Female Kerbals

[Specialist290]

Aerodynamics overhaul, time warp redone, fairings etc. are not "big" enough features?

My comment regards the whole thread, not just the OP, and memory issues are frequently mentioned in it.

To put things into the proper context, I'd like to point out that female kerbals were officially revealed before the Squadcast revealed the other major features.

[Whirligig Girl]

Because Soviet history isn't really celebrated in North America or much of the rest of the world. Heck, as a kid they only taught me who the first Canadian woman in space was. Yay, nationalism!

They never taught the first person in space or much about space travel at all. My knowledge of space history is completely unlinked from my school learning.

US Education isn't that great.

And speaking of Valentina, here's a picture, based on the famous one of her in the vostok capsule.

[Louella]

They're making space tourists for new tourism contracts. So they'd be working on adding variety to the character models. And when they're doing that, then it is the logical point at which to introduce female kerbalnauts.

[GoSlash27]

See previous about all software having bugs.

So you think Squad should do 0.91 as a bugfix release, and then do 0.92 with aerodynamics and female Kerbals?

That's reasonable. The problem is that from what you've been saying, people are hearing "Fix all the bugs, and in a year add the new thing." Furthermore, I'm seeing a lot of pushback on this one feature. I haven't seen any sort of backlash on waiting to add the spaceplane parts or aerodynamics until all existing bugs are fixed. Hell, people are still asking Squad to add the barn back in, not fix the bugs and then add the barn back in.

Do you see the difference? Cause to some of us, it's casting a very bad light on certain members, even if they don't deserve it.

This is where I'm coming from also. The devs have added a lot of stuff over the past year. Some worked, some didn't. But through it all, I've never seen opposition to it until now.

If it's just a matter of pushing back against politically correct nonsense, I can totally relate to that. I'm not a fan of people who push their political agendas in my entertainment either.

But in this case, girlbals have been a glaring omission and a lot of people have been asking for them for a long time now. And it just plain makes sense to have them from a sales perspective. So why not?

[TheCanadianVendingMachine]

They're making space tourists for new tourism contracts. So they'd be working on adding variety to the character models. And when they're doing that, then it is the logical point at which to introduce female kerbalnauts.

You are correct. If Max would've alluded to that in the tweet, or one ahead, there would be less issues. It makes sense for people to go space, and not just be the standard joe. But still, I would rather see that be implemented later. The changes in Kerbals, that is.

[Whirligig Girl]

I just love people immediately white-knighting "the cause" and not even rationally trying to hear us out. I've iterated about a half dozen times that I actually use a mod right now, currently, that add female Kerbals myself in case you want to know where I stand. I'm not saying, no don't ever add them. I'm not even saying don't add them right now. I'm saying finish what you started before starting other things! Is that so goddamn hard to understand? Right, of course, because it's automatically tied to gender. Because I don't want female Kerbals right now, I'm a misogynist. Cool.

I don't care what the hell the feature is. I DON'T WANT ANY MORE FEATURES. I WANT MY GAME TO ACTUALLY RUN FOR MORE THAN 15 MINUTES FIRST KTHX.

I'm not even going to get started with aero... especially when Ferram offered his expertise and Squad basically flat out ignored him. Now they're probably going to break FAR instead.

Wow, I'm starting to see how stupid it is when I bold and capitalize my posts. We get your point, we don't need capslock.

It feels weird saying it to someone else. Huh.

[Nitrous Oxide]

They're making space tourists for new tourism contracts. So they'd be working on adding variety to the character models. And when they're doing that, then it is the logical point at which to introduce female kerbalnauts.

To be fair, I should have seen that coming... FinePrint had those, stock currently doesn't.

Now it all makes sense. Somewhere, buried in all the crap, the voice of reason. Now why can't they just straight up explain that from the get-go and save people like me the frustration of "oh, here they go again, adding more stuff and ignoring what currently doesn't work!"... especially when the know they community will be at odds with it.

We get your point, we don't need capslock.

Yes, but does Squad?

Edited January 24, 2015 by Nitrous Oxide

[Sage]

I am curious when you would expect Female Kerbals *should* be added. If not this update, then when? The update after this one? When KSP goes gold? When KSP 3 is announced? When should they be added?

