KSP Loading... A closer look into Update 1.6

[Maxsimal]

1 hour ago, Tyko said:

@Maxsimal Did the dev blog go out with the stats in it somewhere other than KSP forums? Maybe I missed it?

No, it's still coming, not sure of the exact time frame.  It will be posted with the other devblogs. 

[tater]

I still hope they toggle off the $%#@%$# parachute on the kerbals.

[klgraham1013]

11 minutes ago, tater said:

I still hope they toggle off the $%#@%$# parachute on the kerbals.

I'm pretty sure "$%#@%$#" translates to "rather silly looking."

[Curveball Anders]

3 hours ago, T1mo98 said:

So don't add features to a game because it makes things more difficult? That would be a pretty excrementsty developer if you ask me.

Also, I don't want to rely on mods to get new features. Mods can become outdated or discontinued, a core game feature will always stay available and functional. 

I didn't say that nothing new should ever be added. But the designers must be very careful when adding new features, esp if there's still issues in the current code.

I don't want to be relying on mods either, but they could revive their previous idea with "official" mods.

 

[Tyko]

4 hours ago, Curveball Anders said:

8 hours ago, T1mo98 said:

Mods can become outdated or discontinued, a core game feature will always stay available and functional. 

I didn't say that nothing new should ever be added. But the designers must be very careful when adding new features, esp if there's still issues in the current code.

I don't want to be relying on mods either, but they could revive their previous idea with "official" mods.

Anything can become outdated or discontinued. Nothing is permanent in a game regardless of whether it's "official" or not. Companies deprecate or change content all the time. USI-LS and TAC-LS have been around as long as the game has been out of beta and have great support. 

[klgraham1013]

11 minutes ago, Tyko said:

USI-LS and TAC-LS have been around as long as the game has been out of beta and have great support. 

Even before beta.  TAC-LS has been around for ages.

12 minutes ago, Tyko said:

Nothing is permanent in a game

You know what is permanent in games?  When companies actually finish them.

*ba dum tis*

Goes to reminisce about games actually getting finished.

[GrandProtectorDark]

36 minutes ago, klgraham1013 said:

Goes to reminisce about games actually getting finished.

It isn't like that games did not have any bugs or gamebreaking glitches back in the day before online patches

[klgraham1013]

10 minutes ago, GrandProtectorDark said:

It isn't like that games did not have any bugs or gamebreaking glitches back in the day before online patches

No, but developers didn't intentionally release games early just because they knew they could patch it later.  If you released a buggy game, that's what you were known for.  There was no fixing it.  You had to live with your screw up.

[Lord Aurelius]

Since the suggestion of stock Life Support seems to have generated quite a bit of good discussion, I thought I would go into a bit more detail on why I would like to see it made stock.

From a realism perspective, life support is a major concern for real-life space exploration and it's kind of silly that it isn't reflected at all in KSP and we can send Kerbals out in space indefinitely with no consequence.

In terms of gameplay, manned missions are completely OP compared to probes. Probes effectively have life support (run out of EC and they're dead unless you can somehow recharge them) and even the relatively complex comm network feature in stock, but Kerbals have far fewer considerations other than a little extra weight (plus they get more science experiments and infinite jetpack fuel, wouldn't mind if there was a difficulty option to make them use monoprop as well to close another exploit). I would expect the concept of life support would be significantly easier for a new player to grasp than the stock comm network system, and it would provide a necessary balance for manned missions vs probes.

As mentioned, I would expect anything like this to be an optional difficulty option (just like the comm network and reentry heating) for players who aren't interested.

Edited December 18, 2018 by Lord Aurelius

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, klgraham1013 said:

No, but developers didn't intentionally release games early just because they knew they could patch it later.  If you released a buggy game, that's what you were known for.  There was no fixing it.  You had to live with your screw up.

And without a single exception I'd rather play quite a number of today's "terribly broken" games over anything perfectly coded from 20 years ago.

[Lord Aurelius]

22 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

And without a single exception I'd rather play quite a number of today's "terribly broken" games over anything perfectly coded from 20 years ago.

There were some pretty awesome games from 1998 that still hold up well today. Ocarina of Time, Thief: Dark Project, Total Annihilation and Baldur's Gate come to mind for examples (and Age of Empires 2 came out a year later).

