PDCWolf
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Posts posted by PDCWolf
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On 1/5/2024 at 6:14 PM, Audaylon said:
I don't care when or if my neighbor plays a single player steam game. I never understand these posts. There are millions of video games.
And what metric do you use to gauge the success and retention of something? Because that's exactly what drives further investment be it on a particular feature or the product at all. Why do you think every game nowadays has a skin store, a battlepass, and some even a casino?
For Science! already has ~2000 people playing it went almost under yesterday, might be today, KSP1 is back to being the most played of the two. In the end, KSP2 doesn't exist in a vacuum, it has a cheaper, and clearly once again more endearing, competitor, which thankfully keeps it in check when it comes to justifying the up to 5 times bigger pricetag.
2 hours ago, GluttonyReaper said:Obviously I can't comment on the quality of Science, but this is pretty the much main thing that's keeping me from picking up KSP2 - sure it looks like it's technically a better game than KSP1, but there's yet to be anything that really sticks out a "standout" feature that actually pushes me over the line. Streamlined systems and quality-of-life stuff like procedural wings and thrust-on-rails (while presumably a lot of work, and I'm happy they exist!) are obviously improvements, but they're not exactly enough to convince me spend £45 on the game when I already own KSP1. The only thing which really sticks out is the (vastly) improved graphics which, while essential for a game like this, can't really carry the whole thing.
(I should also clarify that buying KSP2 would involve buying a new machine that can actually run it... so I may be a little biased in that regard)
In general it feels like what we've seen so far isn't anything that couldn't have been implemented in KSP1 if it had continued development (game design wise at least), and any of the interesting features like colonies, resources, interstellar, etc. are so abstractly described that it's difficult to get excited for them. I had really hoped that a fresh start with a more professional team would have lead to all the stuff great about KSP1 being distilled down, and everything else being replaced entirely with something more game-like. Instead it feels like there's been a lot of time spent faithfully recreating KSP1, warts and all... just to continue where the first game left off, running into a lot of similar issues unsurprisingly.
That said, I would also note that there doesn't seem to be much from the KSP2 team to actually sell the game at this point. Other than the initial EA push (which seemed to be a bit of mess), hype and marketing still seems to be contained to existing community rather than trying to bring loads of new players in. Perhaps they're aware of how bare-bones things are at the moment, and are waiting until there's more to show closer to a 1.0 release before really pushing it out there.
It's barely a remix for now. It's KSP1 but done differently, with most differences hard to appreciate and under the hood, and only believed to be there because no mechanic takes advantage of them (other than loading times, which is a discussion worth its own thread). And for those "improvements" that are out there... orbital decay is back, that's all I've gotta say really. For people that dreamed about a new, professionally made physics engine? The game was over from day 1 when they told us it was gonna be Unity again, and later on we learned they're still using the same middleware and a lot of recycled, looked-at-but-allegedly-not-copypasted components from KSP1.
As for the graphics, I really don't feel as positive. For me the overly plasticky look on the parts, the overtly saturated terrain and the disney movie smoke is much more offensive than KSP1s mess of clashing styles that at least somewhat tended to realistic enough if you had a ton of suspension of disbelief.
Thrust on rails is absolutely broken for now, as is anything that includes thrust during a change of scene.
As for selling the future of the game, they're completely uncompromising in the bad sense of the word, as in they're really against making any sort of compromising statement because they clearly lack any faith in being able to take any plan they publicize to completion. Some may say it's a lesson learned from the mess that was the pre-launch campaign, I'm more inclined to believe it's lack of capacity, but that's entirely my personal view... If the science systems they hyped for months are just a lazy remix of KSP1 whilst still keeping all the bad stuff... What hope would anyone have for anything further, specially when the devs themselves don't even have what it takes to make a single promise about it? At least people are clearly getting bored of the main progression system after a couple weeks, that's enough of a message for themselves and the dev team, I'd hope.
