Why weren't the part upgrades included for the old parts?

[regex]

Seriously, this is such a cool feature I have to wonder why it was left out of this release. It's not like it couldn't have been done for the existing engines that will eventually get the new assets, all the stuff is right there.

Basically, in case you've been living under a rock (even I, Mr. I-Can't-Be-Bothered-To-Load-The-Game-This-Month, downloaded and checked it out), Porkjet's current grab-bag of re-styled assets was released presumably to show off what has been done (it's amazing) while also serving to showcase the new part upgrade system (it's amazing).

Here's an Imgur album that kind of shows off the system. I checked out the part config files to see how it was managed, created a new career, cheated in a ton of science, and then followed the upgrade path. You'll also notice that the craft file includes the upgrades used.

http://imgur.com/a/Ipy3A

So yeah, it's working for the LV-T range, that could have been included in this release, it's purely config changes. For that matter, the art assets in the pack could have been included in this release as well because damn does my Saturn Ib thing look awesome. Only problem with it is that you can't specify the upgrades in sandbox (which makes me sad).

Edited September 15, 2016 by regex

[Wallygator]

I completely agree with your question. 

This is a fantastic update (1.2). Really fantastic. The new parts? Fantastic. 

Not including them? No so fantastic. I do not understand the decision surrounding it. Unless it now remains a development scheme that will no longer be followed internally (sorry that was a guess not theory). 

At the very least a clear note regarding plans for inclusion. 

In the other hand we are still on "pre-release so there's that. 

So on this entire effort I give them a 9 out of 10. That last 1 is because of parts. 

Include parts in final release and fix remaining bugs... 11 for 10

tl;dr: I also don't know what they are thinking. 

[Superfluous J]

I've been going under the assumption that it was a last-minute thing that didn't pass QA, possibly simply because they didn't have time to test it. So they cut it and plan to put it in later. Alternatively, they didn't want one set of engines to be upgradeable while the others were not, so decided to wait until they had configs they liked for ALL engines.

I too am totally jazzed for this, even though I've not played with it yet.

[regex]

The UI could also use some work, both in areas of information presentation and also by adding a selector for sandbox play. Or for sandbox just maxing the upgrade value; there's no real "historical" reason like with, say, an 8D75 versus a 14D21. Still, this is an amazing new development for science/career and it should be in the game NAO.

[Deddly]

Wouldn't a new mechanic like part upgrades greatly affect game balance? I imagine something like that would require a considerable amount of tweaking and playtesting, and would only work properly if all engines had the upgrade mechanic applied to them. I personally feel it would feel rather odd to only be able to upgrade some of the parts.

I'm happy to wait until it's finished.

[Corw]

Well, maybe they plan to add whole set at once in single update. The ones we got as mod are just subset that was good enough to show, rest is not finished.

Edited September 15, 2016 by Corw

[Twreed87]

This actually makes sense to me. This is likely the next big project, but it's nowhere near ready for all parts, or to be fully implemented. Instead of putting an incomplete feature in the main update, they allow those who are interested to seek it out and play with it early. I think it's a great idea and can't wait for 1.3 (presumably).

[Bloody_looser]

I like the upgrade feature, hopefully it'll make into stock. It'll definitely add depth for building craft series and generations.

 

Since it's tied to .craft file, there's no problem with craft-sharing too.

Some decals (like a letter in the model number or smth) for upgraded engines would be nice though, to cut the guesswork on the screenshot - whether it's a simple LVN or 'Legendary LVN of Mighty Thrust'. 

 

 

[Streetwind]

It's honestly quite apparent that the feature is just not done yet. The "show upgraded stats" button is a silly crutch solution around not being able to display the stats dynamically in the editor info windows where they belong, and Squad hopefully knows it. You can't really release something like this.

I'm fairly sure that this is intimately tied to the rocket part revamp - why would Squad go through every single part of the game right now, if they have a total revamp coming up anyway? I urge people not to underestimate the amount of work that would go into this kind of thing. I'm a tinkerer at heart, I spend more time tweaking KSP than playing it. And I've made my own engine capability upgrades in the past. Believe me when i say: drafting stats, checking cross-part balance, determining tech tree placement and all that jazz... that isn't a ten-minute-per-part affair. if you want to do it right, expect to put multiple hours into every single part - and when you're done, be ready to review the entire thing as a whole, throw out half of it, and start over.

Let's not go and grill Squad over this, okay? They decided to give us something that wasn't ready for primetime yet, just because they felt like we players would enjoy the sneak peek. But if the immediate results of this are complaints and completely unrealistic demands, this may have been the first and the last time they ever do that.

[Wallygator]

1 hour ago, Streetwind said:

It's honestly quite apparent that the feature is just not done yet. The "show upgraded stats" button is a silly crutch solution around not being able to display the stats dynamically in the editor info windows where they belong, and Squad hopefully knows it. You can't really release something like this.

