KSP Weekly: The Falcon

[klgraham1013]

7 hours ago, JPLRepo said:

QA have been rigorously testing the stock DV calculations used in the Burn Indicator against mods that calculate DV.

That's great, but after 1.4, I'm more hesitant about such statements.  Finger's crossed QA has a better showing this time around.

[DMagic]

9 hours ago, Enceos said:

I think deleting or commenting out the attachment nodes in .cfg and comparing the results with the behavior of the default variant should produce more tangible results and answer the question.

I think it's a bit of a semantic argument, whether "closing" the attach node vs attaching a part reduces drag.

Drag is reduced on a part when it is shielded or occluded in some way by another part.

The most obvious way to do this is by attaching another part to, you can see it in the drag cube section of the part windows on that screen shot. The faces of the part that are "open" have a higher drag surface area, ~3, while the faces that are "closed" have around 1.8; having a lower surface area (even on faces that aren't directly in line with the thrust) will reduce drag on the part (you can see the same thing on a simple cylindrical part with an open bottom end vs a closed bottom end).

I suppose what could help clarify is to know what happens when you attach the same part in the same location, once by attaching to the node, and once by using only surface attach. I don't know how KSP handles surface attach parts for drag calculation. 

Does KSP only care about the physical arrangement of parts and which is the parent of which? Or does being stack attach make a difference vs being surface attached?

[Enceos]

This guy on his channel posted lots of vids where he experiments with the stock KSP aerodynamic drag model. Here's one of them:

 

Edited September 30, 2018 by Enceos

[bonyetty]

On 9/30/2018 at 12:16 PM, Terwin said:

I strongly suspect that the improved burn time indicator was done the way it was because side-steps the biggest problem with a dV indicator in the VAB/SPH: which environment do you want the calculation for?  (it also provides a highly intuitive indicator about how much of your remaining fuel you will need to use, as anyone who is watching it will quickly notice that they must stage when they get to a line)

If you have a burn-node for a specific vehicle in a specific environment, then calculating the dV is much more straight-forward then trying to calculate dV off the launch-pad/air-strip for a vehicle that has an engine that has awful atmospheric performance such as a terrier or poodle.

Any 'per environment' control that does not take up far too much screen-space will be missed by large numbers of users, and no calculator will provide 100% accurate dV information for a given vehicle when it comes to getting to orbit, because so much of that will depend on the launch profile and which altitude you are at when you stage.

I strongly suspect this is more of a 'we will give you what we can, but we are not going to add information that will primarily serve to confuse new players' than a change in attitude about providing dV in the assembly buildings.

Some very good points you have made there especially with regards to atmospheric flight. A VAB/SPH dV may provide sea level and vacuum dV like Mechjeb and KE. SQUAD is also not totally against caveats such as with phys warp. The engineering tab(I think that’s what it called) gives warnings about blocked hatchets, no power generation etc and this could be a way of conveying the imprecise VAB/SPH dV calculations. Advanced tweakables is the preferred means of reducing info overload to new players, since it was introduced, it seems to me. I guess we will have to wait and see. It is fun speculating. 

[Deddly]

I have to say I'm loving the tone of these latest weeklies. There's a fair amount of both criticism and praise, but it's a much lighter atmosphere. It's like the KSP community is back to what it should be. This is the reason I joined 

[klgraham1013]

I really don't see how exposing dv is any more confusing to new players than orbital maneuvers.  I'm assuming anyone who has shown KSP to a friend has spent far to long explaining why burning toward a planet while in orbit isn't the best way to get down to the planet.  Really, dv and twr are rather simple concepts, on par with everything else new players have to learn when starting KSP.

[Poodmund]

I think you've missed the point that was being discussed above with regards to the reference frame the amount of dV that is to be calculated is shown. It's not that the concept is largely complex from a vacuum based reference but when you start introducing atmospheric bodies or very low TWR craft at low orbital altitudes, dV quotas aren't necessarily relevant compared to a instantaneous impulse in vacuum conditions.

KER and MechJeb both kind of allow you to manually change the craft conditions to assess these areas but it gets very UI heavy at this point. 

For example, in the VAB, most people just design launchers in the vacuum conditions around Kerbin... as that is what is shown by default. How SQUAD can communicate 'relevant' data to the user without requiring a complex UI is the hard part here.

[AVaughan]

1 hour ago, Poodmund said:

How SQUAD can communicate 'relevant' data to the user without requiring a complex UI is the hard part here.

No dV display will ever be 100% accurate for all possible craft configurations.  eg just consider any apollo style mission.  The dV calculator cannot know when in the mission the lander will separate from the command module, and hence it can't really calculate an accurate dV for the mission.  It gets even worse if the player intends to refuel the lander and make multiple landings as part of the mission.   But a simple dV estimate is still useful, and a player who understands how they intend to fly the mission, can use the per stage numbers to be sure that the ascent stage has enough dV to  get to orbit, and same with the transfer and lander stages.  Even a simple estimate of per stage dV is extremely useful.   It does not need to be 100% accurate, a simple drop each stage when all engines are out of fuel is good enough to be useful.   Label it "estimated vacuum dV", and calculate assuming vacuum.    TWR would also be useful, but that is easier for someone with basic physics to estimate.  (For stage one just add up sea-level thrust of all take-off engines and compare that to vessel mass (already available in the engineer's report) multiplied by 10).

[Karma Kerman]

you know, we haven't heard any more news about the Consoles for KSP, honestly if its just news about a bug fix update im happy anyway but i would love to see news about the Making History DLC for Consoles like is it coming "Soon™" and if people who had the original KSP before the Enhanced Edition came out will they get the DLC for free

[nestor]

On 9/28/2018 at 11:57 PM, SpaceCube2000 said:

Will the entire part overhaul be released in this update? Or just part of it? 

