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Precision landing pad


Laxez

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14 minutes ago, MADV said:

Absolutely no.

I hate to break it to you as I don't want to influence negatively the way you play the game, but the very challenge of partial recovery is already present in KSP1 (career mode), and as far as I know the average player isn't trying to pinpoint the launchpad or the runway for every single one of their Kerbin reentry. Heck, even most veteran aren't always trying. A 90% recovery at 10 or so kilometers away is pretty damn good enough that most players would only try to land closer it they find pleasure in the challenge.

I'd expect the average player would be very satisfied with a good enough result, especially for a mission that is subsequently repeated for free in the background. And in the remote possibility recovery scaling on proximity from KSC in KSP1 career mode was news to you, I strongly advise you against changing your play-style for a handful funds you did not notice until then and which the game in normal difficulty gives you in near infinite abundance already.

Thank you for offering help in case I did not know about the current recovery system in KSP 1. I was aware of it and wanted to suggest something different. So, on the topic of player psychology, I always err on the side of loss aversion. Personally in career mode I land my craft anywhere on Kerbin no matter how expensive they were because I only really care about precision in colonies. Additionally, as you said, in career mode there are virtually unlimited resources, even without ISRU, that you can use to keep playing. However, I’m KSP 2 especially with repeated missions this will change. If you fly a route transporting 1000 units of metal to a colony but land imprecisely, only recovering 500 units of metal, that is 500 units lost every single time the mission runs. Over many supply routes, this compounds and you could run into a situation where you end up stagnating or even losing material. So, unlike current career mode, the landing penalties in KSP 2 create a long term negative impact that is very difficult to remove. I’m not advocating for full recovery anywhere, I’m one of the people looking to incentivize precise landing. I just think there needs to be an easy way to mitigate losses without having to re-run dozens of missions. 
 

4 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

KSP wouldn't really be KSP with an autopilot - the motto as I remember it is build, fly, explore. An autopilot would take away a core pillar that's been there since before the game went into open alpha. Valid wish, sure, but a wish that goes against KSP's foundations.

“fly” can mean many things to different people. I don’t like the idea of a fully unlocked and overpowered autopilot as well, but sometimes people want to plan a mission well and watch it unfold as if a really skilled button presser had done it. I think there is merit in that, even though I think including it in the stock game would harm new players by not exposing them to what I consider a more rewarding play style. 

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The moderation team has seen countless well-meaning forum threads devolve into complete disaster when the subject of using an autopilot becomes the focus.
Please do not allow your devotion to your opinion to affect the civility and respectful discourse which are the hallmarks of this forum.

Thank you for your understanding,
Forum Moderation Team

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Hopefully back on topic we have seen in some of the teaser videos evidence of landing zones at KSC similar to SpaceX's landing zones at Cape Canaveral. Based on the clouds video, and assuming each of the two runways are roughly as wide as KSP1's runway, the landing zones look about 200m in diameter to me. They could just be there for fun or for cosmetics, but if intercept is enabling and encouraging stage recovery it could be pretty pertinent to this discussion. After all, a few of us might be able to manually land one booster, but I'd be pretty impressed if we could simultaneously land 2. 
 

 

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19 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

I think what he's saying is he's been trying for years and still finds it very difficult. He's not the only one saying this, so I think its worth considering that some people just find that rapid hand-eye coordination and intuition about how to angle your thrust to come down gently vertical just physically difficult.

What I don't get here is where exactly the problem lies. There have been words about not enough time, not enough info, not enough manual skill (whether is it "trainable" or not, that's another matter, people have different minds). Different people, different problems.

If someone can't land at all, it may be due to one of the above. Some of them are fixable, some may not be (like I said, human brain is weird. ). If someone can land, it appears to me like being unable to land precisely is entirely fixable with proper tools. If you can land within few km from target on your own, then this: 

LRCHs92.png

, impact time and velocity right on your display is exactly what you need. Because you already know how to control your ship on descent. If you can get that red marker on the big X on the surface as soon as you can and don't touch the controls until you're close enough to fire your engines to slow down for touchdown, you're good to go.

