Multivac

I'm not interested in joining a high school debate club with you. I'm simply saying that I think it's crummy of you to badmouth a brilliant game in order to defend the launch of a sequel that's received some (perfectly fair) criticism. KSP1 made building rockets and going to space fun, and I learned plenty from it without bothering much with the tutorials, and despite the bugs and quirks the game does, indeed, have. "Omg the NERVs are unbalanced! My strut broke! It didn't have features X, Y, or Z (that KSP2 doesn't really have yet either!) Worst! Game! Ever!" is not an argument I'm gonna spend tons of time or energy refuting. If KSP1 weren't a good game, you wouldn't be arguing here, and neither would anyone else, and there'd be no such thing as KSP2 to argue about in the first place. KSP1 was more than merely a success, it was something that people loved, and still love, and rightly so. I don't like seeing people badmouth it in order to defend the sequel from well-earned criticism, is all.

Absolutely ridiculous how some people keep "dumping" on KSP1. KSP1 was, and remains, an absolutely brilliant and unique game that has given me and, I know, many other players, many hundreds of hours of joy. While teaching us things about space travel we never understood before, and teaching them in a brilliantly intuitive way. And we have nothing but fun throughout the lesson. The only reason any of us are here on this forum at all is KSP1. It's one thing to defend the car crash that is the KSP2 launch, but throwing KSP1 under the bus in order to do so is just low. Whatever bugs or questionable design choices it may have (and I think you're severely overstating how serious they are, I've never had nearly as many issues as you keep claiming to experience, except maybe when trying to figure out new mods) the fact is it still adds up to a wonderful, deeply enjoyable game. I'd pay $50 for KSP1 again today, and it'd be worth every penny.

I don't like all the people on here getting high and mighty with comments like "don't pay if you don't want to" and such. You aren't heroically sticking up for some small indie game creator who is having difficulty bringing a revolutionary new idea to reality, you're sticking up for a big corporation that is engaging in practices that, in my opinion, are pretty obviously unfair. If you want your players to act as your QA testers, that should be reflected in the price. If your game costs $50, it should be a pretty good, playable game. As soon as someone pays $50 they should have access to something that's at least a playable and enjoyable experience, regardless of future planned features or road maps or whatever. If you just want QA testers, you should ideally be paying them, not the other way around. And there is absolutely nothing whatsoever wrong with expressing negative opinions about a product that is a major, over-priced letdown many years in the making, neither on third-party sites nor right here on this forum.

