tested in real world missions. It will send 3 kerbals to land on Duna and Ike and bring back science samples and instruments from everything they can touch. The mission itself will involve 2 interplanetary spaceships along with a lander carried along. One is a crew ship with accommodations for a long term flight and powered by a conventional engine. The other ship is nuclear powered so it will only be under thrust when Kerbals are far away. This cargo/support ship will carry fuel for the crew ships return voyage, science instruments and the lander to Duna and back. The crew ship has already been tested in full in Mission 18. It uses a convential engine to carry 3 kerbals and has a command pod, where the crew go for launch and splashdown, and a habitat module for them to live in during the extended flight. The core of the cargo ship is a quite skeletal. A central T800 tank has girders to support 3 surrounding tanks. Those tanks carry nuclear engines and the fuel to run them. The top of those tanks contain mounting points for science pods, which have already undergone testing in previous missions. These outer tanks also house the solar arrays and RCS thrusters away from everything else. The central span has docking points for additional fuel tanks - 3 radially, 1 on top and 1 on the bottom. Other support systems are also present on the central span including monopropellent storage, batteries, lighting, attitude control and flight computer. The core of the cargo ship weighs about 25 tons so it can be lifted with the standard 30t lifter created for the Duna program and used in several previous missions. The cargo ship is deposited with full tanks in a 200km parking orbit to await additional attachments. After the lifter has detached itself it deorbits. Next to launch is a fuel ship. I had created another design for this ship, but with the performance of the 30t lifter (and its ability to ferry cargo right up to a renderous instead of just to orbit) I created a larger version of the fuel ship to carry 3 modules instead of 2. It still falls under the 30t weight limit because it ditches the previous renderous module and instead relies on the lifter for everything but the last 100m or so, which is carried out by a micro tug carried on top. The micro tug is essentially a docking port attached to a round RCS tank with 4 thrusters and guided by a tiny probe core and battery with a single solar panel on the back for trickle charging. It was initially a bit challenging to use the tug (the RCS ports are as far from the center of mass as they could be) but after wasting monopropellent on the first 2 tanks I got the hang of it, piloting it more like an RCS-less docking. I also found that small translations could be done accurately by shutting off SAS, making the translation and then using torque to correct my pitch. The first run put up 3 tanks to go on the radial attachment points. I brought the tug back to the lifter for disposal before realizing the lifter didn't have a port for it to dock to. I disposed of the tug using RCS to deorbit and use thrust to deorbit the lifter. The second run brought up another 3 tanks and it's at this point I should talk about the fuel "plan". The fuel plan was drawn up without much data about aero-capture, so I built in a lot of delta-v for 'capture' scenarios. I also built in a minimum 10% safety on all the requirements. The plan for fuel looked something like this: - Cargo ship burns for Duna, using up the fuel in the 3 T800 tanks on the engines with a safety margin that calls for a little fuel from the other tanks too. - A little over 1.5 drop tanks (1 drop tank is equal to 2 T800 tanks) are depleted to refuel those T800 tanks and the 1 empty drop tank is released in deep space (weight reduced by further 0.6t in advance of capture). - Capture at Duna which burns slightly less fuel but enough to use up what remained so that we finish depleting the second drop tank and deplete a third. We've burned 3 of the 5 drop tanks so far if we keep moving fuel into the T800 tanks - The crew ship flies to Duna, using most of its fuel. It docks with the cargo ship and depletes the last 2 drop tanks to refuel itself for the return journey. - The lander goes to Duna, using up its fuel supply. The center T800 tank is depleted to refuel the lander for the Ike landing, leaving only the fuel in the three engine T800 tanks - The cargo ship discards all the drop tanks and returns using the fuel in the three T800 tanks Since I was bringing up 3 tanks anyway I decided to simply add the extra tank to the cargo ship, it could be safely attached to the tank on the bottom. It would obviously add weight but the fuel would counter the weight addition at the cost of slightly longer burns and the need to transfer some fuel during the first burn. With some more experience I moved two drop tanks at once on the first go (they get stacked on the bottom port so there isn't a reason to seperate them). With what I learned the move goes smoothly. The last tank is attached to the top of the cargo ship and the micro tug is refueled from some tanks on the lifter before returning and docking with the cargo ship. At one point the plan called for using the lander as a tug to move around science modules and tanks but that idea was dropped. The only thing left now is the lander. The lander was tested back in mission 17. To bring it to the cargo ship it will be launched a little bit different. It is attached upside down with a microtug linked to a shroud on the engine. This way the lander can be docked without a pilot (the lander can only be flown manually, to save power and weight it has no computer control). The landers delivery micro tug tops up all the monopropllent tanks on the cargo ship and its own tug before removing the shroud. Now all that is needed to leave is to release the aerodynamic caps from the science modules and burn for Duna when the launch window arrives.

