Kerbal Space Program (2015)

Kerbal Space Program is not really a game that has deep narrative contextual undertones, it's pretty much a game where you send things to space and occasionally blow them up, and I love it. As a massive admirer of physics and astronomy(my ideal profession is a theoretical physicist) this game changed my entire point of view on how I approach the subject. For the first time I could travel and see black holes, neutron stars, dwarf planets, dying stars and much more in a first/third person perspective. It brought a whole new meaning to Sagan's "pale blue dot" as, using modifications, saw Kerbin getting farther and farther away with the help of time warp. Soon, as I meet the neighboring galaxy, Kerbin was simply indiscernible from the hundreds of systems I could also visit. That's when I truly grasped the true beauty in the vast loneliness and isolation of traditional spaceflight.

Other than that, this game is the epitome of complete player freedom. You could make it a hardcore space simulator(which I do with the RSS/RO mods) that requires genuine proficiency in spaceflight mathematics, or you could make a thousand booster rocket and watch it explode with a inexplicable glory. The universe is yours in this game, use it to your advantage, or your Kerbals demise.

TL;DR: I really have to play this game again. Have a nice day :) !

Score: 97/100

Kerbal Space Program may seem like a peaceful casual funny game but rather appears as a complete simulator. You won't have the courage to play it more than an hour if you don't stop sufficiently at the tutorials. And just when you think it can't be that hard to reach the stars, you suddenly realize that there are an impressive amount of parameters required just to visit the stratosphere without landing anywhere.

The game strangely manages to give you the impression of total freedom when it doesn't allow you to go anywhere without following and understanding an incredible amount of rules. Each step you will achieve in order to reach an objective will demand you to dig deeper into the game mechanics. It tries to be funny but I think its humor is totally obliterated by its incredible difficulty.

Graphics seems effortless and do not help to truly get involved in the game. It is important to highlight the fact that the game benefits from a huge community that is hyper-active. Play it on Steam and you will easily discover plenty of crazy-original mods.

Okay so I've gone back to Minmus. Picked up a bunch of money rescuing someone there and also planting a flag. I was able to unlock a few more techs, and am pretty close to having the KSC fully upgraded. Unfortunately I am currently unable to find a suitable launch window to any planet atm. However something should hopefully come up soon. My probe to Eve should at least be arriving soon.

I don't think this was an intended use of the Rovemate, but it works really well for finding anomalies

The Mun space station with landers and transporters

I designed this science reentry module for cheaper recovery of science. Then I realised I forgot to put control pods on each science container, so the whole thing had to come back. Fortunately it survived reentry and brought some science with it

I had a small heart-attack as the science modules flipped into the water, but the science made it home

The current state of the Kerbin space station, complete with science reentry and Kerbal reentry modules

Fuelling up a space station in preparation for entering a solar orbit for asteroid mapping

Hmm... You can never have too many docking ports TFW you press Z instead of X

Haven't been able to do much lately because of life. However I have put a space station into mun orbit, and I built a craft to transfer fuel between the space stations. Basically it's a flying fuel tank. I also built a mun lander which works reasonably well. It uses the atomic engine for de-orbit, but because that engine is too long for the landing struts, it must flip over and use 4 vernor engines to land. Works okay if you remember the oxidiser. There is still unfortunately not enough fuel efficiency to explore more than a few sites at once, but rovers and maybe mining should fix that. Another option might be to build a refueling base on the mun, but I'm not sure about that.

Anyway still haven't gone to any other planets, but it should happen soon. Right now I'm just building funds and science, and getting the stations fueled up. It's gonna be an adventure, we're going on an adventure Charlie.

I built a rover and put it on the Mun. I flipped it over after about a minute. ;_;

Eh, just stick it on the side

We didn't pick an optimal LZ, but everything is in one piece

Bugger

Anyways I did polar surveys of the Mun and then Kerbin. I don't know what the point was but I did it. For some reason the overlay glitched out and was visible in normal flight. I have no problem with this but when I reloaded it disappeared.

I unlocked the nuclear thruster and now I am realising that I probably won't need to wait for launch windows. All you really need is to set up space stations to act as refueling stations. You can have as much delta-v as you want as long as you have the patience and money to send up refueling missions. Fortunately I have gotten pretty good at docking now, it only takes maybe 5 minutes to dock once you understand it.

