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23 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

just feel like they might hurt early careers lego format

I think the lego format is quite capable of harming creativity. Using procedural parts with RSS/RO has let me create rockets with a lot more unified art style and I hate that Squad is making all these part variants when we could easily have a procedural texture/part system that applies textures to all parts. For now, if you want to use KSP than SimpleRockets 2, you're stuck with rockets that could lag a lot less if you didn't have to stack tanks so much.

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1 minute ago, Bej Kerman said:

I think the lego format is quite capable of harming creativity. Using procedural parts with RSS/RO has let me create rockets with a lot more unified art style and I hate that Squad is making all these part variants when we could easily have a procedural texture/part system that applies textures to all parts. For now, if you want to use KSP than SimpleRockets 2, you're stuck with rockets that could lag a lot less if you didn't have to stack tanks so much.

I agree wholeheartedly, thats why I suggested it be a mid tier technology, maybe title "improved manufacturing" or something. I believe having limits early on helps people have a scope of the task at hand and I feel full creativity from the get go could either lead new players to sloppy design technique or being overwhelming. Similar to introducing a new player to KSP in sandbox mode. The part limit is not an issue in the beginning anyway when you're working with 30 part max rockets, but quickly starts becoming an issue at 150+ parts. I realize for veterans this could be annoying but most of us will get there in like 3 launches anyway.

I will say though, if procedural parts gets implemented with very few limits the "wobbly rocket" problem will go away and that could lead to unrealistically durable craft surviving sideways reentries, whereas building nodes served as a point of instability lowering craft durability.

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7 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

the B1046 F9 booster didn't turn into spaghetti, so I think the same should apply to KSP.

The 1st stage ruptured at minimal deviation  from prograde

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and the second stage is much shorter than the 1st stage with the same diameter...

 

but if you really want to argue that a rocket reentering sideways shouldn't tear itself apart then the proton begs to differ.

Spoiler

 

and that one isn't even going very fast

Edited by mcwaffles2003
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On 2/7/2020 at 3:14 PM, Brikoleur said:

Software developer here.

MJ doesn't require additional testing since it's just an input system. TweakScale has some hurdles but nothing major since it's a linear scaling of basic parts , it's an algorithm Darn it.
Also MJ was made by a OG  dev AFAIK.
 

If a muggle moder can maintain these mods without giving up on life a coder that's familiar with the program architecture will cruise trough the testing. Games always have choices , it's what makes them fun.

EDIT : BTW I've been coding since 1998 , started with Pascal . Let's not throw expertise around nonconstructively .

Edited by General Apocalypse
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On 2/5/2020 at 11:02 PM, fulgur said:

MJ allows you to (a) launch to orbit following a perfect gravity turn (b) plot and execute burns, ie rendezvous, trans-[anywhere] intercepts, circularisation (c) landing...

Takes all the fun out of piloting. I do admit that ion manoeuvres are horrible, so I have a 50-line kOS script (including time-to-burn, data printout etc) which took me half an hour to make, copying the tutorial and making a couple of improvements, which does it for me. kOS is about as fun as piloting, because when you become as good as the training manual, it gets boring. Trying to put what you are doing (so I burn retrograde over this continent...) into code (at longitude x, point retrograde and burn for x m/s) is a great challenge.

Historically even Vostok -1 was automated , reaction times of humans are insufficient during certain maneuvers hence we take our best guess , crunch the numbers , input them and let the computer handle it.

I personally hate doing rendezvous more then a couple of times per station , how much fun can there be in the 25th liquid fuel resupply light ?

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2 hours ago, General Apocalypse said:

If a muggle moder can maintain these mods without giving up on life a coder that's familiar with the program architecture will cruise trough the testing. Games always have choices , it's what makes them fun.

Maintaining a mod on your own is not at all the same thing as developing a piece of commercial software on budget and on schedule.

