Your Favourite Feature in KSP

[quasarrgames]

I see so many threads (and admittedly created a few) about how ksp "isn't good enough" and "is missing so many features".

I just thought it might be fresh to make a thread that was just the opposite.

So, what's your favorite feature in KSP?

 

My favorite feature is the editor tools. Rotate, offset, root, they've made my building experience so much more fun, as well as making all my craft look infinitely better!

[lukethecoder64]

Kerbal portraits. By far.

[Hysterrics]

I think we all take symmetry mode for granted. Think about a life without symmetry mode. *shudder*  

[nohelmet]

Maneuver nodes, by far. It's genius how they teach you orbital mechanics.

[katateochi]

The space bar!  

Seriously though, there is a lot to like in this game (even if there are bits that make me scream).  The whole craft building interface is fantastic, especially when you compare it to things like robocraft and besiege.  But if I have to pick one thing, it's the ability to remove a whole section of parts (a module if you will) and plonk it on somewhere else or duplicate it (actually that's a bit bugged atm ) or save it as a subassembly.  The lack of that feature was very apparent in those other two and after taking it totally for-granted in KSP it made them seem very limited (tbf it was a while since I last tried those, maybe they have it now). 

[Spacetraindriver]

KSP itself...

[Temstar]

Patched Conics.

Yes laugh all you want at the lack of Lagrange points and fuzzy orbits but patched conics vastly changed the game when it was introduced. Before that you played the whole game with basically Tier 1 tracking station. Every trip to the Mun or Minmus was a shot in the dark and every orbital rendezvous involved looking up tables, eyeballing AN/DN and using circular orbit.

[regex]

I love almost everything about this game except for career mode and the science implementation (although science mode is pretty cool).  Sure, it's watered down for the masses and there's still an entire elephant in the room but the recent updates have been fantastic.

[Superfluous J]

I could joke and say "dV info" but won't.

For me it's gotta be the editor as a whole. I've tried many 3d building software in my time, large and small, dedicated and integrated, art- and game-related. I've never really enjoyed the process before. Some of them I gave up in frustration, others I was able to make work in spite of the problems, but none were actually a joy to work with. KSP's ship editor is fantastic in comparison.

Is it perfect? Of course not. But it's solid and a joy to work with.

[razark]

The ability to mod the game.

[Red Dwarf]

The spaceplane parts. There was a time when they weren't a part of the stock game, but now they're such a core feature, at least for me. 

[livefree75]

I know this is a little broad, but I think the fact that KSP has mostly realistic gravity simulations is what makes the game unique. Before I started playing it, I didn't even know that rockets had to go horizontally to get into orbit. (Imagine my first attempts to orbit Kerbin )

If you want a more specific feature, I think the vast world/solar system is awesome (despite being 1/10 IRL size). There is so much to explore in KSP I could play it for years.

Also, 100 posts!

[Guest]

The fact that it's so open.  My favorite feature is the dll loader.  I know, parts are awesome, but a majority of parts mods wouldn't work without custom modules.

[RocketSquid]

The simple file structure and relative ease of modding. Seriously, you pretty much just need to be able to read, type, and look stuff up.

[Snark]

I have to agree with these two:

1 hour ago, 5thHorseman said:

For me it's gotta be the editor as a whole. I've tried many 3d building software in my time, large and small, dedicated and integrated, art- and game-related. I've never really enjoyed the process before. Some of them I gave up in frustration, others I was able to make work in spite of the problems, but none were actually a joy to work with. KSP's ship editor is fantastic in comparison.

This.  A thousand times this.  I'm astounded at how fun and easy it is.  I can slap together a rocket in nothing flat, as creative as Legos, and it actually looks cool too.  This is really hard to get right, and they've totally batted it out of the park.  Hats off.

 

2 hours ago, razark said:

The ability to mod the game.

And this.  I've been playing KSP for nearly two years now, but didn't get into modding until just a couple of months ago, and I have to say I'm impressed.  The game's open architecture makes it so easy to mod.  I started from absolute zero knowledge of any of the game's internals, and in just a few days was turning out useful mods that make the game do things that I always wanted it to.  I can add features to this game.  And it's not even hard.  Just astounding to me.

Yes, the fact that they're on .NET makes life easier; that platform is just a joy to program in, and it has features that make self-documenting APIs much easier to find one's way around in.  And much of the so-called "KSP" API is just the Unity engine, not KSP itself.  Even so:  they've done such a great job ensuring that this game is moddable from the get-go, which in turn has led to a proliferation of high-quality mods for the game, which in turn has made my KSP experience immeasurably richer and kept me coming back month after month.

So major kudos to Squad for their foresight in making this happen.

