totm july 2023 Threads of the month: July 2023

[adsii1970]

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

July 2023 Edition

Today is July 6^th in my part of the world, which means it's way past time for this month's thread of the month! As many of you know, I am a part-time faculty member of a local community college (a two-year post-secondary education institution in the United States) and at a local university. Sometimes, my real-life job interferes with the things I love doing, such as the Thread of the Month. Some changes are coming soon, so I ask you to be patient with me. I want to answer a few questions I've received through the forum's DMs and Discord. And as always, I will not disclose the identity of those asking the questions; however, I will give my answer so all may benefit from the response.

• I thought I saw you on Discord as a moderator. Were you fired?  No. I was not fired, but I decided to walk away from it. I am a moderator here and on the original Kerbal Space Program Steam discussion area. At first, I was more than willing to help moderate the Discord server because I enjoy giving back to this community, which means so much to me. However, between my professional commitments, the demands already promised on my time (this forum and moderating the Steam area), family commitments, the pursuit of another advanced degree, and some health-related issues (high-performing anxiety and depression, PTSD), it was more than what I could handle. Rather than have a bunch of community jobs and not be a strong team member in all of them, I decided to choose the ones where I know I provide the most value.
• I noticed a forum game never gets a thread of the month. Is this intentional?  Yes. It is intentional. And I believe it is in the first Thread of the Month's original intent- to highlight our forum members' creativity. I am not saying it does not take creativity to come up with a forum game. However, the popularity of the forum games tends to overshadow the other threads. This would mean nothing besides forum games featured as threads of the month. So, for now, we recognize nominated forum games with honorable mentions. With that said, I have toyed around with offering a "featured forum game of the month" in the future (maybe in 2024 - depending on the feedback), but we'll have to see.
• Someone said you have a Discord account, but I do not see you on the KSP Discord. Why? Yes, I do have a Discord account, and you can find my Discord ID on my KSP profile page, listed where the Twitter ID goes. To avoid confusion about my roles, I decided not to be involved with the Discord server for Intercept Games/KSP2 because I have no official capacity there. NONE. So, I decided to leave. I maintain a "private" server for students in my college classes, but I boot them out once the end of the term hits.
• I've seen people using TOTM badges as signatures that don't have a TOTM listed. Who do I report it to?   Some people want to be legends in their own minds. When I was in the military, we called these folks "PX Rangers" because they often went to the clothing sales store, bought awards they didn't earn, and went home while on leave and wore them on their uniforms to impress their friends and family members. It's the same mindset we see with those who will nab badges for challenges and threads of the month. Don't confront or call them out - you'll only start a flame war on the forum that will get ugly and potentially cause them to report you for harassment. So, instead, ignore them. I am working on a project now where I am cataloging all the threads of the month, going back to the very first one. Once completed, it will be linked to every TOTM in the future for all to see. Those imposters will know who they are, and everyone on the forum will know. I still like to have the mindset that most of our forum members are pretty good folk and won't do that sort of thing. I am pessimistically optimistic.

An update about the KSP 2 Mods and Thread of the Month Nominations from now on: There's a change in this month's threads of the month. Last month, I (prematurely) featured a KSP2 mod, and immediately a few of you made an issue of it because I admitted that I had not installed the mod on my game and tested it out before featuring it. I want to address this issue - I have four copies of the original KSP, and I do have one version (1.12 - the last update) solely used for testing nominated mods for that version of KSP. But for KSP2, the developers have stated in several updates there is no official support for mods yet for KSP2. For this decision alone, and to prevent my frustration with KSP2, I have decided not to mod my copy of KSP2. It can cause the game to respond in very unexpected ways as the game undergoes development. This was why I did not test out the nominated mod.

The community managers reached out to me with instructions regarding future nominations for mods for KSP2 - since there is no official support for mods yet in KSP2, the thread of the month will no longer feature mods for KSP2 until mod support is officially added to the game. Since the community managers are the ones who provide oversight to the forum moderator team, I will defer to their guidance in this.

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. Press the <CONTROL> button when the image appears and right-click on your mouse. A menu will drop down and allow you to edit the picture. You can resize it - the first number can be changed as large or small as you want. Eventually, I will add 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 have kept some forum statistics to respond to those claiming the forum was dying. There were 460 new forum accounts (an increase of 124, or up 36.90% from June). Out of the new forum members that joined last month, there were 20 who transitioned from new accounts to being active and participating in the forum. This conversion means 4.34% of the new users who registered their accounts last month are now contributing members of our community! (This is a decrease from June; 7.44% 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 July:

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, this work may be creative, fan-fiction, or other presentation related to the game.

