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Anyone else think KSP 2 might be overly ambitious?


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Don't flame me or anything, but having spent a few person-years in hours playing KSP - I have concerns that the stated features in KSP 2 might be too far reaching.  I have seen the videos and interviews and am very excited, but my excitement is tempered with real fear (ala No Man's Sky v1).  To name a few points

  • The shared videos of "Not Actual Gameplay" look incredible.  I would suspect it would take a lot of effort to beautify all of those assets and add effects such as "unique" explosions based on the parts involved.  Lets face it - KSP's stock graphics have always just blown - If it weren't for mod collections such as KSPRC, the game is pretty unappealing graphically.
  • The new development team is tackling multiplayer and claim to have solved one of the biggest challenges - the physics behind it.
  • Inter-stellar travel to new systems sounds awesome - but the development team needs to properly manage time warping features to make this work well - which I suspect is another serious challenge they have been wrestling with.
  • Base building anywhere on bodies with solid surfaces, and then being able to launch from them - this is huge - and again something I suspect the development team has had to do a lot of work on.
  • Making a game that is easily approachable for new gamers AND veterans to feel challenged.  I can't help but think that things might be too limited or dumbed down.
  • The development team has said in interviews that they started off with the KSP code base and essentially tore everything out and rebuilt it.  This is a massive task.
  • The new code base is allegedly designed from the bottom with modders in mind - this is also another massive task, but they say they have it.

I will say I would be very very happy to be wrong!  If they can accomplish all of these things I would be stoked.  I don't mean to be a debbie downer or anything.  Am I being overly pragmatic about this? 

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1 hour ago, Compsagnathus said:
  • The shared videos of "Not Actual Gameplay" look incredible.  I would suspect it would take a lot of effort to beautify all of those assets and add effects such as "unique" explosions based on the parts involved.  Lets face it - KSP's stock graphics have always just blown - If it weren't for mod collections such as KSPRC, the game is pretty unappealing graphically.

I dont expect the game to look as good as in the "not actual gameplay" trailer but somewhere between that and pre-alpha. Honestly with how little my GPU is doing in KSP 1 there's definitely room for substantial improvement and just the procedurally generated trees/rocks/etc is a great start

1 hour ago, Compsagnathus said:
  • The new development team is tackling multiplayer and claim to have solved one of the biggest challenges - the physics behind it.

They're reworking the game from the ground up. The original was built, as I understand, mainly by a person who never made a game before and was later helped by a team that was fairly amateur. Im guessing with physics it wont be hard to start poking on the limits but with a more flexible foundation and clear understanding of what the community wants out of the game they'll be able to set themselves up for future improvements much better than KSP 1 currently is

1 hour ago, Compsagnathus said:
  • Inter-stellar travel to new systems sounds awesome - but the development team needs to properly manage time warping features to make this work well - which I suspect is another serious challenge they have been wrestling with.

We're also going to be hitting velocities in KSP 2 that are well beyond our non-cheated experience. To me this problem seems too obvious for them not to be able to tackle it out right

1 hour ago, Compsagnathus said:
  • Base building anywhere on bodies with solid surfaces, and then being able to launch from them - this is huge - and again something I suspect the development team has had to do a lot of work on.

I'm guessing whole buildings may function as a single part and worry over this might be overblown. I think star theory is over-hyping the physics in the base building segment and am guessing just don't build a building past the ledge of a crater while its just dangling

1 hour ago, Compsagnathus said:
  • Making a game that is easily approachable for new gamers AND veterans to feel challenged.  I can't help but think that things might be too limited or dumbed down.

Just keep the game about 100% the same (mechanically) in the beginning so the learning curve doesn't change, then as we venture into new territory (building bases with purpose) the learning curve will continue up so both veterans and the newly indoctrinated are fairly challenged. Also they're introducing tutorials to help those less clever of us to get to those ah-ha! moments many of us got, like when we found out that slowing down in orbit helps you catch up to craft ahead of you

1 hour ago, Compsagnathus said:
  • The development team has said in interviews that they started off with the KSP code base and essentially tore everything out and rebuilt it.  This is a massive task.