CHAPTER 48 LAYTHE: DAWN *** 28 DAYS AFTER THE LANDING ROZER: Fuel status. LAYTHE LANDER: Fuel level – 41,84%. ROZER: Fuel status of Laythe Ascent Module. LAYTHE LANDER: Fuel level – 86,79%. ROZER: Fuel level required for execution of the ascent protocol, let me see... ascent protocol 156-B2. LAYTHE LANDER: Required fuel level – 87,12%. ROZER: :sigh: LAYTHE LANDER: Warning. Required fuel level above current fuel level of Laythe Ascent Module. Safe ascent impossible. Please change the parameters of the projected ascent path and refuel. ROZER: You don't say. I'm trying to find a solution for this since we landed here, you fraking piece of crap. SID: What's going on, Rozer? ROZER: Well, what do you think is going on? I'm trying to find a way for us to leave this mun with the samples, that's what's going on. In case you didn't notice, that's what I'm doing since we've landed. SID: New ascent protocol? Hmm. But did you- ROZER: Yes, I included the velcro in the calculations. Even if we tore it off from the inside of the LAM it's still not enough. SID: :sigh: Is there anything we may throw away to reduce the weight? ROZER: Well, we already get rid of the chairs and practically every non-essential equipment from the pod. Which means what we're left with are essential parts – solar panels, batteries and so on. Unfortunately we don't have proper tools to get rid of the RCS thrusters too and before you ask, yes I did run several simulations of what would happen if we get rid of the monopropellant completely – it won't help. In fact, we need to carry more or less 5 units of it into the orbit. Even these 2-3 m/s more we could get using the RCS thrusters will help. SID: Crap... This doesn't look good, does it? ROZER: Not at all. I even calculated what would happen if we didn't take oxium, and reduce the life support system to heating-cooling subsystem only. SID: And? ROZER: Well, apart from the fact that we would be dead if we didn't perform rendez-vous several hours after we get in orbit, it's still isn't enough. Besides, these calculations aren't perfect – if we get into a jet stream during ascent it could just easily give us a few meters per second or take them from us, not to mention screwing our trajectory. SID: And what about “Proteus� What about BERTY? ROZER: I'm getting mainly white noise. You were out there with me, Sid – one can practically cut the radiation with a knife in orbit. Few bytes which get through to the Laythe Sat are just a pathetic remnants of our transmissions, so there isn't much to send to “Proteus†for analysis – and that's assuming the satellite is working nominally. SID: You still think there are problems with it? It was hardened against the radiation after all. ROZER: You are the professor, you tell me. How many single-event effect have already occurred? How many glitches its software have encountered? I'm sure it was in a safe mode several times by now. This mun is in the eye of a radiation storm - we could just as well start making smoke signals. Thick atmosphere, interferences, breaking down equipment and I don't even want to mention our laughable transmitter. No, we can't count on BERTY's computing power. We're alone and we have to figure this out by ourselves. And it seems that there is no other option than to leave some samples here – if we want to get in orbit. SID: Leave the samples? But that's why we get here! First samples from Laythe could change everything we know about the- ROZER: I know, Sid. I know. The thing is, we're not getting of this mun if we're going to take everything with us. We've used too much fuel during landing. That's it. One can't argue with the rocket equation – as a scientist, you know this better than me. SID: … ROZER: We still have weeks to figure out something, you know. SID: Yes, of course. I'm thinking about EVA. ROZER: EVA? What about it? SID: Well, four weeks have passed and our adaptation period is over, so we may now perform extravehicular activity. I've been thinking- ROZER: We may perform EVA? You're not going anywhere. SID: No way Rozer, we've been talking about it and there isn't such an option. ROZER: Yes there is. I am the captain and I say you're not going out. You're not strong enough. SID: I've been training the whole time for it! ROZER: You're a scientist and I was in the spec-ops – my organism is stronger. What if you trip over or