Kerbal Space Program

Wall of text incoming - these are my collected notes over the course of playing KSP 0.90 Beta on hard mode up to the point with all tech acquired and most buildings upgraded to maximum level (VAB/SPH/runway/launchpad/R&D). At the point it's just matter of doing a few more flights to get the rest, no obstacles (except bugs) ahead.

Administration building

Missing numeric form of reputation balance. The gauge is pretty but if I am about to use a strategy that costs me 400 reputation I'd like to know what will it do with the slider. The only way to see numerical value I found is to place a ship on launchpad and recover it - but that's not very comfortable.

All kinds of acquiring money (for reputation or science) are worthless. Money go about 1,000:1 to science and 10,000:1 to reputation, so getting about 10:1 is like nothing - no help at all during the game and very symbolic difference at the endgame when science is unnecessary.

Mission Control

Absolutely the most important building in career game, hidden behind all others. I suggest switching it with Administration or moving it somewhere closer to the camera in default KSC menu view.

Deployment contracts (satellite/orbital station/surface station) - it does not feel right that I'm free to do whatever I please with the ship as soon as the game decides that it matches all requirements. In the real world the company would likely want to use it at least for a while. I suggest ending the contract by clicking "hand over" option on the control point by which the ship becomes unusable (impossible to control, switch to it, impossible to dock or claw). Eventually it may disappear after leaving. Or some other way of handing over the satellite to the company.

Contracts should probably have shorter durations. Especially short range contracts (Kerbin, Mun, Minmus) with several years duration are way too comfortable.

New contracts probably should not appear as soon as I decline a contract. There should be a delay (which might eventually make me miss another contract's deadline if I try to time warp to get another contract).

I decided to hold back my attempts outside Kerbin SOI. Now I am getting contracts to build an outpost or perform measurements on Duna before I finished the contract to even visit it for the first time. I believe commercial offers to exploit a planet should only come after it has been proven to be reachable.

At present it is completely optional to finish "basic contracts" like Explore Duna/Eve/Ike. I believe the game should "push" the player through exploring all places in the system and these contracts could be used for that (like some kind of a storyline):
- as long as there are still unfinished basic contracts, you are required to have at least one basic contract accepted to launch any ships
- there are set deadlines for each such contract. They may get more strict for higher difficulty levels
- not meeting the deadline (or failing the contract) means game over

Contracts Management (out of the Mission Control building)

It would be great to be able to move contracts in the list (widget) up and down and group relevant contracts together. Having three contracts on Minmus interleaved with other contracts gets very uncomfortable when I want to move over checkpoints in the most optimal way. Collapsing other contracts does not help much and resets every time I switch ships.

Target markers on navball (when one is selected for navigation) should be marked by a vertical line (from zenith to nadir) so that I know direction to the target even though I don't see the icon. Getting direction to the next spot with a ship rather than a plane or a rover is very uncomfortable as to brake I have to point the ship in exactly the opposite direction.

It is hard to figure out which target marker belongs to which contract in the list (and therefore what are measurement conditions). In the end I have to go through all contracts and compare the site name. And it happened to me once that two different contracts used the same site name. It could perhaps help if the widget used the same color as the contract's marker. The same with orbits, if I pick two satellite deployment contracts I may accidentally swap destinations because there's no way to tell which orbit is which item in the list. Except if I go to Mission Control.

VAB/SPH

Problem with unbought parts: multiple times I had to buy a part only to put it on the ship and then decide to not use it. It would be nice if it was possible to "try out" these parts on the ship prior to buying them. The purchase can then be done with placing the ship with these parts on launchpad/runway. Unbought parts could be presented similarly to testing parts with a different background, e.g. orange.

Hard mode (no quickloads/no reverts) could probably use some testing functionality so players don't have to "cheat" by testing their designs in sandbox.

A shortcut similar to "Revert to VAB/SPH" is missing a lot in hard mode. Clicking recover, clicking through the recovery dialog, then selecting VAB/SPH in menu takes long and gets annoying. I suggest adding "Recover and Return to VAB/SPH" instead, which would do exactly the same (quietly recover and open VAB/SPH) as long as it is possible to recover the ship.

There is not much point to uncover action groups separately in SPH and VAB - especially since it is possible to crossload ships of one in the other. Action groups could be added by R&D upgrades instead.

It would be probably better to add some 1-2 "free" action groups in the first step and the rest in the other, to prevent players "hacking" useful actions into RCS, Abort, or other standard controls.

Also, there is desperate need to be able to review/change action groups in flight, otherwise it is excessively hard to manage action groups for ships docked to stations (and way too easy to forget how did I set up action groups for my ship that's several years in use while flying all kinds of other ships).

R&D

Part "research" prices are very low at first two tech levels, compared to all other hardships at the start of the hard mode they were negligible and could be increased.

Consider putting turbojet to the highest tech level. The game gets way too easy after acquiring it.

Consider putting docking port Sr to lower tech level. All 2.5 m technology is already available, just not docking port. And that one is definitely needed.

Runway

Lower level runways (level 1 and 2) should have approach lights or markers (e.g. flags) which are maybe less functional but structurally bigger than level 3 (so there are not complaints that level 3 runway is a downgrade to a runway with obstacles - honestly there was no point upgrading to runway level 3, level 2 was not restrictive at all in my gameplay).

SAS

New SAS modes (prograde, retrograde, etc) should automatically switch back to "keep course" under certain good condition, such as the ship's relative speed is too low to display these indicators reliably. Or in maneuver tracking mode, when the maneuver is deleted it should again switch to "keep course" instead of switching SAS off completely. The way it works now it killed a few of my Kerbonauts because the ship toppled right after landing (retrograde tracking is othervise extremely comfortable for landing) and almost destroyed my ship after I stopped it close to the station and it tried to violently turn it around (again retrograde tracking, this time in target mode for rendezvous). It should also switch to "keep course" on docking/undocking/decoupling/leave seat, again to prevent violent rotations of the detached ship due to switching to a different control point.

Hard mode

Very challenging at the start, then it gets better and in the end it gets rather unchallenging. I was able to finish it (all upgrades, all parts bought) without visiting other planets - contracts for Kerbin, Mun, and Minmus measurements provided all necessary funds and science. I had enough science points to unlock all tech 8 nodes before I collected money to upgrade R&D building to level 3, without even any methodical collection of science points from any biomes.

A tool for calculating interplanetary transfers is missing in the game. Planning Mun/Minmus transfers with just sliding the maneuver around the orbit is good enough, but the same can't be easily done for interplanetary without leaving the SOI first.

A tool for non-debug-menu revelation of biomes is hopefully planned for some future beta.

Kerbal skills

Pilot Kerbals are obsolete with later probe cores. There should be a skill (e.g. maneuver tracking) possible only with Kerbal pilots.

Scientists Kerbals are obsolete as soon as the tech tree is finished. Could be perhaps helped by some contracts requiring measurements performed by a scientist (at certain required level).

Bugs

There are plenty but that'll be hopefully matter of further beta releases.