Devnote Tuesday: 1.2 is getting ever closer!

[tater]

2 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

If you found them floppy after the last update where they explicityly said they strenghtened them, then no, you shouldn't expect them to be less floppy now. But if you never bothered to test after that then I think you are jumping the gun on installing KJR. I'm in the opposite boat to you, I never used KJR, be it before or after the change in joint stiffness. Of which I think there were two, the most recent in 1.0, though I could easily be mistaken. It was not important to be because a little teeny bend in a rocket (which is what I experienced in all but the most ridiculous rockets) was fine by me.

I can't find the post, but I know I saw a thread made recently (unless it was a necro bump) that had a stack of little tanks with a mk1 on top, and a vector on the bottom acting like a noodle. I assumed that was obviously an extreme case, but it shouldn't be a thing at all.

I'm of this mind: no real rocket would be built with 4 stacked tanks that can bend/break at those interfaces. If you attach 4 tanks, then put an engine at the bottom, the game should consider that ONE TANK. If there needs to be a mass penalty, I'm cool with that (although stock tanks are too heavy, anyway). Not the idea that the joint is less wobbly, but it should be one unit.

If the game abstracts struts to include explosive bolts whenever needed (which I'd be fine with as long as someone bothered to write a single sentence in the part description saying so), then it can abstract the reality that a stack of tanks with an engine at the bottom and no separators in between is actually a single, monolithic tank. The only reason that anyone should ever have to use the smaller tanks honestly should be as 1 tank upper stages, or to tweak the total tank capacity. All the tanks should have identical textures, BTW, and look seamless when stacked. But that's the "rockets are ugly," unlike spaceplanes problem. 

[Superfluous J]

1 minute ago, tater said:

If you attach 4 tanks, then put an engine at the bottom, the game should consider that ONE TANK.

You'll hear no argument from me here. I personally think that there should be a single procedural fuel tank in the entire game that you can make as big as you want, and tech upgrades make the "making it bigger" part less expensive.

[regex]

2 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

I personally think that there should be a single procedural fuel tank in the entire game that you can make as big as you want, and tech upgrades make the "making it bigger" part less expensive.

This is one of the reasons why I can't bring myself to play the base game anymore. The "LEGO paradigm" is inferior compared to procedural parts.

[Johnny Wishbone]

14 minutes ago, tater said:

I'm of this mind: no real rocket would be built with 4 stacked tanks that can bend/break at those interfaces. If you attach 4 tanks, then put an engine at the bottom, the game should consider that ONE TANK. If there needs to be a mass penalty, I'm cool with that (although stock tanks are too heavy, anyway). Not the idea that the joint is less wobbly, but it should be one unit.

If the game abstracts struts to include explosive bolts whenever needed (which I'd be fine with as long as someone bothered to write a single sentence in the part description saying so), then it can abstract the reality that a stack of tanks with an engine at the bottom and no separators in between is actually a single, monolithic tank. The only reason that anyone should ever have to use the smaller tanks honestly should be as 1 tank upper stages, or to tweak the total tank capacity. All the tanks should have identical textures, BTW, and look seamless when stacked. But that's the "rockets are ugly," unlike spaceplanes problem. 

I don't disagree with your point (bolded by me), but I do think that changing the stock game the way you suggest would have a major impact on career mode. Part limitations are a big gameplay element in that game mode, and overcoming the issue of having 50% of your part count be a bunch of small tanks (because that is all you have avaliable at the start) is part of the challenge. If the game were to consider that to be one tank, you've now circumvented the part count and given yourself a major advantage. Unless you only plan on having the game abstract a stack of tanks into a single unit for the purposes of fuel and joint strength and not part count.

 

[tater]

1 minute ago, Johnny Wishbone said:

I don't disagree with your point (bolded by me), but I do think that changing the stock game the way you suggest would have a major impact on career mode. Part limitations are a big gameplay element in that game mode, and overcoming the issue of having 50% of your part count be a bunch of small tanks (because that is all you have avaliable at the start) is part of the challenge. If the game were to consider that to be one tank, you've now circumvented the part count and given yourself a major advantage. Unless you only plan on having the game abstract a stack of tanks into a single unit for the purposes of fuel and joint strength and not part count.

