KSP 0.90 'Beta Than Ever' Grand Discussion Thread!

[David H]

With this update. Need to change the research around. Need to be able to unlock plane engines sooner if not 1st.

Also some tweaking on the contracts.

I am running out of cash before being able to get into orbit. The "test this part." The cash rewards are barely able to support the building of the vehicle.

Once I found the fly here was a good source of cash. Although I don't have any plane engines. So I had to use unlimited fuel.

Had plenty of science though.

In addition. Wheels need to be unlocked SOONER.

*****

Edit. Tweaking on contracts.

I'm already getting contracts to explore the mun. Land an outpost on the mun. Getting me thinking, with the right parts and flight path I could make it there.

Would be possible. However. I have researched a lot of parts just not enough cash to unlock them. Also can't build them due to vab not being able to build that many parts.

Edited December 16, 2014 by David H

[Eskandare]

With this update. Need to change the research around. Need to be able to unlock plane engines sooner if not 1st.

Also some tweaking on the contracts.

I am running out of cash before being able to get into orbit. The "test this part." The cash rewards are barely able to support the building of the vehicle.

Once I found the fly here was a good source of cash. Although I don't have any plane engines. So I had to use unlimited fuel.

Had plenty of science though.

In addition. Wheels need to be unlocked sooner.

I agree. I tend to use prop engine mods and recategorize them as start to satisfy the early flight requirements.

[Goose273]

Yay, it works great! Was hoping in sandbox you still get the chance to level up and give experience to the Kerbals you hire however. Perhaps this is a mod worthy note.

[Crashy_McSplodey]

I'm home after 6 months away on Friday, new laptop waiting for me! Can't wait to get KSP DLed and modded up and then spend all of my time off doing rokkit science!

[MKI]

Gotta give it to squad on this update.

Its excellent at every level.

I love the new levels of difficulty with the up-gradable buildings. I created a new career with difficulty set on Moderate and found myself flying missions almost entirely on the basis of getting cash.

I like the new bottlenecks that are provided from the up-gradable buildings, the Launchpad keeps early missions down. Then the VAB and then arguable the Tracking Center (its hard to do everything without nodes or mods haha)

Fine-Print is such a great addition, throwing satellites into orbit for big bucks is a lot of fun. I have yet to go for any scouting/ viewing missions because of the fact Rockets aren't designed for such and jets come later. I still prefer the idea of having Rockets come before jets, simply because in atmospheric gameplay is bland, and boring. Plus the current parts would allow a player to get to orbit much easier than it currently is. Things will probably stay this way until there is an areodynamic update and focus on space planes in general.

Since the new MK3 parts are at the end of career, I have yet to see their viability in Career. But in Sandbox these new parts do live up to the hype. The new Editor system helps a lot in creating Shuttles and SpacePlanes that simply could not have existed before.

The editor upgrades are great. The editor gizmos open up many more doors, while at the same time leaving the "old school" ways untouched. I still find myself rotating parts with the WASD keys but find using the rotate function much more useful when i need it. Offset alone gives great command on where you want to put parts. Part clipping can now be done to the extreme, but I'd rather have that in stock and have great looking crafts.

Since its only been 1 day I have yet to check out any biomes, or build any stations (one of the main Fine-Print missions im looking foward too) but I can totally feel the viability of Career over sandbox.

The nails in the coffin are down, Sandbox is cool and all, but a full fledged Career is much more satisfying to play hands down. I'm only few in game days in and I'm loving all the things I need to handle, deal with and think about when i put together a mission. Before this game was only a simulator, and it still is. But there is so much BEHIND that simulator that makes it so much more fun.

Good job squad, I see great things with this game. The ground work is set and this game could release right now and I would say its excellent. But I know more is coming and I can't wait to see how you guys implement it.

[DeepSpaceDutch]

Good job squad, I see great things with this game. The ground work is set and this game could release right now and I would say its excellent. But I know more is coming and I can't wait to see how you guys implement it.

This, for the first time in months I cannot wait until I go home after work to continue my Career I restarted late last night (just got to orbit, so lots of stuff to do). Also for the first time ever I was really thinking about the different ways to proceed, which facility to upgrade, which contract to choose (because Max=2 you have to choose wisely early on, love that!), how stay under 18t, etc.

For the first time ever I can now really say, YES, this is a game in the true meaning of the word.

