KSP2 should have no optional features

[Guest]

Some thoughts came up in another thread that has drifted off-topic, but that are in my view significant enough that they're worth a discussion. Namely, about optional features and moddability.

KSP has a lot of optional features: CommNet, with sub-options (plasma blackout, require signal for control, additional ground stations). Atmospheric heating. G-limits on kerbals and parts. Pressure limits on kerbals and parts. And so on and so forth.

I understand why most of these options are there: SQUAD didn't want to break people's craft or careers with updates, so when introducing something like CommNet or atmospheric heating, they left the option of opting out. This may have been a good call at the time as it reduced short-term rage. Even so I contend that almost all of these options have made KSP worse than it could be, compared to how it would be if they were standard, always-on features, and, more importantly, that KSP2 should have these and any other gameplay systems it introduces as standard, with no opt-outs. Life support, for example: if it's in, it needs to be in for everybody. 

Thesis: Options are BAD

Optional gameplay features are bad because they create bugs, constrain creativity in a bad way, and create a bad kind of complexity for players.

Optional features create bugs.

A system with optional features needs to be tested with the features on and the features off. Despite designers' best efforts to silo them off, they will have unexpected interactions: fixing something in one system may break something somewhere else when the system is switched off. It is much harder and more expensive to test, debug, and maintain a system with many optional features than one that has few of them.

Optional features constrain creativity in a bad way.

Really good games have systems that synergise and interact with each other to create space for creativity and emergent gameplay. Designers build on them to create new levels of gameplay. If the features are designed as self-contained silos that can be switched on or off at will, then it is no longer possible to build on them to create these richer, higher-level systems. Career mode in KSP1 for example is pretty sparse, and it is harder to make it less sparse because you'll have to check with every contract whether it requires an optional system, and if it does, you'll probably just not bother and make something to the lowest common denominator instead. The same constraint applies to modders: if they have to consider whether a system is enabled or not, their work will be that much harder too.

Optional features create a bad kind of complexity for players.

Concrete example from KSP1: noodle rockets. It's really common to see newbies complain vehemently about this, and then when somebody tells them about Advanced Tweakables and Autostrut, they go "...oh." The focus should be on the challenges of the game, not the challenge of configuring the game.

Corollary: Moddability is AWESOME

Extreme moddability makes it possible to customise and transform the game in a much richer and more fine-grained way than even the most baroque Gameplay Options screen ever could. If it was not possible to disable CommNet in the options, somebody would have made a "no CommNet" mod that doesn't just disable it, but rebalances the tech tree so that the now-redundant antennas make sense again (or are removed altogether), moves probe cores and command modules around to account for probe control points no longer being needed, and removes the contracts from career mode that need CommNet. Players who don't want CommNet would get a better experience and SQUAD could focus on making CommNet and the systems that build upon it as good as they can be.

Moddability moves the QA onus from the developer to the modder.

If a modder wants to remove a system from the game, it's up to him to figure out how to do it in the best possible way. He will also give it his full attention, giving it the polish and balancing it needs, and he and the mod's users will work together to make it work well. The result will be less buggy, better balanced, and just overall more polished than the crude off-switch the developer could provide. And the developer is freed to focus on making the stock game as good as it can be.

Moddability liberates creativity, where optional features constrain it.

Both modders and developers of the base game are free from having to consider whether an option is on or off. They can focus exclusively on how to make the game's core features better and how to create new systems that build on them. Both mods and the base game will end up richer, more fun, more imaginative, and stabler for it.

Moddability makes things as simple or as complex as you want.

If you're new to the game and play stock, just jump in and enjoy the solid, stable, coherent, synergistic systems in it, without having to worry about what to enable and what not to enable. If you're an experienced player running on modded systems, you pick the mods you want to use and go with that, whether the mod is an "easy mode" that disables features, or a "hardcore mode" that adds new systems or tweaks things for a bigger challenge, or something in between.

Conclusion: KSP2 should only have standard systems

KSP2 should have a clear vision of what it wants to be, and what systems are needed to take it there. It should believe in this vision and stick to it, making it as good, as solid, and as refined as it can be. It should learn from KSP1's mistakes, not reproduce them out of a mistaken deference for it. It should have no optional systems. The game should work the same way for everybody. The baseline should be KSP1 with all options on, with any additional systems – resource management, possibly life support, automation for the colonial phase of the game, etc. – working the same way.