 

Career is a hot mess, frankly. That "part count" even matters is pretty absurd. Like most other career aspects, it creates the odd situation from a gameplay standpoint where KSP career is at its hardest early in the game.

[Superfluous J]

Just now, tater said:

That "part count" even matters is pretty absurd.

This.

VAB size should restrict rocket size. Only and period. Launch Pad should restrict mass. Only and period.

If you can launch a rocket with 1 thermometer, you should be able to launch one with 8. And if you can launch one with a T-800, you should be able to launch one with 8 T-100s.

[tater]

Preach it, brotha'  

[Temeter]

Well, the part count kinda does force you to be a bit creative and get a feel for how to improve performance...

... but in the ends, it also stiffles creativity in the long run by limiting your tools, making the early game a bit less enjoyable and crazy than it could be.

Edited September 13, 2016 by Temeter

[tater]

If you put 1 FL-T100 directly on top of another, it should "poof!" turn into a FL-T200. If you put 2 more on top of that, poof!, the stack should become a FL-T400, and so forth. With an odd number, it "poofs!" to a single tank when the engine is added (or it could wait, and do one "poof" at the point an engine is added all the time).

You still get "lego," but you'd see that you are in fact building tanks of a given size, and that the small tanks are merely representing a mass of propellants.

 

[Johnny Wishbone]

22 minutes ago, tater said:

Career is a hot mess, frankly. That "part count" even matters is pretty absurd. Like most other career aspects, it creates the odd situation from a gameplay standpoint where KSP career is at its hardest early in the game.

Again, I don't disagree with what you are saying. As someone who pretty much exclusively plays stock career, I couldn't agree more that game mode does leave a lot to be desired, and I wish that those in charge would have spent some of the time between any of the releases since it was introduced listening to the people on this forum. There have been a lot of great suggestions and ideas for ways to improve career mode that have been all but ignored by the devs.

[regex]

4 minutes ago, Johnny Wishbone said:

There have been a lot of great suggestions and ideas for ways to improve career mode that have been all but ignored by the devs.

Because most of the good ideas that actually change career for the better involve scrapping everything that's there and starting fresh. Career is terrible but it's what we have and what we'll continue to have because the workload involved with scrapping everything that's there and starting fresh is enormous this late in development. Career works, after a fashion, to allow everyone to play kind of the way they want without locking other ways of playing out, and that's why it feels so watered-down.

FWIW I was playing an RP-0 campaign up until recently and I hit my own version of a "wall" where I was in a slump waiting for research nodes to finish (KCT). I had some four nodes that would take about two years to finish and I'm not about to waste that time doing nothing because I have to have cash to unlock parts, but doing tons of launches putting satellites into orbit while waiting for solar panels and heat shields to become available just killed it for me. Sure, I could warp through two years and grab some large contracts on the other side to fund part unlocks with the advance but then I have to face things like Test Flight cutting out my first stage engines early because I haven't researched them enough.

That's what career mode looks like when you tack on other things trying to make it meaningful. You can't, but you also can't rewrite a large portion of the game.

[Temeter]

7 minutes ago, regex said:

FWIW I was playing an RP-0 campaign up until recently and I hit my own version of a "wall" where I was in a slump waiting for research nodes to finish (KCT). I had some four nodes that would take about two years to finish and I'm not about to waste that time doing nothing because I have to have cash to unlock parts, but doing tons of launches putting satellites into orbit while waiting for solar panels and heat shields to become available just killed it for me. Sure, I could warp through two years and grab some large contracts on the other side to fund part unlocks with the advance but then I have to face things like Test Flight cutting out my first stage engines early because I haven't researched them enough.

That's what career mode looks like when you tack on other things trying to make it meaningful. You can't, but you also can't rewrite a large portion of the game.

I don't think that's fair. Reasearching things takes time, maybe years, which is what the mods tries to simulate. That has nothing to do with the KSP campaign. In fact, that feature is almost alien to the way stock works.

