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What is your biggest issue with ksp 1 that you want to see fixed in ksp 2?


Rutabaga22

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Well, some of my biggest issues they have mentioned in previews or dev updates already, so  I know those are already being addressed, but one I have run across recently (because I hadn't really used it much before), is field construction, especially on the ground. There is a mission that generates to go add parts to a rover to fix it, and the version I got required adding several wheels. It was nigh impossible; it refused to actually orient the parts the same way as it would in the regular construction interface, or even in remotely the same way as already attached parts. Even worse, the physics don't pause while you are doing it, so the moment you grab a wheel to move it, the whole rover sinks into the ground, making it even more impossible to attach or align the part, and if you somehow manage to get it attached anyway, it then launches the entire rover way up into the sky and into the distance; it was low gravity, so it didn't blow up, but you would have to chase it down and start all over. On top of all that, even if you manage to get all the wheels on, it was genuinely impossible to get them all lined up, so it was hit or miss if it could even drive at all, and it could never drive straight. It also required parts too heavy to carry, so Bob couldn't just have them in his inventory and I basically had to pick them up and throw them ahead as I ran along to the rover. The whole experience was maddening.

It's a great concept, but it clearly was designed with only zero-g construction in mind (though I haven't used it much for that yet, so I'm just assuming it's better. It's a new enough feature that I tend to forget about it), and has some major interface and implementation issues, at least with gravity.

Another one, that @Nazalassa's post reminded my of, is when you do a burn and have a perfect intercept with a planet or moon, then hit warp to SOI change and all of a sudden are no longer even remotely on the same course and nowhere near an intercept. I always quicksave before hitting warpto and often just warp to an arbitrary close point instead, but it would be nice if it actually worked.

Edited by GigFiz
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20 minutes ago, GigFiz said:

it clearly was designed with only zero-g construction in mind

There's a new issue then: in 0-G you have no limit on the mass of the parts you're manipulating. Then why can't you move big parts such as 3.75m fuel tanks?

Other problem, still with EVA construction: you cannot take root parts. Which means that, if you're detaching two fuel tanks from your ship and you strap them together, then one of them becomes a root part and you're never, ever be able to move it again.

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Rather than static performance settings, I hope KSP2 is has more adaptive settings, like the ability to set up lowering graphics glory as required to maintain frame rate or, or dynamically alter load/unload distance based on performance. 

The game should at least detect when the frame rate goes below some user specified threshold for some seconds, automatically quicksave, and prompt user if they want to close and reopen the game to deal with the situation.  That or get rid of all memory leaks in the game and in all mods, hmm

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24 minutes ago, Nazalassa said:

There's a new issue then: in 0-G you have no limit on the mass of the parts you're manipulating. Then why can't you move big parts such as 3.75m fuel tanks?

Other problem, still with EVA construction: you cannot take root parts. Which means that, if you're detaching two fuel tanks from your ship and you strap them together, then one of them becomes a root part and you're never, ever be able to move it again.

I haven't done enough zero-g construction to run into the root parts issue, but that's really interesting. I think that it then goes back around to the same thing I was talking about with ground construction, ie: it should pause and the interface should become much more like the VAB than it is in its current form, including more absolute directionality and the ability to re-root parts, which would solve the issue you bring up.

As far as zero-g weight limits, I guess I have less of a problem in principle with that because I could see how volume could be an issue with unwieldiness, even if weight isn't. That said, at that point, it would be great if you had a manipulator arm part that you could include that would then bypass that restriction and greatly increase the complexity and size that you are able to work with

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1 hour ago, Bej Kerman said:

It's an issue with the aerodynamics, what kind of question is this. Regardless if Kerbin's diameter is 1,200km or 12,000km, the sound barrier shouldn't be so easy to cross.

Right. Im looking for a slightly more in-depth and informative answer, if anyone knows. You already said you weren't prepared to write a paper on it and thats fine. Thats why Im asking if anyone else knows more about this.


It could have to do with the way they've mapped the US Standard Atmosphere onto Kerbin. Atmospheric density looks pretty similar for the first 30km. Temperature also effects the speed of sound, and that doesn't look wildly different except that it cuts off at 70km

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Standard_Atmosphere#/media/File:Comparison_US_standard_atmosphere_1962.svg

vs

600px-Kerbin_Atmosphere_T&P.png

So more likely it has to do with the way mach effects and drag are modeled for parts? I remember shortly after 1.0 was released they made a number of changes to drag values and other physics and temperature calculations because of problems with reentry and rockets tumbling over. The change log for 1.03 lists "Drag curves modified to lower transonic hump." and 1.05 lists "Drag coefficient changes based on the same factors as turbulent convection (a Pseudo-Reynolds number). This means higher drag high up in the atmosphere, and slightly lower drag when going very fast very low." If I remember correctly there was a whole conversation about unrealistic behavior and they decided to deliberately jigger things to make rockets launches and capsule reentry less frustrating. This isn't my field though so I could be wrong about that. 

