Nappi

Love the podcast and loved the christmas stories. My sister and I used to wish for some SNES game each Christmas and play hours and hours of it. That eventually stopped because my sister lost interest in games in Playstation era. However, she got very excited about Wii and the prospect of playing Zelda and Mario again, and so we got the console for the Christmas of whatever year the console launched. You could just see how nostalgic our parents got seeing us sitting next to each other on the living room floor, playing Zelda again.

This was absolutely amazing. I also love the Kerbal: Project B.E.A.S.T. series.

Sounds like Idle Book Club is finally coming back: https://twitter.com/idlebookclub/status/679404928150843392 Really looking forward to it! Have you selected the next book yet? Somehow I assume it is not Wolf Hall anymore*.. Also, again, if possible, please announce the books for the next two months in advance, because... you know... slow readers. * Edit: Missed Chris confirming this.

The new meta game is hard as hell. I got about 10 error and 5 "you are not logged in" messages when going through the three discovery queues today.

I used three crew member pod with one empty seat. I did all of the orbital fine-tuning in the rescue ship, then switched to the ship-to-be-rescued through Space Center. I did not reload during the EVA stuff, and when I entered the module, I could only see Bob's portrait. Come to think of it, there might have been a Bob in rescue ship already. Could that be the problem? That is not a such a big deal for me, since I'm playing in Science mode and losing Kerbals has no in-game consequences. I count all three as having made it safely home after a very successful rescue mission. I'm a little worried about the potential of losing contact with an unmanned rover after the carrier ship has returned back to Kerbin, though. At the moment, I can only see my ship in the Space Center. I can take control of the rover by first piloting the ship and then switching between nearby command modules using a hotkey. But what happens if I drive the rover too far for this kind of switching to work, or fly away with the ship? Edit: Nevermind, the rover icon at the top of the Space Center view was disabled. I can jump directly to the rover now.

My plan for this rescue mission was quite ambitious. I designed a ship that can carry a small rover to Mun and return with the stranded Bob Kerman in the third, empty seat of the command pod. The Rover was autonomous but had a seat for transferring Bob between ships, so it wouldn't matter if I didn't land near Bob. I learned two things: 1. A rover with small wheels is really slow. 2. I should really start to pay attention to the delta-v requirements for these missions. I ended up with 200% more Kerbins stranded on the moon, with neither of the ships having enough fuel for the return trip. The distance between the ships is about 30 km so it would take about 50 minutes to reach the first ship using my current rover design (with no possibility to warp time). The rover and the rover landing system works though and could potentially be used to reach new biomes, although the drive would be very monotonous. I was understandably pretty pissed after this mission. I had promised to save Bob and I was not going to give up. I realized that Bob's ship had just enough fuel to reach Munar orbit, so I designed a new ship with whopping 8200m/s of delta-v, transferred both ships to Munar orbit, and started a painstaking, I-have-no-idea-what-I'm-doing driven operation of matching the orbits for intercept. At this point I realized that neither of the ships had RCS thrusters. I got the ships within about 1 km of each other, ordered Bob to abandon ship, pick up all the science and aim for the rescue ship. The operation was stressful* as hell and at my first approach I overshot quite a bit. I managed to reset for second approach and reach the ship without running out of propellant. The return trip went well, and Bob** was able to go home for the first time in who knows how many years. Now I only need to rescue the crew of the first rescue mission. * Made more intense by the Chatterer mod which adds radio chatter to the game and, it turns out, the sound of breathing during EVA. ** The original two pilots were lost, however. After the successful transfer, only Bob was shown in the lower right corner and the other two were not mentioned in the mission report after successful landing. Is there a way to avoid this? What happens if I land an autonomous rover somewhere and return with the ship? Will I still be able to pilot the rover from the space center?

I remember being really confused about Star Wars: Masters of Teräs Käsi as a kid. "Teräs käsi" means "steel hand" in Finnish (except that it should be "teräskäsi"), and I couldn't figure out why the Finnish distributor (or whatever) would translate only part of the name into Finnish. I'm not sure if the reality is less weird, to be honest. Anyway, if the Star Wars pronunciation corresponds to the Finnish one, then the name should be pronounced more or less like it is spelled (with "ä" corresponding to the "a" in "hat").

Hnnngh.. Nick's story made me want to play Crusader Kings II again so much. The last time I played the game, I became the King of Norway through some good luck and a dash of filicide (my memory about the affair is a bit hazy so some of this might be off): I was playing as the King of Ireland and my mission to conquer England bit by bit was going nicely but the progress was slow. Everything changed when I realized that one of my daughters was next in line (or the second) to the throne of Norway. I immediately send my best assassins to kill the king (or the next in line), and after a some time (and probably a couple of loads) I managed to get rid of him. Eventually my daughter became the queen, and there was a huge civil war in which my daughter needed my help (Obviously, she was like eight or something. Probably hadn't even opened a tavern yet). I sent my troops to Norway to deal with the rebels. Then I took the next logical step and assassinated my daughter to become the King of Ireland and Norway. It had to be done. There was no other option. You would have made the same decision! I stopped playing soon after that. No idea why. Edit: I just noticed that I owned half of Iceland as well.

