totm dec 2023 Threads of the month: December 2023

[adsii1970]

The KSP forum moderator's team presents the

Threads of the Month

December 2023 Edition

December is finally upon us, and it is the first Monday of the new month - which means it's time for the Threads of the Month! We had some outstanding nominations this time, and I am excited to see what will be nominated for January TOTM (2024) and the 2023 Thread of the Year (I plan to announce that winner on December 31st)! So, if you want to help out in the nomination process of either the TOTM or TOTY, follow the instructions on nominating a thread at the end of this OP.

With December steadily marching on, it's not too late to start looking around the forum to nominate threads you feel are worthy of being contenders for December's threads of the month!

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 that interest in the Kerbal Space Program was declining. There were 258 new forum accounts created in November (a decrease of 65, or down 20.12% from October). Out of the new forum members who joined last month, there were 15 who transitioned from new accounts to being active and participating in the forum. This conversion means 5.81% of the new users who registered their accounts last month are now contributing members of our community! (This is a decrease from October; 7.43% of the new members became active and contributing members). If you're interested in seeing the new members of our forum, click here!

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

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! Many great content creators deserve this recognition since we were made aware of the thread by @Halban; Post Your Cinematics Here! (Cinematic Enthusiasts) that serves as a repository for cinematic threads. The thread has received the TOTM previously, but it was felt that it wasn't enough for those who have shared your fabulous 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 @Pipcard in their cinematic, "Photonic Station: A RO Orbital Construction 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 @Pipcard'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.

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.

There's no shortage of good fan fiction stories featuring our brave, green Kerbalnauts in all situations! This month, we have an outstanding nomination written by @Toaster355 featuring Kerbal Space Program 1 as the story's backdrop. In this thread, you will find a Kerbalized recreation of a historic plan drafted to be NASA's plan for a space station that would later be incorporated into the first truly international effort to build a semi-permanent space station.

@Toaster355 introduces the mission report:

Quote

Before the International Space Station, there was Space Station Freedom and Space Station Mir 2. Freedom was the next proposed American space station, which was basically the ISS without the Russian Orbital Segment, with some key differences. Mir was the next proposed space station for Russia as well. But instead of these countries making their own stations, we collaborated and made the ISS instead...

I will be recreating Space Station Freedom, in my own interpretation. My missions will be shared with the community via headings explaining the mission, screenshots with captions, dialog, among other ways.

Here's where you'll find this thread:

So, if you're interested in seeing some great screenshots of what KSP1 looks like, a "what if" construction, some good storytelling, or how someone else imagines their Kerbiverse, why not try this 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 the Kerbal Space Program.

One of the things most die-hard Kerbal Space Program players enjoy is the game's flexibility and ease of modding. With a single mod or a few more, you can create a new gaming experience and add as much customization, new challenges, and new features to this game as you want. This mod was nominated for a TOTM earlier this year but received an honorable mention. Its name has come up again because our forum community feels it deserves recognition for the amount of detail it brings to IVA flight. I agree; as many of you have, this mod by @MOARdV brings a level of immersion into the game I've enjoyed for quite some time.

@MOARdV introduces the mod:

Quote

What is it?  MOARdV's Avionics Systems (MAS) is a plugin and toolkit designed to provide an immersive IVA experience. It is based on experience developing and maintaining Mihara's RasterPropMonitor mod. For the player, MAS allows for a more immersive experience with better responsiveness.  For the prop and IVA designer, MAS is much more capable than RPM, with support for Lua scripting that allows truly complex functionality.

What isn't it? MAS is NOT a large collection of ready-to-play IVAs.  There are a few retro stock IVAs included in the mod that will give players and IVA designers a taste of what MAS can do.  MAS includes Module Manager patches to update the basic RPM props and IVAs from the RPM distribution to use MAS props.

You can find this mod here (Note: this mod is a dependency and will not add any new features to your IVA unless another mod requires it).

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.

General space flight and space science threads of the month:

This category features a thread that adds to our forum community's STEM knowledge (science, space flight, and related fields) and doesn't fit the game support/game mod categories.

This thread, started by @Nightside, Artemis, NASA's planned program to return to the Moon is discussed. It's long overdue for humankind to return to the Moon and do something more than missions to the International Space Station, especially now that its retirement is planned for the next few years. There is debate about whether returning to the Moon should be humankind's next goal, especially since Mars is the eventual goal by the end of the century. Personally, I have always hoped that in my lifetime, I would be able to see humans step foot on the Moon again and would eventually see the first Lunar colonies established. And I hope that Artemis achieves that and becomes an international effort to accomplish that goal. This must be a human endeavor and should not be left to any nation.

Quote

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/05/nasas-full-artemis-plan-revealed-37-launches-and-a-lunar-outpost/

Finally some concrete mooncrete details from NASA.

What do you make of this schedule? 

What does the T/V module do?

What do all these acronyms mean?

If you are interested in reading the comments from your fellow forum members or wish to participate in the discussion, then please visit this thread.

Honorable Mentions:

• Hello! Is there any release window/date for when we could see "on final approach" make its way to consoles? by @Turtlegirl1209
• It's The Wrong Red Moon... Adventures of an Alternate History! by @Kimera Industries

All nominations were used for this month.

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 @Kerbalsaurus, @Nazalassa, @TwoCalories, 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.

[Kimera Industries]

Congrats to the winners! It's a great feeling to know I made it to an honorable mention!  

[adsii1970]

30 minutes ago, Kimera Industries said:

Congrats to the winners! It's a great feeling to know I made it to an honorable mention!  

Well deserved. Keep doing what you're doing.

[Little 908]

Congratulations to everyone who has their work here

[Toaster355]

WOAH! 

Thank you all so much for nominating my thread!!!
Even though I make stupid typos everywhere and take a long time to finish things, you all still care about and enjoy my work here!
Thank you to everyone that has supported my threads, especially you @Kerbalsaurus and @TwoCalories ! I'm gonna keep doing what I do, as long as you all still want it

[AstroWolfie]

cool, id like to try to get nominated

[kurgut]

Grats to everyone ! : D

Happy hollidays to all