get a heart attack? It's not a picnic, it's a hard manual labour. SID: What if I trip over? You're the one who broke his arm when we got here! ROZER: Good thing I'm ambidextrous than. I'm not going to argue about it again. SID: But- ROZER: No, Sid. You're too important for the mission to risk stupid accident. SID: That's why you want to get out there? To protect me? ROZER: As a valuable asset- SID: Oh for the love of Kod, stop it! If you die out there, how am I going to get off this mun without a pilot? ROZER: You're smart, you'll figure out something. Enough of this – I'm stronger than you and that's I'm going out today. You'll oversee my EVA and after we get some biomedical data- SID: Okay! Fine, I'll stay this time! ROZER: Good. Order: extend the ladder. LAYTHE LANDER: Affirmative. Extending the ladder. ROZER: But why are you so upset? Is it because you wanted to be the first one? SID: … ROZER: Sid? SID: I've dedicated the last 40 years of my life to Jool and its muns. I've gone millions of kilometers from home to finally land on the only mun with atmosphere and bodies of liquid on its surface. And now I can't even get out... ROZER: You will. You've waited so long, what would few more days change? Or do you really care about being the first one? SID: Don't you? Doesn't everybody care about this? ROZER: To be completely honest, I don't think it matters. SID: Yeah, sure. Being the first kerbal to set a foot on a different world doesn't matter? It's important. Apart from science, obviously – but we're not only the scientists here, we're explorers too. You think it doesn't matter? ROZER: It doesn't. SID: So what does than? ROZER: It's not where you are but what you do that counts – for me, at least. SID: Huh. After sacrificing your entire career to one goal you won't downgrade it so much. ROZER: How do you know I didn't sacrifice it too? LAYTHE LANDER: Ladder extended. Lights on. SID: Why should I know? It's not like you like to talk about you with anyone. ROZER: And there are good reasons for that – we need to stay focused. Now please help me prepare the airlock. The last thing we need is an unexpected decompression. *** ROZER: Okay, initiating final check-up. Order: EVA check-up. LAYTHE LANDER: Affirmative. Suit temperature – 20 °C. External temperature - 4 °C. External pressure – 1 atm. Oxium level – 99,65%. EVE check-up completed. All systems nominal. ROZER: You got that? SID: Yes. Check the dosimeter before you leave. ROZER: Zero milisiverts. Okay, I'm going out of the airlock. Opening the hatch. I think – wow! SID: I see it on the airlock camera. ROZER: Is it normal? This fog- SID: Don't mind it, it's just the atmosphere. On the outside the pressure is bigger, so it's filling the airlock. But the fog... it condensates in contact with the warm air. ROZER: Warm? SID: It's all relative. You should start moving, you're wasting oxium. ROZER: Yes. I'm going out. Uh! Hatch closed, I'm on the ladder. SID: Everything seems fine. ROZER: I'm going down. SID: Rozer? ROZER: I'm on the surface. It's really... muddy. SID: Muddy. Truly inspiring words for the future generations. ROZER: Hmm. Yes, definitely slash. I sink a little with every step but only few centimeters. Walking isn't that hard however. It's dark, I'm turning on the spacesuit light. The atmosphere is dense enough to- SID: Yes? Dense to what? ROZER: … SID: Rozer? ROZER: It's – it's beautiful. SID: What? ROZER: The dawn. ROZER: Uh. I can feel the cold in my feet. SID: You do? Computer, EVA status. LAYTHE LANDER: Affirmative. Suit temperature – 19 °C. External temperature – minus 92,3 °C. External pressure – 0.8 atm. Oxium level – 97,34%. All systems nominal. ROZER: Minus 92 degrees? So why I can feel the cold? SID: It's the atmosphere – on the Mun in the shadow there are lower temperatures but vacuum is a great insulator. Here the atmosphere is sucking heat out of you. ROZER: Copy that. I better take the tools and the experiment. SID: I agree. ROZER: Uh! Damn, it's really heavy. SID: It's 0.8g after all. Are you ready? ROZER: Yes, I'm ready. SID: Okay. It's dark and the surface isn't that stable so you need to make small steps and take it easy. ROZER: Roger. How far should I go to deploy the experiment? SID: 50-60 meters would do. ROZER: I'm going. SID: Uhm, your suit temperature is still slowly dropping. Can you hear the heating system