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[Girlinhat]

Not to mention, anything involving ion drives.  Autopilot makes SO MUCH sense.

[Graknorke]

At the same time, orbital mechanics and things are WAY beyond a lot of people.

Maybe, but not at the basic level that you need to do things in KSP. Stuff like "Burn prograde/retrograde to raise/lower your orbit" is easy enough to get.
The complicated things like calculating perfect transfer orbits is of course way beyond that, but you don't actually need to know that to play KSP. If you want you can just throw more Δv at the problem and do it less efficiently.

[puke]

To be entirely fair, tone aside

You can go ahead and put me on your ignore list, too.  You'll feel better without the temptation to respond to things like this.

Here is the link, for your convenience:    http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?action=profile;area=lists;sa=ignore

Really, no one tore into that joker a few pages back when he was telling people to put parachutes and probe cores on discarded stages to recover funds.  People just let him give false advice about things he hadnt actually tested, because it isnt worth it to talk sense into someone like that. 

But when I ask for help with something that I've had problems with since the first demo of KSP back in 2011 (yes, I have never used the W key in those years) you feel the need to defend him for mouthing off.  So it looks like you'll be a lot happier if you dont have to read my posts.

Don't worry, you wont miss much.  they're not very good.

[Sean Mirrsen]

To be entirely fair, tone aside

You can go ahead and put me on your ignore list, too.  You'll feel better without the temptation to respond to things like this.

Here is the link, for your convenience:    http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?action=profile;area=lists;sa=ignore

Really, no one tore into that joker a few pages back when he was telling people to put parachutes and probe cores on discarded stages to recover science.  People just let him give false advice about things he hadnt actually tested, because it isnt worth it to talk sense into someone like that. 

But when I ask for help with something that I've had problems with since the first demo of KSP back in 2011 (yes, I have never used the W key in those years) you feel the need to defend him for mouthing off.  So it looks like you'll be a lot happier if you dont have to read my posts.

Don't worry, you wont miss much.  they're not very good.

I don't ignore people on principle. I may 'ignore' them via not taking what they say seriously or vehemently refusing to see what point they are trying to make in favor of maintaining mine, but I find it's very much counterproductive to just not give yourself a chance to listen.

Feel free to ignore me though. You don't seem to be the kind of person who minds such trivialties. ^_^

And I don't defend his tone. Just his advice. Short and crude it may have been, rudely accented with a failed attempt at an ironic echo it may have been, but it would - or could - have helped you had you followed it. As far as stuff said by people on the internet goes, roundaboutly useful advice is way above par.

[Putnam]

Really, no one tore into that joker a few pages back when he was telling people to put parachutes and probe cores on discarded stages to recover funds.  People just let him give false advice about things he hadnt actually tested, because it isnt worth it to talk sense into someone like that. 

That joker didn't defend his position when confronted (because he knew it was wrong), nor did he resort to namecalling.

[dragnar]

At the same time, orbital mechanics and things are WAY beyond a lot of people.

Maybe, but not at the basic level that you need to do things in KSP. Stuff like "Burn prograde/retrograde to raise/lower your orbit" is easy enough to get.
The complicated things like calculating perfect transfer orbits is of course way beyond that, but you don't actually need to know that to play KSP. If you want you can just throw more Δv at the problem and do it less efficiently.

Man, KSP is being used in schools to teach orbital mechanics to kids. Like, lower school kids. Kids who don't even know what the branches of mathematics involved are called! KSP falls into the classification which is best for teaching in fact: Easy to learn, incredibly difficult to master.

The wall that keeps people out is the initial learning period - the point where they realize they don't know how to progress, and the game isn't going to go out of it's way to explain it to them, they need to find something external. ...I really have no idea if that's a good or bad thing though to be frank. It's great for those curious enough to go looking. It encourages and reinforces learning. But it does mean a lot of people get frustrated and drop it entirely instead.