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15 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:
What's impossible to tell is how this diagram is mapped onto Kerbin's atmosphere currently, mainly whether and how much it's been scaled down relative to atmospheric pressure. My guess is that they've basically applied a 70% scaling so the Karman line is at 70km rather than 100km and abruptly cuts off. In reality atmospheric heating begins above the Karman line, closer to 120km up, so you could scale 58% it to deliberately ease-in this initial heating event. What might make for a smoother transition would be instead to scale it so the mesopause is aligned at 70km (82% scale) so you don't have a sudden temperature spike as soon as you enter the atmosphere. All of these solutions are a little artificial of course because kerbin's scaled so much differently than earth. For my money the latter solution would make for the most intuitive gameplay while still incurring a solid dose of reality.
Or maybe Im wrong and at these altitudes air temp doesn't matter compared to density and friction?
What translates into heating is having enough air density for the shock bow to actually compress enough air molecules into heating up. As the atmosphere gets less dense, obviously there's less air molecules, in fact not enough of them to compress into each other, which is why you have the ISS being able to generate lift, or adopt a posture where it reduces drag, but not heating up. In reality what KSP does is close to ignoring anything above the stratosphere, so you go from stratosphere to perfect vacuum as soon violently as just changing from 69.999 to 70.000 meters. Once you're below 70.000 meters, there's automatically enough air molecules for them to compress and heat up, although very lightly.
What we'd need to examine this in enough depth is a diagram that relates, at a fixed altitude, speed to temperature. From then we can discuss if it's too much or too little, but anything else apart from that has no fix without manipulating the whole atmospheric setup. IRL, even if you ignore all the other atmospheric components, you will absolutely burn up if you do what OP did (hanging around too long at high temperature). What we need to look at is that if at a certain speed, the maximum heating experienced at a fixed altitude makes sense.
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1 hour ago, rjbvre said:
Is it too pessimistic to think the amount of time they spend somewhere is directly tied to the amount of users there for strictly pr reasons, and they're not actually giving that much weight to any of the suggestions on any platform?
I wouldn't say all feedback is weighted by amount of people repeating it, but I will say that there's of course a very heavy conflict of interest, with the devs all hanging out on discord and pretty much seeing only positive feedback, and then they are expected to put work on this or that feature that people didn't like, which of course directly clashes against their "reality" of what they see on Discord. For a very concrete example look at UI, where the further away you get from the Discord, the harsher and more varied feedback is, versus the reply we got from Nate:
The most talked about points in feedback all over are the usability, design and position of the Navball, the VAB interface, VAB camera controls, UI color selection, legibility, and the PAW being a trainwreck. What did we get in return? that they're looking at legibility, maneuver nodes, icon salad, and PAW "organization issues". There's a clear disconnect between the focus points of feedback, versus what the team says they get from it. That can only come from two places: The conflict of interest I mentioned before, or that they're really not up to take high level feedback, limiting what they want from us to low hanging fruit like obvious and not so obvious bugs and playability complaints. It can also be a mix of both. For an even worse example look at science as a feature: almost a month of feedback has gone completely ignored.
This is repeated on every single conversation that's been had in this forum, Reddit, and I'm sure the Discord too. I just wish that if it's the later, they made it very clear, because against all other EAs out there, this really means we're nothing more than buy-in testers.
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12 minutes ago, regex said:
And yet, again, according to Squad they gave far more weight to Reddit due to there being far more people there. Was Reddit defending the devs the clear behavior?
I'm inclined to say yes. In fact they still kinda do.
Back then I was on 4chan and we were visited by HarvesteR, Maxmaps, and some mods from here too, sadly those times are over.
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2 hours ago, regex said:
Even the barn had its defenders. It's been pretty clear to me since that any dev team should stick to their vision of the game they want to play rather than listen to the community on anything other than bugfixes.
Oh for sure, not denying that, but if you looked at the forum as a whole, yeah, defend the devs was the clear behavior.
2 hours ago, Periple said:LOL the problem with KSP2 is definitely that there hasn’t been enough people hating on it!
On the discord, which is the main focus of the op? definitely. Love how the awful stuff that went and still goes on in there gets ignored because haters were perceived as the problem.
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2 minutes ago, regex said:
What the hell are you talking about? Squad willingly steered their ship directly into a bland game. If anything they paid more attention to Reddit than these forums, if they were actually to be believed, due to a greater population of feedback.
