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Kerbal Space Program: Making History Expansion Grand Discussion thread.


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1 hour ago, GungaDin said:

To reframe my question then - IF the Historic parts are available from career mode then I'm hoping to play a career with just historic parts.  I guess we'll all see by the end of March then... 

I'm with you... and, to judge by your avatar, you're probably as excited by the KerSoviet (or whatever) parts as I am!   :cool:

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Yea Max - I've been a space history enthusiast since the first Gemini flights when I was in 4th grade so this is all pretty exciting for me.  I pretty much suck at math but when I found out that you could calculate trajectories and even orbits using equations I hit the books.  Never ended up in an aerospace job but I did write a complete lunar lander program in Fortran on punch cards.  Sold 3 printouts of the program on paper through an ad I placed in Sky And Telescope.  Then discovered model rocketry and so KSP is a dream for this old guy.

 

 

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11 hours ago, Zuthor said:

Not sure if this has been asked before but will the new DLC also effect Career? Like will the tech tree be expanded for the new parts and career contracts based on the new items?

At the very least the DLC will act as a parts pack mod for career, so all the new pods should become possibilities for rescues, and the parts should be come possibilities for 'recover part X' contracts.

Also, the parts were mentioned as going into the tech tree, but I do not recall any mention of if there will be new nodes for them or not.

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 3/17/2017 at 10:16 PM, Tex said:

So far, I'm actually quite impressed with the responses. More people than I would have expected seem to welcome the announcement, and I personally think that it is a good step to take. Their new content looks awesome!

Sucks that I bought the game two months AFTER when they said all DLC would be free for ;.;

Mmm,me too

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Will the new DLC contain any parts from the Chinese space program? I have been following that program and it is arguable their organisation has been one of, if not the most, active in the world with regards to things like putting things in orbit and sending probes to the moon.

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Hey friends... Looks like the new DLC Squad and Take Two have been working on is nearly upon us. I have a few strong feelings about this, so I thought I'd write them down in a post here to clear my system, and maybe even initiate some discussion in the replies below if I don't embarrass myself with a miscommunication :P

Just a couple disclaimers first, I'm not here to bad-mouth anyone who is looking forward to purchasing the DLC. Your game, your choice :) Second, I'm not here to accuse Squad or Take Two of anything or to unfairly criticize them, I feel like they've worked hard on this and have outdone themselves both with features and visuals once again. And third, this is just for me to put my thoughts down. I'm not asking for any trouble or trying to give some to anybody.

So- onto the topic at hand. I was initially wary about the whole idea of there even being separately purchased DLC for reasons that become obvious when looking at some "Tripe-A" titles of the last decade. We all know that Squad is a good team though, and even if I had a few reservations about a third party acquiring KSP at first, I've come to accept Take Two as very trustworthy with this awesome project kept afloat by such a lively and friendly community.

Now, I'm not big on marketing or software design, so if the rest of this sounds like I'm pulling words out of a hat it's likely because I am. Call me paranoid or pessimistic, but Kerbal Space Program, while still an arguably obscure videogame, seems to be falling into the trap of divide-and-conquer style exclusive content. One of the great things that has kept Kerbal Space Program relevant and alive for so many years is the endless sea of community-made plug-ins and add-ons that allowed users to almost limitlessly modify their gameplay experience and do things that would be impossible with the limits of the development capabilities and interests of Squad. While one player could be sending Bill to the Mun in a cardboard box, another could be flying Valentina from the real-world planet Earth to Alpha Centauri  by collecting the energy from an artificial microscopic black hole, the beautiful thing would be that these two are playing the exact same game. Look up a video on YouTube about circularizing into a polar orbit around Ike with a 900-ton SSTO passenger spaceplane? No problem, if they are using mods just install for free (or a modest donation to the modmaker if you can afford it (i love you, modding community :D)) or see if it can be done without the mod!

Unfortunately DLC can make this a lot more complicated. The player community now becomes divided, and with enough DLCs even alienated from each other.