Initially, I was going to treat this as another cinematic nomination until I sat back and read the introduction of the cinematic tread by @kurgut:

Quote

I was asking my self this question : What exactly happens when a "missing crew respawn" in KSP.As KSP is a highly accurate and realisitc simulator about green little mens, there has to be a plausible explanation. They can't just re appear from thin air.

Luckily, Wernher von Kerman was kind enough to show me the secrets of this interesting and complicated process ! He guided me in the secret KSP facilities where all this mirakle of Kerbal engineering happens. I hope you'll discover some interesting facts, as I did !  

This is something that, at one time, we've all come up with our own (and sometimes, rather strange and weird) explanations for - how do our dear and departed favorite Kerbalnauts come back from those missions that go horribly wrong? Well, visit this thread, read about the backstory, watch the cinematic accompanying it, and laugh (or two!)

This is truly a unique way to do a mission report.

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 our go-to vehicles we like to use. Sometimes, a good challenge can cause us to think of another way to achieve our goals.

No thread was nominated 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.

Although Kerbal Space Program has been out for over twelve years, those who love this game will admit there are still some areas where the game still needs a little love. If we are honest with ourselves, there's never been a "perfect" game. However, thanks to the easiness of modding KSP and our wonderful modding community, much progress is still being made in perfecting this game. This is one of the reasons I always tell folks in other threads I believe the original KSP will have a very long shelf life. The nomination for this category for the original KSP is for the mod by @smushanoob. Although a disclaimer at the top of the tread reads, "This mod is not ready for review. It is heavily work in progress, and there will be visual errors, bugs, and more," many of you felt the mod deserves to be honored with receiving the recognition of thread of the month. The mod, "[1.9.x - 1.12.5] [6/20/2023] - Ahum² Planet Pack" is described as:

Quote

This mod seeks to establish a unique and new challenge  with 32+ worlds to explore, seeking to that the challenge never becomes a bore and that Kerbal Space Program can be modified to a better and more unique system.

So, if you would like to give @smushanoob a hand in developing a new mod that adds many planets and many things to do, then why not try this?

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.

No thread was nominated for this category.

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 gameplay. Note: This has changed. Instead of awarding this to a thread, this is a *post of the month* since most new cinematic works are 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, this change in the category to a Post of the Month (POTM) will highlight the great work done by these deserving content creators. Other threads containing cinematic posts will also be featured in this category.

Yes, folks, that's right. An overhauled image just for the cinematic posts! There are 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 who have shared your great creations featuring our favorite Kerbalnauts. Instead of being a TOTM, I've changed it into a CPOTM - a Cinematic Post of the Month.

For this month's CPOTM, we'd like to recognize the work of @CEO of China  in their cinematic, "Journey to Layth - KSP Cinematic," found here:

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

If you 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 exact instructions to nominate a post containing a video as you would use to nominate a thread.

Honorable mentions:

Sometimes it's challenging to choose which threads will be selected as the Thread of the Month for our five categories. We get many good nominations each month but limit it to one for each type. Threads nominated but not selected as a thread of the month become honorable mentions. The honorable mention for this month is:

• I made a WORKING Space Elevator in KSP by @Mr. IDK

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

Congratulations to all the winners of the Thread of the Month! We want to thank our forum members, @AlamoVampire, @Camptaine, @jost, @ShadowDev, @Socraticat, and the members of the moderation team and staff who nominate 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.

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, use the "Report a comment" feature (the three dots on the upper right corner of the comment box) to report the thread. Please put in the text field of the port post "Nomination for the 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. It's everything you did or didn't want to know and includes helpful tips.

And the last word for this month's post: I'd like to thank a few people who trust me enough to continue supporting and allowing me to contribute to the forum. I want to thank the Lead Moderator, @Vanamonde, for bringing me on as a moderator, a decision I'm sure he has had moments where he often wonders why he did it. I'd also like to thank  @PD_Dakota, our community manager, and @Nerdy_Mike, the KSP Franchise Community Lead, for tolerating me and 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.

