Better Than Starting Manned (Flower's WIP KSP mod )

[Renegrade]

Man, honestly I think it's just time for a new aero model :)

It is.. it most certainly is.

I think bandaids like the above are inevitably going to have problems like I described where they may work well in some circumstances but will behave in a counter intuitive fashion in others. I think inevitably the more time they spend futzing around with trying to make the old system behave in a reasonable manner will ultimately be wasted when they realize they just need a new system.

I think Squad recognizes that the entire aero model is a placeholder (I swear I saw that on a dev to-do list somewhere), which makes me a bit confused as to why they have so many plane parts and just added that RAPIER hybrid. Like you say, they'll have to fix everything they've added in those categories to work with their new aero model. Good money after the bad, right?

My thoughts above about the nosecones were along the lines of 'the best that can be done in 5 minutes'. Of course maybe the ones we have are exactly that already.. :S

ALso I think we have it backwards: the low "dragsity" nosecones try to pull the nose towards the retrograde marker. I'm testing a Duna drop-probe for BTSM right now, and I noticed that the test rocket likes to flip upside down. Once it's in freefall and the retrograde marker is in the sky, the probe seems to be doing fine, falling shield-first/parachutes last.. but uh... aren't nosecones having that same effect? :S :S :S

If that's the case, then their band-aid is actually harmful even when used as designed :C

Maybe set aside an entire release to revamp the aero model and rebalance the game to fit it, but yeah, I think the longer they put this off, the bigger a problem it's going to become.

Reserving a release for just that might not be a popular move in the community's eyes, but I think it's a very necessary one.

I'm with you on that. Maybe though, if they distracted the community by releasing some fluff or incorporating parts from a popular mod or something, they could hide the fact that all of the real work was on an aero model and that the release only has a single real bullet point.

By the way, thank you for sharing your thoughts and time with everybody. I'm a (or was a) professional programmer myself, but it's all been back end/server-side work. I've always been interested in games and game design, but it's a special treat to be able to chat with (or listen to chats with, ex. Icy/FC streams) an actual game programmer/designer. Gives me ideas and insight for my own game I've been scribbling up for the last uh.. oh geez, it was the 20th anniversary last year, haha..

Anyhow I've been chatting yer ear off, so I'll leave ya in peace - the tidbits you've let drop about the next BTSM sound awesome, man!

[FlowerChild]

I think Squad recognizes that the entire aero model is a placeholder (I swear I saw that on a dev to-do list somewhere), which makes me a bit confused as to why they have so many plane parts and just added that RAPIER hybrid. Like you say, they'll have to fix everything they've added in those categories to work with their new aero model. Good money after the bad, right?

There's a lot of that kind of confusion going around man. For example, I've seen stuff about how they plan life support and reentry. However, they then add career mode and give the justification for manned missions coming first as it being a matter of manned pods being simpler for new players, I assume because you don't have to worry about energy management.

But hold on...if they're going to add life support and reentry, and I assume losing Kerbals will eventually be a bad thing in terms of cost or what have you, won't that make them more complicated? Does that mean they aren't adding life support and reentry, or does it mean they're wasting time now dicking around with a version of the tech tree that they know they're going to have to entirely rework later?

And one of the biggest question marks for me is how they refer to the game as "sandbox complete" (it's even on the main page of their website), yet they still seem to have plans for features that will drastically change the core mechanics, which makes it sound like sandbox is anything but complete. So, which is right? Sandbox complete or not? Are they really planning on revamping core features like aero? Is it just an arbitrary title they slapped on the game because they thought it would sound good?

My honest impression is that I don't think Squad themselves know what they're doing more than a release or two into the future and are just kinda winging it in that regard based on community feedback/whining or what have you. That's fine and all, and is a valid development strategy for some, but it also makes me take anything I hear about upcoming features with a big old grain of salt.

So, what I've taken to doing is just assuming nothing at all about what features will be coming in the future. We have what we have now, and maybe things will change in some particular area, but there seems to be no way to be certain. If I feel something is important enough to justify it, I either implement it myself, or try to find another mod I can integrate to make it happen.