"Does anyone have any tips for making an Eeloo lander?"

-"Using the Soyuz DLC or the Curiosity+Pallas pre-order Combo Package?"

"I play in stock."

And this is just for casual players. Modding will become a nightmare, plug-ins will not only need to be updated to be compatible with updates on the base game but potentially with DLC content as well. It is almost without question that some modders will either abandon or avoid compatibility maintenance for anything but the core game. Worse yet, perhaps a very useful and interesting mod comes along but for whatever reason it only works side-by-side with a particular DLC, and immediately tons of players are barred from downloading something that would be free if not for the fact that they cannot afford or are not interested in said DLC.

Speaking of which, I am thoroughly impressed with the dev team's work on the mission maker in Making History. I have been learning SideFX Houdini as of late which uses similar UI structure and it makes me happy that more and more software is using node-based programming. However, I am admittedly disappointed in the decision to allocate resources to creating historical parts. Don't get me wrong, the DLC parts are incredibly well-made and beautifully textured as usual, but I feel this was the job that the modding community had been taking care of for a very long time already, with countless add-ons already featuring similar parts. Spending so much time on replicating early space missions as a part of the stock game seems almost... dry. Part of the fun of stock KSP was that the parts you had at your disposal were vaguely similar to motors and pods and tanks used in real life but with their own design of originality to them, so that any replica mission you carry out will automatically have its own Kerbal twist to it, which is really charming. If you'll all allow me the liberty of ignoring the other features (since mission-making will likely be a relatively niche endeavor), charging $15 for something that can be acquired for free through mods seems a bit cheap on Squad's part. However I have a lot of respect for the KSP development team and doubt they would consciously stoop to the level of Electronic Arts. While Ubisoft is driven by greed, Squad is driven by passion, and that is what makes KSP so different from other big game titles. The devs are loving of their work, but they are not stupid. Money is definitely a consideration to be had, and I am by no means forgetting that. Everyone's gotta eat, of course. Like I said before, I am not big on marketing and I don't know much about Squad's planning, but I do bear some concern for the future of Kerbal Space Program's reputation as a game held in the palm of its community rather than grasped by the fist of a company.

 

Perhaps I am fulfilling a certain role in the story of Chicken Little... this was mainly a disorganized ramble now that I look back at it. Feels better now that I'm posting it though :)

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So, without DLC, what would you suggest that Squad/Take-2 do to make money?  It's a given that if there is no money coming in, there won't be any more updates or support

Modders won't have too much to worry about, since the DLC really looks like another mod.  As long as a mod doesn't touch the DLC code, there won't be anything to worry about.

Regarding the community, the problem you mention is already here, in that someone asks the question and the return question is "what mods".  There really isn't any difference, and the DLC is cheap enough that I suspect that many if not most people will eventually purchase it.

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I agree with the linux $15 is not an awful lot of money, given how many hours people plow into this game. And I think that Squad are clever enough to develop the base game and DLCs in parallel so that the base game experience is well worth its own purchase price and that it is well understood by everybody that the it is the base game which is the target for modding.

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1 hour ago, b0ss said:

 If you'll all allow me the liberty of ignoring the other features (since mission-making will likely be a relatively niche endeavor), charging $15 for something that can be acquired for free through mods seems a bit cheap on Squad's part.

You raise some good points. I'm not sure the above statement really works though. The DLC is offering an experience - you can create and play through historical missions. To support this they are providing a bunch of new historical analog parts. It's well thought out and you can't really consider the $15 price without including the Mission Builder.

If you're not planning on using Mission Builder and you're happy with mod parts then save your $15 - or buy it anyway to support Squad and help ensure more development in the future. If this DLC doesn't sell well it could put a real damper on further investment. :)

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Thanks for the thoughtful discussion, @b0ss.  I totally get the concerns, and yeah, it's something worth keeping an eye on.

However, just because something's potentially concerning doesn't mean it will actually be much of one in practice.  Time will tell.  Here are a few thoughts of my own, speaking as a player and a modder myself.

