KSP 2 Multiplayer Discussion Thread

[PlutoISaPlanet]

@SciMan everything you said above is true. In my version of multiplayer, the way these processing crises are avoided is quite simple. A players vessels are not present in your game until your games are "merged". Until then, maybe you just see colonys, but you can't interact with them. This is difficult to explain, but this is the way I see it.

[Deadmeat24]

I don't want to say I have solved the problem with time warp, because I am sure my idea has some flaws. But I have spent a lot of time thinking about it and would love to have them pointed out because I have reached the point where I can't see them. 

 

My idea is that in multiplayer when performing a mission you would do it in a sort of "pre-planning" mode. Almost like the game within the game. This would allow any warping/reverting wanted, as it is not actually taking place in the "real world" until you tell the game that you are done with the mission. 

 

Once you have the mission planned out and executed in the simulation world. The pilot or computer would perform it in the real world automatically. We already know some form of automated flight is coming with automated colony supply runs so I imagine this would not be too difficult to implement. From there you can warp ahead if all the players agree, work on another mission, whatever you want. It doesn't cause an issue as the missions are first executed in the simulation where you can stop warping for maneuvers, and in the real world the maneuvers are automated and can be warped through.  

 

One problem I have already solved would be for instance if two people are trying to send a rocket to a station around Jool and  person A gets the mission done quicker, arriving say 14 days before. When person B did the simulation, the dock was not occupied, however that has changed. The way to avoid this is to implement some sort of alert if at any point in the mission, including in the future portion of the flight,  a craft not present during the simulation version is in close proximity. It would then give the option to resimulate the problematic portion of the flight with the new craft simulated and change things, OR it would continue to move forward as if nothing had changed.

 

If player B chose the option to change things, in this case the end of the flight, player B could put the craft into a parking orbit in order to wait for player A to plan a mission to leave. If player B knew that player A was going to leave a couple days after arrival, he could select the option to continue anyways. Player A would leave after 2 days and the dock would be open prior to the already planned arrival of player B's craft. 

 

This method allows people to play out their missions still, and makes it so that nobody has to wait on anybody else in order to do another mission. It also allows for time warp as long as everybody is ok with warping for a bit. It's not perfect, as waiting may occasionally be necessary. But at least the waiting isn't blocking you from doing other things to avoid timeline paradox problems or being warped into the moon. 

 

I feel this is a good compromise between the "everyone can do what they want" dmp method which CAN result in paradoxes (you cannot convince me it doesn't as I have used dmp before), and the "lowest voted time warp" method which would result in unproductive waiting periods while one person does a moon landing.

 

I've seen the time warp issue become heated at times so again I am looking for CONSTRUCTIVE criticism of my idea. I think both of the "mainstream" ideas have their flaws so don't come in here saying "way A is best, way B does not work" please just point out problems with my idea, "way C" if you wish, that I can solve. I like a challenge. 

[ash73]

On 12/26/2021 at 12:06 AM, Deadmeat24 said:

Once you have the mission planned out and executed in the simulation world. The pilot or computer would perform it in the real world automatically. We already know some form of automated flight is coming with automated colony supply runs so I imagine this would not be too difficult to implement. From there you can warp ahead if all the players agree, work on another mission, whatever you want. It doesn't cause an issue as the missions are first executed in the simulation where you can stop warping for maneuvers, and in the real world the maneuvers are automated and can be warped through.  

The real mission would have to 'start' at the exact same moment in time as your final sim mission, for everything (planets, moons, etc) to be where it should.

So all you could basically do is rewind time in the "real" universe and watch it again. What's the point, if you can't interact with whatever else is going on around you?

This is why multiplayer is such a waste of time, the only reason people want it is to show off, it won't add anything to the game. Just imagine all the extra features they could be building into the game if they weren't wasting so much effort on pointless MP...

[pandaman]

MP is not really 'my thing', especially in respect of KSP, but I do enjoy the occasional 'bash' on CoD etc.  But I am intrigued as to how they implement MP in KSP, especially the solution they apply to time warp.   And I do think MP is a good thing to include.

I can't see an MMO style set up working at all, but for a small, limited access, group (single figures max) I can envisage it being fun.  I would enjoy an occasional co-op or 'war' scenario with or against my kids for example.

