KSP 2 Multiplayer Discussion Thread

[t_v]

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

All you give up is being able to control (physical) time-warp on/around a celestial body. But you gain big multiplayer. That's not cutting the game in half.

Again with the false dichotomy. You can have MMO and control over time warp. It is not one or the other. Look at how other people have already solved it. 
 

3 hours ago, Vl3d said:

12 hours ago, t_v said:

fix the problems you have without forcing players to wait weeks to leave Kerbin SOI.

I feel like you haven't read what I've been saying. You just get to orbit, plan the journey and go. It can't be any easier and faster - and it's also real-time planet-side + auto time-warp during the journey + it allows for large numbers of players.

I have, and there have been two different things that have shown me how this system is unplayable. I understand that once you make the ejection burn, you can time warp, you don’t have to wait to leave the SOI. But you have also said that players need to wait for the transfer window, both in real time and by warping. The first one is just silly and will result in some planets never being explored within the lifetime of the game, and the second one is literally just adding time warp back into your “no time warp” solution. 
 

Once again, manual control over time warp and big multiplayer are not exclusive. Manual control over time warp and being able to see other people doing stuff in real time is not exclusive either. You can have the experiences you want (which you have talked about extensively in other threads) without the immense drawbacks of your solution. 

[Vl3d]

You can't have large scale multiplayer with physics warp. You would just see people popping in and out of existence as if they are using hyper-speed wall-hack cheats. It breaks immersion. You couldn't have space-races or races of any kind. If I can see you, you don't warp.

I'm sure there are other solutions if you really are that impatient. I'm not the only one who should think about them, you know? I'm just a random guy on the forum.

I wrote a Q&A to end spamming this thread.

 

Edited April 8, 2022 by Vl3d

[t_v]

Ok, let me get this right: the giant interplanetary craft that just popped into existence after being on a journey doesn’t break immersion but the tiny, practically invisible Mun ship speeding up and warping does?

Let’s talk experiences, since those help to convey the ‘feel’ of a particular solution. 

- You are on a flight with your friends. Another friend wants to join in with the same plane model. Instead of having to stop and wait for that friend on the ground, they can just spawn and warp up to your position. 

-you look up into the sky and see a constellation of little streaks, like a meteor shower, as someone rendevouses  with a station. 
 

- you come out of time warp after a long interplanetary transfer, and as your ship slows down to real speed, the stations orbiting Duna do too. (a nice visual effect)

 

- You are teaching someone how to get to the Mun for the first time. They warp ahead, you see their ship seemingly accelerate but then when they stop warping you then warp to their position, ready for the next part of the tutorial (with journeys, you can’t interact with ships while transferring, which is kind of dumb as the coolest reasons to dock come while a ship is on a transfer, this cutting off a lot of experiences)

I can come up with more. Time warp won’t break immersion any more than constant popping in and out of existence. 

[Vl3d]

21 minutes ago, t_v said:

they can just spawn and warp up to your position

No to warp drives! You're being sneaky, thought it would get past us, eh? Just go meet your friend at the closest colony and takeoff in tandem.

No warp drives!

27 minutes ago, t_v said:

with journeys, you can’t interact with ships while transferring

You can interact once you're in stable orbit. You keep forgetting that while you warp the planets and the moons keep moving at high speed. You're creating parallel universes everytime you warp.

No to manually controlling time travel when on / around celestial bodies. Only the server keeps the time and system positional configuration.

A better controversial solution:

"What if I get bored of waiting to ... circularize at apoapsis / rendezvous / land with parachutes ... in real-time?"

Use basic automation as software modules and simple conditional triggers. Create the maneuver in advance and allow smart-parts or a minimal autopilot to do the final burn / do the approach or dock / trigger the parachutes and the landing legs.

And/or set an alarm and go do something else meanwhile. You don't have to micromanage or babysit. Unload manual controls to the rocket design process.

[linuxgurugamer]

15 hours ago, SkyFall2489 said:

I think they are trying to find a way to remove direct physics simulation from long distance travel, having you just set manuvers, auto execute them, and drain ship fuel appropriately, with no time warp within SOIs. Not sure entierly how it would work out, but why reinvent the wheel?