2 hours ago, b0ss said:

Unfortunately DLC can make this a lot more complicated. The player community now becomes divided, and with enough DLCs even alienated from each other.

Depends a lot on what the DLC is, and also what the market penetration is.  If the large majority of KSP players fit into one "camp" (e.g. almost everyone has the DLC, or almost no one does), then there's not much of an issue because the asker and answerer are likely as not to be in the same "camp" as each other.  But even if there's not... an asker can simply say what their requirements are.  "Hi,  I'm playing stock-only, does anyone have a recommendation for an Eeloo lander?"

Or, "Hi, I'm playing stock, plus Making History, plus <some list of mods>, how about an Eeloo lander?"

I don't think it makes that much of a difference, really.  From what they've shown of Making History, for example, I don't see anything that's massively game-changing in terms of gameplay.  Some new tank sizes and shapes, some new engine sizes and shapes.  It seems unlikely to me to be a big problem where people who don't have the DLC will have trouble getting answers to their questions, particularly if they state any constraints up front.

Really, I think we've already been pretty well inoculated against this sort of thing already: there are so many mods out there (and have been for years), with so many players using them, that we're already used to the idea of different players approaching the game with different sets of mods or whatever, and the community has managed to maintain itself intact with no problems.  When you think about it, Making History is basically just another mod.  It simply happens to be one that costs money, that a substantial fraction of the population is likely to use.

But I don't see how that's really any different from, say, giving "how to get to orbit" advice in a world where a large segment of the population runs MechJeb and a large segment doesn't.  We've all gotten along fine up to now, I don't see any particular cause for alarm to think that will suddenly fall apart because of the existence of DLC.

 

2 hours ago, b0ss said:

Modding will become a nightmare, plug-ins will not only need to be updated to be compatible with updates on the base game but potentially with DLC content as well.

Again, the devil's in the details.  You can speculate about imaginary DLCs that haven't been announced yet that would cause problems for modders... but that's just borrowing trouble, so let's keep it real by just considering the only DLC yet announced, which is Making History.

And, speaking as a modder... I see no trouble whatsoever with Making History being out there.  It's a non-issue.

What does Making History have in it, taken for all in all?

  • Missions (the ability to design and play them)
  • A bunch of new parts

That's it.  How does that interfere with me as a modder?  None of that will have even the slightest effect on any of the mods I've written.  It may give me new opportunities-- for example, I have my IndicatorLights mod, which adds little indicators to various parts, and I'll want to add some config to decorate the new Making History parts with them too, sure.  But that's because I want to, not because I have to-- if I didn't, it wouldn't break any of the functionality I already have.  And it's exactly the same work I would have had to do if they'd included all those parts in the stock game rather than making it DLC.  The fact that it's packaged as DLC makes not one whit of difference to me, as a modder.

And then there's the brand-new functionality stuff, the mission builder.  Well, a modder might want to go and write a mod that tinkers with that.  But, again... doesn't really matter that it's a DLC.  The modder writes code that works with the product that ships, and that's it.

Is it, in principle, possible that there could be some combinatoric grouping of possible DLCs that could complicate life for modders?  Sure, in principle, I guess.  However, nothing I've seen so far gives me even the slightest cause for alarm.  KSP is already game with a rich ecosystem of mods out there, and people who write mods often need to deal with other mods (e.g. producing compatibility patches, where appropriate).

We already have a fairly well-defined process for doing this kind of stuff, and frankly, dealing with DLC from a professional developer (where they've got a well-defined release cycle and have to keep things stable and backwards-compatible and all sorts of other stuff that mod authors don't have to worry about) seems to me to be easier than dealing with mods from Random Cool Mod Author.

2 hours ago, b0ss said:

Worse yet, perhaps a very useful and interesting mod comes along but for whatever reason it only works side-by-side with a particular DLC, and immediately tons of players are barred from downloading something that would be free if not for the fact that they cannot afford or are not interested in said DLC.