Curious that you don’t know that if you’re a veteran coder. Are you professional or a hobbyist?

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2 hours ago, General Apocalypse said:

Historically even Vostok -1 was automated , reaction times of humans are insufficient during certain maneuvers hence we take our best guess , crunch the numbers , input them and let the computer handle it.

I personally hate doing rendezvous more then a couple of times per station , how much fun can there be in the 25th liquid fuel resupply light ?

However, the programs are individual to all the spacecraft, i.e. my massive folders of kOS files.

And I actually love doing rendezvous and resupply, it gives me a chance to field-test SSTOs before flinging them off to Laythe or wherever. Plus SSTO-flying (if not a brick) is inherently fun.

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5 hours ago, fulgur said:

However, the programs are individual to all the spacecraft, i.e. my massive folders of kOS files.

And I actually love doing rendezvous and resupply, it gives me a chance to field-test SSTOs before flinging them off to Laythe or wherever. Plus SSTO-flying (if not a brick) is inherently fun.

To each their own , who says we can't have mixture of both ? The problem with MJ is that you can't open it's insides in game and play with it. KSP 2 could fix that.

6 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

Maintaining a mod on your own is not at all the same thing as developing a piece of commercial software on budget and on schedule.

Curious that you don’t know that if you’re a veteran coder. Are you professional or a hobbyist?

Moders come and go , there are tons of great mods that got left in the dust when their creator vanished off the KSP scene. 
The time and budget is irrelevant to us. It is a managerial decision . Why should we , the community worry about this ? We pay for the product , given the humongous popularity of KSP they can easily produce a AAA game. 

Also I own the company  , we're quite small though , just 12 people.

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40 minutes ago, General Apocalypse said:

The time and budget is irrelevant to us. It is a managerial decision . Why should we , the community worry about this ? We pay for the product , given the humongous popularity of KSP they can easily produce a AAA game. 

Time and budget is by no means irrelevant to us. There are always trade-offs, not least between features and quality. That's why discussions like these have a certain value, so they know what to prioritise.

According to SteamSpy, KSP has sold between 2 and 5 million units. That's amazing for an indie but not even close to AAA numbers; those would be on the order of 10 times more.

As I said, I have a strong preference that they prioritise quality over features. If they deliver exactly what they promised and no more but at a high quality, I will be more than happy. OTOH if they deliver a bucketful of half-baked extra features, I'm probably out.

(As to MJ specifically, that should IMO definitely not be a base feature -- it would change the game from "build rockets and fly them" to "build rockets and program them." That's not what KSP is all about.)

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4 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

Time and budget is by no means irrelevant to us. There are always trade-offs, not least between features and quality. That's why discussions like these have a certain value, so they know what to prioritise.

According to SteamSpy, KSP has sold between 2 and 5 million units. That's amazing for an indie but not even close to AAA numbers; those would be on the order of 10 times more.

As I said, I have a strong preference that they prioritise quality over features. If they deliver exactly what they promised and no more but at a high quality, I will be more than happy. OTOH if they deliver a bucketful of half-baked extra features, I'm probably out.

(As to MJ specifically, that should IMO definitely not be a base feature -- it would change the game from "build rockets and fly them" to "build rockets and program them." That's not what KSP is all about.)

It's gotten to the point we can agree to disagree. For me there's no alternative to KSP it's a one of a kind game . I've been building rockets since I was 8 , KSP is the only way I can scratch that itch without paying a small fortune and using time I don't have.

We do not know the size of the development team or the resources. As for the success of KSP the sales numbers are bad because the game started as a pet project and had the most horrible management possible. Even so it is a game that fell in line with the ascent of SpaceX and it developed a friendly and loyal fan base. 
As for the flying part - well love a good flying simulator and KSP is very very far away from that. It never had a chance given the size of the development team to be a one. 

You should tryout MJ , it needs the rocket to be made for it otherwise it will fail in the most ridiculous ways possible. There's nothing to fear about it.