It's like we spent our time at two different communities entirely. Whenever anything bad was said about the game this forum got up in arms, which is funny because the posts are still there. Only very obvious mistakes had people agreeing, like the barn.
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1 hour ago, regex said:
There's some serious "kids these days" energy in this thread. I thought better of these forums (actually I didn't, based on the reasons I originally left, but I thought it had gotten better).
You draw parallels to that and not to the community shielding the devs from all criticism and steering them into a bland game back during KSP1?
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1 hour ago, RayneCloud said:
So, why not just have KSP be kerbin and the mun and nothing else?
Well, that was the experience for what the previous dev team found to be the majority of players.
Again, I'm not against the idea of adding more planets, but I think the effort would be much better invested first in giving players reasons to go there other than lame progression locks and blurbs of text.
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1 hour ago, RayneCloud said:
So, why have interstellar at all then? Because that's just more "barren planets" to go visit for, I dunno, no reason what so ever? If we're going by that logic then every planet is a boring barren rock with no reason to go to it, so why have a space game about going to those places, there's nothing there yeah?
No resources, no science, no mission and vehicle design challenges, no discoverable to explore, no landscapes and amazing vistas to see, no reason really to go to space or do things in space because it's all barren planets.
Ya know, IRL, there's 95 celestial objects around Jupiter (That we know of), I'm sure there's no reason for us to go to any of them. Uninteresting barren lifeless rocks that they are. *shrug*
And I actually agree with not seeing much point to interstellar. However, I will say that interstellar transfers should at least offer a different mechanism for spaceflight than normal Hohmann transfers between planets.
That the planets are already barren rocks shouldn't be a justification to add more uninteresting barren rocks, it should actually be a reason to put the work in to make them interesting, varied, and worthwhile to visit.
1 hour ago, RayneCloud said:I mean, sorry for being a bit snippy here... but that whole "they're barren rocks with nothing on them" argument just really grinds me up because it's a non argument for space flight games like KSP, etc. It's also used to shut down space flight IRL. "Why go there? It's barren and empty."
Nasa estimates there's something like 290 celestials around most major planets and dwarf planets in our solar system,- 95 around Jupiter
- 146 at Saturn
- 27 at Uranus
- 14 at Neptune
- 5 orbitals around dwarf planet pluto
This type of argument means, we never go to any of them. Because there's just, "no reason, they're all barren rocks" There's nothing to learn, nothing to do, no advancements to be made and that's the same thing here in KSP...
I don't play Stock KSP 1 without OPM, because going out past Jool, out in to the deep solar system, requires even more engineering in terms of mission planning, vehicle design, etc. For me personally, tho I suppose someone else will just jump in here and go "I play OPM stock and can get to pluto with nothing but 1 engine you're a noob" to shut me down on that, but oh well.
I make no connection between the argument in KSP and real spaceflight, however IRL even barren rocks can tell us a lot of things that help a myriad of disciplines from geography to chemistry, biology, astrophysics and everything inbetween. In KSP not only can't you represent that, but also the way the game is actually emphasizes how empty and barren those worlds are.
in KSP, what makes a landing on Gilly different from one on Pol and Bop? Maybe the color of the terrain, one of them having the Kraken, and now whatever discoverables are out there. Other than that, once you did one there's almost nothing to gain from landing on any of the other two besides completionism.
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Whilst I agree with GP2 and beyond (an actually well made asteroid system that can be used to create Oort cloud bodies too please?), there's also a harsh reality that is new players not leaving the vicinity of Kerbin. Even if KSP2 has much more incentive, we still don't know if that's changed, or will change. Plus it's not like most planets aren't barren an uninsteresting already save for hand-planted "discoverables" strewn around. What makes more planets not just be more barren wastelands, which we already have plenty of?
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9 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:
But from time to time I do check in to the much more popular discord server and I can honestly say I've seen almost no substantive conversations happen there for over a year.
Gotta have more weight now that it's not a "hater" saying it.
The discord is barely more than an overgrown hype squad, ready to commit abuse and worse against anyone who disagrees.
