KSP Weekly: The Falcon

[razark]

42 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. 

"... hasn't been much in the way of news..."?!?  THERE HAS BEEN NOTHING AT ALL, and people have been repeatedly asking and pointedly ignored.

 

People have asked: Will the console players get the1.4/1.5 update, much less the Making History DLC, or even any bug-fixes at all?

There's two possible ways to answer:
A. No, nothing is happening beyond what has currently been released.  We're done, and console KSP is, and shall ever remain, what it is now.
B. We do plan to provide future updates, but we are unable to say exactly what (or when) updates will be provided to console players.

For some reason, however, Squad has chosen to let console players play a guessing game as to whether they were even being noticed or not, and not responded to the questions even though Squad employees have been posting in the threads.  Sadly, they have chosen to go with option C, which is "<absolute silence>", until just now when their representative decided to say "You know we're working on it.".  (Well, no, they don't.  That's why they've been asking!)

 

If Squad were to release 1.5, stopped posting any reference to the PC version, and only posted space news in the KSP Weekly thread, what would the PC player response be?  How many weeks of being completely ignored would it take for a user uprising to start?

 

 

And for the record, I'm saying this as a PC player that thinks the console adventure was a complete and utter mistake that should never have happened.  However, Squad has committed to it, and they should be open and honest with their customers.  Especially since those customers have gotten the <poopy> end of the stick since day one.

 

 

Anyway, I've said my piece about it.  Here I shall let it lie.

Edited October 2, 2018 by razark

[Redneck]

5 hours ago, scimas said:

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.. 

you just answered it right there..........."work is being done, we are aware of it. But our legal/pr hasn't decided what to release to the public." Then thats what they should of said then right? Its real simple. Make the effort to get the answers. I think thats the biggest thing the console players are mad about. There does not appear to be any pro-active effort being taken to get the answers because the right questions or inquiries are not being made on their behalf otherwise we would not be having this discussion. And like @razark said I to have said my piece. Im done. including quotes/responses to this thread its derailed enough already

Edited October 2, 2018 by Redneck

[Deddly]

Fair enough guys. You make some good arguments and that's all the more insightful since you're PC players. Even this is really valuable feedback. 

[mattinoz]

On 9/29/2018 at 8:02 PM, klgraham1013 said:

...or just have a little more faith in the people buying a game about launching rockets into space using semi realistic physics.  I mean, you have to have some desire to be smart if you're choosing to play KSP seriously.   ...and not just for the lol splosions. 

What's more confusing to new players.  Giving no information, or giving some information with a disclaimer that this gauge do hickey might not work to great with crazy craft.

That disclaimer should pop-up as a warning and the acceptance button should read "Challenge Accepted"!

[Adsixnine]

On 10/1/2018 at 12:31 AM, Enceos said:

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

 

 

yeahhh

[Gotmachine]

On 10/1/2018 at 2:32 PM, Poodmund said:

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. 

The vacuum delta-v value is very simple to understand and use, and roughly valid in all situations. For example, it's widely known that you need about 3400 vacuum Dv to get in LKO. Or 1500 at Duna. Or 8000 at Eve. From that, you know that you need more margin with a low TWR / draggy craft.

What is more problematic is the TWR. But this can be simplified down to a situation (body) switch button somewhere near the engineer's report and a double reading when a body with an atmosphere is selected : sea level TWR / vacuum TWR.

Excepted in some very specific cases, you don't need more.

[Poodmund]

5 minutes ago, Gotmachine said:

The vacuum delta-v value is very simple to understand and use, and roughly valid in all situations. For example, it's widely known that you need about 3400 vacuum Dv to get in LKO. Or 1500 at Duna. Or 8000 at Eve. From that, you know that you need more margin with a low TWR / draggy craft.

Absolutely, as informed Kerbal players we know these things off the top of our heads... but for someone picking up the game, having no experience or communication with existing Kerbal players... how do you communicate this abstract information to the player intuitively?

I'm playing Devil's advocate here because I presume this is the exact conumdrum that has been plaguing SQUAD and KSP for years.

[Gotmachine]

1 minute ago, Poodmund said:

how do you communicate this abstract information to the player intuitively?

