KSP 2 Multiplayer Discussion Thread

[t_v]

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

@t_v said: "I think that first-time to orbit experience is better served in a smaller world without all the distractions of dozens of near-simultaneous launches."

Let's settle this:

Kerbin has a total surface area of 4,523,893.4 km^2.

Excluding water based colonies, the land surface area is roughly half of that. But let's exclude mountains and steep hills and say 40%.

Kerbin usable land surface area: ~ 1,800,000 km^2.

The KSC plateau is about 25 km^2 (from the wiki). But let's say for a 1-4 kerbal agency you would need 100 km^2.

That's a maximum of 18,000 space agencies that can fit on Kerbin and a maximum of 72,000 players.

Steam-charts says the peak player count for KSP1 was 19,079. And on average there are 3,500 players online at any given moment.

If you wanted to you could fit 5,000 players on Kerbin without any overcrowding issues on regional servers (latency reasons). They wouldn't all launch or fly simultaneously anyway.

 

If you only count in-person launches that would be the case. But once you factor in supply runs, the numbers change. First, you no longer count active players and you include the full player base of that server, which easily fills the 18,000 agency cap for the largest regions. Then, discounting any launches that go interplanetary, players will want a supply mission to the Mun, minmus, and several orbiting stations several times a day. Let’s say this averages out to 5 supply runs from Kerbin every day and 5 landings. So, with this very conservative estimate of 10 launches/landings per 6 hours, that makes on average one every 36 minutes per agency. Launches take roughly 5 minutes, landings take roughly 9, so yes, there will be many rockets flying into or out of space while you launch, enough to lose track of the one rocket you are trying to follow. 

[Vl3d]

13 minutes ago, t_v said:

players will want a supply mission to the Mun, minmus, and several orbiting stations several times a day

If there are so many players for that to constitute a problem you don't render other agencies automated missions and you only render the online players.

Server can decide depending on player count or it can be a local performance setting.

Edited April 13, 2022 by Vl3d

[t_v]

46 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

If there are so many players for that to constitute a problem you don't render other agencies automated missions and you only render the online players.

Server can decide depending on player count or it can be a local performance setting.

So, it is an MMO with a limited player base per server?

[Vl3d]

That's what I'm thinking. 1000-5000 players on Kerbin. Team-only when in deep space. Fewer and fewer on celestial bodies as you leave the solar system.

Also anyone should be able to create private servers to play hybrid single player like you want.

Would be very interesting to visit the empires of the Elders after a few years.

Did I get the MMO definition wrong?

Edited April 13, 2022 by Vl3d

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Vl3d said:

Obviously I'm talking about in-game causality

Which doesn't matter outside of roleplay.

2 hours ago, Vl3d said:

Say you're in the future and you create a colony right on a small island on Laythe. I, in the past, simultaneously decided to land at that spot to also make a colony. Now that place is blocked and I'm stranded.

You know how rare of an edge case it is to have someone to choose the same exact place in a whole solar system to make a base in the timeframe of the final approach before landing? And even then you just have to put an alert to that player screen with a message like: "WOW, you're the unlickiest player in gaming history, someone just landed here while you were reentering the atmosphere, your craft has been teleported 50m to the left".

Even with your totally impossible MMO dreams having someone making a base right before you're touching down in the same exact place is something not worth banging your head around, it's probably way easier to find edge cases to brake the vanilla single player.

[Vl3d]

14 hours ago, Vl3d said:

@t_v said: "I think that first-time to orbit experience is better served in a smaller world without all the distractions of dozens of near-simultaneous launches."

Let's settle this:

Kerbin has a total surface area of 4,523,893.4 km^2.

Excluding water based colonies, the land surface area is roughly half of that. But let's exclude mountains and steep hills and say 40%.

Kerbin usable land surface area: ~ 1,800,000 km^2.

The KSC plateau is about 25 km^2 (from the wiki). But let's say for a 1-4 kerbal agency you would need 100 km^2.

That's a maximum of 18,000 space agencies that can fit on Kerbin and a maximum of 72,000 players.

Steam-charts says the peak player count for KSP1 was 19,079. And on average there are 3,500 players online at any given moment.