I think that's fairly unlikely.  And even if it were to happen, it seems like a self-correcting problem:  if there's a major need for a large chunk of the gameplaying population that's going unfulfilled, somebody's going to get around to writing a mod to address that.

Again:  hypotheticals aren't real.  If we start from "What's the worst possible thing that could hypothetically happen?", then of course we'll be able to come up with extremely scary scenarios.  But that's not super productive, and we'll likely end up scaring ourselves over stuff that never happens.

A much more productive approach is to consider actual examples.  Can you come up with one that seems plausible?  It's okay if it's imaginary, but get specific.  Give an exact example of a hypothetical DLC, and what problems you think that might cause in terms of compatibility.

I'm having trouble thinking of one, myself.  Because what DLC generally does is add new stuff to the game.  Any given mod will either work just fine in stock-- in which case everyone can use it-- or else a mod is focused on working with some specific thing from a DLC (e.g. a mod for the mission builder in Making History), in which case the mod is completely irrelevant to anyone who doesn't have that DLC and therefore won't be missed.

I'm having real trouble thinking of an example in which anyone gets left out in the cold because they need a mod and they can't get one because DLC.  Doesn't mean one doesn't exist, just that I'm having trouble thinking of one off the top of my head.  :)  Got some example ideas?

2 hours ago, b0ss said:

Don't get me wrong, the DLC parts are incredibly well-made and beautifully textured as usual, but I feel this was the job that the modding community had been taking care of for a very long time already, with countless add-ons already featuring similar parts. Spending so much time on replicating early space missions as a part of the stock game seems almost... dry. Part of the fun of stock KSP was that the parts you had at your disposal were vaguely similar to motors and pods and tanks used in real life but with their own design of originality to them, so that any replica mission you carry out will automatically have its own Kerbal twist to it, which is really charming. If you'll all allow me the liberty of ignoring the other features (since mission-making will likely be a relatively niche endeavor), charging $15 for something that can be acquired for free through mods seems a bit cheap on Squad's part.

A fair point.  Though, the fact that it's "official" actually makes things nicer from a modder's / player's perspective, because it means it's likely to be adopted widely enough to get good support from modders.

To take the example of my own IndicatorLights mod I mentioned earlier.  There are a bunch of new parts in Making History, some of which are appropriate for decorating with the sort of indicators I have in IndicatorLights.  So of course I'm going to instrument them, so that anyone who uses IndicatorLights will get all the extra goodness on the new Making History parts.  :)  ...But there are lots and lots of excellent parts mods out there, which I haven't bothered to add compatibility patches to, simply because I don't have the time and I don't happen to use those mods (and in many cases may not even have heard of them).

So if nothing else, the existence of DLC does provide the opportunity to have at least a somewhat-standardized set of "official mods" that are likely to get a higher level of support from the modding community than Random Modder's Mod would.

 

I could be wrong about any or all of the foregoing, of course.  :)  But, my initial reaction is one of cautious optimism.  I'm not seeing any particular cause for alarm, and I see no reason to assume the worst without some sort of concrete indications thereof.

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There are few people writing mods for Colossal Cave Adventure. I say few, because Pcgamer and Cnet are still writing articles about it as recently as Dec. 12, 2017, so I do not doubt that there are people who are. But technology progresses. If KSP had said 'we are done, this is the last platform', the audience for the game would slowly diminish. The graphics and physics engine would quickly become quaint. No new potential modders would be inspired about what could be done. It would end up being a bunch of old people like me

STANDING AT THE END OF A ROAD BEFORE A SMALL BRICK BUILDING.
AROUND YOU IS A FOREST.  A SMALL STREAM FLOWS OUT OF THE BUILDING AND
DOWN A GULLY.