The main problem indeed lies in the ability to land. Wherever. Without this, arguably basic, skill you won't be able to land precisely where you need. So the question should be "can the devs make landing easier for everyone?" But since we're talking about precision, the question is: "How much precision is needed?"

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I agree with Aziz. If a player can't fly properly, help them fly properly as opposed to taking the stick from them.

13 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

but I'd be pretty impressed if we could simultaneously land 2. 

One very nice QOL feature would be the game trying to follow player inputs across multiple ships.

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2 hours ago, The Aziz said:

(whether is it "trainable" or not, that's another matter, people have different minds).

I think this may be part of it. I mean I have all those mods loaded and I've landed on the Mun approximately a million times. I can pretty reliably land within 20m of where I intend to. In the universe of KSP players I've practiced this more than a person really should. Yet I still find accurate Mun landings pretty difficult and a little stressful every time, and in atmo I honestly don't bother trying to land very precisely anymore. I get within 50km, pop some chutes, and use the engines to get down to a couple of m/s wherever I happen to be. I definitely agree though that seeing trajectory both in map mode and in flight are absolutely critical. I started a new install recently and Better Burn Time broke and just not having burn and impact time right next to the nav ball proved surprisingly difficult, so thats probably critical too. All that said I think it's okay to admit that the amount of time it takes to learn this skill for some players might just not be worth it, and if these kinds of things don't unlock until mid-game is there really any harm? Players who don't want them could just chose not to unlock them at all and have more science or whatever available for things they do care about, and players who want the convenience will already have learned to land manually basically where they need to, this would just allow them to get much more accurate with less fuss. And, y'know, being able to see this in-game would just be kind of awesome?

AdmirableEquatorialBlacklab-size_restric

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I agree, and I think the most important part in that argument is having the players unlock that tech after they have made some progress and have presumably done sone landings already. It is fine for players to try precise landings and decide that it isn't what they would like to do, but it would be a shame if players didn't even know that precise landing was a thing they could do manually because they were never encouraged to do it manually.

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On 2/21/2022 at 11:37 AM, Pthigrivi said:

I think what he's saying is he's been trying for years and still finds it very difficult. He's not the only one saying this, so I think its worth considering that some people just find that rapid hand-eye coordination and intuition about how to angle your thrust to come down gently vertical just physically difficult. For folks like that being told "you just have to practice more" sounds kind of insulting. Maybe after decades of trying they could do what you find comes easy, but that just isn't worth it for a lot of players. Hopefully much better visualization helps, but I see no reason to rule out some autopilot functions. 

Nailed it. I was the kid who couldn't enter the Konami code correctly. (Still takes a few trys even today.) I've never got far in most side scrolling platform games. (The ones that people thought was too easy/forgiving were the only ones I was able to beat.) I can only button mash in fighting games and only do the simplest of combos. (I have problems with platforming in the Lego games at times, and those are dead simple.)

In 1st person I don't have an innate feel of my surroundings. I can only avoid what is seen directly in front of me. I fall off alot of edges in games cause I can't tell where the edge actually is. 

In 3rd person I lose all sense of depth/movement of the surroundings. So as you can imagine, that creates a whole world of problems when playing a flight sim.

I've been playing flight sims since I got my first computer in the mid '90s. So all I need is better situational awareness and I can land safely and precisely.

What about people who are new to the flight/space sim genre?

Does it make sense to lock anything that can help a new player behind a skill wall? They will quit before they unlock the tools that can help them. If it wasn't for the hand holding in the early days of me playing flight sims. I've never would have continued playing flight sims. Eventually I was able to turn off the helpers and play the sim as the devs intended. (The devs understood that to draw in and keep people to playing the game, they had to make it easier for new players.)

In my opinion, have the helpers on by default and leave it to the experienced and veteran players to turn them off or ignore them. Don't force a new player to prove that they are worthy to use them. That is the quickest way to lose players. 

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14 minutes ago, shdwlrd said:

Does it make sense to lock anything that can help a new player behind a skill wall? 

This brings up another point which I don't think anyone made specifically but probably most people agree with--things like trajectories, burn time and time to impact should be available right from the get go. 