E: Forgot to mention, they also share posts from here and from Reddit with each other to brigade and downvote, but I haven't seen Dakota complain about that one.
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10 hours ago, Jeq said:
Thermosphere doesn't destroy most thermal resistant parts first in real life.
Not sure how cooling works at vacuum that fast. there is no thermal conduction happening without air.
Are you saying konosohere decides to destroy most heat resistant parts first. And destroy parts if they are protected by heatshield but let uncovered parts alone?
6 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:Radiative cooling. It might not be a lot, but apparently it was enough. And there is still air there, very little, but it's there
As I understand it, the Karman Line is where the velocity required to maintain enough aerodynamic lift for level flight exceeds orbital velocity, and can vary somewhat as the atmosphere expands and contracts, as Starlink found out....SpaceX just lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm. There could be worse to come. | MIT Technology Review
When the capsule raises back up, the ablative material keeps melting and ablating away, taking heat away with the pieces that fly off. You can read about that and radiative cooling in the apollo capsule here.
You're not in the thermosphere, that's just not how atmospheres work in the game.
As for the heatshield issue, if your heatshield is designed to whitstand 3000ºC and your capsule can only resist 1500ºC, and you keep both parts in 3000ºC heat for long enough, guess which one fails first...
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3 hours ago, hatterson said:
Yea I’m good with fairings being basically required in atmo, I just don’t think it’s a good gameplay experience to have shallow atmospheric entries be significantly harsher than steeper ones.
Technically, holding your craft at speed at any altitude would cause enough heat buildup. The Apollo capsule dived very shallowly and skipped out to cool down between braking dives, because as shallow as you might want to come in, you'll still heat up beyond the capacity of whatever thermal management system if you just stay toasty for long enough.
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IRL, the atmosphere extends up a lot. The Karman line is a general accepted boundary, but in reality you're hitting atmosphere particles all the way up to 10000km. Even up to 1000km, atmospheric drag is considerable, and causes tangible orbital decay, but that same density of air is not enough for super heated particles up there to heat up anything in a non negligible way.
In game, we have to make do (LCD Pandering) with an atmosphere that ends at 70km, to not have atmospheric decay and having to juggle with station keeping every low orbit. This however also means atmospheric density is very compressed, and even at 69.999km you're hitting enough atmosphere to heat up.
It is unexpected an unintuitive, but it is more a concern of game balancing than a bug or something "done wrong". It is definitely not a thermosphere though, it's way too low for that. In fact it can't be related to any realistic term, as Kerbin is not realistic, it's density curve vs altitude isn't realistic, and thus heating effects aren't entirely realistic either.
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Glad to see y'all are already back. I feel this upnate plays down on a couple of the issues raised by the community (namely UI, specially failing to see a direct address of the feedback thread yet), and completely turns away from any feedback on science itself as a feature, independent of optics.
Kinda sad to see we're stuck with a barebones remix and streamlining of a mainline feature yet again on what's supposed to be a bigger and better sequel.
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Right now, the entire selling point of KSP2 is potential, like for any EA. As much as people like to cry and whine that EAs shouldn't be bought over promised features or roadmaps, that's how it is and it is not gonna change any time soon. Both companies and players know that. And potential for the game will fall further and further as new stuff comes out and said potential is realized or wasted.
The aggregate review flow shows a smidge of an uptick in purchasers, meaning 0.2 FS! actually got a couple people to buy the game, and some people to come back and play it again, but they still haven't broken half a million steam sales, 10% of the original. However that same data shows that, even for an update that gates progress behind long-term gameplay, retention is also very low. The current statistics show that ~50% of the people that came back are already out after 2 weeks. For what's supposed to be a long term mechanic, a mainline feature in the roadmap, that's really bad.
The reasons should be obvious, as KSP2 still fails to offer anything but a barebones remix of the KSP1 experience under a, very hard to defend as "better", coat of paint. If you can hide the whole of science behind a flashing button, you really can't expect it to be an enthralling mechanic that keeps people going, and that's exactly what came out. Science. Is. Bad. And now the numbers prove it too. The faster we all accept that and the team shows whether they plan to address it or that's what we're stuck with as we move on to the next thing, the better.
