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The video shows tedious selecting of each part placed in symmetry; while some builders will want that level of control, tedious clicking could be reduced if a checkbox, or modifier key during part selection, could be added to apply collision setting to all parts linked in symmetry.

"BUT, what is the gameplay like?" - Squad pre-emptively answers by releasing numerous gameplay overview videos, BEFORE a cinematic trailer. Bravo! Classic Kerbal mayhem, nobody dies - great cinematic!

Good point, I would like to believe its limited like a maximum pool of points per experiment in each biome as GoldForest suggests. Or in the case of new objects - Science per object (and possibly per biome as well, if for example "crystal formations" can be found in multiple biomes.) I play with Science payouts nerfed 40% in my Career, because after the MPL was overhauled to generate Science over time, Science points felt too easy to get. The expansion is adding a ton of new Science points, since so many new experiments are being added at once; but at the same time it may not feel like i'm 'cheating,' if some of the new experiments are in their own tech tree Science Nodes. (...giving us more things to spend points on, such that adding more easily-obtained Science points stays in some kind of balance.) I like the scaling of costs for recruiting Kerbals, it forces players to think more about Rescue contracts. Most of my career game's engineers and scientists come from Rescues.

This expansion adds a lot to the tech tree... is Squad taking a look at moving some existing parts around, and slotting in these new ones? How many new parts will be added to the 1000 science nodes I'm very happy to learn that the new Action group extensions are coming to the base game! Please give "stock" players something new to find in the solar system: Squad could promote the expansion a little more, by adding the small "take home" surface features.

Rover Arm naming question: (smallest) CRSY : Seems to suggest "Curiosity" - presently the largest rover operating on Mars. I think the smallest arm would make more sense if named after Sojourner ( SOJ-R ?) the first and smallest rover on Mars. While it didn't have an articulated arm, it was able to deploy and retract a single-function Alpha Proton X-ray Spectrometer. (APXS testing on Earth) (medium) SPRT: Seems to suggest "Sprit" || (large) OP-E : Seems to suggest "Opportunity" : each one the same size.

ball-in-socket hinge type? Perhaps like the Grappler, when it's set to Free Pivot.

After the news about this dropped I wondered if this set of parts was expansion-worthy, but... I have to agree now, that it is. Kerbals struggled with the wheel for many years, building prototypes and refining the amount of "roundness" required for consistent operation. Similarly, the "hinge" wasn't an easy problem to solve. One of the presently unemployed engineers had been trying to get the hinge idea to work with multiple pins side by side, because multiple wheels side by side scaled up so well to support heavy loads. The simplified design with ONE pin scaled up as big as needed, is proving to be much more reliable. This is a giant leap for Kerbal Kind.

Does it support models 'with collision' ? Because I think that may be important for some classes of new objects... if you want to position a robotic sensor arm near the surface, as opposed to a generic placement / origin point. That's why I wanted to distinguish between hand-placed objects such as the new surface features, which may be more resource intensive, versus "scatter" objects. Small rocks, small debris, grass, flowers - should remain no-collision but I'm thinking if planet/moon surfaces get fleshed out with tons more features to make driving around more interesting, more objects with collision models becomes important, to create the sense of a "real" landscape.

Not to discourage your efforts, but whether it's worth the trouble of taking an elaborate rover, for some other players, depends on the distance between surface features. Some won't want to spend half an hour or more driving across a largely featureless landscape, to get to the next point of interest. These new surface features are a step in the right direction, though. Next I would like to see an expansion / overhaul of the "scatter" system, to dynamically landscape the terrain around the player with many more interesting things to see, on long drives. Other games might statically place thousands of objects to create an interesting landscape, but I don't know if the current game engine would support static placement of so many different kinds of objects. It would not matter how nice it looks, if such an update turned the game into a 1 FPS slide show.

methods have not yet been revealed.

I would not expect robotics to animate during Timewarp. Will the rotation state be saved / restored in persistence? I hope Squad is testing this, with multiple hinges and docking ports.

Hype delivery van

Love the animations! Sound effects, too!!

Squad is erring on the side of caution with regard to the new surface features: no player bases are going to be destroyed by the sudden appearance of a crystal formation. While clever scripting when loading a saved game state could move a surface feature so that it doesn't intersect with player objects, doing that would require more testing time to get right. For example, how far should it be moved? That's a question that doesn't need an answer, if the whole idea of writing some kind of script is left out. Squad probably has enough work on their plates, making sure their new robotics and rotator components states are saved in persistence and restored reliably.

That's not set in stone, IMO. Ask politely! I think it would be good marketing (Squad!) to give everyone the new surface features, it would just not be possible to "science" them without the DLC.