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Intercept Games wonder what will keep us playing KSP2 for 1000s of hours is part of the early access announcement post. Heres a few suggestions. Anyone else?


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Its a good question. I have over 7000 hours in KSP.

What kept me playing in KSP1?

  • Bug Hunting.
  • Engineering Challenges I made for myself which involved robotics. Paddle Boat for Eve, Totally reusable Forklift/Dropship/Shipping Container Base assembling mission, and a crane for rocket integration (outside the VAB/SPH) were my main ones.

But also what reduced my motivation to play?

  • Kerbin SOI is all that is needed to unlock the tech tree. I lost a lot of my motivation after that.
  • Barren nature of the planets. Everything looks similar.

What could keep me playing for 1000s of hours in KSP2?

  • Robotics with more advanced KAL controllers, logic gates etc. Robotics that actually work well. (eliminate drift entirely and robotics acting more like they would in real life e.g. There's too much spring to the pistons )
  • KSP2 being reliable and robust in a way that I don't have to find so many workarounds for complicated crafts to work. KSP1 is OK for simple crafts but the more complicated they get the more bugs/issues arise.
  • More interesting places to visit.
  • Techtree still unlocking when well past Kerbin SOI.
  • Don't hurt me please on this one...perhaps a story line of some sort.
  • Well thought out DLCs and updates of varying value. Cheaper ones might be just parts. More expensive might be Robotics for example. A entirely new system with a similar amount of planets to KSP but heavier might be something too.
  • KSP1 was missing surface base parts. Imagine what surface base parts would have looked like in KSP1. Not talking about colony parts (Runway parts for KSP2 look amazing but not what I mean)
  • Colliders that better support Kraken Tech (this is the undocking of a craft into 2 crafts that interact in a way that can make hinges/rotating parts with colliders rubbing against each other to keep them together)
  • Oh. EVA Construction. Please have this in KSP2. It was a massive addition to KSP1

Additional Thought on Multiplayer:

The Mission Builder (Making History) wasn't adopted by the KSP1 community. But could something like that be used in KSP2 multiplayer somehow which the community might find compelling? Just throwing it out there.

 

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5 minutes ago, Anth12 said:

Robotics with more advanced KAL controllers, logic gates etc. Robotics that actually work well. (eliminate drift entirely and robotics acting more like they would in real life e.g. There's too much spring to the pistons )

Also auto locking!!!

You should really check out this list:

 

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long term projects one one place. so that i dont just build a huge colny on every planet wich build ships that make colonies. i want to need to send a few ships to another star system  so that i can build a refuel station wich sends rockets with fuel from a ground colony up to the station so that i can refuel incoming ships. i want to have some advanced colony system so i have some planning needing to be done. some dificoulty is good for playing long time.

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3 hours ago, Anth12 said:

Robotics with more advanced KAL controllers, logic gates etc. Robotics that actually work well. (eliminate drift entirely and robotics acting more like they would in real life e.g. There's too much spring to the pistons )

Unfortunately, devs already stated that the robotics from KSP1 won't be returning, at least initially. I think it was in one of the interviews with Matt Lowne or Shadowzone, possibly one from Feature Episode 6.

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Add more procedural parts to the base game like fuels tanks, in many shapes including spheres, so I can create things that are pleasing to me. That would extend my total play time somewhat. If I have to add mods which constantly update and have to rebuild craft over and over, and crap like, that I'm not going to play for thousands of hours.

Edited by regex
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Beyond personal goals and the career/science mode, achievements are my number one priority if I happen to really enjoy the game. I only have about 80 hours in KSP1, which is mostly limited by my lack of knowledge, skill, and the lack of things to do. If there's a list of things I can do, I'll do them, no matter the challenge. However, since KSP2 isn't a rougelike, it's only a matter of time before all achievements are completed, no matter how many there are.  No matter how fun the game may be, I likely won't play when I run out of things to do, since progress and results are my driving factors when it comes to video games (probably not a good thing but whatever). There's a lot of ideas I have, most of them complete nonsense, but I would really like to see career mode return, with more emphasis on resource management. 

For a wacky idea: New Game Plus, with modifiers. Maybe random planet orientation, orbits, varying resource densities with respect to the original amounts on planets, random atmospheric densities and composition (where did Duna get oxygen from?), etc. That would keep me coming back time and time again, but I highly doubt something like that is really feasible with how complicated everything already is. 

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10 hours ago, intelliCom said:

Ever tried modding? By extension, ever tried Kerbalism?

I do use mods but mostly I use ones that dont break a stock game, though I did add KAS so I could use hoses for fuellines. never used Kerbalism.

7 hours ago, Domonian said:

Unfortunately, devs already stated that the robotics from KSP1 won't be returning, at least initially. I think it was in one of the interviews with Matt Lowne or Shadowzone, possibly one from Feature Episode 6.