 

[Deadmeat24]

12 hours ago, ash73 said:

The real mission would have to 'start' at the exact same moment in time as your final sim mission, for everything (planets, moons, etc) to be where it should.

So all you could basically do is rewind time in the "real" universe and watch it again. What's the point, if you can't interact with whatever else is going on around you?

This is why multiplayer is such a waste of time, the only reason people want it is to show off, it won't add anything to the game. Just imagine all the extra features they could be building into the game if they weren't wasting so much effort on pointless MP...

That's a good point. Maybe you could plan a launch date in advance. And there is nothing preventing taking over a flight mid mission if nobody else has a problem with it I suppose.

 

Also with regards to the purpose of multiplayer I know that when me and my cousin did a dmp based game, we had lots of fun both adding modules to a station or multitasking by each working on different objectives. I believe he did a moon rover while I did a biome hopper for minmus.

[Bej Kerman]

On 11/18/2021 at 8:14 PM, Wubslin said:

Hydrogen probably doesn't have a metastable metallic phase though, so you might want to label that as magic.

MH isn't insanely out of scope.

[Guest]

15 hours ago, ash73 said:

 

This is why multiplayer is such a waste of time, the only reason people want it is to show off, it won't add anything to the game. Just imagine all the extra features they could be building into the game if they weren't wasting so much effort on pointless MP

Tell me you never touched a coop game without telling me you never touched one.

 

This thread would be half a page long instead of 23 of only people who actually play multiplayer games were allowed to post here.

[Clancythecat]

As someone who has played numerous co-op games with their younger sibling,  I feel that the ideal time warp system would be like minecraft's sleeping system, in which to skip the night, all players must sleep at the same time, when player A time warps, a notification appears on player B&C's screens asking whether they want to time warp, and if they both click yes, they all time warp at the same time and the same rate.

If one clicks no, the time warp does not occur, and the other 2 players wait until the 3rd player is ready.

You could even add the alarm system that stock KSP1 has had for a few months now so players can set alarms that automatically stop the time warp.

[Bej Kerman]

15 hours ago, Clancythecat said:

As someone who has played numerous co-op games with their younger sibling,  I feel that the ideal time warp system would be like minecraft's sleeping system, in which to skip the night, all players must sleep at the same time, when player A time warps, a notification appears on player B&C's screens asking whether they want to time warp, and if they both click yes, they all time warp at the same time and the same rate.

If one clicks no, the time warp does not occur, and the other 2 players wait until the 3rd player is ready.

You could even add the alarm system that stock KSP1 has had for a few months now so players can set alarms that automatically stop the time warp.

Space is big - the difference between the amount of time it takes to get to the Munar surface from orbit to the time it takes to get between Kerbin and Jool is even bigger. A vote system just will not work with everyone having different places to be. Someone might be crashing into Minmus and have to stop the warp for 10 minutes to avert disaster, so stopping timewarp will not be vote driven, but then trolls could come along, bait the group with a vote then immediately stop time warp. Minecraft's system is adapted for a small world where everyone wants it to be a specific time, Morning, so you can't just plaster it onto KSP - night is only 10 minutes, anyway.

An actual solution: Dark Multiplayer and Luna Multiplayer have existed for years and gotten along just fine with players inhabiting bubble universes they can sync with. Why nobody brings this up constantly is beyond me - multiplayer with bubble universes is tried and true, yet everyone keeps coming up with less sustainable solutions.

[Deadmeat24]

18 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Space is big - the difference between the amount of time it takes to get to the Munar surface from orbit to the time it takes to get between Kerbin and Jool is even bigger. A vote system just will not work with everyone having different places to be. Someone might be crashing into Minmus and have to stop the warp for 10 minutes to avert disaster, so stopping timewarp will not be vote driven, but then trolls could come along, bait the group with a vote then immediately stop time warp. Minecraft's system is adapted for a small world where everyone wants it to be a specific time, Morning, so you can't just plaster it onto KSP - night is only 10 minutes, anyway.

An actual solution: Dark Multiplayer and Luna Multiplayer have existed for years and gotten along just fine with players inhabiting bubble universes they can sync with. Why nobody brings this up constantly is beyond me - multiplayer with bubble universes is tried and true, yet everyone keeps coming up with less sustainable solutions.