Plus, time warp is used for other things too. Such as waiting for crew respawns, waiting for ISRU to fill up your tanks, and more.

Ummm, that's what KSP does already, when a ship is on rails.  What they are doing is a way to minimize all the individual physics calculations for all the individual parts in the ship when it is loaded and active

[t_v]

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

No to warp drives! You're being sneaky, thought it would get past us, eh? Just go meet your friend at the closest colony and takeoff in tandem.

No warp drives!

You can interact once you're in stable orbit. You keep forgetting that while you warp the planets and the moons keep moving at high speed. You're creating parallel universes everytime you warp.

No to manually controlling time travel when on / around celestial bodies. Only the server keeps the time and system positional configuration.

A better controversial solution:

"What if I get bored of waiting to ... circularize at apoapsis / rendezvous / land with parachutes ... in real-time?"

Use basic automation as software modules and simple conditional triggers. Create the maneuver in advance and allow smart-parts or a minimal autopilot to do the final burn / do the approach or dock / trigger the parachutes and the landing legs.

And/or set an alarm and go do something else meanwhile. You don't have to micromanage or babysit. Unload manual controls to the rocket design process.

1. Time warp, not warp drives. 
 

2. how about interacting while on transfers? That’s what I was lamenting not having with your solution. 
 

3. So you are just going to make the game more of an AFK simulator? It really sounds like you actually just want to play Eve online. 

[Bej Kerman]

15 hours ago, Vl3d said:

15 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

No-one wants to be forced to build faster craft or wait hours for their orbit to come round. This is a bad idea - every player needs physics warp.

Why do you NEED physics warp on/around the planet aside that you're used to it in single player KSP1?

1. Can't wait 1 minute to land with parachutes? Set your parachute to deploy at a lower altitude.

2. Can't wait for ISRU tanks to fill? Add more drills and converters.

3. Can't wait for the space station to come around? Do a better rendezvous maneuver and design a faster rocket, park in orbit and set an alarm.

4. Isn't it a transportation game? Journeys take time, you can't time-warp rover circumnavigation.

5. Why would you want to regularly desync all the players just because of impatience and bad time-management skills?

6. Physics time-warp kills multiplayer unless you constantly pop in and out of existence. But that's usually called cheating by using a hyper-speed wall-hack "assistant".

1. Already do that

2. That's hardly a solution.

3. Again not everyone wants to build a faster rocket, some want to go smaller or more efficient.

4. If KSP was only about sitting down and doing nothing between destinations, then most walking simulators on Steam would give you a better deal than KSP.

5. Wanting to spend 1 minute on a regular launch instead of an hour isn't "impatence and bad time-management skills". Wanting to build a small and efficient probe instead of an extremely quick rocket isn't "bad engineering skills". Wanting to put a space station together in an hour instead of a month isn't "bad skills all-round".

6. Physics time-warp is needed for KSP, and Dark Multiplayer gave us the best solution by giving us pocket universes. It works for Dark Multiplayer, why you're so insistent we trade that for a haphazard MMO instead is well beyond me. Why so many players on the forum want this tried and true solution swapped for the sake of having all the players, separated by millions of kilometres, all synchronised is just not something I'm ever going to figure out.

12 minutes ago, t_v said:

It really sounds like you actually just want to play Eve online. 

Good one 

[Vl3d]

13 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

for the sake of having all the players, separated by millions of kilometres, all synchronised

That's completely your idea, not mine. I never says that. I've advocated for individually desynced celestial body pockets with real-time bubbles. Only the local players on / around the celestial body are synced in real-time. But of course you can jump to any colony and the solar system configuration changes.

13 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

3. Again not everyone wants to build a faster rocket, some want to go smaller or more efficient.

Interplanetary torch ships confirmed!

13 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

4. If KSP was only about sitting down and doing nothing between destinations, then most walking simulators on Steam would give you a better deal than KSP.