They already did it though, we've seen the pre-alpha footage and besides the rockets seeming more noodley everything seemed to function as usual

1 hour ago, Compsagnathus said:
  • The new code base is allegedly designed from the bottom with modders in mind - this is also another massive task, but they say they have it.

Doesn't seem like a massive task as opposed to a general philosophy to be held en route through coding for the team, as opposed to what I imagine the first games development philosophy being "just get it to work." I dont know much about KSP 1's base code but I suspect a large bit of this to be simply make the code more organised and parsable.

 

Just my guesses

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Oh yes, very much so.

I mean, coming from KSP1 where performance has been an issue eversince I started to venture beyond Mun/Minmus...
And they're adding SO MUCH on top, I can't help but to be nervous about the whole thing.

Frame rates kill my enjoyment very quickly...  Kraken is next but with experience you get better at avoiding it.

I am hopeful, but nervous.

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Maybe? It's always a concern but IMO they seem to be keeping scope reasonably well under control. To address your concerns one by one:

(1) Well it is "not actual gameplay." The pre-alpha gameplay videos give a more realistic idea of how it's going to look; I expect they will prettify it a bit beyond that however. 

(2) Yeah multiplayer is hard. Still they are claiming that they have solved it, not that they're going to solve it. If they're not lying -- and I'm willing to take them at their word at this point -- then that risk is undercontrol.

(3) Timewarp is not a problem as long as they're sticking to patched conics or any other simulation system that can be time-skipped rather than -warped, i.e. where it's possible to compute the state of the system at any point in time in a single pass, rather than having to run the simulation step by step to get there. (I suspect this is one of the reasons they chose not to implement n-body physics, because it's not possible to time-skip that.)

(4) Base building is a big new system yes. However there's nothing unusually hard about it, there are plenty of games out there that feature base building. It should be fairly simple to project how difficult it is to do, for an experienced team.

(5) Accessibility definitely needs work. They have said however that they do not intend to dumb anything down, but rather to add better, more interactive tutorials. I'm 100% on board with that approach. Whether the tutorials are good enough remains to be seen of course, but I don't think veteran KSP1 players need to worry on this score.

(6) Rewriting the code. Yes, it is a big task. However once again they've been talking in the past tense. If they've already done it, then that risk is under control too.

(7) Mod support. Actually no, it probably isn't such a big task. This is a design consideration that needs to be taken into account from the start. If some of them are modders and know what they want, this will most likely add very little actual work. It just needs to be a part of the design.

So bottom line is, no I'm not terribly worried. It might still fail or spin out of control of course, but so far they seem to be taking a fairly sensible, conservative approach to things, tackling the hardest problems first (namely, multiplayer and the resulting core code rewrite), and being prepared to add meat on those bones later.

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14 hours ago, Compsagnathus said:

The shared videos of "Not Actual Gameplay" look incredible.  I would suspect it would take a lot of effort to beautify all of those assets and add effects such as "unique" explosions based on the parts involved.  Lets face it - KSP's stock graphics have always just blown - If it weren't for mod collections such as KSPRC, the game is pretty unappealing graphically.

As you said modders have already been able to significantly beautify KSP1 so I am sure that professional game developers can beautify KSP2.

14 hours ago, Compsagnathus said:

The new development team is tackling multiplayer and claim to have solved one of the biggest challenges - the physics behind it.

I am still not convinced that KSP is a game that is fun in multiplayer but maybe they find a fun way to implement it. There are so many ways it CAN be don though.

14 hours ago, Compsagnathus said:

Inter-stellar travel to new systems sounds awesome - but the development team needs to properly manage time warping features to make this work well - which I suspect is another serious challenge they have been wrestling with.

This is not hard. Better time warp mod already adds faster timewarp. There are also mods that allow accelerating with faster timewarps. Just implement those and maybe something like Kerbal Alarm Clock and problem is solved.

