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How do you deal with all the shortcomings of the game ?


NikkyD

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3 minutes ago, NikkyD said:

As a software developer i am well aware of that. But i am talking about things that are not personal flavor but simple basic things. You have 1m, 2m and 3m engines and fuel tanks but only 1m boosters... why ? stuff like that

But you are talking personal flavor. That may be a shortcoming to you, but not to others. I don't find that an issue at all.

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8 minutes ago, NikkyD said:

As a software developer i am well aware of that. But i am talking about things that are not personal flavor but simple basic things. You have 1m, 2m and 3m engines and fuel tanks but only 1m boosters... why ? stuff like that

For that matter, that never bothered me.

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2 hours ago, John FX said:

Not wanting to disagree with the point of your post I think the McLaren F1 might like to disagree with your comment about no high performance 3 seater sports cars...

Ha!

I knew I should have fact-checked first. I haven't seen the inside of one, and bizarrely the internets don't seem to have pictures of one with three people sitting in it, so I have no idea whether it's a brilliant or supremely uncomfortable idea.

 

4 hours ago, NikkyD said:

@Plusck there are hinges... with mods ofc.

It has been mentioned over and over that i want to buy a product that is somewhat finished and not a LEGO set of parts with which i have to build my own game first and then i can build things inside it.

But look at mods like mechjeb, its been around since the earliest days of the grid :wink: and they NEVER implemented something like it into the full game even tho everyone seems to be using either MJ or the engineer tool or something in that neighborhood.

Gothic 3 was a desaster when it came out, the only thing that kept it alive was a community. The first thing everyone was installing along with it was the community patch. Years later they want to make a buck out of it again and this time they included the community patch officially in the game. It's just not professional behaviour this attitude to let mods fill up the gaps that you leave open beause you are understaffed and underfunded. MineCraft was written by a single guy, many indie games are written by single guys, you know that before you start, i dont let that count as an excuse. If the game is successful, you hire more crew to finally patch it to near perfection. If it was some bottom dwelling niche game with 1k buyers and a 2 guy crew, it'd be understandable but that's not the case.

I'm having trouble understanding this. You (apparently) bought a game that is very lego-like / sandboxy, with an optional set of challenges (career mode) to lead you through the learning curve, and... this is not the product that you wanted?

As for it not being finished: there are bugs, and some annoying ones, but the only games out there that don't visibly suffer from a huge number of bugs are ones with huge production costs and a very limited set of possible actions. Minecraft has always suffered from bugs and a mutitude of detractors who complained about Notch simpy adding stuff to the game instead of ironing out the current bugs.

However your complaints are not about bugs but about the content of the game itself, and often what you feel should be there by default without resorting to a mod. The trouble is that I can't agree with any of your points, bar one (which I'll come to later). It seems to me that the point about the stock game is that it enourages innovative responses to the challenges that it sets, and an intuitive grasp of what is often counter-intuitive without having all the numbers spelled out for you. A bit of research into the rocket equation and orbital mechanics gives you all the tools you need to work out precise dv, most efficient trajectories and so on, and if that leaves you cold then you can go and use other people's calculations and the mods that they have produced to integrate that.

Because at its core, KSP tries to be as accurate as it can with respect to the laws of physics, while dumbing it all down to a mini-me solar system so that the sheer frustratingly difficult business of real space exploration doesn't make the game a chore from the outset. However, you can make it frustratingly harder with mods...

And the problem with mods is that still, after years of fine-tuning, they get things wrong. MechJeb and KER still can't work out the actual dv of a rocket if you start including drop-tanks. And they will never be able to tell you the dv of a ship if it has part of its flight in the atmosphere and part in a vacuum. I haven't tried KER in 1.1 yet (yes, that's right, I enjoy playing modless) but it simply couldn't cope with the Rapier in 1.0.5. And nobody could tell you how much velocity you will shed aerobraking without knowing exactly the shape of your ship, what angle it flies through the atmosphere, entry velocity, lowest altitude, whether you deploy landing legs or airbrakes, and so on. If anything, this sort of question should convince you how extraordinarily well-planned the Mars rover missions have been, to be able to get a huge machine landed at the right speed within hundreds of metres of their target. The reverse - thinking that because NASA can do the maths then KSP should include that as default - seems to be the basis of one of your complaints.

