Devnote Tuesday: Experimental Improvements

[FlowerChild]

Hey, Don't complain at us that SQUAD is considering this "1.0 Release", We've pretty much all told them "Don't go to Beta just yet" and now "Don't release on the first version after you start beta"

No, no, you misunderstood "the wall" I was referring to wasn't the community, but rather Squad itself. There was a huge thread about this when they announced next version was going to be release, and I know a lot of the community, myself included, thought it was a really bad idea.

At a certain point though, it became obvious to me that they were going to go this route regardless of what anyone said and that there really was no point in going on about it. I don't like it, I think that as time goes by and feature complete is being pushed aside week after week that's it's getting even riskier, and overall I think this whole thing is a mistake, but ultimately I wish them the best of luck with it.

[Streetwind]

Looking at the ROUND8's stats, it was redundant with the Oscar-Tank, except in terms of design. We needed an inline Xenon tank much more than we needed another low-capacity LFO tank for probes.

You are, of course, free to mod it back to its original specs if you want to, or create another cfg to have both variants.

Cheers

HarvesteR, I totally agree that a larger xenon tank is a very useful addition... but if you have to decide between the Round-8 and the Oscar-B about which part to convert, then convert the Oscar-B instead! It's a somewhat visually sub-par part with an awful fuel/mass fraction that nobody ever uses. The Round-8 on the other hand is visually distinctive and very popular among builders, who can make use of the unique shape to do some designs that wouldn't be possible with any other tank. I'm willing to bet that if you had picked the Oscar-B to convert, you'd have a lot less complaints.

That said, I think there's a better solution still... if you want new, larger xenon tanks, just go talk to Nertea!

Edited April 15, 2015 by Streetwind

[ShadowZone]

Looking at the ROUND8's stats, it was redundant with the Oscar-Tank, except in terms of design. We needed an inline Xenon tank much more than we needed another low-capacity LFO tank for probes.

You are, of course, free to mod it back to its original specs if you want to, or create another cfg to have both variants.

Cheers

Let me rebut your argument about "it was redundant" with this:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/115621-Do-you-think-Squad-should-leave-the-Round8-Toroidal-Tank-alone?p=1838424&viewfull=1#post1838424

It carries 25.5% less fuel, as the Oscar tank has 57% the capacity of the ROUND8!!!!

Sorry to say this, but I am afraid you don't know your own parts that well...

Please reconsider your decision. It is atrocious!

[Capt Snuggler]

Am I reading that right? Clouds?

Please tell me this is for the game, not the video.

This is (unfortunately) for the video

*sigh*

COOL

------------------------------------edit-------------------------------------

also just noticed the thing about the ROUND-8 Toroidal Fuel Tank. I don't really care about breaking old craft designs but it does come across as a bit lazy...

you should at least change the gold foil texture to silver to match the other xenon tanks.

why not keep the Round-8 as is and make a modded silver version for xenon? while your at it, add a full set of light weight, fragile, high drag, gold foil tanks.

Edited April 15, 2015 by Capt Snuggler

[Akinesis]

Oh, I got really excited when I read the bit about adding clouds. I actually sighed in relief and admired those fluffy white watery-things through of my office window for a minute. Then I read on, and my heart was ripped out and stamped on. I am very much hoping Squad will add clouds before the release, but at this stage it seems unlikely. I'm sure they will come in time, and EVE is a fantastic tool so it's not the end of the world by any means.

And there are so many other features to seriously look forward to!

Good work, guys!

[Darnok]

MK3 wings, heat shields (?), parts to gather resources, scanners, fairings, bigger landing gear... guys hurry up please

[AlphaAsh]

Who, me?

And yeah, I let go of the whole "next version is going to be release with absolutely no beta period!" thing awhile ago, but man, this whole "let's keep adding features during the final round of testing!" thing is leaving me with red palm imprints all over my face

This is why I've been relieved that work has given me zero time to do any modding for a few months. Everything you and 5thHorseman have said, yep exactly, +1, etc. Either Harv's not bothered with any impact analysis for this last set of features, or doesn't care. Apparently Squad are redefining Agile development.

Looking forward to 0.27/0.95.

[Rune]

Nice stuff.... wait what?

Xenon is useless, that tank was awesome how it was! That is a terrible terrible change.

I'd suggest changing the Oscar B then. It's about as useless as Xenon.

The only reason xenon was useless was that to build a decent ship you had to use hundreds of small tanks, jumping part count through the roof. If I have a complaint with repurposing that tank to carry xenon, it's that it's probably not big enough to give a 10mT ship a decent mass ratio. What really stops me building manned ion-powered ships is structural integrity at x4 timewarp because the ship is, mostly, just a gazillion little tanks.

Old ships in saves, BTW, should keep their .cfg's just like they were, I still have some monoprop tanks with 40 units on the spherical tanks flying around.

Rune. I have moved class C 'roids on xenon...

[Superfluous J]

The only reason xenon was useless was that to build a decent ship you had to use hundreds of small tanks

I thought it was the terrible TWR that was - from a gameplay perspective - still way too low even though it beat real ion engines by factors of ... hundreds was it? I don't actually know because just thinking about using them gives me shivers.