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1 hour ago, GigFiz said:

Even worse, the physics don't pause while you are doing it, so the moment you grab a wheel to move it, the whole rover sinks into the ground, making it even more impossible to attach or align the part, and if you somehow manage to get it attached anyway, it then launches the entire rover way up into the sky and into the distance; it was low gravity, so it didn't blow up, but you would have to chase it down and start all over

Totally agree.  I once tried a contract to fix a rover so that it could be driven a few hundred meters.  I ended up propping it on my pilot's head while my engineer moved the wheels.   

And even then, something weird happened with the physics so it couldn't drive.  I ended up sending a larger rover and carrying it to its destination.   This is the biggest thing for me, often craft are hit by inexplicable physics breaks that can completely immobilize them.  I think this has been mentioned before.  Other than the colonies it's definitely the biggest thing I'm looking forward to. 

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1 hour ago, Nazalassa said:

There's a new issue then: in 0-G you have no limit on the mass of the parts you're manipulating. Then why can't you move big parts such as 3.75m fuel tanks?

Other problem, still with EVA construction: you cannot take root parts. Which means that, if you're detaching two fuel tanks from your ship and you strap them together, then one of them becomes a root part and you're never, ever be able to move it again.

A workaround I figured out for the root part issue is first to detach the root part using KIS, the grab it or let it float away.  Though it does seem this can whistle for the kraken at times, typically the craft seems to properly reroot to the adjacent part

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5 minutes ago, darthgently said:

first to detach the root part using KIS,

That's with the help of a mod. Even if this can work, we probably also need a stock way to solve the problem, no?
Anyways, it's not a bad idea.

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23 minutes ago, Nazalassa said:

That's with the help of a mod. Even if this can work, we probably also need a stock way to solve the problem, no?
Anyways, it's not a bad idea.

Yes, as stated, it is a workaround

The fact that handled parts drift during stock construction mode is something that completely baffles me.  It is truly difficult to understand how that made it through even the most basic testing for playability.   Parts that are being rotated or offset should have the player manipulations anchored relative to the parent part position. Instead the seem to be anchored to some more primitive underlying reference frame

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58 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

If I remember correctly there was a whole conversation about unrealistic behavior and they decided to deliberately jigger things to make rockets launches and capsule reentry less frustrating.

Ah, yes;

"Are newbies angry? Make the physics stupid!"

I have good reasons to expect that the devs won't tackle problems like this. Still, they'd better make the aero model good or I'm going to have one good reason to boycott it. Yes, it's a space simulator, but half the time in KSP the entire point of launching a rocket is to land on another planet, maybe one with an atmosphere. There's no reason to dumb aero physics down given it's just as important as ground physics for rover wheels (another weak link in KSP) and orbital physics for spacecraft.

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9 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Ah, yes;

"Are newbies angry? Make the physics stupid!"

I have good reasons to expect that the devs won't tackle problems like this. Still, they'd better make the aero model good or I'm going to have one good reason to boycott it. Yes, it's a space simulator, but half the time in KSP the entire point of launching a rocket is to land on another planet, maybe one with an atmosphere. There's no reason to dumb aero physics down given it's just as important as ground physics for rover wheels (another weak link in KSP) and orbital physics for spacecraft.

 WE MUST PROTECT OUR FUNDIMENTAL RIGHT TO BURN UP IN THE ATMOSPHERE 

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17 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Ah, yes;

"Are newbies angry? Make the physics stupid!"

I have good reasons to expect that the devs won't tackle problems like this. Still, they'd better make the aero model good or I'm going to have one good reason to boycott it. Yes, it's a space simulator, but half the time in KSP the entire point of launching a rocket is to land on another planet, maybe one with an atmosphere. There's no reason to dumb aero physics down given it's just as important as ground physics for rover wheels (another weak link in KSP) and orbital physics for spacecraft.

I also don't see why would a heat shield produce lift and can be used as a wing.

(but I'm FOR keeping the docking port kraken drive, as it is emblematic of KSP)

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2 minutes ago, Nazalassa said:

I also don't see why would a heat shield produce lift and can be used as a wing.

That's one of few things KSP's aero does good (somewhat good). Why shouldn't a heat shield produce a small amount of lift? It's a flat surface. Command capsules returning from the moon in the 60s used their heatshields and trimmed their center of mass (like the Concorde) to adjust the trajectory. The only problem is that KSP's aero can be broken so hard that heatshields can be made into standalone wings.