working? ROZER: Sure I can, the fans are rotating like crazy. SID: Oh. And you still can feel the cold working its way through your boots? ROZER: Yes. SID: Ahem. I think one experiment would do this for today than. There may be some problems with the suit heating and cooling system. ROZER: :breathing: Great. So how much time I have before I freeze to death? SID: Two hours? ROZER: :breathing: Damn. The, uhm, slash is a little slippery. SID: Remember, small steps. You don't need to hurry, you've only 40-50 meters left. ROZER: :breathing: SID: ... ROZER: :breathing: SID: So, uhm... Do you want to know what this experiment actually does? ROZER: :breathing: No. But it won't stop you from telling me this. Am I right? SID: Well, you are carrying it so you can just as well- ROZER: :heavy breathing: Just say it. SID: Okay. This experiment is spectrometer-based combustion monitoring device for flame stoichiometry. As you know, we have three more of them and- ROZER: :heavy breathing: Stoichiometry? SID: It's chemistry, branch dedicated to reactants and products in chemical reactions. It will basically use the oxium from the atmosphere to, well, burn it and then it will analyze the products of the oxidation as well as detect all the atmospheric gases. ROZER: :heavy breathing: So basically it's a gas lighting. SID: Well, I guess you can describe it like this... But it's much more sophisticated than this – it's like saying that a space rocket is just a pile of explosives. If successful, these experiments will give us a detailed knowledge about the composition of Laythe's atmosphere. And I hope it will give us the answer for the basic question – why there's oxium here? ROZER: :heavy breathing: Frak. I hope it's 50 meters because if I have to carry it even further I need a break. SID: Uhm, actually I'm getting your spacesuit signal from 56 meters. You may stop. ROZER: :heavy breathing: Good. ROZER: :heavy breathing: Damn it... May I deploy it now? SID: After the check-up. Computer, EVA status. LAYTHE LANDER: Affirmative. Suit temperature – 13 °C. External temperature – minus 92,4 °C. External pressure – 0.8 atm. Oxium level – 91,34%. All systems nominal. SID: Hmm, you're using oxium too fast – but it's nothing, you'll be back before you'll be down to even two thirds. Deploy the experiment, Rozer, but be careful for your arm. ROZER: :breathing: Copy that. ROZER: :breathing: It's deployed and it's working, Sid. SID: Fantastic! And to think it's the first artificial flame on this mun ever. ROZER: :breathing: You're forgetting exhaust flames from the lander. Can you see me? SID: The only source of light out there? Of course I can see you. ROZER: :breathing: Not the only one. SID: I'm getting data from the device! ROZER: :breathing: Good. SID: This is amazing. Rozer, you should start heading back to the lander, spacesuit's temperature is still dropping slowly. ROZER: :breathing: Copy that. Just give me a minute to catch my breath. SID: Rozer? Your spacesuit temperature has dropped to 8 °C . ROZER: I'm going. SID: I'm really worried about it – this shouldn't have happened. I mean, were the spacesuits damaged during the landing? ROZER: It doesn't matter now. We have to fix my spacesuit and hope your is fine. SID: But what if we can't fix them? We need to deploy all the experiments and take samples from various locations. We can't leave without taking the samples from the ocean, for the love of Kod. ROZER: Right now we're not leaving with any samples at all. But we should deal with the problems one at a time. ROZER: I'm at the ladder, I'm going up. SID: Be careful with your arm! And how are you feeling? At 4 °C it must be- ROZER: I'm fine. It would be much worse if it happened during a long EVA, half--hour walk from the lander, don't you think? SID: Well, yes, it could always be worse but... how's this comforting? ROZER: :breathing: If it could be worse and it isn't yet I find that comforting. SID: Yet? ROZER: :breathing: Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. I'm at the hatch, Sid. SID: Opening. But you always expect the worse to happen, don't you? ROZER: :breathing: I guess I do. Uh! Okay, I'm in. SID: Repressurization started. So where's logic in that? You're preparing for the worst but not hoping for the best? ROZER: Hope is the denial of reality. And reality is all that is – just so. *** MISSION STATUS ***