[BoomShroom]

I'm quite excited for the .625m SRBs, because slapping trashcans on the side of 1.25m rockets always looked weird to me. The max acceleration thing will be nice, especially when it comes to my ill-equipped landers. I would like some bigger jet engines for the Mk.3 bits, as well as some part for protecting engines in a shuttle-style reentry, and maybe some single KS-25 engine for it to be protecting.

[sarbian]

So this is the thread where a Minecraft modder complains that there is new features near and post release ?

Let me take a bath in that sea of irony.

So when do we get to see Rogelio new work ??? This is what I am waiting for !

[Yukon0009]

RT5......Was that a reference to KSK's First Flight story?

[Rune]

I thought it was the terrible TWR that was - from a gameplay perspective - still way too low even though it beat real ion engines by factors of ... hundreds was it? I don't actually know because just thinking about using them gives me shivers.

With the new autopilot, and x4 physical timewarp, a burn on ions is entirely a function of ship stability, you don't even have to shepherd it. With reasonable builds, acceleration is usually over 1m/s^2, and that means that you can do, for example, Jool ejections, in two ~20min passes pointing prograde, capturing the essence of long, low thrust burns (a pretty cool part of advanced spaceflight) in what amounts to five-ten minutes of gameplay, half an hour if you count the timewarps between apoapsises. Now, you can do the same thing in less than a minute with a high thrust cemical burn at TWR>1... but that also gets old, quick.

Rune. So, basically the same reason you wold like to starve you probe of dV in order to need gravity assists: for the cool factor of "I did it", and the navigational challenge.

[FlowerChild]

So this is the thread where a Minecraft modder complains that there is new features near and post release ?

Let me take a bath in that sea of irony.

Yes...because that ender dragon crammed in at the end there turned out just dandy for that game

I never said it was a good idea for MC either. No irony involved.

[Hcube]

Actually, its very easy to get a probe to any planet with ion-burns shorter than 3minutes... As long as your probe only consists of a probe core, panels, massless batteries massless experiments (barometer thermometer gravioli detector a seismometer) and finally Xenon and Ion drive. Tis thing will weigh less than 1t, with reasonable TWR, and can go anywhere...

If you get hour-long burns, you are doing it wrong !

This is why i pretty much don't care about the ROUND8 debate... I like ion powered probes, but without the addition of a new, more powerful ion drive, I won't use it, too big and heavy. On the other hand i pretty much never use the LF+O ROUND8...

[Perry Apsis]

I haven't seen this mentioned, but since development is going so smoothly, I'm hoping you folks can find time to address a pet issue of mine. When you hit "t", it comes on in whatever mode it was last in. Why is this a problem? Suppose I had it set to hold prograde, then turned it off. Later, I'm doing a powered landing, and I'd like to turn it on again to use stability assist or hold retrograde. But if I turn it on, my craft will immediately try to flip itself around. Can we please always have it come up in stability assist mode, which I think should always be safe?

Thanks!

[Masetto]

o7 Squad.

Thanks for all the good work, and thanks for keeping us informed of the progress.

So. Hyped. For. This.

[John FX]

Sure it is, but if you believe it isn't, you probably should get editing over at wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle

But hey, if I've woken up in a bizarro world where up is down, red is blue, and poodle nuggets are on the menu at McD's (wouldn't be the first time), let me rephrase:

"So when do you guys expect the game will be feature complete?"

Or did I just inadvertently order a boat-load of octopus?

"Some software is kept in perpetual beta where new features and functionality are continually added to the software without establishing a firm "final" release."

I think you just may be on a different line in the Wiki.

[Red Iron Crown]

The term "Beta" effectively became meaningless when Google started putting their services in perpetual Beta status, IMO. Gmail was in beta for the better part of a decade, all the while offering the service publicly and adding/revising features.

Arbitrary term is arbitrary. The only one that really matters is "early access", with the different categorization on Steam.

[sarbian]

Arbitrary term is arbitrary. The only one that really matters is "early access", with the different categorization on Steam.

Indeed, getting rid of the early access stigma is the most likely reason for the move out of beta.

[Corw]

I haven't seen this mentioned, but since development is going so smoothly, I'm hoping you folks can find time to address a pet issue of mine. When you hit "t", it comes on in whatever mode it was last in. Why is this a problem? Suppose I had it set to hold prograde, then turned it off. Later, I'm doing a powered landing, and I'd like to turn it on again to use stability assist or hold retrograde. But if I turn it on, my craft will immediately try to flip itself around. Can we please always have it come up in stability assist mode, which I think should always be safe?

Thanks!

Seconding.

[vardicd]

The Round8 Toroidal Fuel Tank was repurposed as a 1.25m inline Xenon Tank

NO NO NO NO NO NO AND NO This travesty must not stand.

Edit: Having that as a xenon tank would be awesome, but leave the old L/O tank in there too, maybe just make them different colors?

[smjjames]

Has anybody noticed this bit: "from proper detection and placement of splashdown effects at very high speeds (now that that’s possible)"? Maybe they've reworked the water?

[vardicd]

Experimentals is supposed to be when they're "all done" and doing the very final round of testing. Adding features AFTER Expermentals is like adding features AFTER Beta.

Oh wait. There's a delivery truck outside that smells oddly of octopus...

Or *cough DLC cough*

[Capt Snuggler]

Has anybody noticed this bit: "from proper detection and placement of splashdown effects at very high speeds (now that that’s possible)"? Maybe they've reworked the water?

(@squad) yeah, what does that mean?