It should also be even more moddable than KSP1, so players who want to tailor it to their personal requirements have a way to do it. 

This will benefit everyone: we will have a better, more robust, more stable, more synergistic, more fun stock game, and better, richer, better-integrated, and more diverse mods.

Appendix: So... uh, no options at all?

OK fine. Some – very few – options may add sufficient player value that they are worth putting in, while having negligible impact on QA, game design, unnecessary user complexity, debugging, and testing. These could be:

• Tunable constants for difficulty. Something like the resource abundance and rewards sliders in KSP1 career mode.
• An opt-in hardcore mode that disables quicksaves, quickloads, and reverts.
• An opt-in hardcore mode for LS that toggles whether kerbals die or hibernate when LS runs out.
• An opt-out for tutorials and advisors.

There may be a few others, but entire gameplay systems should never be optional, the way CommNet is in KSP1, and physics need to work the same way for everyone, unlike the optional atmospheric heating or G-limits in KSP1.

 

Edited February 27, 2020 by Guest

[Dirkidirk]

seems reasonable to me, I don't think that many players would be annoyed if it was in ksp2, except for those on the consoles. (like me)

Edited February 27, 2020 by Dirkidirk

[KSK]

58 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

The focus should be on the challenges of the game, not the challenge of configuring the game.

Yep. Last time I checked the game was called Kerbal Space Program not Kerbal Settings Program.

No arguments from me on any of that but especially this 

1 hour ago, Brikoleur said:

Really good games have systems that synergise and interact with each other to create space for creativity and emergent gameplay. Designers build on them to create new levels of gameplay.

Give me an out-of-the-box game like that and I’ll be happy. By all means make it moddable but mods should (in my opinion anyway) be there to extend the stock game not create it. Put another way I completely disagree with the notion that the developers should provide a framework and leave it up to modders to turn that framework into a game.

I would also agree that with a solid base to build on, modders can do incredible work. You only have to think of the various total conversion mods out there for various games.

Or, to pick an example from the top of my head, the Caveman to Cosmos mod for Civ 4, which took a very solid stock game and gave it more of everything. A little too much so in my opinion but you can’t fault the ambition.

But CtC was in no way required to make up for a lacklustre stock Civ 4 experience.

[Guest]

KSP is a game defining it's own genre of space simulators, but at the end is a mix of 2 existing well explored genres, simulators and management games and both of them have their replayability factor build on options.

I usually play this kind of games one at a time, for one run lasting from a single week to multiple months to then switch to another game.

KSP, Factorio, Rimworld, Oxygen Not Included but also City Skyline, Planet Coaster, Open TTD, Stellaris, my list of games of this kind is pretty long, and all of them thrive in options, optional system (like commnet) to enable or disable, optional difficulty settings, options in the map generation, in the resource concentration, in the survival aspect and, on top of that, modding. That makes every run unique, a new story.

All of these games have options, some of them even more radical than the ones in KSP, but none of them has a "progression" mode that has the same problems of KSP's career and science modes. 

The problem that KSP has over all these other games is that KSP was never meant to be a management game, that side of the game has grown in place during time, one placeholder after the other and those placeholder were never replaced with some well-thought gameplay, but just expanded with good ideas represented by new, hastly made, placeholders. Just like planes and jets, but without a Porkjet coming in and actually replacing placeholders with well designed content.

An example is the contract system, it doesn't make sense not because of commnet being optional, but for core design reasons like the underlying balance, the economics and the fact that none of the contracts categories makes actual sense.

 

The problems with KSP were never in options, just in stratification of never replaced placeholders and bad design choices made due to inexperience, as I stated multiple times KSP is an organically grown project, not a designed one, with all the good and the bad that it brings.

Edited February 26, 2020 by Guest

[T1mo98]

In my opinion it's a fundamentally bad idea to leave out extra features or content to just let modders do it.
At that point it's not even a game developed by a studio, instead it becomes a group project by a bunch of modders that you can never be sure whether or not it will work out or have long-term viability.

The problems of modding can be numerous:

1. Depends on volunteer-programmers that can decide on a whim to stop supporting a mod, leaving you high and dry when an update comes that breaks that mod. You're left hoping someone else will pick it up, but linuxgurugamer doesn't have infinite time to take care of every unsupported mod.
2. New game updates regurarly break mods, so if your entire build is dependant on those mods, you have to wait potentially months before a mod is updated. 
If the update in question fixes a major bug that hampers the experience on older builds or introduces major performance improvements, this can be a real problem.
3. The obvious issue of Console players.
4. Craft sharing becomes far less easy considering more mods will have to be installed since more people will be reliant on mods, especially if Advanced Tweakables are removed and put into a mod which you are suggesting.