Another aspect to consider in the equation is that when we talk about water on Mars, it's probably not going to be the clean, pure liquid we commonly think of. Quite possibly it will be polluted with a number of different mineral contaminants that make it quite possible to remain in a liquid form even down to -20c

I will talk about science in a later video. The foam insulation is what's on top of the orange tank, but the texture is not final.

Well, technically, Sol is a main sequence yellow star, so realistically it works either way. Most of it is going to depend the viewer's interpretation of "real" in the first place. Is it based solely on personal observation (which would be a notch for the white fans), or is it based on scientific facts that categorize its color as yellow? And to that point, how can anybody talk about realism when the discussion surrounds a fictional star that's too small to even exist in the real universe anyway? Okay, okay, I admit it: I'm just nit-picking for the sake of discussion. For my part, I think modifications look great, no matter what color they are! Actually, now that I think about it, I wonder if there's a way to change the ambient light color on individual worlds. Sure, Kerbin is earth-like, so the light is white. But what about Laythe or Eve? It might be interesting if other planets with atmospheres also had a slightly different spectrum of visible light within.

K^2, I fail to see how your pessimism is justified. First of all, the 20 km diameter was clearly stated as simply being able to resolve an Earth-sized planet as a "disk" from 50 light-years. "Resolving as a disk" is the common term used when we talk about what resolution is required before a point source first begins to resolve. It is obvious I was talking about simply a fuzzy picture of something just barely larger than a point source. Clearly, if you want a true terrestrial planet imager, you'll need something like on the order of at least 100 km across, and then, you'd only be able to get halfway decent images of the very closest planets. I had almost added that if we could make an interferometer some day with a diameter of 1000 km, we could put the equivalent of 50 pixels across an Earth-like planet 50 light years away, but I cut that part out; I thought it was too much detail and too distant of a proposition. Perhaps I should have left it in to make my meaning more clear? Perhaps I misspoke when I said we can do it with today's technology, but we should be able to do it soon, especially if more funding and study was put into it. I don't see where there are any major show-stopper issues. Perhaps I misspoke because what I really mean, when I think of "today's technology", is that it is something that we either already have, or could immediately begin research and development on, and have ready in a reasonable time span like 10 or 20 years. Clearly, if we directed NASA to build a space interferometer composed of a separately-flying, telescope constellation, we wouldn't be getting in for at least 10 years, probably more like 20- just look how long it took for just the "simple" JWST. But at least, we'd be working on it, and it would be coming. I would assuming that station keeping would be accomplished with something like small electric ion thrusters. You can probably have some small adjustable optical elements to make up for really small, fast perturbations. You can determine the precise distance between the spacecraft with laser interferometry, and it is accurate to the required precision for optical interferometry. How can this not be extended to kilometer+ distances? I would think that the lack of atmosphere, ground vibrations, the ability to smoothly change the distances between the telescopes means space is a far better environment to build an optical interferometer than the ground. I don't see what you find so worrisome about drift. In space, perterbation forces are extremely weak, as opposed to on Earth, where we have wind, Earth quakes, even the minor seismic distrubances caused by people walking around or cars passing by; temperature swings, etc. Space is empty and constant. We have the thruster and MEMS technology to precisely position the telescopes, or there is no reason to think we couldn't develop it. We have laser interferometers capable of measuring extremely precise distances, precise enough for the task. And if by some chance a visible light laser interferometer isn't good enough, why not just use a UV laser interferometer? Where do I go wrong here?

There are a few problems with that which go a bit beyond engineering. First, I agree with the ~20km estimate, but that's just to resolve it as a point. Basically, you'd be able to confirm that it's not a point object, which we already know. If you want to image anything of its features, you'll need a significantly larger effective aperture. Just to say, "Hey, look, clouds" you'll need something like 10x larger size. Of course, if we are doing this with a swarm, it's not really a huge problem. We can build an interferometer thousands of km across. In fact, anything smaller than Earth orbit is kind of pointless. But the larger you go, the more challenging it gets with precision. So lets talk about that. Starting with there not being a terribly good way to build an optical interferometer telescope. It's easy enough in radio astronomy. We just build an array, record the actual time-dependent signal, and use computers to sort out the rest. We can't do that with a signal in optical frequencies. So we have to build an actual interferometer. And again, on ground, it's not impossible. You just have to tune everything, like you said, to nanometer precision. The fact that this is something that's been understood for many decades, and we still only have a couple of arrays that are actually capable of doing something useful, with a few more planned or under construction, should tell you how difficult a task it is. On the ground, where things don't shift around, and we can measure distances with incredible precision. Distance is still a limiting factor. Across a few hundred meters, we can use lasers to measure distances very, very precisely. As distances grow, you start having problems. Not only is it hard to measure distances, but they constantly change. And then we go to the big problem. Space. First of all, holding station with required precision is impossible. Just forget about that. Things are going to move and drift, and you'll have to find a way to deal with that. No mechanical system is going to move with sufficient precision and with little enough vibration to allow this to work. You'll have to measure precise positions of the objects and find non-mechanical ways to adjust distances that beams have to travel. Fortunately, there are electro-optical systems that can work for you, but nearly all of them require polarized light, so you'll have losses there requiring larger mirrors on telescopes. But that's ok, we can deal with that. Measurement, though... Lets start with the fact that GPS can pinpoint your position on the ground to within a few meters. You'll have to do better. Even if we forget about doing this full scale, and try to build a swarm just 200km across somewhere, you'll end up doing 200x better than GPS on timing along. So we went from error in meters, to that in centimeters. Perhaps, millimeters. We are still 4-5 orders of magnitude short. You can do improvements with the right geometry, doing some adjustments, improve timing techniques used for positioning, and you might be able to shave a couple of orders of magnitude off that. But you are still way short. Using interferometry to image exoplanets is a great idea, but we are not going to do this with modern technology. We can't. The only way we'll have chance is if we can do the same thing we do with radio interferometry and do computer processing. And to do that, we need optical computers. When that becomes a standard for computation, we can start talking about ways to build a large space array for imaging exoplanets.

