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Devnote Tuesday: I ain't getting on no plane!


SQUAD

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OK, a question..... Antenna ranges.... not that I care much either way, now... but what happens when you send a probe to the Mun (which isn't that far away FOR MY POINT TO BE MADE)..... and it ends on the other side of the Mun.... will there be a signal blackout?

I ask this question because if there will be signal blackouts, then I can see people having to have at least four com-sats orbiting each planet and moon JUST to prevent black outs...

Unless of course.... you just go with the flow and don't care about losing contact with a horny Jeb all alone in a capsule with that gorgeous Valentina..... :)

 

Edited by kiwi1960
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Just now, kiwi1960 said:

OK, a question..... Antenna ranges.... not that I care much either way, now... but what happens when you send a probe to the Mun (which isn't that far away FOR MY POINT TO BE MADE)..... and it ends on the other side of the Mun.... will there be a signal blackout?

I ask this question because if there will be signal blackouts, then I can see people having to have at least four com-sats orbiting each planet and moon JUST to prevent black outs...

Unless of course.... you just go with the flow and don't care about losing contact with a horny Jeb all alone with in a capsule with that gorgeous Valentina..... :)

 

RoverDude can probably answer better than me, but if I understand correctly, a signal blackout with this system does not result in a 100% loss of control.  It's not really clear what you do lose though.

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22 hours ago, SQUAD said:

Aside from fixing bugs and tweaking code based on the feedback from the QA team Bob has been working on giving pilots more utility by introducing pilot-only control. This means that a scientist or engineer can only achieve full control of certain pods when in direct communication with Kerbin.

:groan: :rolleyes:

Can we please have an option to turn off Kerbal classes?  It's literally the most glaring example of "poorly-thought-out-feature" in the game.

Has config modding been successful there?  I seem to recall that you can't give certain abilities to certain classes, or they just outright wouldn't work.  Maybe we could have all Kerbal abilities be config-able so we can mod this disappointing mechanic (classes in general) out of the game?

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20 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

We can probably be more helpful than that, right?

Sure, make sure we can mod it into irrelevance, like I asked above.  If you're fishing for ideas from me, I'm not going to waste time trying to make an ultimately flawed mechanic less flawed because it'll still end up flawed.

E: I mean, seriously, it's such a forced game mechanic.  It doesn't feel organic or make any sort of sense, as upthread comments have pointed out.  The problem is that KSP is a very "manual" game, the player does pretty much everything, so restricting them in any way has to be well thought out.  The class mechanic is not; it feels slapped together in a manner indicating railroaded player choice based on the limited available mechanics.  Even if it's nice for Kerbals to have titles for RP purposes and immersion the game mechanic effects of it feel utterly artificial. 

Edited by regex
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Am I the only one who likes Kerbal classes? It's an interesting logistical challenge that adds a bit more challenge. Admittedly I use the field experience mod- allowing Kerbals to level up while on a mission seems to me to be a good next step- one way to make it work is to only allow Kerbals that are in a vessel that is connected to KSC via the new comm network to level up.

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7 minutes ago, Waxing_Kibbous said:

Am I the only one who likes Kerbal classes? It's an interesting logistical challenge that adds a bit more challenge. Admittedly I use the field experience mod- allowing Kerbals to level up while on a mission seems to me to be a good next step- one way to make it work is to only allow Kerbals that are in a vessel that is connected to KSC via the new comm network to level up.

I know of no challenge that it adds.  Pilots and Engineers are useless (and nothing in this patch makes me think that is going to change).  Scientists have one good function.

I disagree with @regex though, the ugpradable buildings and restrictions on early tier buildings is clearly the most poorly thought out feature.  Classes come in at a close second though.

Edited by Alshain
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Well I would describe things as unfinished, rather than poorly thought out. It seems strange to complain that kerbals themselves don't have a strong role in the game and then suggest that the way to fix it is to completely eliminate that role. If you lift all restrictions what incentive is there to send more than one kerbal anywhere? Wouldn't it be nicer if instead we fleshed out their abilities and refined the way we upgrade them? It doesn't seem particularly productive to accuse squad of not thinking something through if we can't come up with any better ideas.