Benefits of having options:
1. All players have immediate access to all options after downloading the game and don't need to download other stuff for basic functions.
2. Craft sharing is simplified because unmodded craft will be much more prevelant.
3. Supported for the entire length of the game's lifecycle.
4. Automatically updated with each new version of the game.

 

There's also a flaw in the reasoning that options are "a bad kind of complexity for players."
Simply put, players that are looking for more options of stuff to use will only be frustrated by the lack of options and the requirement to download something else.
Players that aren't interested in all these options or don't play the game in-depth will simply play the game and not be bothered. They wouldn't even be aware of or care about the complexity of options and when they start to become more involved, they will appreciate the level of customizability.

 

Conclusion: Relying on mods for everything is a bad idea.

[XLjedi]

Historically, there has been a pretty distinct disconnect between modability and multiplayer support.

Question is, will multiplayer be a persistent MMO-type universe; or limited to private servers or queued matchups of 4-5 players at a time?  I'm not sure how a game can be both open to mods and have something like a persistent MMO universe environment.  I suspect the multiplayer will therefore have to be limited in scope, but that seems to be contradictory to the Take 2 business model.  So I'm a bit perplexed.  Maybe they go the opposite way and just disallow mods in multiplayer?  Which can be an indirect way of influencing players against installing the mods if only allowed in solo career mode.

How they go about managing this gameplay paradox is currently one of my biggest curiosities. 

They already seem to be moving in the direction I thought they would in order to address my other multiplayer curiosity related to time acceleration...  

Spoiler

They seem to have embraced the 1/10th scale equivalent of warp 10 engines for interplanetary travel.

 

Edited February 26, 2020 by XLjedi

[Dirkidirk]

15 minutes ago, Master39 said:

KSP is a game defining it's own genre of space simulators, but at the end is a mix of 2 existing well explored genres, simulators and management games and both kind of them have their replayability factor build on options.

I usually play this kind of games one at a time, for one run lasting from a single week to multiple months to then switch to another game.

KSP, Factorio, Rimworld, Oxygen Not Included but also City Skyline, Planet Coaster, Open TTD, Stellaris, my list of games of this kind is pretty long, and all of them thrive in options, optional system (like commnet) to enable or disable, optional difficulty settings, options in the map generation, in the resource concentration, in the survival aspect and, on top of that, modding. That makes every run unique, a new story.

All of these games have options, some of them even more radical than the ones in KSP, but none of them has a "progression" mode that has the same problems of KSP's career and science modes. 

The problem that KSP has over all these other games is that KSP was never meant to be a management game, that side of the game has grown in place during time, one placeholder after the other and those placeholder were never replaced with some well-thought gameplay, but just expanded with good ideas represented by new, hastly made, placeholders. Just like planes and jets, but without a Porkjet coming in and actually replacing placeholders with well designed content.

An example is the contract system, it doesn't make sense not because of commnet being optional, but for core design reasons like the underlying balance, the economics and the fact that none of the contracts categories makes actual sense.

 

The problems with KSP were never in options, just in stratification of never replaced placeholders and bad design choices made due to inexperience, as I stated multiple times KSP is an organically grown project, not a designed one, with all the good and the bad that it brings.

um, what are you arguing for? am I dumb?

[MechBFP]

5 hours ago, KSK said:

Yep. Last time I checked the game was called Kerbal Space Program not Kerbal Settings Program.

Hahah, so true. 
I remember the first time I started the game I was just like “?!?!?! Guess I will just hit normal difficulty and hope for the best”. 

14 minutes ago, T1mo98 said:

 

In my opinion it's a fundamentally bad idea to leave out extra features or content to just let modders do it.

 

I don’t think anyone is arguing for that.  They are arguing if it is going to be optional concept or features, then leave it up to modders.
As such either implement it fully and properly, or don’t bother at all. 
That makes sense to me. 

Edited February 26, 2020 by MechBFP

[Guest]

36 minutes ago, Dirkidirk said:

um, what are you arguing for? am I dumb?

TLDR:

1- Every management game is build on the options it offers to customize the experience.

2- KSP problems have nothing to do with options and everything to do with career and science modes being placeholders at best.