1 hour ago, NikkyD said:

I don't want to derail my own thread to cars, but even a Nissan GTR has 2 backseats. They call it 2+2 and it is somewhat popular amongst supercars but nobody really wants to sit there. But the whole statement was taken out of context. The context is, that there are 3 professions in the game and it makes sense to take them with you on a trip. In addition because of the xp system you want as many kerbals as possible to place a flag on every body for max xp. You start career with 4 but the pilots are doubled. So taking the famous 3 along with you is kinda a nobrainer imho, but the 5 year old capsule parts dont feature that.

As a logical next step in the tech tree after a 1-man-capsule for first steps in space there should be a 3 or 4 man version, given the whole setup. Next step would then be a lander for 1 and a lander for 3. If you look at the visual model of the 2man lander can, you just have to ask yourself "why can't i fit 3 in there ?". And yes, it bugged me so much i simply made my own part, without inside view tho, which is a bit annoying but acceptable.

And again I really don't see how it makes sense to take the three professions on a trip.

In early game, it makes sense to take a pilot and a scientist. Once you get decent probe cores, you can leave the pilot behind most times. In almost all cases, an engineer is pointless in a landing party. It becomes useful if you use manned rovers, to repair wheels, but by the time you unlock tech for manned rovers you have probe cores and you have the ability to land the Mk1-2 pod if you really must. The main use for engineers is in mining, and it would be pointless to put a 3-man pod on a mining craft since the other two crew will just be sitting twiddling their thumbs while it works.

So therefore, where is the logic in having a 3-person crew on a lander? If it's just to level up the maximum number of Kerbals, why not complain about there being no light 5, 6 or n-person pods? It's a no-brainer to add crew cabins if you want a maximum crew number with minimum mass. And you can't complain that it looks clunky because you're the one wanting to make space exploration into a bus trip. And the fact that you start with 4 Kerbals kinda suggests that what is supremely logical is to have two 2-man missions going at the same time.

It took 40 years of playing around with the idea for a 3-person sports car to be developed. Again, it's a no-brainer: you are building something that is symmetrical, with a given "forward" direction and a need for maximum visibility. With very few exceptions every such vehicle has either a single pilot or a pilot and a co-pilot, and the rest are just along for the ride. It's easy to design, it maximises visibility, it minimises size and weight, it allows both crew to have the same idea of where the "front" is (something that is difficult with 3 people while maintaining visibility/control). You only start having a third crew member when you're no longer trying for "light" and instead having to deal with "very complicated", which is not what you want a lander to be.

So you made a 3-man part without considering any of that, and obviously without an inside view - you'd be very hard-pressed to fit 3 people in logically together with instruments. And you made it a lander can, so logically, there was an operational reason why such a part was designed...  which escapes me.

In the meantime, the Mk1-2 pod is logical - it is re-entry capable, designed to be tough, probably with some radiation shielding, and with substantial torque in its reaction wheels. In every sense it is clearly the part that is intended to be in command of extensive space exploration, and return home. And if you're going a long way away then yes, it makes sense to take three different professions. But it doesn't make sense to land your mothership.

 

I said earlier that there is one point that I can agree with: planning ahead. Specifically, I see this as the need for a planetarium. The one major shortcoming (apart from the bugs of course) is the inability to see where planets will be aligned when. It is also something that could be added quite simply, as a separate building. Basically it would just contain a planetarium with the possibility of dropping a single orbit somewhere and one or two maneuvre nodes, and fast-forwarding and rewinding to any given date.

That, imho, would be a useful and relatively easy addition to the game (since the planets' paths are all on rails, it doesn't need to interact with one's save at all). It would certainly cut traffic to that alexmoon web app overnight. And it wouldn't flood the new user with excessive information, just the basics to plot missions without having to have a bunch of vehicles already in orbit or switch to and fro between career and a separate sandbox savegame.

