Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Uneron]

They do do one useful thing- they absorb heat passively.

Wait, there is passive heat absorption? Does this apply to parts other then turbines, too? If so, are there effective ways of keeping an engine cool (thinking about atomic engine here)?

[LoSboccacc]

Struts worked some time ago 

[Guardian G.I.]

Spoiler: New screenshots from the upcoming 0.18, anyone? (click to show/hide)

[Aqizzar]

Are those airports?

Is that a Kerbonaut walking around inside a craft?

Is that a constituent-vehicle selection menu?

And damn those new models look nice.  I wonder if they've been hiring modders or something.

[forsaken1111]

Currently salivating over the possibilities of orbital docking, refueling, etc.

Also the ability to rename craft and assign them a designation like 'probe' is kinda nice.

[Micro102]

Uh oh, my imagination is running wild again.

Imagining rival space programs fighting for dominance over space, being funded by corporations, and building bigger and more expensive ships while going to war and building bases around the solar system.

[sluissa]

And damn those new models look nice.  I wonder if they've been hiring modders or something.

That's been the case for most of their recent hires.

C7 and NovaSilisko, were hired because of their modding skills, and I know at least a few others were hired out of the community for one reason or another.

I agree though. Every taste I get of this just makes me want it more.

Also *squee* gravel airstrips! I'd scoff at any other simulation game doing that for space landings. (Although I know the shuttle could land in the middle of the desert if needed) But gravel strips and Quonset hut hangars is just... so Kerbal.

Plans... so many plans. I think I'm most excited for the map planning mode though. Going to make flying much less trial and errory. Which, was good for learning, but still bad when you have to do it even for routine flights until you've got a dozen under your belt and can do them in your sleep.

Personally I could care less for the potential for war, although a good old fashioned space race might not be out of place.

We seem to be getting a lot more than we bargained for in this coming update. Originally it was "no docking in .18." Then it was "we're focusing just on the sound aspect". Now... all this... I'm just blown away. This will probably make just the second game I'm happy to have been an early adopter of.

[Aseaheru]

what, even if a game showed up based on Coyote?

[Ozyton]

Are those airports?

Airport, singular. During one of the KSPTV streams the artist (named Nova?) figured it would be cool to have a runway to land on. He said that those islands the main runway is pointing at are there because he wanted players to have a goal to reach for their first planes, and having a runway there will only make it that much of a sweeter success =p

Is that a Kerbonaut walking around inside a craft?

No, that's the inside of the "tuna can" command pod pictured on top of the large orange fuel tank in image 4. it's a 2 crew command pod and is simply a cylinder, allowing large parts to be placed on both sides (I believe.) There is also a 4 crew pod that is larger and meant to be used as a living quarters, on a space station for example. It has no IVA currently though.

Is that a constituent-vehicle selection menu?

That's a vehicle renaming menu. You can now rename your crafts even mid-mission, so you can have models of crafts saved in your VAB and each one can have their own little name. The vehicle type selection thing mainly determines how long the object can exist before the game deletes it. Space stations and bases will pretty much never be deleted, while space debris has a pretty low priority. They also change the ship's icon in the map and tracking views so you can differentiate them better.

And damn those new models look nice.  I wonder if they've been hiring modders or something.

As far as I know they have done a complete art pass on every ship part. The old solid boosters look nice, the old grey fuel tanks look nice, everything looks nice. Also, now when you put a decoupler on the bottom of an engine it puts the engine in a shroud/fairing (whatever they are) so that the entire rocket will look super spiffy. Look at the last image, it's where the large tank is connected to the rest of the plane. It's covered in a shroud, but in the other images the shroud is gone. There's also a new docking port that's inside a 1 meter cylinder, so it fits on most rockets, but you can activate it and it opens a door and pops the docking port out.

They've also made it so if an object has no direct 'path' to the sun it will be in total darkness, making those floodlights necessary for landing on the dark side of moons and planets that are... dark. Floodlights also use battery energy which can be recharged using solar panels... which need sunlight.

Oh, they

[Sirus]

Oh, they

They what? WHAT?! 

[Ozyton]

I would have loved to tell you had bay12 not derped out on me. Now that it's back I've forgotten what it was I wished to say. The issue is I don't know how much you guys already know and how much of this is just repeating what you already know. Might as well just say a bunch of stuff in hopes of covering it all.

Intake ports work now, and radial intake ports have been added for jet engines. Kerbinless command pods (in 2 varieties from what I can tell) are in so you may create probes, they will require electrical energy and once the batteries run out the command pod will not respond to control input. Multiple command pods per vessel, however the first one placed will be the 'root' one and full of kerbonauts, the rest empty. Ion engines that use batteries and xenon fuel, the engines are far more powerful than they would be in reality for gameplay/fun purposes.
Resources (fuel, electrical energy, modded resources) can be transferred between ships through docking ports, or shut off for whatever reason. Action groups set to the number keys can perform user-set actions per vehicle, so you can create a ship that toggles an upper stage's engines with the press of the 1 key, or an emergency shutdown that toggles engines off and boosts the command pod away from the rest of the ship, for example. Flight planning, but I think we've already seen it. Multiple flight plans within flight plans to coordinate each part of your flight.

The game has also been reported to have a 'vast improvement' in terms of how well it runs. The mod that slows time during heavy physics calculations is also in natively, in the form of a slider. If you want the game to always run the same speed but cut out frames everywhere then turn it down, but if you want to see every detail of your ship exploding turn it up. Also useful for piloting complex crafts that physics calulations would otherwise make it impossible to fly due to framerate issues.

Also, I don't know if any of those pictures showed, but there are now girder-type structures you can place, useful for lightweight probe construction or just for structure in general.

[Fikes]

Any word if they are going to add official "rescue" pods? Just places for Kerbalnaughts to climb into that start out empty. I have a lot of stranded minis-in-ites.

[Guardian G.I.]

Also, I don't know if any of those pictures showed, but there are now girder-type structures you can place, useful for lightweight probe construction or just for structure in general.

You mean, these girders?

Any word if they are going to add official "rescue" pods? Just places for Kerbalnaughts to climb into that start out empty. I have a lot of stranded minis-in-ites.

It'll be possible to add multiple command modules, so (apparently) you can attach an empty standard command module to an unmanned probe.

[sneakey pete]

I cannot wait to launch myself a large station piece by piece, before docking multiple splace planes to it. Or sending a refueling depot to jool. Or sending probes to anywhere. Or landing a fully fueled space plane on Laythe and relaunching it. The multiple parts of the game seem like they're coming together in many interconnecting ways that will up the possibilities 10 fold this update.

[ank]

Resources (fuel, electrical energy, modded resources) can be transferred between ships through docking ports, or shut off for whatever reason. Action groups set to the number keys can perform user-set actions per vehicle, so you can create a ship that toggles an upper stage's engines with the press of the 1 key, or an emergency shutdown that toggles engines off and boosts the command pod away from the rest of the ship, for example. Flight planning, but I think we've already seen it. Multiple flight plans within flight plans to coordinate each part of your flight.

No. Fucking. Way.
This is Über Control Pack.
Escape towers, refuelling, perfect control!
Will I be able to shut-down my liquid engines and activate my air engines with a button press? and reverse it?

When this comes out we gotta have a Laythe and back race! It will finally be doable!