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KSP Loading... Deep Dive on the Breaking Ground Enhanced Edition Expansion


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Welcome to our official newsletter, KSP Loading…!  If you want to learn about all the current developments of the KSP franchise, then this is the place to be!

Kerbal Space Program Update 1.9 on PC

The KSP team is so excited about the features being worked on for Update 1.9. Similar to the last update, 1.9 will focus on furthering the performance and graphical improvements to the foundations of the game. These improvements include: new textures and mappings for Celestial Bodies, new shaders, optimizations, additional revamps and much more. Our goal for update 1.9 will be to continue to build upon the foundations that make KSP great.

Terrain Revamp for Moho and Dres

We’re continuing to revamp our celestial bodies, and in 1.9, Moho and Dres are getting fresh high-quality texture maps & graphic shaders. Take a look!

KSP breaks ground on consoles!

As we announced recently, Breaking Ground, the second expansion of Kerbal Space Program Enhanced Edition is coming to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on December 5th and it will have 100% feature parity with its PC counterpart.

Kerbal Space Program Enhanced Edition: Breaking Ground is all about exploration, experimentation and technological breakthroughs. With this expansion console players will be able to discover mysterious surface features across the moons and planets of the Kerbolar System. Players will also have the ability to collect data with brand new deployable experiments and design complex crafts with the addition of robotic parts.

Deployed Science

This feature will allow you to deploy experiments on the surface of celestial bodies to take measurements over time. You will need to bring these experiments with you, unpack them from storage containers on your craft and set them up to run. In order to do so, you will need to place a central station, one or more power generating devices and possibly a booster antenna to get your science base set up. The experiments and power generators will run better if the right kind of Kerbal sets them up, thus giving you more reasons to bring Kerbals with different professions on an adventure.

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Click here to see the different experiments that will be available in Kerbal Space Program Enhanced Edition: Breaking Ground 

Surface Features

Surface features are items of scientific interest scattered across all celestial bodies.  These features include meteorites, craters, mineral formations, and even stranger planetary oddities. Surface features vary in size and Kerbal astronauts will be able to pick up and return the smallest of them to study back at KSC. However, larger specimens will need to be scanned and analyzed on-site by the newly developed Rover Arms. The Rover Arms come in three levels that you unlock via Research and Development, each of which have more sensors and tools that allow you to collect more science from the same surface feature.

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Click here to see more images of Surface Features and the Rover Arm in high-res. 

Robotics

With Breaking Ground, you will see a number of robotic parts including: hinges, pistons, rotors, rotational servos, propeller blades and turbo-shaft engines. Available in a range of shapes and sizes these new parts operate under realistic physics, with real forces and torques, electricity consumption and even motor mass accounted for. 

We are also including a controller part that will let you coordinate the behavior of many different parts on your craft. Use Hinges to provide angles of rotation between two parts. Pistons give you linear motion. Rotors will allow you to generate torque around their axis. Rotational servos will give you precise control of angular position. Propeller Blades and Turbo-shaft Engines will allow you to build helicopters and other blade-propelled contraptions. 

The KAL-1000 controller can sequence the actions of all the robotics parts and a number of other fields.  It gives you access to a powerful track editor tool which lets you plan how parts will behave over time. Using this controller, you can set up complex cranes, walking crafts, disco lighting or whatever you can dream up!

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Click here to see the Robotic Parts images in high-res.

The New Suit

This futuristic-looking suit was designed to match the spirit of Breaking Ground. It not only looks great on Kerbals, but offers customization where players can choose what color the helmet and suit lights will glow when in a darkened environment.

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Click here to see the Suits in high-res.

Free Update for Consoles

Coupled with the Breaking Ground Expansion, Kerbal Space Program Enhanced Edition is getting a FREE content-filled console-optimized update that will bring all improvements, features, color variants and part revamps we’ve added up to PC 1.7.3 to console. These updates include:

Altimeter mode toggle

A long-requested quality-of-life feature that will allow you to toggle the altitude mode from Above Sea Level (ASL) to Above Ground Level (AGL) by simply clicking on the new icon to the altimeter. The KSP Team is optimistic that this will lead to improvements in the KSC’s survival rates…

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Delta-v per Stage and Delta-v Tool App

Plan missions better and find flaws in your ship staging setup with this long requested feature that will let you visualize the Delta-v values along with a range of other technical data for each stage and the vessel overall. Plus, a Delta-v app that will allow you to get the vessel environment for how Delta-v is calculated in the VAB and SPH. Players will find this very useful!