So, the reply would be a resounding no.
As for the "but I don't use the launcher" fallacy, even if you consider Steam as half the total playerbase of the game (it should be closer to 75% considering Epic and launcher-dissidents), the statistics and trends will still hold with a very high confidence. At an estimated 500.000 buyers, we only need a population of 12k to establish trends with a 99% confidence level. Steam offers a population size of 25k, meaning we can establish 99.9% confidence over a population a magnitude bigger than the real one, with a 1% margin of error. As much as you hate player number posts, they are and will always be right so long as Steam remains the main distribution platform for PC games.
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On 1/3/2024 at 4:34 PM, Mikki said:
SPEED CHART ... Conversion and conclusions
I have calculated the given speed indication of m/s (meters per second) into some better digestible units, so people can better imagine what they are doing to their Kerbals (and mostly the crafts) in atmospheric conditions... I added Mach numbers for the technical intrigued.
10 m/s 36 km/h 22 mph Mach 0.03 A fresh breeze in your face 25m/s 90 km/h 55 mph Mach 0.07 Falling from a motorcycle really hurts 50 m/s 180 km/h 112 mph Mach 0.15 Heavy speed fines, take off speed light aircraft 100 m/s 360 km/h 225 mph Mach 0.3 You should really stop sticking your head out and close the window 300 m/s 1`080 km/h 670 mph Mach 0.9 Civil jet top speed, close to supersonic 600 m/s 2`160 km/h 1`350 mph Mach 1.7 Speed for fighterjet in cruise mode 1`500 m/s 5`400 km/h 3`360 mph Mach 4.4 Multiple supersonic speed, aluminium alloys melt due to friction heating in atmosphere 3`000 m/s 10`800 km/h 6`720 mph Mach 8.8 "Ram Jets", "Hypersonic regime", steel alloys melt, titanium alloys may still stay solid 6`000 m/s 21`600 km/h 13`440 mph Mach 17.6 "Scram Jets", this speed in atmosphere is not sustainable, 2/3 to low earth orbital velocity 15`000 m/s 54`000 km/h 33`600 mph Mach 44 This speed in atmosphere evaporates basically any material in seconds 30`000 m/s 108`000 km/h 67`000 mph Mach 88 This is 0.0001 c, or a ten-thousands the speed of light 100`000 m/s 360`000 km/h 224`000 mph Mach 294 0.0033 c. Three-thousands the speed of light in vacuum. Not fast enough to get to proxima Any thoughts? I think we need speed conversion in the game at some point.
I think it's important to distinguish that there's also multiple speeds and multiple ways to measure speeds. Very few fighter jets actually cruise at mach 1.7 for example, with the F-18 cruising at 1250kmh , and F-16 at 928kmh. The sound barrier is dependent on the medium, this varies by atmospheric pressure (which can be modulated by altitude and temperature) so whilst Mach 1 is always the sound barrier, the speed in kmh and mph can vary a lot (1234kmh at sea level, 1060kmh at altitude, 5309kmh in water).
360kmh would be better exemplified by saying that's near the top speed of a formula 1 car (~370kmh in the Mexico straight is the max in competition I think).
No piloted turbojet aircraft has gone faster than Mach 3.3, that record being held by the SR-71 (X-15 and similar being rocket aircraft) is a bit that could be added to the table as well.
Atmospheric heating mostly comes from the shock bow in front of the body compressing the air, not friction.
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2 hours ago, Ahres said:
I'm reviving this post from Pthigrivi because I really want to know if there's anyone out there that doesn't want science mode to be like this. Hilariously, his post is what most (or all?) players wanted For Science! to be and instead got ignored due to other forum users wanting to keep their arguments going.
This is exactly what a science/exploration mode should be. We all know it. The KSP veteran players at Intercept know it. Yet we still got stuck with this. I really wish we knew why. We know why Nate and the team had wobbly rockets, even though a rare few were happy with that design choice. I'd like an explanation from the team about why we didn't get a much more fleshed out science mode. This was IG's chance to do KSP right.