Refuelling mission to the Kerbin space station just prior to docking

I also brought up a spacecraft designed for ferrying crew between space stations. The real savings don't come from making rockets that can be recovered. The savings come from never needing to come back down. The space station helps with this because you can process research up there and also level up your crew. Anyway now I am just finishing my exploration of the Mun and then will finish Minmus. After that I guess it will be time to see the rest of the neighbourhood.

Woo, KSP 1.4 is out. Too bad it doesn't support my mods yet, so I rolled back to 1.3.1.

I gathered science from the badlands. Now I just need to do north and south poles. I found a trick to increase LOD, however increasing it too much will kill the framerate and loading times, so I just increased it a little bit. It really helps when landing, otherwise there's a tendency for terrain to suddenly look very rough when you're already committed.

Experiments in STOL and VTOL

I did some experimentation with VTOL and STOL with a plan to help with exploration of Kerbin. I had some success with STOL aircraft... I was worried that vertical engines would flame-out due to lack of airflow, however this doesn't seem to be an issue. After many, many design iterations, I have an aircraft capable of landing in a couple of aircraft lengths. In order to perform a short landing, I have an action group to shut off the forward engines. The vertical engines only have enough power to slow descent, not eliminate it, so it must be timed so that you are landing at a speed just high enough for the wings to still have some lift. The engine is shut off, so there is no go-around. Fortunately the landing gears are capable of surviving a pretty rough landing.

First STOL landing. The airframe might need some maintenance.

However it is very fun to fly around the mountains with it. It is apparently capable of entering an unrecoverable flat spin, so that's cool. I haven't tested the range yet, but it's probably not very good. But with drop tanks it might be possible to reach anywhere on Kerbin. Maybe I could even establish a refuelling base somewhere.

There's a nice cliff near the KSC which I call Pride Rock. If I can land on that then I should be able to land on anything. Unfortunately I haven't managed to land on it yet...

Approaching Pride Rock. I have some newbies filling in for the veterans, who are currently on an... extended mission.

Approaching in STOL configuration

Oh no

At least the failures look nice

I had some success with a VTOL. Basically the same airframe but with like 3x the vertical thrusters. However I doubt it has a useful range. I did land it on top of the VOB helipads and plant a flag, so it works well enough at the KSC.

VTOL 101: More engines

There are no Easter Eggs up here. Go away.

The probe is still on the way to Eve, and there's like a year until the Duna launch window 😴 Oh well, I have gathered most science from Kerbin, and there's still a lot of work to do on the Mun and Minmus. I recently completed three missions at once: Land some tourists on the Mun, plant a flag on the Mun, and do some science on the Mun. I've mostly re-learned all the orbital stuff, even some gravity assist stuff. I've unlocked most of the tech tree, but the remaining techs will obviously require the most science. Still tons of work to do if I want to get flags on all the planets.

One of my tourists was lucky enough to fly through a canyon on the Mun. He somehow survived despite loss of comms.

Looking for the badlands (I didn't find them):

Headbutted a solar panel... Didn't really need it... Oh no

Okay, back into KSP. I was hella confused going back to an old save, but there's no way in hell I'm going to unlock half the tech tree again. So far I've had manned missions to Mun and Minmus. I have a long-range comms satellite set up, and I have an unmanned probe heading to Eve, because Duna isn't in the launch window right now I guess. Hafta wait 171 days for arrival at Eve. I guess I'll screw around with telescopes and rovers until then. The plan is to just swing by and have a look at it and get basic science.

So far only using Kerbal Alarm Clock mod. I want to finish this on vanilla before trying anything else. Might look at some atmospheric mods though.

A pretty awesome game. Teaches you orbital and delta v stuff. Is just fun exploring the planets. Still having stuff added I think.

Some things that could be improved:

• The planets are not that amazing. Once you've landed on them a couple times, there's not much to do with them. But that's just the game I guess.
• Food and oxygen would be interesting, but you can mod it in so whatever.
• I find the graphics engine to be kinda shit honestly. You should be able to zoom in on stuff from far away and not have it look like crap.