I think the reason is because dmp and lmp both have problems with paradoxical situations. I've done co-ops with both of them and have had problems with it before. While given ksp 1's limitations this is essentially the best we can do, with a whole new game people are hoping for something better. They just don't know what it is.

[Bej Kerman]

31 minutes ago, Deadmeat24 said:

I think the reason is because dmp and lmp both have problems with paradoxical situations. I've done co-ops with both of them and have had problems with it before.

Why, what happened?

[Deadmeat24]

16 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

Why, what happened?

The problem, as I recall (this was a while ago), was craft getting duped if they were interacted with in the past. It was really weird and eventually there was a lot of clutter everywhere. It was just very unintuitive and resulted in problems that didn't make any sense. Obviously this could be remedied if it was built into the game from the ground up. But I would like to see a new method that might work better, what that would be I don't really know, but I'm sure they are working on it. 

[Bej Kerman]

11 hours ago, Deadmeat24 said:

The problem, as I recall (this was a while ago), was craft getting duped if they were interacted with in the past. It was really weird and eventually there was a lot of clutter everywhere. It was just very unintuitive and resulted in problems that didn't make any sense. Obviously this could be remedied if it was built into the game from the ground up. But I would like to see a new method that might work better, what that would be I don't really know, but I'm sure they are working on it. 

KSP is just one of those games where it'd be irritating if you didn't have control over your own local flow of time. Now of course these issues could be remedied since this time round the multiplayer aspect is being done by a crack team of professionals, as cunning as the original devs for the multiplayer mods were. We could have such cool features as having to sync with an object first before being able to interact with it - for instance, having to rendezvous with where it is in the present while being able to see where they are in the present, or if both orbits are static and nearby, just teleport the syncing vessel to the nearby one. There's tons of QOL stuff that could be done by the devs now to help with these issues - one thing for certain is that vote warping and discrete turns like in Children of a Dead Earth are just not on.

Edited January 2, 2022 by Bej Kerman

[KCobalt]

On 8/19/2019 at 10:47 PM, MDZhB said:

I'd like to think it would be some kind of co-op mode with a party leader or something like that. Each player is restricted to a single kerbal in IVA mode, except for one who is a controller. Collaborative craft building would be cool to see too.

Edit:

This picture is called "Multiplayer.jpg" and it is at the multiplayer part of the promotions page. It might just be a generic image, but it might also mean that this is how multiplayer might work:

I wouldn't like being locked in IVA. But your idea could be fun, imagine a minmus colony that everybody does stuff on their own accord. Especially would be cool with more stuff to do on EVA, such as orbital construction.

[Wubslin]

On 12/31/2021 at 4:25 PM, Bej Kerman said:

MH isn't insanely out of scope.

Even if it does have a metastable phase to it, it's still a monopropellant. John D. Clark's Ignition! tells us that when you're working on monopropellants not reliant on catalysis to decompose, you're essentially playing with primary high explosives. Metallic Hydrogen could be ridiculously dangerous if the slightest disturbance in the fuel lines resulted in your entire craft going up like a low yield nuclear explosion. Not to mention needing, like the devs said, to have a mixture of hydrogen and a dopant to make the substance reactive to a magnetic field and able to be contained by a magnetic nozzle. How would that even work? I'm not trying to argue the fuels' exclusion from the game, I'm just saying that it's basically the one propulsion mechanism whose physics aren't really understood. Even with nuclear salt water rockets, we're maybe a year of multiphysics simulations performed on big iron at some national lab like Los Alamos before we'd have a working design. Inertial confinement fusion is real technology. Nuclear fission is real technology. Metallic hydrogen? Remains to be seen whether it can exist without the weight of a gas giant bearing down on it or a wall of metal imploded by a nuclear explosion transiently rushing in on it.

[Deadmeat24]

On 1/2/2022 at 3:22 PM, Bej Kerman said:

KSP is just one of those games where it'd be irritating if you didn't have control over your own local flow of time. Now of course these issues could be remedied since this time round the multiplayer aspect is being done by a crack team of professionals, as cunning as the original devs for the multiplayer mods were. We could have such cool features as having to sync with an object first before being able to interact with it - for instance, having to rendezvous with where it is in the present while being able to see where they are in the present, or if both orbits are static and nearby, just teleport the syncing vessel to the nearby one. There's tons of QOL stuff that could be done by the devs now to help with these issues - one thing for certain is that vote warping and discrete turns like in Children of a Dead Earth are just not on.

