Jimmidii

A decade of KSP, and I’ve been here for most of that! It’s safe to say my understanding of orbital mechanics and real life space missions has been vastly enhanced by KSP. I guess I only have two things to say here. Congratulations! Also, thank you.

The rover I used to drive to the North Pole is untested on low gravity worlds, but would probably work pretty well. It relies on a wide wheelbase and low centre of gravity to remain upright, and has a lot of mass due to carrying a lot of fuel and running on fuel cells. If somehow it does manage to flip, it's a lost cause, but on Kerbin at least, on anything that's not really rough, I can let it run forward at full speed without paying too much attention to it as it's incredibly stable. The slightly offset height on the front and back wheels helps it negotiate slopes and deal with landing after small jumps.

I'll finally be able to fix some of my earliest satellites that I chucked into orbit having forgotten to include an antenna

For me, it's the intuitive grasp on real-world rocket science and orbital mechanics it's given me. The manoeuvre planner is the unsung hero in that regard. Being able to see instantly the effect of any burn and the effect of burning more/less... Early space programs would have LOVED that sort of tool. Watching space missions with an understanding of what they're doing, how, and why, is something I really doubt I would have had without KSP.

"Crisis on Infinite Kerbins" Also known as "My savegame folder"

I fear you're looking for KSP2 to be a different type of game than what KSP2 is aiming to be. I'd imagine something like you're looking for might be possible with mods, but it won't be the base game. In the meantime, I'd suggest trying Factorio, possibly with Bob's and Angel's mods, as they would likely be able to feed your complexity addiction. (Careful though, much like KSP, it's often a good way to end up watching the sunrise before you go to bed)

I've just stumbled across Kurt's 'like a glove' moment again; There were a lot of calls for a monument to be added to the game in that spot at the time, and it would probably have been worthy had it happened. It inspired a more general idea in me though, what if there were areas or plinths around KSC that could be used to display craft? A way of customizing your KSC with memories of your best or worst moments. I'd imagine it could easily use height/width/weight restrictions similar to early career restrictions, and maybe have parts locked in place or the craft converted to a single entity to reduce any performance hit.

All my experience from seeing torch engines in fiction before says 'moving planets'. I'm not sure if that's what'll be added in KSP 2, but the thought that it might be there is interesting... I doubt it as that probably means they'd have to deal with planet collisions as well. The explosion animations look good, definitely looks like they'll add more immersion.

I built a new rover and used the updated wheel mechanics to knock a few hours off my best time driving to the North Pole from KSC.

Think of the Hype Train like an interplanetary space mission. There was a lot of excitement around the launch as it accelerated to incredible speed. Right now it's travelling to the destination AT that incredible speed, but because nothing's changing or being talked about, it goes mostly unnoticed. Once it gets to the destination and we get the chance to start doing science, Hype will explode off the charts again.

I've found the Flea good for getting bigger non-reusable landers off the surface of Duna (EDIT: And Tylo!). That much thrust from that small a part is useful.

I'm not certain, but it looks like the fuel tanks attached to the wing tips might be slightly misaligned. If they're not pointing perfectly forward it might be contributing to your problems. You can use absolute rotation, rather than relative, to make sure they're aligned correctly.

Your main argument against LS now, that you're constantly repeating, is that it's too ambitious for the devs to add it with the time and resources they have left. If you're not convinced of that, what do you have against LS being in the game?

What's convinced you that they haven't already been working on an enjoyable LS implementation from the start? They've obviously gone into development of this with their eyes open, with new multiplayer, interstellar, and colony systems already confirmed. If LS is implemented, it's almost certainly not because they've suddenly decided to tack it on now.

You're making an awful lot of assumptions about what other people would find fun based on what you would find fun. You're also making an awful lot of assumptions about the game design abilities of the devs working on KSP 2 based on how you perceive the game design abilities of members of the forum. You're also making an assumption that this will be forced on you and not part of difficulty settings. I really don't think you need to worry about this as much as you appear to be worrying about it.

There's no chance of KSP 2 for free, there's a very small chance of some sort of small discount I guess, but I doubt even that. I have a feeling early adopters might be recognised somehow, maybe some sort of cosmetic that signifies veteran players. On the one hand, it'd be nice to see the people that helped get the game off the ground in the first place rewarded. On the other, one of my biggest pet peeves in games is permanently missable DLC/timed content.

If they do go down this route, one other option is progression. You start with having to run supply missions, because 'trivialisation' is heavy and expensive and difficult to start with. But you can progress to it. As for tragedy, there's always the option of hibernation being the default state for an unsupplied Kerbal, instead of death. KSP is literally a game about travelling, most of the fun is in getting there.

If they were going to go down this route, my gut feeling is that you'd store the level of upgrade for each part in the craft file. Downloaded/shared craft would only be usable if you have the levels of upgrade needed, similar to how it currently is with locked/unlocked parts. In the editor, you'd be able to upgrade (maybe even downgrade!) individual parts, as well as have an option to upgrade all parts on the craft. (More or less treating upgrades as variants) This would also avoid craft that have already been launched suddenly being magically better.

It's not that I wouldn't want to play KSP, I really, really, would. Waiting until exclusivity ran out would be worth it though, to avoid my personal details being held by a company with a data protection record as bad as EGS has.

The only thing that would actually stop me playing it would be if the publisher undermined the dev statements til now and decided to go EGS exclusive. There might be certain features that I like less than others, but we already know it has building spaceships, flying spaceships, and orbital mechanics. That's already enough for me to play it

I'm intending to build the biggest colony my computer can handle without crashing (too much) on Laythe.

I like flying resources about, it gives me a reason to build, fly, go places and do stuff. The waiting for resources to actually be mined, however... well that's usually a coffee break as I sit and do nothing for a bit. I can see some compelling gameplay if there's a logical progression of resources being needed and available, with manual collection being replaced by the challenge of building up infrastructure. Further manual collection could shift to more challenging resources and locations, with then the challenge of building up infrastructure there too... and so on. On that note, I'm surprised no one's asked the devs yet whether the seas on Eve really are made out of rocket fuel.

Building a new version of Minecraft is exactly what they did do. In part at least to get around limitations of the original Java version. They put a huge amount of resources into developing Bedrock edition and bringing it up to feature parity with Java edition. They're now developed in parallel, but there are definite advantages the with the Bedrock edition for stability and cross platform play, as well as the upcoming upgrade to allow RTX graphics. With KSP 2 being developed by a different studio, and Squad remaining on KSP 1, we're getting the best of both worlds. KSP isn't going to suddenly stop existing because KSP 2 exists, if it turns out that you still prefer it to KSP 2.

It's possible there would be a small discount (the Football Manager games usually have a 10% discount for owners of the previous year's version) but it's pretty rare for there to be offers like that. One option, you have a bit of time to save up yourself between now and the release date. If you ask your parents now, they would probably give you opportunities to earn the money. Edit - And ninja'd while the post sat there by @Spaceception lol. It is a good idea though.

Bearing in mind there's confirmed interstellar travel, we don't necessarily need to switch between one or the other. (Especially once modders get their hands on it )