14 hours ago, Compsagnathus said:

Base building anywhere on bodies with solid surfaces, and then being able to launch from them - this is huge - and again something I suspect the development team has had to do a lot of work on.

We can already build huge bases on the surface if we want in KSP1. There is just not much reason to do that (other than that it looks cool). There has also already been mods (like Extraplanetary launchpads) that let you build and launch crafts off-world. And again I am sure professional game developers can do at least as well as modders.

14 hours ago, Compsagnathus said:

Making a game that is easily approachable for new gamers AND veterans to feel challenged.  I can't help but think that things might be too limited or dumbed down.

This is the only point I am actually worried about. I REALLY don't want the game to be dumbed down and made too easy to attract new players. I want a game with some challenge.

14 hours ago, Compsagnathus said:

The development team has said in interviews that they started off with the KSP code base and essentially tore everything out and rebuilt it.  This is a massive task.

Yes it is a massive task but making a good game is always a massive task. KSP1 was basically made from scratch and it turned out to be ok.

 

14 hours ago, Compsagnathus said:

The new code base is allegedly designed from the bottom with modders in mind - this is also another massive task, but they say they have it.

This is not that big of a big task. This is just a design choice that you have to do really early on. KSP1 was already quite mod friendly so I don't see why KSP2 wouldn't be also.

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it looks like they waited till they got the biggest hurdles out of the way to even announce it.
i dont think the mechanics of the game are something to be worried to much about.
however, the fact that its still in Unity should bring some concern over the garbage collection annoyance that KSP1 has due to the nature of the game (no loading screens during flight).
 

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looks to me, like they have just texture remodeled KSP1, whilst adding in KSP1 base mods as "their own" are using the exact same engine, the exact same music to promote... (as from alpha gameplay - KSP1 launch and "wobble physics"), and probably only got the contract from take two because they claimed to be able to add multiplayer...

(adding "framerate drop" at the moment ("alpha gameplay"), and this is without landscape textures, is not assuring for multiplayer, where the players computers will have to exchange physics.).

but i am a cynic...

(don't worry for them though, they have known to change developer company name previously - "they will be fine" )

 

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On 10/10/2019 at 10:44 AM, Compsagnathus said:

The shared videos of "Not Actual Gameplay" look incredible.  I would suspect it would take a lot of effort to beautify all of those assets

Yes, they look incredible.  And yeah, it's not actual gameplay, but they are actual game assets.  The parts, the terrain-- that's really what it will look like, is my understanding (aside from any changes that they choose to make between now and then).

I gotta say that they look very pretty to me already, I don't see any particular need to "beautify" them more.

On 10/10/2019 at 10:44 AM, Compsagnathus said:

add effects such as "unique" explosions based on the parts involved.

Yes, I'm sure that was a lot of work.

You'll note I said "was".  As in, past tense.  As in, they've already done it, at least they've done enough to demo some awfully nifty-looking explosions to us while we were visiting their studios.

Explosions gonna be purty.

On 10/10/2019 at 10:44 AM, Compsagnathus said:

The new development team is tackling multiplayer and claim to have solved one of the biggest challenges - the physics behind it.

Yep, no idea there.  We asked them, and anything at all around multiplayer was "no comment" so that one's a wildcard.

On 10/10/2019 at 10:44 AM, Compsagnathus said:

Base building anywhere on bodies with solid surfaces, and then being able to launch from them - this is huge - and again something I suspect the development team has had to do a lot of work on.

I would imagine so.  But then, they've also had a lot of time to work on it.

On 10/10/2019 at 10:44 AM, Compsagnathus said:

The development team has said in interviews that they started off with the KSP code base and essentially tore everything out and rebuilt it.  This is a massive task.

Careful, there.  What they did is to just build a completely new video game, essentially from scratch.  They're not refactoring KSP 1, they're just making a new thing.  So yes, it's a big job, to the same extent that coding any brand new game is a big job.  Given that companies produce big-job video games all the time, and given that this studio has produced other games before and it's not their first rodeo, I see no reason for concern there.