 

[csiler2]

I disagree. I think it's important to allow options as part of a sliding difficulty scale in the game. Yeah, it's true that Sandbox and Science make things easier than Career, but the play style for each mode can be very different because of the locked options. Maybe I want to play career, but I'm frustrated by the 'normal' career difficulty. So going from 'Normal' to 'Easy' disables comms network (maybe I don't want to go to the hassle of building that infastructure), I don't have to worry about losing money to accidentally destroyed facilities, and the difficulty sliders adjust. That means I can still have the challenge of career without it being as punishing as a normal mode. Switching toScience can't fill that, and neither can Sandbox.

The Game Maker's Toolkit YouTube Channel has talked about this a couple times. Here's one of his videos that talks about purity of game maker vision vs. players playing the way they want. I think it ultimately depends on what the KSP2 developers have planned for their vision of the game. 

The only optional features I'm against is optional features that are not included as part of the difficulty modifiers/scale. So I'm against people arguing that KSP2 should have a life support framework pre-built for modders or life support as an option for players that want it outside of the difficulty options.

[DStaal]

4 hours ago, csiler2 said:

The Game Maker's Toolkit YouTube Channel has talked about this a couple times. Here's one of his videos that talks about purity of game maker vision vs. players playing the way they want. I think it ultimately depends on what the KSP2 developers have planned for their vision of the game. 

Thanks for that link, that helped crystallize one some of my thoughts on the issue.

Brikoleur's argument largely is about balancing the game vs. debugging the game.  My question is: Balancing the game to do what?  I've played exactly one career mode save.  I found contracts an annoying distraction from what I was trying to do, so I never went back.

So if you're trying to balance career mode by offering deeper and better contracts - at best, you're spending time in a place where I'll never see it, and at worst (if you've turned off the options to play in other modes) you're annoying me and locking me out of the gameplay I prefer.

That video spent a lot of time talking about the designer's vision of how the game should be played vs. how the players want to play it - but one of the main things about KSP is that it has a *very* lose 'vision' of how it's meant to be played.  That has led to some very diverse groups of players - some setting up huge civilizations, some trying to build the minimal ship for a certain trip, some trying to build the most complex ship for a certain trip, some focusing on rockets, some on planes, some trying to step through the history of spaceflight, some trying to re-enact their favorite sci-fi show, etc.

So, if you don't have options and you're enforcing the designer's vision of how the game should be played - what is the designer's vision of how the game should be played?  And which subset of the current players is going to like that vision?

I'll agree you can go overboard on options, but especially for a game like KSP where part of the appeal is being able to design your own gameplay experience (to borrow from the video), you can also present to few options when you try to impose a vision on the players that they may not be in favor of.

[mattinoz]

8 hours ago, Master39 said:

KSP is a game defining it's own genre of space simulators, but at the end is a mix of 2 existing well explored genres, simulators and management games and both of them have their replayability factor build on options.

I usually play this kind of games one at a time, for one run lasting from a single week to multiple months to then switch to another game.

KSP, Factorio, Rimworld, Oxygen Not Included but also City Skyline, Planet Coaster, Open TTD, Stellaris, my list of games of this kind is pretty long, and all of them thrive in options, optional system (like commnet) to enable or disable, optional difficulty settings, options in the map generation, in the resource concentration, in the survival aspect and, on top of that, modding. That makes every run unique, a new story.

All of these games have options, some of them even more radical than the ones in KSP, but none of them has a "progression" mode that has the same problems of KSP's career and science modes. 

The problem that KSP has over all these other games is that KSP was never meant to be a management game, that side of the game has grown in place during time, one placeholder after the other and those placeholder were never replaced with some well-thought gameplay, but just expanded with good ideas represented by new, hastly made, placeholders. Just like planes and jets, but without a Porkjet coming in and actually replacing placeholders with well designed content.

An example is the contract system, it doesn't make sense not because of commnet being optional, but for core design reasons like the underlying balance, the economics and the fact that none of the contracts categories makes actual sense.

 

The problems with KSP were never in options, just in stratification of never replaced placeholders and bad design choices made due to inexperience, as I stated multiple times KSP is an organically grown project, not a designed one, with all the good and the bad that it brings.

Actually KSP for a long time was billed as a Tycoon game in the making. Career mode was seemingly added in a hurry to get to version 1 because it couldn't tick the box as complete until there was some tycooniness like things in the game.

