What do you HATE about KSP?

[Robotengineer]

I hate nothing about KSP. Are there things that I strongly dislike and would like changed? Yes. But I certainly do not feel the raw anger and outrage of hatred towards any part of KSP.

[StrandedonEarth]

I hate that I don't get as much time to play it as I like. And that I waste my valuable gaming time by surfing these informative forums.

I also hate that I have to break every so often so my laptop can cool off and stop throttling itself into a time dilation factor of 1 second game time = 3-4 seconds real time

Edited June 28, 2015 by StrandedonEarth

[LABHOUSE]

Lag!! It is just a 75 x 8 metre fairing on a 400 part craft, but it lags worse than a fairing free 1,200 part craft.

Edited June 28, 2015 by LABHOUSE

[Sandworm]

The occasional nods to physics that seem to be written without any regard to actual physics.

Orbital mechanics might be accurate, but aero and heat are more magic that simulations. For instance I know of no modern concept of heat that would describe the following pic. Three identical boosters, filled with liquid, very very cold liquid, manage to heat at radically different rates. Then the metal decouplers melt, launching the still cool and intact boosters off like missiles. The only heat model that might predict such behaviour (caloric) still cannot explain why the decouplers get hotter than the things they touch. Even the 18th century knew that didn't make sense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caloric_theory

So ... what do I hate? I hate the days/weeks we all have to spend picking through cfg files to disable whatever ridiculously unpredictable "feature" has been added by the most recent post-release patch. Tonight's project is creating a MM file to effectively disable all heat production on liquid-fuels engines. I'd rather just play the game.

Edited June 28, 2015 by Sandworm

[Plume & Akakak]

Nothing.

[Fengist]

I hate the fact that there's STILL really nothing to do in this game. I can live with the bugs till they're fixed. I can tolerate the lack of memory crashes. I can enjoy the game on 32 bit. But the thing that's going to make me drop this game for good, sooner or later, is the fact that there's nothing to do. Once you build that base on the Mun, what purpose does it serve? Once you land a rover on Duna, where are you going to go with it? Once you get an aircraft to Laythe, why would you really need to fly it?

In one challenge I created I stressed over and over again the challenge was not about reaching the destination as fast as you could, it was about the journey getting there. The reason? Because once you reach any destination in KSP, there's no journey left and nothing to do when you arrive. Ok, so they added a resource. So now you can mine for fuel to refill the ships you create and go to further destinations and doooo... what?

I've said it before and I'll say it again, things you build and create in KSP have all the relevance and permanence of a sand mandala. You build them, admire them, abandon them, delete them, rinse, repeat.

And in my situation, here's the real befuddling irony. Out of sheer lack of things to do in-game, about a month ago, I learned how to create mods. My KSP universe now consists of build, launch... crap, delete, mod, F12, rebuild, build, launch... crap, delete... etc. Squad forbid I should ever think that my mod pack is complete, I would have nothing to do.

[Vanamonde]

New rule for this thread; you can state your own peeves, but you can't tell other people why theirs are wrong.

Edited June 28, 2015 by Vanamonde

[TokiTech]

Only thing annoys me is the new KSP build can ruin my hours spent on designs and tested crafts. Is the reason i stopped doing variations and experimental crafts because i know one day it will all go into the drain. I also thought the game will auto update previous versions craft's parts with latest values but it doesn't. Among tweaks after tweaks just changed the physics too much too fast, is the basic foundation needs to be set right before building everything else.

[Murdabenne]

Hate? too strong a word. I dislike the memory/graphics limits - I have a lot of RAM and graphics on this gaming PC so that I can do things like run a ton of addons, and high amounts of textures and details -- I find it irritating to crash with memory allocation errors and memory leaks when I do a lot of scene changes during a design and test session. Its 2015, come on over to the 64 bit world; I have 4 hyperthreaded cores, 32GB of ram, SLI graphics with a couple gigs each of Graphcis RAM, and a 64bit OS. I know you need the lower end to support a wider variety of machines, but please take advantage of the assets I and many other gamers provide.

Pet peeve: Squad's extremely poor software release engineering skills. X.Y.Z - Z is supposed to be a BUGFIX not a major systems change to the function of the program, especially one that isn't backwards compatible (broken saves!).