Edited September 13, 2016 by Temeter

[regex]

Just now, Temeter said:

I don't think that's fair. Reasearching things takes time, maybe years, which has nothing to do with the KSP campaign. In fact, that feature is almost alien to the way stock works.

My point was that you can't tack features on to the stock career to make it good; strange things end up happening.

[Temeter]

1 minute ago, regex said:

My point was that you can't tack features on to the stock career to make it good; strange things end up happening.

Well, the strange things you quoted would happen in any realistic campaign.

[tater]

It's completely interconnected. Any attempt to "fix" career within the current paradigm is bound to fail, IMO. I think it can be incrementally improved, but it's tough to fix. To be fair to the devs, career is hard, period. I have suggested career changes literally starting with my first post here, but it's non-trivial.

One huge problem relating to R&D is that almost everything in KSP actually existed literally simultaneously in RL. The first RTG flew around the same time as the first manned flights. Solar panels were nearly always a thing, etc.

If you were to make a tech tree where parts were arranged in historical order, then perhaps the stock timeline actually makes sense. Day 0, "What's a rocket?" Day 4: "Let's go to the Mun!"

[Temeter]

4 minutes ago, tater said:

It's completely interconnected. Any attempt to "fix" career within the current paradigm is bound to fail, IMO. I think it can be incrementally improved, but it's tough to fix. To be fair to the devs, career is hard, period. I have suggested career changes literally starting with my first post here, but it's non-trivial.

One huge problem relating to R&D is that almost everything in KSP actually existed literally simultaneously in RL. The first RTG flew around the same time as the first manned flights. Solar panels were nearly always a thing, etc.

If you were to make a tech tree where parts were arranged in historical order, then perhaps the stock timeline actually makes sense. Day 0, "What's a rocket?" Day 4: "Let's go to the Mun!"

Day 5 to day 25, "don't bother, they'll pay us anyway"

[regex]

3 minutes ago, Temeter said:

Well, the strange things you quoted would happen in any realistic campaign.

Which is one of the reasons we have the gameplay we have. The player has to fly every launch. Every. Single. Launch. Even in a "stock" RO/RP-0 campaign where you have MechJeb installed and can walk away from the screen for a launch, you still have to take that time. And that's a problem for a meaningful career experience where things take time to complete, because you can end up doing a ton of rote tasks while waiting for realistic progression to happen, which is very draining. Some people may find that engaging but then you've cut out other play styles.

TBH I think Squad should have just stuck with sandbox and added more content rather than try to make a career mode that ended up pleasing no one.

[Nansuchao]

4 minutes ago, regex said:

Which is one of the reasons we have the gameplay we have. The player has to fly every launch. Every. Single. Launch. Even in a "stock" RO/RP-0 campaign where you have MechJeb installed and can walk away from the screen for a launch, you still have to take that time. And that's a problem for a meaningful career experience where things take time to complete, because you can end up doing a ton of rote tasks while waiting for realistic progression to happen, which is very draining. Some people may find that engaging but then you've cut out other play styles.

TBH I think Squad should have just stuck with sandbox and added more content rather than try to make a career mode that ended up pleasing no one.

There was a mod called Routine Mission Manager for those boring, repetitive missions. I don't know if it's still active, but was very interesting for the issues you're talking about. I feel the same boredom sometimes.

[HafCoJoe]

23 minutes ago, regex said:

The player has to fly every launch. Every. Single. Launch. Even in a "stock" RO/RP-0 campaign where you have MechJeb installed and can walk away from the screen for a launch, you still have to take that time. And that's a problem for a meaningful career experience

You know, it's funny you mention that - I've had an idea for career mode (Or a mod) that would let you launch payloads from LKO if you've already launched that tonnage before. 

