totm feb 2023 Threads of the month: February 2023

[adsii1970]

The KSP forum moderator's team presents the
Threads of the Month
February 2023 Edition

It's hard to believe we are already into the second month of 2023. There's been a lot of stuff happening behind the scenes with our friends at @Intercept Games in preparation of the much anticipated early release of Kerbal Space Program 2 later this month. It's been quite a journey over the last few weeks watching the updates and the various social media posts showing us glimpses of what we can expect to see in the latest installment of the KSP franchise. All I can say is wow! It is such an honor to be a part of such a great team and community.

The next thread of the month - March 2023 will probably look a lot different as we incorporate KSP2 elements. Please be patient as we work them into the TOTM. I would like to remind everyone we do not want to create a divided community but highlight both games and celebrate the contributions of one community. I look forward to seeing what we can accomplish together.  

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. Eventually I will be adding these images to the thread I've created as a repository.

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 January, there were 775 new forum accounts (an increase of 389, or up 200% from December). Out of the new forum members that joined last month, there were 51 who were active and participating in the forum. This conversion means 13.21% of the new users who registered their accounts are now contributing members of our community! (This is an increase from last month; 6.48% 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 February:

A lifetime impacted by Kerbal Space Program

There are some of you who are or have been profoundly impacted by Kerbal Space Program. Since I have been a member on this forum in October, 2012, there are a handful of forum members who have shared their stories of how the game and this community have changed their lives forever. We've had a thread created recently where such a testimony of the game's impact was shared and we'd like to share the thread with you, our forum community.

 @Entropian, on behalf of the moderation team and the rest of the forum community, we wish you the best in wherever your future takes you. Happy launchings and no matter where your future takes you, you are always welcome on our forum. Stop in from time to time and share of your life's journey and continued KSP/KSP2 exploits.

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.

There were no nominations for this category.

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. Beginning March 2023, after KSP2 is in Early Access, this category will feature threads from KSP and KSP2.

For many of us, there's a feeling of excitement as KSP2 comes out this month. For me, I am planning on continuing to play the original and the sequel. But others I know (yes, I know a few KSP players in the real world) plan on abandoning their crews, even those in the far away areas of the Kerbiverse) are going to completely switch over to KSP2 once it is out on early release in a few weeks. But whatever you're planning to do, this month's member created challenge and missions thread is for you.

This challenge is described by @Klapaucius as:

Quote

KSP2 comes out in just over 6 weeks.  This may be, for many of us, the last time we spend serious time in the original Kerbal Space Program, so let's go out with a bang.

This challenge is very simple. To celebrate the end of an era and the beginning of a new one:

Do something big, epic, crazy, WILD, unprecedented in KSP1 or just accomplish something you have never done in KSP before.   (EDIT) This should be something new, not something you have already done.

And if that has your attention, here's the thread:

So, if you need a push in the right direction and a place to share the images of your success, why not give this mission challenge a chance?

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. Beginning March 2023, after KSP2 is in Early Access, this category will feature threads from KSP and KSP2.

So, you've already visited every planet in the stock system and in OPM. You're looking for strange, new worlds and a distant star to go explore. Well, @GregroxMun and the merry band of world crafting deities are at it again! Being a professional historian by nature, I hate to just copy and paste anything. But there's no other way to put it than how @GregroxMun describes how this more-than-a-planet-pack came into being:

Quote

After the success of Week World Planet Jam, where 10 planet modders made a 31-planet solar system in 1 week, some of the WWPJ creators had been brainstorming how we might run a second planetjam in a similar format. We kept the things which were most fun about making WWPJ and got rid of some of the worst parts--namely the lack of collaboration, and the deadline which was just right for some but too short for others. This time we would have two weeks and up to two orbits per person, rather than one orbit per person. Cross-collaboration would be allowed. It ended up actually being quite a complicated thing to set up the allotments because this time the system layout would reward many gas giant planets and some contributors did not want to make gas giant systems, but when all was said and done we had 15 contributors and 15 orbit slots to be filled in. Most of the slots had a specific mass allotment that had to be filled exactly, but could be split up into a planet and moons, or coorbital planets, or left as a single planet.