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On 2/7/2020 at 1:03 PM, Bej Kerman said:

Can you find footage of a rocket turning into spaghetti?

No, but actual rocket engineers are better at this than most of us.

FWIW I can't find any footage of my own KSP rockets looking anything like spaghetti.

Edited by 5thHorseman
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17 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

(As to MJ specifically, that should IMO definitely not be a base feature -- it would change the game from "build rockets and fly them" to "build rockets and program them." That's not what KSP is all about.)

Not trying to be a dick, but who are you to say what KSP is all about? Also, in what way does having an automation tool (that doesn't require knowledge of programming) take away from flying? It's not like you can't ignore the feature and go fly a rocket on your own like you can in KSP, but if there is no feature of this sort how will anyone really make real progress in this game? The scope is an order of magnitude greater. We will be running resupply missions, building colonies, managing science retrieval missions, managing stations, and more across several different star systems... and we're supposed to manage every bit of that AND perform every maneuver manually? why? At some point along this the game stops being fun and seriously becomes a chore instead. You want to go off and explore but there's a million things happening at once and you're doing it all your self manually, what space program is run this way?

I think keeping out any form of automated maneuver control is setting the game up for failure in the long run and down to its core is like arguing against having automatic prograde/retrograde locking. Now, I didn't know about KSP when it was in version 0.25, I got here in 1.2 so maybe there was a backlash I dont know of. But no one right now says having the ability to lock to prograde/retrograde/target/maneuver/etc... is "cheating" because it's already stock and very much ingrained in KSP, so why is automated maneuvering not worthy? I just dont get how involving the player while flying by pressing gas/brake ultimately makes the experience much more pure and right.

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13 hours ago, General Apocalypse said:

You should tryout MJ , it needs the rocket to be made for it otherwise it will fail in the most ridiculous ways possible. There's nothing to fear about it.

I've tried out MJ. There is indeed nothing to fear about it, or nothing wrong with it, in fact it's quite essential for stuff like more realistic solar systems. In other words, it's a supremely successful mod. And it needs to stay that way.

49 minutes ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

Not trying to be a dick, but who are you to say what KSP is all about?

A dedicated fan with a general preference for the base game, or the base game only lightly modded.

49 minutes ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

We will be running resupply missions, building colonies, managing science retrieval missions, managing stations, and more across several different star systems... and we're supposed to manage every bit of that AND perform every maneuver manually? why? At some point along this the game stops being fun and seriously becomes a chore instead. You want to go off and explore but there's a million things happening at once and you're doing it all your self manually, what space program is run this way?

That would be a disaster and is in fact one of my bigger worries in re KSP 2. They do need to figure out how to stop the late game from turning into Milk Run Simulator. 

MechJeb however isn't the solution: while it can automate parts of those milk runs, you'd still have to set up the transfers yourself. In other words it would just shift the busywork, not eliminate the problem. The late game would still be soul-crushing grind of routine mission after routine mission, even if take-off, landing/docking, and execution of manoeuvre nodes are automated.

I can't think of any way to solve this that doesn't involve a whole new layer of mechanics -- namely, a strategic layer that abstracts out supply lines altogether. To do this well is a significant undertaking and materially changes the game. The only alternative is to leave out supply altogether, with colonies producing their own resources; this however would make the colonisation gameplay pretty thin on the ground.

I hope Star Theory has the resources to figure it out. Fortunately they have experience making resource-management type games so there is hope.

Edited by Guest
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I don't think the MJ debacle has anything to do with avoiding the "milk run simulator" problem and I sincerely hope that their solution isn't something as uninspired as a mere maneuver executing autopilot.

Something on the line of kerbals flying their own ships when levelled up or cpu generated ships and companies would be way better.

 

For the autopilot thing I'm hoping there will be a KoS analogue in the base game, I don't think that basic programming is out of the reach of people playing a game based on the understanding of complex orbital mechanics. 