If you wanted to you could fit 5,000 players on Kerbin without any overcrowding issues on regional servers (latency reasons). They wouldn't all launch or fly simultaneously anyway.

 

We should also account for the fact that not being near the equator makes the game harder for players.

That's would again put a limit of probably 40% on the usable land surface for better balance.

So that's a new maximum of 7,200 agencies and 28,800 players. Still enough for a player base of at least ~1000 solo players per server (more if also playing co-op), while avoiding overcrowding.

Edited April 14, 2022 by Vl3d

[Pthigrivi]

To my mind you really want everyone on an equal footing, which means along the equator, and you want to give a decent berth for stage recovery without landing on someone else’s space center. That looks like 10-12 slots to me. 

[Vl3d]

Kerbing equatorial circumference: 3,769,911 m

Equator = 360 degrees = 36 * 10 degree segments

Equator has 17 land segments and 19 water segments. Let's remove one land segments because of terrain. So 16/36.

Max. number of agencies EXACTLY on the equator: (3,769,911 m * (16/36) ) / 100.000 m = 16.75 = ~16

That means max. 64 players in the whole interstellar-wide universe.

What a galactic waste of space.

[Vl3d]

1 hour ago, Pthigrivi said:

To my mind you really want everyone on an equal footing

I imagine someone actually telling this to the team during the multiplayer design discussions.

Just imagine you would tell the team that multiplayer works only if everyone is exactly on the equator.

Because no one wants to spend some Delta-V for a max. 45° inclination change.

I would just reply: it's a difficulty setting. If you want to play on easy, join another server that has free space near the equator.

Edited April 14, 2022 by Vl3d

[Pthigrivi]

Well okay but most players don't want to do an inclination burn on every launch, so the slots around the equator all get gobbled up first. And honestly 12 players to a server sounds about right to me. I usually have 50-100 active flights, and that will probably balloon as we start setting up colonies. Even if a lot of players had fewer at any given time you'll still have hundreds of vessels flying around. Even with that many I'll probably have most other player's paths turned off so I can see what Im doing. Even if they weren't bogging down my CPU it would just end up looking like incomprehensible clutter. 

This is just me in a typical single player. If I put a few friends in it would be hard to tell whats what.

Edited April 14, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[Vl3d]

Well in my mind by default you would not see other agencies craft orbits in map view. You would see your agency's craft (co-op).

But in normal view you would see all craft if they are big or very close.

Or you could communicate with another agency and do some contract or common project. Then you would see only them in map view. Maybe have a list to select specific satellite or station to view.

[DwightLee]

On 4/13/2022 at 2:48 AM, Master39 said:

As I said yesterday "Syncing" can just mean that if you are at day 250 and I'm at day 300 you have to timewarp to my date. Or that if I used a station at day 260 you have to timewarp to after that to use it on your own.

The correction there is just seeing thing warp ahead exactly as if you were timewarping on your own for your own reasons.

A simple permission system is all you need to avoid that your friend uses your space station in the future forcing you to timewarp 10 years to use it or the whole "stealing asteroids" scenario.

 

When you have multiple players playing together if they're doing different mission you have to deal with the logistics of different timewarps anyway, true, an asyncronous system is more difficult to program and has edge cases that needs to deal with, but a syncronous system just offloads all that complexity upon the players, that need to organize actively, communicate a lot more and take turns at playing the game at the speed they need for a particular mission (and that could mean the dead of either plane flying, roving and EVAs or of any mission past maybe Duna because you woulnd't be able to do both).

My first and only Eve return mission was with an elettric plane bringing a rocket to altitude, a 15 minutes affair forced at 1x warp, in a multiplayer setting that would be excruciating for everyone online except me.

That would indeed be my preferred method, I am not a fan of the "zones" and resync options others have mentioned.

[SSTO Crasher]

Multiplayer is really the last feature of ksp2 that they have told us nothing about 

[Vl3d]

Trading resources will be possible. Kerbals will play more of an avatar role and they will be able to emote. More experienced players will be able to show new players the ropes. Agency space centers will have room for 4 team / co-op players. Teams will have customizable spacesuit colors. And it's gonna be fun. That's all we officially know.