 

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

"What if I get bored of waiting to ... circularize at apoapsis / rendezvous / land with parachutes ... in real-time?"

Use basic automation as software modules and simple conditional triggers. Create the maneuver in advance and allow smart-parts or a minimal autopilot to do the final burn / do the approach or dock / trigger the parachutes and the landing legs.

And/or set an alarm and go do something else meanwhile. You don't have to micromanage or babysit. Unload manual controls to the rocket design process.

---

25 minutes ago, t_v said:

2. how about interacting while on transfers? That’s what I was lamenting not having with your solution. 

Fine, add deep space multiplayer local real-time bubbles for ships! Like I proposed for space stations, asteroids and comets. Then you can be a pirate. There, are you happy now?@t_v :))

Just keep on / around celestial bodies real-time so we can be a lot of players.

Edited April 8, 2022 by Vl3d

[Bej Kerman]

15 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

I've advocated for individually desynced celestial body pockets with real-time bubbles

So that you can keep the players inside those bubbles synchronised. Players synchronised, but still immense distances apart. All this you've spent hours proposing just serves to take a crowbar to the most important feature KSP has following the moment the game loads to the launch pad.

16 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

29 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

3. Again not everyone wants to build a faster rocket, some want to go smaller or more efficient.

Interplanetary torch ships confirmed!

Again, not everyone wants to build a faster rocket. Some want to go smaller or more efficient.

17 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

Use basic automation as software modules and simple conditional triggers. Create the maneuver in advance and allow smart-parts or a minimal autopilot to do the final burn / do the approach or dock / trigger the parachutes and the landing legs.

Basically, your idea boils down to this: play my way (torchships), or just don't play at all.

[DunaManiac]

Honestly, I think an MMO with no phys-warp is just needlessly complicated. Dark multiplayer works, so why transform the game to fit a needlessly complicated format that not many people would be interested in?

17 hours ago, Vl3d said:

Can't wait for the space station to come around? Do a better rendezvous maneuver and design a faster rocket, park in orbit and set an alarm.

 

"Do a better rendevous" doesn't fix the problem. In my opinion, the game shouldn't have to make you design a needlessly large rocket just because you don't want to have to wait as long in the meantime.  It isn't "impatience" or "bad time management," its just simply avoiding tedium. In my experience, most rendezvous take around a few hours in-game time to complete, unless you're lucky and come in at exactly the right time. "Just use a torchship" doesn't solve the problem, especially in the early game when you rely on chemical rockets, if we're looking at some kind of progression.

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

Use basic automation as software modules and simple conditional triggers. Create the maneuver in advance and allow smart-parts or a minimal autopilot to do the final burn / do the approach or dock / trigger the parachutes and the landing legs.

 

An autopilot migt solve the problem of waiting several hours to maneuver your craft, but it DOESN'T solve the problem of having to leave your computer running for several hours as you patiently wait for an encounter.

[Bej Kerman]

16 minutes ago, DunaManiac said:

Honestly, I think an MMO with no phys-warp is just needlessly complicated. Dark multiplayer works, so why transform the game to fit a needlessly complicated format that not many people would be interested in?

17 hours ago, Vl3d said:

Can't wait for the space station to come around? Do a better rendezvous maneuver and design a faster rocket, park in orbit and set an alarm.

 

"Do a better rendevous" doesn't fix the problem. In my opinion, the game shouldn't have to make you design a needlessly large rocket just because you don't want to have to wait as long in the meantime.  It isn't "impatience" or "bad time management," its just simply avoiding tedium. In my experience, most rendezvous take around a few hours in-game time to complete, unless you're lucky and come in at exactly the right time. "Just use a torchship" doesn't solve the problem, especially in the early game when you rely on chemical rockets, if we're looking at some kind of progression.

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

Use basic automation as software modules and simple conditional triggers. Create the maneuver in advance and allow smart-parts or a minimal autopilot to do the final burn / do the approach or dock / trigger the parachutes and the landing legs.

 

An autopilot migt solve the problem of waiting several hours to maneuver your craft, but it DOESN'T solve the problem of having to leave your computer running for several hours as you patiently wait for an encounter.

