Future of KSP, still a game it used to be?

[PhoenixCola]

First to start of, I have been restraining myself from writing this post for over a year now, and am beginning to think that I might be just too whiney in my head, since I seldom see topics like this brought up on the forum. It feels like everyone is fine with stuff I am about to mention and only a few people bring these things up. First of in pretext I would like to say that KSP has been and still is my No 1 game, most of the time the only game I have on my PC, and it is an absolute marvel and refreshment in video game industry. There is hardly any game so rewarding and beautiful as our beloved KSP. I have not seen any developer so engaged with community and actually willing to listen to it as much as Squad is, for me they are a shining light in the ever more profit driven game development world, which more and more often provides us with gaming titles that are not even worth mentioning and remembering, let alone playing. And that is the reason why I am feeling even more obligated to throw my thoughts in, and raise questions i feel are important in a hopefully non whining, constructive way.

 

The first question I would like to raise is, what is KSP becoming?

With every update, I have a greater and greater feeling that KSP is becoming more and more of a "framework" for community mods, which are for me a more and more a necessary "evil", hell, if you want to do something in KSP in a really enjoyable way, you are going to do it with mods, and this is great that it exists, but it also creates some unavoidable "walls" which modding can't deal with or deals with in some very faint and unreliable way, due to KSP / Unity limitations. Even some mods developed by community have made it into official release, which is awesome, and I think this trend should be continued to a certain degree. I am however disappointed in Squad's focus on certain game aspects, mainly, why is so much attention given to non-flight parts of the game, there are some things which were really critical, but there are some that I cannot believe took precedence over things that are still a major issue ingame.
Mainly, I want to point my finger at actual gameplay after you hit spacebar to launch a flight for the first time.I will just throw some issues out of my mind which I really cannot believe that someone in development process finds acceptable, and again someone in QA phase gives it a go for release.

1) Patched conics have been a nightmare for the entire life of the game, and they are a really critical element of any mission, they are getting fixed now, hopefully, so it took all this time, even through official release (1.0) of the game to even get into fixing of those.

2) Rocket stability / part attachment node strength. Anyone who claims that spaceships are fine should try deleting EAS-4 Strut Connector from GameData and trying to play that way, It is almost impossible to design a large rocket without that part, it is the only thing that enables construction of all those awesome huge ships everybody loves, and even that fails at larger scales, Kerbal Joint Reinforcement (KJR) becomes a necessity at this point, and again, why is it implemented by community so awesomely, and developers are not taking a similar course of action, beats me.

3) Mission and timewarp management - Again, if you have 2+ ships in a mission that are set to execute some node in future, it becomes a real real pain to manage all those, nodes are skipped, encounters missed, missions screwed because when you switch ships once you cannot revert anymore, so here again comes an intervention from community - Kerbal Alarm Clock (KAC) or similar mods that will make the game playable at this level. Also It is great that we don't have reports of epileptic seizures when timewarping at max while on launchpad / KSC view, I look away/turn off monitor every time I have to do that, it is just nauseating.

4) Planetary exploration - Now this is the part that makes me want to rage, because this is the greatest waste of potential ingame of all. There are the known planets, Moho, Eve, Kerbin, Duna, Dres and Jool, and their respective moons. And there is nothing to do on them, once you land on a body, there is almost nothing that motivates you to actually stay there and dig around, do science, try to survive, you know all the good stuff that space gives you. There are anomalies that you could visit but they don't do anything but give you the bling factor when you find them, and are almost impossible to find, even worse a lot of them were removed or buried below the surface, so they are unreachable. (Magic boulder, I will miss you forever.) And then, we are supplied with parts that would enable exploration of bodies further away than Eeloo (nuke engines, ion engines, RTG-s) which have absolutely no real use, everything within the stock Kerbol system is far inside the reach of conventional chemical rockets and solar panels, so there is no real need for high tech parts like those. Regular engines + asparagus will get you anywhere you can go in stock system. Some planets will break your ships by simply landing on them or even loading a craft on the surface (yes i am looking at you Eve)... So in order to remove all that dullness there are again some spectacular community made mods that will try and mask the overwhelming dullness of planets that are supposed to be places which should make your heart want to explode with excitement. Notable huge ones are Outer Planets Mod, Distant object enhancement, Environmental visual enhancments, and a huge selection of additional science mods, basebuilding mods, lifesupport and lately a visual candy - Scatterer, which try their best, but really cannot change the fact that there is nothing to really do in space once you left the launchpad, because of nonexistent base mechanics to expand on! Hell, the most interesting thing that happened on planets in stock game beside resources being introduced are actually biomes, which were painted by a community member!