I'm with you on that. Maybe though, if they distracted the community by releasing some fluff or incorporating parts from a popular mod or something, they could hide the fact that all of the real work was on an aero model and that the release only has a single real bullet point.

I really don't think devs should worry that much about community reaction or go to those kind of lengths in fear of it (I know many do though). If they know something needs to be done for the health of the game and their own development budget, that's just what needs to be done. People may whine briefly, but at the end of the day, it really doesn't mean squat if they do.

[Iluinrandir]

So i have been playing the prelease 3 for some while now with some additional mods (Mainly RT2).

this is my current workhorse:

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dont make the payload wider. It will flip the rocket ;)
Without struts this was a quite flexible design ;)

it works quite well. I got all the temp, press, seismic and grav. scans from kerbin, mun and minmus and also all goo experiments except for minmus.
Obviously i should get the crew reports of the mun now but for some reason i cannot see a way to make a mission with a surviving kerbal (this is not necessary from a gameplay standview but i would like to return my kerbals safely).
So i have two questions:
What is the safe speed for the MK1 pod to not break from the chutes when the chutes open? (my current speed lies at about 130m/s and it stell breaks the chutes off)
Can i return the mk1-2 pod with my current techlvl? (Apparently i am missing bigger heat shields and i do not see where they are in the tech tree)

Current techlevel: (currently 372 science points left due to a not complete manned mun landing)
lvl 4 (100 science): 7/8 (no aerodynamics)
lvl 5 (200 science): 3/7 (spec. construc.,adv. electronics, adv. exploration) (i got adv. exploration to get some science but there are no eva reports in space which was a not so nice suprise .... o.O)
lvl 7 (400 science): 1/? (Large electrics... solar panels)

A comment to FAR:
I like it. Faster asscents with rather slim rockets.

A comment to playing with RT2:
Works quite well, making heavy use of the flight computer to toggle communication devices via action groups to save energy. Can also be used to get through the early tech tree by activating the communotron after the atmospheric flight. Still RT2 makes it even harder to play BTSM ;) . I think it can be played with BTSM without any problems.

A comment to Science Point gathering:
Feels really grindy, i have a sat in a polar orbit in mun and minmus to get all biomes. (also using ScanSAT to the alle biomes)
MY question here would be: What are you (FC) considering optional science for progression? (kerbin badlands is optional but are there more optional biomes/science points?)

[FlowerChild]

A comment to Science Point gathering:
Feels really grindy, i have a sat in a polar orbit in mun and minmus to get all biomes. (also using ScanSAT to the alle biomes)
MY question here would be: What are you (FC) considering optional science for progression? (kerbin badlands is optional but are there more optional biomes/science points?)

Oh dude...thank you so much for creating this account. I would have happily banned a half dozen or so morons on the KSP forums by now, and this allows me the chance to get some that out of my system.

So thanks again. This will feel good indeed.

[FlowerChild]

BTW guys, after putting some thought into it, I think I'd best pull the prereleases here, and not make any future ones available publicly here, for reasons that I think the above post demonstrates.

It's going to wind up splitting the mod community, and I'm going to wind up running tech support for what are essentially two different mods over on the KSP forums.

If any of the forum regulars that have been playing this need a copy or what have you, just fire me a PM and I'll hook you up.

[FlowerChild]

New release available over on the KSP forums, and man, was that ever a fucking big one, if I do say so myself. I think it took me around an hour just to do an editing pass on the change log :)

[Larmantine]

Congratulations!

I may have missed this, but the FAR version is discontinued?

[Gormador]

New release available over on the KSP forums, and man, was that ever a fucking big one, if I do say so myself. I think it took me around an hour just to do an editing pass on the change log :)

Dude, that change log is MASSIVE! 2500 words, this is huge!

[Stormweaver]

Congratulations!

I may have missed this, but the FAR version is discontinued?

For now it's just being put off until FC decides that's the way he wants to go in terms of an aerodynamics model - so for all intents an purposes I suppose it is.

Speaking of which; was the change to how ISP affects thrust (as opposed to fuel consumption) decided against in the end, or just too much for it all to fit in one release?