Edited by Pthigrivi
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Just now, Pthigrivi said:

Well I would describe things as unfinished, rather than poorly thought out.

:rolleyes: It's been "unfinished" for years.

Just now, Pthigrivi said:

It seems strange to complain that kerbals themselves don't have a strong role in the game and then suggest that the way to fix it is to completely eliminate that role.

Uh, no, Kerbals still don't really have a really well-defined role to begin with, and the one they had was split up to make people use bigger pods.  Scientists are good mid-game, Engineers only if you, for some reason, enjoy mining (I don't so they are almost useless), and Pilots can be tossed for probe cores as soon as you're ready to admit the extra mass makes no sense (maybe they'll be a bit more useful under the new telemetry system).

Just now, Pthigrivi said:

If you lift all restrictions what incentive is there to send more than one kerbal anywhere? Wouldn't it be nicer if instead we simply fleshed out their abilities and refined the way we upgrade them? 

If classes were straight quality of life improvements I'd be fine with them but they're just artificial restrictions based on what game mechanics could be removed to make them important.  To make them better, I'd say give all Kerbals all abilities but give Scientists a bonus to science and Engineers a bonus to mining.  Pilots?  IDK, I do all the piloting anyway and I can just sub in a probe core if I want.  Quality of life incentives rather than restrictions, especially when I have to do everything manually anyway.

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4 minutes ago, regex said:

:rolleyes: It's been "unfinished" for years.

Im a patient guy. I fully understand that there have been bigger priorities. Its funny how much I see people endlessly ranting about how squad should drop everything and work on optimization and bug fixing and the aerodynamics model and yada yada and when they do just that all of a sudden its "UGH why haven't you fixed everything else!?" Sure, the experience system could use some work, but so could a lot of things. I'm perfectly happy to wait on KAS becoming stock to see some nice mission planning tools integrated.

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3 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Im a patient guy. I fully understand that there have been bigger priorities. Its funny how much I see people endlessly ranting about how squad should drop everything and work on optimization and bug fixing and the aerodynamics model and yada yada and when they do just that all of a sudden its "UGH why haven't you fixed everything else!?" Sure, the experience system could use some work, but so could a lot of things. I'm perfectly happy to wait on KAS becoming stock to see some nice mission planning tools integrated.

Fair enough, but for me, claiming any feature that someone points out as "flawed" to be "unfinished" seems more like a diversion from the points in the argument.  Regardless of whether it is unfinished, the feature is still fundamentally flawed.

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2 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Im a patient guy. I fully understand that there have been bigger priorities. Its funny how much I see people endlessly ranting about how squad should drop everything and work on optimization and bug fixing and the aerodynamics model and yada yada and when they do just that all of a sudden its "UGH why haven't you fixed everything else!?" Sure, the experience system could use some work, but so could a lot of things. I'm perfectly happy to wait on KAS becoming stock to see some nice mission planning tools integrated.

I think part of this comes from the fact we no longer get any impressions of what the developers are thinking beyond the next patch.  The last time we heard anything about the future, other than the next immediate patch, was when Maxmaps said they wanted to look into graphical enhancements and making the game look better.  We aren't talking about actual features or specifics, we are talking about what Squad thinks is perfect the way it is and what they may want to work on in the future.  The lack of any comments on their direction is what leaves users feeling uncomfortable and striking out at anything.

Browse through any one of the Multiplayer threads and you will see a number of people that think it should come after an overhaul of this or that system, but we don't even know if Squad thinks those systems are in need of overhaul or if they are completely happy with the way they are.  We don't hear anything other than the very next patch from them anymore.

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2 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Well I would describe things as unfinished, rather than poorly thought out. It seems strange to complain that kerbals themselves don't have a strong role in the game and then suggest that the way to fix it is to completely eliminate that role. If you lift all restrictions what incentive is there to send more than one kerbal anywhere? Wouldn't it be nicer if instead we simply fleshed out their abilities and refined the way we upgrade them? 

You can't call something unfinished when its implementation adds little to no value AND there has been no talk whatsoever in expanding it. Many of the game mechanic systems in KSP are poorly thought out and are mere after-thought features added in an attempt to make it more game-like. Science mode barely makes any sense and Career is sorely lacking in a gameplay sense.