I think the problem was to attracted customers with a promise that it didn't have a clear vision, but like the games mentioned it should be something that would give a logic structure the game and make them good for replay but also help push the player towards the next challenge without being heavy handed in a save but adds pressure to keep an eye on other things going on and keep them managed and it clearly doesn't constrain creativity in any of those game. 

Then it all fell over as the Team decided player must be able to single thread a mission from launch to landing and nothing could get in the way. Mean they avoided adding systems to help the player. KSP2 must break that curse or not both even trying to have a progression mode.

Then again those games all hide difficultly in Maps or slider or some way to scale difficulty and throwing the player at different situations that is a path KSP doesn't have at it's disposal. 

Sliders and scales means the base systems never turns off a system, they are still reliable they just might not hit a point they become a constraint to the game play that save. Every Factorio Map has bitters, bitters always evolve and expand. The only binary is do they attack if not disturbed. Resources are allows somewhere just scale in spread. 

Agree fully KSP as it stands lacks a vision to make it a game beyond being a simulator. KSP2 needs game.

[mcwaffles2003]

Getting rid of optional content will not get rid of bugs or half baked content, only devs can do that. But turning off options will limit anyones ability to turn off any half baked content the devs make as well as force people to play the game in one way. KSP isn't dark souls and I do not believe a game that is meant to inspire creativity of play be so restrictive that one can't toggle options. Your argument suggests that if a good feature is built into the game that simply allowing it to be turned off would make it bad... that is flat out ridiculous. You may then suggest if it was a good feature almost no one would want to turn it off.

I hope you never open up an icecream shop... because if you did and I walk in I suspect there would only be one flavor, and if I were to ask "where are the other flavors?" you would reply with "this is the best flavor, everyone will want it..." Not everyone likes chocolate ice cream, doesn't mean it is a bad flavor, just people have different tastes.

When I was new I didn't want to play with kerbal G-limits, plasma black-outs, and every other feature that could be seen as activating a "hard mode".. I just wanted to play around and experience the game, get a feel for how to play it.If life support is brought into the game then making it optional is not what will make buggy or half-baked... crappy development will do that. But, if its optional and buggy/half baked, at least then I'm not forced into dealing with it.

 

As far as optional features creating a "bad kind of complexity for players" 

Quote

Concrete example from KSP1: noodle rockets. It's really common to see newbies complain vehemently about this, and then when somebody tells them about Advanced Tweakables and Autostrut, they go "...oh." The focus should be on the challenges of the game, not the challenge of configuring the game.

I wish you had picked literally any other feature since autostrut blows and leads to kraken attacks. Imagine if we were all stuck with it with no ability to turn it off

Spoiler

19:14

Funny this came out only 4 days ago.

But seriously, is it that difficult to navigate an options menu? Because if it is, wow you are not ready to be learning orbital mechanics or basic Newtonian physics.

But hey, maybe you're right and making something optional somehow inherently makes that something bad and we should all run off to mod land to fix it.... Well I hope someone develops a mod called "Options Menu" (probably linuxgurugamer will make it/sustain it). Then 99% of us can complain to private division about making the "Options Menu" mod a stock feature... But wait, if like 75%+ of us want a feature that is well built, by your logic it should be present in the base game.

 

You should add a poll to this thread:

Quote

Should KSP 2 have optional features?

1. Yes
2. No

So we can see how many people actually want it there/gone, and if less than 75% say yes I'll shut up

Edited February 27, 2020 by mcwaffles2003

[Guest]

2 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

I hope you never open up an icecream shop... because if you did and I walk in I suspect there would only be one flavor, and if I were to ask "where are the other flavors?" you would reply with "this is the best flavor, everyone will want it..." Not everyone likes chocolate ice cream, doesn't mean it is a bad flavor, just people have different tastes.

I'm actually toying with the idea of opening a café, and indeed it would only have one flavour of coffee. It's going to be extremely good coffee, and I'm quite sure there are enough people who appreciate that type of coffee that they'll come there for it. If somebody wants a spiced pumpkin mocha latte I would politely direct them to the neighbouring Starbuck's. 

2 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

I wish you had picked literally any other feature since autostrut blows and leads to kraken attacks. Imagine if we were all stuck with it with no ability to turn it off

Autostrut only blows if you're using it wrong. And of course I don't want auto-autostrut: what's stupid is that autostrut is hidden behind an optional feature -- Advanced Tweakables -- rather than being introduced openly as the crucial construction technique that it is.