Yeah I agree there is a lot of QOL stuff which would help since mp will be built into the base game. I just don't want the devs to go "the way this mod does it must be the only way" in the same fashion as some of the people on the forums have been. As I am sure there are other alternatives, and maybe one of them could turn out better than the syncing option. The truth is until we get an mp feature video there is very little we can do to speculate about mp except referring to the ksp1 mods. Which is a little annoying tbh (c'mon Nate we need the intel! ).

[PlutoISaPlanet]

17 hours ago, Deadmeat24 said:

 Nate we need the intel! ).

KSP 2 will (hopefully) release in less than 365 days, hopefully we get a major update sooner than later.

[not giving a name]

what if you did multiplayer like flightgear, where each player controls timewarp and position individually (so you can move long distances),  but if you are close to another player, you cannot warp (for docking or rendezvous) 

[Bej Kerman]

On 1/5/2022 at 9:12 PM, not giving a name said:

but if you are close to another player, you cannot warp (for docking or rendezvous) 

Could you give us some specifics, and perhaps make it at least 100 words long (submitted and readable) so you don't end up underdescribing this? The devil is in the details - can drifting close to someone else while already in warp yank you out of warp? Does physics warp count?

Edited January 10, 2022 by Bej Kerman

[t_v]

On 1/5/2022 at 4:12 PM, not giving a name said:

what if you did multiplayer like flightgear, where each player controls timewarp and position individually (so you can move long distances),  but if you are close to another player, you cannot warp (for docking or rendezvous) 

I had a similar idea, before realizing that it had problems which would repel a large portion of the player base. Essentially, in flight gear, you can control your flow of time with no impact on anyone else, so if you speed up 2x then your plane flies twice as fast but you will be passing by planes flying at normal speed. This has the advantage that at any given time, if a player has done something all other players can see that thing an interact with it. You can also set up infrastructure much faster in game time as you don’t have to warp to a point where your friend has set up a supply route to build your next mission, you can simply start building your next mission even though your friend took 2000 in game years to set up that route. 
 

(the craft that would be affected by your warp would be the craft that have your kerbals in them, when offline players crafts would be frozen in a parking orbit and when a craft has kerbals of multiple players in them and both players are online, the craft unfreezes and warps at the lowest warp between the two players)

The problems I found with that were immediate. First, the less completely game breaking ones: you can warp ahead to rendezvous with a craft that is not warping, sort of negating proper rendezvous, unless that craft is yours. Second you can “race” to the moon and win by just being more aggressive with time warp. Next, the game breaking bugs: how would positioning even work? If a craft heads off to duna and warps to reach to, for them duna has moved considerably for them but not for you, otherwise nobody would ever be able to execute transfers. Where does that ship display in the system? Where it is relative to kerbin, duna, the star, or something else? This quickly becomes more complicated the more scenarios you think about and it becomes a game of cat and mouse to try to reach a ship that is skittering unpredictably across the system. Although, once your friend is in an orbit of duna, their ship should behave normally and show around duna, although duna is still at the transfer window for you. This sort of thing is fine for causal players who just want to mess around but breaks reality so badly (but look ma, no causality issues!) that most people would not be able to accept it. 

[t_v]

Another thing to consider in multiplayer is who controls what. I hope that it is not just whoever built the craft/colony controls it and others cannot control or influence it. My personal preference would be a system where each player controls a group of kerbals and can control whatever craft those kerbals have access to. So, to control a craft you would need a Kerbal in a command pod and not just a passenger module, and to reap science you could share a lab with one other player. That way, you could edit maneuver nodes while the other player executes them or do the flying while the other player(s) manage the ship. In colonies, you could chose how many kerbals of each player's type to produce whenever more population is created, and cooperatively manage colonies. In probes, you could share control of the probe by selecting the player as a controller in flight. However, you could also lock colonies, vessels, and probes to only be controllable by you, so that you can keep your infrastructure safe from hijackers rendezvousing with your stuff and taking it over. Although, having an option to hijack craft and colonies would be really cool too. Depends on how it is implemented. 

