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Why Kerbal Space Program won’t leave the Kerbol system for the time being

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Squad, Kerbal Space Program’s mostly-Mexican engineering team, yesterday withstood a seven hour stint of being asked anything by the Kerbal Reddit community. Thankfully, the unmistakable pull of the game steered their line of questioning well clear of a potential Spin the Bottle debris field and into orbit around one of Kerbal’s perennially pressing issues: where next?

Nowhere outside a return flight’s reach of Kerbin, it seems. Meanwhile you can see why you should be interested in what Squad are up to in our Kerbal Space Program review.

Fans asked if Squad had considered expanding the Kerbol system – the fascimile of our solar system that immediately surrounds Kerbin – beyond its current borders, or even adding entirely new stars and attendant planets.

Lead developer Felipe ‘HarvesteR’ Falanghe replied that the team have “certainly thought about it a lot” – but felt that the more important task was to fill the current solar system with “more things to do”. At this stage, another system would amount to nothing more than “variations on the same terrain system”.

“Take for instance when we first added docking,” he wrote. “It gave a whole new importance to simply being in orbit around Kerbin. Or how with the addition of R&D, even landing on different spots on good old Kerbin now had all new purposes.

“This is what I mean with ‘more to do on the current system’,” he explained. “I think in the long run, these sorts of things will increase the depth of the gameplay far more than just adding more places to visit, without having new things to do when you get there.”

On the subject of comets, Squad PR head Miguel ‘Maxmaps’ Piña added: “Once we’re done making all the huge bodies in our solar system interesting and important to visit, we’ll have time to consider smaller ones.”

Squad’s current focus seems to be on filling out the new Kerbal career mode. Already visible on the horizon are Contracts – which will bring proper objectives, extra funding and a reputation system – plus the business of budgeting and hiring on ‘nauts. And all while launchingKerbalEdu.

They’re a busy lot, and total less than 20. Do you think they’re applying their energies to the right parts of the metaphorical shuttle?