As others have stated, representation matters. Not only so that women can feel they can play the game, but so that we men can see women in the game as our equals. Many of us may not want to see this, or would prefer to see women as equals "soon", but we need to see this. We need to learn this. We need to remember this.

The sad truth is, women in science and engineering have it harder because of us men. We've been told, almost since birth, that men are "better" than women. We take our prejudices with us into the laboratory and the workshop. When we have to work with women scientists and engineers, we condescend, we harrass, we insult. We do all we can to drive them out. There are individuals who don't. But, collectively, our gender needs to grow up. If adding Female Kerbals to KSP helps us grow up a bit, to start seeing women scientists and engineers as colleagues worthy of respect, then let them be added.

Arguments that adding Female Kerbals will "break the game" are, bluntly, false. If people are uncomfortable with the idea of Female Kerbals, then I respectfully submit that they need to ask themselves why they are uncomfortable.

1. I've never really saw kerbals as male either, so I would say that this uèdate as added gender altogether.

2.Have you ever worked in a stem field? I saw that argument "women have it harder" trew around a lot of time without any solid base, and I take it as a personal insult, as I work in a STEM field. I don't insult and harrass people in my work for their gender and I can assure you that women are treathed equally in most places and don't experience any extra difficulty than males; females professors exist, and have existed for a long time, as the person who implemented Apollo flight computer software was a girl, for example. Maybe you are one of the guy that think Dr. Matt Taylor was a terrible sexist pig because he had a shirt during rosetta/philiae landing (made by her female friend) that some random "intellectual" found offensive, while seroius women where in the control room coordinating the mission. Our gender is mature as the opposite one. Women can be sexists, and men can get an harsh unfair treatment in work as well in the form of less support, as they are seen by gender stereotypes as strong and emotionless. So I would say that you are the sexiest one here, as you paint the opposite ... as beings in dire need of help, oppressed by a stronger force, when that isn't really the case. We're all human and we share all the fault and the virtues, just in different forms. Last but not least, gender bias in workfields exists on biological bases, and while it's bad to invoke those stereotypes to exclude a person from a place, it's also wrong to use them to stigmatize the opposing group. But this is more for the science lounge. If someone is intrested in sexual dimorphism in the brain and human behaviuor, make a thread and I'll give some you some papers.

3.female kerbals don't break the game, they are uncomfortable because they bring gender in a game where there wasn't ANY. Kerbals where mostly male because most of ksp player seems to be male and there was a certain degree of self identification, the default pronoun in english is the male one and they had mostly male names. Wanted a quick way to add females in? Just add to the config some female names, leaving things gray. And last, Max started hyping up this feature like it was something important, while my main gripe is exactly your point: it doesn't subtract from the game, but it doesn't add anything really either. It would have been better if they had showed the feature like the aero overhaul or resources, just presenting it to the community. In fact the only thing they could have hyped where resources, and that would have worked.

[KerBlam]

I WANT MY GAME TO ACTUALLY RUN FOR MORE THAN 15 MINUTES FIRST KTHX.

What's going on with your game only running for 15 minutes? That's certainly not a universal problem with the game.

I think the Kerbettes is a non-issue. They've said it was simple to implement and it should add too much memory load. They hyped it, because they obviously thought people would think it was an exciting addition... I think it will be great, and I'm sure the guys down at KSC are thrilled. The cupola will see some action for sure.

Edited January 24, 2015 by Claw

[Nitrous Oxide]

What's going on with your game only running for 15 minutes? That's certainly not a universal problem with the game.

Running out of memory certainly isn't some weird, odd instance with only my game either.

[Whirligig Girl]

This is clearly a heated debate. I still don't see why people don't like female Kerbals. Females are awesome in general.* Kerbals are awesome. (Source)

The two combine into something awesome. This didn't take much work on the dev's part, so the argument that it takes away dev resources is null.

*Fine, males are awesome too. Source

[KerBlam]

Running out of memory certainly isn't some weird, odd instance with only my game either.

No but it can be managed by the users choice of Hardware/OS... This is a conversation for another thread really, and has been had a million times, but it doesn't matter what bugfixes SQUAD implements, they aren't going to fix that issue until the game gets UNITY 5.