Edited by Plusck
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4 hours ago, NikkyD said:

It has been mentioned over and over that i want to buy a product that is somewhat finished and not a LEGO set of parts with which i have to build my own game first and then i can build things inside it.

That aspect is actually one that I like the most with KSP (but then I like Lego too :wink: ).

I'm free to decide on my scenario and my tools, and then I get to play with that.

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Well, for Mun and Minmas missions, I use radial engines and attach the rover underneath using an inverted decoupler. After landing I release the rover and I am in business.
And at least in this version, rovers handle better, from 0.90 to 1.05 they were practically unplayable to me. 

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19 hours ago, DChurchill said:

Not sure what you mean by "takes itself serously". You mean the whole idea of Kerbals?

I think that the whole "construction set" combined with the fact that it's extremely moddable is why it's the success that it is. And is in essence, the answer to the OP's question. Don't like the way something works? Get a mod. You can play this game any way that you want. Look at the Skyrim mod community and the fact that it's still going strong, what, 5?? year later. Hell, I played Skyrim last night, after I sent a rover to the Mun. I have somewhere near 2,000 hours in that game. I wouldn't have if not for the mods.

Off topic but is it bad that when I play Skyrim, I can't look at either of the moons without trying to figure out the delta-v needed to reach them and potential landing sites lol?

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1 hour ago, Plusck said:

I said earlier that there is one point that I can agree with: planning ahead. Specifically, I see this as the need for a planetarium. The one major shortcoming (apart from the bugs of course) is the inability to see where planets will be aligned when. It is also something that could be added quite simply, as a separate building. Basically it would just contain a planetarium with the possibility of dropping a single orbit somewhere and one or two maneuvre nodes, and fast-forwarding and rewinding to any given date.

That, imho, would be a useful and relatively easy addition to the game (since the planets' paths are all on rails, it doesn't need to interact with one's save at all). It would certainly cut traffic to that alexmoon web app overnight. And it wouldn't flood the new user with excessive information, just the basics to plot missions without having to have a bunch of vehicles already in orbit or switch to and fro between career and a separate sandbox savegame.

That would be extremely useful and would go a long way towards addressing my own points on this thread. It would also be a very nice unlock for the Tracking Station in career mode, as a possible way of integrating it into the game. Even better - throw in some way of simulating atmospheric entry ahead of time (perhaps by first getting a probe orbiting your planet of choice, which then unlocks an appropriate part of the Planetarium). Combined with a basic delta-v calculator, I think those three tools would really improve interplanetary travel.

By basic, I mean KER or similar. I take your point about KER not being entirely accurate but having something would be a lot better than nothing. If in doubt - bring reserve propellant.

Edited by KSK
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More and more of these, lately.

I'll never grok how people can make it past the splashscreen of KSP and then gripe about it not being serious or realistic enough...

This is Kerbal Space Program.

Not a sim.

I'll say that again for emphasis -- NOT A SIM.

It's not advertised as a sim, everything about it makes it very clear that it's not a sim. So why do people never cease to complain that it's not a sim?

Do you buy a cheeseburger and moan about it not being a ham sandwich?

Worse, you can make it very sim-like, or whatever you want-like, via mods, yet the first thing people do when complaining that the game isn't something it's not is to say things like "and don't tell me there's a mod for that!"

Why not? It's the solution to the problem. Instead, they insist that the base game be modded to fit their personal preferences. Which has already been done, it's just not stock, so angst and woe.

It's like buying a box of Lego and getting a 3D printer along with it, for free, then ranting that it's a just box of Lego. It's what you bought -- even the most casual observer should have known that's what they were buying -- and what is more, you can make it into whatever you want.

 

-Jn-

 

 

 

Edited by JoeNapalm
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33 minutes ago, JoeNapalm said:

Worse, you can make it very sim-like, or whatever you want-like, via mods, yet the first thing people do when complaining that the game isn't something it's not is to say things like "and don't tell me there's a mod for that!"