Edited December 18, 2018 by Lord Aurelius

[Superfluous J]

11 minutes ago, Lord Aurelius said:

There were some pretty awesome games from 1998 that still hold up well today. Ocarina of Time, Thief: Dark Project, Total Annihilation and Baldur's Gate come to mind for examples (and Age of Empires 2 came out a year later).

When was the last time you played any of them?

I can't speak to any of those but the games I did love back then I can barely stomach the control schemes today.

[FleshJeb]

18 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

And without a single exception I'd rather play quite a number of today's "terribly broken" games over anything perfectly coded from 20 years ago.

After KSP, this is the game I have the second most hours in, and I still play periodically. The graphics are "good enough", the sound design is astounding, and the gameplay is deep. I'd argue that SPWAW is the best wargame ever made. That said, it's on v8.403, and pretty much everybody plays the community unit rebalance.

[Lord Aurelius]

41 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

When was the last time you played any of them?

I can't speak to any of those but the games I did love back then I can barely stomach the control schemes today.

I haven't played any of those recently myself (with the exception of AOE2). However when I have gone back and played them I didn't have any trouble with the controls (maybe the super zoomed in camera in the RTS games due to the hardware limitations of the time). Most of these games have remasters now (or in the case of TA ground-up fan remakes) which don't touch the core gameplay (or controls for the most part) and still have thriving communities, which I guess is my point that there's some 20 year old games which are still heavily played to this day (also forgot to mention StarCraft and Red Alert 2 in my earlier list) simply due to how great the game design/story was (or at least the fun factor).

[Deddly]

Sounds like a great topic for the lounge, that one

 

Sooo, 1.6, eh? Looking forward to it. 

Edited December 18, 2018 by Deddly

[RealKerbal3x]

2 hours ago, Deddly said:

Sooo, 1.6, eh? Looking forward to it. 

Same! I mean...stock delta-V...

[Wkf Kerman]

On 12/14/2018 at 11:01 PM, FleshJeb said:

You don't want to do it the fun way?

https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Kerbol_System/Table

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohmann_transfer_orbit#Calculation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_inclination_change

Thanks for the information! However I think in KSP, calculations are just an assistance. The fun part is not only planning it, but also achieving it. So adding player-records features may promote gaming experience.

[JadeOfMaar]

On 12/17/2018 at 11:37 AM, T1mo98 said:

Also, I don't want to rely on mods to get new features. Mods can become outdated or discontinued, a core game feature will always stay available and functional. 

I understand your sentiment and I've felt your pain when it comes to having a mod I really like not only die out but break and stop working at a KSP update. But for most of the mods I like, I'd like to prose an argument. Mods can provide features that have been requested by the fanbase for years, and deliver them better and more timely than Squad will. And in many cases, the mod maker only has to recompile the plugin (if any) when a major KSP update arrives.

Most mods (I think) do not rely on a plugin and should still be usable well past the day their makers retire or abandon them.

Here are some examples why I trust in mods rather than avoiding them and trusting in stock:

• I am thankful but not hyped that KSP is now getting builtin dV readouts. KER has been around for years, and more than filling that gap. Meanwhile everyone who avoids mods and wants [x] new feature has been effectively cheating themselves out and punishing themselves.
• Not every dead mod is a broken mod. Most don't rely on a plugin and will still likely still work in current KSP.
• A mod that becomes broken by a KSP update has a far higher chance of being fixed or made less broken faster than a stock feature. (well, while it's still alive anyway) Meanwhile, broken stock features will last a long time such as: wheels; KSC runway problems; ocean physics (or the lack of);
• Certain decisions that make KSP what it is have questionable grounding and excuse themselves with "In the spirit of kerbal silliness." KSP is as much a game that tries to be real as it tries to be a looney tune. But somethings just can't be pardoned or overlooked by the more serious players such as the obvious blaring problems with Making History and where KSP defeats itself by easily empowering the player to unlock the stock tech tree without ever going interplanetary.

[Lord Aurelius]

On 12/18/2018 at 6:03 PM, JadeOfMaar said:

I understand your sentiment and I've felt your pain when it comes to having a mod I really like not only die out but break and stop working at a KSP update. But for most of the mods I like, I'd like to prose an argument. Mods can provide features that have been requested by the fanbase for years, and deliver them better and more timely than Squad will. And in many cases, the mod maker only has to recompile the plugin (if any) when a major KSP update arrives.

Most mods (I think) do not rely on a plugin and should still be usable well past the day their makers retire or abandon them.

