In the name of Science, and all its wonders

[Athos]

Greetings and salutations, fellow Kerbonauts! I picked up KSP during the Steam Summer Sale and have been really loving it ever since. I spent a lot of time on rockets in the science sandbox mode, and unlocked the tree with repeated missions to Minmus and the Mun, thanks in part to a lander design by Scott Manley, seen in the YouTube video where he unlocks the entire tech tree in the newest game mode in two missions. I've captured a small number of asteroids into Kerbin orbit. I have simple space stations in orbit of Kerbin and both its moons, and once I got them there, I got a little bored with rockets, so in the last few weeks, I've been working on SSTOs. I have a couple of SSTO designs that I'm pretty proud of, and I'll be posting them to the craft exchange. Later, I might add some of my rockets. I look forward to constructive criticism from the folks that have been doing this longer.

In these forums, I've seen some of the fantastic things that can be done with mods and MechJeb in particular, but at least for the time being, I've decided to stay bone stock. I've also seen plenty of ways to 'abuse' mechanics, ie asparagus staging, airhogging, and in general, spamming certain components like struts and canards. In my humble opinion, if the game allows it, I have no problem with anyone taking advantage of it. At this early stage in game development, there's something to be said for the idea that it's compensating for things the devs haven't fixed, balanced, or implemented yet. Also, doing so seems to be rather well-suited to the simplistic mindset of Kerbals as portrayed by Squad. Bigger and more can only be better, after all!

Personally, I want to try to strike a balance with my designs, so particularly in my rockets, I try to limit where I use these things. Still, I'm amazed at the things people have gotten to fly, taking these to extremes, and I'm not immune! My SSTOs would never get anywhere without at least some airhogging, strut spam and canardapalooza. However, I try hard to build craft that are controllable and not too ridiculous, and so far, I'm pretty pleased with the results.

As of now, I have just one question for my fellow forum members: I read the board rules and noted the section on walls of text. If you haven't already noticed, I can be verbose. Does this board have functionality where you can hide text behind a link that will expand it, like a spoiler tag? I'd love to be able to go on, and let those who want to read it, do so with a click.

Pleased to meet you all!

Edited August 26, 2014 by Athos

[Claw]

Hey Athos,

There are lots of people who like to maintain stock. I do use MJ myself, but pretty much for the purposes of saving my self the need to hand calculate everything. Other than that, I enjoy stock too (even the parts that are "broken").

The forum does indeed support spoiler tags. You do them like so...

[noparse]

Put your spoiler text in this part.

[/noparse]

And it will look like this:

Put your spoiler text in this part.

Welcome to the Forums!

~Claw

[Athos]

Fantastic! Thank you for the tip, Claw. I'll be sure to point Inspector Gadget in the other direction next time I see him.

I'm sure I'll eventually succumb to the draw of MJ, but for now, dead reckoning is still fun for me. Occasionally exploding in new and interesting ways has its charm..

[Claw]

Don't ever feel pressured to load mods. My philosophy has always been: Use them if you want, don't if you don't want to. Don't let anyone "push" you into using mods.

I always recommend to new players to try stock for a while to figure out what your play style is. Then you can decide what mods (if any) might be most interesting for you. Some people prefer physics updates, others like parts, some people like atmospherics. Some people prefer none at all. There are hundreds of mods to chose from. It's all up to you.

(BTW: I only chose MJ because I prefered the way it looked over Kerbal Engineer Redux. That's literally the only reason.)

Cheers,

~Claw

[Athos]

Alright, I'll keep that in mind. One of my reasons to stay stock is, becoming dependent on mods is becoming dependent on another dev. If a mod maker goes dormant and a new revision breaks the mod, well, I don't want to have my arse hanging in the wind without my favorite functionality. I want to be excited about new releases from Squad, not dreading them!

re: MechJeb, I'm thinking precision flying will eventually become interesting, and probably necessary for me. I doubt dead reckoning will get me much further or much bigger than I've already gotten, so some measure of precision is going to be required for long-range missions.. but I have had a lot of fun so far. Not that my opinion matters to anyone, but I do think precision flight computers would make sense to include in later branches of the tech tree, given how difficult dead reckoning is, and how much math it takes to DIY. In any case, thanks again for your help and advice!

Edited August 26, 2014 by Athos