I'm glad someone has some sense

The bottom line is that Vl3d' idea just doesn't work. It requires the player to enjoy allowing their computer to waste power on hours of activities that should only take minutes of real time. Time Warp is the most crucial aspect of KSP, and clearly the devs working on Dark Multiplayer understand this as they figured out a system that works and allows players to individually time warp. I only want to know why Vl3d is so quick to throw this tried-and-true system out the window when it's necessary for KSP.

Edit: @Vl3d I want to see you play KSP version 0.7.3, which predates the addition of time warp. I want you to circle Kerbin twice and land again without losing patience 

Edited April 8, 2022 by Bej Kerman

[Lisias]

12 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

I'm glad someone has some sense

So it's time to someone screw up things again.

There's one thing I think you guys are missing. On Multiplayer Simulations, interactions between users are not always desirable.

I was watching some Flight Simulator's videos in the recent past, I was trying to decide if I would go X-Plane or Flight Simulator and I thought one way to gather info about was watching these videos. What I realised is that one of the first things people learn on multiplayer sessions on these games is that everybody should turn off physical interactions between players (as this was commented out in about half the videos). I found it odd, and it took some time until someone entered on a multiplayer session being recorded with the option on.

Boy, this dude didn't managed to take off

What was happening is that most players weren't in the mood to "follow the ATC", didn't wanted to do waiting circuits for a landing slot or take a long queue in the tarmac waiting for the takeoff. They aimed to the runway and virtually crashed the craft over whatever was over the asphalt - and on the grass too.  

It's weird, but most people that travelled from distant airports withhold the long hours of simulation happily (one dude came from France using a Concorde once!!!), but once they arrived on the destination airport they just wanna get the job done and get to do something else (as doing aerobatics with a Airbus or landing a 747 on a aircraft carrier).

Now, consider the following scenario: you and a friend spent hours carefully planning a rendezvous  mission between his supply ship and your station. Then someone else docks on your station and takes the fuel!

Or the dude is not experienced, do a lousy docking and screw up your station's orbit, and the supply mission is now a rescue attempt that neither you or your friend was willing to do.

So, yeah. Or you limit the server's sessions to a few guys that knows each other (and then it's better to do a peer-to-peer connection between a few players that control who enter into the session), and then there's no reason to prevent them to do Time Warp if they want… Or you set up a central server for a MMO (MSFS style), but with the option to turn off the physics interaction, and then there's no reason to prevent the dude to use time warp at all.

Alternatively, you can allow players to interact just with some selected ones - creating "virtual" spacetime bubbles on the game where just some people can physically interact with you on the session. You would get a "rich" environment full of things happening (what makes for better immersion) without risking some dud SAS throwing you out off your orbit. As an additional benefit, you can allow the people inside a spacetime bubble to choose how they want to play, using time warp or not - or even some cheats.

Edited April 9, 2022 by Lisias
tyops as usulla...

[Vl3d]

31 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Then someone else docks on your station and takes the fuel!

You only dock to your own agency's craft or to another agency's but only after requesting and receiving permission. You allow physical interactions between ships belonging to the same 2-4 man agency because it's the Kerbal way to crash into your friends.

But generally physics interaction would be off in Kerbal to be able to project a large number of crafts as very small part count systems with no collision meshes. Performance for large number of craft on screen.

The point is that on / around celestial body time-warp is just that in multiplayer: a warp. It messes the whole game up.

1 hour ago, Bej Kerman said:

 I want to see you play KSP version 0.7.3, which predates the addition of time warp.

I never warp to get to orbit. There will be no warping close to the planet in multiplayer, I'm sure of it.

Edited April 8, 2022 by Vl3d

[Bej Kerman]

7 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

36 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Then someone else docks on your station and takes the fuel!

You only dock to your own agency's craft or to another agency's but only after requesting and receiving permission.

So if you don't get accepted, you can just ram the docking port and cause more damage than if you were allowed to dock?