Thanks Squad, for all your blood, sweat and tears in creating this awesome game. So go enjoy a well deserved Christmas!!

[Guest]

This is the first time in many, many months i've been excited for an update. So many additions and tweaks - the game seems so polished, just time for the nitty-gritty now (proper aero pls).

[silenced]

There it goes, the evolution ... from a sandboxy idea to some real 'game'.

[Red Iron Crown]

Career mode is much, much more complete with this update. There's a much better sense of progression, kerbal specialization and XP makes them more than placeholders, there are more varied and interesting things to do with contracts, and building upgrades are enough of a money sink that there are actually real fiscal constraints now.

The editor upgrades, new SAS modes, and new parts also throw a bone to sandbox players.

I'm declaring 0.90 the biggest update since 0.18. Congrats and thanks to Squad on a job well done.

[morscience]

I suppose that since pilots have some sort of auto control now that people who don't use mechjeb can finally have some sort of autopilot(that isn't OP)

[jaredjeya]

All of my buildings are starting at Level 3. Is this a known bug?

[DeepSpaceDutch]

A very very very small point of critique; pitty they did not fix the radial decoupler issue.

[Frank327]

Great update!

I'm playing career on moderate and I'm in a bit of a conundrum. Cash and science aren't exactly flowing freely anymore after getting into orbit, getting the update for EVA suits and getting most of the space EVA science done. I have 54 science and can either:

1. Get the big fuel tanks. I've upgraded my launch pad but not my VAB. I think I can build a mun-capable rocket with 30 parts. Only problem would be I'd have to guess the hohmann transfer, but I can just wait for the mun to appear on the horizon.

2. Save up a bit more science and get airplanes. This would be a slower approach but probably financially safe.

I love that I actually have these considerations. Used to be I could just blindly go to Duna in my 4th flight. Now it's actually somewhat strategic.

[Ziff]

All of my buildings are starting at Level 3. Is this a known bug?

Yes it is. It has been posted multiple times in multiple places, including about a page ago.

[cantab]

I think people are missing the biggest and best part of this update.. KSP IS NOW MULTI-THREADED FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER....!!!!!! Sadly.. I just tried it, and using more than 1 cpu core doesn't do a thing for improving launch and in-flight performance for complex (800+) part ships, still really poor FPS there.

KSP has always been multithreaded, technically. It's just that there's only one physics thread and that's 95% of the overall workload.

I've not seen if the game is any better/worse performing than before.

[Prof. Endwalker]

I was really looking forward to the KSP 'Beta than Ever' Update, and forever will love this game, but I really find this update, exciting, and a little disappointing. The new plane parts are great, the new models of the tiers of buildings look amazing, but... *sigh* I really don't like criticizing this amazing game, but I really favored the old system of parts. The propulsion tab was both engines and tanks, the air intakes were part of the aerodynamics, It was great! I could look at my craft and grab new parts at the same time! I now have to relearn the system of parts, but honestly: Why couldn't you just add the new parts to end of a category? Give the ability to add new categories, but keep the old one! The new abilities to automatically move to nodes are like MechJeb, which I never like to use, as it made the game feel easy, and I like the challenge. Trust me: I LOVE THIS UPDATE. I LOVE THIS GAME. SOME THINGS IN THIS UPDATE I AM A BIT DISAPPOINTED IN.

[Red Iron Crown]

The new Mk3 tanks appear to have better mass ratios than any previous tank (9.33:1). They pretty much obsolete the ARM tanks, and will give the 2.5m/1.25m tanks a run for their money if the craft is large enough.

[Athlonic]

Career mode is much, much more complete with this update. There's a much better sense of progression, kerbal specialization and XP makes them more than placeholders, there are more varied and interesting things to do with contracts, and building upgrades are enough of a money sink that there are actually real fiscal constraints now.

The editor upgrades, new SAS modes, and new parts also throw a bone to sandbox players.

I'm declaring 0.90 the biggest update since 0.18. Congrats and thanks to Squad on a job well done.

This all the way.

Squad, I don't even know if you realize the outstanding work you just did here

Thank you sooooo much !

[G-rom]

Is it downloading right now?

Steam is Downloading it ^^

Yay...I guess... :l

ITS OUT!!!!1!!1!!11! !

[WuphonsReach]

Now, C7 aerospace wants me to test a landing gear on a kerbin escape trajectory. I shall return after I politely tell them they're insane.

