KSP Weekly: Fixing projects and making contact

[Cpt Kerbalkrunch]

I guess I was hoping for something along the lines of "do this, this, and this" and it would tell you how much science you would earn or which tech node you would unlock or how much cash such and such company would pay you for succeeding. Sort of a "build your own contract" that's not technically a contract. I pretty much only play career mode, so I guess it might not do me much good, but I would still give it a try. Plus, we're really just guessing at this point. I'm gonna stay hopeful.

[regex]

38 minutes ago, Cpt Kerbalkrunch said:

I guess I was hoping for something along the lines of "do this, this, and this" and it would tell you how much science you would earn or which tech node you would unlock or how much cash such and such company would pay you for succeeding. Sort of a "build your own contract" that's not technically a contract. I pretty much only play career mode, so I guess it might not do me much good, but I would still give it a try. Plus, we're really just guessing at this point. I'm gonna stay hopeful.

I highly doubt it would end up being something like that considering they've already flatly stated it has nothing to do with contracts. I mean, that's pretty much what I wanted to see in career mode since ... career mode was announced, even had a suggestion for a "mission proposal system" but instead we have a limited set of random contracts that kind of sort of adjusts to what you want to do but really doesn't let you drive the space program.

[Cpt Kerbalkrunch]

3 minutes ago, regex said:

we have a limited set of random contracts that kind of sort of adjusts to what you want to do but really doesn't let you drive the space program.

Agreed on that. I really do like career mode, though. The added incentive of money really does make it more interesting to me. I've said before that it must be my inner greed, because I'm closing in on 100 million and yet, for every ship, I want to make sure it's going to be profitable. But the way in which they're structured could definitely use some work. I know what they're trying to do with the balancing system, but it just doesn't quite work right. I would really like to see a contract menu. For instance, one of the menus in mission control would be "planets". Click on Jool and see all the available contracts for Jool and it's moons. You could have another where contracts are separated by type. Tourist contracts in one menu, Exploration contracts in another, and so on. The game could still rotate the available contracts, but this would give you more of a say in how to run your program. And I'd really like to see a greater number of the creative, more involved contracts. I just recently got the Ultimate Jool 6 and the Eeloo 4. Both were pretty cool. And I think everybody gets the Ike 3 Course early on. More of those would be great. "Land on Eve and Gilly with a single vessel"; things of that nature.

[KSK]

7 hours ago, SQUAD said:

 As an added bonus for those players that enjoy more ‘creative’ uses for our parts - all of the new separators and decouplers will be set up with hollow collider configurations (in this case, four mesh colliders)

For giant bearings and other moving parts? Paging @Majorjim! and the rest of the artist mechanics!

[Human Person]

8 hours ago, SQUAD said:

As an added bonus for those players that enjoy more ‘creative’ uses for our parts - all of the new separators and decouplers will be set up with hollow collider configurations (in this case, four mesh colliders).

Wow, I'm super excited about this new feature! I can already think of lots of uses for this, e.g. building a S1-D from the Saturn v applications programs 

 

 

 

As you can see, the 4 outer F1 engines can be dropped early while the center F1 continues propelling the rocket all the way to Orbit. Those 4 engines could then potentially be recovered. We need hollow colliders to make such a thing. 

Please add hollow colliders to all decouplers, it's such a great feature.

 

Edited May 20, 2017 by Physics Student

[MiffedStarfish]

Hollow decouplers? This is great! I can think of so many uses, (none of them practical) skydiving a kerbal through one from orbit, setting them up with launch clamps to give your tiny rockets loops to fly through and show optimal ascent route... I really appreciate the little tweaks and features that you have been adding to the game, like the multi-vessel action groups and now these decouplers. Any chance of going through the other ones and giving them similar colliders? Keep up the great work.

[Skylon]

I think of the 5m tanks and separators, and then the 3.75m, and how the 2.5m will look less good next to them. Essentially our Saturn Vs will be a mixture of most of the art styles ever put into KSP.

But hollow decouplers is great, as pointed out above. Mostly the possibility for engines going through them is good. I hope they are added to all decouplers, especially the chunkier ones like the 2.5m. I still remember making a second stage of a DAV from it, and realising that it thought my engine should be heating the decoupler. And if you do remodel them, perhaps a remodel/retexture of the 1.25m stack separator and the 2.5m decoupler.

Edited May 20, 2017 by Skylon

[Pena]

Yay for further optimizations! Smooth gameplay is always appreciated and who would not like gigantic conrstructions anyways? Keep up the good work

[rudi1291]

9 hours ago, SQUAD said:

to visualize and manipulate PQS celestial bodies in the MB.

Hoping for more info on this soon™, sounds interesting.

Also, the new decouplers. I really like that they are not as obvious as the 2.5m one.

[KerbMav]

1 hour ago, Skylon said:

I think of the 5m tanks and separators, and then the 3.75m, and how the 2.5m will look less good next to them. Essentially our Saturn Vs will be a mixture of most of the art styles ever put into KSP.