 

 

 

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3 hours ago, Master39 said:

I don't think the MJ debacle has anything to do with avoiding the "milk run simulator" problem and I sincerely hope that their solution isn't something as uninspired as a mere maneuver executing autopilot.

Something on the line of kerbals flying their own ships when levelled up or cpu generated ships and companies would be way better.

 

For the autopilot thing I'm hoping there will be a KoS analogue in the base game, I don't think that basic programming is out of the reach of people playing a game based on the understanding of complex orbital mechanics. 

 

I just hope it's in some sort of actual scripting language; i'd prefer having it in C++ but i know that's not going to happen. But if they decide to use their lua scripting engine for it then i could get on board with it; one of the things that turned me off KoS was that they decided to use a custom language. And sure there's interfaces for it that allow it to accept other code, but that requires me to still understand the custom bits i don't want to bother with.

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6 minutes ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

I just hope it's in some sort of actual scripting language; i'd prefer having it in C++ but i know that's not going to happen. But if they decide to use their lua scripting engine for it then i could get on board with it; one of the things that turned me off KoS was that they decided to use a custom language. And sure there's interfaces for it that allow it to accept other code, but that requires me to still understand the custom bits i don't want to bother with.

Strong agree (except that IMO C++ would be a bit of a weird choice for a scripting language.) Lua, Javascript/Typescript, Python, whatever would be good. A custom language is just pointless.

(I expect the modding interfaces would be more open though so that you can still write them in C# or whatever.)

Edited by Guest
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Just now, Brikoleur said:

Strong agree (except that IMO C++ would be a bit of a weird choice for a scripting language; for one thing it's compiled.) Lua, Javascript/Typescript, Python, whatever would be good. A custom language is just pointless.

(I expect the modding interfaces would be more open though so that you can still write them in C# or whatever.)

Yeah you'd have to compile it into plugins wouldn't you? So you'd have an API fetching compiled plugins and then stepping thru the instructions; which isn't impossible by any means but as you said "Weird". Also introduces the ability to do very malicious things; you could completely overwrite entire portions of KSP2's memory with a setup like that.....and it's running with elevated privileges....

So yeah them using a more purpose built language isn't just acceptable; it's likely the only option that would get past the legal team xD

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1 minute ago, Bej Kerman said:

As someone who doesn't want to learn how to speak computer, why the hell should programming languages be used? Do you want to program your rocket to do something each time you do something? That doesn't avoid the Elite: Dangerous problem at all!

Oh, it certainly doesn't. It's a tangent. Could be fun though. 

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On 2/7/2020 at 12:03 PM, Bej Kerman said:

Okay then. Can you find footage of a rocket turning into spaghetti?

Did you look at that Proton rocket video around 1:20?

That looks strongly like a wobbly rocket with three main components: booster section, 2nd stage, fairing.

Sure it falls apart after only a couple seconds of wobble, but that is because KSP rocket parts are unrealistically strong(if your rocket is visibly wobbling, it should have already undergone RUD).

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3 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

As someone who doesn't want to learn how to speak computer, why the hell should programming languages be used? Do you want to program your rocket to do something each time you do something? That doesn't avoid the Elite: Dangerous problem at all!

I want to be able to write a script that'll land a booster SpaceX style so i don't need FMRS, i want to make a script that'll send my lander down to Ike, mine ore and refuel itself, and then dock with my interplanetary ship so i can get on with exploring, i want to write a script that'll do basic manuevers for a probe so i don't have to keep it in focus constantly until the mission is complete. Etc.

It's not about making people "learn how to speak computer" ; i would expect that they'd make sure that people without any kind of programming experience could do similar things. Perhaps with some kind of visual scripting system or logic breadboard.

What I'm saying is that i want a robust system that has additional features for people who actually know this stuff in addition to the systems for the vast majority who couldn't be bothered with it.

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