After the successful missions to Mun and Minmus, everything I did yesterday ended up in a disaster. First I tried to achieve Duna orbit without studying correct launch windows and delta-v requirements, and unsurprisingly ran out of fuel. After that I decided to launch an experiment heavy mission to Mun to collect a bunch of science. Either the additions to my ship weighed too much or my manouvering was less fuel efficient than before, but I ended up stranded on the Mun without enough fuel for a return trip. Oh well, at least I have clear goal now: to rescue the trapped Kerbal along with the science he had collected. Not entirely sure where I can house him in the rescue ship, though. Maybe I'd better start designing a new ship using large radial size parts? This game has so much personality that I feel really bad for all the Kerbal I lose, even if the losses don't have gameplay consequences in Science mode (I think?). I'm not counting the revert flight casualties, though; I consider those as simulations.

Running out of electricity was purely my own stupidity. I had been upgrading my ship as parts became available but had forgotten to include any external batteries, so I was relying solely on the electricity of the command module. For my second mission, I just attached a couple of batteries and I had more than enough of electricity. Thanks for the tip though, I'll try to remember to include some photovoltaic panels for longer trips. Oh yeah, rovers! Maybe I'll go for some sort of simple Mun rover next. Gotta get that science!

Yeah, Minmus was easy stuff compared to Mun. I would have done the whole trip on my first try without quick loads if I hadn't ran out of electricity upon my return home. I couldn't survive re-entry without SAS. I think I may have drained it all by leaving SAS on while on Minmus, the ship trying to stabilize itself the whole time. Funny in hindsight, but I was pretty pissed at myself at the time. Oh well, at least I got to see the Lesser Sea of Idle Tranquility. Ok, Duna landing sounds pretty tough. Maybe Duna orbit first.

Good recommendation! While le Carre's and Mantel's writing are quite different in many ways, they both have a relatively subdued style that I find very pleasing. My favorite of le Carre's is Smiley's People but you should probably begin with Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy if you haven't already read it (or seen the movie).

Interesting report, keep em coming! I finally managed to land on Mun and return home safely last night. Landing on Mun took multiple attempts (I'm not above using quicksaves) but I eventually figured it out. I still don't know how to pick a correct spot for landing (and actually hit it), though, and some of my early attempts failed simply because of the slope of the ground. The micro landing strut (the only one I had unlocked) were not giving me any favors either, and I just barely avoided destroying my engine upon touchdown. Nevertheless, I finally landed safely, planted a flag, collected a shit-ton of science, and, for once, had enough fuel for the trip home. I had to repeat the re-entry phase multiple times because I kept blowing up pieces of my ship. When I eventually realized that it doesn't matter if the Mystery Goo Containment Unit and other science stuff blow up as long as I have collected and stored the data during EVA, I managed to return home safely amid small explosions. I'm playing the Science mode, so I don't need to worry about resources. I think I made the right choice, because the missions are stressful enough as it is without having to worry about my designs costing too much. I do wish that the Science mode had some kind of contracts, though. For example, I don't know if I get a science bonus for launcing a satellite into orbit (or for that matter, what equipment I should put there to get that bonus). I think my next mission is to land on Minmus, which actually sounds easier than the Mun mission. After that, I do not know yet. How difficult is a return trip to Duna compared to Mun? I also would like to learn docking, so maybe I will try to build a small space station or something. Do these have any benefits outside fulfilling Career mode contracts and acting as fueling stations? Do you guys use any mods? Which ones? MechJeb sounds like something I might look into once I'm ready to tackle more complicated missions and feel that I have had enough of unassisted manouvering. I have no end of respect for this game.

I finally figured out a decent rocket design that I can use as a basis for my future Pollo space missions, got on Mun orbit, and managed to return home safely. The re-entry is damn scary every time. Plus, I really need to work on my gravity turn skills and the stability of my rocket. I guess my next target is to land on Mun or Minmus. I hope I have unlocked landing gear already. Not even dreaming about stuff like docking yet. I like the progression of the Science mode, but I hate how the science works. I had to repeat the Mun mission because I had reset the Mystery Goo Containment Unit and Science Junior after inspecting them, having assumed that this would not cause me to lose the data of the experiment but would simply close the hatches thus avoiding potential problems upon re-entry. I also don't understand why you lose a percentage of the science points if you decide to transmit the data instead of storing it. Oh and having to go outside the ship to collect and store data in order to free up space for more experimental results is just ridiculous.

Yeah, heat shields and shallow angle of re-entry does the trick. Took some experimenting though.

Started playing this again after a long while. It seems that re-entry has become much more brutal. Also, gathering, storing, and transmitting science data is quite confusing at first. Still love this game, though.

Finally! Great first episode! Keep em coming.

Gorgeous art style! Looking forward to seeing more.

Damn this looks nice!

Does anyone else have a problem with spatial sound (if this is the correct term) in this game? Quite often it sounds like the enemies are standing right next to you, when in fact they are a couple of rooms over or on a different floor. I'm wondering whether this is a bug or intentional. Sure, the walls and floors are full of holes, but I'd still expect the enemy barks to be a bit muffled by the distance and obstructions.

Somehow I doubt this is what you are looking for, though.

Love the visual style!

Sounds great! Looking forward to hearing it.

Looks fantastic!

I've been meaning to start playing Kerbal again for ages, but with The Witcher 3, MGS5, Fallout 4 and bunch of other stuff I have felt that I can't give this game the time that it deserves. Then Giant Bomb started their Kerbal: Project B.E.A.S.T. Now I'm dedicated to finishing Fallout 4 fast, so that I can start sending those ridiculous little guys into space in their dumb rockets.