Tweeker

But there are things you can do that will negatively effect their impression of the game.

The idea that people don't like the female voice is laughable. No one here is saying that girls are icky, or the women should stay in the kitchen. Trying to frame the complaint in that way is extremely disingenuous. Someone in another thread said Scott Manley would not be a good choice to voice the tutorial because he's a white man. That is explicitly biased thinking, his race and gender don't enter into it. His knowledge and bearing do.

As I've noted before, unless you re-balanced the Vector engines {or their analogues} it's only a look alike.

The problem with targeting the tutorials to kids is that you create additional barrier to entry for other new players. If I showed this to my teenaged nephews it would not entice them to play the game.

The facts do speak for themselves, KSP is in the top 0.1% for life time revenue, and top 0.2% for units sold. Top 99.9th percentile is very far from being niche.

LOL.

At least one other person heard it, @ 6:08

4 million copies sold is hardly niche.

KSP is hardly a niche title, It's sold nearly 4 million copies. And retention is hardly an issue, the average amount of time played is 302 hours, with a median of 139.5 hours. As to your second question, Why should the tutorials appeal to people over the age of 10? I think that question answers itself. If I had no KSP experience and the tutorial was all I had to judge the game on then it'd be a hard pass. Numerous games manage to have a tutorial without talking down.

Progress!

IIRC when I bought it was 0.20, and while I did enjoy the game I certainly wouldn't have paid $49.00 for it. So you could argue that if I did the same with KSP2 that it would be money well spent. But as you said there is nothing in the the game right now that makes it worth a day one, or even year one purchase.

That's a false dichotomy, there is lot of room in between a tween spouting "space is cool yo!" and a college lecture. Case in point.

That's an incredibly childish response. The franchise has never had any problem brining in new players, in fact it was popular enough to warrant a sequel. Maybe appealing to the existing user base would be a good approach?

The poll is missing an option for " Not going to buy" or "I'll wait till it's on sale for less than $10."

Full disclosure upfront, I had already made up my mind to pass on KSP. . I just finished watching Scott Manley's gameplay video and I have a few thoughts. First and foremost, that tutorial is hideous. It's so incredibly condescending. I don't need or want some tween sounding brat rocket-splaing to me. Even if I didn't have 10 years of KSP under my belt, and this was my first foray into rocket building that tutorial would be a huge turn-off. What ever happened to adult people explaining thing in adult ways? Why not get someone like Scott Manley to do the tutorial? What were they thinking? Do they even know their audience? Secondly, I've mentioned this before but it bears repeating. Why are they charging full price for an unfinished game? Either finish it, or charge a price more appropriate to an early access game.

Why? Because they're charging full price for and Early Access game.

$49.00 for an early access game? Blech I've still got a bad taste in my mouth from the way they treated Star Theory, Now they want to push an unfinished game out at AAA pricing? Double Blech.

That is , as the saying goes, "The banality of evil", It wasn't personal, just business. . and by the way, Have you met this nice guy who is really passionate about #product.

That really the crux of it, they are hoping that by putting a face on it, and by focusing on the game, that they can head off any negative feeling about what they've done.

Hi Nate, I certainly understand your difficult position in this matter, you're just a guy trying to get thru like everyone else. I don't see any need to bash on you for doing what you must to get by. It must have been quite difficult to find a project you had put so much into suddenly in limbo, and yourself out of a job. I can empathize, I've been there myself. But for my part, no matter how excited I am about KSP 2 I can't in good conscience reward Take-2's behavior in this matter. If I put myself in Michael or Allen's shoes I would be absolutely livid, by all accounts Take-2 was quite happy with the progress Start Theory had made on the game, and had even given them an extension. The sticking point here seems to have been Michael and Allen not wanting to sell the company on Take-2's terms. Even if the sale was a no-go there was no indication that the completion of the game was in any danger. This was a business move, and a pretty shady one at that. I've been playing KSP since .18, and I have enjoyed every minute of it. I learned alot, and made many memories playing the game. I am deeply excited for everything you are doing in KSP 2, But now knowing the sleezy things that have been done, for no reason beyond pure, simple greed, I don't think I'll every be able to enjoy it in the same way. I seriously doubt Take-2 will miss my 60$, but I can't just overlook such ruthless behavior. I wish you good luck with this project, but honestly I'd feel guilty enabling such behavior.