I'm not thrilled with the ambiguity from the Devs, because its human nature to assume the worst when we don't have enough facts to go on. Particularly when dealing with other people, it gives us time to anticipate whatever bad news there is. Now, for what its worth, here's where I'm coming from: I played the demo a few times and liked it (around 0.20/0.21, I forget). After promising myself I wouldn't get hooked, I did my research on the game and saw that they were planning on implementing a resource system, which was a huge selling point for me. It was *the* thing that convinced me to pay for the game. Obviously, there's a risk in paying for future features, but I'm sure many of us have bought games in the confidence that they'll be better in the future. I'm not going to get all melodramatic and talk about the obligations to the paying customer or anything like that. But, when you pay money for software and the developer says that they plan on introducing a feature, and then it starts to really look like they're walking back that plan... it hurts (never mind that it was the feature that sold me on the product in the first place). And the ambiguity hurts more. Again, not to be melodramatic, but this analogy seems very appropriate: Ever been dumped? Hurts, doesn't it? Ever been dumped by someone who just didn't tell you that you've been dumped? Hurts even more. I hope this helps explain why some of us are very upset about this. Of course, the ideal situation would be for the Devs to jump in and say "Hey, guess what? We got it to work, resource mining is coming in 0.23," but I think many of us would be at least satisfied by getting some concrete answers regarding the whole thing. PS, for every person who says that the whole logistical process of extracting and refining resources is boring, many people think the same way about managing apses and docking.

Hey guys. I created a development forum discussion thread to talk about specifics. They might get more notice there.

There are proposals on the table in the real world for refueling probes in-situ on Europa (and probably other places). They talk about reducing launch mass requirements in terms of kilograms, so I assume we're not talking something enormous that requires infrastructure. As far as trivializing fuel use, any resource system that allows refueling will do that; it should be balanced through other means. One possible way to do that is to give the converter or drill part a "durability" that can be replenished/replaced/fixed by an EVA. You could even give larger parts a much greater durability so that the EVA task doesn't become the focus of your resource extraction, and have the tiny parts never able to be repaired (or only repaired once or twice).

Eh, just ignore all the "ram" talk anyway, people on this forum don't generally seem to understand how ram affects performance in a game. It's not a magic bullet that improves framerate. Your cpu is fine, I run a 3570k@ 4.5ghz and the game is nice and snappy, as for overclocking, here's a nice in depth guide. It's not tremendously difficult or dangerous, just follow the guide. http://www.overclock.net/t/1247413/ivy-bridge-overclocking-guide-with-ln2-guide-at-the-end

Funny thing is, though, that whenever someone says resource system, we immediately know that he is referring to ISRU, not Fuel, oxidizer, RCS, etc. When ever we talk about those things, we call them fuel, oxidizer, and rcs fuel, not the resource system, and up to now, there has never been any misunderstandings between anyone on these separate subjects, which never shared the same name. As far as I know, fuel, o2, rcs, an xenon were collectively called fuel, and we referenced electricity to charge or electric charge.

I totally agree, Aramchek. I do NOT want to have to manage air, food, etc. "Simulating all the tedious minutiae of real space flight" is not what I signed on for! JordanL, I think you've hit the nail on the head right here. I would like to know what Squad's vision for a completed game looks like. The main web page for KSP describes the game as "create and manage your own space program". With sandbox being complete, they've nailed down the "create" portion. We know science will be a part of "manage", and there's talk of missions and reputation as well. What is the vision for "manage"? Do they even have this vision yet, or are they still throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks in order to get a vision?

Ok, so the "old" ressource system wasn't fun. Fine, but why scrap it completeley? How about adapting it now that you know whats not fun about it? Even during Kerbalcon there was the talk with the astronout who told you that asteroids are still missing ingame (twink twink). Now, lets find another use for asteroids besides deflecting them from earth....hm...oh...yea...ressources! Either this is a total communication failiure on SQUADS part (=we didn't scrap ressources, just our first implementation) or they really don't see how ressources are what drives space programs (its way too expensive to build everything on earth, famous gravity well problem). p.s. you really have to get better at communication on the internet FAST, you need a certain skill at beeing precise and vague at the same time covering all your bases without talking obvious BS (= we didn't want that anyways, we always planned that anyways). When large groups of ppl start disecting what you say you better cover your ass.

Wow, this thread is old. Would you guys mind checking the dates before you resurrect a thread more than a year old next time? It's okay if you want to talk about it, but it's generally better to just make a new thread. If you feel the need, quote the important parts from the old one. Necromancy is frowned upon in most cultures I'll be locking this, guys.

Don't forget to point both dishes at each other (target the SS-1 to the comms sat, and the comms sat to the SS-1 on the Duna probe), otherwise they can't talk to each other. Mission Control is the only one you can just point at and have it work. If you're low enough (geo-Kerbin Orbit is low enough) then consider using one of the omni-directional antennas for communicating to probes in Low Kerbin Orbit. Putting these on your comm satellites will erase the need to point dishes at Mission Control and each other, so long as the satellites are within range (GKO is under 3Mm, so any antenna but the Comm-16 should work). Then you can use your dishes to point at probes and things. It took me some time to figure it out, too. If this is confusing, just ask. If you have more questions, just ask. Honestly, I don't yet know what the benefit to pointing at a planetary body is. I thought it was intended to target the closest receiving relay around that body, but I haven't seen it work that way. I could be doing it wrong, so don't take my word for it.