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23 hours ago, t_v said:

[...]I only really care about precision in colonies. [...]

However, I’m KSP 2 especially with repeated missions this will change. If you fly a route transporting 1000 units of metal to a colony but land imprecisely, only recovering 500 units of metal, that is 500 units lost every single time the mission runs. Over many supply routes, this compounds and you could run into a situation where you end up stagnating or even losing material. So, unlike current career mode, the landing penalties in KSP 2 create a long term negative impact that is very difficult to remove. [...]

Can't this be handle with good balancing? Or is there an inherent flaw with a recovery system? For example if we assume you recover resource and funds for the empty craft, what would you say about 100% recovery within 2 km, then 1% less every 2km further away, as the preset of default difficulty, fully customizable, with strategies influencing it?

Also, unless I missed something, you are the first one to actually look at a concrete example for recovery. And that makes me realize the question : "what should be the cost of an imperfect landing?" hasn't been raised yet. It could be a fraction of its cargo, like in your example, but it could also be funds, or work-time of a colony building.

I don't like the % of the cargo approach, probably for the same reason as you : you spend a whole lot of effort to go through the solar system, and the whole mission performance rely only its very end (also, missions that are not about cargo don't care about precision).

IMO, one thing the recovery should strive to achieve, is to allow to manually deliver, automatic recover, and flying the ship again from the colony, refilled and possibly with another cargo. Which means if colony recovery make the ship disappear and grants fund, I expect to be able to spend funds to build ship on colonies.

All in all, the recovery cost/benefits I would like the most would be the following : spend a small amount of funds or building work-time (eg a big rover hangar) proportional to weight and distance to teleport (possibly with a small delay) the craft to (one of) the colony launch pad(s), from which you can interact with its resource, inventory and crews from the colony screen.

Edited by MADV
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35 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

This brings up another point which I don't think anyone made specifically but probably most people agree with--things like trajectories, burn time and time to impact should be available right from the get go. 

Yes, exactly. Anything that can help the player should be on by default. Then you can turn it off if you don't want it. 

14 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

And what you're suggesting is that the side scroller should play itself.

Out of that whole post, why would you choose that line? Are you suggesting that I quit playing KSP because I suck at one portion of the game? Or do you think anyone that doesn't have an innate feel for flight sims play the game? Or did you miss the point of the post? (Which is I have crap hand eye coordination and can't tell depth on a 2d panel if you didn't pick up on that. And I'll appreciate any help I can get from the devs.)

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1 hour ago, MADV said:

Can't this be handle with good balancing? Or is there an inherent flaw with a recovery system? For example if we assume you recover resource and funds for the empty craft, what would you say about 100% recovery within 2 km, then 1% less every 2km further away, as the preset of default difficulty, fully customizable, with strategies influencing it?

That is sort of the solution I was thinking of, not necessarily the way the recovery is scaled but the way you can tweak the recovery radius in game. I think if it is set, players who frequently fail at recovering precisely will become frustrated that in order to improve the yield of their operations, they have to spend a lot of time rerunning missions and reloading landings. We don't know if policies will be available in KSP2 but that sounds like one way to fix that problem. 

1 hour ago, MADV said:

I don't like the % of the cargo approach, probably for the same reason as you : you spend a whole lot of effort to go through the solar system, and the whole mission performance rely only its very end (also, missions that are not about cargo don't care about precision).

The system is not about percent of cargo, it is about percent of final craft. We already know that in colonies, money is not the only resource and when recovering a craft you will be able to recover the parts in the craft or turn them into something reusable, either resources or money. In KSP 1, it just turns the craft into money, but in KSP 2, you will have a certain percent of metal, fuel, uranium, etc. that the craft had when recovering. This applies to all missions, not just cargo missions. So, the problem is not that it deducts cargo but that it deducts from the overall value of the craft and there is not a good system to mitigate those reductions late-game. 

1 hour ago, MADV said:

All in all, the recovery cost/benefits I would like the most would be the following : spend a small amount of funds or building work-time (eg a big rover hangar) proportional to weight and distance to teleport (possibly with a small delay) the craft to (one of) the colony launch pad(s), from which you can interact with its resource, inventory and crews from the colony screen.