5) Contracts and rewards - This part is really done much better than anything mentioned above, but could still use improvements, mainly things like Eve and Moho should give a ton more science/money because they are far more difficult to complete than anything else. Some are just completely stupid and impossible, but hey, its really fine compared to issues mentioned above.

So, I am reluctant to say "KSP is supposed to be a space exploration game" because it is not only that, if I am correct, it should be a merger of a flight simulator, construction/engineering game, manager and space exploration, and if so, why oh why is so much attention given to a lot of trivial things and improvements that are tied to the management part of the game and there are close to none improvements in other aspects of the game, mainly things I have addressed above.

So what are your thoughts, am I completely wrong and am I playing the game completely wrong, or do you resonate with things mentioned and are feeling a bit undercut on these important aspects in the way I do?

Thank you all for reading, peace, out.

 

Wall of text critically hits you for over 9000 damage. You die.

 

[KerbonautInTraining]

I most definitely agree with the joint re-enforcement because it's a (relatively) easy thing to fix. Why the stock joints are so intentionally weak is beyond me. I'm hoping 1.1 will help, but chances are I'll still use KJR.

[Amianoob]

I agree with some of the points you've made but not others, mainly I disagree with you on the joint reinforcement. I believe that having weaker joints and lots of struts is just such a Kerbal thing and that if suddenly all of your rockets were rigid and didn't explode for no reason then some of the fun would definitely be lost. What I mean to say is, Do we want Kerbal space program to become a strict simulator? Or do we want it to be a game? Personally I think that where it is right now is a pretty good medium and that adding KJE to stock would definitely take it further into the sim side, which may not be the best for play-ability.

Where I do agree with you though is the planets, I love going to them, designing crazy landers and rovers, but, I've never once in all of my years of KSP set up a serious surface base and maintained it, I tried it once* but I never felt compelled to keep it up and really colonize the planet. I think the best way to make planets more interesting and more "colonizable" would be to utilize the current ISRU system alongside with a 3D printer component, this way you can build structures from the normal parts on the surface of other worlds, they could even add some specialized buildings, or maybe just one, a factory. I think 3d printing + ISRU would make you actually want to colonize these places. 3D printing is the future of planetary colonization in real life, why not KSP?

Finally at the end you stated that most of the updates are centered on the managerial parts of the game, and I'd agree this has been true, but only recently. Most of the time I've been playing it's all been about adding new parts and planets and just more stuff, it was only after 0.18 when the game became sandbox complete (as squad called it) that squad changed their focus to the strategic and economic parts to really flesh out the actual game, before that there really wasn't anything to it, just a big old sandbox with things to blow up and places to go. I think 1.1 will do an awful lot for KSP and that probably 1.1 is what 1.0 should have been.

All food for thought, thanks for writing such an interesting post and cheers for reading mine.

 

*An imgur album of my only attempt at planet colonization (.18 I believe) http://imgur.com/a/xuvUV#0

Edited March 3, 2016 by Amianoob
Apparently I'm not a grammarian, damn.

[RizzoTheRat]

To be honest I'd rather they spend their time developing the game engine/mechanics/framework than reinvent stuff modders have already produced.  I really like the idea that it's a framework that many people have developed mods for, it enables you have massive variation within the same game.  It's relatively simple for a new player, with option to get crazily complicated with stuff like RO.  Having such an active modding and player community presumably acts as a nice pointer to the developers as to where their customers would like to see the development going, and ensures longevity of  the game too.