Here's a clue: if you are doing things that change fundamental program functionality, especially if you are adding entire systems (aerodynamics for example) they you are NOT feature complete, so you are still in ALPHA. If you have to replace entire features because you have to do them a different way (heat for example), and they are neither fully regression & stress tested, nor are they backward compatible, then you are in BETA. And in either of those events, you should not be doing such large changes as a bugfix level release - those are typically major release increment items, especially if they break backward compatibility. Its misleading to the end-users, as well as bad software engineering practice to do so.

Despite the fact that they versionined it to 1.0, KSP is still at best a Beta piece of software. The thing is, I enjoy it enough to put up with the crashes, inconsistencies and so on. Thats why I gripe - because I care ("The opposite of love isn't hate, its indifference" -- Elie Wiesel).

Bottom line: Its simply fun to fling a kerbal to a distant place on a craft of your own design.

[SciMan]

"Hate" is certainly too strong of a word for my feelings, but here's a list of things I very strongly dislike, ordered by priority (strongest dislike first):

1. Unity 4.x bug that doesn't clear textures out of system ram after transferring them to video card ram.

This effectively doubles ram usage for NO BENEFIT AT ALL.

Of course, this one's not exactly something I dislike about KSP or Squad, as it's a Unity bug and only the makers of Unity can fix those.

Squad can only work around this kind of bug , tho that hasn't stopped them in the past (ex: Krakensbane).

2. No On-Demand loading of textures. Instead, the game loads all textures on start.

Again, large RAM usage for no benefits.

A mod was available at one point that fixed this (Load On Demand), so it's almost certainly "easier" to implement than Win/Mac x64 support, because AFAIK x64 support requires updating to Unity 5 (not easy almost by definition).

3. Memory leaks, AKA When the game is done using a section of memory, but doesn't deallocate it properly.

Granted, this can be hard to catch when writing the code, but fixing them should be TOP PRIORITY, because they are GUARANTEED to cause a crash, eventually.

Glad to see that 1.0.3/1.0.4 fixed the largest/most commonly reported one.

4. Many examples of stock textures that are far too high resolution for what they do.

I mean, 2048x2048 texture on a BUTTON?!? The resolution used is massively overkill, and firmly into "Whiskey Tango Hotel" territory.

No small wonder the game can have RAM problems even when stock.

That's all of the software bugs that annoy me, now for the game-play and game-balance issues.

5. Lack of challenge/too much "grinding".

Once a player figures out piloting, there isn't much challenge in the game.

The only thing left is grinding science and/or funds to unlock and/or pay for parts to do what you want with the game.

In other words, it feels arbitrary and robotic.

Instead of feeling like you're operating a space program, it feels like you're trying to convince the game to let you have fun playing.

Perhaps I'm just playing it "wrong", but how is there a "wrong" way to play a single-player sandbox game in the first place?

6. Seeming willful resistance to providing the player with information that is vital to NORMAL game-play.

Delta-V and other useful information (ship mass, etc) should be accessible.

Anything else leaves the player flailing in the dark for no good reason.

This is ESPECIALLY true where relevant to game-play (ship delta-V next to maneuver node delta-V).

That's all the game-play/balance issues.

Now for a really small one, but it's about SQUAD itself.

7. Adding new features before working out bugs in previous things.

I suppose it's okay to do this if the buggy system is going to be entirely replaced anyways (not fixing infiniglide in the 0.90 souposphere).

In most any other situation, it's not hard to see how this practice can result in a massive backlog of bugs, to the point that two bugs can interact to create a third bug (that might seem to be entirely unrelated).

I have seen a rise in "patch" releases recently, which I like because it means bugs are getting fixed before features are added. Hopefully this continues even when there aren't any "game-breaking" bugs in a major release.

If all future development on this game was dedicated to improving game performance (increasing FPS, lowering RAM usage) and fixing bugs, I would be quite happy with that. After all, mods are taking care of the "new content" side of this game quite handily, and have been doing so for quite some time now.