I know. I am just stating what would keep me playing KSP2 for 1000s of hours. The lack of robotics in KSP2 wont stop me from getting at least a 1000 hours out of KSP2 probably. But Robotics really opened up a lot of possibilities in KSP1

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1 minute ago, Anth12 said:

I do use mods but mostly I use ones that dont break a stock game, though I did add KAS so I could use hoses for fuellines. never used Kerbalism.

Kerbalism sounds scary at first; brings realistic things into the game like food and water for Kerbals, science research that isn't instantaneous, and potential for engine failures.

But it also makes me drastically change how I design my spacecraft and plan my missions. Despite it being the same old Kerbol system, it is truly a fresh, new, and challenging experience.

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5 hours ago, Domonian said:

Beyond personal goals and the career/science mode, achievements are my number one priority if I happen to really enjoy the game. I only have about 80 hours in KSP1, which is mostly limited by my lack of knowledge, skill, and the lack of things to do. If there's a list of things I can do, I'll do them, no matter the challenge. However, since KSP2 isn't a rougelike, it's only a matter of time before all achievements are completed, no matter how many there are.  No matter how fun the game may be, I likely won't play when I run out of things to do, since progress and results are my driving factors when it comes to video games (probably not a good thing but whatever). There's a lot of ideas I have, most of them complete nonsense, but I would really like to see career mode return, with more emphasis on resource management. 

For a wacky idea: New Game Plus, with modifiers. Maybe random planet orientation, orbits, varying resource densities with respect to the original amounts on planets, random atmospheric densities and composition (where did Duna get oxygen from?), etc. That would keep me coming back time and time again, but I highly doubt something like that is really feasible with how complicated everything already is. 

New Game Plus with the ability to increase gravity would make for an interesting challenge. Steam achievements. I definitely want that

Just now, intelliCom said:

Kerbalism sounds scary at first; brings realistic things into the game like food and water for Kerbals, science research that isn't instantaneous, and potential for engine failures.

But it also makes me drastically change how I design my spacecraft and plan my missions. Despite it being the same old Kerbol system, it is truly a fresh, new, and challenging experience.

Food and Water might be interesting but random failures probably isn't something I would want to happen. Failures should be from my own stupidity ;)

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9 minutes ago, Anth12 said:

Food and Water might be interesting but random failures probably isn't something I would want to happen. Failures should be from my own stupidity ;)

You can adjust a lot of this in settings anyway. If you don't want random failures, don't have them. It does make the radiation belts too easy IMO though.
Oh yeah, there's also radiation belts. Any probe you wanna send to Jool has to be on a polar orbit, lest your spacecraft get bombarded by 200 rads per second.

I'd say random failures are good as it encourages you to create duplicates as redundancy, like clustering rocket engines on your launch vehicles. You're also given a very clear idea of how much your parts are going to fail, and how much they can be used before they fail. It's not completely random.

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5 minutes ago, Anth12 said:

New Game Plus with the ability to increase gravity would make for an interesting challenge. Steam achievements. I definitely want that

Food and Water might be interesting but random failures probably isn't something I would want to happen. Failures should be from my own stupidity ;)

Not having spares or the ability to repair or redundant systems could be considered a result of stupidity.  I mean it is in the real world.  I get what you are saying, but I think the "random event bad" line of reasoning only goes so far with regards to gameplay in a game based on technology, planning, and a dangerous environment

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3 minutes ago, darthgently said:

Not having ... the ability to repair

This annoys me about unmanned probes in Kerbalism though. You're literally forced to not be able to repair them.

Also, I have the mod with Far Future tech, and all the far future engines have an even 10 minute / 40 minute burn duration for standard and high quality respectively. Why is this?

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15 minutes ago, darthgently said:

Not having spares or the ability to repair or redundant systems could be considered a result of stupidity.  I mean it is in the real world.  I get what you are saying, but I think the "random event bad" line of reasoning only goes so far with regards to gameplay in a game based on technology, planning, and a dangerous environment

If I send a probe to eeloo and its engine randomly fails...then its a feature I am not interested in. If it runs out of EC because the solar panel isnt facing the sun, thats my fault but it failing randomly would just irritate me.

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2 hours ago, Anth12 said:

If I send a probe to eeloo and its engine randomly fails...then its a feature I am not interested in. If it runs out of EC because the solar panel isnt facing the sun, thats my fault but it failing randomly would just irritate me.

