Kerbal Space Program

[Firefly00]

• Official site
• Official YouTube channel
• GameSpot first look

Taking those first steps into the Big Black is the culmination of a great deal of preparation... and the focus of this under-development title. Which, it seems, definitely tries to earn its sim cred - expect to not only design a viable spacecraft, but come to grips with the intricacies of orbital mechanics and eventually interplanetary travel...

[ThereminVox]

No matter how I set my rocket stages, my final stage is usually "fuel tank explodes; job posting goes up for a new Kerbalnaut."

[Jazzrat]

Been playing this for a few days now since they are now in final release and man, it's still a load of fun. The game have came a long since it's original inception years ago, there's a even a career mode that test your ability to juggle management aspect of running a space program and keeping your kerbals in one piece after blasting em to space.

I feel so silly taking screen shots of my own achievement even in sandbox mode but at the same time it was just so satisfying when you achieve something amazing on your own.
I wanted to try out a few rocket configuration in sandbox mode for my science mode save file to land my first kerbal on Mun (kerbal version of Moon) but he ran out of fuel after landing, then i sent a rescue team that's basically a 2 man lander on wheels that could lift off and get back to earth and he ended up running out of fuel as well but i still manage to rendezvous with the first stranded kerbalnaut. Driving on the moon was a massive pain in the ass, i had to save scum every kilometer traveled because of how easy it is to flip your car in low gravity.

Finally i just sent a 3 pax lander, landed in close proximity and have the rover drive to it and get out. Landing a heavy craft in a 5 km radius just sent dopamine firing on all neurons. Now i m designing a craft to save one of my first Kerbal in space that's stranded on a solar orbit after a botched moon survey mission. Even without the leveling up factor of science mode and management of career mode, the game is just a lot of fun generating self imposed objectives from your own mishaps and failures.

[Renegade334]

I remember trying this once a long time ago and instantly bemoaning the lack of trajectory preprogramming (though you could customize the sequence in which the rocket stages and other components would be [manually] activated/jettisoned), thus forcing the player to change the yaw/pitch and engine output according to how the trajectory curve evolved in real-time. I managed to send a few Kerbals on textbook Mercury-like missions (get into orbit, then safely return back to Earth followed by ocean splashdown) and even a few of them out of the Kerbal solar system (yes, basically suicide missions with no hope of returning to the Kerbal homeworld; heck, I even lost a couple of these astronauts on EVA sorties, while trying to figure out the standard keyboard configuration. ).

I even experimented with a few Grasshopper/Falcon 9 vertical landings, but so far only ever managed national GDP-crippling, 4th of July-style fireworks.

I dunno how much the game's changed since my last peek, though, but I had fun creating utterly outrageous heavy rockets that made the Soviet N1 look like a Neanderthal's cave wall doodle due to the sheer amount of booster rockets and other interconnecting support struts (to keep the whole thing rigid while I altered yaw/pitch settings in flight).

[Jazzrat]

There's preprogrammed trajectory now, you should check out the release version on youtube or streams, cause the last time i tried it (long ago), they only just implemented the moon. Also there seemed to be quite a robust mod scene so you can just mod in whatever you wanted.

[Blaat]

I remember playing this a lot a few years back but I always had trouble reaching other planets. I fail at rocket science.

[Gravitas Free Zone]

It's a solid game at this point in terms of things to do. Only real wrinkle at the moment is that the overhaul of the aerodynamic model between v0.9 and v1.0 has been controversial and problematic. But you can still get into space.

[Dextro]

I know many players find this cheating but I don't particularly care: if you find yourself not wanting to deal with manually executing your manoeuvres there's a mod called MechJeb2 that works as an autopilot. You set the manoeuvre you want to carry out, hit execute and let the computer worry about it.

Another mod I personally find very attractive is one called RemoteTech. It adds comunication ranges to the game for stuff like beaming science data back to the Space Centre or, more maddening, remote controlling unmanned probes. I love the concept but it's so damned hard just to get a working satellite system to rebroadcast commands to the entire planet... I ended up playing through my entire Sunday afternoon just to try (and fail) to build a space shuttle to get satellites into the proper Geostationary orbits.

[Gravitas Free Zone]

I think the hating on MechJeb or various other mods is silly; the game has a totally-open sandbox mode for a reason, and playing everything in a self-imposed Crazy Hard mode gets annoying. Even an obviously "cheaty" mod like HyperEdit is very useful if what you really want to be doing is practicing docking in orbit and don't want to waste a lot of time getting the different ships there in the first place.

On the other hand, it's still proper that if one enters a challenge or shows off some sort of crazy stunt that they still disclose any mods being used.

[Mr Hat and Clogs]

This game is hilarious. I only recently started playing it again after it released (last I time I played was back in like one of the first builds they had on Steam). Having quite a bit of fun with career mode, working my way towards my first Mun landing for all that glorious SCIENCE!

[Jazzrat]

The game have been around for long while now so it's natural for it to have a purist/hardcore community. Since there's no multiplayer component, it doesn't matter whether people mod it or not unless they are in some sort of career time challenge.

Personally i'm just going at it in unmodded for now to learn the game before i get any mod.