A few things I felt need mentioning (Jool shadow, oceans)

[mcbmaestro]

1)Jool's shadow. Jool is huge so it really needs to hit a moon with darkness when it eclipses the sun. The sun shouldn't still shine and give you power when in Jool's shadow. Reminds me of Pitch Black lol but its actually a very similar situation. Actually all planetary bodies needs shadows. Past time for that.

2)On that note, I was trying to look straight up on Leythe and couldn't. You need to be able to look straight up. You can look up sorta high, but not straight up. Should be able to tell noon by seeing it.

3)Water effects. The water right now is too wobbly and shifty looking and obviously so simple looking it has to be placeholder graphics. It's hard to even tell if you're steady right above it or not. It's badly in need of updating and needs to stay in place so we can reference it better when landing on it. Keep it still, but keep it interesting. Toss in some whitecaps, or even 3d waves if you dare. I'm actually assuming by the time of final release the water will look 100x better, or atleast 10x It makes total sense to me, moon mission is probably the biggest aspect of the game and water landings are a key aspect that needs drastic refinement. From a visual stand point think you just landed in the ocean, click Recover Vessel, compared to Apollo 13 omfg we made it home. Some capsules flooded and sank, how about simulating that?

Edited March 27, 2014 by mcbmaestro

[Legendary Emu]

Squad definitely needs to fix the part where solid metal plates float perfectly.

[Camacha]

I fear that a lot of these placeholder mechanisms/things will not be adjusted anymore, as the focus has shifted towards luxeries as multiplayer and such.

[Javster]

There's a thread about adding floatation devices to capsules

[Kasuha]

Jool's shadow would be nice to have. I believe it works when you're in Jool's SOI but ceases to work when you get into SOI of any of its moons. And then solar batteries cease to work on your fully sunlit craft because you're actually in Jool's shadow.

I think devs are aware of this, though, and are still planning to do something with that. Later, when the game is feature complete-

[vger]

I fear that a lot of these placeholder mechanisms/things will not be adjusted anymore, as the focus has shifted towards luxeries as multiplayer and such.

Really, how hard could adding floatation be? Even a really simple equation for calculating "will it float?" could be handled similar to drag's relativity to mass. All you need to do is add a flag to the parts that tells the game whether that part can float. To determine if the vessel will float, compare the combined mass of all the parts that can float to the parts that can't. That will determine whether or not you'll have "a sinking ship."

Not very realistic, but then neither is drag. To make it more interesting I'd want oceans on different worlds to have unique compositions, which would drastically affect buoyancy. But it doesn't seem worth the trouble making it that involved, unless sometime down the road, water exploration is given a useful purpose.

On the topic of shadows... yes, do it. And while we're at it, a cool 'eclipse' sprite for Kerbol when the conditions are correct.

Sinking capsules though? I don't like the idea. If we got to design our own capsules, that would make sense. But since we can't, it would be up to a roll of the dice each time you landed in water.

[helaeon]

Along with Jool's shadow... things should get dark when you have a solar eclipse of any kind, like on the Mun with Kerbin blocking Kerbol.