Squadcast Summary (Updated 2014-12-13 - the 0.90 features video edition!)

[kujuman]

It's still all pointless until Squad finds a way to fix the stopping of rotation during time warp though.

Eh, bothers rather than finds. It's super easy, but just not very high priority. There's at least one mod that does it.

And no, it's not pointless. Landing without any SAS is tough, landing an asymmetric ship without SAS is very tough, and timewarp tricks won't help a whole lot very near the ground.

[RobotsAndSpaceships]

Eh, bothers rather than finds. It's super easy, but just not very high priority. There's at least one mod that does it.

And no, it's not pointless. Landing without any SAS is tough, landing an asymmetric ship without SAS is very tough, and timewarp tricks won't help a whole lot very near the ground.

Really? i've never found it that hard to do without SAS, and the plugin you speak of, the last time I tried it it was super buggy and ended in the spinning destruction of several ships.

[kujuman]

Really? i've never found it that hard to do without SAS, and the plugin you speak of, the last time I tried it it was super buggy and ended in the spinning destruction of several ships.

Tough != hard. Besides, your argument is then that SAS is useless (for you) anyway, not just with the existence of the timewarp rotation stopping. If landing isn't hard without SAS, then you probably don't need it at all. So for you it'd be pointless to include SAS, just as it is to remove it. In which case, SQUAD should not be developing for you, but for the typical players, players for whom SAS is important (hence all of the backlash of SAS being removed).

Using http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/85990-0-23-5-Persistent-Momentum-1-0-%2814-July%29 or http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/67821-Timewarp-Rotation-Fix ? They both work the same way, only slightly differently in how they save/load. Cybutek's mod seems to work bug free on 32-bit. No reason to believe SQUAD couldn't fix any residual bugs since they have the source.

[Alewx]

Again a punch into the face of the sandbox Players that use pilots very rare because they are valuable... KXP is not my like the way it is described here.

KSP seems to move from nice sandbox build rockets game to mainstream gamedesign by book, pretty sad.

[Ikaneko]

Obsessed with ksp, you wouldn't mind making this a regular thing, would you?

I'd give you rep!!

[rkman]

About part clipping: i was under the impression that intersecting collision meshes can cause phantom forces, with results varying from a tendency for the craft to go off-course, to ripping the craft apart. Is that a lie, or did Squad fix it, or do part clipping Kerbonauts just take their chances?

[BudgetHedgehog]

Again a punch into the face of the sandbox Players that use pilots very rare because they are valuable... KXP is not my like the way it is described here.

I don't see how - sandbox players get fully functional buildings, highest level kerbals and top tier probes automatically. If anything, you get a better deal than career players because they have to work to earn the things you get at the start.

Obsessed with ksp, you wouldn't mind making this a regular thing, would you?

I don't do it for the rep, but I'll make it as regular as I can! I'm definitely going to do next episode, for sure.

About part clipping: i was under the impression that intersecting collision meshes can cause phantom forces

I don't know the status of phantom forces. I personally haven't experienced any, despite my occasional heavy abuse of it but we'll see. One thing's for sure, TCSB will be interesting!

[Superfluous J]

I'm wondering if Courage and Stupidity will have any influnce on the KXP system.

I'm wondering if those values will even still exist. They were at one time described as placeholder stats. At least, I expect there to be more stats to compliment them.

Also: an unmentioned feature of the part-count limit is that it should discourage the spamming of massless parts. I don't see that as a bad thing.

I would prefer them giving those parts mass to discourage people from spamming them.

[BudgetHedgehog]

By the way guys, if you have any suggestions for how I can improve this thread (new one for each summary? Added to OP in spoiler tags? Replies to this thread and linked in OP?), feel free to tell me. This thread is for your benefit, after all. My thought is to have just the latest one in the OP with past ones as replies to this thread linked in the OP. This saves on clutter in the OP and ensures you can see the most recent info immediately.

Glad this so many of you like this

[GusTurbo]

Ok, a lot of people in this thread are getting upset over a misunderstanding. SAS is not being removed, they're simply adding functionality on top of it. Having a Pilot Class Kerbal will give you access to controls like Mechjeb's Smart A.S.S. -- you click a button and the pilot rotates the craft to prograde and hold there, for example. High level probes will also be able to do this. Lower level probes and Pilots will still be able to hold a heading, like the current SAS.

The way I see it, this finally makes the 3 kerbal pod useful. If you're making a solo flight, you'll generally take a Pilot. With 3 Kerbals, you have access to all 3 skill bonuses, which makes crew selection actually have a purpose.

Thanks for putting this together ObsessedWithKSP. I think some people would do well to follow the advice under your name.

[Bloody_looser]

By the way guys, if you have any suggestions for how I can improve this thread

Adding approximate time, when a certain feature is discussed in the Squadcast, would be really helpful.

Anyway, great work.

[Toastie_Buns]

It will be interesting to see if Kerbals have multiple specialisations.

Naturally, it would make sense, since that's how astronaut training works; you spend hours learning aerodynamics, orbital mechanics, making and breaking computers and a helluva lotta geology. Better take a crash course in photography while you're at it, it would be a shame to get all that way and bring back fuzzy pictures.

Oh, you know geology? The rock you're holding is hard? Well, how hard? Time to revise that Mohs scale knowledge.

In short; Kerbals will need multiple skill sets, otherwise you're forced to bring more dudes. A pilot is great, but landing on the Mun is kinda pointless if you can't repair your broken antenna or know what to pick up in your soil sample. You brought an engineer? Great, the antenna is fixed but we still have no idea what to pick up. Oh, we brought a scientist? Then who's controlling the service mod- Oh crap.