2 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

You should add a poll to this thread:

I'm pretty sure I'm in a minority position with this opinion. I contend that's because most people don't understand the indirect impact of optional feature sets on the quality of the game. "Do you want to eat your cake and have it too? YES!!!"

Even if the majority votes YES on options, I am still right about this -- it's not something that ought to be subject to a vote.

Edited February 27, 2020 by Guest

[mcwaffles2003]

18 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

I'm actually toying with the idea of opening a café, and indeed it would only have one flavour of coffee. It's going to be extremely good coffee, and I'm quite sure there are enough people who appreciate that type of coffee that they'll come there for it. If somebody wants a spiced pumpkin mocha latte I would politely direct them to the neighbouring Starbuck's. 

Good luck man. Just saying, I wouldn't order a burger from a place that wouldn't allow me to take off the mustard.

18 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

Autostrut only blows if you're using it wrong. And of course I don't want auto-autostrut: what's stupid is that autostrut is hidden behind an optional feature -- Advanced Tweakables -- rather than being introduced openly as the crucial construction technique that it is.

[snip] Simply having a dividing border with the title "Advanced tweakables" should have been sufficient.

18 hours ago, Brikoleur said:

I'm pretty sure I'm in a minority position with this opinion. I contend that's because most people don't understand the indirect impact of optional feature sets on the quality of the game. Even if the majority votes YES on options, I am still right about this -- it's not something that ought to be subject to a vote.

I've listened to your argument and noted the concern over increase dev/debug time require due to the increased combinations in which the game can run. I find it doubtful (I have no true experience though) that literally every combination must be tested, but instead tweaking combinations of relevant features and receiving bug reports post release of an update followed by patching would seem sufficient. Also, I believe the fact that now there is an experienced and well financed dev team should be considered.

 

I just think saying absolutely no options is a bit drastic. Some key features though should be on the table. Life support, for instance, is a very touchy subject in this community and I believe has been confirmed to exist in some degree in the game. Many want it and many others dont want to be forced into it, both for good reason. And not having base game life support has contributed to many incompatibilities between mods and has limited their abilities due to a lack of reference to the base game. Like how kerbalisms book keeping on resources interferes with near futures book keeping on electricity. That problem ultimately boils down to a lack of base game book keeping on unfocused crafts, which would be ultimately solved in a base life support system.

At the end of the day though, if the life support system ends up half baked, I hope we are given the option to opt out until it is better addressed. If we find features half baked like I just mentioned, we as a community should hold the devs accountable, demanding the issues deserve some treatment and dissuade prospective customers from purchasing the game until addressed. Look at wolcen for instance... The released a buggy game, half baked, and its ratings are in shambles. Anyone looking to buy the game now is heavily dissuaded until its ratings finally improve. Same with no mans sky. On release it was a disaster and sales quickly dropped after launch and only have begun to recover after years of fixing, they were forced to make a better game by an angered community. I don't think the KSP 2 devs want that and, naively, I dont think the KSP 2 devs want it either. 

 

tl;dr - ridding of toggling options will not make the features better but force us to use them if they're bad

 

 

Edited February 28, 2020 by Vanamonde

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

tl;dr - ridding of toggling options will not make the features better but force us to use them if they're bad

This is where you're wrong.

3 minutes ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

I've listened to your argument and noted the concern over increase dev/debug time require due to the increased combinations in which the game can run.

Yet you're not addressing it, beyond saying that you don't believe me despite having no experience in the field. (I have well over 30 years worth of it.) 

You're also not addressing my other argument: that having siloed-off, optional game systems makes it harder to build gameplay on them, and necessarily leaves that gameplay sparser and poorer for it.

3 minutes ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

Good luck man

Okay fine, I'll allow three options: regular espresso, ristretto, double espresso. And if I really like you, I'll also make a lungo or americano.

Edited February 27, 2020 by Guest

[XLjedi]

@mcwaffles2003 autostrut is indispensable.  I simply would've quit the game if it didn't exist.

[Guest]

Just now, XLjedi said:

@mcwaffles2003 autostrut is indispensable.  I simply would've quit the game if it didn't exist.

I was stitching together my craft with struts before I found out about it. Frankenrockets man

[XLjedi]

@Brikoleur My only major criticism with autostrut is:  I'd much prefer if it just let me pick the part that I want to anchor to.  