[Whirligig Girl]

I DON'T WANT ANY MORE FEATURES. I WANT MY GAME TO ACTUALLY RUN FOR MORE THAN 15 MINUTES FIRST KTHX.

But, like, that's not a universal problem with KSP. It runs stable on my computer, which is fairly midrange. Are you using Windows 64-bit? If so that's not stable. Check your PC's specs, compare to recommended specs. The stock game has never crashed on me unless it was an insane circumstance (300+ part ships) or rare Krakens (I can't even think of a time when that actually happened).

[Specialist290]

Nitrous Oxide, while I sincerely hope you eventually get your issues resolved, do you think you could post a thread concerning your particular issues in one of our Support subforums? It might be a better venue than this thread if you're looking for detailed, targeted support for your issues.

[Nitrous Oxide]

the users choice of Hardware/OS

Oh yeah, let me just run on down to the PC library and swap out my laptop for something that actually works with KSP.

I have 956 games on Steam, and it's safe to say that after 515 hours, KSP runs the worst of any (seriously, I've never had an application ctd so many times in my life). I thought nothing would ever surpass PlanetSide 2 in terms of "eyes bigger than your stomach" so to speak, but like seriously, developers, know your limits and especially the limits of your engine. Unity is meant for tablets and phones. Not games the scale of a solar system. /facepalm

Nitrous Oxide, while I sincerely hope you eventually get your issues resolved, do you think you could post a thread concerning your particular issues in one of our Support subforums? It might be a better venue than this thread if you're looking for detailed, targeted support for your issues.

Ain't no fix for me, I've already tried everything. I'm not about to spend my weekend installing Linux just to find out that, no, there are no drivers for my card... KSP used to run beautifully pre-0.90 and now it's all broken. Mods don't do anything special, except make the game crash a bit faster... all my issues are still around in stock and other people have already reported them (memory leaks for example).

Edited January 24, 2015 by Nitrous Oxide

[AbacusWizard]

This actually IS a bugfix release. It's fixing one of the most glaring bugs that's been with KSP since the beginning: the accidental omission of female astronauts.

Seriously though, this is wonderful. I'm looking forward to this so much; it should have been done months if not years ago. I wouldn't mind seeing a variety of hairstyles and shades of green for skintone as well. The notion of kerbals gaining experience and having different careers leads nicely into the notion that kerbals can look different. We humans often tend to think in terms of faces; I for one would find it easier to remember "The light green one with medium brown hair is the pilot, the dark green one with blue pigtails is the scientist, and the medium green one with the purple mohawk is the engineer" than "Jefdan is the pilot, Kirmok is the scientist, and Bikbot is the engineer."

As for the claim that kerbals are a single-gender race: yes, at the moment they are, and that gender is clearly male. The default kerbalnaut model has a haircut and jawline that are associated with maleness (in modern western culture, at least); the associated specialists at the space center are generally wearing male-associated clothing, they have male-associated names, and some have facial hair. If you "don't see gender" here then you're not paying attention.

This related article is well worth reading to anyone interested in representation of female characters in games:

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2014/02/games-noir-and-the-17.html

P.S. Yes, I'd love to see more bugfixes. I'd love to be able to design large ships in the VAB/SPH without the game freezing and force-quitting every third or fourth click I make. I'd love to see improved aerodynamics and n-body simulation and Lagrange points and procedural landing gear and Rockomax-sized xenon tanks. But the addition of female kerbals isn't preventing that. Believe it or not, it is possible for the developers to work on more than one project at a time. Those who say otherwise are reminding me very much of some people I know who say that we shouldn't devote any effort to space exploration until we've solved all of our problems here on Earth.

[Specialist290]

@Nitrous Oxide: Fair enough. Figured I'd suggest it, though, since it seems your particular technical issues are starting to overtake the thread topic.

[Vaporo]

Wow. Fourteen (EDIT: fifteen) pages on this subject in under 3 hours. I can't believe what kind of negativity is coming out of this.

Why wouldn't Squad create a bit of hype about female Kerbals? It's been coming for a long time, people have been asking for it for a long time, and it's finally happening.

In any case, no matter how Squad announced it, I think that the hype would have happened anyways (By tomorrow, there will probably be half a dozen threads on the subject).