8 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

1 hour ago, Bej Kerman said:

 I want to see you play KSP version 0.7.3, which predates the addition of time warp.

I never warp to get to orbit. There will be no warping close to the planet in multiplayer, I'm sure of it.

You never warp to get to the Mun, or even Minmus? Go on, do that without warping, and you'll see how badly timewarp is needed in KSP.

[Vl3d]

Bej really I'm not gonna continue bothering in answering your comments if you don't read my replies that you actually quoted.

13 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

So if you don't get accepted, you can just ram the docking port and cause more damage than if you were allowed to dock?

 

23 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

You allow physical interactions between ships belonging to the same 2-4 man agency because it's the Kerbal way to crash into your friends.

But generally physics interaction would be off

Obviously if you receive permission to dock only then you can physically interact with the vessel.

15 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

You never warp to get to the Mun, or even Minmus?

I warp to any other celestial body. I just don't warp to Kerbin orbit.

[t_v]

13 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

You never warp to get to the Mun, or even Minmus? Go on, do that without warping, and you'll see how badly timewarp is needed in KSP.

For this, their system would allow warp because once you do the burn (which would require about 15 minutes of idling if you are on the wrong side of the planet) you would have an SOI change in your trajectory and would be kicked out of synchronous time (which for me would be immersion breaking as you would never see the ships go off into space, they would just fade out in the middle of a burn)

A more accurate example is when you burn and then have to wait an orbit before getting your rendezvous (because you want to save delta-v). Suddenly you go from waiting less than half an hour to waiting real-life weeks for what was probably a tiny little mission. There are lots of ways this could soft lock you out of the game, making it literally unplayable. Or, take rendezvous times. If you messed up your ascent timing, there is no reverting and if you actually engineered your craft to have tight margins, you won’t have enough delta-v to make a quick rendevous by doubling your orbital period, and you have to wait for real-life days to watch your craft approach excruciatingly slowly. The solution is not “get better lul design bigger craft” the solution is to let players play how they want (which includes efficiently, which takes a lot of time in-game) in multiplayer. 

[Lisias]

46 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

You only dock to your own agency's craft or to another agency's but only after requesting and receiving permission. You allow physical interactions between ships belonging to the same 2-4 man agency because it's the Kerbal way to crash into your friends.

So why the time warp is a problem? The causality must be preserved only for these 2-4 players in their own spacetime bubble...

 

21 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

I warp to any other celestial body. I just don't warp to Kerbin orbit.

But  I do warp while in orbit to get into that manoeuvring node!

 

39 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

So if you don't get accepted, you can just ram the docking port and cause more damage than if you were allowed to dock?

Exactly my point. And I will not even talk about doing it purposely - highly crowded places like Kerbin's orbit will quickly became a Kessler Syndrome Work Shop.

 

22 minutes ago, t_v said:

The solution is not “get better lul design bigger craft” the solution is to let players play how they want (which includes efficiently, which takes a lot of time in-game) in multiplayer. 

Sometimes, I have this strange feeling that people forget about the purpose of a game...

[Vanamonde]

Some content removed. Keep it on-topic, please. Also, ease off on the tempers, guys. 

[Bej Kerman]

4 hours ago, Vl3d said:

4 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

You never warp to get to the Mun, or even Minmus?

I warp to any other celestial body. I just don't warp to Kerbin orbit.

You warp to any other celestial body? But your idea implies you don't mind sitting for hours, or even days when going between moons. Are you saying that timewarp is needed? Because it is. Everyone else timewarps, even across "short" distances. Bottom line: independent timewarp stays, and your idea has to center around that.

Timewarp is a critical feature, whether interplanetary or in orbit. It's hasty to decide no-one else needs timewarp for low Kerbin orbit.

Edited April 8, 2022 by Bej Kerman
Same point, different wording.

[Snark]

Some content has been redacted and/or removed.

Folks, in case it wasn't clear when Vanamonde said

2 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

Also, ease off on the tempers, guys.

...this also implies:  please do not make personal remarks, in case that wasn't clear.

Thank you for your understanding.

