Currently under development. This game is considered to be in the "sandbox complete" state and the first versions will be free to download and play.

KSP is a game where the players create and manage their own space program. Build spacecraft, fly them, and try to help the Kerbals to fulfill their ultimate mission of conquering space.

https://kerbalspaceprogram.com/

Has anyone given this a shot? Learning curve looks fairly steep but could be fun.

I'm learning to stay away from these early access programs - Minecraft didn't have much in the way of mods or gameplay when I picked it up when it first went up for sale, and after having a little fun with it had no desire to ever go back, even though it probably offers a much better experience now. I did pick up KSP to help support the devs, but after having a good bit of fun getting Jebediah into orbit I quit playing to wait until the game matured and I'd recommend you doing the same unless you enjoy the community aspect of interacting with the devs with bug reports and suggestions.

The game has come quite a long way along with a great modding community. There's a fantastic youtube series going on now by Scott Manley. If you like Apollo 13, you'll love this stuff. The series is pretty heavily edited, and you don't get to see much of his actual experimentation and construction, but he uses the new career mode and a few mods to show his progress from the beginning of a new space program. Right now he's coming to the conclusion of a 200 or so in game day flight to one of the outer planets along with a few other interesting missions he cuts between.

Sadly there are still a lot of bugs and limitations, in particular the game is still using the 32-bit Unity engine which limits the game to 4GB of memory, and with a lot of stuff going on in a particular save file along with a nice helping of mods, you're constantly juggling around that. Hopefully in another year it'll have been ported to the 64-bit version and smoothed out.

Recommend the manley interstellar series aswell, awesome.

On the fence about buying this. Have played the demo for a few hours. Dont want to buy it tho if its something im not gonna keep wanting to play. How is career mode?

Interesting; you need to collect "science" to get better parts. To get science you need to get measuring equipment each time transport it farther away.

The game is unfinished obviously, no need to buy it yet. I bought it because I couldnt wait after watching someone else play and its been fun, but there are some features lacking.

Bump. Started playing this after a recommendation and it's been a lot of fun. Just did my first flyby of the Mun in career mode after doing all the tutorials.

One difficulty I've been having is with flights where I just want to get into orbit around Kerbin (one of the earlier goals in career mode). My first attempt on a smaller rocket barely succeeded with enough fuel for me to get back into the atmosphere afterwards, and as I've started making bigger rockets to go farther I've noticed a compounding problem:
1. In order to do more stuff in space beyond "just get to orbit" I need to bring more fuel with me
2. That makes my rocket heavier
3. To deal with the extra weight I need more boosters for takeoff

#3 in particular has made my rockets very hard to control while launching, to the point where either I can't steer them (they kinda just go straight up until the boosters are done no matter what I do with WASD) or they're incredibly unstable (the slightest twitch makes them veer uncontrollably off course and ruin the mission).

The way this compounds is that because my rocket takes off straight up, I have to bring even more fuel for all the corrective burns I wind up having to make in orbit, which adds more weight and needs more launch thrust, which makes the problem worse.

With the Mun flybys it wasn't that big of a deal because who cares, you're going to the Mun, just blast off and go wherever and adjust orbit as necessary. But I just selected my first "rescue a Kerbin from orbit" mission, and to fine tune something like that I need to take off in a very specific direction and still have enough fuel (weight) in orbit to maneuver while I'm up there. What am I missing?

(from googling, these types of questions are usually accompanied by photos of rockets - I'm at work so don't have one, but picture something pretty simple - main rocket is a pod, then a bunch of fuel tanks underneath on top of a Swivel liquid engine, then ~4 of the BACC Thumper boosters attached to radial couplers - I don't have a ton of tech/better parts to use yet, and probably shouldn't need them to accomplish something this simple anyway?)

I assume you're playing the PC version.

Step one: Load the mod Kerbal Engineer. This mod will give you a delta-V calculation for your builds. Delta-V is a "gas gauge" for rockets.
Step two: Google "KSP delta v map" The first couple hits with give you charts for required delta-V for various objectives. e.g. 3400m/s delta V is needed for a low Kerbin orbit. Here's a simple website version: https://13375.de/KSPDeltaVMap/


As an aside there are TONS of good info on proper rocket design and playing the game.

Twitch: Dasvaldez (Das Valdez): Many good beginner twitch videos (Search for "Boot Camp" - A great place to start)

Youtube: Scott Manley - Scott is the gold standard of KSP youtube videos. Only problem is many of his videos are really dated and played with much older versions of KSP

Twitch: Szyzyg (Scott Manley)

Twitch: EJ_SA (Eric (EJ) Johnson): Good beginner and lots of way advanced stuff

Thanks, I'll try that. Will mods mess with save games already in progress at all?