The dev team took science a little bit in the right direction with heavier parts, atmospheric and submersible parts, duration of operation, data and samples, etc. But if the game is about building and flying rockets, and an incorporated science mode is considered a must, then how did we not get a rocket-building game with a science mode that requires polar orbits for scanning or clipping through the atmosphere to gather some knowledge of a target environment before sending a full-fledged krewed lander? The game is absolutely much more fun to play in 0.2 but man... it feels like the opportunity was there, especially after all the threads that showed what we wanted as a player base, and we still didn't get it. Why?
Are we leaving it to modders? Was onboarding a concern? Is a science mode like this still coming?
I agree with a lot of the rewards proposed, but I still fail to agree with the tech tree (not suitable for the shamefully low variety of parts for a given role), and with the "examine a crater and get fuel tanks in return". Now, that later sentence needs to be clarified a bit further in saying I don't agree with the perception that I need to take my Kerbals near the sun to discover Xenon propulsion (or other proposed "applied science" type stuff).
My problem with science is foundational and multi-axial. Science in itself fails to get the player exited about it. Right now people are coping hard because it's been 10 months of famine where we got grid fins and a couple engines and that's it, but as soon as people start completing the tech tree once, it's gonna be a drag to re-complete it whenever new stuff drops. Why? Because it's a good solution applied in a place where it shouldn't, and made completely brainless too. There's no challenge, no nuance, no variation and no replayability to it, and folks will realize, seemingly later rather than sooner. Lastly, science is uninvolved with the rest of the game because the rest of the game is very lackluster in variety, mechanics, and overall depth, thus why I say "foundational" when I mention my problems with this feature.
- A tech tree requires variety, otherwise it's not a tech tree, but a tech stalk. Right now the "branches" are not "stuff you might want but must sacrifice linear progress for", the part variety is so dry every line outside the straight progress is "parts you will need later anyways". The only two ways to play the tech tree currently are either to beeline forward, or to pick up a couple extra nodes along the way so you don't end with big tanks and little decouplers.
- Science is unengaging and risk free. It'll be forgotten as soon as a new shinier thing shows up because it's straight up boring. It's so boring the team was actually ok with hiding it and making it as frictionless as possible. They didn't try anything new, they didn't even try that many changes, from a formula that we all hated. Again, the honeymoon period is slowly fading away and we'll start seeing more of these threads in other parts of the internet, not that we haven't been seeing them anyways.
- Science lacks detail. I don't mean granularity or busywork, I mean the fruits of what's a huge labor for new players (getting to other planets and such), showing anywhere in the game. Sure, they will add achievements later, but that's pretty much a given if you wanna launch on consoles nowadays. However bringing samples back from Moho or Eeloo , for example, will remain as unrewarding and pointless as it already is.
Science should unlock detailed maps, maybe a little museum feature to display your samples (or pictures, if you transmitted science but didn't bring anything back), images/memorials of your first Kerbals on the Mün and such. That's really the easiest part to fix, as it's adding instead of changing. Another thing that's relatively easy to fix is add more parts. I should be having to choose when I unlock anything, for example engines: do I want this or that fuel? do I want engines that can survive a re-entry or make them disposable? Do I want to go for TWR or high efficiency? and so on. Make the tech tree into a damn tree.
As for the tree, my personal choice would be to not display the tree. You'll have to put up with me as I detail a bit more here: I wouldn't have "science points" but "interest points" generated. This "interest" can be interpreted as both public and private eyes looking at your space program, bringing in sponsors, researchers, engineers and such. That's what those points are supposed to represent in abstraction and so will decouple the process of science from the result, meaning we no longer need to hear about "applied science" theories where you need to land on the sun to discover heat and develop heat resistant parts and other dumb stuff anymore. We discover cool stuff and thus more people join or fund our cause. The points representing that are what gets invested.