[SkyFall2489]

All this argument.. why can't we let players choose? If there's an option not yet available, that's what mods are for.

[Pthigrivi]

I guess if I can play with 2-8 or so people I know to collaborate on bases or have a space race or drive around the Mun together I don't really need to see dozens or hundreds of other ghosted ships of people I don't know?  Why not just keep it simple with small servers, do your thing in your own time or warp forward to synch with someone who's ahead of you? 

[Lisias]

5 hours ago, SkyFall2489 said:

All this argument.. why can't we let players choose? If there's an option not yet available, that's what mods are for.

Because multiplayer will have DRM activated and no add'ons will be allowed...

 

4 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

 Why not just keep it simple with small servers, do your thing in your own time or warp forward to synch with someone who's ahead of you? 

From my experience on Doom and  Quake Planet World times, most if the time you won't be able to play with your friends due conflicting schedules.

So you just want to fool around on a public sandbox and get some fun and perhaps get to know someone that would invite you to a closed multiplayer session.

Edited April 9, 2022 by Lisias
Quake WORLD, not planet! Damn, I'm getting old...

[SkyFall2489]

22 minutes ago, Lisias said:

5 hours ago, SkyFall2489 said:

All this argument.. why can't we let players choose? If there's an option not yet available, that's what mods are for.

Because multiplayer will have DRM activated and no add'ons will be allowed...

What do you mean by DRM?

[Lisias]

1 hour ago, SkyFall2489 said:

What do you mean by DRM?

"Digital Rights Management". From where are you? Dres?

Serious now.  We only have two open disclaimers from the devs about DRM and related stuff:

1. There will be no DRM on Singleplayer
2. There will be no micro-transactions.

This is being discussed for years on this forum. And no one even had stated that Multiplayer will be, also, DRM free. And since the game (allegedly) is near completion and on the verge of being launched, I think we can assume that the developers already know if Multi Player will or not have DRM - so, if they are silent, it's because someone with decision power thinks that telling this in advance will be deleterious. And if talking about would be deleterious, it's highly probably due we will not going to like it.

At this time, I think it's reasonable to conclude that they would had said something if the Multi Player would be DRM free - unless they are using this as a marketing tool to keep us talking about KSP2, but IMHO this would also be a bad symptom, because the logic conclusion would be that there's nothing else worthing to be used to feed the hype up. 

And it makes sense to assume Multiplayer will not be DRM free because:

• No Add'Ons will be allowed on Multi Player
  • and so they must prevent things like Harmony to tamper with the runtime code
  • not to mention how to cope with some people having add'ons, some others, and even some people having conflicting add'ons!
• They need to have anti-cheats installed
  • Otherwise there will be no publicly opened MultiPlayer sessions
    • And without publicly opened Multi Player sessions, why bother with Time Warp?
• They need to pay for the costs of the Multi Player services
  • And so they can't allow non-paying players to log in and waste resources that would be needed by the paying customers

So logic states that we must assume KSP2 will have DRM for Multi Player. More over, the whole Time Warp discussion is only relevant on a publicly open (and add'on locked) Multi Player session.

So I don't see how KSP2 in Multi Player would be DRM free (at least, while arguing about Time Warp! )

On a personal note, I don't see how they would prevent a port for Luna or Dark Multiplayer to be used on the DRM free Single Player - so, in the bottom line, perhaps MP having DRM would not be a problem at all?

— — — ADDENDUM — — — 

There's one more reason to assume Multi Player will not allow Add'Ons: malware.

Being virtually impossible to assume that every KSP2 player will have a "standard" set of add'ons installed, you need to leverage the remote environments by preventing add'ons at all, or by syncing them somehow over the network.

If you are going to sync the add'ons between the players, you will need to be absolutely sure the add'ons are licensed in a way that allows that. So you will need DRM to prevent your servers from syncing unsigned (and/or unlicensed) content.

If you are going to prevent the use of add'ons on the Multi Player remote environments, you are going to need DRM the same.

Edited April 9, 2022 by Lisias
Some entertaining grammars made less entertaining. - and an addendum.