[Jon144]

I hate the low FPS

[RandomRyan]

what i like: explosions

what i hate: explosions making lag

[stevehead]

I agree with other people that "hate" is too strong of a word. I've invested too many hours playing the game or programming tools/mods for it while having fun to truly hate anything about the game. Closest thing is when I rage over bugs that should have never slipped by Squad's QA and testing, but I could write one large wall of text regarding that subject. As for actual game play, I do have several major complaints:

1) The payload fractions are way too large in stock since the new aerodynamics. I thought rocket sizes with the old stock aero were perfect for that balance between realism and game play, but now a puny little rocket is able to reach orbit. This is something that should have been anticipated knowing how FAR/NEAR affected the payload fraction pre-1.0. Squad really should have scaled the solar system by a factor of 2 for the new 1.0 aerodynamics; it ups the dV to low Kerbin orbit back to pre-1.0 amounts (about 4.5 to 4.8 km/s). It does increase dV for non-atmo maneuvers by about 50%, but after playing 2x scale for some time, it's hardly any more difficult (1210 m/s vs 860 m/s for a Mun transfer); it also makes the 2.5 and 3.75 meter parts less OP.

2) The career mode still feels like I am a freelancer as opposed to running an actual space program. I was hoping to have the ability to plan missions instead of relying completely on randomly generated contracts. For example, I could propose a mission to Jool where I place an orbiter in Jool orbit while send a lander to Laythe; I would be awarded funding based on my reputation. I want to be able to control the direction of my program, not the contracts. The contracts should be there only for making some extra funds on the side. The majority of career mode should be me deciding what to do based on my funds and reputation.

3) Science is still too boring and repetitious. There should be more to experiments than just right-clicking them: the impactor experiment from KSP Interstellar and experiments from Station Science (another thing lacking in stock is having an actual purpose for bases/stations other than fueling and ISRU) are both examples of how science should have been in stock. At least the current experiments should be differentiated in some way; there is no difference between a temperature scan and a mystery goo reading other than the message and amount of science. When science first came out in 0.22, I really thought it was a place holder and I am disappointed that it hadn't been improved on since.

4) Stock fairings and their confetti explosions... "No sir, I don't like it". I'll just stick with procedural fairings.

[Senormeens]

Oooh... I didn't think about that, thanks for the tip! This has happened to me about 3 times and every time I restarted the mission thinking I had no other options. I should be able to recover my pilot from the flight control center, right?

No you cannot recover anything that is in orbit or landed on another body, you can only recover things landed at kerbin, but hey, at least you can fulfill the contract

[SmallFatFetus]

Major

- Abysmal sound design. its just awful and weak. Fire screaming out of an engine nozzle, propelling a million pound vehicle into orbit should not sound like a hair dryer, as stated earlier in this thread. It should have deep bass that puts our headphones, studio monitors, subwoofers etc. to good use.

s. Oh, and sonic booms!

- The engine effects are almost worse than the sounds. Once again, my rocket should not look like it is propelled by a candle. If that. Also, it appears that many of the SRB effects have remained the same since the very first public release of KSP.

- The music. The main theme is fine, but there are three(?) space themes. In a game where plenty of people rack up more than 1000 hours, and the game is set guess where, that's going to repetitive quick. I probably turned my music volume off before I played 30 hours. There should be a unique set of songs for each celestial body, landed and in orbit. Perhaps a few to play during reentry. Maybe something to listen to while flying planes. The list goes on. Once again, these songs should NOT be miscellaneous Kevin MacLeod tracks. Squad has money, they can hire a composer if they don't want to do it themselves. As an aspiring audio engineer, this is very important to me.

-Lack of any significant endgame, or push to explore.

- Nothing to do on planets. They're barren and boring. The only thing left to do is take off.

- There is no art style. It's just a hogged up mess of different parts by different artists. There needs to be a sense of uniformity. You can't have 55 gallon drum fuel tanks mixed with beautiful, sleek Porkjet parts.

- Memory leaks. Long scene changes. Bugs. Crashes.

- OS X SUPPORT IS AWFUL.

Minor

- Insta-scan

- No footprints or rover tracks

- Lack of good, physical, ground scatter. The game is complete now, this shouldn't be a WIP option in the settings.

- "Engine cannot activate while stowed"

And the list goes on...

[tygoo7]

Hate is a strong word, I'd rather use dislike for these ones.

-Low FPS sometimes

-Black screen kraken, I get this a lot.

-Sounds, please add way more sounds and better ones, they add SO much to games!

-Flame effects, stock ones are kind of ugly, that's why I use hotrockets. I really do love the new turbojet effect though.

-No sounds for kerbals, minor one but I would like to hear their little chatter and screams.