Well, a Dv map in the KSPedia would do. If the "DeltaV" word appear in a few key place, even a player that don't know anything about rocket will soon understand what it mean. The maneuver node tool is a great learning tool : you quickly understand that the more you want to change your orbit, the more Dv you need.

Then an enginner's warning when you don't have enough Dv to get to orbit. There is already one for the TWR < 1 situation.

You could also have a "Approx. DeltaV to orbit : 3400 m/s" line in the tracking station body info box.

As for the fact that a draggy / low TWR craft require more Dv, this is actually something that a new player can understand by himself, by testing different designs and playing the game. It's an intuitive thing. This isn't comparable to the current situation of not knowing your Dv, it's something that is near impossible to guess, especially for a new player. But everyone knows that a rocket has to go fast and has to be pointy. And you can get where you want with an inappropriate TWR or a draggy craft, but you will never reach you goal without enough Dv.

[Tyko]

25 minutes ago, Gotmachine said:

Well, a Dv map in the KSPedia would do. If the "DeltaV" word appear in a few key place, even a player that don't know anything about rocket will soon understand what it mean. The maneuver node tool is a great learning tool : you quickly understand that the more you want to change your orbit, the more Dv you need.

Then an enginner's warning when you don't have enough Dv to get to orbit. There is already one for the TWR < 1 situation.

You could also have a "Approx. DeltaV to orbit : 3400 m/s" line in the tracking station body info box.

As for the fact that a draggy / low TWR craft require more Dv, this is actually something that a new player can understand by himself, by testing different designs and playing the game. It's an intuitive thing. This isn't comparable to the current situation of not knowing your Dv, it's something that is near impossible to guess, especially for a new player. But everyone knows that a rocket has to go fast and has to be pointy. And you can get where you want with an inappropriate TWR or a draggy craft, but you will never reach you goal without enough Dv.

THIS!!!  Once I had a DV map and a way to calculate DV my game experience improved dramatically. I knew that 3400 wasn't a "perfect" ascent, but once I knew that was a workable number I started learning very quickly about rocket designs and how to fly them.

Think of it this way. In KSP as it stands now a new player can build a rocket and eventually figure out how to get something into orbit. Without knowing DV or what the DV target should be they have don't have anything to go on to learn and improve. This leads to a lot of overbuilt monstrosities and it only gets worse when mission payloads increase. If people want to play the "moar boosters" way, more power to them, but the game should at least offer some basic info for those who actually want to learn something about rockets and space travel.

I also love the idea of adding this to to the Engineer's report tab. 

[Raptor9]

I always thought of dV as the "gateway" principle of understanding. As soon as you understand dV, you can start learning about how it interacts with how a craft is designed or flown, or how a mission is planned. Principles that leverage delta-V savings (Oberth effect, bi-elliptic transfers, gravity slingshots/brakes, aerobraking), and others that have delta-V penalties (gravity losses, drag losses, cosine losses) are all catch-phrases that are discussed constantly on the forums, but all revolve around delta-V.

So I agree that it's a good idea to have some more delta-V information in KSP, like a delta-V map in the KSPedia tab; but I don't think it should go overboard.  Part of the fun of this is doing research on the internet to squeeze out a little more delta-V savings to ensure your craft can make it to your destination.  The first time I heard of a Molniya or "lightning" orbit was when career contracts were in their infancy.  Having no idea what that was, I googled it and learned a lot about how you can affect satellite coverage/duration beyond just simply increasing the altitude of a circular orbit.

Maybe have a section at the bottom of the delta-V map that reads something like: "Not enough dV to get to your destination, but no more funds for boosters? Here are some key phrases to look-up that may "slingshot" you across the finish line: Oberth Effect, Gravity Assist/Brake, Aerobraking" 

[klgraham1013]

9 hours ago, Raptor9 said:

snip

I understand where you're coming from, but would argue that, maybe, the KSPedia is where more advanced information should be stored.  Having to leave a game to learn a game is a dangerous path.  It works occasionally, but I wonder how many people bought KSP, never made it to the moon, laughed at explosions, and than never played it again.  All because they had no clue what they were doing.

[Raptor9]

6 minutes ago, klgraham1013 said:

Having to leave a game to learn a game is a dangerous path.  It works occasionally, but I wonder how many people bought KSP, never made it to the moon, laughed at explosions, and than never played it again.  All because they had no clue what they were doing.