I am actually feeling like this whole launch is pretty unfair. It's not just the road-map that puts all the promised features an unknown length of time into the future (despite the game already costing what you'd expect a finished game to cost). It's not just the sky-high system requirements that make this "more accessible" space sim game anything but. It's a more basic thing behind the philosophy of this launch that, for some reason, I'm only realizing now, after having read and seen a bunch of early reviews. We're being asked to pay for the privilege of being QA testers. Traditionally, QA testers don't pay for the privilege of testing games. Instead, it's developers who pay QA testers, in exchange for the help the QA testers give them in finding problems with a new game so that the game can be fixed and improved... before it's released to the actual audience. We've been explicitly, openly told that the point of this Early Access release is to help the developer fine-tune the game and make sure everything is "working right" before the new features in the road-map can be added. ... But that's the job of a QA tester. Now I see review after review basically saying that this is a very buggy alpha-level release. It's not just that a bunch of nice features are missing, as we've been told they would be since the roadmap was announced. It's that, well, the game is at a stage where it probably shouldn't have been released yet at all. It's not fair to ask me, or anyone else, to pay a hefty sum for the privilege of testing an alpha. Not some token sum, either. KSP2 is being sold for the price of a big, shiny, finished game. Now, if you're a small tiny publisher, like a group of a few people working on a passion project together, sure, maybe you can't afford a QA department, so you ask your fans to test the game for you, even if they're also the ones financially supporting you. For a small indie publisher, sure, that's fair enough. But even a small indie publisher will generally be kind enough to its fans to charge them some small, steeply discounted amount of money for an early version of the game that needs early testing. That's certainly how Squad did it. KSP2 is not being developed by a small indie group. It's being released by a major corporation that should be able to afford a QA department. And even if it can't, even if for some reason the developer does need to rely on the audience to also be QA testers, the decent thing to do would be at least to price the game accordingly. The fact that this developer wants to charge me $50 to play a game that has none of the promised features, that probably won't run well on my computer, and on top of that I'm asked to play the role of a QA tester for a game that turns out to be, basically, in an alpha state? It leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I actually spent a lot of money on KSP1. I bought the game early, when it was still discounted. But then I bought it again years later when it came out on Steam because I wanted to support it and I was so excited about it. And on top of that, I actually bought two additional copies of the game as gifts for friends. And, of course, I own both DLCs, and have actually bought at least one of the DLCs at least once as a gift as well. But none of that expenditure felt like it left a bad taste in my mouth. This does. I feel that it's fundamentally messed up that the new devs are openly asking me to help them test their unfinished game, which offers none of the features that have been hyped up for years, and I have to pay a hefty price for the privilege. I'm expecting someone will chime in with — "but they have a right to charge whatever they want, and clearly some people are willing to pay, so there!" And, sure, that's true! I don't disagree with the fact that they can, or with the fact that some people, maybe even quite a few people, will be happy to pay. I'm just saying that in my opinion this approach is messed up, and unfair, and fundamentally disrespectful towards the games' fans, and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. And I'm a loyal KSP1 fan of many years and a customer who has already spent plenty of money on the "franchise" saying this. What's been released so far, by all accounts, should cost maybe $15, not $50, especially if you want the players' help testing it as well. Or better yet, hire a QA department, and actually pay them, and only release the game to an audience at all once the QA is done. That's what I think and I think I have, at least, a right to express it.

I... honestly can't imagine someone being "sick" of KSP1 and excited about KSP2. The core gameplay will be the same, especially considering all the features that will make KSP2 really different from KSP1 won't be around for a while longer. And sure, I certainly hope the system requirements will drop, but, like... by how much? And how soon? I'm not saying I'm definitely never going to buy KSP2, or anything as extreme as that, but it sincerely was something I expected I'd buy on day 1, no questions asked, and now I feel I very much have no choice but waiting and hoping for the best, possibly for a year or more longer, or however long the rest of development will take (and many EA titles stay EA for years...) (... Actually, considering how many features have yet to be implemented, I'd say it's all but a sure thing that it'll take years. Will that be how long it'll take for the sysreqs to drop, too? And again, by how much?..)

Eh. Between the high system requirements and multiplayer being at the very very end of the development ladder, I've gone from enthusiastically waiting for KSP2 release day to "I'll get it later, maybe, depending on reviews." For me, pretty graphics have always been a "nice bonus" rather than a must-have feature, and the features I was excited about are a long way off from being released. I've played KSP1 on a tiny netbook with integrated graphics, and while it wasn't pretty, it ran, and I still had fun. My current computer is better than that, but nowhere near the system requirements that have been posted, and from everything I've seen and read, it doesn't look like I'd be having much fun with KSP2 in its current state. I feel sad, because before the roadmap and, now, the system requirements were released, I was quite excited to get KSP2 as soon as I could. But it looks like I'll be sticking with KSP1 for the foreseeable future, instead. On a less self-centred note: What about other people who don't have top-of-the-line gaming computers? What about, say, schools? Remember how KSP1 got used to teach kids about space travel? Not a lot of educational institutions have top-of-the-line gaming rigs available for educational purposes. And wasn't making KSP more accessible, like, a core goal with KSP2? That's what the tutorials were about, right? Sky-high system requirements are the exact opposite of making the game accessible.