On 10/10/2019 at 10:44 AM, Compsagnathus said:

The new code base is allegedly designed from the bottom with modders in mind - this is also another massive task, but they say they have it.

How is that a "massive task"?  It simply means that when they were building it, they made sure to incorporate that design requirement as they went along, rather than trying to retrofit something on afterwards.

Yes, there's some work, certainly-- it's not free.  But I don't see that it would hugely increase the development cost of the game.

After all, Squad managed to make KSP 1 pretty darn moddable...and it was their first rodeo (no game development experience before KSP).  And Star Theory now has the benefit of hindsight and can learn from the places where KSP 1 stubbed its toe.

Also, bear in mind that there are opportunities for synergy, here.  Many of the same architectural and feature decisions that make a game more moddable can also be highly useful during development (e.g. for testing, rapid prototyping, etc.)  So making it super-moddable from the get-go may actually help them with development, at least in certain areas.

On 10/10/2019 at 10:44 AM, Compsagnathus said:

I will say I would be very very happy to be wrong!

With the caveat that I have no idea what multiplayer will be like, my guess is that most of these fears are misplaced.  ;)

Also, bear in mind that they've been working on this game a long time.  With a sticker price of $60, we can presume they're pretty well funded.  You get what you pay for.

21 hours ago, Francois424 said:

And they're adding SO MUCH on top, I can't help but to be nervous about the whole thing.

Frame rates kill my enjoyment very quickly...  Kraken is next but with experience you get better at avoiding it.

Right, and they've stated explicitly that they know everyone doesn't have a top-end gaming rig, and they're putting tons of effort into optimizing the physics and so forth because they know it's been a KSP 1 pain point from the beginning-- and also they want to enable people to have ships with much higher part counts.

So sure, we won't know what the performance is really like until we get our hands on it, but remember that they're designing this game for you, not for someone with a super-expensive top-end rig.  It may actually perform better for you than KSP 2-- that's certainly what it sounds like they're aiming for.

 

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56 minutes ago, Snark said:

 

Right, and they've stated explicitly that they know everyone doesn't have a top-end gaming rig, and they're putting tons of effort into optimizing the physics and so forth because they know it's been a KSP 1 pain point from the beginning-- and also they want to enable people to have ships with much higher part counts.

So sure, we won't know what the performance is really like until we get our hands on it, but remember that they're designing this game for you, not for someone with a super-expensive top-end rig.  It may actually perform better for you than KSP 2-- that's certainly what it sounds like they're aiming for.

 

Even top-end rigs struggle to push KSP once the part count increases; optimized code doesn't just benefit those on the low-end it benefits everyone who want to play!

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16 hours ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

Even top-end rigs struggle to push KSP once the part count increases; optimized code doesn't just benefit those on the low-end it benefits everyone who want to play!

my rx570 starts stumbling already @ 30 fps lock, low settings SINGLEPLAYER (2560 x 1440), as above.

17 hours ago, Snark said:

Yes, they look incredible.  And yeah, it's not actual gameplay, but they are actual game assets.  The parts, the terrain-- that's really what it will look like, is my understanding.

oh; it's a game exclusively for people who have rtx 2080 SLI then....

18 hours ago, Snark said:

We asked them, and anything at all around multiplayer was "no comment" so that one's a wildcard.

...

"hey star theory is there actually going to be multiplayer like you said so or is it going to be basically ksp1 with somebodys base mod in vanilla that only people with a rtx 2080 sli setup can play ???"

(i am annoyed because it is seemingly going to tarnish the reputation of a great game / people are going to be butthurt when it looks NOTHING like the video.)

 

 

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20 hours ago, Snark said:

The parts, the terrain-- that's really what it will look like, is my understanding (aside from any changes that they choose to make between now and then).

Parts, yes. Terrain, I would be surprised. They showed terrain in the actual gameplay videos and it looks nothing like the trailers.

1 hour ago, k00b said:

oh; it's a game exclusively for people who have rtx 2080 SLI then....