Been slowly going through Scott Manley's beginner series and getting some good stuff out of that, though also seeing the outdated aspect. After watching his video of a simple plane flight I went to build one like his and didn't have the same parts available (the first jet engine you get is now tiny, it's not something you can just throw on the back of a fuselage). It took some searching to figure out "how the **** do I even attach this to a larger body" and then some more when the stupid thing refused to get airborne.

Also keep in mind that the more fins/wings you have, the more the rocket will resist turning. Also the faster the rocket is going. (If your thrust-weight ratio is too high, you can throttle down the Swivel, and you can also throttle down the SRBs in the assembly phase.) Ideally, you want to take off with stability assist on, get a little head of steam going, then tilt your rocket over by about 5 degrees in an eastward facing direction. Then turn off stability assist, and your rocket should very slowly topple over as you ascend. If you time it right, gravity will do all the turning work for you.

EDIT: You can also use additional Swivel engines as boosters. Just connect extra fuel tanks using radial couplers, stick engines on the bottom and nose cones on top, and you are ready to go. When you have fuel hookups, you can then feed the central engine from the boosters, which is more efficient, but kind of cheating.

No not these "standard" mods. You do have to use the mods designed for your version of KSP.

BTW, in addition to Kerbal Engineer (I view as a requirement for the game), these are also nice:

Stock visual enhancements - Adds clouds, water effects and makes things prettier (This one includes a few other mods as part of the package)

Precise Maneuver - Makes maneuver nodes way way easier to use. There's a few of these type of mods but I feel this one's the best.

Oh here's another good website after you have a bit more experience:
https://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/ - It's a launch window planner for those trips away from Kerbin.

Oh just a personal input on Kerbal Engineer:

Under Kerbal Engineer options (Kerbal wrench panel on bottom right of the vehicle assembly building), I set "Flight Engineer Activation mode" to partless. This makes Kerbal Engineer available all the time during a mission.

Oh and recommended KSP opening screen settings:
I turn off "Auto hide navball in map settings"
default throttle to 100%
turn on advance tweakables

Then in game settings:
Enable Comm network
then under advanced: turn off require signal for control, enable plasma blackout

There are also mods to have the unmanned parts before the manned parts in career mode, which is infinitely better than standard.

The problem with that is the unmanned part of the game is a bit harder than the manned part. Esp when using the Comm's Network stuff. You won't have a lot of the required unmanned data relay networks built yet.

How does the electrical or rover parts tech tree work?

Also unmanned science is way slower than manned science. everything needs to be transmitted back with distance penalties?

Got my orbit craft to within ~150 meters of the stranded Kerbal in orbit, and I'm home free if ONLY I CAN FIGURE OUT THESE ****ING JETPACK CONTROLS which are SO TILTING to get him to my ship. You can't make them point in the ****ing direction you want if you're on different vertical planes!

EVA up is LShift
EVA down is LCtrl

Direction is in reference to the camera

I'm not sure if that's true - the threads on this are confusing but this leads me to believe it's not? However, this thread mentions chase camera which at least provided a more useful frame of reference (when in target mode, movements are relative to the target), although it's still weird and difficult to use.

Anyway, I got here:



...and it took a lot of searching to figure out that if I LEFT CLICK on the hatch then I can move Jebediah into the crew cabin so Geofory can board. That was a stressful 10 minutes when I was wondering if I was going to have to change my ship design and do this all over again.

But Geofory is now home safe!



A proud moment in Kerbal history.

Awesome job!!!! That's a fairly tough mission to execute.

Unless you changed the defaults. EVA directions are based on the Kerbal's orientation but he will automatically face away from the camera. After a little practice, EVA is second nature.

I think this is the part I couldn't really make happen. I'd rotate the camera and try to figure out how to make the Kerbal face that direction (since rotating the camera by itself doesn't activate RCS) but couldn't figure it out - what's that button?

left mouse button

Things I've discovered this weekend:
- landing on the Mun is really hard, in like 5 attempts I couldn't ever find a flat enough spot to land on where my ship wouldn't tip over (I have landing struts but I guess they don't go wide enough to cover the CoM on anything but insanely flat ground). Finally I landed by the side of a crater and when my ship tipped over (but pointed towards the crater!) I discovered that if I used my engine to get to ~5m/s along the ground (6 would make my fuel tanks explode) I could fall into the crater then activate my engine to 100% and take off. LOL
- got a separate contract to basically fly straight up and test a part at 290km on sub-orbital trajectory. On the way down, realize I forgot to put a chute on my test ship. At 5000m, I put Jebediah on EVA, let go of the ship, and blast the jetpack to slow down as much as possible (which isn't a lot). He survives impact at 43m/s! LOL

Here's my first Mun landing:


Here's a launch I had at sunrise:


Here's a reentry from a Minmus mission:

Here's my first Duna landing attempt. Who can find the design flaw?

Heh

My own attempt to capture gravitas: my first Minmus landing, with a flag planted on Lake Jebediah (seems weird they made Minmus landings wayyyyyyy easier than the Mun)