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Why I don't want interstellar travel


garwel

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1 hour ago, garwel said:

Even if I'm wrong, and the game won't be dumbed down,

The "dumbing down" you're talking about is compared to mods that never were part of the game.

 

1 hour ago, garwel said:

the approach is to expand the game, not deepen it.

Your idea of "deepening" the game is adding busywork and artificial difficulty like random failures (which is literally a "you loose because of a dice" condition)

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I've also been a player since almost the very start of KSP, started playing before there was a map view and have put in multiple thousands of hours. Though I'm from the other end, where I've been to every planet with almost every sort of mission profile. And I'm looking forward to everything in KSP2. At almost every point they've announced almost exactly what I've wanted to hear. The new engines are something I'm dying to get my hands on. What it sounds like the resource and trade system is, is my absolute dream. And I'm greatly looking forward to setting up a multiplayer server with some friends. Pretty much all exactly what I could want from a sequel.

 

On the other hand, I've tried and disliked the more simulationy mods. Real scale and real fuels to me just makes things tedious and didn't add anything I found interesting. Now, I don't disparage anyone liking them. But they should be things added as options or mods.

 

And I would describe myself as a hardcore KSP  fan. KSP is my absolute favourite game of all time bar none.

 

At the core of it, I think it makes way more sense for the vanilla KSP experience to be more simplified and focused on being a good and fun game. While saving the more complicated, detailed, and realistic simulation stuff to be added by mods. For the simple fact that the more casual end of the audience would be turned off by all that complexity and avoid the game or lose interest, while the hard core simulator end of the audience is the one with the experience and patience to mod the game.

 

If KSP2 was aimed at the simulator crowd, it simply would not be getting this scale of investment and development. This way, Take Two can invest way more in the project hoping for a wider audience. And with the improved base game and increased mod support, everyone can get what they want.

 

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2 hours ago, SolarAdmiral said:

. For the simple fact that the more casual end of the audience would be turned off by all that complexity and avoid the game or lose interest, while the hard core simulator end of the audience is the one with the experience and patience to mod the game.

 

Just as a point of nuance I think there’s a difference between a game with complex rules and a game with complex outcomes. Chess for example has incredibly simple rules and a stupendously huge range of outcomes. In fact I would argue the best games produce the biggest potential for  gameplay diversity based on the simplest possible set of rules. If on the other hand you have a huge set of very complicated rules but players tend always to do the same thing then you probably have a very boring game. This is why I advocate for having a relatively simple and streamlined progression system, but one thats still carefully balanced to produce lots of strategic forks based on how you play and what resources you find. Thats the real trick of good game design—leveraging a set of dynamics that are simple to learn but incredibly difficult to master. 

Edited by Pthigrivi
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23 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

 

If on the other hand you have a huge set of very complicated rules but players tend always to do the same thing then you probably have a very boring game. This is why I advocate for having a relatively simple and streamlined progression system, but one thats still carefully balanced to produce lots of strategic forks based on how you play and what resources you find. Thats the real trick of good game design—leveraging a set of dynamics that are simple to learn but incredibly difficult to master. 

Definitely agreed. It's already looking like there's going to be lots of depth in KSP2 much more than the original especially centered on the new engine types. It looks like they're designing then to all have some unique challenges.

 

I simply meant that if the vanilla game was built with the exacting realistic detail of real scale solar system, real rocket fuels, a detailed life support with dozens of consumables, and whatever else to make it a 100% realistic simulator, it would be even more daunting and unwelcoming to new players and semi casual players. That sort of thing is better added as mods if for no other reason than the simple fact that the sort of folks who want that are also the sort of folks who would liberally mod their game. While the casual and first time players are much more likely to play fully vanilla, at least until they decide they want more.

