totm aug 2023 Threads of the month: August 2023

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

August 2023 Edition

What happened to July? Ah, it seemed that just a few days ago, we were getting the month started - July, that is! Now, August is already upon us! It means the beginning of another academic year for many of our younger players (and maybe some of you not-so-younger players). For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, it means summer is coming to a close - with the hottest month before us first. For those of you in the Southern Hemisphere, you'll continue trudging through winter's cold. Oddly enough, Those in the Northern Hemisphere who hate summer heat would love some winter weather. And I am sure some of you in the Southern Hemisphere who hate winter would love some of the heat of summer!

An update about the KSP 2 Mods and Thread of the Month Nominations from July 2023:

Last month, our community manager, @Dakota, and I discussed the KSP2 mod situation a lot; you can read about it in the comments of the July 2023 TOTM. Several of you reached out and expressed your concerns that we were ignoring the modder community's contributions. Well, we were not - and I promised to evaluate the nominations for July once I could upgrade my gaming laptop. Wow. That was an experience - what should have taken ten days for the things I ordered (64 GB of RAM and an external HDD) to arrive ended up having to be reshipped by Crucial. The folks at the USPS mishandled the original order - somewhere between Cleveland, Ohio, and where I live in Kentucky, it disappeared en route. Long story short, I had to wait nine more days and contact Crucial, who reshipped my entire order by UPS expedited delivery. Since only a week remained in July, I decided to wait and post the results in August.

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 430 new forum accounts (a decrease of 30, or down 6.52% from July). Out of the new forum members that joined last month, there were 24 who transitioned from new accounts to being active and participating in the forum. This conversion means 5.58% of the new users who registered their accounts last month are now contributing members of our community! (This is an increase from July; 4.34% 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 August:

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.

Another fan-fic? You've got to be nuts, right? I enjoy member-generated fan-fic and have for quite some time. For me and many of you in our forum community, seeing the world others create for our favorite cartoon-like spacefaring aliens is fascinating. Sure, they can be nearly fearless, wreckless, and sometimes overly silly in their mannerisms. We all have our go-to Kermen, and many of us will revert our game and lose progress in some planned mission rather than see them disappear from a lousy game mishap. And in this fan fic by @Kerbalsaurus, we not only see some great imagination at work, Kerbalnauts living at the edge of sanity and space, but some unique craft designed to meet the challenges we have come to know in this game we love.

So, if you want a good laugh or are looking for some inspiration for a fan-fic thread, why not try this one?

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.

Verified for the current version of KSP2 (August 4, 2023 - version v0.1.3.1): One of the most frustrating things is plotting a course for your brave Kerbalnauts to brave the final frontier. It's easy to allow frustration to overcome you as you drag the maneuver node, grab the little orientation "handles" (or, as my twelve-year-old daughter calls them, the travel direction thingies), and gently tweak them -- to bump the mouse a little too much! This mod, by @schlosrat, offers an easy solution to the problem with the mod. Set your preferences, and with the click of a mouse, the "onboard" systems do the rest.

The mod is described by @schlosrat as follows:

Quote

Plan your (Space) Flight! Fly your Plan! Handy tools to help you set up maneuver nodes that will get you where you want to be. Making spaceflight planning easier for Kerbal Space Program 2 one mission at a time.

Some dependency mods are listed in the OP, and a video demonstrates the capabilities of this mod. Please read the instructions carefully and install all the required dependencies before installing this mod and launching your game.

So, if you want a new approach to setting maneuver nodes, why not try this mod?

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 are times when older threads are nominated for TOTM that when nominated, we think, why hasn't that thread received TOTM before now? In this thread, by @Ultimate Steve, the simple question is asked, "What funny/interesting thing happened in your life today?" Although this thread was started in January 2017, it is still going strong; we all like to share our stories of the funny or strange, random things that happen to us. @Ultimate Steve introduces the idea for the thread:

Quote

Exactly as the title says.

I haven't had anything particularly funny or interesting happen today, but yesterday I was unloading a car from grocery shopping. There were bags of diet pepsi in the trunk that were nearly frozen (it is winter) and had been shaken around for the past hour on the journey from the store to our house.

I was grabbing another bag and then suddenly it ripped, causing one of the bottles (2 liter size) to fall onto the driveway - knocking the cap in just the right way that it came loose.

The result? It became a horizontal rocket - it was off the driveway and far into the neighbor's yard in less than a second. And today when I went outside there was a line of frozen pepsi all along the driveway on the path that the bottle took.

So, anything funny or interesting happen in your lives today?

And over the years, we've shared -- and continue to share what's happened! If you've never visited this thread and need either a good laugh or you have a story to share, why not give this thread a try?

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 @kurgut in their cinematic, "Apollo 11 Anniversary Tribute - The Full Mission flown in First-person view (IVA) - KSP RSS/RO," 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 @kurgut'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:

• Humanized KSP Planets by @CiaaiK
• Ksp tv series by @paranoid android
• MICRO ENGINEER (KSP2 Mod) by @Falki
• The Sky is Not the Limit: A Modded KSP1 Career Playthrough by @TwoCalories.

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:

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, @dsplaisted, @EchoLima, @Kerbalsaurus, @ShadowDev, 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.

Ineligible nominations:

[1.3.0] Community Database of Module Manager Patches for Stock KSP by @Alshain: This thread is already a recipient of TOTM (November 2017)

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.

[kurgut]

Hey thank you for "CPOTM" ! Glad to inaugurate this new acronym  
Grats to others totm forum members too !
Cheers

[Kerbalsaurus]

Thank you very much for TOTM! And congratulations to all of the winners and Nominees! You all have truly great threads!

[Just Jim]

Congrats everybody!    

[Dunas Only Moon]

16 hours ago, Kerbalsaurus said:

Thank you very much for TOTM! And congratulations to all of the winners and Nominees! You all have truly great threads!

wow... if i know correctly, this was on your beyond playthrough. and if it is, congrats! i have been interested since page 3, and was thinking "wow, its small but high quality", and now im thinking "wow, its BIG but a bit higher quality", so congratulations!

[Royalswissarmyknife]

Congrats @Kerbalsaurus for getting TOTM! 

[schlosrat]

Wow! And thanks, it's such an honor to be selected for this, especially with so many other truly excellent threads!

Congrats to all the winners and nominees, and congratulations to you on your new gaming laptop! I'm glad it (eventually) arrived and hope you get countless hours of fun with it!