[MaxLiang]

I imaged a multiplayer way for KSP2. I'd like to share it.
1. We would like a holiday activity in which players could build an spaceship together and then fly to other planetary systems by the  spaceship。And those spaceship-engineers should be awarded by some spical items like : ship skisn or colthings for kerbals.
2. The holiday activity should be much more challenge than single player mode. So that multiplyer is necessary
3. There must be some public areas where starships and it`s components were bulided. In these public areas,  timewarp shoud be voted by players or controled by server creator. Instead, in private areas, timewarp should not be limited
4. Due to the third description, some key resources shoud be real-time-limited so that these resources will not disturb myltipleplyer game

[PlutoISaPlanet]

28 minutes ago, MaxLiang said:

I imaged a multiplayer way for KSP2. I'd like to share it.
1. We would like a holiday activity in which players could build an spaceship together and then fly to other planetary systems by the  spaceship。And those spaceship-engineers should be awarded by some spical items like : ship skisn or colthings for kerbals.
2. The holiday activity should be much more challenge than single player mode. So that multiplyer is necessary
3. There must be some public areas where starships and it`s components were bulided. In these public areas,  timewarp shoud be voted by players or controled by server creator. Instead, in private areas, timewarp should not be limited
4. Due to the third description, some key resources shoud be real-time-limited so that these resources will not disturb myltipleplyer game

I like #3

[SciMan]

Something that forces you to play a certain way (like forcing you to play multiplayer by making a task impossible to do without 2 or more people) is something that will be certainly ignored by a section of your users. Holiday event or not. In fact, making a holiday event is ALSO something that will be ignored by a section of your users.
This might not be a bad thing on a game where you have something like 100k simultaneous users (like a big MMO or something like Destiny 2). I would bet a large sum of money that KSP 2 will not have that kind of popularity.
For that reason, IMO those kind of things should not be developed until well after the game has launched, and the developers have been able to gauge if the community would appreciate (or tolerate) such things.

I still think that multiplayer for KSP 2 should focus on "small groups" of 2-8 players at a time maximum, playing what's essentially "co-op", with no such thing as a separate "co-op save" and "single player save".
What I mean by that is that you should absolutely be able to do something like take your existing single player save, and invite a friend into it. You should ALSO be able to take an existing co-op save, and run it with just one person (without losing the ability to pilot ANY of the vessels, no matter who "owns" them when playing co-op, if that's even a thing).

It should be totally drop-in and drop-out as seamlessly as possible (I guess it's fine if it needs to re-load the scene).
There should NOT BE ANY "ownership" of vessels, that results in "I can't control this because I don't own it". That's the simplest way to make it so you can make meaningful use of stations set up by other players.

As far as controlling destructive behaviour, there should be an easy to use kick/ban system, and players should NOT be able to join freely just because you have your session "open" or whatever. It should be invite-only.

The idea that someone can just join your server, mess everything up, and then leave, even if they are a friend you know, in fact that makes this MORE likely, that is one of the things that scares me away from multiplayer sandboxes. So reliable admin tools are a must-have if I'm personally going to play. We shouldn't HAVE to depend on mods to do that, but we SHOULD have the possibility of modding that kind of thing (with the notable exception of not being able to mod your game so that it ignores kick and/or ban commands).

[t_v]

17 minutes ago, SciMan said:

It should be totally drop-in and drop-out as seamlessly as possible (I guess it's fine if it needs to re-load the scene).
There should NOT BE ANY "ownership" of vessels, that results in "I can't control this because I don't own it". That's the simplest way to make it so you can make meaningful use of stations set up by other players.

Is the simplicity for the sake of learning the system easily? In that case, I had an idea a few days ago of how control could work in multiplayer that is pretty easy to grasp and results in interesting ways to collaborate on craft and probes (and it isn’t a hassle, you can just put other people’s kerbals inside your craft in the editor to allow them to control it)

 

For the problem of losing control in single player, when the server detects that a player who was on the server is banned, it redistributes their kerbals among remaining players (so in single player it just goes to the person playing), and those kerbals cannot reproduce/ they generate kerbals for the players still playing, and if the banned player rejoins, their kerbals are given back but any offspring stay with the players who created them.