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They label themselves a hard sci-fi, non-open-world starfighter sim a la Star Citizen. Their dev team profiles have notable names on them. They namedrop big things. But am I the only one who fails to see a connection between rather ordinary starfighter sim gameplay that goes on on the screen, and the hard sci-fi fluff they push on the side? Visible lasers, extremely close-range dogfighting, some of the ships noticeably lack radiators, one of the ships has pronounced atmospheric features... hell, it seems there aren’t any SC-style gimballed weapon moints!

Wishing to make a little novella set a few thousand years in the future where interstellar travel is comon. In the hopes of using time dilation as a plot device, I want to make some ships capable of travelling at close to c with a constant 1g acceleration, while staying within the realm of possibility. I was hoping you guys could help to make sure that the propulsion concepts i was planning to use were still scientifically accurate, for the most part. To solve the "where did you get all that antimatter?" hole, I know that the collision of two specific kinds of white dwarves can generate lots of antimatter. Since fusion reactors somewhat replicate the conditions inside a star, it seems feasible that a very powerful, unstable fusion reactor could produce antimatter. So what if the reactor destroys itself in the process! You have antimatter! Let's just assume it's a very expensie fuel source. The only somewhat cheaty thing i plan to do is give humanity thermocouples that are close to 100% efficient. I'd prefer not to have to deal with hundreds of kilometres of radiators. Now on to the ideas: Antimatter- So i know that typical matter-antimatter collisions produce exhaust velocities of about 0.33c. Too low for me. I also know that pure electron-positron annihilation produces velocities closer to 0.56c, which is what i need. Is there any possible way to magnetically store electrons on their own, or to supercharge normal matter with hundreds of electrons apiece and store that? (don't mind if the magnetic storage takes crazy amounts of energy (thermocouples!) or if some of the fuel decays over the two-year transfer time due to quantum tunneling). Also, what are the actual equations that are used to determine the destructive capabilities of antimatter? Bussard Ramjet- I know that these supposedly have a "terminal velocity" of 0.2c, but this assumption seems to imply that the hydrogen is sped up to roughly the same speed as the ship before being fused. I was planning to use a series of magnetic wireframe nozzles a couple hundred kilometres across placed a few light minutes at maximum in front of the ship to ionize the incoming hydrogen (using beamed power from the ship) and nudge it into the ship's reactor. These nozzles could also use the ionized hydrogen to propel themselves at the same pace as the rest of the ship. Light Sails- Probably incapable of near-lightspeed travel, but maybe a cheap way to transport cargo at reasonable speeds. A ship could use an engine to get close to a star, and then unfurl a solar sail at perihelion. A quick calculation based on the amount of power the earth gets tells me that a circular 100km sail placed 6.4 million km from the sun (the closest we can get a spacecraft with our current technology i believe) would be hit with about 3.0*10^16 watts of energy (give or take an order of magnitude). Is this reasonable? Black Holes- Could a black hole be used as a gravitational slingshot to get ships close to the speed of light? Thanks for reading this.

Lowell Etroublant, 1949 After the second world war, the Eastern European division of Lowell Cars, the Lowell Automobilwerk GmbH, came under communist rule and was nationalized. Soon (August 1945) the government ordered the design of a cheap family car to help the struggling economy and to satisfy the disgruntled, often defiant, population. The Lowell team started designing and had a prototype ready in February 1946. They invited government officials for a test drive. It was a disaster. The government rejected the proposal based on the used technology like standard suspension and wheels, gearboxes and the piston engine running on regular fuel (Normalbenzin). The argument was they needed the parts for building up military vehicles. Back to the drawing board. After many months of searching the team found parts they could use. From a terminated company (because the Soviets felt the fighter jets competed with their own designs, which made Stalin angry) they acquired jet engines and landing gear. At first the engineers wanted to use the landing gear as the main wheels but this idea went into the trashcan after they discovered the tires couldn’t handle the roads, which were in terrible shape. They had already made the landing gear units a part of the bodywork design and a redesign presented a problem because of the delay, they wouldn’t make it before the deadline. They eventually found, just in time, the final solution: elephant skateboard wheels. There was a huge surplus because a famine in early 1948 made the government order all elephants to be slaughtered for food. It looked funny but did work: they were compact to install, provided reasonable grip and a smooth ride. Plus the brakes were excellent because -as we all know- elephants are heavy. But because of the fact there was no gearbox and thus no way of driving the wheels, there also was no reverse. Drivers had to push their car if they had to back up. For the time, aerodynamics were excellent. The jet engine could propel the car to an amazing 90m/s at 100% power. It was decided to reduce the power to 18.5% though, partly because the weak suspension damping made the car dangerous at speeds above 35m/s but mostly because all government officials displayed a different colour of the rainbow during a demonstration. They couldn’t handle the idea that a cheap car for the plebs would be faster than their own state limousines. The population soon discovered how to remove the engine limiter but if the state police would catch you speeding, you’d spend the rest of your life in a gulag for instilling anti-socialist thoughts to the public, an act of high treason. After production started in 1949, the population soon discovered funny little levers labeled Einziehfahrwerk hidded away behind panels, which would lower the original wheels. They also discovered these wheels didn’t have bad tires like the design team claimed, in fact they were a lot better. After a short trial the design team admitted the lie because they wanted the car to look ridiculous and make a fool out of the communist government. They were hanged the next day. The name of the car was allegedly the name of the wife of one of the team members. It sounded French but no government official spoke the language of the former enemy. There was another way the team made the car ridiculous but this wasn’t spotted by the government nor the public. It was discovered in the memoirs of a widow of one of the team members, when she published those decades later. Tip for fun: Set the Juno to 100% thrust and disable crash damage, it’s fast and good for drifting. Download link