-Planets are too boring, instead of adding new planets like GP2 why don't you make the current planets more interesting?

-Ground scatter has no collider, shouldn't this be an easy fix or would it cause to much lag?

-No wind or weather, there should be clouds and weather where you have a reason to scrub a launch due to stormy weather or something. I think that would be awesome!

Other than that, there's not much I dislike about KSP since it is after all, my favorite game.

[Dispatcher]

I dislike not ultimately having a VAB/ space dock in orbit around one of the moons. Imagine assembling and launching interplanetary craft in orbit. The implication is that materials and components are mined, processed and manufactured at the moon(s) and lofted into orbit from that low gee environment; or reclaimed from redirected asteroids.

I dislike not having stock multiplayer (which Squad first was adamant about never going to be a feature and later touted as a future element of the game), but am glad its coming.

For new players (such as friends, etc.), I dislike the limited nature of tutorials and lack of (any kind of) manuals. The forums and You Tube videos out there are where I send friends; not to anything helpful in game.

The game at times requires little thought and effort for reward and at other times demands eking out small gains at the cost of too much time and effort for the rewards.

[Overland]

we only have 1 stock KSC. other than KSC2 that we cant use.. I mean seriously..

we can build rockets, planes.. trains..

but theres no nice runway or complex anywhere nearby thats stock that you can actually drive too that functions..

with kerbaltown mod being abandoned...

can we have the ability to atleast place alternate additional bases elsewhere or have some stock? even if its just 2-4 for each planet

[Old Foxboy]

1. I hate how the graphical stuttering and low FPS problem with high part count craft destroy's any attempt on piloting a complicated craft into orbit (huuuge rockets or even basic MK3 spaceplanes for example).

2. The wobbling on SAS, overcorrecting gimbals. Just annoying.

3. Docking is way too easy. However, with the built in docking controls, better leave it that way.

4. This heating... still a lot of work to do (parts inside cargobays...)

5. The career mode: No real feeling of a sense behind the missions. This should be more sophisticated and provide a better feeling of a continuously growing space program. It's better than in 0.9, but it's still not good at all.

There's lot mot. Some has been said already. However, KSP is a great game.

[Guest]

Please show a screenshot of the place in the VAB where you can see contracts you have not yet accepted, so you can compare those words to the words on the pictures in the VAB.

It appears I misread the post I was replying to. Col_Jessep, I apologize.

I meant that you can refer to the part name AFTER you accept the testing contract.

It appears Col_Jessep wants to see a picture of the part BEFORE accepting the contract.

Until to load a saved one and it puts a guy in it. This is probably the only single major headache I have with the game.

Upon further review, a probe controlled pod does auto assign a crew.

However:

A pod attached to another pod does not.

I hadn't really tested the probe-controlled pod, because this is my standard issue rescue pod.

A variant of it can be built starting in tier 2 and progressively upgraded.

I guess I was really off the ball the other day, must be the sleep deprivation.

Sorry everyone.

With that being said, I'm signing out of this thread.

Edited June 28, 2015 by Guest

[Sandworm]

Major

- Abysmal sound design. its just awful and weak. Fire screaming out of an engine nozzle, propelling a million pound vehicle into orbit should not sound like a hair dryer, as stated earlier in this thread. It should have deep bass that puts our headphones, studio monitors, subwoofers etc. to good use.

s. Oh, and sonic booms!

I'm not saying KSP has good sound design, but that "deep bass" is a bit of a fiction. Much of it comes from doppler effect. The shuttle is, within a few seconds, moving away from the microphone fast enough to shift everything lower. In KSP the camera follows the craft and so shouldn't experiance the same low notes.

[Javster]

The crashes...

And when the game tries to guess which that engine should be in... And you've changed the order around near the top so you have to move everything manually.

[rkman]

I hate nothing cause whatever is in this game is there for a reason

Especially all the bugs.

[Azimech]

Why such a strong negative word.

Some people might get motivated to amplify their own negative emotions, if they see the forum supports it.

Why not "What do you love the least".

[Geschosskopf]

]Voltaire had a lot of fun ridiculing this mentality.

EDIT: Fixed link.

^^ Probably not what you meant to link, Geschosskopf.

Thanks. Fixed.

Anyway, I was referring to Voltaire's hilarious satire Candide. The earlier posts I was citing were espousing pretty much the same view as Professor Pangloss.