Improved Burn Time information

The  improved burn time indicator will now calculate based on dV and not acceleration. Additionally, it will contain a staging indicator that shows which stages contain the dV needed to complete each part of the maneuver. This will show a red section at the end if there’s not enough dV in the current vessel to complete that maneuver. In the extended mode of the burn time indicator two extra lines are shown, allowing you to adjust how much time you want to spend burning before and after the node during the maneuver as well as showing you a countdown for when you need to start burning fuel to do so.

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Extensions to the Action Group System

Along with those updates we’re also adding two extensions to our action group system. The first one adds another type of action group for controls that lets you bind input controls to fields - an axis group. The second adds Action Sets, which allow you to enable or disable sets of axes or action groups.  

This extends what you can do with a limited number of buttons, allowing you to put your craft into different modes of operation. You can even override the base controls with the action set feature, furthering how you can fine tune the interface between you and your craft. We developed these extensions to give players more options to control their robotics, but it certainly will be useful for stock and modded players as well.

Revamped Parts

A large number of parts have been given a fresh new look since the last update. You’ll be pleasantly surprised to find over 40 new part revamps, including the MK2 Lander Can, which like many other parts, includes a new variant for you to choose at will.

KSP 2 Developer Diary

In case you haven’t read through our latest KSP 2 Developer Diary yet, we invite you to check it out! Included in the post is an early animatic for the concept of our KSP 2 Announce Trailer, which was illustrated and narrated by Star Theory’s Creative Director, Nate Simpson.

To learn more about the effort that went into creating this trailer and how every bump, hiccup and cheer of triumph led to the final KSP 2 Announce Trailer, be sure to read our latest Dev Diary.

Apollo 12 Challenge’s Stellar Stand-outs

Thank you to everyone who participated in the #KSPApollo12 in-game challenge to re-create the Apollo 12 mission. There were so many amazing posts and we wanted to highlight 3 stellar submissions here: 

IG: ksp_space_agency

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YouTube: Dronez

TWT: Punet Shrivas

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Remember, you can share and download crafts and missions on Curse, KerbalX, the KSP Forum and the KSP Steam Workshop.

That’s it for this edition. Be sure to join us on our official forums, and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Stay tuned for more exciting and upcoming news and development updates!

Happy launchings!

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Really bummed that your not including maneuver node even tho it was added before breaking ground..... I've been waiting for those read outs so i don't have to jump back and forth between map and ship view during launch. At least I'll be able to over engineer the delta v on a ship to counteract the inefficient maneuvers I'll be planning with the old system

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Conversely, I'm sure Console players don't want to get their noses rubbed in the new features which will take who knows how long before they reach them.

Alternatively how about wrapping the different sections in SPOILER tags? Again, just to keep the sections more obvious and more separated.

6 hours ago, dok_377 said:

Great. So no fixes for broken robotics until the next year. And 1.9 will bring more bugs to it. This broken mess loop will never be closed. 

Where the heck did you get that from? Every update fixes bugs (and yes, sometimes introduces new ones too...).  This announcement is just broad-overview of new features, not a detailed breakdown of every bug fixed...

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2 hours ago, micha said:

Conversely, I'm sure Console players don't want to get their noses rubbed in the new features which will take who knows how long before they reach them.

Alternatively how about wrapping the different sections in SPOILER tags? Again, just to keep the sections more obvious and more separated.

 

Where the heck did you get that from? Every update fixes bugs (and yes, sometimes introduces new ones too...).  This announcement is just broad-overview of new features, not a detailed breakdown of every bug fixed...