I'm fairly sure that this is intimately tied to the rocket part revamp - why would Squad go through every single part of the game right now, if they have a total revamp coming up anyway? I urge people not to underestimate the amount of work that would go into this kind of thing. I'm a tinkerer at heart, I spend more time tweaking KSP than playing it. And I've made my own engine capability upgrades in the past. Believe me when i say: drafting stats, checking cross-part balance, determining tech tree placement and all that jazz... that isn't a ten-minute-per-part affair. if you want to do it right, expect to put multiple hours into every single part - and when you're done, be ready to review the entire thing as a whole, throw out half of it, and start over.

Let's not go and grill Squad over this, okay? They decided to give us something that wasn't ready for primetime yet, just because they felt like we players would enjoy the sneak peek. But if the immediate results of this are complaints and completely unrealistic demands, this may have been the first and the last time they ever do that.

Fair enough.  A reasonable statement.

I attribute this all the inadequate planning, insufficient resource and poor communications - all typical of just about any large project at some point in its life-cycle.

Still, it makes sense to communicate back our interest, sadness, frustration, etc. in objective critical ways...  Just excusing it all because it was too difficult in the last few weeks doesn't cut it in other industries.  Also, user/customer complaints and requirements are always unrealistic at some point.  Squad should know this already. They appear to be (mostly) grown ups ;-)  but they are yet to display (IMO) proficient customer base expectation management. However, I temper this comment with the fact that much (nearly all?) of the team has departed and we have a large cadre of new folks applying their own stamp on the overall development and user community management process.

Frankly, I would have preferred Squad to included this very small set of parts in the pre-release, fully integrated. (So what if it took an extra 2 weeks?)  Let 'Users" kick the tires and feed back on the intended features with the explicit communicated position that the decision to include, exclude or expand them will be made based on results.  I say this because I still have not been able to implement them correctly to experience the "upgradeability" they supposedly exhibit. "Here's a part file with no instruction or background", available to everyone and anyone, expecting usable feedback from the wider-community (people who are not keen on coding or 3d modelling) is weird from my perspective

That is not a dig at your above comment (which I feel is constructive), but rather wider attitudes in general.

Edited September 15, 2016 by Wallygator

[Sharpy]

I believe the problem is gameplay balancing. The looks of the parts are fine, but they all contain some buffs or nerfs of stats, and these may or may not be welcome - and may or may not need adjustment to make for a balanced gameplay. This is to be determined by a lot of playtesting - which would delay 1.2. Instead, they're going to release 1.2 as a serious bugfix / game engine update, and push the parts to, say, 1.2.1, which would be a purely parts update not breaking any compatibility, not requiring modders' attention and providing quality, tested and BALANCED new parts.

[Frozen_Heart]

Woah. That looks amazing! Would mirror the improvements we see in engines and fuel tanks in real life and allow the same launch vehicle to be constantly improved over time. (look at the Falcon 9)

 

Would also solve the issue of making parts balanced for career and sandbox. In career at the start 1.25m parts are meant to be pretty poor, but it would be nice for them to improve as the game goes on so you still have a reason to build smaller launch vehicles.

[regex]

7 hours ago, Streetwind said:

It's honestly quite apparent that the feature is just not done yet.

Another week or two would have done it, it's not that far off from complete.

7 hours ago, Streetwind said:

Let's not go and grill Squad over this, okay?

Oh, you think I should grill them over this? Do I need to step up my game?

[Mikki]

8 minutes ago, regex said:

Another week or two would have done it, it's not that far off from complete.

Oh, you think I should grill them over this? Do I need to step up my game?

maybe we must start seriously worshipping Mr. Porkjet as our new, one and only, gracefull and loving, kerbal, god of teasing.

[Superfluous J]

Can you - in the VAB - set what "level" you want the item to be at? Can you intentionally downgrade a specific engine after purchasing the upgrade in R&D?

I ask for 2 reasons:

1. It'd be nice to be able to recreate someone else's rocket without access to a craft file, or test a specific engine level in Sandbox. If you can't select the level, You'd have to start a new science/career game, cheat in the necessary currency/currencies, research the proper nodes, then build the rocket. This seems a bit clunky when all you want to know is "what would have happened if I ran this engine before doing that upgrade?.
2. The ability to modify parts' stats in-editor is a large step toward something Squad said they'd never do, but has actually done a few times in the past. I don't want to give it away but it rhymes with schmrocedural schmarts.

[Armisael]

You can only use the version of the part you've currently unlocked. In sandbox you get the base version of the part - no upgrades at all. I'm still not sure how I feel about upgradeable parts in general, but the current system is clearly not ready for even beta release (not by KSP beta standard at least - the term beta has become rather devalued over the last decade). I'm also very thankful that they didn't hold up literally everything else to get that system sorted out.