Well, before you tell them that, how's the pay? For the right funding we'll launch one of the backup pilots to anywhere at anytime!

(Some of the contract rewards are a bit low - I'll pass up a lot of the item testing contracts because either they don't pay out enough funds to cover the launch. And/Or they do not pay out any science points at all. If I'm being asked to test a part at a specific altitude and at a specific speed, I want 5-10k funding or at least 5-10 science points.)

[katateochi]

I was really looking forward to the KSP 'Beta than Ever' Update, and forever will love this game, but I really find this update, exciting, and a little disappointing. The new plane parts are great, the new models of the tiers of buildings look amazing, but... *sigh* I really don't like criticizing this amazing game, but I really favored the old system of parts. The propulsion tab was both engines and tanks, the air intakes were part of the aerodynamics, It was great! I could look at my craft and grab new parts at the same time! I now have to relearn the system of parts, but honestly: Why couldn't you just add the new parts to end of a category? Give the ability to add new categories, but keep the old one! The new abilities to automatically move to nodes are like MechJeb, which I never like to use, as it made the game feel easy, and I like the challenge. Trust me: I LOVE THIS UPDATE. I LOVE THIS GAME. SOME THINGS IN THIS UPDATE I AM A BIT DISAPPOINTED IN.

well, you could just create your own custom category that's setup just like the old ones. (although I'd agree that creating custom cat's is a little fiddly. I'd like to see a larger interface that enables you to drag and drop parts and add whole sub-categories in one go, but it's WIP, I'm sure it will get better).

re-learning things that have become part of muscle memory is always tricky, I've been playing since 0.15 so my mouse still goes up to where the buttons used to be, but I think its a change for the better and us old-dogs just gotta learn new tricks! I like the separation of engines from tanks and when I start packing in the mods again, that is going to be really useful.

I'd like to see more keyboard shortcut's in the editors. I find having to click the arrows to change pages is annoying (maybe have mouse scroll change pages when mouse is over the parts list, or page up/down) and I'd also like to be able to switch which category is open from the keyboard. The left hand is kinda underused in the editors.

The only thing that I'm sad about is the ctrl+click on a part already in the craft feature seems to have gone again (it was removed a while back, then it returned in a kinda unreliable way). I hope that gets added back in later.

But the minor grumbles I have are really just that; minor. Overall I think this is a fab update.

[MGCJerry]

Sure it will take some getting used to, but you can always create your own categories to sort parts so nobody is really "stuck" with what organization we were given. I also always have the tendencies to pull out parts and just leave them sitting in the workspace until I need them so I don't have to keep switching categories. However, I do like the option to sort parts by 'installed date'. For the vector hold, you don't have to click the other options. When SAS is enabled, it appears it defaults to "Stability Control" where the pilot is holding it steady (eg: old SAS). While not addressed to you, but related; I'm also happy to see that in sandbox the SAS abilities have been expanded to the probe cores as well but not sure how it pans out in career.

My biggest disappointment with the update is radial decouplers, and still no dv readout. It would be nice if there was a dv readout like the contracts button in the vab.

[G-rom]

I actually Love the New expirience System!

It will make KSP a Lot easier for new players!

As someone who played the game since the 0.19 Update I´ve been waiting for more Use for the Kerbals,because they mostly were just these Science Boosters...

[WuphonsReach]

The latter I agree with. The 3 tier jumps are HUGE. There's not a lot of in between from 'Orbit' to 'Anywhere' to 'Eve Return vehicle'.

The VAB progression really needs about 5 levels (even if there is no visual difference between the first few levels). Action groups should still come at tier 2 and tier 3, but the number of parts needs to be smoothed out to [ 30, 60, 120, 240, unlimited ] or something.

Launchpad/Runway has a similar issue and should probably go with a mass limit of [ 25t, 50t, 100t, 200t, unlimited ]

[Whirligig Girl]

Took me couple of hours of try and re-try, but finally... This is going to take a while.

http://i62.tinypic.com/2hwpe7t.png

I was wondering... have you guys thought about torrents? Some games I tried used this. You download a program which is just a specially tailored torrent client, and then it hooks you with SQUAD's servers or other peoples computers alas traditional torrent (but controlled be the company of course). It really speeds things up.

Steam downloaded the update in 5 minutes. (Though it was probably sped up because I did not start perfectly from scratch)