This is sort of what I hope for, and it would give incentive to design efficient missions instead of building orbital hoppers, you would fly a cargo plane mission transporting a certain amount of cargo a certain distance, and when recovering the game will run the mission as many times as it takes to transport the full mass of the craft back. Going further would multiply the cost of the recovery mission by the extra distance. 

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21 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

And what you're suggesting is that the side scroller should play itself.

Except they aren't having problems designing spaceships, getting to orbit, docking, or landing under normal conditions. Most of the game is perfectly accessible to them. It would be more like you were playing a side-scroller and you came to a level where you suddenly had to move your character to play Guitar Hero so fast that only a small fraction of players could advance even after years of practice. That's now a game design problem. I think we all agree that making that sequence easier would be entirely reasonable, we just have disagreements about how to do that. We all agree that better flight visualization and data would help, along with a thoughtful treatment of recovery range. I think a .5 or .25 warp is a great idea too. And hey, maybe thats enough! I don't think KSP2 absolutely NEEDS autopilot functions. At the same time though ultra-precise landing is a very niche aspect of the game at present. There are other aspects like hovering skycranes, spaceplanes maintaining angle to horizon on reentry, really long-duration flights and rover journeys and mechanized stage recovery for which autopilot could actually open up new gameplay possibilities. For some people those possibilities might be fun, which, in the end, is the whole reason for a game to exist.

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4 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

That's why I suggested having slow motion to reduce the amount of quick coordination required, instead of the cheap (and frankly terrible) solution of letting an autopilot do it.

You're missing the point. The root cause of my landing problems is the lack of situational awareness. I can overcome my crappy hand eye coordination with timely, detailed information about the situation of the craft. With timely information, I don't have to fumble around the keyboard trying to correct a problem I just realized is happening. (Just making it worse in the process. :mad:)

Another cause for landing issues with players is task saturation. There are just too many things going on at once. Different people have different levels of things they can do at once, or in quick secession. Once they reach that point, they can't process what is happening anymore and will make mistakes. (Usually with bad outcomes.) 

(Fun fact, lack of situational awareness and task saturation was one of the leading causes for airline accidents in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. To this day, those two reasons are still one of the leading causes of general aviation accidents and filings.)

Now your slow motion idea may work with task saturation problems. But it doesn't solve the situational awareness problem. For the game to retain new players and help current players, both problems will have to be solved. 

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On 2/22/2022 at 11:26 PM, shdwlrd said:

For the game to retain new players and help current players, both problems will have to be solved. 

To maximize player retention and new player the game should scrap all orbital mechanics and simplify the flight model down to more reasonable "No man's sky" levels.

Otherwise the game would be inaccessible to people that really can't learn orbital mechanics.

[snip]

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On 2/23/2022 at 12:05 AM, Master39 said:

To maximize player retention and new player the game should scrap all orbital mechanics and simplify the flight model down to more reasonable "No man's sky" levels.

Otherwise the game would be inaccessible to people that really can't learn orbital mechanics.

What? You don't want that? That's insulting to people that really can't learn orbital mechanics, typical toxic gamer mentality.

[snip] It's not helpful for the topic at hand. :mad:

I was just thinking, Why must KSP2 be just as difficult to get into as KSP1? Why can't players master the different tasks required on their own terms? Why can't KSP2 offer more of a direct approach to assist players with difficult tasks like landing? Why must anything that directly assists the player be a 3rd party mod? 

In the grand scheme, KSP is just a game. It doesn't mean anything tangible. It's not worth getting upset about opposing views. It's not going to directly affect your life.

So why be so opposed to anything to help the player in a game that is considered very difficult to begin with? Hubris? Being afraid that anything added to the game will ruin your enjoyment of it? The vision of the HarvesteR? Your pride doesn't matter, there's nothing tangible to show for it. HarvesteR isn't involved in the development of KSP2. His wants and wishes can be forgotten. You can ignore any features you don't want to use. So why are you so opposed to having anything added to assist the player again?