As a counter point, if a person doesn't want to pause a game to read wikipedia or any other online source, then they probably don't care to pause the game and read a manual either.  KSPedia certainly waters down the techno-babble and condenses it to very general terms for younger audiences or players that are new to the aerospace realm.  However, if a player gets to the point that they are looking to leverage more advanced spaceflight/engineering techniques beyond just making it to Kerbin orbit or fly around the KSC in a jet, they will most likely seek out the information, regardless of the location or medium.

If a person lacks the attention span or commitment to read how to do something, or is a visual/hands-on learner, then having a larger and more detailed library of hands-on tutorials would probably be the better alternative if Squad was worried about keeping a person's attention in KSP.  That's how I see it anyway.

[Tyko]

5 hours ago, Raptor9 said:

As a counter point, if a person doesn't want to pause a game to read wikipedia or any other online source, then they probably don't care to pause the game and read a manual either.  KSPedia certainly waters down the techno-babble and condenses it to very general terms for younger audiences or players that are new to the aerospace realm.  However, if a player gets to the point that they are looking to leverage more advanced spaceflight/engineering techniques beyond just making it to Kerbin orbit or fly around the KSC in a jet, they will most likely seek out the information, regardless of the location or medium.

If a person lacks the attention span or commitment to read how to do something, or is a visual/hands-on learner, then having a larger and more detailed library of hands-on tutorials would probably be the better alternative if Squad was worried about keeping a person's attention in KSP.  That's how I see it anyway.

As a counter counter point - putting static information you're going to reference regularly in KSPedia is kind of annoying.

I often refer to the DV Map when I'm building my craft - maybe I'm trying different approaches, do I need 3 stages or 4? At what point in the mission will I be staging and how does this influence my design? Having a DV Map in KSPedia is more than worthless at that point. Do I keep jumping back and forth between VAB and KSPedia? Do I reference the DV Map and scribble a bunch of numbers down on a piece of paper? As a new player I'm going to have to look at this thing a lot, so why not print the thing out? I can look at it whenever I want and I can even make notes in the margin.

If there's a DV Map in KSPedia it should be formatted to print and there should be a "PRINT THIS NOW" button on the page.

Alternatively, we can build a dynamic DV Map - define your departure parameters and your planned arrival profile and it spits out the DV for each portion of the journey in a handy list that can be viewed in the VAB.

[Burning Kan]

20 hours ago, Tyko said:

If there's a DV Map in KSPedia

as mod it exists:

also good idea for Squad to implement it in the kspedia

[Tyko]

2 hours ago, Burning Kan said:

as mod it exists:

also good idea for Squad to implement it in the kspedia

Actually, that's not a mod...it's a PDF and exemplifies my point - the best way to distribute a static DV map isn't in KSPedia, it's as a printable PDF    

[Burning Kan]

8 minutes ago, Tyko said:

Actually, that's not a mod...it's a PDF

thanks dont know that,but iam use it often and it helps me in kspedia and its very small so why not make it stock?

[Tyko]

1 hour ago, Burning Kan said:

thanks dont know that,but iam use it often and it helps me in kspedia and its very small so why not make it stock?

I didn't argue against including it. I said in my previous post that if it's included it needed to be in a printable format with a big "Print now" button. I also said that if they're going to include it they should make it dynamic. Please read my other post   

[Burning Kan]

2 minutes ago, Tyko said:

printable format with a big "Print now" button

as u sayed its already pdf format in kspedia so it cannot be much hassle to print it extern,but why not -

a dV map in kspedia and a big"Print now" button, NOW

5 minutes ago, Tyko said:

they should make it dynamic

that would be great but dosnt belive that will happen, Unfortunately

but how knows

[Thygrrr]

When you base your NavBall stuff on deltaV, can you also put a deltaV and TWR indicator into stock VAB and SPH?

And, during flight, maybe add "deltaV" as a resource to the resource view. I'm thinking of making this into yet another mod, but... why does such a basic feature have to be a mod.

:)

[Terwin]

On 10/8/2018 at 6:34 PM, Thygrrr said:

When you base your NavBall stuff on deltaV, can you also put a deltaV and TWR indicator into stock VAB and SPH?

And, during flight, maybe add "deltaV" as a resource to the resource view. I'm thinking of making this into yet another mod, but... why does such a basic feature have to be a mod.