6 hours ago, Wallygator said:

I attribute this all the inadequate planning, insufficient resource and poor communications - all typical of just about any large project at some point in its life-cycle.

Still, it makes sense to communicate back our interest, sadness, frustration, etc. in objective critical ways...  Just excusing it all because it was too difficult in the last few weeks doesn't cut it in other industries.  Also, user/customer complaints and requirements are always unrealistic at some point.  Squad should know this already. They appear to be (mostly) grown ups ;-)  but they are yet to display (IMO) proficient customer base expectation management.

Were you expecting these parts in 1.2? They were excruciatingly clear that these parts wouldn't be making it into the update. The fact that we got even a peek at them through a mod is already more than expected.

Edited September 15, 2016 by Armisael

[regex]

17 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

It'd be nice to be able to recreate someone else's rocket without access to a craft file, or test a specific engine level in Sandbox. If you can't select the level, You'd have to start a new science/career game, cheat in the necessary currency/currencies, research the proper nodes, then build the rocket. This seems a bit clunky when all you want to know is "what would have happened if I ran this engine before doing that upgrade?.

Yeah, that's definitely missing.

Quote

1. The ability to modify parts' stats in-editor is a large step toward something Squad said they'd never do, but has actually done a few times in the past. I don't want to give it away but it rhymes with schmrocedural schmarts.

Oh you.

You're not really editing the "stats", you'd be setting an upgrade level (I suppose you could call it "editing", but I see it more like choosing whether to have a shroud or not). Incidentally this is a very "Real Fuels"-ey mechanic, anyone who's played RO is familiar with it. It allows the modder to wrap several different engine variants into one part.

Edited September 15, 2016 by regex

[Corona688]

9 hours ago, Wallygator said:

This is a fantastic update (1.2). Really fantastic. The new parts? Fantastic. 

Not including them? No so fantastic. I do not understand the decision surrounding it. Unless it now remains a development scheme that will no longer be followed internally (sorry that was a guess not theory).

The new parts are different in more than just appearance.  The LV909 now includes integrated tanks, for example.  I suspect save incompatibility.

[Superfluous J]

1 minute ago, regex said:

Oh you.

1 minute ago, regex said:

You're not really editing the "stats", you'd be setting an upgrade level (I suppose you could call it "editing", but I see it more like choosing whether to have a shroud or not).

Yeah but imagine an "upgrade" for "liquid fuel only in LFO tanks," just to name the most glaringly obvious place where this would be useful.

[Wallygator]

11 minutes ago, Armisael said:

They were excruciatingly clear that these parts wouldn't be making it into the update.

Better not bring it up.  Many might disagree even if their disagreement may appear unfounded.

[Armisael]

From the devnotes a week before the 1.2 prerelease:

On 9/6/2016 at 8:03 PM, SQUAD said:

Furthermore, Nestor has some exciting news about the engine parts Chris was working on previously. If you haven’t seen these parts, well… they look awesome! Unfortunately, these parts didn’t make it to this release, but we know you are excited about them and the good news is that we will be releasing these files for you to add them to your creative inventory. Go nuts and show us what parts you can build with these great 3d assets!

I don't know how much more clarity you could possibly want.

[regex]

13 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

Yeah but imagine an "upgrade" for "liquid fuel only in LFO tanks," just to name the most glaringly obvious place where this would be useful.

Tank content switching in stock would be amazing.

[Corona688]

I think Squad should have kept their mouths shut about the new parts.  In all the anger about porkjet being "held back" we're forgetting everything we hated in 1.1:  Jinky wheels.  Glitchy physics.  Poor performance.  In short -- nearly all the stuff 1.2 fixes.  If they have to break compatibility, it's nice to have the fixes first.

Edited September 15, 2016 by Corona688

[regex]

6 minutes ago, Corona688 said:

I think Squad should have kept their mouths shut about the new parts.  In all the anger about porkjet being "held back" we're forgetting everything we hated in 1.1:  Jinky wheels.  Glitchy physics.  Poor performance.  In short -- nearly all the stuff 1.2 fixes.  If they have to break compatibility, it's nice to have the fixes first.

So, wait, you want to rebuild everything again twice? Because you can bet everyone's going to be rebuilding after all these fixes, and then they'll rebuild again after all the new parts come out.

Do you think ...

Does Squad want us to rebuild everything every update?

[Superfluous J]

1 minute ago, regex said:

Does Squad want us to rebuild everything every update?

Want? No. Not mind? Probably. Willing to? Most definitely.

Personally, I want to have to do it.

(Note: While I implied it would work with my phrasing, do not try to splice my words into the above sentence in place of "want" unless you're trying for for the most rudimentary of amusements.)