Uh, wow... Wasn't it mentioned at some point that one of the improvements over KSP1 would be better optimization?.. Because KSP1 can basically run on a potato, if you turn the graphics to minimum and keep your part counts low... (Source: In the past, I've played KSP1 on a tiny old-fashioned Windows 7 netbook. No, it wasn't pretty, but it was still fun...)

I'm mostly imagining playing KSP multiplayer with friends, people I already know, rather than random internet strangers, to clarify. So some degree of cooperation would be likely, and figuring out a plan together would be part of the fun, rather than an obstacle. I mean, obviously you'd be talking by voice on Discord or something (assuming KSP2 won't have a built-in voice chat) while doing this, which would also help. I probably should have said earlier that that's the kind of scenario I had in mind. Yes, obviously working with a stranger you've never met and trying to guess what they're doing with minimal communication would not be fun. But doing it with someone you know and get along with seems potentially very fun to me, despite, and in part even because of, the challenge you describe. :3 Like I said earlier, makes me imagine playing Legos with a friend as a kid, stuff like that. And even doing it with strangers - as long as you two first establish that you're on the same page in terms of how you play KSP, and as long as you can trust each other not to grief, could still be fun, and potentially lead to new friendships if anything. Also:

You know what would be amazing? Building craft with other players in realtime. I got inspired to imagine this after looking at some screenshots of the KSP2 version of the VAB. There's supposed to be a whole new approach to it, with "workspaces" replacing "craft files," so you can work on multiple craft in the same space and instantly see how they'd fit together, how they'd compare, and so on. And wouldn't it be cool to combine that with multiplayer? Just, you working on your craft while your friend is working on theirs, at the same time and in the same "place," and you can both instantly see each other's work, compare it to your own, trade ideas and fool around and show off, etc. :3 I think that'd be fun as heck. It'd be like being a kid and playing Legos with your best friend on the living room carpet again, only more complex and more science-ey! It'd also be cool to instantly, seamlessly work together on a big project. Like, "You work on the science payload, and I'll scroll down and try and find a way to put together enough boosters to actually get it into space!" Stuff like that. :3 Or, you'd be able to instantly check how your multiplayer space station will fit together once it's in orbit, before launching it in separate segments! I have no idea how plausible this is (though at least you wouldn't have to work with synchronizing physics or time warp :P) but I think it'd be a really cool mechanic.

You misunderstand me. I am not asking for a work-around. I am saying there should be an option within the launcher and/or the game itself to keep the launcher from popping up every time you start the game. I don't launch directly from the .exe, I launch from Steam. And, in fact, a work-around exists for Steam as well, by editing the game's launch options. But no-one should have to use a work-around, regardless of how they launch the game. There should be a button, or a check box, within the KSP interface itself. And, in fact, there is! There's been a check mark in the game's settings, once you launch KSP, for ages that lets you disable the launcher. I already had it set to disable the launcher since ages ago, which is why I didn't remember it in my previous post. But this setting doesn't seem to be having an effect on this new launcher, near as I can tell. This is a problem.

Is there an option to disable the launcher? If not, there absolutely needs to be one. Giving more power to the users to decide how they want to run the game is good.

This is silly. No-one is taking away your ability to play single-player if that's your personal preference. Lots of other people, myself for example, are super excited for multiplayer. There's an entire separate thread where people discuss how multiplayer mechanics might work. KSP1 multiplayer mods have already existed for years and have already proven that it's quite possible to make multiplayer KSP both workable and fun (if a bit unstable - because these were mods for a game that wasn't designed to be multiplayer from the ground up - which KSP2 seemingly will be). If all you can think of to do in multiplayer is fly off in a different direction from everyone else and stare at a "marker or point," that just tells me you need to exercise your imagination a tiny bit more. Please don't tell me that the way I want to enjoy KSP2 is somehow "wrong." I personally can't wait for that last point on the roadmap.