My personal thoughts on your individual points:

1) Patched conics Yes it can be tricky to line up precise manouvres, but it's a massive improvement on early versions when you had to guess, and yes there's mods to improve the interface (Precise node, Mechjeb)

2) Rocket stability / part attachment node strength. I don't use KJR, and try to design things that aren't too wobbly, but invariably need to use quite a few struts.  I just see it as a limitation of the world I'm playing in.  If I could slap anything together and make it to orbit surely the game would be a bit less fun.

3) Mission and timewarp management Agreed, but as you say mods exist to add functionality for this

4) Planetary exploration The game's about rockets and flying around in space, more detailed planetary exploration might be nice eventually but there's more important priorities.  Plus there's mods like USI Kolonisation which will turn it in to a whole different game about base resource management

5) Contracts and rewards - Again it's a nice change from earlier versions when it was all sandbox, and I imagine it will undergo further tweaking, plus...yes there's mods for it

[Andiron]

I like it that way because sometimes some awesome peoples (like ksp modding community) have very good ideas and/or skills. The number of mods available is huge and if I don't like a feature or need more stuff, there is always something I can use.

In gaming, some mods achieved to beat the vanilla like A Game Of Thrones (for Crusader Kings 2), Third Age (for Medieval 2 Total war) or  DayZ (for Arma II). In my opinion, Realism Overhaul is one of this kind

1- I use Enhanced Navball and Precise Node

2 and 3- Essential mods. Should be in-game

4- I use Dmagic/Scansat for moar science and activities. The BTDT scanner ,for exemple, is really time-consuming but rewarding. New Horizons is truly a must-have for a better solar system (and long-range missions)

5-  Contract Configurator and his contract packs ftw (join SSI Aerospace now !)

Edited March 3, 2016 by Andiron

[Rocket In My Pocket]

Agreed.

Game is still missing basic features you would assume any game that centers around building rockets and going to space would have. *Cough* life support *Cough*

Right now KSP can definitely feel like a skeleton at times; that you have to drape your own meat/skin over in the form of mods.

[regex]

Wow, we're still complaining about joint strength?  I remeber the days of stitch-strutting and putting extra tanks under Mainsails to keep them from exploding, we've got it good these days.

And career mode is a total mess, there's very little good about it.

E: and yes, KSP has and always will be a modding framework, which is a great thing because KSP, while awesome, is a very divisive game in opinions.

Edited March 3, 2016 by regex

[StarStreak2109]

I think you have made some good points there, especially regarding point 4.

[JoeNapalm]

 

Everybody agrees there's mods that should be stock.

Now find me two people who agree on WHICH mods should be stock? Good luck!

KSP has done quite well being what it is, with the mod support to make it what you want to be.

You want increased joint strength or life support? Great. Go get 'em. That guy over there who DOESN'T want them? He's happy, too.

I've played stock, I've played heavily modded. Both are great. Never used many of the mods that some folks claim they can't live without. I'm sure some of the handful that I refuse to play without aren't a big deal to some.

I'd rather they spend their time making the game better as a whole than worry about recreating mods that already exist for those who want specialized features. SQUAD can never have the manpower (kerbalpower?) to generate the content that the enormous mod community puts out every single day.

 

-Jn-

[TMS]

23 minutes ago, regex said:

Wow, we're still complaining about joint strength?  I remeber the days of stitch-strutting and putting extra tanks under Mainsails to keep them from exploding, we've got it good these days.

I was just gonna say that!

My stitching became so subtle and invisible that it was eventually taught in major medical schools.

[Guest]

I'm not worried about what mods you use or what things you do to your game.

I'm worried about the inability or unwillingness of Squad to fix these basic issues that have been solved by mods, and the community's constant defense of "you entitled jerk".

Dynamic texture loading. User-friendly maneuver nodes. Tutorials. 