[The Jedi Master]

Did they seriously take the barn out? That upsets me. i was totally looking forward to starting in a barn! I absolutely loved the idea. It just made sense, especially when you consider that the US itself used old farms and barn silos as missile hangers. Enough people really griped about it enough that they scrapped it? That is a true loss to both historical references and for the kerbalness of it. Other than that, the rest of the update looks pretty cool.

What part of the post says this?

[Nemrav]

What part of the post says this?

Not from squadcast, but apparently they took the barn out because people whinned too much....

[razark]

but apparently they took the barn out...

They took it out so they could rework the model but insist that the silly thing will be put back in after they make it look better.

[The Jedi Master]

While we're on the topic of things people gripe about, I'm just seeing way too much negativity in this thread. I'm no fanboy by any means, but come on. Despite what many people seem to think, Squad does, in fact, listen to its community. I'd prefer to have them listening to constructive criticism, rather than whining, and I'm sure they would too.

[Alewx]

I don't see how - sandbox players get fully functional buildings, highest level kerbals and top tier probes automatically. If anything, you get a better deal than career players because they have to work to earn the things you get at the start.

Remote units do no longer get SAS, they kinda will have something like it in the highest tier, gut it is not recommended to use them, so what is their purpose then? It is the soft way to force the Player to use pilots.

I watched the twitch today in total.

Don't get me wrong here, for career it is totally ok, having to work up the whole way.

But in prespctive of Rosetta and Dragon, remoteunits do not only have SAS they are cappable of finding their own course. While in the game they are nerfed to be of no use.

In case I don't want to use kerbals because they are valuable to me, it is pretty hard to impossible to play, based on what MaxMaps said.

My normal workflow is to build a craft in LKO with remoteunits and then in the last stage, I send up some kerbals for the Mission, how should that then work?

[Frozen_Heart]

So can probes no longer use SAS at all?

[Alewx]

So can probes no longer use SAS at all?

The way it was described by MaxMaps in the twitchstream no, the last one in the techtree will get somekind of miniSAS he was not really clear about that.

But in generall it sounded like probes no longer have SAS at all.

[andrew123]

The way it was described by MaxMaps in the twitchstream no, the last one in the techtree will get somekind of miniSAS he was not really clear about that.

But in generall it sounded like probes no longer have SAS at all.

0_o I hope they don't nerf the mini sas.

[Frozen_Heart]

The way it was described by MaxMaps in the twitchstream no, the last one in the techtree will get somekind of miniSAS he was not really clear about that.

But in generall it sounded like probes no longer have SAS at all.

That's... ridiculous...

[Whirligig Girl]

Guys, probe cores have different pilots skills depending on the tech level. You can even combine probe cores together for more than one piloting ability.

The first probe cores have no SAS, true, but they are cheaper and lower tech.

[andrew123]

Guys, probe cores have different pilots skills depending on the tech level. You can even combine probe cores together for more than one piloting ability.

The first probe cores have no SAS, true, but they are cheaper and lower tech.

But which ones are the first probe cores? I want to see the tech tree.

[Alewx]

Guys, probe cores have different pilots skills depending on the tech level. You can even combine probe cores together for more than one piloting ability.

The first probe cores have no SAS, true, but they are cheaper and lower tech.

Do you need a 2,5m probe for every work that is done without kerbals?

Having to combine them is also not really clever as there is the problem with the different sizes.

For a simple sat sure there is no sas needed, there is torque and force enough but there is more where remoteunits are used.

The way the system is build is "we have to improve career mode", which for itself is ok, but keeping such a limitation in sandbox is ridicioulus, I just hope there will be adjustments, otherwise I will have to abuse MM to add the function back into the probes.

[Bloody_looser]

Have none of you memory of (not even that) old versions of KSP? It used to be that you had reaction wheels (SAS) and heading hold (ASAS) as separate parts. So if you wanted to have control, you needed to add an ASAS, otherwise it was manual flying (read: spin stabilization). The ASAS was pretty heavy, 800 kg, so you'd typically have it on launchers and maybe landers, but not on the ascent stage, for both dV reasons and size. ASAS functionality was added to the pods in .21 when the SAS was rewritten, so not even that long ago. Ever wonder why the 2.5m ASAS unit doesn't have wheels modeled in it? Because it was just a computer when it was introduced in .18! But .21 made that redundant, so it got torque added.

It took something out of the "game"...we no longer had to balance having extra mass of an ASAS vs manually controlling the vessel, and there were times you'd forgo the ASAS. Easy mode.

In sum, get off my lawn, suck it up, learn to fly manually (like many astronauts did in Mercury and Gemini and I assume early Soviet vehicles), and quit complaining

It sounds like - "Back in my days water was solid and we only had the Mun". Really, it's not an argument for scrapping SAS function.

Ok, a lot of people in this thread are getting upset over a misunderstanding. SAS is not being removed, they're simply adding functionality on top of it. Having a Pilot Class Kerbal will give you access to controls like Mechjeb's Smart A.S.S. -- you click a button and the pilot rotates the craft to prograde and hold there, for example. High level probes will also be able to do this. Lower level probes and Pilots will still be able to hold a heading, like the current SAS.

Yup, I've been reading devnotes as well. At first it sounded like this, but in the discussed stream Maxmaps states there will be no SAS without a pilot or some "high-tier" unmanned core. Btw, it's around 21:30 in the video and sounds loud and clear. Or am I getting it wrong?

Edited December 7, 2014 by Bloody_looser