All the overhauled parts we've shown so far will be included in 1.5

[Darth Badie]

On 9/28/2018 at 4:41 PM, The_Cat_In_Space said:

I really hope that SQUAD hasn't abandoned the console version of the game. 

No, you can be sure we are working on it

 

[MR L A]

On 9/29/2018 at 7:57 PM, Tyko said:

Actually, nobody on this thread has said it might be too much for new players. You're the first

Actually, yes they did... 

 

[Human Person]

Will the stats of the DLC engines be rebalanced?

[razark]

1 hour ago, Darth Badie said:

No, you can be sure we are working on it

Not really.  People have been asking for weeks and this is the first response that they've gotten.  They can't be sure of anything if y'all don't let them know.

[Darth Badie]

Just now, razark said:

Not really.  People have been asking for weeks and this is the first response that they've gotten.  They can't be sure of anything if y'all don't let them know.

I understand but as soon as we have news we will share them. 

[Delay]

@Darth Badie

I'm not a console player, but please add this exact thing to every weekly from now on instead of leaving them in the dark.

Knowing that news will be shared as soon as they're given is better than not knowing anything about the current development state of the console versions.

Edited October 1, 2018 by Delay

[klgraham1013]

3 hours ago, Darth Badie said:

No, you can be sure we are working on it

 

Alright, console players.  You got you're sentence of news.  That should tide you over for a while.

[Redneck]

1 hour ago, Darth Badie said:

I understand but as soon as we have news we will share them. 

I am just curious. How do you guys get news from them? Is it a dont call us we call you kind of thing? Is there a roadmap or trello you guys can check?

[HansonKerman]

On 9/28/2018 at 1:46 PM, SQUAD said:

We improved the burn time indicator by recalculating based on dV and not acceleration. We’ve also added a staging indicator that shows which stages contain the dV needed to complete each part of the maneuver. This will show a red section at the end if there’s not enough dV in the current vessel to complete that maneuver. We’ll continue looking at ways to leverage this dV information going forward. In the extended mode of the burn time indicator two extra lines are shown, allowing you to adjust how much time you want to spend burning before and after the node during the maneuver as well as showing you a countdown for when you need to start burning fuel to do so.

Nice. This is definitely one of the awesome things about KSP you never knew you wanted.

[Lord Aurelius]

I'm very excited about the implications of the dV work. Hopefully we'll get proper dV readouts in stock soon.

Not nearly as excited with the new parts, they look alright, but I'm still not seeing a lot of consistency between these new parts and what has been revealed already. At least they finally fixed the config file for the rover core and added some side nodes.

[scimas]

5 hours ago, Redneck said:

I am just curious. How do you guys get news from them? Is it a dont call us we call you kind of thing? Is there a roadmap or trello you guys can check?

I think it's more along the lines of "work is being done, we are aware of it. But our legal/pr hasn't decided what to release to the public." 

Of course a simple "News about Console version will be available in a few weeks" should have been better in one of the previous few weeklies.. 

[razark]

10 hours ago, Darth Badie said:

I understand but as soon as we have news we will share them. 

The point is people have been asking, but met with complete silence.  It appears that y'all don't care.  I understand if there's no news that has been cleared for release, but a even simple "We see your posts, and work is continuing."¹ would be better than ignoring the console players.

Even if the news is "We've given up and there will be no further updates to the console version ever.", it would be more information than they've been told until now.  Your attitude towards console players is ridiculous.  They deserve something, and for a long time, until now, you've given them nothing.  It's pretty damn shameful.  Just be honest with them, and let them know either that they're still players that you care about or that you don't. 

@SQUAD:
Acknowledge that console players exist once a week.  Is that really too much to ask?

 

 

¹Which is what you've posted now.  It's overdue by weeks, if not months. 

Edited October 2, 2018 by razark

[Redneck]

1 hour ago, razark said:

The point is people have been asking, but met with complete silence.  It appears that y'all don't care.  I understand if there's no news that has been cleared for release, but a even simple "We see your posts, and work is continuing."¹ would be better than ignoring the console players.

Even if the news is "We've given up and there will be no further updates to the console version ever.", it would be more information than they've been told until now.  Your attitude towards console players is ridiculous.  They deserve something, and for a long time, until now, you've given them nothing.  It's pretty damn shameful.  Just be honest with them, and let them know either that they're still players that you care about or that you don't. 

@SQUAD:
Acknowledge that console players exist once a week.  Is that really too much to ask?

 

 

¹Which is what you've posted now.  It's overdue by weeks, if not months. 

If anything...Make a phone call and find out!

[Deddly]

2 hours ago, razark said:

They deserve something, and for a long time, until now, you've given them nothing. 

I agree that there hasn't been much in the way of news, but there was a console patch released just two months ago, so it's not such a distant memory that we can say they have received nothing for a long time. But I get what you're saying. 

[Redneck]

38 minutes ago, Deddly said:

I agree that there hasn't been much in the way of news, but there was a console patch released just two months ago, so it's not such a distant memory that we can say they have received nothing for a long time. But I get what you're saying. 

it just seems to me if i am sub-contracting work to a company and i had some agitated customers I would be calling spain (blitworks) and asking them "where are we at on (insert subject here)?" and passing some or all that info onto the customer. "What did you guys work on today? last week? last month? Give me something" is how i would imagine the phone call would go. Just seems there is no effort being made to get these guys any answers,and i dont mean checking a email inbox, but taking a more pro-active approach and getting the answers this is why people in the forums keep asking. If squad wants to solve the problem the solution to me seems pretty simple and reasonable. If they are not going to update consoles anymore then tell them that. If its in negotiations then tell them that. Tell them something!

Edited October 2, 2018 by Redneck