Finally, do away with the tech tree, and have those points be assignable to the different buildings in R&D, and have parts be unlocked in a semi-linear but also semi-random way. This'd mean you don't have full agency over what you unlock, but still have enough control over where you want to point your space program, and with the inclusion of minimum investment milestones, you can actually control the progress as good as a tech tree whilst the player can't spoil themselves with the full tree in sight. Imagine you try to invest points into a specific department and get a "we can't go further in our research with our current knowledge", so you actually need to go invest into other areas instead of beelining to your favorite part. Also, for player satisfaction, this system would allow you to invest interest points partially, so you don't feel like you pulled a huge mission to still not have enough for an unlock, something the current system fails hard at.
In conclusion: There's a lot of ways to make a fun and engaging science feature. Sadly, they all require that effort actually be put into making new stuff rather than copypasting KSP1 science and changing a couple CFGs and MESH{} parts into each other to make the revolutionary concept of a part that does many things. Even better, they could actually put some effort into making the underlying systems a bit deeper, creating actually deep variety rather than a lot of puddles.
What we have right now is the minimum viable product and I'll eat my pants if adding a couple more tree nodes when colonies and interstellar arrives fixes anything. Resources will make it more interesting, but through extra limitations rather than actual depth.
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1 hour ago, regex said:
I don't care at all whether Kerbals used methalox first, it's pretty clear to me we're not playing out the earliest days of their experimentation despite what any flavor text says. Maybe they tried a bunch of options before settling on methalox. Maybe the tier 1 science is their industry getting up to speed, not unlocking tech. There are plenty of explanations for that and I don't need to agonize over them. KSP2 clearly isn't about going from sounding rockets to Mercury to Apollo and beyond.
And those conclusions, specially for newer players, and specially if you're changing foundational stuff for the first game, shouldn't be left as an exercise for the reader. As for the second part, even then, a lot of the ordering choices of the tree don't make sense, which is kinda why this thread exists.
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2 hours ago, regex said:
I don't care at all about the first game or parity with it. I'm playing KSP2 now.
Care about whichever of both you like, KSP2 will still need an explanation of how refined methane is easier to research and come by than black powder.
I remember from AMA 1 that Shana said she hired writers based on their ability to produce a credible explanation of why Kerbals went crewed first, guess that didn't go far either: Not only is the crewed first part unexplained, but also the text for the first node reads "This is the first step from firework rockets to real rockets"... Did they have liquid fueled fireworks? Methalox is not hypergolic so they'd need pumped, ignited liquids.
So yeah, as much as you don't care, heck, even if we ignore KSP1 at all, the problem is still there. This is "gameplay" vs common sense, and I'm using quotation marks because gameplay justifications look very flimsy.
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On 12/29/2023 at 2:52 PM, Vl3d said:
Of course probes should come before crew. Same for SRBs.
In a normal universe, in which the devs actually listened to the players and the N modders that came before (excluding @Nertea, for he is the Destroyer of Fun), progression would be something like thisWhilst I agree that probes and SRBs should be first, the progression there seems excessively linear. I'd much prefer a bigger chance at variety, as almost every path should be a valid path forward, instead of the linear + optional system we have now. This highlights how badly part, fuel, and tech variety the game needs.
On 12/29/2023 at 2:52 PM, Vl3d said:PS: Why, oh why do people not understand that the point of Tier 1 for veterans is not to land on Tylo with the first node parts, but to actually go through the historic progression of space flight and have fun around Kerbin? Just like a beginner would.
No reason to try and rule over how people should play the game. If I'm given a set of parts capable of taking me to Tylo, and I want to challenge myself to do it, then there should be nothing but my own skill stopping me. If anything that outlines that experienced players have gone for what's now gonna be 11 months without getting at least a bone thrown at them. That is the problem, not the other way.
1 minute ago, regex said:On the whole manned vs. probe argument, I don't actually care one way or the other but I don't think Kerbals should be held down by humanity's path forward. They're overly-enthusiastic aliens who started their orbital program with methalox engines and their entire concept (and view of the consequences) of "danger" is clearly much, much different than ours.
The problem I see here is this conflicts with the first game, where you start with SRBs. Also how they discovered methane refinement before the very natural charcoal+sulfur+potassium nitrate for black powder rockets is beyond any sort of logical explanation. At some point all the gameplay vs common sense (not even realism) concessions become unintuitive and counterproductive. Now not only does veteran knowledge from KSP1 become useless, but basic real world science gets thrown out the window, and not even for a case as strong as the smaller planets have.