[ShadowDev]

7 hours ago, adsii1970 said:

An update about the KSP 2 Mods and Thread of the Month Nominations from now on: There's a change in this month's threads of the month. Last month, I (prematurely) featured a KSP2 mod, and immediately a few of you made an issue of it because I admitted that I had not installed the mod on my game and tested it out before featuring it. I want to address this issue - I have four copies of the original KSP, and I do have one version (1.12 - the last update) solely used for testing nominated mods for that version of KSP. But for KSP2, the developers have stated in several updates there is no official support for mods yet for KSP2. For this decision alone, and to prevent my frustration with KSP2, I have decided not to mod my copy of KSP2. It can cause the game to respond in very unexpected ways as the game undergoes development. This was why I did not test out the nominated mod.

The community managers reached out to me with instructions regarding future nominations for mods for KSP2 - since there is no official support for mods yet in KSP2, the thread of the month will no longer feature mods for KSP2 until mod support is officially added to the game. Since the community managers are the ones who provide oversight to the forum moderator team, I will defer to their guidance in this.

disappointed that this decision has been made. 

[schlosrat]

7 hours ago, adsii1970 said:

 

An update about the KSP 2 Mods and Thread of the Month Nominations from now on: There's a change in this month's threads of the month. Last month, I (prematurely) featured a KSP2 mod, and immediately a few of you made an issue of it because I admitted that I had not installed the mod on my game and tested it out before featuring it. I want to address this issue - I have four copies of the original KSP, and I do have one version (1.12 - the last update) solely used for testing nominated mods for that version of KSP. But for KSP2, the developers have stated in several updates there is no official support for mods yet for KSP2. For this decision alone, and to prevent my frustration with KSP2, I have decided not to mod my copy of KSP2. It can cause the game to respond in very unexpected ways as the game undergoes development. This was why I did not test out the nominated mod.

The community managers reached out to me with instructions regarding future nominations for mods for KSP2 - since there is no official support for mods yet in KSP2, the thread of the month will no longer feature mods for KSP2 until mod support is officially added to the game. Since the community managers are the ones who provide oversight to the forum moderator team, I will defer to their guidance in this.

I'd like to object to this in the most strenuous way possible. This is an absurd position and is detrimental to the community.

Modders, and modding, contribute a great deal to the game and always have. We (modders) have delivered fixes for things - in some cases far earlier than the devs were able to (e.g. Community Fixes mod and the separation control loss issue, the ability to rename vessels in flight, the lack of Kerbal EVA lights, etc.), as well as delivering feature-laden mods that directly contribute to the playability of the game. Mods delivered grid fins before the devs did, and have already delivered new rover parts and other things.

It's perfectly understandable that the devs have prioritized addressing bugs and advancing on the roadmap ahead of rolling out official support for modding. Their energy and focus are needed exactly where they are, and to divert them to give us official modding support would be detrimental to the progress they're making on the game. That said, the existing game already has latent support for modding, and our intrepid community of modders has dug in to do their best to help make the game even better. We do so at risk that in the future when the devs do have the time to flesh out the official support we may find ourselves needing to make some adjustments. We know this, and those of us who choose to dig in and press on accept that risk. And in return, you're going to deliberately bury your head in the sand, ignore our work, suffer without the benefit of the features and fixes we're delivering, and basically stuff your fingers in your ears chanting "LA LA LA LA!" as loud as you can? By this I mean you're deliberately choosing to ignore the reality of our contributions, and frankly, that's kind of insulting.

Ask yourself how you would feel if you poured hours of your free time into making something better for others to enjoy and then got this in response. Seriously, how would that make you feel?

Modders don't just make things (for free!) that are engineered to solve problems and make the game more playable, they also often freely jump in to help players with problems. I double-dog dare you to head over to the KSP2 Modding Society discord and ask questions about mods, how to use them, or even the game in general. I can assure you that you'll be met with more kindness than you've shown us here with this post. Don't want to use Discord? No problem! Go onto the forum thread for any actively supported mod and ask your questions there. Chances are the mod's author will jump in to try to help you with it. We're a helpful lot, and so it's in our nature to try to make things better for others.

 

Edited July 6, 2023 by schlosrat

[schlosrat]

@adsii1970, I want to add that I think your tireless effort in curating the TOTM is also a worthy and great contribution to our community. I may have come across as overly harsh in my post above, and so I want to publicly apologize for that. One of the best things about KSP (1 or 2) has always been the community and how we work to help each other. Your work helps others to spot and find interesting, helpful, and fun threads - and as such your work here deserves to be celebrated! I just hope you might reconsider your position on the use of mods. It really does make me sad to see someone with a platform saying they're not going to use or even talk about KSP2 mods.