If it is on the nav-ball you can always calculate dV for the 'current environment', in the VAB/SPH that number is not nearly as useful as the most efficient vacuum engines are awful at the launch site.

or you could just show the vacuum dV, but then you have people wondering why it is so inaccurate when they try to launch.  What if they want the dV at 10km where their airplane will be cruising?

Just being able to calculate the dV for the local environment is plenty for the nav-ball, but not enough in the VAB.

If you have a highly intuitive, easy to use interface for this for the VAB/SPH that does not take too much screen space on small displays, I am sure SQUAD would be very interested, but remember, it needs to be intuitive not just in your culture/language, but for new players from around the world...

 

[IncongruousGoat]

On 10/8/2018 at 7:34 PM, Thygrrr said:

When you base your NavBall stuff on deltaV, can you also put a deltaV and TWR indicator into stock VAB and SPH?

And, during flight, maybe add "deltaV" as a resource to the resource view. I'm thinking of making this into yet another mod, but... why does such a basic feature have to be a mod.

Because automagically calculating a ship's delta-V is hard for non-trivial craft. MechJeb and KER have been trying to do it for years, and still can't quite figure it out for most of the stuff I build. I put up with this, because I know that the tools I use are somewhat broken, and because I have a calculator and am not afraid to use it. A new player would not know this. A new player wouldn't understand why the problem exists in the first place, and a new player certainly wouldn't be able to circumvent the problem by doing the math by hand.

No, what I wish we had was a section of the KSPedia called "By the Numbers" (or something like that) explaining, for anyone who's interested, how to compute delta-V, TWR, and any other important but easy to compute numbers. This information is entirely too hard to come by for how useful it is.

[Lupi]

Honestly, you may want to see last week's thread to air those grievances.

But in short, I imagine they're trying to think of how to do it tastefully, rather than vomiting clutter all over the screen like KER and Mechjeb do. Clutter that causes the game to stutter due to excess garbage data requiring garbage collection.

So, for now, the navball might be the first step. They themselves said they were looking into how to leverage this in the future, so I'm sure they're thinking about it. 

[Thygrrr]

7 hours ago, IncongruousGoat said:

Because automagically calculating a ship's delta-V is hard for non-trivial craft. MechJeb and KER have been trying to do it for years, and still can't quite figure it out for most of the stuff I build. I put up with this, because I know that the tools I use are somewhat broken, and because I have a calculator and am not afraid to use it. A new player would not know this. A new player wouldn't understand why the problem exists in the first place, and a new player certainly wouldn't be able to circumvent the problem by doing the math by hand.

Mechjeb and KER have been more than good enough.

Especially getting to Mun, Minmus, Eve and Duna are near impossible for a new player without something telling him "this rocket is good enough" or "adding more fuel isn't making this stage get any farther due to TWR"

 

One of the least cluttered solutions is Basic DeltaV, and I'd go even further and put it in the engineering report, but instead of making that a foldup menu, make it a drawer from the right of the screen, similar to the function groups on the left.

 

Or just keep it open at the top right of the screen. That's where players will see it because that's where the pretty launch button is.

Edited October 10, 2018 by Thygrrr

[Terwin]

15 hours ago, Thygrrr said:

One of the least cluttered solutions is Basic DeltaV, and I'd go even further and put it in the engineering report, but instead of making that a foldup menu, make it a drawer from the right of the screen, similar to the function groups on the left.

Ok, but what is 'Basic DeltaV'?  Sea-level?  Vacuum? some intermediate value?  Sea-level for the first 3km/s and then vacuum for the rest?  Is it per-stage or total?  

If you have LFO, fuel cells, xenon, Ion engines, and verniers on one stage, how do you calculate the dV?  Do solar panels change this calculation? How about if you add NFT nuclear reactors that produce small amounts of Xenon in addition to power?

[Thygrrr]

Basic DeltaV is a mod.

Also, DeltaV is generally dependent on drag, but AFAIK no DeltaV Mods calculate this, and that makes perfect sense.

One could calculate a "perfect ascent" DeltaV, but that differs from craft to craft. However, if you know that "4000 m/s dV are enough to get into a decent orbit", and you know your craft has that much, you will be fine.

In space, where maneuver precision matters more and more, DeltaV calculations are easier and easier because the crafts get simpler and there is no drag.