We're in official release. Why does it still feel like a beta?

 

_{Before you yell at me for hating Squad, I don't hate Squad. I disagree with the direction and priorities they have for the game.}

Edited March 3, 2016 by spink00
and unwillingness

[wumpus]

1 hour ago, regex said:

Wow, we're still complaining about joint strength?  I remeber the days of stitch-strutting and putting extra tanks under Mainsails to keep them from exploding, we've got it good these days.

And career mode is a total mess, there's very little good about it.

E: and yes, KSP has and always will be a modding framework, which is a great thing because KSP, while awesome, is a very divisive game in opinions.

Have you tried stitching in stock KSP?  You wind up on the launch pad with struts sticking out at a 45 degree angle (that were in the "right" place in the VAB).  Squad either needs to fix this or put the joint fixes in stock.

[PhoenixCola]

Thank you for replies folks, really, I appreciate it a a lot, this is really the best game community I participated in by far, those are some great replies.

I just wanted to clarify on KJR bit, while I just love the mod, as pointed out by @Amianoob, I am as well internally divided on its use, I kind of hated myself for using it, and at first  I thought it would make things just too good, and it rides on this fine line of "Being a Kerbal Way" vs "Being a Real Sim", and naturally, there are conflicting opinions. And as @regex pointed out, things were really bad, I am playing since 0.17 and lived through all kinds of good changes, as many of people here did. Strutting becomes with time an art form as @TMS said, and it adds that junk,duct tape and zipties feeling, and even real spacecraft are strutted sometimes (Space Shuttle is a shining example, still wonder at times how the hell did that thing work so good.), so it might be that this does not need adressing.
However, when I look at 3.5m parts, and the fact that they are implemented by Squad in the stock game, and that they work so badly, I am personally more inclined toward KJR rigidity. It feels far more natural than rockets that seem to be made of some rubbery material. This is the part where the game does not punish you for doing something wrong, as it does with other things, it just refuses to cooperate on the level that it should, and the poor strut is caught in the way as "rigidizer" for something that needs to be the job for joints. For me in general the feeling is not diminished, and there are pretty much the same amount of explosions in my gameplay, it just eliminated larger rockets breaking under their own weight and behaving like they are a piece of rubber. And with introduction of reentry effects, you have to be really careful not to push the ship beyond its design capabilities. So while they could make stuff more rigid, it would be great to make ships more sensitive to pure aerodynamic effects, and really push out those dangers of max Q for example.

It could be that Squad is a really young development team, and they have demonstrated their skills in really improving the game beyond my expectations actually, so it might be that as they are getting more and more skilled, they will squash some of those things listed.

Also, did anyone else notice that the "planets" on the loading widget actually move in a wrong direction respectful to their in game orbits?

[steuben]

On one hand: Bugs and balance. Features. Content. Those three things are zero sum in terms of resources. To add to one you've got to take from the other. It doesn't help that when you add to one you add to the needs of the others while decreasing the resources available. Ain't feedback a wonderful thing.

On the other hand: We have the fora. Regardless of how they allocate those resources people will complain. add more content and some features, fix the bugs and balance before adding new things. features and bugs, the game is stale nothing new has been added. Balance things equally, things aren't happening fast enough. Ain't fandom a wonderful thing.

The gripping hand: We're all Monday morning quarterbacking here. Fun ain't it

 

[qromodynmc]

Im not having that much problem with stock game but there are some mods i'd like to see in game;

Kerbal engineer redux, i think some kind of delta v tool was coming to stock game. And something similar to tweak scale, not for engines but scaleable fuel tanks and wings would be good, current static tanks and wings are forcing limits of game by increasing part count.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Curveball Anders]

13 minutes ago, steuben said:

On one hand: Bugs and balance. Features. Content. Those three things are zero sum in terms of resources.

Also known as the builder's (or architect's) quiz:

• As you want it.
• On schedule.
• Within budget.