[mcwaffles2003]

17 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

Yet you're not addressing it, beyond saying that you don't believe me despite having no experience in the field. (I have well over 30 years worth of it.) 

You might not agree, but I addressed it

20 minutes ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

tweaking combinations of relevant features and receiving bug reports post release of an update followed by patching would seem sufficient. Also, I believe the fact that now there is an experienced and well financed dev team should be considered.

 

17 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

optional game systems makes it harder to build gameplay on them, and necessarily leaves that gameplay sparser and poorer for it.

How?

17 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

Career mode in KSP1 for example is pretty sparse, and it is harder to make it less sparse because you'll have to check with every contract whether it requires an optional system, and if it does, you'll probably just not bother and make something to the lowest common denominator instead. The same constraint applies to modders: if they have to consider whether a system is enabled or not, their work will be that much harder too.

All thats needed for contracts is a dependency check, I don't see how this adds a ridiculous amount of extra work nor does the player have to deal with anything, they just dont see the contracts appear that are non-viable. What complications were brought to the fold if plasma blackouts are left unchecked? If kerbal/parts g loading are left unchecked? If commnet is left unchecked?

The designers don't need to compensate for these features beyond declaring dependencies check for optional systems. If anything when these features are disabled the game should run slightly faster as the game is no longer constantly checking these statuses. If theres an update to commnet why does having a disable commnet option complicate that? Its not using commnet anyways

 

16 minutes ago, XLjedi said:

@mcwaffles2003 autostrut is indispensable.  I simply would've quit the game if it didn't exist.

I use KJR, autostrut killed any of my larger craft. This thing wobbled to hell and snapped even if I cheated it directly into orbit (with the manual struts as well)

Spoiler

 

Edited February 27, 2020 by mcwaffles2003

[XLjedi]

@mcwaffles2003  LOL, well of course if fell a part.  It's a complete (and glorious) monstrosity! 

Don't blame autostrut for that.  

Given the approach of KSP2 in the next year or so; I would start to ween yourself from mods that change the stock parts.  I'm getting the feeling that mods (although allowed in single player) are going to be heavily restricted in multiplayer online.  They would have to be.  

[mcwaffles2003]

16 minutes ago, XLjedi said:

@mcwaffles2003  LOL, well of course if fell a part.  It's a complete (and glorious) monstrosity! 

Don't blame autostrut for that.  

Did you see the matt lowne vid I posted? His craft was fairly simple yet destroyed itself.

Also, thank you it took a long while to build

16 minutes ago, XLjedi said:

Given the approach of KSP2 in the next year or so; I would start to ween yourself from mods that change the stock parts.  I'm getting the feeling that mods (although allowed in single player) are going to be heavily restricted in multiplayer online.  They would have to be.  

I'm hoping that multiplayer will have a mod check making sure everyone has the same mod pack to attend (similar to factorio) and it would probably be on the modders to tell people if their mods are MP appropriate. Though I will say, that craft I showed was 100% stock (Outside KJR). 

Edited February 27, 2020 by mcwaffles2003

[XLjedi]

Don't really care what ML couldn't get to work...   

They work great on the craft that I build.  Maybe go point Matt to my stuff.   LOL

If I paid attention to what most of the wanna-be armchair aerospace engineers on youtube said...  I would not have built the majority of my craft.

I can name at least 3 off the top of my head that speak with authority on their webcasts but my reaction to what they say half the time is...  That's a bunch of bull @$%!?   LOL  I'm glad I tuned into them later rather than sooner.

Edited February 27, 2020 by XLjedi

[Guest]

1 hour ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

How?

Oof, I started to write an explanation but it got pretty long. Best I can do is give you a metaphor.

If gameplay is a construction made of Legos, and your job is to design a Lego castle, which is easier: making the castle when you know the set of bricks you're allowed to use, or to make the castle if you have to account for each combination of only regular bricks, or regular bricks plus roof tile bricks, or regular bricks plus techno bricks, or all of the above plus custom-made bricks specifically for the job? It's very much the same in any design discipline.

(Also no you didn't address it, the line you quoted is just you disagreeing with my premise.)

1 hour ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

This thing wobbled to hell and snapped even if I cheated it directly into orbit (with the manual struts as well)

Hmm, I wonder what the problem could be?

[Guest]

Guaranteed the game will have options. Better start preparing yourself now 

Edited February 27, 2020 by Guest