[AbacusWizard]

I think it's pretty clear that kerbals are meant to be cartoony versions of humans. Same general shape (if exaggerated), same number of eyes, similar level of hairlessness, similar facial expressions, similar rocket components, etc.

[tater]

Sage, the game just added gender, you claim. The names are male. They look like human males.

I ask the same question no one answered before: if the characters from the start had been magical ponies and unicorns or princesses, would you be playing? If the answer is no, then the gender matters to you.

You say "no gender," where there is no gender as long as they are, you know, male. My daughter asked if there were any girls the first time I showed it to her. She wasn't primed for this issue, and instantly read them all as male. I'd bet money that the vast majority of people confronted with extant kerbals would ID them all as male.

[Whirligig Girl]

The stickfigure comparison: Kerbals are stick figures, just really finely detailed stick figures.

I won't give any comment, I'll leave this to whatever interpretation you want.

[Sage]

@AbascusWizard

The associated kerbals at the space center are however only a recent addition, and some of us don't even play carrer mode much. I would say that they are another misstep of Squad, at this point. The kerbals from most of us are the ones in the suits, and they don't look particularly manly to me. The jaw line is mostly due to the whole face shape, and females have short hair when working as astrounauts (see Samantha Cristoforetti). If you actually want to distinguish females by giving them silly ponytails you are actually describing women in a sexist way.

Also, while I won't enter in the whole ordeal of representation of groups in fiction versus the artist vision of the authors, I'll comment that thinking that women actually care about being represented by kerbals and their gender is pretty sexist again, because you assume that women actually play ksp for a plygonal model instead of the physical challenges and puzzles combined witht the humor of kerbals as funny and not careful astrounauts like the other players do.

EDIT @tater yes, of course. I've already explained that in the post above mine. I would play the game even if it had humans and a gritty tone, the main attraction are the physics, while the settings define the tone of the game.

As for the example of your daughter, that's due to the fact of her being of a young age, making her more intrested naturally to the funny cartoony figures, the names being males mostly, and probably the fact that astrounats are mostly males (and that shapes the names, too). So basically it boils down to the question if people who are intrested in the game will check it regardless of kerbals, which I'm pretty sure the answer is yes.

Again, my main gripe is that it's something that was hyped as truly important, while other features that probably makes female gamers happy too, are left aside. Or the fact that we are already out of beta, while some times could have been spent relasing incremental bugfix patches while the team worked in parallel to preapare the features of 1.0relase.

Edited January 24, 2015 by Sage

[r4pt0r]

kerbals are our little green aliens, so why not this?

My take on Kerbal physiology and explanation of why there are no female Kerbals in the space program:

http://i58.servimg.com/u/f58/17/27/45/47/gerbal10.jpg

In my concept, Kerbals are an aquatic organism similar to Earth's cephalopods, including that their vital organs are concentrated in what appears to be a head, but is actually their main body. The "torso" of a Kerbal is little more than a muscular foot featuring one or two pairs of tentacles. Kerbals possess no bones, and their bodies being adapted to a marine environment, they suffer negligible muscle degeneration from being in space and are able to survive extreme G-forces. As they live underwater, Kerbals have built very few structures on land - rather the majority of their cities are hidden deep in Kerbin's oceans.

Like crabs and several other marine invertebrates, Kerbals are able to survive and breathe on land as long as they keep themselves well-hydrated, but whenever they go outside it is necessary to wear protective suits to prevent drying out. A side effect of the suits is that they restrict movement, preventing the Kerbals from extending their tentacles freely but still allowing them to manipulate objects and operate machinery.

Currently the space program only employs male Kerbals due to physical limitations: male Kerbals possess a second pair of tentacles, which originally developed for use during mating, similar to the claw on the back end of an earwig. Female Kerbals, on the other hand, only have two tentacles. In the water, unrestricted by gravity, this is no problem for them, but on land this prevents them from performing tasks such as carrying rocket parts, using a notepad, etc. Presumably work is being done to develop artificial limbs for female Kerbals so that someday soon they too can explore the universe.

[Nitrous Oxide]

kerbals are our little green aliens, so why not this?

Because political correctness.

[spidersVise]

I don't care for that theory(read: really dislike), but at the same time I'd love a pair of robot arms to be on the lady Kerb I'd use for friggin' all of my missions.