totm oct 2023 Threads of the month: October 2023

[adsii1970]

The KSP forum moderator's team presents the

Threads of the Month

October 2023 Edition

THE EXTREMELY  WELL-OVERDUE AND LATE EDITION

I want to apologize to the community for not posting the TOTM sooner. Rather than explain what's happening here, you can read about it here. 

With October nearly halfway done, it's not too late to start looking around the forum to nominate threads you feel are worthy of being contenders for November's threads of the month! As you can see, we had a lot of good nominees for October.

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 where you want to place it, and 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, or interest in the Kerbal Space Program was declining. There were 294 new forum accounts (a decrease of 97, or down 24.8% from September). Out of the new forum members who joined last month, there were 10 who transitioned from new accounts to being active and participating in the forum. This conversion means 3.40% of the new users who registered their accounts last month are now contributing members of our community! (This is a decrease from September; 5.62% 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 October:

A particular highlighted thread for this month:

Once in a while, a thread merits special attention because it brings something unique to the forum. This month, we've had such a thread nominated. I am sure when @archenemy_6 began this thread, there was no expectation of what happened next - but within a few short posts, a conversation with NASA scientists working on the OSIRIS-REx project began! And to think, it all started simply enough with the  question posed in the OP:

Quote

Has anyone read anything on this satellite?

I actually just heard about it today and did a little reading. It will be going to an asteroid and scanning it's surface and taking a sample.

If anyone has Snapchat you add NASA and you can see them uncrateing the satellite.

I've never seen it before so I thought it was pretty interesting.

It is always fascinating how threads like this develop within our community. We had all kinds of information being given, from how the name was selected to what was planned for the mission. We also learned that some of NASA's brightest minds play the Kerbal Space Program, which should make us all feel better regarding how many hours we spend launching things into orbit.

 

If you're ready for leisurely reading and learning something new, this is an excellent place to start.

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 creative, fan-fiction, or other presentation related to the game.

This month's nomination is found in the craft exchange of the KSP2 forum, and according to the introduction offered by @Heretic391, a team was involved in the efforts of this beautifully constructed station. Maybe, now that the forum community has noticed this project, we will get additional information about who else was involved with it. As you can see from the thread, the graphics offered by Kerbal Space Program 2 are stunningly beautiful, and this station highlights what is possible at this stage in the game's development. The station is so large it has to be downloaded in several files. There are links to each section in the OP of the thread.

If you're looking for a beautiful station (I'm still not sure what the crinkly-looking purple stuff is) or want to see what others are doing in KSP2, visit this thread! Thanks to @Heretic391 for sharing your files!

This month, we have a second thread nominated for this category, but since it is a mission report in the original Kerbal Space Program, I do not feel bad having two! I enjoy mission reports because they allow us to see how others envision their Kerbiverse! In this fanfic by @Misguided Kerbal, the challenge was trying something new with objectives and ship designs. He describes this new idea in the thread's OP:

Quote

Oh boy, here we go again. I'm Misguided Kerbal, and here I am starting another mission report (hopefully we'll finish this one.) Anyway, I've been meaning to do a full JNSQ playthrough for quite a while now so I'm quite excited for this. 

This is going to be in JNSQ - sandbox mode, but with my own personal restrictions, as I really hate the grind of Career and Science mode and just want to do my own thing. All of this is my own interpretation, of course - though you will see strong inspiration from things such as BDB and Raptor9's craft catalog and the likes.

So, what exactly are we doing here? Good question, imaginary voice in my head. The end goal - land a kerbal on every single body in the JNSQ system. We'll see how it goes.

Here's the link to this new thread, Starbound, a JNSQ adventure:

If you're looking for some mission ideas, maybe some craft inspiration, or to see how another forum member plays the game, why not visit this thread?

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 the Kerbal Space Program.

No thread was nominated for this category.

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.

At first, there was a bit of a debate about where to put this nomination. The longer I thought about it, the more it made sense to put it here! This thread by @Halban serves as another repository for other content creators to put their cinematic creations, much like the Hatbat thread. Before you start saying, "Hey, adsii1970, shouldn't you just merge the two threads into one?" My answer is, "No, we shouldn't!" Anyhow, there are a lot of content creators whose works would be lost in such a merger, and it would be unfair to both Halban and Hatbat and the forum members who have uploaded and shared their content.

If you want to watch a lot of great cinematics, this is a great thread to visit!

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. This month's CPOTM was in a different thread, started by @Halban, "Cinematic Enthusiasts."

For this month's CPOTM, we'd like to recognize the work of @Yukon0009in their cinematic, "Rocketman - A 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 @Yukon0009'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:

Dreams Thread by @Pthigrivi

Sometimes, choosing which threads will be selected as the Thread of the Month for our five categories is challenging. 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, @Kerbalsaurus, @Socraticat, the moderation team members, and the 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.

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.

[RevanX_LSR]

Congratulations to all TOTM winners!