each day i live, i grow more and more concerned about the future of our species, i firmly believe were not thinking hard enough as a species about where we want to be in 100 years, weve made it so far, weve modernised to a point that its possible no other species in the universe has yet reached our level of advancement, we were fortunate enough to evolve higher than average intelligence in the mess that is the evolution of life, and yet we choose to destroy our planet without thinking about where were going to go next when the planet can no longer support us, were well aware of the effects we have on it, and that were relying on outdated and non renewable methods of obtaining energy, so we cant be a stay at home civilisation as it stands, and were not certain such a civilisation is even possible, we fight each other, hunt species to extinction, and have extremely closed minded thinking when it comes to our view of the world. im going to get to the point now, if we are to continue surviving as a species, we need to leave the planet, this is extremely clear at this point and yet people only think of themselves and what the taxes they pay to the government can do for them personally, at this point theres probably a few people who think im a hypocrite for saying these things but let me make it very clear, i want the taxes they pay to go to turning us into a spacefaring species, not into weapons to wage war, not into a health care system ill only take advantage of later in my life, and not into construction projects to create jobs, none of these things matter while the clock counts down to the time when we run out of non renewable resources and no longer have a way to leave the planet weve now destroyed. if we invest in our space programs, things will be rough for a long time im not going to deny this truth. people in first world countries who dont have jobs will still not have jobs, the national debt in the case of the united states will still be there, people in first world countries will still starve and have no access to clean water, but with the population growth running as rampant as it is, we do not have the means to solve those problems directly no matter how much time and resources we put into it, but if we had access to the solar system weve been ignoring for next to no reason other than the general public isnt interested in "that waste of money, build more weapons to keep us safe, and my brother johnny still has no job", we would have the resources to solve all those problems and more, and the economy would enter a boom for the next couple of thousand years. my personal feelings are that we need to stop giving government run space programs pocket change that they can barely do anything besides send a small probe to some place with, and start giving them large amounts of money they can actually make some progress with, commercial spaceflight shouldnt just be about touring low earth orbit, it should be about settling humans on other worlds, we have access to so many asteroids we could gather valuable resources from, and use as space colonies using the rock of the asteroid to shield us from radiation extremely close to us on a cosmic scale, were missing out on a very powerful kickstart to completely solving the problems we have here on earth just because we feel we should focus on them right now, but the direct approach is not always the best as weve proven countless times throughout history and appear to be proving yet again anyway that was my real talk, feel free to add your thoughts

