[JLO64]

I’m primarily a coding instructor but I also teach lessons based around Kerbal Space Program. From that angle I’m pretty happy where these devs are going with the sandbox and level of freedom they plan on giving users. One reason my students seem to really like KSP are all the different things you can do/build (especially space planes). While it does have a high difficulty curve when it comes to the controls, once they master them they all seem to appreciate the level of control they have. From my perspective, I feel that instead of trying to make certain systems more accessible/simple they should go in the opposite direction and offer more control/options (preferably with a decent tutorial though).

However, something I really hope the developers plan on making a macOS port. I use a MacBook myself, but I’ve noticed the vast majority of my students also have Macs. I have no hard data to back this up, but I suspect a larger than average segment of users interested in this game are on Mac.

[janzer]

Have you ever combined KSP with the coding instruction using either kOS[1] or kRPC[2]?

1. https://ksp-kos.github.io/KOS_DOC/ 2. https://krpc.github.io/krpc/

[kanemcgrath]

I relied on Mechjeb too much in my game, so I did a run using KRPC and built my own autopilot features with it. It was a lot of fun, and I would recommend it.

[colechristensen]

I thought it would be nice to have actual mission planning in game for things like complex maneuvers, orbital slingshots, Lagrange point orbits, and the like.

Then launch countdowns, maps, exact timed burns that you'd still have to do manually but you could seemingly do so much more.

Or maybe this kind of thing already exists with mods.

[kanemcgrath]

Mechjeb does a lot of automation for complex maneuvers like planetary transfers, ascent autopilot, target interception, etc.. You can even do a porkchop plot for interplanetary transfer. but lagrange points are not possible in KSP because of the Sphere of Influence Model. and orbital slingshots are not included, I assume because they require an intense bruteforce calculation.

[colechristensen]

Aha ok! Ambition reignited, it's not that it's trivial but it's very possible to simulate these things and there are plenty of valid shortcuts. The "BMW" astrodynamics books I learned a large chunk of it from was published in 1971. "Sphere of influence" is a lot more "things you have to do with pen and paper" than things you're forced to do with modern computers.

[loganmhb]

There’s a KSP mod called Principia which does some kind of n-body simulation in which Lagrange points do exist iirc.

[peesem]

somewhere they have an FAQ where one of the questions is about Mac support, i remember the response being something like "most of the developers use Macs so it might happen"

edit: here - https://kittenspaceagency.wiki.gg/wiki/Frequently_asked_ques...?

[bigyabai]

> Officially supported native builds for both [macOS and Linux] would require significant financial contributions to be considered economical.

Running it through Wine is probably the safest bet. Should be no problem for platforms with D3D11 emulation figured out (eg. basically everwhere).

[laughing_man]

I'm running KSP on Proton, and it works just fine. If I were developing the game native builds on Linux would be pretty far down the priority list.