 

The GPU isn't the bottleneck for KSP. Single-thread CPU performance is.

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1 hour ago, k00b said:

my rx570 starts stumbling already @ 30 fps lock, low settings SINGLEPLAYER (2560 x 1440), as above.

You seem to be very confused about the performance of the current game, and of games in general; what does the fact that it's SINGLEPLAYER have to do with its performance?

And why are you implying that your gpu is what's bottlenecking the game? My current laptop has a Vega 8, and I run the stock game at 60 fps (1080p) with the gpu at around 70%. KSP is basically 3d chess for any gpu worth its name.

1 hour ago, k00b said:

oh; it's a game exclusively for people who have rtx 2080 SLI then....

1 hour ago, k00b said:

(i am annoyed because it is seemingly going to tarnish the reputation of a great game / people are going to be butthurt when it looks NOTHING like the video.)

You seem to be annoyed at both the fact that it's going to have good graphics AND that it's not going to have good graphics? What's the matter with that? Why has everyone gone crazy thinking that ksp 2 is going to be a "heavy" game? KSP uses technology from 10 years ago and was developed by an indie team. Modern games have much better graphics, and they don't require a "rtx 2080 SLI". And, even in the case that your rtx570 is terribly compromised and in constant thermal throttling, as it seems to be,  you can always turn down the game settings.

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13 hours ago, k00b said:

my rx570 starts stumbling already @ 30 fps lock, low settings SINGLEPLAYER (2560 x 1440), as above.

oh; it's a game exclusively for people who have rtx 2080 SLI then....

...

"hey star theory is there actually going to be multiplayer like you said so or is it going to be basically ksp1 with somebodys base mod in vanilla that only people with a rtx 2080 sli setup can play ???"

(i am annoyed because it is seemingly going to tarnish the reputation of a great game / people are going to be butthurt when it looks NOTHING like the video.)

 

 

RX 570 isn't a 1440p card; it's better suited to 1080p. So ofc you're going to have issues pushing 1440P; also what's your basis for literally any of the rest of this. Like i get being cynical; i get being nervous around a game published by 2K especially since it's going to be developed by a team we've never heard of. But they're communicating with us on a regular basis; they're relatively sure they have solutions to performance and have described them in some detail. Could it all be lies? Could it all be nonsense? Sure; it's happened before.

But until the game releases; with the information we currently have there's absolutely no indication of KSP2 being for "People with RTX 2080 Ti SLI" or that it's "KSP1 with mods" or that it's going to "Tarnish the reputation of a great game" all of this is exaggeration or even just straight up false. Let's take this all the way; let's go ahead and just say in spring 2020 KSP2 drops and it's a buggy performance hog with way too much RTX and VFX that turns into a slideshow. The reputation of KSP 1 wouldn't be tarnished; nor would the reputation of Squad. It would be the reputation of KSP2 and Star Theory, and mind you KSP1 is confirmed to still be recieving updates.

Star Theory has wayyyy more riding on KSP2 that would encourage them to push out a great game; KSP1 and Squad have a product already that will stand on it's own. So i really can't see KSP2 being anything other than a medicore game at worst, potentially great at best. 

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Over ambitious?  I don't think so personally.  I doubt they would have shown or declared stuff unless they have done it, or had very good reasons to believe they could do it.

Take multiplayer for example, they have stated 'It is in'.  They may not have released any details of how it works, which likely means that they are still sorting out details, or just want to surprise us later (quite likely both) but they wouldn't claim a big thing like that was in it if they hadn't been sure it would be.

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Seems to me the list is exactly what is needed as the foundations to get right to set KSP for another 10 years as they say in the Dev video. Also most of the tasks are related. So they must have gotten a key one or two already done as they speak in past tense about them.

Task A) rework physics engine to be Streamlined.  Hey look if we do this and that we can multi-task the engine.

Task A1) Improved timewarp thrust on rails .... interstellar

Task A2) multi-actor ... bases

Task A3) multi-player

Task B) Streamline development .... Hey look this means modding will be easier.

