Yeah, that is the sort of thing I wonder if they have in as intended or if they feel like they can improve and update how some of it all functions. I will have to read the link Telika left, which seems to be exactly the sort of info I was looking for. It makes me secure in knowing that I am just as well off waiting to purchase the game until they get more things implemented. 6months-1year away from release is usually best for a big complex type of game anyway just for working out kinks, and certainly for further refinement.

Yeah, i'm not too demanding when it comes to nodes because i have played almost all my science mode run without them. Because i didn't get what they were and how they were used. Needless to say, my first trip to Duna took quite some time. And when i discovered nodes, it was quite "woah, wait, you can do that !?". I'm still too surprised and grateful to nag.

But if i had to, what annoys me more than overshooting with my nodes' thrusts is dragging the node around. When you zoom out, the node's thrust buttons scale, but of course not your orbit. So, positionning the node while checking interplanetary trajectories is a bit hellish. But again, there is probably a keyboard command i ignore. Like the alt-f5, which i'll have to try (thanks).

The main mod i'm considering to get these days is the one that colours your parachute buttons depending on how safe or risky it is to open then. I often click on them on the ship, to get these details (especially for unfamiliar drag chutes or foreign atmosphere), but when your ship is spinning like mad it gets a bit annoying. Again, mere UI issue. Cockpit commands would not have this problem.

We're so nitpicking, though. We give a bad image of that game.

I find that with sandbox games like these I don't really care about "how it should be played". But rather "what's the most fun for _me_". Building a ship by trial-and-error is fine when it is just about getting into orbit at kerbin. But for longer missions it can be rather frustrating. Like realizing after 1 year flight to Jool that you haven't enough fuel, going back into the editor to add another fuel tank and redoing the whole mission. And of course that one fuel tank more wasn't enough ...
ugh
So instead, after I figuring out how much deltaV I need to land+return from Mun for example, I rather use those values directly when building my rocket instead of starting again with trial and error.
But then, that might be just a matter of taste. There are quite a few players who prefer to play the unmodded game.

The nice thing about the game is, that you can just copy the game folder, continue playing your unmodded career in one folder and fool around with some mods in the other.

they had two blog posts about whats coming next
http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/content/345-KSP-and-Unity-5
http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/content/350-Development-Relay

most work now is going into the upgrade to Unity 5 (which also includes a complete UI overhaul)

instead of clicking and dragging the handle, you can also use the mouse wheel while your mouse pointer is over them.
I find that works better than dragging
though I still can only recommend to try the PreciseNode mod. It is one of the essentiell mods that I always install.
the other are kerbal engineer and kerbal alarm clock.

Perhaps this will all be improved with the GUI reimplementation for Unity V.

Yyyeah. Kinda realised this after having carefully meticulously set a node throttle, and then zoomed the map all the way out with the wheel.

Anyway, question : do you people place mods in the GameData folder or in the Plugins folder ? I see that you're supposed to put them in GameData but it makes me wonder what the (by default empty) Plugins folder exists for...

(Also : Custom action groups are great. Make ladder/panels deployment much less tedious. Intend to use it to toggle on/off different sorts of thrusters actrivated on the same stage, to switch from cruise nuclear ones to landing/liftoff regular ones at will.)

My topic subject says otherwise lol :D Slight nitpicking is fine I guess, no game is perfect hehe

Hehe, quoted the wrong person

Yeah, thanks for the tip. I'm definitely installing some node mod for sure.

I'll be more than happy to install mods that beautify Kerbin, like adding clouds for example:
http://i44.tinypic.com/9k5uo2.png

Thanks for the helpful tips, cw8 and Telika. I'll probably give the game another try soon now that I know where I went wrong before.

oops. i blame the forum software :p. multiquote is annoyingly hard to do.

Yet another Mun landing, probably the 5th or 6th. It's becoming like second nature, like riding a bicycle. Kerbalnaut, the lander, the rover and the Milky Way:
http://oi59.tinypic.com/xmsr35.jpg

Also, extendable solar panels break at 8m/s horizontal speed on Kerbin, are you freaking kidding me?

Out of curiosity (no [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity_(rover)]pun[/url] intended, actually), where did you attach your rover ? I see a separator on the floor, but I'm not sure where it used to be. Under the rocket would have blocked the thruster, above the rocket would have required you to point your nose towards the ground during detachment and quickly turn around to land ?

As you may have gathered, I had used two different ways with my rovers. The second one was part of the lander itself, so it could detach itself from it and come back (the lander thrusters/landing struts would be distant enough to serve as "spider legs" under which the rover could come back). The first one didn't have this return ability, it was a one-way vessel with the thruster behind it (like a rocket-propelled car), so as it was landing vertically it had to tilt and detach itself - to somehow "crash" horizontally [in that picture you can see its landing thrusters abandonned behind]. You used a third technique, it seems ?

Also, no urgency (I'm still toying without mods for a while, so not digging deep into that yet), but any answer to my post 63 question on plugin folders ?

(As for my latest news, I'm struggling to rescue an idiot stuck on a solar orbit at Jool distance, and circling in the opposite direction than Kerbin and the other planets. Shouldn't have accepted that mission.)

I attached at the bottom of one of the tri-corner fuel tanks and put a separator. It got heated to red hot by the atomic engine lol. I made a slightly bigger rover and I have no idea how to attach it. I'm not sure how people attach rovers of the side of their rockets.

How do you make something that stores rovers back into landers for bringing back to Kerbin?

yes, putting the mod in the GameData folder is the correct way. The several empty top level folders like plugins, parts, resources, etc are just remnants of the past. Back then installing a mod meant moving the dll into the plugins folder, the model parts into the parts folder, etc. At some time they changed the way the data is loaded and moved everything into the GameData folder. Now you can just unzip the mod into GameData\.
I guess they left the old loading code in for compatibility reasons, which is why we still have those empty folders.

Ok thanks.
Oh I see. I would have feared that the asymetry would make piloting more difficult (in liftoff and landing) but I suppose it was light enough.
Using docking ports instead of a separator would allow your rover to fly back the same way it arrived, wouldn't it ? Then there is the question of careful reentry, but lately I've managed to land back on earth quite a few complete landers originally meant for mun/minmus landings only. So it's not necessarily a big problem, with enough parachutes and a soft enough reentry angle...