If you would like a hand installing any to try them out I would be delighted to personally spend my time helping you.

[smushanoob]

Thank you!!! Congrats to other winners  

[adsii1970]

5 hours ago, ShadowDev said:

disappointed that this decision has been made. 

The community manager, @Dakota, and I have discussed this again and decided differently since we discussed this issue after the objections about the June 2023 TOTM release.

5 hours ago, schlosrat said:

I'd like to object to this in the most strenuous way possible. This is an absurd position and is detrimental to the community.

Modders, and modding, contribute a great deal to the game and always have. We (modders) have delivered fixes for things - in some cases far earlier than the devs were able to (e.g. Community Fixes mod and the separation control loss issue, the ability to rename vessels in flight, the lack of Kerbal EVA lights, etc.), as well as delivering feature-laden mods that directly contribute to the playability of the game. Mods delivered grid fins before the devs did, and have already delivered new rover parts and other things.

Both @Dakota and I(remember, he is part of the official Intercept Games staff, and I am just a meager volunteer who offers my time) have discussed this a bit this afternoon. Never was the decision meant to be a slap in the face to our modding community. It was meant as a way to prevent a lot of other issues. Here's why I did not test the KSP2 mod nominated for June:

• Again, there's no official support for mods in the game yet. And my desktop PC could barely run KSP2 without mods at anything faster than a PowerPoint presentation.
• As a former member of the Pioneer Group who did the beta testing for KSP1, I learned quickly that when you're trying to run a game that's not fully optimized, mods can wreck and make memory leaks worse.
• This is why I stated in my comments that I did not install or test the mod on my install of KSP2. However, I did not want to let the forum community know I was running the game on a potato.
• Thanks to using an employee discount, I now have a laptop that has the strength to run KSP; later next week, I will have the RAM upgraded to 64GB since the onboard GPU utilizes system RAM for graphics. It currently has 8GB.
• This past semester has been a living hell for me as a professor. Teaching five classes (three undergraduate and two graduate), by the time I did get the laptop capable of running KSP2, I was too tired, had too little time (finals week and getting ready for the summer semester), and yeah. Time was a premium. The laptop was still installing all the Windows 11 updates, SPSS, various other programs I use for research, Steam, Steam games, etc. And I was already a few days late getting to the TOTM and did not want to make the community wait any longer. It's technically supposed to be released on the 1st of each month.

My personal feelings about any TOTM that's a KSP2 mod:

• Installing a mod within KSP2 requires a mod - which requires BepInEx for KSP 2 (Adding modding support to the game). It is a shame this mod, which is necessary for any mod to work with KSP2, has not received a nomination for TOTM. I'm not too fond of the idea of me crowning a thread with the honor of TOTM - which is why community nominations are so important. Sadly, this mod has not received the recognition it needs. Without this mod, no other mod will work in KSP2.
• Just as the decision not to include KSP2 mods made some folks angry, to have outdated mods featured on the TOTM can do that, too. Whenever a mod is featured, we (as a forum and me, as the one who creates the TOTM) must include the game version at the time of nomination. This way, if someone stumbles on a TOTM in 2027, from July 2023, and sees a really neat mod they want to try, they will understand that the mod was initially featured to work on version 0.13.3 or whatever the version number is. I know we did not do this in the past with KSP1, but in hindsight, maybe we should. You'd be surprised at the hate PMs and Discord messages I get over defunct mods featured in TOTMS - even older TOTMs from before my time!

How KSP2 mods will be handled this month moving forward:

As I mentioned earlier, @Dakota and I did discuss how best to serve the forum community. I've been a forum member since 2012 and even lost my original profile with the Great Forum Purge of 2012 (yeah, it wasn't good). It wasn't that we were trying to belittle, ignore, or show any disrespect toward the KSP2 modding community. Many of our more experienced players and members of the modding community realize that mods can create some exciting and unexplained behaviors or introduce new problems to gameplay. Most of us older players know that when these things happen, we test - uninstall the mod, check to see how the game runs, reinstall the mod, and if the bug persists, check the mod's thread and follow the reporting strategies listed in the OP. Unfortunately, newer players often encounter issues with mods and immediately will report them using the bug reporting system rather than checking on the mod's thread first.