It really should be noted that this problem has already been faced, addressed, and solved — at least in one way — by mods like Luna Multiplayer and Dark Multiplayer. Players can time warp independently, but if a player is in your "future," you need to "catch up" with them — accomplished by clicking a single button in the Luna interface — before you can interact with their ships, say by docking one of your ships with theirs. "Catching up" simply puts you into time warp until your current date is the same as theirs. It's not always an ideal solution, no, but it worked — or, to be more honest, it worked except when bugs crept in, which was often. But, bugs are bugs; Luna is a mod that kludges its way towards making a single-player-by-design game multi-player instead; of course it will be buggy. If this same approach were implemented in KSP2 from the ground up, and worked smoothly, it'd be a perfectly valid solution to the problem. Now, I'm not saying this "independent time warp + catch up" idea is the only, or even necessarily the best, way to solve the time warping multiplayer issue. I'm just pointing out that this isn't a new problem. It's one that has already been thought about, and at least one solution has already been not only dreamt up, but actually implemented and extensively played with by a team of KSP modders. It's not a brand-new thought, or a mind-blowing unsolvable challenge.

I am insanely excited about KSP 2 multiplayer, to the point where it might be the feature I am most looking forward to. I want to build an "international space station" with my friends, with each of us contributing a module and docking them together. I want to have a space race, and see who can land on the Mun first. I want us to send missions to rescue each other's inevitably stranded Kerbals. I want to run a little orbital refuelling outpost, and see other players dock with it, knowing that I'm helping them complete their missions. If that "players-hiring-each-other-with-contracts" mechanic mentioned way back in this thread gets implemented, I very much look forward to playing around with that. I also have a friend who really likes multiplayer games. They are nerdy as heck, and I think they'd love KSP, but they've explicitly told me that it being single player only (setting aside the fairly limited and sadly buggy multiplayer mods) is a big turn-off for them. I've already got them to promise that when KSP 2 comes out, they'll give it a try — if I'll play with them. There's just been some negativity about the idea of multiplayer KSP in this thread, and I want to reiterate that absolutely not everyone here feels that way. I really, really want KSP 2 multiplayer to be a thing, and I am super excited for it. There's tons of ways I can imagine having fun with it.

I think what Kerbals really need... is hats. HATS!

To me, KSP is above all an example of a beautiful balance between "serious" realistic simulation gameplay, and light-hearted, cute, "fun" gameplay. Kerbals, to me, are kind of a symbol of that balance. They are astronauts, they pass out from G-forces, they provide useful skills, they gain experience, and in the game's "story," they are a civilization working hard to try and reach space. They are also ridiculous, funny, and adorable, just smart enough to (supposedly) put rockets together, but a bit too silly to be able to do it safely. They are perfect. To me, a game without Kerbals could still be an interesting space travel sim, but it would no longer be the game I know and love as Kerbal Space Program. As a tangent, I think the game *would* benefit from expanding on the Kerbal population a bit. I don't need or want KSP2 to turn into some sort of in-depth "Kerbal civilization simulator," but I do think the game would benefit from having, say, a few Kerbal cities and/or other civilian locations scattered around the planet. It would help make the game's world feel more "alive" and "real," and would make exploring around the planet's surface (and observing the planet from low orbit) more interesting. I think that would add enough to the gameplay experience to be a worthwhile addition.

I like the idea of making this a difficulty setting. In "normal" difficulty reaction wheels would work as they do in KSP1, so new players would have an easier time getting into orbit and playing around with spacecraft design. Once they get some experience, those who want more of a challenge and/or more realism in their game could then change to a harder difficulty setting, which would "de-power" the reaction wheels and force them to rely more on other means of control. And at the highest difficulty settings, reaction wheels could function more like a monopropellant-saving add-on to a thruster-based RCS rather than a full spacecraft control solution in their own right. As others have mentioned, RCS thrusters would need to be moved lower in the tech tree for this, but honestly, why not? Maybe introduce weak, basic RCS thrusters very early on, and just add more powerful thrusters higher in the tree; maybe the ability to use translation controls (as opposed to using the RCS thrusters just for pitch and stability) could also be unlocked later, around the time when the player is going to be mastering docking.