We started on Saturday, 2022-October-21, and the initial "Deadline Version" was compiled two weeks later on a red-letter date in the history of planet modding: November 5th 2022. The deadline version contained 80 planets. Over the course of the next two and a half months, 21 more objects would be added, and a lot of balancing, bugfixing, and visual polishing would be done. We're now very proud of the result. Even after spending so much time actively working on it, the size, complexity, and level of completion of PJ2 puts my own previous work to shame. (Whirligig World, built by just myself, took nearly 4-5 years to get to a similar point, though it still hasn't reached a "1.0" state.)

Now that the reasoning behind this thread has been shared, it's now time to share what this mod actually is and why those of you who want more destinations (and more variations of Kerbals) should be interested in giving this mod a try. Here's the introduction to the mod is described:

Quote

Planet Jam 2: the Ilio-Pyri System:  A huge community-built 101-world planet mod.

It is a common story across Kerbal history: an interstellar colonization mission is almost guaranteed to go wrong. Typically, the interstellar spacecraft will crash on a habitable world, society will collapse to the lowest tech level that is survivable, and it will be hundreds of years before anyone builds up the technology to launch rockets again. Amusingly, this didn't stop happening, even after those dozens of colonies banded together (alongside plenty of alien species) to form an Interstellar Federation of Planets. Almost a hundred years ago--and that's counting by Pyrian years, which are very long--an interstellar ship of exploration crashed, and now that multispecies society of Kerbals and Kerbaloid aliens are finally ready to reach to the skies again.

So, if you are looking for something to do before Kerbal Space Program 2 comes out, why not give this mod a try!

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.

There's a lot of excitement here and on the other Intercept Games social media platforms about the early release of Kerbal Space Program 2 - which happens on February 24th! If you're like me, you're hoping your computer isn't too much of a potato to run the game and you'll be able to send your favorite crew into space in some new and shiny parts. But until then, we've been able to share our excitement on the hypetrain thread started by @GregroxMun:

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A whole new world has opened up and its naME IS KERBIN, HAHAHA! That's right it's ya girl Gregoria Luna back at it again with the Hype Train! Full steam ahead, boiler pressure is clocking in at uh... oh my. 360 gigapascals. Fantastic, we got earth-core energies.

I seriously never thought I'd take the Hype Train out again, but she's been excellently maintained and let me tell you she's ready to go. And so am I, I genuinely don't think I've ever been this hyped, and that says a lot.

So, if you have been living on the Mün and have no idea what all the excitement is about, why not visit this thread, read a few posts, and see for yourself why KSP2 will be the sequel to KSP we all know it will be!

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

This category features a video or other form of cinematic of a Kerbal mission report using in-game video recorded game play.  Note: This has changed. Instead of awarding this to a thread, this is a *post of the month* since most new cinematic works are being posted in a single thread. We have a lot of great content creators but because they've been posting their mission reports as videos in a single thread, most of their work goes unnoticed by the general forum audience. Hopefully, with this change in the category to a Post of the Month (POTM), this will highlight the great work done by these deserving content creators. Other threads that contain cinematic posts will also be featured in this category, too.

Yes, folks, that's right. An overhauled image just for the cinematic posts! There's a lot of great content creators who are deserving of this recognition since we were made aware of the thread, Post Your Cinematics Here! (Cinematic Enthusiasts) by @HatBat. Although the thread did receive TOTM previously, it was felt that it wasn't enough for those of you who have shared your great creations featuring our favorite Kerbalnauts. Instead of of it being a TOTM, I've changed it into a CPOTM - a Cinematic Post of the Month.