6 minutes ago, Nazalassa said:

(but I'm FOR keeping the docking port kraken drive, as it is emblematic of KSP)

The "bugs are good" attitude of the community is one possible reason the devs were so slow on fixing things. Fortunately, KSP 2's crew insists on "slaying the Kraken", and it's a completely different game anyway so it won't have any of the bugs from KSP 1.

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57 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

"Are newbies angry? Make the physics stupid!"

I think it might be a tradeoff, and in the balance ultimately this is a space game so it makes sense to prioritize the player experience getting to and from orbit even if it leaves planes a little OP. Or maybe there's a subtle solution that achieves both? Thats kind of why I was hoping to noodle a little deeper into the complexities of aerodynamics behavior. 

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3 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:
1 hour ago, Bej Kerman said:

"Are newbies angry? Make the physics stupid!"

I think it might be a tradeoff, and in the balance ultimately this is a space game so it makes sense to prioritize the player experience getting to and from orbit even if it leaves planes a little OP. Or maybe there's a subtle solution that achieves both? Thats kind of why I was hoping to noodle a little deeper into the complexities of aerodynamics behavior. 

There's a line between simplifying physics and destroying it.

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3 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

There's a line between simplifying physics and destroying it.

I agree.

Plus, a game like KSP has to be realistic.

And it makes no sense that at each update we get some new stuff, while the most old bugs are still there. A good game would be one where bugfixing passes before adding stuff, and not after.

No more of that:

Found a bug?
Call it a feature!

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I really don't know how stock KSP or FAR works, but here's what ferram4 said on how mach is handled. In my experience, drag increased kind of linearly when you went at higher speeds, whereas the speeds right around Mach 1 and further supersonic speeds should experience a lot more drag due to air building up. 

On 9/14/2012 at 7:22 PM, ferram4 said:

Mach Effects and Area Ruling - Lift and drag will vary as expected with Mach number. Supersonic planes will need to properly area rule themselves for optimum flight characteristics.

On a side note, making a model for an entire craft to do things with certainly allows for much more realistic aerodynamics, but it can also help improve less realistic (read punishing) systems, and when I saw the 'emergent fairings' section, I immediately thought that system could be used for buoyancy and fluid containers (both keeping water in and out)

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2 hours ago, t_v said:

I really don't know how stock KSP or FAR works, but here's what ferram4 said on how mach is handled. In my experience, drag increased kind of linearly when you went at higher speeds, whereas the speeds right around Mach 1 and further supersonic speeds should experience a lot more drag due to air building up. 

So if I recall correctly it had to do with a mismatch between the densest part of Kerbin’s atmosphere being roughly as tall as Earth’s is, but the dV to orbit being almost 10x less. That means on kerbin you’re probably ditching your first stage much earlier because its doing so much less work but you still need to climb just as high as you do on earth before really rolling into your gravity turn. Because of that you’re hitting the sound barrier with your first stage tanks close to empty vs being 60%ish full like a falcon first stage would be (for instance). This made manually navigating that barrier without flipping unrealistically difficult because you’re hitting it with your COM much lower on your vehicle. 

Something like that?

Edited by Pthigrivi
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22 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

So if I recall correctly it had to do with a mismatch between the densest part of Kerbin’s atmosphere being roughly as tall as Earth’s is, but the dV to orbit being almost 10x less. That means on kerbin you’re probably ditching your first stage much earlier because its doing so much less work but you still need to climb just as high as you do on earth before really rolling into your gravity turn. Because of that you’re hitting the sound barrier with your first stage tanks close to empty vs being 60%ish full like a falcon first stage would be (for instance). This made manually navigating that barrier without flipping unrealistically difficult because you’re hitting it with your COM much lower on your vehicle. 

Something like that?

I’m really not convinced that these changes were made for balance reasons, or any reasons other than simplicity. Also, if your first stage tanks are less full, you will be more stable in the atmosphere since your COM is raised. I’ve never played with FAR, but I bet that the low pressure zones along the side of the fuselage contribute a lot more to flipping than any atmospheric density or scaling problem. 

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27 minutes ago, t_v said:

Also, if your first stage tanks are less full, you will be more stable in the atmosphere since your COM is raised. 

Oh you’re right it does lift… so why are we always hitting max instability around 7-10km? Increased TWR punishing you for small deviations from prograde?

Edited by Pthigrivi
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25 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Oh you’re right it does lift… so why are we always hitting max instability around 7-10km? Increased TWR punishing you for small deviations from prograde?

I’m not at all knowledgeable on this topic, but I think it is because usually, the drag on the front of the craft is the highest at those altitudes (and associated speeds), while the rest of the craft is not contributing any forces. Once there is a deviation from prograde, the drag on the front of the craft plus the cross-sectional drag on the front overpowers the torque from the back and excarbates the turn. FAR, as far as I know, would exacerbate this because the transonic flow around the ship would take a moment to start applying forces while the front of the ship would experience more force. 

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