"Science" as a resource is dumb. How does a dirt analysis help me produce a turbojet? Tech research progress should may as well be time and money based (much like real life to some degree). Have a daily fund budget for basic research and you pick the topics/branches you want to acquire. Plenty of games have done this and it mostly makes sense. "Science" experiments should only contribute to research if it's relevant to the topic. (Really, the current science and experiment system is more about the flavor text than anything else. Shoehorning it as a gameplay mechanic was not thought out.)

Dedicated astronaut classes makes not sense. While astronaut do have specialties and assigned mission roles, many have more than one role. If you want to distinguish Kerbals, make the stats meaningful and let us TRAIN kerbals on the ground is skills. And remove the HORRIBLE idea of increased cost-per-hire. I'd rather pay a daily salary. (Oh, hey, gameplay incentive to make decent profits in career!) But you still need incentive to even use kerbals anyway. I use RemoteTech, so I have some incentive now and then (like initial constellation deployment), but afterwards *shrug*.

When "features" don't make much sense and their interactions with one another even less so, they are poorly thought out in my eyes. Especially when they don't give incentivize to the player to do anything. (Or worse, make them NOT want to do something.)

Actually, thinking about things, I'm starting to think that part of the problem is that, a good chunk of t he community is, for lack of a better term, "brainwashed" by the (what little) lore there is in KSP and roll with it. In the end, a lot justify too much of KSP as "that's just how Kerbals are," or, "that's un-kerbal to do." Some of us should probably get out of that biased subjective mindset.

Anyway, at some point, I kinda hope they gut the "gameplay" side of KSP and rebuild it from scratch as much they are the actual code. At some point, I'd like to be able to manage a space program from a more MACRO level than the micro level we're forced to now. (Case in point: I'm willing to babysit a vessel during launch, as it's a critical event. Same with landing. But why do I need to babysit vessels through every single maneuver burn? They're not THAT critical unless you want/need precision. That's what pilots and probe cores should be for! <<< Oh, hey, GAMEPLAY INCENTIVE for a kerbal class!)

NOTE: Several replies came while I was typing this up, so pardon me if something I said seems out of place, redundant, etc.

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6 hours ago, Terwin said:

Do you know how to safely change a tire on the lunar rover?

No, but I bet John Young did. Or at least he knew the equivalent task. And last I checked he didn't go to Mars first.

And something in me suspects that were I there, I'd have been able to suss it out.

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I wanted to mention, I've found some very interesting and annoying bugs with the wheels in the current version of KSP and I sent a message to Arsonide about them :) - I'm reading now though that he's moved on from working on wheels! Who would be the best person to send my craft and questions to?

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11 minutes ago, Avera9eJoe said:

I wanted to mention, I've found some very interesting and annoying bugs with the wheels in the current version of KSP and I sent a message to Arsonide about them :) - I'm reading now though that he's moved on from working on wheels! Who would be the best person to send my craft and questions to?

I say file a bug report. Bugging a specific person will at best annoy that person and at worst the request/report will be lost.

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The sooner the update comes the sooner they move on to a long needed balance polish pass* and gameplay overhaul**

*Or Riot

**I agree with the others the class system is unsatisfying and seeing more taped on to it is only frustrating not reliving, but small targeted changes will solve nothing only broad overhauls that take in the whole picture and how all the pieces mesh together.

Edited by passinglurker
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4 hours ago, Alshain said:

We don't hear anything other than the very next patch from them anymore.

The problem with game developers talking about the future and beyond, is that there will be gamers willing  to raise the pitchforks if they end up deviating from their "promises", so as result devs tend to be tight lipped.

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6 hours ago, Majorjim! said:

Keep talking to that brick wall Snuggs.. I wish for some screenies too.

Does this mean a robo rover will automatically follow waypoints? Is this autopilot for rovers?

Pretty sure autopilot stuff is out of scope, they've said no to autopilot stuff bfore.

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1 hour ago, m4v said:

The problem with game developers talking about the future and beyond, is that there will be gamers willing  to raise the pitchforks if they end up deviating from their "promises", so as result devs tend to be tight lipped.

Only if you go into specifics.  Maxmaps had a way of discussing what they wanted to do without saying what they were going to do.

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