RE: Resources Proactive communication on major announced features: When it was clear that resources weren't going the way they intended, it's appropriate to tell the community: "Hey, this isn't working out, it's gonna take more time to develop. The design goals of the feature are X, Y, & Z, and it's not meeting the requirements". Trying to ignore the problem away breeds these problems. Further, I have seen tons of posts on here about players being upset that they have to read about major features on other sites. Responsible announcements: If the resource system was so undeveloped that a few weeks of development made it clear that the entire system was so un-fun that it had to be scrapped, then I would never have released the image of resource map in the first place. IF things happened on a time frame even remotely close to what HarvestR stated, then it was beyond premature. RE: Multiplayer announcement When members of the chat were asking "what announcement what announcement?" The community manager should have told them. The whole coy thing, "Oh, what? announcement" If multiplayer was planned the whole time as HarvestR claimed, someone should have at least removed the conflicting information. The way it's been presented, it looks like total BS. RE: HarvestR's presentations On the opening:Is a practice run too much to expect when he's opening the Kon!? I KNOW he's busy. That's not an excuse. The Kon was supposed to be the annual showcase of his project. To be professional would be to treat the showcase of the project as absolutely paramount. Even more important getting the patch out on time. It doesn't take much to get a list of features to talk about ready. Saying "I don't even have a list of features in front of me" when that's what your supposed to be talking is just god-awful presentation. Someone coach the boy for next time. And if no-one says something, it's not going to get better. On his closing statements:I would have never have made the statement RE: community expectations about resources. First, SQUAD released the chart, we didn't ask for it. Second, SQUAD had months to address it, and curtail a spiral of expectations when those expectations were way lower. On today's address: He had a chance to expand what was said with time to prepare. He provided NO expansion of what was said. That's disappointing. If the community was confused about what was said at the Kon, repeating what was said doesn't do any good. In summary, if SQUAD wants to have a good community relationship, I expect them to show the community respect by communicating in a matter that is: Direct Proactive Prepared That's what I'd do differently. I really appreciate you being direct enough to ask, Rowsdower. It's movement in the right direction. One other thing: after a portion of the community has expressed such a strong interest in resources, I would have at attempted to make it clear they were heard. It would take a statement like "After seeing how strongly the community feels about the resource system, we will do our best to revisit the system". I will reiterate that I think resources can be fun. It's easier to figure out if the focus of the system is clear. and on this: Yeah, it can be rough. But inconsistent and confusing communication with the community makes it way worse, and the onus of responsible communication lies on the developer's. The longer they avoid addressing issues, the worse the community takes it.

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not, so I guess I'll approach this seriously. I don't develop games, and the point in mentioning that I'm a developer was not to make it seem like I know what they should do better than they do. I mentioned that I'm a developer, because the specific point that I was being asked about (client communication) is something that is common to all development, but is very different from most other fields. I've been on the other side of this (with individual clients and companies instead of communities), and I know that sometimes it's better for Dev to simply not communicate or say something until they have a good plan in place. One thing you really don't want if you're developing anything is letting the client (or in this case community) drive the dev cycle, but if you expose a void of information, the client will always fill it with something. It's often better to not mention the void of information until you have your own plan on how to fill it. In this case, I think that this whole resource thing would actually be received a lot differently from the community if it wasn't paired with the announcement of multiplayer as a core mechanic. This has come off to many users as, "The thing we said we wouldn't do because it was impossible is part of our scope and always has been, and the thing that we said we would do and gave detailed outlines for is no longer in scope because we didn't like how it worked". I mean, they are both entirely valid things to happen, but juxtaposed it sort of sets everyone off, and makes it seem like SQUAD doesn't know what they're doing (they know what they're doing). It probably should have been something like: "Multiplayer is something that we've always wanted to put into the game, but for the longest time we didn't know if it would be possible within our development cycle. Now that we're further into alpha, it's clear that our scope can handle multiplayer, which is a feature we feel will strongly improve the experience of the game. "When it comes to the resource system that we outlined a while ago, we haven't talked about it since because we don't have anything to say. Resource mining, like other 'end-game' content, will be tackled once we have all of the core development to a state we're happy with. There's lots of things that we can do to make the core gameplay more enjoyable first, and that's a better use of our time for the immediate future. Resource mining was one concept of what end-game might look like, among many others, so once we feel comfortable getting into hard scoping of that content we'll revisit it and see what makes sense with what we've already built. That might not include resource mining, we don't know. We don't want to restrict ourselves by scoping a part of the game we aren't ready to scope yet. "The important thing is that whatever the end-game content ends up looking like, it's fun and it fits with the rest of the game. Right now we want to finish off the career mode and polish what we have before pressing on. We'll talk more about what end-game looks like once we're closer to the end of development." Such a statement is true (strictly speaking) even if they've already internally ruled out resource mining, and is something people can accept a lot better. Plus it would set people up for the eventual "we threw out resource mining" by setting up the expectations people have, wrapping all of those suggestions and features into "end-game content" which will be talked about closer to the end of dev. It also avoids committing the dev team one way or the other to a scoping session that honestly might change (yet again) by the time they are actually working on it. In short, development is all about delivering a product that your customer is happy with... but if you don't know how to manage customer expectations gracefully, it doesn't matter how awesome your product is. Look at Spore. Maxis and EA managed the expectations on that development cycle very poorly, and then rushed to try and meet some moving goalposts. And then failed at it completely. But on its own, without any context, Spore is an entertaining game. It's just not what people expected. Managing expectations is what actually separates "good" developers and companies. You under promise, you over deliver. SQUAD isn't doing terrible at that, but their product is much better than people think it is, and that's because they're communicating too much or too little (as I said I'm still not sure which). They are the ones that have taken the initiative to build an alpha community to provide feedback, and in that context I'd personally like more information about the overall vision. But goodness, if we're all having these kinds of arguments, this must be a good game. There's no way that I'd even contemplate these kinds of discussions over most games, and that's because the product that SQUAD has delivered so far has exceeded my expectations. That's hard (very hard) to do consistently.

