Zloth
I smell a... wumpus!?
I'm surprised we don't have a topic here about the Kerbal Space Program! I've only just barely started playing. I haven't even gotten into orbit yet except in the tutorial.
It's certainly a different way to play a game than I've ever done. In career mode you start with a bit of money, 4 astronauts, basic rocket parts, and a few easy mission goals. Doing missions gives you money, fame, and maybe a little science. Doing various other things like gathering crew reports and EVA (even on Kerbal itself) gets more science. The more science you get, the higher you can get up the tech tree. Going up the tech tree gives you access to new parts so you can build better rockets and airplanes.
Kerbals can gain xp, too, but they have to do new things. Doing nothing but launching over and over will give you exactly 1 xp and never another.
When I first looked at the mission list I thought the game might be forcing me to lose some. You can only have 2 missions at a time and four of them needed to be accepted inside of 5 hours! As it turns out, though, Kerbals are quite amazing when it comes to building rockets. They can snap one together in about 10 minutes and pop you out onto the launch pad!
The game does feel rather indie. Graphics aren't terribly impressive and, while the music is OK, you can hear exactly when the loop jumps back to the start.
It's definitely fun, though! There's a lot of trial and error involved and the errors can be quite… illuminating. For instance, I had a mission to fly over a spot at least 18km up. I also had a new rocket engine to try out so I stuck a capsule on the top, stuck some fins on the bottom, and aimed for the location as best I could expecting to go maybe 30km above it. Well, the booster was a BIG one! The whole ship was a mass of flame at 20km when the fins broke off. I hit the button to eject the capsule off the rocket but the rocket was still thrusting hard so it exploded pretty close to the capsule. The capsule was a streak of orange, flying almost straight up at 1700m/s that that point and nearly melted but it slowed down some plus I got up so high that there wasn't much air friction. And then there wasn't any air friction. I ended up taking my readings at 130km instead of just 30km with pretty space music playing! Gravity brought the capsule back down eventually (almost melting it again) but the mission was a success!
It's certainly a different way to play a game than I've ever done. In career mode you start with a bit of money, 4 astronauts, basic rocket parts, and a few easy mission goals. Doing missions gives you money, fame, and maybe a little science. Doing various other things like gathering crew reports and EVA (even on Kerbal itself) gets more science. The more science you get, the higher you can get up the tech tree. Going up the tech tree gives you access to new parts so you can build better rockets and airplanes.
Kerbals can gain xp, too, but they have to do new things. Doing nothing but launching over and over will give you exactly 1 xp and never another.
When I first looked at the mission list I thought the game might be forcing me to lose some. You can only have 2 missions at a time and four of them needed to be accepted inside of 5 hours! As it turns out, though, Kerbals are quite amazing when it comes to building rockets. They can snap one together in about 10 minutes and pop you out onto the launch pad!
The game does feel rather indie. Graphics aren't terribly impressive and, while the music is OK, you can hear exactly when the loop jumps back to the start.
It's definitely fun, though! There's a lot of trial and error involved and the errors can be quite… illuminating. For instance, I had a mission to fly over a spot at least 18km up. I also had a new rocket engine to try out so I stuck a capsule on the top, stuck some fins on the bottom, and aimed for the location as best I could expecting to go maybe 30km above it. Well, the booster was a BIG one! The whole ship was a mass of flame at 20km when the fins broke off. I hit the button to eject the capsule off the rocket but the rocket was still thrusting hard so it exploded pretty close to the capsule. The capsule was a streak of orange, flying almost straight up at 1700m/s that that point and nearly melted but it slowed down some plus I got up so high that there wasn't much air friction. And then there wasn't any air friction. I ended up taking my readings at 130km instead of just 30km with pretty space music playing! Gravity brought the capsule back down eventually (almost melting it again) but the mission was a success!