As far as I can tell, KSP is leaving all the hooks in place for modders to exploit.  They even tell you how to handle skins and colors. All the congfig files are still plain text. But if they can make money, they can continue to upgrade to the latest version of Unity and particle effects, or maybe an even better engine when Unity becomes quiant. They can still continue to inspire the next generation of modders

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I also can see some cross over though with some mods making life difficult.  The launch sites is a good example with KK - or maybe part failures with dang it.  If part failures are only dlc and not 1.4.x then supporting both is going to be a hassle.  Will launch sites and part failures be available in career mode as well or just with mission builder mode? 

My two cents.

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22 minutes ago, theJesuit said:

I also can see some cross over though with some mods making life difficult.  The launch sites is a good example with KK - or maybe part failures with dang it.  If part failures are only dlc and not 1.4.x then supporting both is going to be a hassle.  Will launch sites and part failures be available in career mode as well or just with mission builder mode? 

I expect things to play nice; just because a stock mission can now cause a part failure doesn't mean a mod can't. The variant switcher doesn't interfere with Procedural Parts, for example.

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6 hours ago, Gorman said:

I agree with the linux $15 is not an awful lot of money, given how many hours people plow into this game. And I think that Squad are clever enough to develop the base game and DLCs in parallel so that the base game experience is well worth its own purchase price and that it is well understood by everybody that the it is the base game which is the target for modding.

Plus Squad has left the game wide open for modders and will continue from what i understand. I have donated more money to modders than what the DLC cost. alot more actually.

and the more squad adds to the game, the less dependent we are in needing certain mods. What i mean is, we can have less mods for gameplay.

 

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Could someone please remind me: 

Is everyone with KSP getting the new DLC craft parts (engines etc) even if they don't buy the DLC i.e. will buying the DLC just provide the mission-setting feature?

Edited by Foxster
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4 hours ago, HebaruSan said:

I expect things to play nice; just because a stock mission can now cause a part failure doesn't mean a mod can't. The variant switcher doesn't interfere with Procedural Parts, for example.

So in a non DLC 1.4 career, parts can fail?  Great!  Thanks for clearing that up :)

Peace.

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12 hours ago, linuxgurugamer said:

So, without DLC, what would you suggest that Squad/Take-2 do to make money?  It's a given that if there is no money coming in, there won't be any more updates or support

Squad hasn't had much problem hiking up the price of the game in the past for reasons like this. Most games made with this quality and effort cost around $60. Maybe they can take up a small sponsorship or something. Like I said I don't know anything about marketing.

12 hours ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Regarding the community, the problem you mention is already here, in that someone asks the question and the return question is "what mods".  There really isn't any difference, and the DLC is cheap enough that I suspect that many if not most people will eventually purchase it.

Not necessarily. It usually comes as a given that when someone asks a question about the game they are playing full stock. If Squad releases console exclusives, pre-orders bonuses, etc. then hundreds of players will become unable to help each other or communicate fully about the game.

11 hours ago, Tyko said:

You raise some good points. I'm not sure the above statement really works though. The DLC is offering an experience - you can create and play through historical missions. To support this they are providing a bunch of new historical analog parts. It's well thought out and you can't really consider the $15 price without including the Mission Builder.

If you're not planning on using Mission Builder and you're happy with mod parts then save your $15 - or buy it anyway to support Squad and help ensure more development in the future. If this DLC doesn't sell well it could put a real damper on further investment. :)

I agree with all of that. However my concern is mainly about what Making History will do to the community, and not so much the game.

10 hours ago, Snark said:

Thanks for the thoughtful discussion, @b0ss.  I totally get the concerns, and yeah, it's something worth keeping an eye on.

However, just because something's potentially concerning doesn't mean it will actually be much of one in practice.  Time will tell.  Here are a few thoughts of my own, speaking as a player and a modder myself.

Depends a lot on what the DLC is, and also what the market penetration is.  If the large majority of KSP players fit into one "camp" (e.g. almost everyone has the DLC, or almost no one does), then there's not much of an issue because the asker and answerer are likely as not to be in the same "camp" as each other.  But even if there's not... an asker can simply say what their requirements are.  "Hi,  I'm playing stock-only, does anyone have a recommendation for an Eeloo lander?"

