The whole thing about Kerbals being about WAHHEY EXPLOSIONS, do you buy it?

[llamatoes]

I was in the middle of launching my new abort-capability-to-orbit Crew transport, and I realized it wasn't very 'Kerbal'. No SRBs, just plain old liquid boosters, probe guidance, and very safe.

I figured, in actual game-play, the wacky incompetence of the kerbals doesn't equate to much for a competent pilot. Look at Scott's reusable series. No explosions, few SRBs and generally being a bit dry. My game play style is taking risks, but have them backed up.

Its sensible to take from Both the Jeb and Bob schools of Rocketry, Boosters are all well and good, but having your rocket Oscillate into so many separate stacks is not really getting to orbit.

The most kerbal thing I really do is stick a kerbal into orbit, with the Capsule backwards as there was nowhere else I could stick it.

[UmbralRaptor]

"Moar boosters, moar explosions" is very overplayed. It still has an appropriate time and place, though.

[Ford_Prefect]

Yeah, once you get the hang of flying safe and getting things to work properly and the only achievement is building the biggest craft of the old schemata to get to jool, KSP loses a bit of it's magic^^

I am slowly coming back from my KSP break with a new gameplay-style which actually takes less care about kerbal lifes

The only downside of this is: Actually I like to have Jeb, Bill and Bob around...

[Nikolai]

Of course it's overplayed. It's much more rewarding to build a mission that works.

But at the same time, there's this undercurrent of weird fatalistic humor ("When it's your time, it's your time") in aviation and space travel generally in real life that I think this game captures pretty well -- which includes a sort of wry humor about engineering simple solutions to complex problems (as if to make fun of our habitual failure to remember how hazardous and odd what we're doing really is) and the ability to laugh at oneself for "doing it wrong". So even if the game itself isn't all about MOAR BOOSTERS or MOAR SPACE TAPE, I laugh like an idiot when people joke about it.

[llamatoes]

I thought It was funny for a bit, but it sort of died.

[Sᴄɪɴᴛɪʟʟᴀᴛᴏʀ]

Explosions are fun, getting to orbit with all Kerbals alive and well is also fun. The two usually conflict though so the results depend on my mood.

Either way, kerbals are just our avatars since we control them and build all the rockets, so saying they want "MOAR BOOSTERS!" is really saying that we do.

[wooaa]

a rookie player will have a lot of explosions and fire and shrapnel, but as you get more experience the amount of pyrotechnics goes down a lot. however, it is still fun to joke about how sloppy we were at the beginning so I see no problem in the joke.

[Rage097]

I'll still do kerbal things like build a space-bike or a SRB powered drag racer.

The best one was when I pushed the "fire everything!" Button on my WarMech and watched it do a full backflip and a half.

[The Jedi Master]

I think it depends on your play style. For Danny, it is about "LOL SPLOIONS". For Scott Manley, it is about getting to other worlds in the most efficient way possible, while still looking cool doing it. Etc.

And the important thing is that you are having fun with your play style. It's what KSP was designed for. Want to try crazy ideas and watch them blow up in your face? Done. Want to explore the solar system in a serious way, but still have a little silliness from time to time? Done. Want to try to rival NASA in seriousness? Done.

Personally, my play style is somewhere in between "Explode ALL the rockets!" and "NASA is calling, you're hired!" I personally try to stay in between the extremes, although I have a save called "Jeb's Playground" where all the silliness, debug menu antics, really stupid ideas and such are done, and I'm considering trying out a NASA-style approach at some point. So I'm balanced.

But that's just me.

[NeoMorph]

I tend to plan for safety but occasionally I end up accidentally designing a KABOOOOMFEST. Like my heavy launch system... OMG was that a scewup. One of the mid sections would break and that meant that I lost all control to the lower stage which then went off course...

So yeah... I just take it that "Kerbolic Explosions Happen To The Best Of Us"

[Epthelyn]

I guess it's just because even for the most experienced players explosions are inevitable.

I go for explodey-death missions every so often when I'm bored, but most of the time I like missions which actually work and don't end up in a million pieces on the launchpad. That said, provided the destruction was fairly early on or near a quicksave (baaad ), it's funny to watch the tons of different ways a rocket can fail even if you think you're flying it in "that way that worked before".

One thing I've always enjoyed seeing is a rocket rip itself apart leaving nothing but the command pod rolling down the KSC launchpad ramp. It's a shame the massive rocket I spent hours making failed before takeoff, but at the least the Kerbals survived

[llamatoes]

Agreed, I find the odd explosion upon launch, erroneous boosters going everywhere, (as long as the crew is safe , I hate losing guys), that can break the monotony of hitchless launches

[Shrike42]

In sandbox games, I started with dwarf fortress, and !!SCIENCE!! is still key to that community.

In KSP, Kerbals are simply bad asses, and they have the distinct belief that "Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing".

After that, it's all showmanship.

[AlternNocturn]

"Moar boosters" and "EXPLOSIONS" are running jokes that originated from the fact that a lot of new players have no idea how real rockets work, and the most they do is either try to add more thrust or blow up their rocket, or both. I know that for a fact because that's what I used to do. One of my earliest designs used tricouplers to stack as many fuel tanks and engines as I wanted. The reason why this applies to Kerbals is because the joke evolved, eventually becoming a character trait of the Kerbals.

[Feldynn]

That underlying boosters and explosions theme in KSP always reminds me of the old Roadrunner cartoons, to the point I like to think / say I graduated from the "Wile E. Coyote School of Rocket Surgery".

I don't tend to make large elabourate ships / rockets (on purpose) that invariably explode and things generally go according to plan, for me it's those times where I accidentally mess up my staging (launching SRBs into the sky while the rocket sits on the launchpad, jettisoning the entire rocket instead of the initial launch stage when heading for orbit, etc) or those times where everything looks fine until you suddenly realise it's not and you used 3x symmetry for the landing legs on your 4x symmetry ship so it's slightly off balance and tips over when your Kerbal gets out.

[John FX]

This is Kerbal

[CoolMatthew]

Of course it's overplayed. It's much more rewarding to build a mission that works.

But at the same time, there's this undercurrent of weird fatalistic humor ("When it's your time, it's your time") in aviation and space travel generally in real life that I think this game captures pretty well -- which includes a sort of wry humor about engineering simple solutions to complex problems (as if to make fun of our habitual failure to remember how hazardous and odd what we're doing really is) and the ability to laugh at oneself for "doing it wrong". So even if the game itself isn't all about MOAR BOOSTERS or MOAR SPACE TAPE, I laugh like an idiot when people joke about it.

:wipes tear from eye:

I want to say something like "That's so deeep" but the thing is I mean it...

[RRoan]

Nearly four hundred nuclear engines have rained down upon KSP in my last ten launches.

If things aren't explodifying often, you aren't pushing the game hard enough.

[llamatoes]

Things do explodify in my save, such as when you try to dock with something on r

A retrograde orbit, with srbs.