[i2amroy]

Yeah, I think it might be helpful to have a bit more in-depth in-game tutorial. Not necessarily something that explains all the finer points of space launch and exploration, but if something at least gave some basic hints for how to get a rocket into space that would be really helpful. Heck, maybe even have it give you a random "tip" every time one of your spaceships explode like "burning pro-grade while in orbit will make your orbit larger!" or "firing engines at an angle while launching will help establish a circular orbit!". I think that would go a long way towards explaining without explaining. (Also the game really needs to explain the maneuvers tab better, I had literally no idea how it worked until I found an online tutorial; suddenly getting to space reliably was much easier to do ).

[Putnam]

The tutorial does tell you stuff...

[Mictlantecuhtli]

I learned how to not explode by fiddling and exploding alot in mid air. It's something I like the most about KSP, feeling it out is very fun. When you've gotten your trajectories/velocity/building without sucking/etc stuff nailed down it just becomes a 'do what you'd like to' thing. Though I still haven't tried to land on an asteroid.

[puke]

I think a reasonable starting place would be like a lexicon or something.  Teaching you how to fly is one thing, but what is missing is a basic guide to the UI.

It needs things like "This is what I_sp means." and "This is what those icons on your navball mean."

Definitions of prograde and antinormal and how to apply them to move your ship around would be NICE, but you have to first know that the little icon means prograde before you can go look up what prograde means.

And then how the interface works, like fine-adjustments for placing parts.  I didn't even know that existed for the longest time.  And how to transfer resources between components.

It is one thing to learn about orbital mechanics and physics from third party sources, but to have to learn the games interface and basic commands from a fan-curated wiki... well, i guess that is a foolish thing for a Dwarf Fortress player to complain about... but it does not seem okay for a commercial game to do this.

On the other hand, some of the enjoyment is the joy of discovery.  Hard to say where the right balance is.

[Aseaheru]

Personally, I prefer KerbAI to mechjeb, mostly because you can do interesting things like launch several rockets at once and partially because its harder.

[Putnam]

Personally, I prefer KerbAI to mechjeb, mostly because you can do interesting things like launch several rockets at once and partially because its harder.

whazzat

[Anvilfolk]

Really, no one tore into that joker a few pages back when he was telling people to put parachutes and probe cores on discarded stages to recover funds.  People just let him give false advice about things he hadnt actually tested, because it isnt worth it to talk sense into someone like that. 

You might be referring to my post?

Yeah, yesterday I tried adding probe controls and parachutes to all of my discarded stages. It didn't work since they simply disappear as soon as I look at the map, I'm not sure why. But it saddens me, because I'm losing a lot of money in discarded staging...

If that's the case, I wasn't joking or suggesting anything I had just gotten the patch, played a bit and noticed how much money I was losing from discarded stages and decided to give probes+parachutes it a try since it seemed like a sane approach. So I did test it. It just didn't work, and somebody was nice enough to give me a reason why!

Scott Manley did a video explaining this - short version, if something is unloaded (ie, 2.5km away from the active ship) and under a certain altitude in the atmosphere, the game deletes it, regardless of whether or not it should have survived. There's already a mod to fix it though - check out DebRefund, it autorecovers stuff when it would otherwise be scuttled, based on parachutes active on it. (technically based on drag, but close enough)

I thought it was a nice idea and subsequent discussion I wonder how much of the original money you get back after accounting for used parachutes and separators/decouples (do they lose their value once deployed?) and fuel.

[BFEL]

Personally, I prefer KerbAI to mechjeb, mostly because you can do interesting things like launch several rockets at once and partially because its harder.

whazzat

I have no personal experience with it mind you, but I believe its a program that lets you effectively autopilot things but has you write the autopiloting stuff yourself?
Something like that.
Basically its a programmable autopilot, whereas mechjeb is a pre-programmed autopilot.

[Putnam]

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/68089-0-24-kOS-Scriptable-Autopilot-System?