Pick one (or on lucky cases two) out of three

 

Edited March 3, 2016 by Curveball Anders
Muu!

[Edax]

I wouldn't mind joint weakness so much if struts didn't add to the part count and reduce the framefrate.  If the strut was based on a stage that was released, does the end point of the strut still count as a part and increase lag?  What about decouplers?  They leave traces behind on the ship after they get released, but do the leftovers still count as a part?

 

I wholeheartedly agree about planetary exploration.  Landing on Duna for the first time was a huge achievement for me, but all Valentina did was planet a flag and collect some dirt, she didn't even stick around for a sunset before I had her return to orbit.  I've never bothered with any of the bases because it's just spacecraft and spacestation parts that you build a base with.  Even if you can make the aesthetics work, you can't really do anything with it, it's less interesting then a doll house, cause at least in a doll house you can see the interior.  There's two ways I can see planet colonization become more fun, we go with the Kuzzter / Minecraft approach, where the bases are built so that you can walk around in your own base without the helmet and man command chairs.  The other option is to take advantage of the ISRU and ore system and make planet colonization like a first-person RTS/colony building sim, where you go out in an ore harvester, bring back the ore and use the material to build base parts and infrastructure, and have a well-developed colony provide some sort of advantage, like unique tech, a way to generate income, or a space-dock that allows you to build spaceships, or modify ones that land there.  Now THATS a reason to motive people to launch rockets to other planets.

 

Edited March 3, 2016 by Edax

[Scotius]

No one can think about everything. A modder can sit down, and dedicate as much of his own time to his pet project as he wants. People like it and download? Great. No one cares? Oh well - better luck next time. Game developers do not have that luxury - they have to build a complete, working game and deliver it to thousands of players. Players that demand a wide array of things. There is no way to satisfy everyone - so poor devs are forced to make choices: what to add and what to cut off. They can do two things at this point: ignore the community and follow a narrow, inflexible plan. Or try to find a middle road. We all know which way SQUAD chose. And they are following their middle road quite well. Sure, KSP still lacks many things a lot of people want - but the game is here, its completely playable and very enjoyable. We could have it much worse - just look at the state of "Star Citizen". A mountain of cash spent, years of development - and yet players so far got only two incomplete modules and plenty of promises.

[Archgeek]

31 minutes ago, Edax said:

I wouldn't mind joint weakness so much if struts didn't add to the part count and reduce the framefrate.  If the strut was based on a stage that was released, does the end point of the strut still count as a part and increase lag?  What about decouplers?  They leave traces behind on the ship after they get released, but do the leftovers still count as a part?

Nopearunius!  Only the base of a strut counts as a part, the other end is just the point it's rigidly connected to the thing you're attaching it to.  Radial decoupler remnants I think are just textures, but I know they don't alter the physics of anything, so they don't add to part count for the main thing part count bottlenecks, at least.

[Francois424]

You bring up good points Cola.

Personally I have always been satisfied with KSP. 

The only thing that really annoyed me was the re-entry heat patch.  However I can set it to 50% and it's much more manageable (Gotta love having the option).

Another pet peeve is the major slowdowns that started with 0.90 but got so much worse with 1.0 onwards... I mean I do a 120 parts ship and it turns my clock yellow ?  My PC is about 100% better now than 0.25 too.
I also tried to look away from the ground on Kerbin to test what other forum members where saying, and yes, better frame rate.  Re-entry framerate are pretty bad too.
With version 1.0.x also came the Aero re-entry problem.  I made a heatshield umbrella below my perfectly symmetric craft.  Once hitting ~15-20k on Kerbin, ship tilts 15-25 deg to one side and everything overheats/blows-up.  really ?

As for space exploration, getting the biomes on every planets/moons was a HUGE thing to me as I love going to places and exploring them for quite a few hours.  EVE took me nearly 12 hours, MOHO took me like 6 but my rover had flaws and I was getting tired of F9-ing, so I brought my boys home.  Duna took me about 6h.  Depends on your tastes I guess but I love that kind of stuff. If every planet/moons received the same details than Mun/Minmus/Kerbin  it would make things interesting to say the least.