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16 minutes ago, Kerbart said:
And I don't think the tech tree should purely, only, and exclusively be tailored towards first time players. It's very important that the game doesn't provide extreme hurdles for first timers, but that doesn't mean that options should be not available for experienced players, who can have all kinds of reasons to pick them over liquid fuel engines. Even if some players don't see the point in it. "It's not needed because I personally don't want it" is generally a position that's hard to defend.
Wouldn't it be easier for experienced players to unlock whatever they want almost independently of where in the tier it is? we're talking about completing the full tier in your first or second flight.
Just to be clear, I agree with you that the game shouldn't be entirely tailored to first time players, but in this case, with T1 being so cheap and easy to get, I don't see how making it not obligatory (or keeping it obligatory and maybe making it clearer for first time players why srbs are a thing) should affect us. -
3 minutes ago, hatterson said:
For equivalent sizes, solid boosters are either lighter than engine + fuel tank or very close in weight.
Thumper is 7.65T whereas 3x FL-T400 tanks + LV-T30 "Reliant" engine is 8T.
Hammer is 3.56T whereas FL-T400 tank + LV-T30 "Reliant" engine is 3.5T.
Flea is 1.5T whereas the lightest non vacuum engine at that tech is the Reliant at 1.25T for the engine alone even without fuel.
Yes, which is pretty pointless because weight is another limitation not included in the game unlike KSP1 where the pad had weight limits, making solid rockets more and more pointless. I'm sure someone launches solid boosters to space as a last payload kick but still, that's certainly a small minority.
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15 minutes ago, Kerbart said:
SRB's are still my goto if I need raw thrust. It's a lot easier to improve TWR with SRB's than with liquid fuel, especially if I don't need that thrust anymore when some of my LF has been burned up, and we're higher up with enough velocity to worry less about gravity losses. Of course, I could throttle down at that point, but I'd rather just run 100% throttle all the way with staging in between than managing thrust. Call me lazy. Designed that way, my launch vehicles also tend to be simpler.
1 minute ago, hatterson said:One of the tough things in balancing tier 1 is that all of us veteran players, even when we're launching "newbie" rockets, still know the valuable nodes. I know that getting Environmental Science is an obvious choice because it gives more ways to collect points. I know a need a heat shield to do orbital flight (normally). etc.
If a new player instead look at the tree and says "oh man, basic docking would be cool" or "hey micro-construction would be fun to build small satellites" they might drop all of their points on things that don't actually help them progress and end up sort of soft locked. So the early nodes need to be cheap enough that you can easily dig yourself out of that hole. Once you've got tier 1 mostly unlocked then it's pretty easy to dig yourself out either by doing Duna/Eve or by just landing on the mun/minmus in different biomes a few times so in tier 2 and beyond you have much more flexibility to ramp up the node cost and slow down unlocks if you're doing slow progression flights.
Granted one way this might be alleviated would be to have additional secondary missions like launching into a polar orbit and having the existing secondary missions like launching a satellite and having a circular or elliptical order unlocked earlier since even a newbie can very reasonably do those with only a few nodes unlocked if they're able to get to orbit in the first place (and they're also valuable in teaching new players the ropes)
The purpose of solid rocket boosters is raw power. If a new player is struggling to get off the launchpad, its far more natural for them to strap a couple solid rocket boosters to the side than it is to strap LOX stacks to the side.
Whilst I agree their TWR is better than an equivalent-sized liquid combo, their weight is also much higher (another limitation gone), and I don't think first time players are steered to understand any of that at some point, specially since it's both a very early node and an obligatory one.
No resources, no science, no mission and vehicle design challenges, no discoverable to explore, no landscapes and amazing vistas to see, no reason really to go to space or do things in space because it's all barren planets. 
Science is pretty much stupid. Just get rid of it.
in KSP2 Discussion
Posted
SOI's are completely fictional and arbitrary to whatever game rules the Kerbal universe follows, which is more of a reason for them to not be hidden or repeating the mistake in 1 of hiding the orbital predictions behind tracking station levels.