What tickles you most about KSP?

[Deadweasel]

I have loved this game through every iteration. Okay, well maybe not through the bugged releases that required a quick .01 patch, but the new additions and adjustments have always been exciting to me, even if they weren't immediately (reliably) playable.

Looking back through the years (wow, hard to believe I can actually use that word with a GAME), I realize I have kind of grown to enjoy the game from different angles over time. Initially it was the coolness of the aspect of building rockets Lego-style and seeing what they did (and how spectacularly they could go oh so very wrong), but progressed into an exploration phase, where I ventured forth to investigate some of these new planets and moons that had been added.

Since those days, I have only been to a few of the possible destinations, but my play style has evolved into one more based on imagination, and one that makes more of an event out of reaching a given destination, almost savoring the achievement by taking the trip into exasperating detail. Sure, I could probably drop a micro probe to every planet and moon and that's that. But, something in me wanted to make these explorations every bit as grand and broad in the game as they would be in real life, so going to Duna became this intricate, multi-part mega mission, filled with planning and designing for a deployable base, rovers, interactive means to deliver them to the ground (beyond just popping chutes and calling it a day), and building the means to get it all there. So far, I've been getting a lot of enjoyment out of going just getting to a place that others have been to many times. As the saying goes: "It's not the destination that matters; it's the journey."

So my question to everyone is: what flips your switch for you in this game? Is it the rampant "build it and see what it does" construction? Is it the challenge of getting to new places just to say you can do it? Is it some kind of running internal stream of consciousness thing where you're imagining what it might be like to be doing that very thing in real life as you do it?

Or is it something else?

[StrandedonEarth]

What always gives me a chuckle is building a massive orange asparagus monstrosity with a MkI spam can on top, and watching it fall apart in multiple balls of fire as soon as I put it on the launch pad. The kicker is the spam can rolling out of the fireball and Jeb getting out with that idiotic grin on his face. Those command pods are tough to survive that!

[Scotius]

For me it's about exploration mostly. Going to interesting places. Seeing amazing things. Standing on the shore of Laythe's ocean and staring at Jool. Watching Kerbol being eclipsed by Ike. Smiling when Kerbin rises above cold, dead surface of the Mun when my rocket is blasting home. Looking up on Eeloo, and seeing Kerbol only as a bright star. All the things we can't do in real life, i guess

[Deadweasel]

For me it's about exploration mostly. Going to interesting places. Seeing amazing things. Standing on the shore of Laythe's ocean and staring at Jool. Watching Kerbol being eclipsed by Ike. Smiling when Kerbin rises above cold, dead surface of the Mun when my rocket is blasting home. Looking up on Eeloo, and seeing Kerbol only as a bright star. All the things we can't do in real life, i guess

I experience that too! I think I take preparation for the trip more to-heart, after I sent a quick and dirty lander to the Mün and... well, there I was. Once the actual encounter became easy to set up, it didn't seem like quite so much fun to just get there and look around any longer. I needed there to be more to it. Not just getting there now, but having a reason to be there, more than just landing and having a walk/fly/drive around.

It became more interesting to go through all this additional preparation and complex equipment delivery, so that when the time came to hop in a rover and have a look around, it was that much more satisfying.

[victory143]

I love to aerobrake... But I usually have an orbital fuster-cluck...

[Sylon00]

The visuals. I think this game, with the proper computer hardware, is very beautiful. I wish there were some visual plugins that have nebulas and stuff off in the distance.

I've always thought it was cool (regardless of how physics would be involved or whatever) to see a ringed planet in our own sky on a daily basis. I mean, how badass would that be?! A lot cooler than just the moon being up there.

[Galileo Kerbonaut]

Why I love KSP? Because the game makes me feel I'm watching a cool space documentary, but makes me realize: I'm doing this man! I've always loved space and space related games. KSP is the pinnacle of space games in my 30 years of gaming.

Really... one of the best games I've ever played... and will be playing for a loooooooong time.

Edited November 11, 2013 by Galileo Kerbonaut

[Aragosnat]

Mainly the exploration of space. Since it is something I don't believe I will ever be able to do in my life time. As well as noticing that I was happier less stressed when I could play KSP (new pc is on the way). Being able to play in space with beings I sort of care about as well building insane conrtaptions no RL company would ever let you build let alone fly just to see how far it can go before its distruction. As the as the addiction to see how small and light I can make the craft (Still working on that one).

[Deadweasel]

The visuals. I think this game, with the proper computer hardware, is very beautiful. I wish there were some visual plugins that have nebulas and stuff off in the distance.

I've always thought it was cool (regardless of how physics would be involved or whatever) to see a ringed planet in our own sky on a daily basis. I mean, how badass would that be?! A lot cooler than just the moon being up there.

Well, somebody has granted at least one of your wishes already!

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/44135-0-22-Universe-Replacer-v4-0

The other may be coming soon if the developers work out the kinks and/or come back from hiatus.

[kiwi1960]

The feeling you accomplished something in your pathetic life... landing on another world....

but most of all.... watching Kerbals and their ships explode into a million pieces... its almost orgasmic....

(please don't take any of this post seriously....)

The real answer is... beating the odds with the smallest ship possible, the least fuel possible and getting to another world... and back again...

Sure as hell, NASA cannot do that.

[Brotoro]

It tickles me that I can do, at least virtually, what I always dreamed about doing when I was a kid.

[RSwordsman]

What I like most is the ability to realize my fictitious space corps' humble beginnings. Well that, and knowing that it is similar to how REAL space works, without having to handwave things like "inertial dampers" and dogfight-like movement in space.

[Geschosskopf]

While designing improbable contraptions to explore and do silly things in distant places and see the sights there is what keeps me playing, what I find most amusing is doing all this with what can only be described as an amazing lack (for something dealing with a rather technical subject) of in-game instrumentation, both in the editors and in flight .

[vexx32]

Trail and error, all our days; that's the Kerbal way!