Kerbal Space Program free on Epic

The most efficient way to do this would be to just go sideways really fast from the ground. Problem: there's a lot of air in the way. So the right thing to do (again, both in Kerbal and in real life) is to initially go just up, but as the air reduces, gradually switch to moving sideways instead.

Then once you're up there, you need to know the basics of manipulating orbits. Lesson number 1: you can increase the height of your orbit on the opposite side of the planet by increasing your speed in the direction you're currently going. So once you get your apoapsis (highest point) above 100km or so, you can turn off your engines, wait until you get there, then burn hard in the direction you're going and your periapsis (the lowest point of the orbit) will raise up like magic.

You'll be orbiting in no time.

Even if you don't break out spreadsheets or game-specific calculators or whatever, you develop an intuition over time for what looks right as far as stage sizes, payload-to-fuel ratios, that kind of thing. I've done it all by eye & guesswork and have had successful out-and-back missions as far as Minmus and solar orbit (but my not taking it seriously enough and running some numbers ahead of time is probably why my attempts to reach the Mars-alike planet have just been big wastes of time—I just don't have the patience to figure out the ideal launch window and run the time ahead to then, to work out a proper budget for my fuel, and all that—plus those missions are easier with orbital rendezvous and I hate those, I can do them but they're such a pain in the ass)

As for killing all those little guys, consider adding a final-stage parachute that decouples the crew cabin from the rest of the craft. It might take them a few hours to hit the ground, but you'll despotically murder less space goblins that way.

The main thing is "asparagus staging", which is where you set up fuel transfer pipes between stages on the same vertical level such that the outside engines run out first, and the inside engines last. Say you have a single stage, Add two fuel tanks to the side of the main tank with separators and hook up a fuel line feeding fuel from the outside tanks to the inside tanks. Add engines to the outside tanks. Repeat for more layers, transferring fuel from each layer to the previous. Doing this can get you a rocket powerful enough to almost go in a straight line to wherever. Whenever an engine runs out of fuel you can jettison that stage, and have the remaining fuel tanks all entirely full.

The second thing is to make sure your final stage is as small as you can get it. Use a tiny capsule, a tiny fuel tank, and a tiny engine. This makes the final stage more maneuverable but more importantly it exponentially decreases the size of the rest of the rocket. As a rough rule of thumb each next stage should be around 4x the size. Once your rocket starts getting kinda tall switch to building a massive set of asparagus stages. Use struts to make the whole thing stop wobbling.

As others said, you need to go sideways to get into orbit. This translates to going vertically for 5k meters,slightly sideways (e. g. 10°) until 10k, then like 25° until 15k, then keep going until 30k, as you feel like you can go more sideways without making your rocket explode, do it. Do it by trial and error if needed, without trying to minmax, better to go more vertically and then horizontal. Consider that you want to keep going up so that your apoapsis (highest point of the orbit) is above 70k, which is when there is no air at all. You can notice that the "space" music starts only when you hit 70k.

Once the apoapsis is out at above 70k (ideally 80 or more), shutdown engine and wait in map until spaceship is about at the apoapsis. When that happens, point sideways (same direction you were always doing) turn on engine and keep them running until the periapsis get to 70k or more. If it's less than 70k, you will fall back.

That's about it!

To continue, start playing with plotting in the orbital map, it will give you a good idea of what you can do. Keep in mind that the way you measure how far you can go is by checking the spaceship delta V.

Good luck!

Thankfully there are plenty of YouTube tutorials that kind of summarize the basics.

Remember you pretty much have to go up and sideways to get into orbit.

at least you didn't say "pardon my French"...

https://www.epicgames.com/help/en-US/fortnite-c5719335176219...

This isn’t exclusive to Fortnite, by FAR. Singling out Epic isn’t really fair when the same exact thing happens with Roblox, Clash of Clans, etc.

High hopes for ksp2. Multiplayer is interesting as well, there's certainly enough space for a few friends out there.

That's just something you can do when you have a money-printer (Fortnight) and want to buy market share, I guess. Worked in my case—sorta—since I'd only ever have bought a couple exclusives and wouldn't have it set to start-on-boot if not for the frequent free games.

But, if I'm looking to buy a game, I still check GoG and Steam first, and if it's not there give a hard think to whether I really want the game, though. Which is why I've only bought two games. I'll even pay more, or defer until a sale, if Epic has it for cheap and it's more expensive on the other two services. The only price they're winning my "business" with is free (except a couple exclusives).

There is a risk that a game or studio gets a reputation for giveaways/discounts which could canabalize future sales. Or the entire industry gets such a reputation. However, at least in this case, KSP is so old at this point, I don't think it is a major issue. If anything, the publicity probably will do more to boost sales of KSP2, then the notion that KSP2 may be free in 7 years.

Given the timing, I suspect Private Division views this as a marketing deal in advance of the February release of KSP2. Any monetary compensation they get is just a bonus.

Also remember this is suppose to be a loss leader. If they can get you hooked on a few games to draw you from Steam then you start buying your games on Epic and then they make real money

Maybe this isn't a money play, but an attention economy play, in the short run?

I also have many hundreds purchased off of Itch (in large part due to the ukraine bundle).

I prefer to purchase off GoG/humble just due to how locked down Steam is. I've bought the same game in a series on GoG versus Steam. On GoG I can LAN game with my kid to play co-op. On steam, I would need to purchase a controller, figure out how to use it, since basically no games support using 2 keyboard configurations on 2 USB keyboards, and steam requires purchasing multiple copies for LAN play.

Also the steam client often sucks up gigs of RAM (seems to be due to the chrome web portion when checking process list) for no obvious reason that I have better use for.

Epic on the other hand, I have purchased exactly one game at my kid's request and it being an epic exclusive. Due to no linux support of any kind. I've snagged a fair number of their freebies in the past, but only a few work somewhat under Wine, often only if circumventing their client, so it's not worth dropping my money on.

Personally, I think EGS has much worse UX than Steam.

1) Slow on older computers: minimized it to the tray and brought it back? Keep looking at this blank screen and loading bar for 10 seconds now. Want to see your library? Here, wait 20 more seconds.

2) Got a free game, played it and didn't like it? Can't hide it from your library!

3) Want to know how large a download will be before you install a game? Good luck hunting that information!

Steam isn't a perfect launcher, but it had a long time to iterate and gather feedback.

(FWIW, Epic has a "Feedback and UX User Research" [1] program but it's only open to US residents — which I'm not.)

[1]: https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/ux

IIRC one of the early messages was "you'll just need to own them on Epic - Hitman was free for a week a year ago and Hitman 2 was just on sale for 80% off last month (but isn't anymore)" and if you missed those you were SOL. Though I understand it's complicated by the publisher/ownership situation w/ Square Enix for the first Hitman, I'm glad they got it sorted for launch (and even happier that they're simplifying the whole trilogy behind one SKU later this month).

> have you _ever_ bought more than one item from Steam at once, not counting game-and-DLC

Yes. Generally during sales, admittedly, when I'll sometimes pick up a few games at once. As I recall it felt a bit strange that Epic lacked it, because they were promoting themselves at launch with a lot of heavy sales, which really maximized the odds that someone might want to pick up a few games at once.

Content + distribution houses shouldn’t be allowed to do these things in any industry.

Last weekend, I keep a wishlist and check it when sales happen.

Nothing personal against epic (I like the freebies), just not a fan of exclusives.

Plus I leave steam open in background, epic I have to open and wait for a 100+ MB update (crap internet around here).

Edit: The current link.