I'm just the opposite. Nothing makes me happier than a game that not just tolerates mods but embraces them. Heck, KSP used to host it's own mod repository. Mods are the best solution to a game not having something that you want. Give a game a solid engine (I don't mean Unity, I mean the guts of KSP, which is for another thread) and let the mod community flesh out the content. Again, look at Skyrim.

e709bb196fb3ee751139dfc2f9d854261fc4469e

Edited by DChurchill
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On 5/6/2016 at 2:51 AM, bewing said:

For most of your objections, I'd say that's what sandbox mode is for. It takes five minutes to slap a megamax lifter onto whatever design you want, boost it into orbit, and timewarp it to Duna to test. Testing in advance is very practical, quick and easy. You want to know where the planets will be in 300 days? Start a new game, port in your persistent.sfs file, timewarp ahead 300 days, and look. I don't find I need mods to do any of these things.

For reentry, you need to be clever. Aerodynamics will get your stuff to the ground whole with no fuss -- and heatshields never will.

As far as efficiency goes, you can only start measuring efficiency once things actually work correctly. Until that point, every design is inefficient. If it has to be heavier in order to work, then that's what you have to do.

Utterly empiric. Complete inefficient. Even to play a game. Make the game look silly and boring. This is rocket science or random observation?

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I deal with it with mods and by ripping off Eyes Turned Skyward, The Martian, and NASA itself for my craft designs. (though my planes are purely my own)

Pretty much any basic orbital vehicle of mine is ripping off the MK V Apollo spacecraft from ETS. Any lander, the LM or Altair. My failed interplanetary mission to Duna from 1.04/5 ripped off The Martian and Constellation at the same time. And so on.

Frankly, even when I was still just building random stuff instead of actually trying to be efficient with my designs, I wasn't relying on pure stock parts. Stock in general has always been lacking and will be until the focus for Squad moves towards the content side of things.

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I agree that rovers is something that Squad should improve in the future, I find it quite awkward and difficult to build a well-functioning rover that doesn't look like a 5 year old made it. I might just be a lousy rover designer, but a few more rover focused stock parts wouldn't hurt. When it comes to re-entry my experience is very different, when de-orbiting space stations and such I'm often surprised by how many parts that survive the re-entry heating. When doing controlled re-entry of manned crafts I barely have need for heat shields. I guess I don't do it in a particularly fuel efficient way, but if efficiency isn't crucial then re-entry isn't really that difficult in my experience.

I also agree that some of the stats don't make sense, batteries is one example, they are ridiculously light.

Edited by Mjarf
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I don't really see a need for Squad to improve rovers, so much as give us a reason to ever build one.

I think of these things in terms of what KSP started out to be, and what it became. At first, they were designing a pretty simplistic game (from a gameplay perspective) but a pretty complex simulation. They've been trying to manage the two, and the game has kind of taken off in a direction they didn't anticipate. I can totally understand how this can be a difficult path to follow, so I try not to be too hard on them about game features.

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I understand that some ppl don't like/use certain aspects of the game but that doesn't mean the parts can be ignored. It's like who says A must say B. If you implement a part, make sure it really works without any glitches. They implemented wings and obviously wanted to allow the players to build planes, but the whole thing was more of a mess without FAR and such. With the initial drag model they should have not implemented wings and plane stuff. Now there are wheels for a long time and recently they added more and more plane gears and different size rover wheels. That's not just a nice to have, it's a path chosen. So wheels are there to build vehicles, but way too much stuff is missing to make vehicles complete. One could argue that 4 wheels and a base make a vehicle but thats semantics. It's like saying 2 wings and a base make a plane, whether it will be able to fly or not. It's troll argumentation.

So what did they want KSP to be ? From the parts, they wanted rockets + planes + vehicles. The rockets work quite well, the rest... so if you say you don't see a need for them to improve it, you are saying that it is ok to release broken/unfinished stuff for as long as you don't need that stuff but that's where i strongly disagree. If you put something into a game, make sure it works. Not just in principle but also in a sense that it can be used as what it was intented to be used for. A rover that flips over all the time or ice-skates on kerbin is not really useable.

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On 5/9/2016 at 4:15 PM, DChurchill said:

That's what I meant. I just didn't articulate it very well. I agree with that, but maybe not to the same degree. I don't play to the incompetent Kerbal trope. I just ignore that whole thing.