Hi all. I've released the UpgradesGUI plugin, whose function is to complete the part/module upgrades feature introduced in KSP 1.2. Currently it has two main features : Provide a better integration of upgrade in the VAB/SPH part tooltips by showing upgraded part/module stats, something that is really lacking in stock, and very confusing to players. Provide a GUI interface to allow the player to select which upgrades should be activated. I've done this by hacking the tooltips to make widgets clickable. This allow for a nice stock-integrated GUI. Of course I encourage mod authors to use upgrades in their parts and to recommend or even bundle my plugin. But maybe we could go further and overcome the current upgrade implementation limitations : Upgrades can't reliably & easily be used to enable/disable modules : Being able to set the enabled / isEnabled properties in modules instances would allow upgrades to effectively add/remove modules. This has been requested a few times (by @MysterySloth, @sebi.zzr, @Skalou). Combined with the upgrade selection feature in my plugin, this would provide in practice a "module switching" feature to KSP, something that no common switcher plugin (IFS, B9, Firespitter...) currently allow. I know that Kerbalism by @ShotgunNinja does it, maybe also SSTU by @Shadowmage. Therefore I propose a "ModuleEnabler" partmodule that would allow this in a simple way : MODULE { name = ModuleEnabler targetType = ModuleResourceConverter // module to control targetEnable = false // is this module enabled initialy showWidget = false // in the tooltip modules list, is the widget visible showInfoInUpgrade = true // in the tooltip upgrades list, do the upgrade widget show the whole module info (or just the name) // Optional fields used to be sure the right module is targeted if multiple modules of the same type exist in the part : targetIdField = ConverterName // targeted module field name targetIdValue = Lf+Ox // targeted module field value UPGRADES { UPGRADE { name__ = ISRU_Upgrade description__ = Add an ISRU targetEnable = true // enable the ISRU module showWidget = true // show the ISRU module in the part tooltip module list showInfoInUpgrade = false // only show "ModuleResourceConverter" in the part tooltip upgrade list (to unclutter it) } } } Upgrades can't be used to change/switch RESOURCE{} nodes This could be done in a special "ModuleUpgradeableResources" partmodule. Note that the stock behaviour with nested ConfigNodes is to delete all the nodes of the type used in the UPGRADE (here "RESOURCE" nodes) in the module, and replace them with those defined in the UPGRADE node. Combined with the selection GUI, this allow for resource switching. MODULE { name = ModuleUpgradeableResources // Resource added by the module when no upgrade is applied RESOURCE { name = ElectricCharge amount = 1000 maxAmount = 1000 } UPGRADES { UPGRADE { name__ = Monoprop_tank ExclusiveWith__ = resource // mandatory so only one resource set is enabled at a time description__ = Add a monopropellant fuel tank // replace the resources added to the part by the module with these ones RESOURCE { name = ElectricCharge amount = 1000 maxAmount = 1000 } RESOURCE { name = MonoPropellant amount = 40 maxAmount = 40 } } UPGRADE { name__ = Xenon_tank ExclusiveWith__ = resource // mandatory so only one resource set is enabled at a time description__ = Convert the whole part to a xenon tank // replace the resources added to the part by the module with these ones RESOURCE { name = xenonGaz amount = 40 maxAmount = 40 } } } } Also note that I'm planning to give a way for players to open the upgrades selection GUI (the whole part tooltip) for already placed parts in the editor. Still not 100 % sure I can manage this, so no promise. What do you guys think of all this ? Would those modules be useful for anybody ?

I'm having problem with communication, I have a HG-5 antenna on all of my satelite with only KSC as a ground station enabled. However my one satelite which is blocked by Kerbin and cannot talk to KSC is unable to talk to other satelites, why does this happen? http://imgur.com/j05BjlZ(screenshot)

Now, I don't want to start another parts revamp thread. We already have a few of these. What I want to talk about is the simplicity of the parts. Let's take take the HH as an example. Does this thing really have to look like this? The handle bars around the top and bottom dark rings are not usable anyway. And the gold foil needs to be covered to not look as if it was the only thing between the interior and the vacuum of space. Just keep in mind I'm not trying to make a rant of some sort. What I want to say is all the parts, including rocket, MK2 and MK3, should have as simplistic style as possible just so they can be put together and always look good. Right now it's not really possible. If you want to make a plane with hitchhikers as crew modules they will look out of place. To sum up: simplicity would be a nice way of solving the issue with all the parts not looking nice when put together. Simple cylinders with the white+grey+black (+orange accents from time to time) pattern would work best and the textures could be reused in many cases, thus making any part revamp easier to deal with.

There's small implications in-game about lore and myth. I have ideas, ladies and gentlemen. I want to hear yours as well. I will include a snippet of my headcanon lore if anyone's interested though DM. It leans towards the explicit side(Greco-Roman religion+ a little bit of monotheistic flavour) so I wouldn't feel comfortable posting it directly to a thread. Let's just say it explains why females weren't introduced until the official version came out and provides insight into why things are the way they are. Dres? Who's that? Neidon, Sarnus? You're crazy.

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.

Hi am new to this game

So I'm not sure if there's a thread about it, because I haven't seen one, but if there is feel free to merge/lock this one after posting a link to an existing thread. So I was lately thinking about replacing my old(ish) SONY Xperia L with something newer. What would be best is a phone with Android 5.0 and higher but with the same size of the screen. The problem is that doesn't leave me with much options, so I also thought about buying something like this. The phone cameras are kind of meh/10, but I don't think I'll be using it much anyway. I'm also considering buying a solar power bank. Because free energy! (not really though). So what do you think? Is it a good idea to buy a phone from a not-so-well-known company, or rather spend more money on something that is more "reliable". Are solar panels on a power bank worth it? Share your thoughts. And please, keep in mind I'm not an expert. Also don't turn this thread into iOS vs Android war thing. We're all mature enough not to do that, right?

Arr!