Pthigrivi

We'll have to wait to see what they have in mind of course but having a fuel/resource building at KSC that fills over time isn't that weird. Real space ports like Boca Chica have fuel farms. They have warehouses where materials and components arrive and are stored. It's just that dealing with specific vendor contracts is boring gameplay so its abstracted away. It solves the balance problem you point out in your last sentence while avoiding game-bricking failure states. It introduces new players to the concept of resource costs early without bogging down the first few hours with setting up resource collection on Kerbin. If the KSC resource stockpile has a cap then early on the sky isn't the limit, and if it can be upgraded with science later on it provides some interesting strategic decisions for the player vis-a-vis launching bigger and bigger things from Kerbin or investing more heavily in a live-off-the-land strategy.

Well most games do build guidance into the progression system, and since the first-time user experience is so important to KSP I'd be surprised if the first several missions aren't designed in some ways to walk players through the basics. Even log-time KSP1 players might benefit from some missions demonstrating how setting up a colony or discovering a new star system works. So far I feel like the systems they've talked about that we are currently seeing like the VAB and flight UI are massively improved, at least structurally. They're just buggy as all get out. There are also some big gaps like TWR info and broader flight planning functionality. I think in time that stuff will get cleaned up and fleshed out. The bones are there it just needs work. So far all of the things they've said about colonies and progression sound really smart to me and if those words match up to the finished experience the way procedural wings or (un-bugged) acceleration under timewarp have we're probably in pretty good shape.

I think all we know is that you'll have to do the resource run first yourself (the flying bit being what makes it KSP), that it'll work in principle for any vehicle, rovers, planes, even interstellar vessels. We don't know though whether the repeat vessels will be physically modeled and flying around or more abstract. Though I think the former could be really cool it poses some problems and I kind of suspect the resource transfers will be more virtual. I do hope though that scheduling repeat supply runs considers transfer windows and dV costs, and that the deliveries come in lump-sums based on those timings. That shouldn't be wildly difficult. Everything would be known about the route on the back-end and the game itself could suggest repeat rates based on flight duration.

Though I half agree with Superfluous J I wouldn't worry about it going full-factorio. They've said a bunch of times they'd like the mining and colony systems to serve the core gameplay of designing and flying spaceships rather than the other way around. I can't imagine we'd be dealing with belting spaghetti or resource chains involving dozens of intermediate products. It'll certainly be simpler than that. On the plus side though there are aspects of factorio that could actually make gameplay less repetitive. One thing folks above seem to miss is that after you design a resource harvester and go collect a resource you'll be able to automate that run so that it repeats on a schedule without manually babysitting every transfer. Thats sort of like factorio in that you can set things and let them run on their own, but the gameplay itself happens where KSP should happen--designing cool vessels in the VAB to accomplish a wide range of tasks and then flying them to their destination. You're still playing KSP, in-fact the potential design space and navigation puzzles become way, way wider and more interesting, but the resources become an open-ended, non-dictative driver for how you develop and explore rather than "Go test part X on planet Y."

Thats great to hear. Under the rough edges there’s such a great game there.

Im sure this isn’t the place for a political discussion. It just bums me out to see folks laid off.

The only real insight I have on this is that Ive been involved in big complex projects involving tens of millions of dollars and some went great and some went poorly and some went medium. One lesson Ive learned is that when they go medium or poorly the people at the top who actually who made the dumb decisions never take the fall. It’s always the people who had the personal courage, fortitude, and integrity to try to solve unsolvable problems within unreasonable, unrealistic timelines, because thats what they were asked to do. Under capitalism no good deeds go unpunished.

Yeah of all the functions missing from stock seeing SCANsat-like mechanics in the new science mode is absolutely top of the wishlist for me. The flight execution achieving the right orbit, the time-based element, and the way in which biome, altimetry, slope, and resource maps could be so crucial to picking landing sites and deciding where to build colonies make it one of the biggest no-brainer adds.

It's a reference to the original game developed in Mexico. But yeah I think its just a cute flavor for the whole thing.

I would think they might only go to fixed resource locations if they planned for those locations to be specifically designed rather than randomly distributed. For instance you might find rich ice deposits in deep pockets on Munar poles, or rare resources only exposed in specifically deep craters or near other designed geological features, etc. Either system I think could work.

Yeah this is what it sounds like to me. Hence "O-ko" rather than "O-cho". And yeah it's absolutely adorable.