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On 12/9/2022 at 4:15 AM, Laikanaut said:

I also spent a lot of hours in KSP but never bothered to visit many of the planets (maybe half). The issue for me is that once players figure out how to encounter one planet, there's little reason or increased challenge to encounter any others - just the added tediousness of fiddling with maneuver nodes and having to look up the transfer windows using the calculator. The mechanic gets old very quickly and I wouldn't bother to play without Principia now, which adds more depth and interest to this part of the game. Even going beyond the Mun quickly becomes tedious due to the necessity of looking up transfer windows and the large amounts of travel time needed, which makes it difficult to do more than a single mission at one time and return the Kerbals as well.

This is only going to get worse with interstellar travel and so I'm also not really looking forward to it either.

You're denouncing interstellar travel for problems that KSP 1 had which will probably not be present in KSP 2? The gameplay loop involving colonies, space construction and resource gathering on its own will probably nullify most of this first paragraph. Even then, KSP 1 had landmarks unique to planets. Duna has a face, Val has cryovolcanoes, Dres has the largest canyon, etc. and having planets like Rask and Rusk will probably further encourage players to make stops at different planets.

I'm just saying, the basis on which you're saying interstellar travel will make these minor problems worse is really shaky.

Edited by Bej Kerman
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On 12/8/2022 at 11:29 AM, TLTay said:

Devs: tap this person to test your tutorials?

bahahahaha. You win.

On 12/8/2022 at 3:23 AM, garwel said:

I've clocked over 4000 hours in KSP 1 and I'm yet to land a kerbal on another planet (not to mention return).

My dude.............The game is now 11 years old. Real life space programs have been created and sent rockets to orbit in this time. You have the option of stopping messing around with mods for 45 minutes to watch a YouTube video to complete a successful Mun mission of some kind if you really wanted to.

 

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2 hours ago, bcink said:

bahahahaha. You win.

My dude.............The game is now 11 years old. Real life space programs have been created and sent rockets to orbit in this time. You have the option of stopping messing around with mods for 45 minutes to watch a YouTube video to complete a successful Mun mission of some kind if you really wanted to.

 

They said another planet. 

And by Squad's own admission, over like 80% of players have not even gone past Minmus, iirc. 

There's no need for you to criticise them like this. Your comment comes off as a little harsh imo. 

So what if the game is 11 years old, some people prefer staying around Kerbin and I can understand why. Especially when you use a rescale mod, things get much harder DeltaV wise. 

KSP 2 wants to encourage those players to go beyond Minmus by making it easier for players by giving tutorials, as well as parts better suited for interplanetary travel. Let's be honest, interplanetary missions in KSP are hard if they're meant to be 2 way. With the inclusion of better interplanetary mechanics and parts, I see more people willing to take to going to Duna or Laythe. 

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On 12/9/2022 at 12:12 AM, Domonian said:

This is the case with most space games, unfortunately. It's hard to deepen a bunch of rocks out in the middle of nowhere. Although this does depend on how you define "deepen." How would you deepen KSP2, or rather, what is your ideal sequel to KSP1?

There are so many mechanics missing or being incomplete in KSP 1, which don't seem to be addressed (or at least paid attention to) in KSP 2. I mentioned some of them: life support, parts reliability, radiation. These are all major elements of space exploration, but nearly absent from KSP. The science system and, more generally, career progression is rather bland at the moment and doesn't really incentivize exploration. All kerbals are largely the same, differing only in their professions and experience levels. Planning gravity assists and other complex maneuvers is extremely difficult with the way the map works. There is no signal delay or probe automation (even more nonsensical for interstellar distances). There is no such a thing as wind, and aerodynamics are quite basic. The electricity system is not realistic. I could go on, but I think you get my point.

It doesn't mean these things must be on for every player; they may be optional for those who have covered the basics and want a more interesting gameplay (the same way as interstellar travel is probably meant for the players who have already explored the kerbal system). Some of these features may be implemented as mods, but it's always less efficient, more buggy and sometimes not really possible with the existing engine. If anything, adding new parts and celestial bodies is less intrusive and could be more easily done by modders.

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3 minutes ago, GoldForest said:

There's no need for you to criticise them like this. Your comment comes off as a little harsh imo.