[DaveYanakov]

Excellent work on 1.2 man. I stole an hour so far and I've already gotten back up to tech 3. So far all is in order.

Sidenote: Not actually about FAR (didn't want to leak any mention of the integration onto the other board) but I just wanted to let you know that this goo dropper design has worked for 17 missions with a 100% success rate in the stock aero model. If it's even close to properly aligned it will take over and put itself on trajectory as soon as the atmosphere begins to grab it. So far the worst descent was an extremely steep drop from 280km. I was off by about 5 degrees on the way in and hit 5000 meters before it slowed down enough to safely deploy the chute. Still had a third of the shield left to play with.

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[FlowerChild]

Speaking of which; was the change to how ISP affects thrust (as opposed to fuel consumption) decided against in the end, or just too much for it all to fit in one release?

Yeah, it turns out there were two things with it that made me decide to wait:

-First, it completely changes the balance of the early game. That's not such a big deal anymore with the science point changes I made towards the end, but when I first tried integrating it, I realized it would be a heck of a lot of work.

-While running some tests, I realized the way I thought ISP worked in stock was wrong. I assumed they extended the values to take into account atmospheres denser than Kerbin's, and thus stuff like the atmosphere of Eve would choke up the engines. Turns out, Squad actually caps ISP degradation at 1 ISP, so it basically never gets worse than on the launchpad. When I realized this, I realized that even if I did the above rebalance work, it wouldn't have the impact I actually wanted on the game with stuff like increasing the value of the aerospike, unless I also did the work to extend the ISP curve on all engines for denser atmospheres.

All told, it was a bigger job than I wanted to add onto this release, so I decided to delay it until a future one. It shouldn't really be a save breaking change, and I still would very much like to include it, so I'll likely do that in the near future.

Sidenote: Not actually about FAR (didn't want to leak any mention of the integration onto the other board) but I just wanted to let you know that this goo dropper design has worked for 17 missions with a 100% success rate in the stock aero model. If it's even close to properly aligned it will take over and put itself on trajectory as soon as the atmosphere begins to grab it. So far the worst descent was an extremely steep drop from 280km. I was off by about 5 degrees on the way in and hit 5000 meters before it slowed down enough to safely deploy the chute. Still had a third of the shield left to play with.

Nice. No need for a dragticle in that design.

I think why it works reliably is that the stowed drag for a parachute is actually slightly higher than other parts (.22 instead of .2), which is what's keeping it pointed towards the rear. Also, all my other changes to the drag of various parts keeps the rest balanced.

It's a little odd mind you, given the parachute has a nose-cone type shape. There's not much rhyme nor reason to many of the stock drag values.

[dawnraider]

I just got back into playing KSP, I had taken a break for a while. I just started with the new update, which is awesome. Probably one of the most entertaining things I've seen for quite a while is the description of the Amazing Dragticle (TM). I about burst out laughing when I saw it, which is not necessarily good when playing late at night :)

Anyways, loving the new update, keep up the good work!

[FlowerChild]

For those of you that may not check the thread over there frequently, I just put out a new release of BTSM (1.3 Randy Gibbon) over on the KSP forums :)

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/thr ... an-26th%29

[Mason11987]

Awesome, great improvements Flower. Can't wait to try it out!

For those who want a link directly to the changelog on the KSP forums:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/thr ... post930825

[jorgebonafe]

I found out after a couple of manned missions to the Mun that your kerbals don't have to be standing on the ground to collect samples. You can basically make them leave the lander module, immediately collect the samples just hanging there and get back in, making it unnecessary to design your ship with ladders... Just thought I should mention it here as to not advertise exploits to too many people...

[FlowerChild]

I found out after a couple of manned missions to the Mun that your kerbals don't have to be standing on the ground to collect samples. You can basically make them leave the lander module, immediately collect the samples just hanging there and get back in, making it unnecessary to design your ship with ladders... Just thought I should mention it here as to not advertise exploits to too many people...

Thanks man, I appreciate that :)

[Sage]

I'm going to leave this here since I don't have an account on the ksp forums, but I wanted to share the fun I was having with the mod.