Task C) Rework Interface make easier

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20 minutes ago, Majorjim! said:

My main concern is the part count restrictions. The game looks great but I think the part performance will be worse that KSP..

The developers said that they are trying to optimise the game so that you can have high part count at a playable framerate. Besides, they're building the game from the ground up with many of the features of KSP1, so I reckon overall performance will be better than the old game (with its years of tacked-on code) anyway.

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On ‎10‎/‎11‎/‎2019 at 11:20 PM, Snark said:

Right, and they've stated explicitly that they know everyone doesn't have a top-end gaming rig, and they're putting tons of effort into optimizing the physics and so forth because they know it's been a KSP 1 pain point from the beginning-- and also they want to enable people to have ships with much higher part counts.

So sure, we won't know what the performance is really like until we get our hands on it, but remember that they're designing this game for you, not for someone with a super-expensive top-end rig.  It may actually perform better for you than KSP 2-- that's certainly what it sounds like they're aiming for.

And I am holding them very severely to their word.
If we can indeed build a grandtour, 800+ part ship and I am playing realtime, no clock lag? 
It's looking good, but I never sell the skin before felling the bear.

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6 hours ago, Francois424 said:

And I am holding them very severely to their word.
If we can indeed build a grandtour, 800+ part ship and I am playing realtime, no clock lag? 
It's looking good, but I never sell the skin before felling the bear.

I think that you may not need to build a 800+ ship to do a grand tour, there will be sets of parts for bigger ships and the fact that the giant interstellar ship in the trailer has no dedicated lander o any exploration infrastructure but only a ton of containers make me think that probably there will be some system to bring crafts without having them loaded with the main ship (the landers are in the containers).

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4 hours ago, Master39 said:

I think that you may not need to build a 800+ ship to do a grand tour, there will be sets of parts for bigger ships and the fact that the giant interstellar ship in the trailer has no dedicated lander o any exploration infrastructure but only a ton of containers make me think that probably there will be some system to bring crafts without having them loaded with the main ship (the landers are in the containers).

800 is a bit exaggerated.  But 400-600 is the reality with Stock ksp1.
I could shave 25-50% by selecting mods/parts/make my own parts (like one engine replacing 2240 thrust worth of nukes, now that's a lot of parts).
But if I want to go with the land-everywhere lander (except eve), the habitat ring, the Engine section, and a mining ship with 20-50k ore... It racks up quickly, especially in stock KSP.

I only producd 3 ships where I'd have needed over 750 parts, but I'd like to play them lag-less, of course :)

 

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1 hour ago, Francois424 said:

800 is a bit exaggerated.  But 400-600 is the reality with Stock ksp1.
I could shave 25-50% by selecting mods/parts/make my own parts (like one engine replacing 2240 thrust worth of nukes, now that's a lot of parts).
But if I want to go with the land-everywhere lander (except eve), the habitat ring, the Engine section, and a mining ship with 20-50k ore... It racks up quickly, especially in stock KSP.

I only producd 3 ships where I'd have needed over 750 parts, but I'd like to play them lag-less, of course :)

I was talking about KSP 2 not the first, we have already seen the bigger ship parts and engines and plenty of mysterious containers.

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On 10/10/2019 at 7:44 PM, Compsagnathus said:

Don't flame me or anything, but having spent a few person-years in hours playing KSP - I have concerns that the stated features in KSP 2 might be too far reaching.  I have seen the videos and interviews and am very excited, but my excitement is tempered with real fear (ala No Man's Sky v1).  To name a few points

  • The shared videos of "Not Actual Gameplay" look incredible.  I would suspect it would take a lot of effort to beautify all of those assets and add effects such as "unique" explosions based on the parts involved.  Lets face it - KSP's stock graphics have always just blown - If it weren't for mod collections such as KSPRC, the game is pretty unappealing graphically.
  • The new development team is tackling multiplayer and claim to have solved one of the biggest challenges - the physics behind it.
  • Inter-stellar travel to new systems sounds awesome - but the development team needs to properly manage time warping features to make this work well - which I suspect is another serious challenge they have been wrestling with.
  • Base building anywhere on bodies with solid surfaces, and then being able to launch from them - this is huge - and again something I suspect the development team has had to do a lot of work on.
  • Making a game that is easily approachable for new gamers AND veterans to feel challenged.  I can't help but think that things might be too limited or dumbed down.
  • The development team has said in interviews that they started off with the KSP code base and essentially tore everything out and rebuilt it.  This is a massive task.
  • The new code base is allegedly designed from the bottom with modders in mind - this is also another massive task, but they say they have it.