Or, "Hi, I'm playing stock, plus Making History, plus <some list of mods>, how about an Eeloo lander?"

I don't think it makes that much of a difference, really.  From what they've shown of Making History, for example, I don't see anything that's massively game-changing in terms of gameplay.  Some new tank sizes and shapes, some new engine sizes and shapes.  It seems unlikely to me to be a big problem where people who don't have the DLC will have trouble getting answers to their questions, particularly if they state any constraints up front.

Really, I think we've already been pretty well inoculated against this sort of thing already: there are so many mods out there (and have been for years), with so many players using them, that we're already used to the idea of different players approaching the game with different sets of mods or whatever, and the community has managed to maintain itself intact with no problems.  When you think about it, Making History is basically just another mod.  It simply happens to be one that costs money, that a substantial fraction of the population is likely to use.

But I don't see how that's really any different from, say, giving "how to get to orbit" advice in a world where a large segment of the population runs MechJeb and a large segment doesn't.  We've all gotten along fine up to now, I don't see any particular cause for alarm to think that will suddenly fall apart because of the existence of DLC.

 

Again, the devil's in the details.  You can speculate about imaginary DLCs that haven't been announced yet that would cause problems for modders... but that's just borrowing trouble, so let's keep it real by just considering the only DLC yet announced, which is Making History.

And, speaking as a modder... I see no trouble whatsoever with Making History being out there.  It's a non-issue.

What does Making History have in it, taken for all in all?

  • Missions (the ability to design and play them)
  • A bunch of new parts

That's it.  How does that interfere with me as a modder?  None of that will have even the slightest effect on any of the mods I've written.  It may give me new opportunities-- for example, I have my IndicatorLights mod, which adds little indicators to various parts, and I'll want to add some config to decorate the new Making History parts with them too, sure.  But that's because I want to, not because I have to-- if I didn't, it wouldn't break any of the functionality I already have.  And it's exactly the same work I would have had to do if they'd included all those parts in the stock game rather than making it DLC.  The fact that it's packaged as DLC makes not one whit of difference to me, as a modder.

And then there's the brand-new functionality stuff, the mission builder.  Well, a modder might want to go and write a mod that tinkers with that.  But, again... doesn't really matter that it's a DLC.  The modder writes code that works with the product that ships, and that's it.

Is it, in principle, possible that there could be some combinatoric grouping of possible DLCs that could complicate life for modders?  Sure, in principle, I guess.  However, nothing I've seen so far gives me even the slightest cause for alarm.  KSP is already game with a rich ecosystem of mods out there, and people who write mods often need to deal with other mods (e.g. producing compatibility patches, where appropriate).

We already have a fairly well-defined process for doing this kind of stuff, and frankly, dealing with DLC from a professional developer (where they've got a well-defined release cycle and have to keep things stable and backwards-compatible and all sorts of other stuff that mod authors don't have to worry about) seems to me to be easier than dealing with mods from Random Cool Mod Author.

I think that's fairly unlikely.  And even if it were to happen, it seems like a self-correcting problem:  if there's a major need for a large chunk of the gameplaying population that's going unfulfilled, somebody's going to get around to writing a mod to address that.

Again:  hypotheticals aren't real.  If we start from "What's the worst possible thing that could hypothetically happen?", then of course we'll be able to come up with extremely scary scenarios.  But that's not super productive, and we'll likely end up scaring ourselves over stuff that never happens.

A much more productive approach is to consider actual examples.  Can you come up with one that seems plausible?  It's okay if it's imaginary, but get specific.  Give an exact example of a hypothetical DLC, and what problems you think that might cause in terms of compatibility.

I'm having trouble thinking of one, myself.  Because what DLC generally does is add new stuff to the game.  Any given mod will either work just fine in stock-- in which case everyone can use it-- or else a mod is focused on working with some specific thing from a DLC (e.g. a mod for the mission builder in Making History), in which case the mod is completely irrelevant to anyone who doesn't have that DLC and therefore won't be missed.