I'll leave the tech 1&2 rockets (pretty standard), to show my much more intresting progress in the later tech. Mind that I haven't played vanilla, so this is my experience with BTSM "untouched":

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My first "big" mission. This thing can get in space and get back. I used it to get a gravi read of a huge chunk of the biomes of kerbin (I got a lucky tundra read :D ).




Decouplers :) => orbit. Or so I tought, but once high up in the void, it's difficult to stop those residual rotations and get your nodes right. I made some goo-ish science out of it.



With some extra RCS goodness I made it! I organized a mission to get in a polar orbit and get the rest of the biomes, included an unknown badlands biome. I don't have a picture of the launch pad, but the thing is like the old rocket, but with all tech 2 boosters.

Right now I'm trying to get in an orbit around the moon (I don't think I have any other science to do on kerbin,at least with my current set of tools), but I think I'm missing something. I noticed that I'll need a LOT of batteries to keep my probe active all the way in and trasmit the data back to earth, but it seems that I never have enough fuel to do it. Looking at my latest rocket, the Hermes IV mkV, I think I might be trying to hard and getting a little too big, what do you think? Any suggestion on how to get to the moon is appreciated :P

Anyway, I'm having a blast with this mod, and I sort of wish I could have tried directly BTW without vanilla in MC, too. Guess I'll wait for RTH for that. But wonderful job again at getting me lost in a game FC!

[FlowerChild]

I'm going to leave this here since I don't have an account on the ksp forums, but I wanted to share the fun I was having with the mod.

Glad you're enjoying it man, but if you'd like to say thanks or discuss the mod, please take the time to create a ksp forums account.

Considering the amount of work I've put into this thing, I think it's a reasonable amount of effort to request in return ;)

[Sage]

I'm going to leave this here since I don't have an account on the ksp forums, but I wanted to share the fun I was having with the mod.

Glad you're enjoying it man, but if you'd like to say thanks or discuss the mod, please take the time to create a ksp forums account.

Considering the amount of work I've put into this thing, I think it's a reasonable amount of effort to request in return ;)

Fair enough, I guess it's a reasonable request :P

[FlowerChild]

Just wanted to put out a heads up for people that may not follow the BTSM thread on KSP forums regularly:

I just put out version 1.5 of BTSM, and it is epic, if I do say so myself :)

[MoRmEnGiL]

Gah, KSP is still eluding me, still a bit over my budget.

Congrats on new release FC :]

Question for all you KSP veterans, when I finally manage to get this game, should I start vanilla or just dive into BTSM straight up?

[FlowerChild]

Well...I think you'll know which way I'd answer :)

I think you can answer it for yourself though by considering if you could do it all over again, would you play vanilla MC or BTW first?

Same idea really. Yes, vanilla KSP may be easier, but it just plunks everything in front of you at once with no real progression to it. Even its career mode is basically a slightly delayed sandbox with little rhyme or reason to it, and very little in the way of actual gameplay progression.

So yeah man, up to you, but I think the BTW/vanilla MC analogy is a good one.

[Sarudak]

Hmmm... I haven't played ksp in a while but I was thinking of giving it another go. I remember I got too frustrated after failing a goo return mission from the mun a good dozen times but I think it's about time to get back into it.

[MoRmEnGiL]

So yeah man, up to you, but I think the BTW/vanilla MC analogy is a good one.

Well I was asking more along the lines of, should I play vanilla first to familiarise myself with the mechanics, so I kinda know what I am doing with BTSM, but you make a pretty compelling argument here :P I'm waiting for the first chance at a discount to grab KSP, somehow even though I know about it for a long time, I just recently got a huge itch for it.

[Mason11987]

Nah, you can learn the mechanics just fine in BTSM. In fact, I'd say it's even easier to learn them because your forced to actaully understand what the hell is going on before you're thrown into huge numbers of mechanics.

For example, in vKSP you could come in blind and probably get something into space, but you wouldn't necessarily need to learn much about weight or drag or balance, but in BTSM you'll learn about that early on.

Anyway, gotta go check out this new version!