I think this would be a lovely idea. I don't think it necessarily makes sense to "prep" for interstellar voyages at the edge of the solar system, but as an interesting and potentially science-rich destination in its own right, I think the Kuiper belt would be a great addition. Similarly, a heliopause region and an Oort (Koort?) cloud even further beyond that would be interesting too! The heliopause could be a region of space that could be studied as a spacecraft travels through it at interstellar-voyage speeds, without needing to slow down and rendezvous with a body; potentially a good way to pick up some bonus science while en route to another star, and another incentive to build a Kerbal version of the Voyager probes. And an Oort cloud even father out — a large fraction of the distance to the next nearest star! — would be cool. In real life, some comets come from the Oort cloud, so it would be interesting to see that incorporated into KSP2's take on the Kerbol system.

Now I want this graphed onto a space-time diagram that shows light cones, and temporal distortion as we approach light speed. Surely there's some way we can fiddle with relativity and gravity wells to get KSP2 to come out sooner in our reference frame!

With respect, I don't actually think any of this is quite true. I don't think calculating the thrust on a solar sail would be that much harder than simulating the thrust of a rocket engine. It would be a bit more complex, since it would vary with distance from the star and the angle of the sail relative to the incoming light, true, but this doesn't seem prohibitively complex compared to, say, jet engines that vary their thrust based on available intake air, or several other mechanisms we already have in KSP1. Solar panels in KSP1 already vary their power output based on their angle relative to the incoming sunlight, for example, so why couldn't a solar sail vary its thrust in a similar way? Nor is there anything inherently complex about solar sail technology, as compared to rocket engines. The hardest part in real life is manufacturing the material out of which the sail is made, which must be lightweight, strong, and highly reflective; but in a computer game, any material can have any simulated properties we want. Plus, a solar sail has almost no moving parts, aside from those needed to deploy it! The concept of relying on photon pressure may seem complex, but at the end of the day, the mechanism is basically "thing pushes other thing," not really more complex, in basic principle, than a 17th-century canvas sail on a wooden ship being pushed by the wind. Also, saying that "Solar Sails is still a technology that hasn't really proven itself" really isn't true at all! As I mentioned in my original post above, it has already been used on at least two real-life space probes, both of which worked as intended. Solar sails may not be in widespread use, but they absolutely are a proven technology that we know works, and that has already been used to propel real-life spacecraft. There are literally already real-life space missions that you couldn't copy in KSP2 unless solar sails were included. As for "turning off" a solar sail, that can be as simple as turning it edge-on to the sun. Again, just as a solar panel in KSP1 that is edge-on to incoming sunlight won't produce any power. Optionally, a mechanism could be included to retract or partially retract a solar sail; in real life such a mechanism might be too complex or heavy to be practical, but in a KSP game, it needn't be any more complex to implement or control than any other deployable part. As for the balance between realism and noob-friendliness, solar sails could fall anywhere on this realism-noobishness spectrum, depending on how they're implemented. After all, literally every piece of technology in KSP, including every single conventional rocket engine, must face the same balancing problem! Even the most basic rocket engine could be made incredibly complex if the game's designers wanted to; we could all be fiddling with fuel pumps and tank pressure levels just to get a basic Reliant to work. The programmers found a good balance between fun and realism instead, simplifying some aspects of how a rocket engine works while simulating other aspects with a fair amount of realism. And why couldn't the exact same thing be done for solar sails? If the game's designers choose, they could make solar sailing as simple as pushing a button to deploy the sail, and then using your standard WASD controls, or maybe a few buttons on the sail part's right-click context menu, to change how much thrust it's producing, and in which direction. As with ion engines, they could improve the sail's thrust-to-weight ratio compared to real life, and take other steps to make it newb-friendly. The new continuous thrust controls that are already to be included in KSP2 should help with this, by giving the player an easy way to plan out the sail's trajectory as it accelerates. So just because solar sails are different from traditional rocket engines, and seem like such a crazy and far-out technology at first glance, does not actually mean they need to be any more complex in terms of gameplay than any number of engines and other devices we already have in KSP1, or that we already know are going to be included in KSP2.