Many of you reached out to me through Discord asking me if I had seen this YouTuber's tribute to Kerbal Space Program.  So, with that, it only made sense to feature it as this month's cinematic! For this month's CPOTM, we'd like to recognize the work of @Entropian in this amazing cinematic found here:

Sometimes the forum software will get a little glitchy and an exact post may be a little hard to find, especially when it is buried in a longer thread. In case this happens, here's @Entropian's cinematic presentation:

If you happen to encounter other cinematics you feel are worthy of being recognized as this category's post of the month, please nominate them! You can use the same instructions to nominate a post containing a video as you would use to nominate a thread.

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:

• Calvinball by @Deddly
• Chinese Space Program (CNSA) & Ch. commercial launch and discussion by @tater
• Duna Winged Aircraft Range Challenge by @OJT
• The Third Great Number War: The Long Haul! by @AtomicTech

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, @Abel Military Services, @Interplanet Janet, @Misguided Kerbal, @Tangle, @Triston, 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.

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT GOES INTO THE DECISION WHEN CONSIDERING THE TOTM: Wonder no more! This helpful guide is to help you understand what we use to help determine what makes a thread a really good thread and one that becomes a thread of the month/cinematic post of the month winner. It's everything you want or didn't want to know and includes some helpful tips.

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 and @PD_Dakota , our community managers 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.

Edited February 4, 2023 by adsii1970
Had to correct my mistakes. >:(

[LHACK4142]

31 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

A lifetime impacted by Kerbal Space Program

There are some of you who are or have been profoundly impacted by Kerbal Space Program. Since I have been a member on this forum in October, 2012, there are a handful of forum members who have shared their stories of how the game and this community have changed their lives forever. We've had a thread created recently where such a testimony of the game's impact was shared and we'd like to share the thread with you, our forum community.

I can't see the topic under this- it says that I lack permission. That said, thanks as always for the TOTM post, and congrats to everyone who made it!!

[AlamoVampire]

Same thing with me. Same exact thing @LHACK4142 is getting. Guess we lack permission? 
 

that said, congratulations winners and honorable mentions!

214502032023

[OJT]

That's the third honourable mention I am getting. When I am gonna get the grand prize?

On a serious note, if I am getting these mentions, it means I am doing something right

Congratulations to the winners!

[Nazalassa]

Congrats to the winners!

[adsii1970]

@LHACK4142 and @AlamoVampire - we have the issue fixed that was causing the link not to show. I'd like to thank @Gargamel, a fellow member of our moderation team, who was able to get it worked out. I was too busy bemoaning my lack of coffee and yelling at Firefox and the forum software while he solved the problem. That's my story and I am sticking to it.

@OJT It's only up from here! There's no telling what the next month can bring. Congrats on an honorable mention.

[Abel Military Services]

9 hours ago, adsii1970 said:

Congratulations to all the winners of the Thread of the Month! We want to thank our forum members, @Abel Military Services, @Interplanet Janet, @Misguided Kerbal, @Tangle, @Triston, 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.

Thanks @adsii1970

MY NAME IS ON AN OFFICIAL KSP FORUM THREAD! THAAAAAAAAASAANNNNNNNNKKKKKKKSSSSSSSS @adsii1970

Edited February 4, 2023 by Abel Military Services

[Kerb24]

Congratulations to the winners!

[Entropian]

Thank you for the awards!  I'll definitely keep on checking in and updating y'all in the coming years as I move through undergrad!  I'm glad you guys enjoyed the cinematic - thank you very much for watching and selecting it!

[Klapaucius]

Wow! Cool! Thank you!  Now I just need to get my posterior in gear and enter my own challenge!  I have ideas and aspirations: I just need to make time. To be fair, I am in the southern hemisphere, so it is summer and the weather is nice, so have been less inclined to be indoors on the computer.

[steve9728]

I realise I seem to have shared a lot of news from CNSA to the CNSA Thread*

(and a book)

Edited February 8, 2023 by steve9728