Agreed KAC and KER should be stock... I do not think anyone in their right minds would say they do not want that in stock.  KAS comes next but would be met much more like ISRU was, a 'fine to have' add-on.
OPM is such a grand and beautiful project that I dare say it should be stock as well. 
Snark's Jool Biomes is a streak of genius too as it forces ppl to design atmospheric crafts that can enter AND LEAVE the atmosphere... not to mention re-entry on Jool is... crazy as of 1.0.2. good for all future stock Gaz planets

The craft sturdiness was MUCH improved in one of the versions, it much better than what it was in 0.23 where my rockets would disassemble on the Launchpad for no reason.  If anything, the cargobay bug will be fixed soon.

Speaking of advanced parts, I was always a strong believer that there should be 2 types of advanced parts : 
1- The ones that replace part count (A part that replaces 4 nukes is common in mods, or a single part that replaces 8 RTG's, Bigger ONE par huge fuel tanks, amongst many others)
 2- The new practical engine with crazy ISP (Nuke when you get it, Ion engines as well... they just need to get point above eventually).
So an advanced OPM engine part with 2400 ISP and 100 thrust would fit #2,  a 2400 ISP and 800 thrust would fit #1, they both could be in the same technological line that you push forward into.

Which brings me to the tech tree.  It has roughly remained the same (barring a few tweaks) since 0.23, still does not have any easy way to edit it for a regular user, nor does it have any stock alternatives...
The game would greatly benefit from it being easy to manipulate around and move techs around different nodes.  With the Idea of advanced parts, you could make a new tree that even with 100% tech gains AND the new labs, you'd have to explore most of the planets/moons to get it all.  You would most likely never have to, but it would be there.  Kind of a stock interstellar feel, minus the warping to other system part.  IMHO, the first Ion engine with it's whooping 2 thrust should be much earlier in the tech tree as it would be useful then. Keeping the 25 thr or 100thr variants for further away in the line.  I never use the stock Ion in science/career anymore, by the time you unlock it, you have much better options, even for probes.

My main problem with wobbliness and such is with docked/space assembled spaceship.  Without KAS you cannot add struts and it makes the whole thing very weak.  I have resorted to assembling it in orbit, but before launching, just remake the ship in the VAB without docking ports (unless Lander crafts and the likes), or adding them struts, then Hyper-editing the completed thing where the previous one is.  A necessary evil until stock KAS or something done to better docking rigidity between parts (without struts)..

As for your point on maintaining a Base, well without Life Support, there isn't much maintenance to be done really.  You could set-up a science lab or 5, with a powercell, and come refill the Huge LFO Tanks every now and then (assuming Solar does not work).  Then you could collect the researched science and move another biome into the labs (Very OP in my book, but if you edit your game to 1/10h science gains or modify tech tree to multiply the current cost of research by the tier of said research, it's pretty much perfect).  You do it because it's fun, and then you move on.  The only other way would be that you land a lab into a biome (or get there via rover), park it, and it can gain science 1/day/scientist/level until full biome value.  That way you need a base for extended amount of times, and while it is running, you could go do other things.  Much like ISRU that continues in background.  Robotic would yield limited gains and take longer.

As for contracts, my biggest pet peeve with them should be going away with 1.1.  I like to bundle my missions together.  A mission to POL and LAYTHE you say ?  Let's wait for the rest of the Jool system and do Jool-5!  *BZZZZZZZZT*  you can't do that because contract limits/availability will most likely never allow it.  Should be OK with 1.1.  Some rewards are too low as well.  Landing a tourist on Eve and bring her back to Kerbin ?  Man this should at the very least be a million kerbucks.

 

It's good to voice your concerns, it let the Devs and everybody know what you want from the game, and for the record, I did not think it was whining at all.

Good day .