But hollow decouplers is great, as pointed out above. Mostly the possibility for engines going through them is good. I hope they are added to all decouplers, especially the chunkier ones like the 2.5m. I still remember making a second stage of a DAV from it, and realising that it thought my engine should be heating the decoupler. And if you do remodel them, perhaps a remodel/retexture of the 1.25m stack separator and the 2.5m decoupler.

I do so agree with this.

The 2.5m decoupler is way to clunky compared to the others. Now the new, even bigger ones, will make the comparison even worse. How well do the new ones scale, visually specifically? Can you just throw in a smaller variation for the 2.5m (and possibly others) part?

[Mikki]

errm, will there be a 5m (or 3.75m) docking clamp/ring/port? And i love to have hollow decouplers, will the old parts be changed to hollow too? So many questions... 
Will there be wider struts for more spaceraft awesomeness???

Edited May 20, 2017 by Mikki

[klgraham1013]

5 hours ago, MiffedStarfish said:

Any chance of going through the other ones and giving them similar colliders?

You mean...some sort of...art pass!?

[Majorjim!]

4 hours ago, KSK said:

For giant bearings and other moving parts? Paging @Majorjim! and the rest of the artist mechanics!

Awesome! I see some new bearing designs on the horizon. Aces!

11 hours ago, SQUAD said:

all of the new separators and decouplers will be set up with hollow collider configurations (in this case, four mesh colliders).

I hope this will be done for the current stock decouplers too.

[HvP]

As much as I am looking forward to seeing all the new parts in the Making History expansion, it might be politic to occasionally reiterate for clarity that it is a paid expansion for most KSP players.

Just to head off the inevitable disappointment for some of the more casual readers of these threads who might have misunderstood what is and is not a part of the free 1.3 update.

[Tidus Klein]

Im voting for 1.4 to be a huge art pass.

i feel that may get the same amount of hype as 0.24 and .25

[mattinoz]

Hey so what happens with interstage farings now we have hollow decouplers (in more than one size hopefully)?

Hoping this is a sign of change to the way the whole interstage is set up. I mean engines or anything in the middle should dangle off the bottom of a tank and shouldn't be carrying strurtural load untill it fires. It something that has always struct me as odd in KSP.  Now if these new decoupler have and auto generating but tweakable procedurally generated interstage faring that really would be choice. 

Not that the new DLC pack isn't looking pretty cool so far but fixing a few strangenesses along the way can't hurt.

[Wallygator]

On 20/05/2017 at 0:16 AM, SQUAD said:

Columbus’ voyages reminds us of the consequences that the clash between alien civilizations and pathogens can have

While most everyone can agree regarding the historic nature of Columbus as  historical figure, you forgot to mention the concurrent application of coordinated genocide and slavery (which Columbus personally commanded BTW)  - it was't just the pox. Native populations might have had an improved chance of developing more effective resistance to foreign pathogens (and subsequent survival!) if it was not for the violent systematic destruction of their gene pool.  This was a complex moment in history that must not be be normalised by referencing the generally accepted incomplete (and therefore misleading) narrative.

If there ever is a moment of contact with another life-form, let us hope that we only have pathogens to deal with.

Other than that oversight I think it was a very good Dev note. Keep up the good work.

 

 

[klgraham1013]

6 hours ago, Tidus Klein said:

Im voting for 1.4 to be a huge art pass.

If there is a 1.4.

[genbrien]

23 minutes ago, klgraham1013 said:

If there is a 1.4.

why not?

[Mako]

7 minutes ago, genbrien said:

why not?

There has never been a guarantee that Squad would continue to work on KSP beyond what they were working on at any given moment. This has always been the case even when KSP was in Early Access. New versions have always been built and provided in such a manner as to be the final version even if more work was planned. Furthermore, Squad is currently working on KSP in a manner which implies they are focusing on revenue producing updates (localization to sell additional copies in newly available languages) and paid add-on content (the Making History Expansion). There's no way to know if this is motivated by necessity or not. If it's out of necessity, and the localization efforts and paid expansion do not provide as much revenue as expected/needed, it is not much of a stretch to picture Squad discontinuing work.

This doesn't seem to be the most likely scenario, but we have no way of knowing for sure. All any of us can do is speculate. My speculation is 1.4 will mostly consist of more work on localization since Squad originally mentioned a desire to translate KSP to more languages than what we know is coming in 1.3. There would be a lot less speculation if there was some kind of public roadmap.

I understand that Squad feels that since some people can't handle a roadmap no one should have one, but I feel like this is like removing the swings from the playground because a few children were injured when they used it improperly. I tend to strongly disagree with restrictions to privileges for everyone based on the actions of a small number of individuals. In this particular instance, I believe it's a privilege, not a right, to have a roadmap, but I also believe that most problems that can happen can be mitigated or resolved with clear and accurate communication. If excellent communication does not prevent or correct misunderstandings caused by a roadmap, it is likely that the problem is not with the existence of the roadmap but rather with the person viewing the roadmap (at which point there's not much anyone can do besides hoping the individual chooses to understand how the world works).