[regex]

6 minutes ago, Snark said:

Even so:  they've done such a great job ensuring that this game is moddable from the get-go

Caveat: Mostly.  I'm pretty sure the asteroid generation code hasn't been changed since it got put in and that is a prime example of code that should have been reusable but was instead locked up under private functions for literally no good reason, prompting some downright weird workarounds to make custom generation work.  Code like this is all over the place.

On the other hand, yes, Unity and KSP are pretty moddable, and Unity is very easy to get into.

[swjr-swis]

The stuff I can build with it. The stuff others can build with it. The way I learn how to use something in a whole different way, almost every single time I play (or read the forum).

[Snark]

43 minutes ago, regex said:

Caveat: Mostly.  I'm pretty sure the asteroid generation code hasn't been changed since it got put in and that is a prime example of code that should have been reusable but was instead locked up under private functions for literally no good reason, prompting some downright weird workarounds to make custom generation work.  Code like this is all over the place.

Sure.  And the API could be documented, too, but it's not.  At all.  I'm sure there are plenty of rough edges that could be sanded off.  Heck, I've run into some warts myself, just in the relative handful of fairly simple mods that I've written.

However:  it's still astounding to me that they made this happen as well as they did.  Squad's a tiny company, working on a relative shoestring, and their hands are full just trying to implement their own darn features, and we get this, too?

From a software development and release perspective, shipping an API is hard.  I've been in the software industry a very long time, and I've shipped plenty of APIs, and I'm good at it, and take it from me that it's hard.  It's hard to architect it right.  It takes a lot of time and design effort.  And it takes a lot of testing.

I've seen plenty of companies who were shipping APIs do it with a lot less panache than Squad has pulled off, here-- and we're talking big companies that could throw an order of magnitude more developers at the problem than Squad did.

So my hat. Is. Off.

Edited January 25, 2016 by Snark

[regex]

5 minutes ago, Snark said:

From a software development and release perspective, shipping an API is hard.  I've been in the software industry a very long time, and I've shipped plenty of APIs, and I'm good at it, and take it from me that it's hard.  It's hard to architect it right.  It takes a lot of time and design effort.  And it takes a lot of testing.

They're not shipping an API and these are simple mistakes that new programmers make, like not even bothering to try making reusable code.  Over the years I've learned that taking a bit of extra time to make code reusable saves you time down the road, it's just common sense.

And that's cool, I'm not trying to take away the fact that KSP is emminently moddable, especially compared to, say, Minecraft, which was an utter pain for both user and programmer.  That is impressive.

[Snark]

20 minutes ago, regex said:

They're not shipping an API and these are simple mistakes that new programmers make, like not even bothering to try making reusable code.  Over the years I've learned that taking a bit of extra time to make code reusable saves you time down the road, it's just common sense.

And I couldn't agree with you more that reusable code = good.  But coding also has to adapt to the environment.  Myself, I'm used to working on six-nines-of-reliability software that has to live for years in punishing environments, and get worked on by a wide variety of teams.  So every line of code needs to be rock-solid, thoroughly unit- and integration-tested, and independently reviewed before check-in.  And yes, it's very reusable.

But it's slow.  If the teams I'm on had written KSP, it would be much more solid, much more "elegantly" coded, far better documented, lower bug count.  But it would have taken twice the time and five times the manpower that Squad had to put on this.

They're working on a shoestring, with very few developers and a tight schedule.  If it comes down to "just bang out something quick and get this feature out the door" versus "there's no feature", there are hard choices to be made.  You can't compromise on player experience... but programmability is negotiable.  Different environment, different tradeoffs.

And what I'm saying is, given their constraints, I think Squad's done an admirable job here.  Warts and all.

[OrtwinS]

Patched conics and maneuvre nodes.

1) Solar rendezvous with Class E astroid

2) Plan half a dozen low-dv maneuvres to slingshot/gravity assist/brake the thing to anywhere.

3) Watch a huge astroid shear by Mun with a Pe of ~20 km to insta-plane change and capture it

[RizzoTheRat]

I agree that the ability to be modded is one of KSP's greatest strengths (I'm a mod user not creator so no comment on how it's been implemented).  This means that they've been able to create a core game which is relatively simple for a new user to get to grips with, yet infinitely customisable to keep people interested for years.  It means the game development has been helped and steered by the users (ie some stuff that started out as mods has proved to be really popular and ended up in the core game).  You generally find that game modding attracts a loyal fan base that will keep the game popular for a lot longer too

[Red Iron Crown]

I love the lack of launch tower they added back in 0.19.

 

But yeah, the editor. Space lego is endlessly entertaining.

[Jeanjvs]

Quicksaves

[Choctofliatrio2.0]

I generally like all of it. Probably my favorite thing about it is there's always something new to attempt, at least for me.