Like if you've used certain lifter and launch a certain tonnage to LKO, the game would recognize that you've launched that tonnage to LKO and let you load crafts directly from orbit so long as you are using that same lifter and aren't taking up additional volume or mass. Each time you one-up your original launch payload with that craft the LKO launch ceiling would increase, and each time you launch a different rocket it would also recognize how much tonnage and volume you could take with that new rocket. It's kind of hard to explain in text though. Either way though it would eliminate the fly by hand aspect of career. The player would need to do is design the payloads and build bigger lifters when he/she wants to launch bigger payloads. If you're really extravagant you could take it to a new level and launch craft to different S.O.I. if you've been there before. It would make colonization a true concept in KSP. Perhaps even automated and scheduled flights that happen every time the launch requirements are met.

Edited September 13, 2016 by Avera9eJoe

[Hodari]

51 minutes ago, Johnny Wishbone said:

There have been a lot of great suggestions and ideas for ways to improve career mode that have been all but ignored by the devs.

I highly doubt that they have IGNORED them.  If anything, the problem could be partly just the fact that there ARE so many different ideas.  Even among the people who are unhappy with the current career system(which certainly isn't everyone), there are dozens of different mutually exclusive ideas on how it SHOULD be done.  So how do they choose which one to go with?  They could pick one and spend a lot of time implementing it and STILL find out that most of the people are unhappy with the new system.  Maybe they're just focusing on other issues first and hoping that a more clear consensus will emerge, not only on IF it should be fixed in the first place, but HOW.

[tater]

1 hour ago, regex said:

Which is one of the reasons we have the gameplay we have. The player has to fly every launch. Every. Single. Launch. Even in a "stock" RO/RP-0 campaign where you have MechJeb installed and can walk away from the screen for a launch, you still have to take that time. And that's a problem for a meaningful career experience where things take time to complete, because you can end up doing a ton of rote tasks while waiting for realistic progression to happen, which is very draining. Some people may find that engaging but then you've cut out other play styles.

TBH I think Squad should have just stuck with sandbox and added more content rather than try to make a career mode that ended up pleasing no one.

Yeah, likely true, I think. I honestly think that for there to be a "management" type game, where you drive a program, the kerbals need to be able to do stuff completely alone. Design, and self-fly test rockets, or do KCT type "simulations," then when you set a launch, it just happens, and does what it is supposed to, or they have a failure for whatever reason, then you deal with that. Minus that. it's not really management.

[Ignath]

7 hours ago, Arsonide said:

The official addons were updated for 1.1.

Thanks for the correction Arsonide, I missed that announcement.

[basic.syntax]

I like the building-blocks / lego game mechanic, and I have enjoyed the career-mode puzzle solving challenge of achieving an objective on a limited parts budget. But I also like 5th's idea of perhaps removing part count limits and keeping the "more logical" size and mass limits. Progression would be smoother if the still-missing Tier 0 was completed.

[Terwin]

46 minutes ago, Hodari said:

I highly doubt that they have IGNORED them.  If anything, the problem could be partly just the fact that there ARE so many different ideas.  Even among the people who are unhappy with the current career system(which certainly isn't everyone), there are dozens of different mutually exclusive ideas on how it SHOULD be done.  So how do they choose which one to go with?  They could pick one and spend a lot of time implementing it and STILL find out that most of the people are unhappy with the new system.  Maybe they're just focusing on other issues first and hoping that a more clear consensus will emerge, not only on IF it should be fixed in the first place, but HOW.

I consider several of the recent improvements to be primarily for the benefit of progression in career, starting back with ISRU, and including Kerbnet, Probe science storage, and antenna range additions in 1.2.

The biome improvements are only really relevant for Science and Career as well. 

 

Career mode includes more than just the contracts and strategies after all...

[Hodari]

2 minutes ago, Terwin said:

I consider several of the recent improvements to be primarily for the benefit of progression in career, starting back with ISRU, and including Kerbnet, Probe science storage, and antenna range additions in 1.2.

The biome improvements are only really relevant for Science and Career as well. 

 

Career mode includes more than just the contracts and strategies after all...

Also good points, though I think the contracts, strategies, and tech tree progression are the main parts of career mode that people seem to have issues with.  But yes, all of those things will make career more interesting.