I liked that it was developed ,and funded entirely base off word of mouth. They made a good game, and sold it for a price that match the features in the game at the time. It was constantly updated and evolving. There was no DLC/micro transactions, no spy ware, no DRM, Just a good game.

More and more I am becoming a trailing edge gamer.

Based on today's news I've definitely gone from pre-order to maybe buy on sale 1-2 year after release, {2024ish} I've got KSP 1 + mods, and that will have to be enough.

I don't think it is strictly necessary to change to real life fuels, but it would be nice to have a few more realistic options. Alot of the fuels can be condensed into groups based on how dense they are, how storable they are, and how well they perform, In KSP currently you have, Monoprop, Solid fuel, Liquid fuel/oxidizer which is a rough analog of hypergolics LFO for the LV-N, and Xenon. Generally speaking I am a proponent of keeping things simple, But I think there is value in adding an analogue for cryonic fuels, and a "fluffier" fuel as a LH analog. Most of the hypergolic fuels, and KER/LOX are of similar density, and produce about the same ISP, ~290 to 340, and I think could be considered to be "liquid fuel" LH/LOX is about 3X fluffier than this, but produce 400-460 ISP, and could be represented by a 2nd type of liquid fuel. The LFO Nerva should have propellant that is 7X fluffier than it currently is, LH being 7X less dense than kerosene. CH4/LOX seems to slot in between the 2, Being slightly significantly denser than LH, and providing ISP in the 330-380+ range. So maybe 8 fuels, Monoprop, Solid Fuel, LF 1 ---- A Ker/lox or hypergolic analog, 300-330 ISP LF 2 ---- A LH/LOX Analog, 3X less dense 375-430 ISP LF 3 ---- A Meth/LOX analog, Maybe 1.2X less dense than LF 1 {a guess} and 320 to 370 ISP. LFO --- NERVA and NTR rockets, 7X less dense than it currently is. Xenon. Future fuels such as Metallic hydrogen. In my experience most real life engine can be converted to KSP fairly simply, divide the IRL engine thrust by either A) (1000 for LBF) or b) (4.5 for KN) to get KSP thrust. ISP seems to vary a bit for KSP engines compared to real life, Clydesdale has 235 VS 242 isp --- 3% lower, the Mainsail/Mastosdon have a ISP of 280-290 SL, VS 260 for the F1. I think real world ISPs could translate with a 5-10% reduction. It is important to remember the Mammoth's stats were badly distorted by the fact that the kickback was greatly undersized for the job when it was rolled out in 0.23.5. The mammoth was greatly overpowered to compensate for this. When the Vector was split of from the Mammoth in 1.0.5 it was likewise OP. Now that there is a proper booster in the form of the Cyldsdale, it is possible to re-scale the mammoth and booster. The Vector/ Mammoth for example should have stats more like this: 1.875M engine ~75% scale. SL ISP, 330-350, Vac ISP 405-430 SL Thrust 420 Vac thrust 510 for the Mammoth thrust would be 1680 SL, 2040 vac. An RL-10s are difficult to characterize because there have been SO MANY of them, however almost all of the have ~25,000 LBF thrust and ~450 Vac ISP. They are very rarely used at sea level, with the exception of the RL10A-5. IRL RL10s have a nozzle diameter betweens 1.16 and 2.1M, and KSP seems to be about 66% scale so 2.5M would be vastly oversized. 1.25M seems workable., then they could make 2.5m or 3.75m clusters like the Centaur, DUUS or EUS or ICPS. At a guess it should have stats something like this: 1.25m ~66-75% scale. SL ISP 300-320, Vac ISP 420-435 SL Thrust 10 Vac Thrust 25 I would like to see the option to switch out nozzles for different applications, for example having a sea level nozzle that is more compact, but lower thrust. Then a vacuum nozzle that make poor sea level thrust, and ISP, but is good in space. Maybe even an Eve optimized nozzle. --Just my 2 cents.

Glad it worked out, I read your post and look at the stock Kerbal X. It seemed like it could be made into a decently capable ship, while staying true to the basic premise.