Jump to content

Squadcast Summary for 2015/12/10 - KasperVld is worth 3 people


Superfluous J

Recommended Posts

Every 15 minutes I drop a time stamp, so if you can find a spot in the video more easily. Descriptions of gameplay are in green. "Something in quotes means it was directly said." If you want to watch the episode yourself, you can find it at http://www.twitch.tv/ksptv/profile/past_broadcasts

Squadcast was just under an hour, and is posted in 3 parts. I ignored the first 2 as they were only a few minutes long each.
0:00
Lots in the studio. Mike. Nathan. And Chris. No Kasper this week.
He has a contract to test a parachute still. He accepts another to test a radial decoupler.
He builds a ship with the chute and the decoupler. And a heat shield even though he's not even going into space.
Turkey offers for people to expand on Devnotes
Nathan discussed moduleengines and the sound fix. Why fix moduleengines when everything is going to moduleenginesfx? Becuase there are a lot of legacy parts that still use it, and lots of mods also use it. "We shouldn't go out of our way to break old stuff." It was a quick fix, too.
He launches with Phoicca Kerman at the helm, with a lot of help from Nathan to hopefully make the ship fly well.
The moment the rocket gets to half fuel (and the top tank empties) it flips.
He lands okay but loses a lot of his craft due to staging shenanigans, and completes none of his contracts.
Throughout this, they discuss the Casper movie, and the differences between Bill Pullman and Bill Paxton.

15:00
Nathan helps him more, getting all the cruft of of the rocket. But it's still going to be bottom heavy with that huge engine.
Then he adds fins. 2 of them. So they won't help. You need 3 or more for stability to actually work.
He launches.
He flips.
He's high enough that he could fix it, and kind of does but not really. Mostly he just left the engine running even when facing down.
He runs out of fuel way too soon and doesn't get the height or speed for the decouplers.
He's also coming down like a lawn dart.
He pulls the chutes the SECOND they turn yellow, and somehow they don't shear off. Phoicca lives for another day.
More help from Nathan, he puts on 4 fins and shifts them down. After a surprising amount of difficulty with the widges and snap mode.
"Nathan, save me from myself."
I don't think he can.
Another launch!
They start talking about Star Wars, so Dr_Turkey misses...
He accelerates the whole way up, meaning he's going over the maximum 920m/s 10km below the minimum altitude of 34km.
When he reaches 34km, he's going over 1.3km/s
He runs out of fuel at 40km, going 1.5km/s straight up.
In a lawn dart.
"Maybe on the re-entry it'll be okay"
followed by:
"This is not going to end well I don't think."
On Nathan's advice, he starts tumbling. He hits the atmosphere.
He MAY have survived if he put the parachutes into 3 stages. as it was, the 3 chutes slowed him down to about 250-300m/s before shearing off. If they'd gone one by one, maybe one of them would have stayed on.
But that did not happen. Dr_Turkey kills Phoicca and blames Nathan for it. Like any good Space Program director.

30:00
Nathan suggests a 45 degree angle of launch, and actually paying attention during launch this time.
His rocket falls over on the pad, so he launches.
I don't know why he's having these issues with rockets falling over. I have to work to get them to do that.
Valentina dies.
"It started to tumble."
No it didn't. It fell over. On the launch pad. When physics loaded. I think that's a bug. That should never happen. Especially on Squadcast where the game is being showcased.
He decides to add a decoupler and heat shield. At least the Kerbal will live. Probably.
It falls over again.
Seriously it's not "tumble"ing. It's falling. Tumbling implies it's moving at the time.
That rocket is perfectly symmetrical. It should never, ever fall over just sitting on the pad. And that happens to every rocket it seems. That is not the way the game works.
"People are laughing at me at the office."
"Not just at the office."
While true, I stand by that there is something fundamentally wrong with Dr_Turkey's install.
He decides to start over, and build a new rocket "My way. My way or the highway."
Dr_Turkey's way is one of the smallest ships possible, launched into the air with 4 RT-10 SRBs at max thrust.
And somewhat ironically they're not enough.
He manages somewhat impressively to kill Bill by pulling the chute too early.
He's out of cash, and almost out of Kerbals. And surprisingly his rep is decent. But he ends the career in shame.

45:00
Nathan convinces him to try to cancel his contracts and accept the "orbit" contract to get some cash. He'll try that next time.
Mike(?) on devnotes:
He's redoing the settings screen. Better controller support. Input classes behind the scenes, to tie the input together. New screen, platform specific and controller specific. Steam controller would have its own screen for example.
And moddable.
Chris: He can't spoil it. He's making things pretty.
Dr_Turkey: He's looking through feedback from the PS4 version that was shown this week.
Some people complained about the controls, but they're changing those.
Things are "less complicated" using the PS4 controller. Dr_Turkey prefers it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Rockets fall over if you place them off center on the launchpad, because the launchpad is not quite flat. You place them off center on the pad by moving them off center in the VAB.