Edited March 3, 2016 by Francois424

[Perry Apsis]

3 hours ago, wumpus said:

Have you tried stitching in stock KSP?  You wind up on the launch pad with struts sticking out at a 45 degree angle (that were in the "right" place in the VAB).  Squad either needs to fix this or put the joint fixes in stock.

That! This! Them!

I just added KJR to my game after repeatedly sending a launcher back to the VAB to correct my errant struts. Sure, it's goofy and a challenge to launch a space noodle, but Kerbals are gifted engineers. Surely--Surely!--they'd have figured out the part about tightening the bolts by now. How many times do I see a lander peeking through a fairing? How many times do I see it lying completely outside of the fairing at a 90 degree angle?

Everybody's got their own optimal point on the realism<---->fun dimension, but this needs to be fixed. Would I download a mod that made all my craft flop around like anesthetized eels? Maybe. Would I choose to use it forever? Certainly not.

[Choctofliatrio2.0]

1: I've never noticed too many problems with it. Maneuver nodes being annoying is really the only thing.

2: Rocket Stability: I've had... very few issues with this. The way I see it, if you need a ridiculous amount of struts to keep your rocket together, your rocket isn't built right. I use struts to support a lander on top of a rocket, and to keep boosters steady, and that is all I really need.

3: I agree on this. I have KAC installed, and it works great. I would like more help from the game keeping track of everything, though.

4: I also agree to this, but I really don't know how they could add more exploration. I wouldn't really like the game to add a whole bunch of colonization parts and mechanics.

5: I'd agree with this.

[Norcalplanner]

I use KJR all the time. I love it, but I realize not everyone else does. Solution? Make stronger joints either an option you can adjust, similar to reentry heat, or tied to a technology you research or an upgrade to the KSC.  Personally, I would love more upgrade options on buildings - imagine a "wing" you can add to the VAB to make joints more rigid, or a new building you can add to the R&D complex which changes how science labs operate, or a new dish you can add to the tracking center which allows you to set KAC style alerts for when vessels are going to change SOI.

[goldenpsp]

I will sort of disagree on one main overly broad point.  Many of your complaints revolve around, as you say, gameplay components.  Those things that happen after you hit space.

We have a situation where the game was built around one version of unity,and now is currently being reworked for the latest unity engine.  We have yet to see the fruits of that labor, but we know some items should be far better (for example we have been told wheels are getting a total rework).

In the meantime, updates have been focusing around non-flight items.  IMO this makes sense.  Why should they bother fixing ANYTHING that involves the unity engine, when those fixes will be un-done with the unity engine update in 1.1

Sure it makes it feel like they are ignoring key parts of the game.  The reality is that they probably haven't been ignoring it at all, but they just cant really show us until they get 1.1 out the door.

In terms of the stock vs. mod debate.  It is a difficult area when considering mods being integrated into stock. For one, you have to take into account the lowest common denominator of sorts.  For example, lots of people like life support.  Many others, especially new players may find a stock life support to be overwhelming.

The other area gets into all kinds of legal difficulties.  Many, if not most mods are released open source.  As such mods cannot really be "integrated" into KSP verbatim without causing some potentially sticky licensing issues.  Take for example  IRSU.  Yes Roverdude wrote it, and I am sure it is based off what he learned by creating his regolith engine and Karbonite mod.  But it was likely completely re-written to get around the fact that his mods are open source.  This obviously increases cost to Squad, so they have to really balance when it is worth the cost to made a mode a part of the stock game.

I could go on but you hopefully get the idea.

[Alshain]

If you think

8 hours ago, PhoenixCola said:

2) Rocket stability / part attachment node strength. Anyone who claims that spaceships are fine should try deleting EAS-4 Strut Connector from GameData and trying to play that way so that my argument actually makes sense.

Fixed that for you.

 

Really, your argument for adding KJR to the game is because you can't play without the tools Squad added to the game to allow you to play?  What exactly is wrong with struts?  If you use the tools Squad gave you, joint strength is fine.

Edited March 3, 2016 by Alshain