totm dec 2022 Threads of the month: December 2022

[adsii1970]

The KSP forum moderator's team presents the
Threads of the Month

December 2022 Edition

It's finally December. For many of us, it's the time of the year where we celebrate various religious and/or traditional observances. There's something in the air where we look forward to spending time with family and friends. For some of us, both young and old, whose lives revolve around a school or university campus, December is the break between two semesters where we have a chance to breathe a little, slow down, and enjoy life before the fast-pace of another semester begins in mid-January. Right now, where I am, we are about to enter the winter season, my favorite season of the year - I love the feel of the cold air, the smell of frost in the morning and evening breeze, and the clouds overhead (cloudy days are great for those who suffer from migraines ). But wherever you are, and in case I do not get a chance to say it before then, happy holidays to you and your family!

And as I do in each of these threads, I am asking a favor - if you see an interesting thread - NOMINATE IT! The instructions for nominating a thread are at the bottom of this post.

Instructions on using the TOTM images: If your thread has been selected as a TOTM, you can copy the image's link above, go to the area of the forum you want to place it, then paste the link. When the image appears, press the <CONTROL> button and right click on your mouse. A menu will drop down and offer you the option to edit the picture. You can resize it - the first number can be changed as large or small as you want it. The above image has the first number set to 174 pixels. I hope Imgur changes this feature soon.

For those out there who like the nerdy parts of the TOTM:

To continue what I started in May 2021, I began keeping some forum statistics to respond to those claiming the forum was dying. In October, there were 445 new forum accounts (an increase of 34, or up 8.2% from November). Out of the new forum members that joined last month, there were 34 who were active and participating in the forum. This conversion means 7.64% of the new users who registered their accounts are now contributing members of our community! (This increased from last month; 6.76% of the new members became active and contributing members). If you’re interested in seeing the new members of our forum, you can click here!

Now, without further delay, I present to you the threads of the month for December:

Fan-fiction, Mission Reports, and Kerbal Space Program-inspired Creative Works:

This category features a thread (or threads) that, while not directly Kerbal Space Program related, may be a creative work, fan-fiction, or other presentation related to the game.

I think I say this every time I do a thread of the month, but I really believe two of my favorite parts of the forum are the fan works and mods portions of the forum. In both of these areas of the forum, you really see the creativity of our forum members shine. And this month, we really see another good entry into the library of Kerbal Fan Fic. This month, we highlight the work of @RoninFrog. In the introduction of the thread, there's a great description of the brave, daring, and oftentimes stupid green beings we know as the Kerbal and their quest to explore the cosmos:

Quote

Kerbalkind is not a warlike species.  This is in a sense both a blessing and a curse.  In one sense the drive to explore space would be out of sheer curiosity and wonder at the lights in the sky.  However, without the ubiquitous fear of failure and war on the horizon, any program toward cosmic exploration would lack the support and interest of fellow Kerbals.  Instead of a reckless race to space, it would be more of a saunter.

Warning, this thread is image-heavy and may cause performance issues with your web browser depending on your Internet connection speed.

So, if you're looking for some good inspiration, a few laughs, and something that's sure to become a forum favorite, why not give this one a try?

Forum Member Created Challenges and Missions:

This category contains missions and challenges created by you, the members of our gaming community. Many excellent missions and challenges threads are created that expand our fun with the game and press our skills, creativity, and sometimes, luck beyond what we get accustomed to. Let’s face it, we all have our go-to design basics and even our go-to vehicles we like to use. So sometimes, a good challenge can cause us to think of another way to achieve our goals. 

 There was no submission this month for this category.

Game Support/Game Mod of the Month:

This category features either help with the game (stock or modded) or mods that add quality-of-life gameplay improvements to Kerbal Space Program.

Ever wish you could take your Kerbalnaut on a stroll (or guided, weightless float) through your spacecraft to explore the IVA from some other view than the command chair? Ever wish you could go from component to component through the internal hatches and see it all from your beloved Kerbalnaut's point of view? Well, if you download this mod and are using a stock install for now, you can! In this mod, @JonnyOThan, @pizzaoverhead, and @Icecovery have provided you the ability to do this very thing!

So, if you are looking for a new way to torture yourself experience in Kerbal Space Program, then this is the mod for you!

(A brief note: yes, it takes some getting accustomed to and as the OP warns, it will cause your Kerbalnauts to drift out into space if you are using mods that are not compatible.   )

General community threads of the month:

This category features a thread that adds to the community and doesn’t fit the game support/game mod categories.