Man all I wanna say is dude you're the best and everyone at intercept has done an incredible job. The game looks amazing and there are so many great touches. Yeah, it's a little rough right now but we all believe in you and cherish all of the thoughtfulness and hard work. I super appreciate how much has gone into KSP2 already its great to see it getting cleaned up and optimized so more folks can dive in. We're all psyched to see science and colonies and new planets and the rest. The best things take time.

So I think the names "Science mode" and "Exploration mode" are confirmed. As far as the missions go I really like what Nate says in recent interviews, that there will be missions, but they're trying to curate these missions in a way that they tie into other game systems outside of the mission's explicit rewards. He used resources as an example, (say Mission A): Place a satellite in a polar orbit and scan Ike for resources; leading to Mission B): We've discovered rich Uranium ore deposits. Harvest and process X Uranium." The mission might have its own reward like unlocking a new tech, but you also now have a uranium operation which could feed into colony growth around Duna. But not all of the missions need to relate to resources. There could be missions related to initial exploration, gathering science, discovering and visiting anomalies, reaching higher populations at colonies, etc. The main point being that the procedural missions in KSP1 were obviously random and rather than feeding back into fundamental game mechanics and creating real strategy and rewarding players for doing things they already want to do they became kind of a laundry list of side-quests that never turned into anything substantial.

Oh good to know. I have parallels and windows anyway cause of work but I'll try Wine. The FPS is my biggest issue.

Haha they remain one the least critical issues.

I mean I certainly prefer the pace here and the ability for all of the thoughtful folks here to take their time and have compelling discussions (well, for the most part haha), but my or your opinion on the nature of a given format just isn't as relevant as the shear volume of eyes and voices on those other platforms. Reach and scale are really important. Its all well to have a detailed discussion with half a dozen folks on the board about the strategy going forward, but if no one sees that discussion it doesn't really matter. In some ways this board is probably more important for lurking devs to take in thorough feedback on gameplay functionality like the maneuver nodes, gaps in the flight planner, etc. than it is for CMs to reach people on development optics.

But as noted the other day this isn't the only place where they're interacting with people. This board has 10% of the active daily users that the discord sees, not to mention twitter, insta, tiktok, etc. They're reaching people where they are. They've said what they can say about it, that they know there are big issues with bugs and performance, they're triaging the worst issues, and this work is going to continue into the following weeks and months. Im not sure what else they can say?

I just think it's silly to speculate on this with so little actual knowledge of the situation. People are being unnecessarily dramatic about all this. So much has already gone into this game, both what we've already seen and the follow-on content with colonies and interstellar. I know its very en-vogue to imagine evil corporate masters twisting mustaches while conjuring ways to make players angry but even from a purely corporate machiavellian standpoint it be pretty stupid to dump 5 years of development in the trash for no reason. The smart thing to do is just take the time to get the code cleaned up and follow through. Even the more scathing reviews I've seen have mentioned how much promise they're seeing. The goods are there, they're just bogged down in bugs and poor performance.

Yeah it works on Parallels for me too, which is great. No rendering errors, but yeah the FPS are pretty bad. I can play with a bit of patience but its a slog so Im going to wait a few months for better optimization. My machine is a bit older than yours, one of the last models with an i7.

Jebus Dakota was just here like yesterday. They're working on the game. When the next patch is ready they'll let us know. Patience.

Thats great. Thanks, yall!

I don't know the discord can be wild but the nice thing is its a lot less formal. Its nice the devs and CMs can relax and mess around. I mean I've been looking forward to KSP2 as eagerly as anyone but it is in the end a game and games are meant to be fun. I've never particularly liked the way every little quote becomes an inquisition.

"In my day you used to call the internet on the telephone!" "Okay grampa lets get you back to bed."

My best advice to folks here is to have some patience. There's a lot to absorb after the launch and we're like 3 business days into a very long process. Im sure the devs hoped and wished things went smoother, that performance and bugs wouldn't have been as punishing as they are. Given how much so many of them have poured into every inch of this game Im sure it's very difficult for them personally. Im sure many of them have gotten few breaks and little sleep for weeks. Give them a couple days here to wrap their arms around this. Im sure they'll be chiming in about patches soon.

Ugh this is so hard for me because I do deeply and truly appreciate the devs and all of the incredibly beautiful and clever design thats gone into it and I do believe in the relatively short term a lot of this can get cleaned up and optimized but given my machine and the limitations of running windows virtually I just can’t really play yet and judge properly or give meaningful feedback. Im very much hoping in the next several months the situation improves and I can really dive in and appreciate whats been produced here. Im not refunding obviously. This has been my favorite game for a decade and I can’t wait for science and colonies and the rest. Its just gonna be a little bit I think before I can come back and be active and knowledgeable enough to contribute as a community member.