I keep writing personal reasons to why I can use help with some aspects of the game. I even put down some good valid reasons as a root cause to the problem at hand. But they are just being dismissed because I as a player am not as good as you are. Hmmm... it's sad really. If you willing to add your considerable skill and observations that can actually help with the difficult task of landing. This conversation would be a lot more productive.

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On 2/23/2022 at 2:22 AM, shdwlrd said:

[snip] It's not helpful for the topic at hand. :mad:

[snip] in another forum I've seen people using the same arguments used here to ask for a teleport button to transfer between planets to allow people that can't possibly learn orbital mechanics to do interplanetary missions.

The point of the "accessibility VS gameplay" debate is that it's an arbitrary line in the sand and anyone traces his own line at a different place, it can be used to argue any videogame down to just a barely interactive video, and it doesn't matter where you personally draw your own one, you're leaving a ton of people out anyway.

KSP is a niche, hard game, and anything less than a No Man's Sky flight model is going to cut people out, your line is at landing, other people have similar and just as valid problems at thinking on 6 axis when docking, or at orientating when they don't have an "up and down" frame of reference, or at grasping orbits, but your problems are with landings so who cares about those people, right? They can go play something else because your personal line in the sand is at the landing "problem".

 

On 2/23/2022 at 2:22 AM, shdwlrd said:

So why be so opposed to anything to help the player in a game that is considered very difficult to begin with? Hubris? Being afraid that anything added to the game will ruin your enjoyment of it? The vision of the HarvesteR? Your pride doesn't matter, there's nothing tangible to show for it. HarvesteR isn't involved in the development of KSP2. His wants and wishes can be forgotten. You can ignore any features you don't want to use. So why are you so opposed to having anything added to assist the player again?

I'm opposed to turning the game away from being a flying-focused game. It's a build-and-fly game and I don't want it to go away from that formula, no amount of other gameplay added can cover for the loss of that, colony games are a dime a dozen nowadays, factory games or resource management ones too. 

It's like a FPS game adding survival mechanics and then removing or making the shooting gameplay easier or optional for "accessibility", you could argue that you can ignore the auto-aim and fewer enemies around, but the game is going to be balanced against the new things instead of the gung gameplay and you can't ignore that.

For KSP2 that would translate in having the colony system designed in such a way that wouldn't require you to land there more than once or twice to have a fully autonomous end-game colony, with all the difficulty and gameplay being on the management side instead on building and flying ships around between colonies and bases.

If landing is being seen as a "problem" to automate away for most players then it's not going to be part of the gameplay design, of the planets design, of the colony gameplay design, of the parts design and so on and you can't just ignore that, the game is going to be very different in its basics.

So, again, for me is not an accessibility or difficulty argument but a game design one, the "somebody isn't going to be able to play that" is an argument that can be used to shut down any random gameplay someone doesn't want.

Edited by Gargamel
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5 hours ago, Master39 said:

So, again, for me is not an accessibility or difficulty argument but a game design one, the "somebody isn't going to be able to play that" is an argument that can be used to shut down any random gameplay someone doesn't want.

Ok, I think that there may be some misinterpretation here. I don’t believe that @shdwlrd is advocating for removal of flying craft, only assistance with it. There is a major difference there, comparable to having a delta-v display (assistance) versus removing fuel depletion (removing gameplay). They both fix the problem of having no fuel in the middle of a mission and make the game more accessible for those people who draw the line at building capable craft, but one of them preserves the gameplay and still gives people who are more comfortable with the game opportunity to engage with that gameplay with less annoyance. 
 

That’s the general policy I think the devs should take, to assist players with every aspect of gameplay while not removing them entirely. Another example: colony resource management will probably be simple but some people will draw the line there. Instead of having a “manage resources” button, have recommended actions be highlighted so players can enter a colony and quickly manage their resources without having to do math and balance numbers. As you said, everyone’s line in the sand is different. Mine is constantly accelerating craft, but I don’t think they should program interstellar space differently, I think they should have a secondary way to display trajectories that assumes you are constantly accelerating. So, it doesn’t matter that everyone has difficulty with different things, the devs should account for as many challenging gameplay elements as they can. 