For many of us, the last update brought about a change we never expected to see from our favorite game - it gave us a game launcher. If you're like me, sometimes changes like this are quite unsettling and anything new can really be upsetting. Well, apparently, @4x4cheesecake felt this same way. In the OP, you can see a common confusion created by this new change:

Quote

With the latest 1.12.4 update, SQUAD / Private Division decided to introduce an additional launcher to the game which will start up after hitting the "Play" button in Steam instead of launching the game directly. IMO this is rather annoying and doesn't provide any actual benefits, in fact, it actually causes some trouble especially for mods.

This is not a mod, but a walk-through of several different ways to bypass the launcher:

So, if you are running Kerbal Space Program on a potato and need every bit of RAM your system can spare OR you're simply tired of the extra step of having to click a button on a launcher, then this thread might help you out. Again, the forum community would like to thank @4x4cheesecake for this collection of advice.

Video-based Fan-fiction, Mission Reports, and Kerbal Space Program-inspired Creative Works:

This category features a video or other form of cinematography of a Kerbal mission report using in-game video recorded game play. 

 There was no submission this month for this category.

Honorable mentions:

Sometimes it’s a challenge to choose which threads are going to receive the honor of being selected as the Thread of the Month for our five categories. We get so many good nominations each month to choose from, but we limit it to one for each type. Threads nominated but not selected as a thread of the month become honorable mentions. The honorable mentions for this month are:

• Get to Minmus as fast as possible without crashing by @physius
• KSP2 - Science Progress by @Cpt72Bug
• Real Life "Kerbalisms" by @Lisias

The honorable mentions for this month may not have made the Thread of The Month, but if you think they might be worthy of another opportunity, please renominate it!

Congratulations to all the winners of the Thread of the Month! We want to thank our forum members, @JoeSchmuckatelli, @Rutabaga22, @Superfluous J, @t_v, and the members of the moderation team and staff who nominated this month’s contenders. Thank you so much for helping us identify noteworthy threads and bringing their awareness to our forum community. We’d appreciate your continued help in the future.

The odds and ends:

TO NOMINATE  A THREAD FOR CONSIDERATION: If you find a thread you feel should be considered for next month’s thread of the month, then use the “report comment” feature (the three dots on the upper right corner of the comment box) to report the comment. Please put in the text field of the report post “Nomination for thread of the month,” and we will do the rest! You can always nominate more than one thread, too.

And the last word this post: I'd like to thank a few people who continue to trust me enough to continue to support and allow me to contribute to the forum. I'd like to thank the Lead Moderator, @Vanamonde for bringing me on as a moderator, a decision that I'm sure has had moments where he often wonders why he did it. I'd also like to thank @Ghostii_Space, our community manager and @Nerdy_Mike, the KSP Franchise Community Lead, for allowing me to continue to serve our Kerbal Space Program forum community through the monthly Threads of the Month post.  

In case you missed last month’s threads of the month, you can click here.

 

[Rutabaga22]

congrats to all who got TOTM this month!

[Ryaja]

Congratulations everyone!

[4x4cheesecake]

7 hours ago, adsii1970 said:

So, if you are running Kerbal Space Program on a potato and need every bit of RAM your system can spare OR you're simply tired of the extra step of having to click a button on a launcher, then this thread might help you out. Again, the forum community would like to thank @4x4cheesecake for this collection of advice.

Well, that's a surprise

And its actually me who has to thank the community because without others contributing on this topic, it would be still this half baked solution I came up with originally and definitely not as helpful as it is right now. So thanks to everyone who contributed to it and especially @Lisias for pushing me to edit the OP, turning the thread into an actual useful collection

[Nazalassa]

Congrats!

[Minmus Taster]

Congratulations to the winners

[Admiral Fluffy]

Congratulations to the winners!!!

[zer0Kerbal]

Congratulations to the winners!!!

[physius]

Hey, my post was honorably mentioned. Thank you!

[Kerbal123_Furry]

heyyyyyy!

Congrats to every winners! Very impressive things!

[Zozaf Kerman]

@adsii1970, just wondering if it is possible for a thread to get two TOTM awards.

[adsii1970]

1 minute ago, Zozaf Kerman said:

@adsii1970, just wondering if it is possible for a thread to get two TOTM awards.

In this past this has happened by accident; we are trying to prevent it from happening again in the future.

[Zozaf Kerman]

Okay, thanks!