Sure, I get it.   At the same time, there are so many instances of NASA bringing a probe or rover back online by switching to a redundant subassembly.  But yes, I do think spare engines is more problematic, lol

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I thought about this question for a while, and though absolutely dozens of new planets and compelling planetary surfaces and exploration sound incredible and would hold me for a long, long time, there is exactly one thing that makes the best games inexhaustible. Well. Balanced. Mechanics. It's the reason the most complex computers on the planet can't solve chess but checkers is boring for 10 year olds. It's the reason Eric Barone outsold most AAA games with a dorky 8-bit Harvest Moon clone. The holy grail of any game is "easy to learn, difficult to master". This is hard, just like any great piece of engineering, because it requires the discipline to remove everything that's extraneous, to ruthlessly simplify the rules such that only the smallest, most delicately balanced and integrated set of strategic choices make all the difference. It's not that tipping one single thing will ruin your experience, you'll be fine if you're close, but to truly master the system and make the most out of every choice means fully understanding each element of the game. 

And even when in truth everything is deterministic there should be the sense of improvisation. I've played KSP for a long, long time and I've gotten pretty good at it. Still, when I launch something as simple as a Minmus surveyor the experience still feels improvisational, because I'm looking at that timing till Minmus intersects the ecliptic plane, optimizing for a polar orbit, making course corrections to perfect my altitude for circularization. When you plan for a Jool mission you tend to pack fuel for the worst, but when you get there there are all of these unique opportunities for gravity assists between different moons and you're kinda flying by the seat of your pants, which is terrifying and exhilarating. 

This is the kind of simultaneously totally forgiving and utterly ruthless doctrine I'd love to see applied to colonies and resources. Getting one up and reasonably self-sustaining should be pretty easily manageable even for non-experts--but really eeking every perfect ounce of productivity should require an uncanny balance of near and far deliveries, energy, material, and personnel investment and allocation, etc. You should never really feel like "Okay there is nothing left to do, everything is perfect." There's always some kind of growth or optimization possible. That's what keeps spurring players on and makes the whole experience really enthralling--really solid fundamentals that are tight as a drum.

 

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27 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

This is the kind of simultaneously totally forgiving and utterly ruthless doctrine I'd love to see applied to colonies and resources.

The parts/bases examples that they have shown us so far look to be pretty amazing but yeah there's nothing about the game play except for Kerbal reproduction and that a VAB can be created and different sized buildings for resource production. It will be interesting how it all works.

But it will be more interesting how they keep us having fun using the colony system.

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To me Id like balanced variability, the ability to adapt and perfect your vehicles to various areas and incentives to do so. I think a good test for this would be if you were to start with a colony with limited resources on a non kerbin planet, how would you progress? If you were on moho, you have lots of fuel in the form of radioactive materials, and you have a lot of metals to make your rockets, but you have little access to propellant. This means in order to not drain up resources from your colony, you should focus on using highly efficient nuclear technology and minimizing propellant usage, using nuclear thermal (then nuclear lightbulbs for lower stages), and then swapping to fission fragment engines for upper stages as soon as possible. If you only had a colony on Eeloo, you have lots of fuel and propellant in the form of water, but you have very little structural materials, meaning you should focus your vehicle making on very high reusability, and having each rocket be self landing in some form. For Jool you have access to a wide array of resources, but each moon is specialized, meaning your best route is to play wide and colonize as many nearby moons as possible. etc etc, I think things that push you towards strategies that normally wouldnt be considered would just be incredible, and vastly change the direction of runs.

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57 minutes ago, Strawberry said:

To me Id like balanced variability, the ability to adapt and perfect your vehicles to various areas and incentives to do so. I think a good test for this would be if you were to start with a colony with limited resources on a non kerbin planet, how would you progress? If you were on moho, you have lots of fuel in the form of radioactive materials, and you have a lot of metals to make your rockets, but you have little access to propellant. This means in order to not drain up resources from your colony, you should focus on using highly efficient nuclear technology and minimizing propellant usage, using nuclear thermal (then nuclear lightbulbs for lower stages), and then swapping to fission fragment engines for upper stages as soon as possible. If you only had a colony on Eeloo, you have lots of fuel and propellant in the form of water, but you have very little structural materials, meaning you should focus your vehicle making on very high reusability, and having each rocket be self landing in some form. For Jool you have access to a wide array of resources, but each moon is specialized, meaning your best route is to play wide and colonize as many nearby moons as possible. etc etc, I think things that push you towards strategies that normally wouldnt be considered would just be incredible, and vastly change the direction of runs.

I see what you are saying. I guess we will see soon enough if it ends up like that.

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I dont think itll start like that, as resource distribution and balance will just need a lot of fine tuning and testing, but I do have hopes for it ending up like that (though probably not as fully developed which is honestly fair, ksp2 has lots of priorities it has to aim for). 

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1 hour ago, Strawberry said:

I dont think itll start like that, as resource distribution and balance will just need a lot of fine tuning and testing, but I do have hopes for it ending up like that (though probably not as fully developed which is honestly fair, ksp2 has lots of priorities it has to aim for). 

I am kind of hoping that there will still be the basic KSP1 drills and ore processing on release.

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