It's just that, unlike KSP1, KSP2 isn't as mod-friendly (after all, it currently requires a mod so that you can use other mods), and the development staff of Intercept Games made it clear the game was not ready for official mod support yet. That's what the guidance we were given was based upon. It was not about the modding community but about the platform stability of Kerbal Space Program 2. The KSP2 mod must also have a disclaimer that states until official mod support is added to the core game, BepInEx is required. Remember, we may have newer gamers and forum members who do not understand the concept of "dependency."

I will be editing the July TOTM tomorrow, probably in the evening, since I have an entire morning of staff meetings and medical appointments until the early afternoon hours. After that, I will review the nominations for the KS2 and do the tests I do for KSP1 mods:

• Ease of installation.
• Does the mod deliver what the OP promises, or is the mod still in development and shows promise?
• Is the mod visually appealing?
• Is the mod more for the beginner, casual, or advanced player? Is it well-suited for all levels of players?
• Does the OP have a clear organization, or is it hard to follow?

Anyway, I hope this helps clarify things going forward and is a workable solution. It was never @Dakota's or my intention to give the modding community we were ignoring your contributions to the community.
 

4 hours ago, schlosrat said:

I want to add that I think your tireless effort in curating the TOTM is also a worthy and great contribution to our community...

Your work helps others to spot and find interesting, helpful, and fun threads - and as such your work here deserves to be celebrated!

Thanks, I appreciate your kind words. There are so many great threads on our forum that, unfortunately, go unnoticed by many people. And sadly, there's only a handful of people who nominate threads. For me, it is an honor to be able to give back to the community, and I look forward to leaving the community college soon and focusing on more fun things in life - like doing more on the forum. While the countdown hasn't started yet, let's say if my life were a rocket, they'd be moving the various stages to the VAB by now.

4 hours ago, schlosrat said:

I just hope you might reconsider your position on the use of mods. It really does make me sad to see someone with a platform saying they're not going to use or even talk about KSP2 mods.

If you would like a hand installing any to try them out I would be delighted to personally spend my time helping you.

Um, I love mods. That's why my KSP1 1.3 install has 59 mods, and my KSP 1.12 install has 137 mods. That old adage, Mod it 'til it dies, applies quite well to KSP. However, with KSP2, while I plan on using some mods, I want to limit what mods I download and keep to a select few.

Edited July 7, 2023 by adsii1970
Removed an extra whiney bit from the post. :/

[kurgut]

21 hours ago, adsii1970 said:

I was going to treat this as another cinematic nomination until I sat back and read the introduction of the cinematic tread by

Hi,

Thanks for the totm, glad you liked it !  
And grats to others as well !

Cheers

Edited July 7, 2023 by kurgut

[dr.phees]

Why isn't this a thread of the month?

 

 

[linuxgurugamer]

4 hours ago, dr.phees said:

Why isn't this a thread of the month?

 

 

Maybe it wasn't nominated?  Maybe, it was not posted in June?  It was released on Wednesday, which was July 5, the TOTM was for threads from June.  

So, if you feel it should be, then by all means, go ahead and nominate it.  But please do not criticize something which happened without considering all aspects. 

[Klapaucius]

On 7/7/2023 at 2:22 PM, adsii1970 said:

There are so many great threads on our forum that, unfortunately, go unnoticed by many people. And sadly, there's only a handful of people who nominate threads. 

This is super important.  When I got my first nomination it really felt like I had arrived and been accepted into the community--not that I ever felt unwelcome in this most welcoming of forums--but rather that I had graduated, so to speak.  It is a little thing that actually means quite a lot.

Edited July 9, 2023 by Klapaucius
typo

[adsii1970]

Update on the KSP2 Mod situation:

ACCORDING TO THE TRACKING INFORMATION, the RAM update I ordered from Crucial shipped from their warehouse on July 6th with an anticipated arrival date of Monday, July 10th. As of today, I still have not received it. I cannot play KSP2 on my desktop, but I can play the stock KSP2 on my laptop. I hoped to have the memory upgrade installed and the mod nominations for KSP2 evaluated and shared by now. I'm sorry for this delay; however, there's not much I can do about this delay. According to the UPS website, the package should be delivered today, but it has said that for the last three days.  I wanted to let the community know I have not forgotten about this.