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On 2/23/2022 at 2:22 AM, shdwlrd said:

[snip] It's not helpful for the topic at hand. :mad:

I was just thinking, Why must KSP2 be just as difficult to get into as KSP1? Why can't players master the different tasks required on their own terms? Why can't KSP2 offer more of a direct approach to assist players with difficult tasks like landing? Why must anything that directly assists the player be a 3rd party mod? 

In the grand scheme, KSP is just a game. It doesn't mean anything tangible. It's not worth getting upset about opposing views. It's not going to directly affect your life.

So why be so opposed to anything to help the player in a game that is considered very difficult to begin with? Hubris? Being afraid that anything added to the game will ruin your enjoyment of it? The vision of the HarvesteR? Your pride doesn't matter, there's nothing tangible to show for it. HarvesteR isn't involved in the development of KSP2. His wants and wishes can be forgotten. You can ignore any features you don't want to use. So why are you so opposed to having anything added to assist the player again?

I keep writing personal reasons to why I can use help with some aspects of the game. I even put down some good valid reasons as a root cause to the problem at hand. But they are just being dismissed because I as a player am not as good as you are. Hmmm... it's sad really. If you willing to add your considerable skill and observations that can actually help with the difficult task of landing. This conversation would be a lot more productive.

Master39 makes a perfectly good point, you can complain about the skill required to land a booster near a colony but you have yet to consider the response you would have in mind if someone even newer than you complained about the skill level required to get into orbit. Is the solution to make everything in the game have an autopilot? Absolutely not. The solution is better awareness and less "task saturation". A stock variant of Kerbal Engineer I think would make a good solution for helping with situational awareness, and of course task saturation can already be overcome with slow motion so that the player has more time to absorb the events happening. So why, after I consider two solutions to two problems, do you just go for such a cookie cutter reply as 'throw in an autopilot'?

 

(just a reminder that Scott Manley also had depth perception problems in KSP but didn't shy away from narrowing his booster landing skills)

On 2/23/2022 at 8:22 AM, t_v said:

I think they should have a secondary way to display trajectories that assumes you are constantly accelerating

Confirmed. Maneuver nodes will account for burn times in how the trajectory is shown.

On 2/23/2022 at 2:57 AM, Master39 said:

KSP is a niche, hard game, and anything less than a No Man's Sky flight model is going to cut people out, your line is at landing, other people have similar and just as valid problems at thinking on 6 axis when docking, or at orientating when they don't have an "up and down" frame of reference, or at grasping orbits, but your problems are with landings so who cares about those people, right? They can go play something else because your personal line in the sand is at the landing "problem".

What I've been saying this entire thread - we don't have an autopilot for docking, we certainly don't have an autopilot for interplanetary transfers or landings. So why must the line be drawn at booster landings? Because one person can't do it? Well I've got news, there have also been people who could never dock or even land on the Mun. So why don't we argue that an autopilot should play the game for us? Because flying is the core aspect of this game, being in control of a rocket you have got to get back safely.

The skill curve of KSP 2 is going to be an extension of the skill curve of KSP 1. You've mastered all you're bothered to learn in KSP 1 and you've now got to keep pushing yourself to utilize the new features added by KSP 2 - it looks scary and that's why forum posts flare up about adding an autopilot, because people don't want to go further up the skill curve than they already have. Because it looks difficult.

Edited by Gargamel
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The Forum Moderators have asked, on a number of occasions, to keep this discussion civil, and it has failed to do so.    This particular argument is almost as old as the forum itself, and it almost always ends in bickering and tears.   

Over the years, we have established some inarguable facts:

  • Some players enjoy autopilot features in the game, and this is completely fine.
  • Some players would rather manually control their craft, and this is also completely fine.
  • The inclusion of autopilot features have not, and probably will not, prevent the second group from enjoying the game their way.  

At this time, we are reopening the thread for discussion.   If you have insights to add that do not contradict the three stated facts above, please do so.  Any comments that are directed at another poster (or at a group of players, such as asserting or implying that what they enjoy is not, in fact, completely fine) will not be tolerated and we will be dealing with them in a more direct manner.     

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