I will say I would be very very happy to be wrong!  If they can accomplish all of these things I would be stoked.  I don't mean to be a debbie downer or anything.  Am I being overly pragmatic about this? 

You have mods who increase the look a lot, was most impressed of the new ground myself even if it will be horrible to drive an small fast rover on. 
Base building is pretty much added with mods as in Extraplanetary launchpads. However having static foundations will solve lots of the issues we have with large bases in KSP. 
In KSP 2 you will get an in game editor. Guess an mix of VAB and the build editor in the sims games will be how it would work, you put down bases and then build on top of it. 
Some mods has even warp while under trust. I assume this has an delay to show that the rocket can actually trust in one direction before you turn off physic. 

Easier access is done with an better tutorial, this is just work as in getting an good one who catches the errors new players does like not doing gravity turn. Probably starting even simpler down to an ballistic rocket 
Showing dV and TWR in VAB helps a lot after you explained that they does. 

Pretty sure they use KSP code for some of the core effects like the locale reference point, or at least the functionality. This is an core function who took a long time figuring out and is not very performance taxing compared to physic. 
That part has to be improved. Guess they can do lots of tricks here to. 

So no see KSP 2 as an pretty natural increment. 

 

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I don't believe the plan for KSP 2 is overly ambitious, in fact, I think the core framework that Star Theory plans to deliver is just right.  It will provide us with built-in, efficient game mechanics to cover probably the top-5 (non-visual) modded-in features used in KSP 1:

  • Landed Base Building and ISRU (MKS/Pathfinder/KPBS/etc) + Orbital Bases (SPE Redux, OKS)
  • Advanced Propulsion Technologies (think Near Future, Far Future, Interstellar, USI Orion)
  • Off-World Rocket Construction and Launchpads!  (EPL, Ground Construction)
  • Extra-Kerbolar Systems and Moddable Primary System (Kopernicus, KSS, etc)
  • Multiplayer!

Yes, we could do all (well, most) of this in KSP 1, but anyone who's tried to build a self-sustainable interstellar launch facility on Io in career mode knows the performance and stability were *brutal* with all the required mods and a station with enough parts to be self-sustaining (esp. with life support).  Not to mention the game-killing Kraken problems with larger bases or ark-level ships.

Star Theory is giving us the tools and systems built-in with KSP2 to do all of the above and more as part of core, efficient game play.  The real benefit of the upcoming release will be to open the door to modders to expand on all these elements with new worlds, new parts, etc., and not kill performance in the process.  I do expect KSP 2 will be a complete game experience when it ships, but I'm more excited about it being a far more robust platform for content creators.

EDIT:  The one extremely popular mechanic I left out of the list is Life Support.  I know a lot of people consider this a must-have game function and we'll just have to wait and see how KSP 2 supports it as both a core feature and moddable add-on.

Edited by Chilkoot
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On ‎10‎/‎16‎/‎2019 at 3:49 PM, Chilkoot said:

I know a lot of people consider this a must-have game function and we'll just have to wait and see how KSP 2 supports it as both a core feature and moddable add-on.

I'm not against it as long as it's toggle-able... I usually keep the default things on (like antenna range and remote without reception dying) but I like having the option of turning it off if it starts annoying me.
Keep it simple tho.  Water, Air and Snacks.  I wouldn't mind having a large greenhouse station or a dome on my ships to make snacks, and/or having to stop at an asteroid or 2 everynow and then for water.
Just not every game.

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