Here are some examples why I trust in mods rather than avoiding them and trusting in stock:

• I am thankful but not hyped that KSP is now getting builtin dV readouts. KER has been around for years, and more than filling that gap. Meanwhile everyone who avoids mods and wants [x] new feature has been effectively cheating themselves out and punishing themselves.
• Not every dead mod is a broken mod. Most don't rely on a plugin and will still likely still work in current KSP.
• A mod that becomes broken by a KSP update has a far higher chance of being fixed or made less broken faster than a stock feature. (well, while it's still alive anyway) Meanwhile, broken stock features will last a long time such as: wheels; KSC runway problems; ocean physics (or the lack of);
• Certain decisions that make KSP what it is have questionable grounding and excuse themselves with "In the spirit of kerbal silliness." KSP is as much a game that tries to be real as it tries to be a looney tune. But somethings just can't be pardoned or overlooked by the more serious players such as the obvious blaring problems with Making History and where KSP defeats itself by easily empowering the player to unlock the stock tech tree without ever going interplanetary.

I think there's a balance here. Mods are great for extending the game and fixing things the devs haven't, but at the same time it is a pain to maintain modded installs once you get beyond a handful of mods (especially since CKAN doesn't work with all the mods I would like to use). Nearly all mods are balanced around stock and can only depend on the player having stock features, so unless there's appropriate compatibility patches it can be difficult to get everything working properly.

As much as I like mods, I play KSP infrequently enough that the game has often updated since the  last time I played and my mods don't work properly (yes I know about copying the game folder and not playing out of the Steam directory, but usually the reason I'm playing it is to try out a new update). At that point I'll usually just play stock and not bother with mods.

So ultimately I greatly appreciate what mods offer, and the next time I'm ready to properly sit down and play KSP for a few weeks I'll definitely take the time to set up a modded install with a bunch of fixes and new features to make my "perfect" install. However, most of the time I just want to hop on occasionally and mess around for an hour or two, in which case having new features and fixes come in through Steam updates is much more desirable. Plus it makes sharing whatever wacky contraptions I build or missions I pull off MUCH easier to share. Not to mention each new update improves the base game a little more (even if it's two steps forwards, one step back due to bugs) and the end result will be a better and better game (with or without mods).

Edited December 20, 2018 by Lord Aurelius

[decimal-simplex]

Have the physics problems with landed craft (specifically, loading a save with an already-landed craft) been solved in 1.6 / not regressed with 1.6? This has been an ongoing issue in the past and was not completely fixed in 1.5.1 either.

Honestly even releasing an update where you can't load a save with a landed craft without risking it bouncing out of the SOI seems like a pretty bad idea so I hope they got it right this time (and that it stays that way).

Edited December 20, 2018 by decimal-simplex

[Foxster]

On 12/13/2018 at 5:02 PM, Foxster said:

That might be true for the tanks attached to the engine variants but the drag of the engines themselves seems out of wack to me.

Have a look at these three craft with the small, medium and large engine variants at 6km...

The drag of the tanks looks OK. The medium engine variant matches the tank size and so the tank has the lowest drag of the three. 

However, the drag of the engines is 6.86 for small, 225 for medium and 622 for large. Surely, the lowest drag should be for the engine with the matched size? Otherwise we might as well always just use the small variant because the drag of the combined parts is going to be so much less. 

Still the same in 1.6. The smallest engine variants have by far the smallest drag, no matter what tank they are attached to. 

Is this intended then?

[SnacklessKerbal]

I can't open up the part menu on anything now?

[OrbitsR4Sissies]

The new designs look wonderful. I'm personally looking forward to the new Poodle. Great engine but a little ugly. Now, it's got an opportunity to sport a dual RL-10 Centaur look--which is perfect for this engine's typical use.

And 1.6 is live now. Looking forward to installing it.

[jakebomb]

This is just another reason why this game remains one of my very favorite games of all time. Don't take out this accolade lightly--thank you so much for this update. Best Holiday ever.

Universe Bless and Happy Holidays to the devs.

[MikeO89]

Updated to 1.6 from 1.5.1 with all my mods and it was a pretty smooth transition. Some mods have to be updated to stop the beginning errors but that's to be expected. I have to say, in a pretty short time I could see/feel the game runs quite a bit smoother with 1.6 than it did with 1.5.1. 1.5.1 was the worst performing version of all I had used to that point.  1.6 is much better. Squad did something under the hood that my system likes a lot better.

Edited December 22, 2018 by MikeO89