Also, rockets sit better on the central engine in the cluster. If you attach a couple engines to the side of the central one, and move them so they are lower than the central one, then your rocket will also fall over. You might think it should provide stability, having the rocket rest on the outer engines, but it doesn't.

 

Edited by bewing
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, bewing said:

Rockets fall over if you place them off center on the launchpad, because the launchpad is not quite flat. You place them off center on the pad by moving them off center in the VAB.

Also, rockets sit better on the central engine in the cluster. If you attach a couple engines to the side of the central one, and move them so they are lower than the central one, then your rocket will also fall over. You might think it should provide stability, having the rocket rest on the outer engines, but it doesn't.

 

Interesting stuff. I always assumed that the game centered your rocket on the pad. I guess I just don't drag the ship around in the VAB enough.

The game SHOULD center it on the pad. It already adjusts the vertical placement so the ship doesn't spawn in the air or in the ground.

38 minutes ago, MaxL_1023 said:

I find that clusters of 3+ are stable, but one or two engines has a habit of falling more often than not. It does seem like rockets are a little less stable on the pad than you would expect with symmetry enabled. 

Maybe this is new in 1.0.5? I haven't played much of the new version (due to Fallout et al). But I literally cannot remember one time in my playing where a symmetrical rocket fell over within a second or so of spawning it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, actually, they do always spawn a half meter in the air above the pad and then drop onto the pad, unless you are using the "Launch Stability Enhancer". Which is the thing that provides the motive force to make them fall over.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Quote

Nathan suggests a 45 degree angle of launch, and actually paying attention during launch this time.
His rocket falls over on the pad, so he launches.

The first time it tumbles because, if you look at the control input indicators, he pitches it over before firing the engine, probably taking the "45 degree angle" comment too literally.  The second one just falls over on its own.  I've certainly had that happen to rockets on me, I'd always treated it as a "feature" to make players use the launch stability enhancers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

At the end they talk a little about controls

17 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

Some people complained about the controls, but they're changing those.
Things are "less complicated" using the PS4 controller. Dr_Turkey prefers it.

There was some mention of the console "advantages" being brought to the PC.  What does this mean? Console controler support for PC in addition to the current keyboard controls (which is fine), or does it mean a change (which I read as "simplification") to keyboard controls (which I'd not be happy about)?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, katateochi said:

At the end they talk a little about controls

There was some mention of the console "advantages" being brought to the PC.  What does this mean? Console controler support for PC in addition to the current keyboard controls (which is fine), or does it mean a change (which I read as "simplification") to keyboard controls (which I'd not be happy about)?

I of course can't actually speak for Squad, but nobody on the cast (or anywhere else I've seen) mentioned simplifying or even changing any keyboard controls on the PC.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5th Horsman I can't say enough how much I appreciate your summaries. Thanks for doing this for all this time. But... I gotta ask...what's the point of these Squadcasts anymore? They are not informative what so ever.

Imo they need to merge Squadcasts with the dev notes. Get someone who can actually play the game and have Dr_Turkey and the guest just talk and discuss development. 

Edited by Motokid600
Link to comment
Share on other sites

42 minutes ago, Motokid600 said:

5th Horsman I can't say enough how much I appreciate your summaries. Thanks for doing this for all this time. But... I gotta ask...what's the point of these Squadcasts anymore? They are not informative what so ever.

Imo they need to merge Squadcasts with the dev notes. Get someone who can actually play the game and have Dr_Turkey and the guest just talk and discuss development. 

I gotta say I agree with you. I've actually been considering not doing them anymore, but in this one things have started turning around.

When watching a new TV show, I have a personal 6-episode rule. If the show totally, completely sucks I don't watch any more but if it has some redeeming characteristics and unrealized potential, I force myself to watch 6 episodes before I drop it. The reason is that in the US at least, 6 episodes is commonly either a half season or halfway to the mid-season break.

I'm taking the same tack with Squadcast. I will do summaries for 6 total Dr_Turkey episodes no matter what. Let him get his feet wet, figure out what "his" Squadcast will be, and start to tease stuff like Max used to do. The previous episode the tease was a letdown as it was just an in-game, re-textured shot of something we've seen before but in this episode there was some good discussion and clarification of some devnotes things. So, I'm hopeful.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks 5th.  Both for doing the summaries and saying above what I was thinking too.

Dr Turkey is new to the job and, I guess, squad too.  He needs to get into the flow, be himself, and make his own mark (crater) rather than just copy Max. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On ‎12‎/‎12‎/‎2015‎ ‎16‎:‎10‎:‎44, 5thHorseman said:

...explanation of 6-episode rule...

That's... very reasonable of you! I dropped the 2nd season of True Detective on the first episode, and would have dropped Squadcast at the first sight of Max playing, if it weren't for the transcripts.

If you do decide to drop it, however, I don't expect I'll watch it, instead relying solely on devnotes and simply waiting till stuff comes out...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This thread is quite old. Please consider starting a new thread rather than reviving this one.

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...