I'm having real trouble thinking of an example in which anyone gets left out in the cold because they need a mod and they can't get one because DLC.  Doesn't mean one doesn't exist, just that I'm having trouble thinking of one off the top of my head.  :)  Got some example ideas?

A fair point.  Though, the fact that it's "official" actually makes things nicer from a modder's / player's perspective, because it means it's likely to be adopted widely enough to get good support from modders.

To take the example of my own IndicatorLights mod I mentioned earlier.  There are a bunch of new parts in Making History, some of which are appropriate for decorating with the sort of indicators I have in IndicatorLights.  So of course I'm going to instrument them, so that anyone who uses IndicatorLights will get all the extra goodness on the new Making History parts.  :)  ...But there are lots and lots of excellent parts mods out there, which I haven't bothered to add compatibility patches to, simply because I don't have the time and I don't happen to use those mods (and in many cases may not even have heard of them).

So if nothing else, the existence of DLC does provide the opportunity to have at least a somewhat-standardized set of "official mods" that are likely to get a higher level of support from the modding community than Random Modder's Mod would.

 

I could be wrong about any or all of the foregoing, of course.  :)  But, my initial reaction is one of cautious optimism.  I'm not seeing any particular cause for alarm, and I see no reason to assume the worst without some sort of concrete indications thereof.

All extremely well said. As were my suspicions, much of what I wrote is out of my own characteristic paranoia about big businesses. The word "DLC" makes me very nervous, especially if it's touching a project I love. DLC used to be just some french fries that you could order with your burger if you wanted, but nowadays DLC determines what kind of burger you are going to get in the first place based on what you can afford and what system you use, and sometimes even just luck. I would feel pretty rotten if something like that poisoned such a revolution in sandbox games as KSP.

7 hours ago, Ty Tan Tu said:

There are few people writing mods for Colossal Cave Adventure. I say few, because Pcgamer and Cnet are still writing articles about it as recently as Dec. 12, 2017, so I do not doubt that there are people who are. But technology progresses. If KSP had said 'we are done, this is the last platform', the audience for the game would slowly diminish. The graphics and physics engine would quickly become quaint. No new potential modders would be inspired about what could be done. It would end up being a bunch of old people like me


STANDING AT THE END OF A ROAD BEFORE A SMALL BRICK BUILDING.
AROUND YOU IS A FOREST.  A SMALL STREAM FLOWS OUT OF THE BUILDING AND
DOWN A GULLY.

As far as I can tell, KSP is leaving all the hooks in place for modders to exploit.  They even tell you how to handle skins and colors. All the congfig files are still plain text. But if they can make money, they can continue to upgrade to the latest version of Unity and particle effects, or maybe an even better engine when Unity becomes quiant. They can still continue to inspire the next generation of modders

I disagree with the first part... there are quite a few mods that enhance KSP's visual factor, add interesting functionality, fix grossly unrealistic behavior with, say, parachutes, etc. Perhaps it won't be as good and would eventually stagnate, but I'm a little confident that development of KSP could be potentially handled solely by the modding community, if only for some time before the original software begins to age poorly.

You're right about everything else though...

7 hours ago, theJesuit said:

I also can see some cross over though with some mods making life difficult.  The launch sites is a good example with KK - or maybe part failures with dang it.  If part failures are only dlc and not 1.4.x then supporting both is going to be a hassle.  Will launch sites and part failures be available in career mode as well or just with mission builder mode? 

My two cents.

Exactly my point!

6 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

@b0ss, your thread has been merged into the master thread for this discussion. 

Thank you, sorry for the trouble. Wasn't aware of this thread at first.

1 hour ago, Foxster said:

Could someone please remind me: 

Is everyone with KSP getting the new DLC craft parts (engines etc) even if they don't buy the DLC i.e. will buying the DLC just provide the mission-setting feature?

My understanding is that everything shown in the DLC is completely separate from 1.4

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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