For my part, I actually hope the attempt to make the graphics better doesn't take focus away from the gameplay and such... Pretty graphics is a nice bonus, IMHO, not a primary selling point.

I mean, I'd argue that a vast, beautiful, elegant spacecraft literally sailing through space is pretty dang awesome and has quite a bit of romance to it, but I guess I get what you are saying as well.

... Oh. I always thought it was a... "space exploration" game, rather than a "rockets" game specifically...

(There are past threads related to this, but they are "quite old!") So I've just recently become aware that solar sails might not be a thing in KSP2 (or at least not at launch), but also that the basic mechanic needed to make solar sails work — namely, the ability to make a ship constantly accelerate even when the player isn't actively flying it or focused on it — almost certainly will be in the game. So... I'm basically just here to beg our wise and awesome KSP2 devs to please please please consider having solar sails in the game after all, mostly because I think they are just about the coolest thing ever. :3 The main reason solar sails don't work well in KSP1 (though there are mods for them!) is that they generate only a very tiny amount of thrust, making the Dawn ion engine look like the Mainsail in comparison. Changing your orbit using a solar sail would take ages! However, in KSP2, unlike in KSP1, it seems we may gain the ability to have a ship continue to accelerate even when we aren't "looking" at it, so there will be no need to sit there staring at your screen for hours at a time at x4 physics warp; you'll be able to just set up your maneuver, and then switch away from the ship to do something else while it accelerates. This makes solar sails quite reasonable as a gameplay mechanic — and they are oh so cool. Here's the thing with solar sails: While they generate only a tiny amount of thrust, they allow your ship to literally be propelled by the very light streaming from the sun (or Kerbol, in KSP's case). Not in the sense of using solar power to generate electricity or anything — a solar sail is literally pushed by light itself, in the same way that a traditional seagoing sail is pushed by the wind. And, much like a seagoing sail-driven ship might never accelerate as quickly as one with an engine, but can keep on sailing as long as the wind is blowing, so too a solar sail can continue driving your spacecraft as long as you're anywhere near a star — no fuel or propellant required. The star itself is your engine! This means that while your acceleration is low, it is also constant. You don't have to worry about running out of fuel, ever, and so instead of having to plan out short, optimally efficient burns, you can just keep building up your velocity — and with a bit of time, you can reach speeds much higher than what any conventional rocket could hope to achieve before it runs out of delta-v. With solar sails, running out of delta-v isn't really a thing, at least until the day Kerbol goes extinct! This means that despite its lower acceleration, a solar sail could potentially reach remote destinations much quicker than a traditional rocket could, by gradually building up speed until it's moving much faster than any rocket. This also makes solar sails a practical means of potentially launching ships into interstellar space (especially with something called laser assist, though that would probably need to be a whole additional gameplay mechanic — potentially a very cool one — and I won't get into that here). As with sail-driven sea craft, you can "tack," in a sense, to control the direction in which you accelerate — solar sails are not limited to accelerating away from a star, just as sailing ships of old were not limited to only sailing with the wind. By angling the sail relative to the incoming light, you can accelerate prograde or retrograde, as with a more conventional engine, thus lowering or raising your orbit! (In terms of gameplay mechanics, I'm imagining something similar to the way solar panels in KSP1 can already tell their angle relative to incoming sunlight, and how much sun exposure they have.) Another cool thing about solar sails is that they have already been used for actual spacecraft propulsion in real life, and so despite sounding cool and science fictiony, are already a 100% confirmed real, practical means of spacecraft propulsion. So I, for one, would be super excited to see solar sails in KSP2. What do y'all think? Solar sails: So space travel can look like this... But feel like this. (With apologies to Disney!)