Let's get past that notion. Kerbals are not incompetent. They're brilliant. Let's see you slap a ship together out of junk with 3,000 m/s dv. Now let's see you put a match to it. Ah, yes, there's the rub, innit? Brilliant but by any human standard, barking mad. I think some of the Kerbals-are-idiots idea is based on a misunderstanding of the Kerbals-are-delightful-little-nutters intent of the devs.

I consider myself a serious player (okay, not RSS-serious, but serious) and I still chuckle looking at those little faces in the lower right. I think that splash screen (you know the one, with the lights and Bob ("OGODOGODOGOD"), Bill ("Uhhhhh..."), and Jeb ("OYESOYESOYES")), and Jeb's last transmission as his craft breaks up on its way toward certain calamity ("You guys have GOT to try this!") sold me on the game, and got me through the period where failures far outnumbered successes, and making orbit was a monumental achievement.

(The thing I try to ignore is career mode. I just wish Squad made it easier to do.)

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3 hours ago, NikkyD said:

I understand that some ppl don't like/use certain aspects of the game but that doesn't mean the parts can be ignored.

Parts that not everyone wants are routinely added. Citation: The three billion posts on this forum about how Squad should stop adding plane parts.

3 hours ago, NikkyD said:

It's like who says A must say B.

What?

3 hours ago, NikkyD said:

If you implement a part, make sure it really works without any glitches.

The only glitchy parts I can think of are landing gear, which you don't even bring up.

3 hours ago, NikkyD said:

They implemented wings and obviously wanted to allow the players to build planes, but the whole thing was more of a mess without FAR and such.

That's because the atmosphere was a placeholder, because the game was in alpha.

3 hours ago, NikkyD said:

With the initial drag model they should have not implemented wings and plane stuff.

Why are you complaining about this? Does it affect anything in the recent version?

3 hours ago, NikkyD said:

Now there are wheels for a long time and recently they added more and more plane gears and different size rover wheels. That's not just a nice to have, it's a path chosen.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean.

3 hours ago, NikkyD said:

So wheels are there to build vehicles, but way too much stuff is missing to make vehicles complete. One could argue that 4 wheels and a base make a vehicle but thats semantics. It's like saying 2 wings and a base make a plane, whether it will be able to fly or not.

Well, no... If your vehicle can't drive, I wouldn't call it a vehicle...

3 hours ago, NikkyD said:

The rockets work quite well, the rest...

...also seems to work quite well, so I'm not sure what point you're making.

3 hours ago, NikkyD said:

A rover that flips over all the time or ice-skates on kerbin is not really useable.

It's ice-skating because you designed or drove it poorly. That's how real rovers work. If you take a sharp turn at 20 m/s (about 40 MPH or 72 KPH) you should expect to spin out, lose control, and probably break everything.

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On 5/10/2016 at 3:26 PM, DChurchill said:

I'm just the opposite. Nothing makes me happier than a game that not just tolerates mods but embraces them. Heck, KSP used to host it's own mod repository. Mods are the best solution to a game not having something that you want. Give a game a solid engine (I don't mean Unity, I mean the guts of KSP, which is for another thread) and let the mod community flesh out the content. Again, look at Skyrim.

e709bb196fb3ee751139dfc2f9d854261fc4469e

The only conceivable disadvantages to mods are an uneven setup among players (CKAN and various tools help alleviate this) and...abominations, such as Skyrim's...horse modifications and the wonderful Scott Manley head pack.

(And yes, I did make this post as an excuse to link that. Also, what ever happened to the "no memes" rule?

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28 minutes ago, waterlubber said:

The only conceivable disadvantages to mods are an uneven setup among players (CKAN and various tools help alleviate this) and...abominations, such as Skyrim's...horse modifications and the wonderful Scott Manley head pack.

(And yes, I did make this post as an excuse to link that. Also, what ever happened to the "no memes" rule?

AAAAAAIIEEEE!!

It cannot be unseen!

The goggles! THEY DO NOTHING!!

 

-Jn-

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