But if you're willing to speculate...

 

Edited April 15, 2022 by Vl3d

[t_v]

6 hours ago, Vl3d said:

Trading resources will be possible. Kerbals will play more of an avatar role and they will be able to emote. More experienced players will be able to show new players the ropes. Agency space centers will have room for 4 team / co-op players. And it's gonna be fun. That's all we officially know.

But if you're willing to speculate...

 

We know:

Trading resources

emotes

experienced players being able to show newer players the ropes

We have no indication for the rest. 

[Vl3d]

Nate said Kerbals are going to have more of an avatar role (video below at 14:53):

Agency space centers will have room for 4 team / co-op players:

Nate mentioned in interviews that there would be 2 non-intersecting runways, 4 launch pad (at 17:44 in video here). You can also see 4 landing areas and 4 x fueling infrastructure in the KSC videos.

Also something I missed: customizable team colors, confirmed in interviews and the trailer. So multiple Kerbal co-op teams confirmed.

 

Edited April 15, 2022 by Vl3d

[t_v]

Sorry, I didn’t see that interview. One thing to note is that the kerbals will fill the role of avatar, and the wording makes me think that you won’t be controlling a single kerbal, you’ll just interact through them. And, team colors is indeed for multiplayer but doesn’t indicate whether it will be co op, competitive, or other type of multiplayer. 

[Vl3d]

47 minutes ago, t_v said:

wording makes me think that you won’t be controlling a single kerbal, you’ll just interact through them

Agree.

47 minutes ago, t_v said:

team colors is indeed for multiplayer but doesn’t indicate whether it will be co op, competitive, or other type of multiplayer

What makes the most sense? Same color, same team. Two colors, two teams. I call teams agencies. Team members could be individually or collectively controlled by 1-4 players, like you said.

Also in before: yes in a MMO with 1000 agencies you can't have 1000 distinct colors. So you just color teams you physically interact with (co-op or competitive). The rest can be neutral.

So what I'm saying is there could be small 16 agency servers created by players where they all start on the equator

AND

big 1000 agency central servers with contracts (ex. first to the Mun) for max 16 agencies.

Edited April 15, 2022 by Vl3d

[Vl3d]

I'm starting to relate to this...

 

[Bej Kerman]

4 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

I'm starting to relate to this...

 

100% preferable to an MMO imo

[Guest]

10 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

100% preferable to an MMO imo

That's a low bar to clear, even no multiplayer at all is a better scenario than KSP2 being an MMO.

[Vl3d]

You're just asking for faster horses instead of flying cars.

[Guest]

23 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

You're just asking for faster horses instead of flying cars.

An MMO is not just a multiplayer game with a bigger player count, there's a whole lot of asterisks attached to such a game.

After a few hundred players multiplayer games start to spiral out of control in complexity, server costs, instancing problems, maintenance.

A live service game with small instances is already an order of magnitude bigger and costlier than your average coop game, but an MMO is even bigger than that.

 

It's like we're all arguing about what's better between a SUV and a compact car and you come in saying that an aircraft carrier surely can hold more groceries. Not only disregarding the scale and the type of vehicle but also the fact that we're having this discussion a thousand Km away from the nearest ocean.

[Vl3d]

How about multiple servers of ~800 players each? Is that an MMO or something else?

Edited April 16, 2022 by Vl3d

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

How about multiple servers of ~800 players each? Is that an MMO or something else?

It depends on who's hosting them, multiple 800 private servers? No problems, Minecraft has multiple such realities, privately hosted, managed and funded.

Hypixel way a big one back when I still followed that game.

Multiple regional servers managed by Intercept or PD? That would basically suck all KSP2 budget and studio resources, look at GTAV, Rockstar couldn't afford to make any new SP due to the MP sucking all the attention and resources, what make you think that a studio that's like 20 times smaller could do better?

Multiple 800 people servers hosted by the developers means that all the focus and resources will go there, at the expense of the single player and that the game would need a solid monetization scheme, being it microtransactions, a subscription or both.