First impressions (noob perspective)

[nohelmet]

Hi everyone! I just got the game about a week ago and I love it! I got some stuff in orbit and on the moon, but I'm still working on my docking skills. I thought that I would share my newbie's perspective in the hope that it may help the developers decide what may smoothe someone's introduction to the game: I know how after a while we all adjust to the existing problems and forget they even exist.

First, some things that really got a "wow" out of me:

• The cool variety of pieces available to build stuff with.
  
• The cockpit view, even with a window!
  
• My first exploding rocket - even failure is fun, with those big explosions and stuff flying everywhere!
  
• Science! I haven't tried it yet, but it looks like a lot of fun.
  
• Orbital navigation is so easy and fun with those controls! This is amazingly well done.
  
• Stages! It's so fun to press stage and hear a big kaboom as stuff drops and engines ignite.
  
• The training missions! I didn't expect them, and they're very useful.
  
• Action groups! I love being able to assign custom actions to keys, even if I mostly only use it to toggle solar panels.
  
• The way quick&autosave is designed to encourage us to plow forward even when something goes a little wrong. This is subtle but I think it realls adds to the game.
  

That's a lot of "wow", I know! What can I say, it's a great game.

I know I bought an unfinished game, so it's expected there will be some rough spots. Here's the list of the ones that I would be happiest to see fixed first.

• In the hangar, it's nice to be able to click then drag the pieces, but I also expect to be able to drag them directly.
  
• In the hangar, when I click on a new piece I would expect that to replace the one I was holding, not just drop it. I change my mind about pieces more often than I want a "clean" mouse cursor.
  
• I could never find the keyboard shortcut to switch tabs (the tabs with the pieces on them), or move between pages inside the tabs. I do these operations a lot so I really expect a shortcut for them.
  
• The Kerbals are switched around when I touch the rocket; I wish they stayed in place. Ideally I'd like to be able to use the tweak mechanism to specify the occupancy of each crewable part.
  
• The stages are sometimes scrambled when I work on the rocket. I wish they didn't.
  
• There are some things I can't save as a subassembly. I wish I could.
  
• I wish the hover text told me the keyboard shortcuts, so I had learned about "X" earlier.
  
• PgUp/PgDn move up and down the rocket; I wish they still did when it's on the launchpad.
  
• I clicked on the "RCS" indicator a bunch of times. It'd be nice if that turned it on.
  
• When looking at the map, it seems to always rotate around the planet I'm orbiting. Is there a way to change this to get a better view of where I want to go?
  

Finally there are a few things that would be super cool, but that I understand may be long shots.

• Telescopes! So we can examine Kerbal from orbit, or the stars.
  
• Asteroids to send probes to, or even capture and bring to the moon for examination.
  
• Passenger capsules! I want to take tourists to space.
  
• Habitation modules for space stations or bases on faraway places.
  
• Oculus Rift support would be super-awesome. I'd love to make a base on Duna and then be able to walk inside and outside it.
  
• Also, some sort of first-person view for when I'm inside, complete with the ability to move from one room to another (if they're connected).
  

Thanks for reading so far! Yes, I know, that's quite the wall of text. In summary, the game is awesome and I'm having a lot of fun. Thank you so much to Squad for making it, and for the many people in the forums for documenting things to smoothe out my learning curve! I hope to see you all in the forums, and we can exchange crazy ideas about where KSP might go!

[Supernovy]

Welcome to the community! It took me a while to figure out how you drag parts in the editors too. A lot of the keys aren't explained in game, but the wiki's control page helps.

The crew list resets every time the craft is changed. It's pretty annoying, but as long as you launch from clicking the launchpad/runway or remember to use the crew tab just prior to launch it's not that bad. The reset button by the staging list can help with the jumbling up.

The things you couldn't save as a subassembly probably couldn't be attached to anything even if they were saved, that's the most common reason it won't let you save a subassembly. If you're designing a subassembly, keep in mind that the first part you place, the root part, is the part that it attaches by.

You can move the camera a little by dragging the middle mouse button, double click to reset. The map can be changed to different targets (your ship, planets, manoeuvre nodes) by using tab and shift-tab. Be sure to hide the navball before using shift-tab as that will also throttle you up. Backspace returns to focus on your craft.

There are mods for telescopes and as far as I know, asteroids are planned for some later update.

Again, welcome to the community!

[nohelmet]

Thank you Supernovy! (and very cool name, btw)

[Monger]

I think you made a lot of very valid and useful suggestions. The UI in KSP is sometimes still a little "rough around the edges". The VAB editor is probably the oldest feature in the game that had no major overhaul, so no wonder that it is currently one of the weak points of KSP.

But fear not, SQUAD is well aware of this. One of the reasons why there is so little polishing to the VAB is probably because it will get replaced with something entirely new somewhere in the future.

[Seret]

[*]Passenger capsules! I want to take tourists to space.

[*]Habitation modules for space stations or bases on faraway places.

Check out the "hitchhiker", it's a part that can hold up to four spare kerbals. Looks enough like a hab module for me too.

[nohelmet]

oh, thank you!

And if I put habitation modules together, is there a way to navigate them in first person?

[Rainbowtrout]

Sadly, not yet to my knowledge. It SHOULD be implemented though.

*hint hint*

[wasmic]

oh, thank you!

And if I put habitation modules together, is there a way to navigate them in first person?

Sadly not. I believe "internal navigation" is on the to-do list, but noone knows how it will be done. It might just be a click on a crew container and a click on another crew container, but it could also be a fully functional internal scene.

[MajorThomas]

Thanks for the useful post nohelmet. As a relative newb myself, I too noticed almost all these things and have since grown used to them. (Building stuff in the VAB is sometimes IMO more difficult than flying; it is to me particularly difficult to build stuff like rovers.)

[nohelmet]

Internal navigation would be slick, especially if/when there is support for VR helmets

[teclas]

I also already played around a bit. At first I was interested in "Let's Play" videos but only recently I tried the real thing. I wasn't a complete noob because I more or less understood how stuff worked and managed the send a rocket to God knows where (I eventually crashed it, it was fun) in outer space.

Aircrafts are still tough, though.