*GASP* Is THAT what project development means!? Thank Jeb you were here to clear that up for me. Yeah, I get that plans change. But it's not the community's fault that the developers announced a feature, then tried to ignore it into irrelevance, then act shocked when players get upset it had been canned. I am, but it's such a weight off my mind knowing that I have your permission, now. I was concerned. No, seriously. Then why announce a feature that they hadn't thought through? Why not say multiplayer had been in the scope since the beginning instead of conflicting information on the site? Why were the community manager and someone else on the team (A dev? I srsly can't remember who) directing people to an external site during KerbalKon, when they were asking about the multi-player announcement? Why not prepare a simple list on paper about what you're going to talk about on your web-cast at the opening event of your own game? srsly, though, don't answer those points above. It's rhetorical. I'm trying to demonstrate that SQUAD has repeatedly dropped the ball on communicating with the community. If SQUAD would decide to either be forthcoming OR keep things quiet, either way would be massive improvement. Seriously, for social media/gaming company that apparently takes pride in listening to their community, they really don't seem to do a good job with communication. And don't try to claim that my statements regarding HarvestR are attacks or toxic. I haven't said anything untrue, and when the lead on project of this scope does that poor of a job of communicating, it's sufficient reason for concern. Don't wag your finger at me, wag it at SQUAD. It's their responsibility to make sure he was prepared, not mine. and finally... Until your title includes "moderator", I don't give two kerbals about your opinion of my posts' tone/content/POV etc. I've as much right as you do to present my opinion in whatever manner I please so long as I keep my posts within the forum rules. You're just going to have to suck it up and live what I write. Or totally ignore it. Your choice. I seriously could not care less. Besides, if you already think so little of my intelligence that you think your patronization explanation regarding project development or my tone would be informative, then I really don't see how you can believe that anything I say, regardless of tone, could possibly have any impact.

That's not quite right. Firstly, there's a difference between saying 'resources' and 'resource mining'. Resources already exist as Fuel, Oxy, Mono and such, but mining, more specifically in the way it was proposed in that old chart, is what got shelved. We might still come up with something better, more streamlined, to cover the 'bases' (pun not intended, just happy accident) that the resources plan was meant to take on, but it's still too early to talk about anything concrete, and that's also a good thing, considering there's a lot still to come, and all our plans are constantly being updated as the game grows. Cheers Note the underlined text, resource-mining isn't necessarily off the table, just the way that Squad wanted to implement them is.

I might have figured it out.. BioMass, even with 3 greenhouses to produce it, is permanently used up to zero by the fuel generator. That way he can't keep up and the 4 greenhouses are faster at consuming CO2 than he is producing them. That station started out with 700 Liquidfuel and already completed .. at this moment its 15th day in space. It managed to produce only 450 LF so far, CO2 is at 304. Biomass stays at 0.something, it just can't keep up producing it. Food on the other hand is up to 4055 already, using only one greenhouse. I guess I should rename it from Refuelling Station to McKerbal.. maybe you can do something about it, its really designed to produce fuel and the generator has been running at realtime for the most of the mission. Btw, I'm over in IRC if you want to talk... The Converter eats 60 BioMass per minute, each Greenhouse produces 3 per minute.

if you want some help with making something that can indicate acceleration and float in zero G, you may want to talk to Frizzank as a start for he has a floating sandwich in his IVA for big G