[Terwin]

36 minutes ago, Mako said:

My speculation is 1.4 will mostly consist of more work on localization since Squad originally mentioned a desire to translate KSP to more languages than what we know is coming in 1.3.

It looks a lot like Squad is implementing the localization such that new languages will be a minor release, if that.  That is not to say that they would not call a new package of languages 1.4 for marketing purposes, but from a programming standpoint new languages should not even need a minor release version, just a new download option.

36 minutes ago, Mako said:

I understand that Squad feels that since some people can't handle a roadmap no one should have one, but I feel like this is like removing the swings from the playground because a few children were injured when they used it improperly.

If you have an effective and reasonable method of making a roadmap available only to those who can handle it maturely, then I imagine that every single game company with a PR department would be eager to hear about it, and no small number of non-gaming companies.

Thus far, the only (usually)effective means that I am aware of involves a NDA signed by every single person who is given access.  From the 'sorry NDA' responses RoverDude is providing to some questions, it looks like Squad is already using this method to allow access to the Roadmap to as broad an audience as they can with reasonable security. (I remember some comments in this forum from Squad team members that flatly state that there is an internal Roadmap, but they are not allowed to share it externally)

 

Note: any method that requires any sort of mature behavior or even requires limited active trolling by semi-anonymous forum or reddit members will automatically fail

[Tidus Klein]

1 hour ago, genbrien said:

why not?

Heck even if the art pass was a DLC I would be happy..(slightly less happy then if it was just a update) but as long as it stayed in the area of 10-20 bucks I don't think I would mind that much.

we have had the same art for the rocket parts sense...lord sense when I first started playing the game some where around the .20 update.

i would not mind that so much if the new parts resembled the old ones, In the years squad as improved the game the skill and talent of the art department has only grown and it shows in there past and present work. Is a full art pass needed? No but I feel it would only add to the game at this point

[klgraham1013]

2 hours ago, genbrien said:

why not?

Because all games end development at some point, and with the introduction of DLC, it seems Squad may be seeing the end for the core game.  Despite my misgivings about some parts of the game, from an outside standpoint, I could see it being considered "finished."

We also must consider the economic state of Squad.  Unlike some game companies, their financials are unknown.  We have no idea what shape the company may or may not be in, but I'll be very interested to see if KSP again cracks the best sellers list on Steam with the new update.  It may no longer make financial sense to continue free development.  It may also be time to truly consider a KSP2, and bank on the profits a sequel can bring.

Edited May 21, 2017 by klgraham1013

[Mako]

@Terwin First, I accept your point about additional languages being a minor update. That is reasonable.

I also accept that people would desire an easy way to share info with only a select group based on certain factors.

1 hour ago, Terwin said:

If you have an effective and reasonable method of making a roadmap available only to those who can handle it maturely, then I imagine that every single game company with a PR department would be eager to hear about it, and no small number of non-gaming companies.

This, however, was not even remotely what I was suggesting.

I was suggesting a roadmap that is public and open to all, and that individuals who persist to misunderstand the purpose and information of the roadmap (whether intentionally or not), after being reasonably presented with clear and accurate information, should be disregarded by devs and peers for the duration of their misunderstanding(s).

I believe that most of the community is capable of understanding the nature and intent of a roadmap. Squad seems to believe that no one should be given the privilege of a roadmap because it is sometimes misunderstood by a limited number of individuals. While I will agree that it is probably easier for Squad to refuse a public roadmap, I do not agree with anyone who might suggest that refusal is the best solution. Furthermore, I believe the best solution, releasing a public roadmap to all and ignoring individuals who persist in misunderstanding the roadmap, is relatively easy to implement and manage. At the very least I suspect it to be a break-even proposal: complaints about the direction of the roadmap could increase while rampant speculation, confusion about direction, and any related discussions would decrease.

Also, your post seems to imply public roadmaps are not used in games development. Maybe I'm misreading or misinterpreting your post, but I will be happy to provide references and links upon request of games which have (or had during active development) public roadmaps. I can think of a few off the top of my head, and I'm sure if I do some research I can find even more. Having not previously done research on the reception or success of public roadmaps for in-development games, I cannot say with certainty that roadmaps are a net positive tool. I believe they are: the truth, whatever you may think of it, is still the truth and it is better than nothing.

I can offer anecdotally that the still-in-Early-Access game Subnautica has had a public roadmap and its community was seems to have in general acted reasonably and favorably when deviations or changes to the roadmap were announced and explained in advance.

Good PR isn't always easy, but I don't believe it has to be hard. I feel like Squad is making it harder for themselves, now more than ever.

[Tidus Klein]

38 minutes ago, klgraham1013 said:

 It may also be time to truly consider a KSP2, and bank on the profits a sequel can bring.

I don't think KSP will ever get a sequel, it's not that type of game. 

Most games that get sequels get them to tie together lore or expand upon the universe of the game and its story.

ksp dosent really have "lore" or a story to expand on its a IMO a simulation builder.. a physics fun land that's only truly driven by are imagination and creativity.