Instead of taking the time and fixing the robotics in 1.8.2, they are jumping the gun and already working on 1.9, which isn't going to be out for at least a couple of months. That means we ALL need to wait all that time and pretend that it's not broken or something. At least they think like that, I guess. I'm not saying they are not going to fix it at all, what I am saying is - they are making the decicions I'm having a hard time understanding. At least fix the critical bugs in the hecking update before moving to the next one, gorsh dammit. 

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1 hour ago, dok_377 said:

which isn't going to be out for at least a couple of months.

You have insider information?

The artists working on the updated textures are just continuing to work in parallel while the coders fix bugs and issues and the release team puts out new releases.  If the next couple of planets are ready at the same time as the critical bug fixes are, why not roll those into the next patch update and instead of calling it 1.8.2 (just bug fix), increment the version due to new features can call it 1.9.

There's absolutely no indication (at this stage) that 1.9 is going to take longer than a hypothetical 1.8.2 would have.

That said, I do also wish that small (eg config file) or critical bugs would have a faster turnaround.  But at least KSP is quicker than Elite Dangerous... don't hold your breath if you want a bugfix there!

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8 minutes ago, micha said:

You have insider information?

The artists working on the updated textures are just continuing to work in parallel while the coders fix bugs and issues and the release team puts out new releases.  If the next couple of planets are ready at the same time as the critical bug fixes are, why not roll those into the next patch update and instead of calling it 1.8.2 (just bug fix), increment the version due to new features can call it 1.9.

There's absolutely no indication (at this stage) that 1.9 is going to take longer than a hypothetical 1.8.2 would have.

That said, I do also wish that small (eg config file) or critical bugs would have a faster turnaround.  But at least KSP is quicker than Elite Dangerous... don't hold your breath if you want a bugfix there!

The timeline alone shows it. Any major update is taking at least three months to release, and that's the best case scenario. Squad themselves said that they are hoping for three to four months average turnaround. Look at the release date of 1.8. It was released on October 16th, roughly one and a half months ago. Which leaves us with at least one and a half months to the release of 1.9. That's going to be the next year surely. And they are not known to just release a fix for the previous version of KSP when there's the new one in the making and it's already announced. 

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12 hours ago, dok_377 said:

Great. So no fixes for broken robotics until the next year. And 1.9 will bring more bugs to it. This broken mess loop will never be closed. 

Sounds like you are new to the game.

It's the same story since forever.

Many veterans play old versions of the game. This alone says a lot.

Sad but true.

Edited by Dafni
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5 hours ago, Dafni said:

Sounds like you are new to the game.

It's the same story since forever.

Many veterans play old versions of the game. This alone says a lot.

Sad but true.

Yes, I'm "new" to this game.

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Edited by dok_377
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1 hour ago, Dafni said:

Sad but true.

Why sad?  One of the primary reasons people stay on older versions is because they have a long-established save with lots and lots of mods.  Upgrading the game and all the mods is quite likely to break the save, mainly due to changes in the mods.  That's assuming that all of the mods the person is using have been updated (if necessary) to the new version.  Sometimes mods change in ways which people don't like, or (part of) the functionality of a mod has become stock and the mod author has decided to stop developing it.

So the only way to stay playing on an older version of a mod is to also stay on an older version of the game.

Apart from core performance improvements and bug fixes, there's little that's been added since 0.90 that wasn't already provided by mods (this is in no way meant to denigrate the updates, and for console users it's the only way to get new functionality) - the big exception being the mission builder.

Unmodded games are far less likely to have issues between upgrades.

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@micha I didn't stay on 1.3.1 for so long because of a save or because of mods.  I stayed because of new bugs that came with new versions.  Squad has developed this reputation for a reason.  I just hope KSP doesn't suffer a buggy end because of it...and that Squad has the foresight to focus on bug killing as the final update approaches.

2 hours ago, dok_377 said:

Yes, I'm new to this game.

Welcome to the update roller coaster.

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1 hour ago, klgraham1013 said:

@micha I didn't stay on 1.3.1 for so long because of a save or because of mods.  I stayed because of new bugs that came with new versions.  Squad has developed this reputation for a reason.  I just hope KSP doesn't suffer a buggy end because of it...and that Squad has the foresight to focus on bug killing as the final update approaches.

Welcome to the update roller coaster.

You saw the attached picture, right? 

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