Given that they're condemning interstellar travel because they themselves make the game harder every time they get closer to being able to pull off an interplanetary mission and then go on to say that the devs would need to make the game easier for interstellar travel despite not having the experience to say that's not true in the slightest, I'd say it is fair.

Edited by Bej Kerman
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Just now, Bej Kerman said:

Given that they're condemning interstellar travel because they themselves make the game harder every time they get closer to being able to pull off an interplanetary mission, I'd say it is fair.

Perhaps, but the way it was worded could have been better imo. 

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My point's that they don't know how to do a Hohmann transfer from Kerbin to Duna and they haven't taken the initiative to learn how to do things like this, and yet they're commenting on how the game would need dumbing down for interstellar (hint: it doesn't) and making comments on these game mechanics you're best only commenting on if you understand it.

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2 hours ago, bcink said:

My dude.............The game is now 11 years old. Real life space programs have been created and sent rockets to orbit in this time. You have the option of stopping messing around with mods for 45 minutes to watch a YouTube video to complete a successful Mun mission of some kind if you really wanted to.

Real life space programs were also usually done by more than one people, if I remember correctly. In KSP 1, there isn't much of an incentive to just visit many other celestial bodies. "Moar boosters" stops being fun at some point. So instead I add challenge by having more realism through mods. Then even a simple landing on the Mun may require more effort, and brings more feeling of accomplishment, than going to Eeloo.

I know not everyone plays like this, and it's ok. However, I'm disappointed that my play style seems to be discouraged by KSP 2's design. This is what my rant is about.

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3 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

My point's that they don't know how to do a Hohmann transfer from Kerbin to Duna and they haven't taken the initiative to learn how to do things like this, and yet they're commenting on how the game would need dumbing down for interstellar (hint: it doesn't) and making comments on these game mechanics you're best only commenting on if you understand it.

Apparently, you haven't read the OP well. I do know how to make Hohmann transfers, and I suppose I can pull off more complex things in KSP than 95% of players, but it's not about my skills. Like I said elsewhere, it's about the devs' choice to take the (relatively) easy road of making a wider game rather than a deeper game with more interesting mechanics. Ok, now we'll have some more fancy engines with cooler GFX and will be able to visit a few planets looking more exotic. But the gameplay itself will remain mostly the same (apart from colonization/ISRU, which I welcome): launch a rocket, get new science, discover a new tech, add more boosters, send another rocket and so on.

4 hours ago, Zozaf Kerman said:

It’s a bit late to say this… your post won’t change anything because the devs are already developing interstellar.

I know. I've been thinking for quite some time whether to post it or not, 'cause obviously it's been a strategic choice they aren't going to reverse because of somebody's rant. But then maybe at least some kind of feedback is better than nothing. The game hasn't even entered Early Access yet, so apparently not everything about it is decided.

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27 minutes ago, garwel said:

interesting mechanics

Your "Interesting mechanics" is incredibly subjective.

Just to pick two, neither random part failures nor signal delay would make the game more challenging. The first one is just a dice roll randomly killing your missions for reasons out of your control and the second it's an extreme feature that either makes the game easier by forcing automation for everything or turns it into a Zachtronics programming game in which you have to program everything manually.

IMOH, the easy choice for KSP2 would have been what you are proposing, chasing blind realism with no consideration for gameplay, don't hire any actual game designer, just a bunch of engineers with the goal of making a realistic simulation.

 

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2 minutes ago, Master39 said:

Just to pick two, neither random part failures nor signal delay would make the game more challenging. The first one is just a dice roll randomly killing your missions for reasons out of your control and the second it's an extreme feature that either makes the game easier by forcing automation for everything or turns it into a Zachtronics programming game in which you have to program everything manually.

This is why you need a game designer: to find interesting and creative solutions instead of just making a few Blender models and adopting some latest DirectX effects. There are ways to make part failures challenging and fun other than just adding an RNG "mission over". This could encourage such essential practices in real-life space engineering as redundancy (not needed at all in stock KSP) or testing. Or it could be overcome with maintenance, repairs (manual or robotic) etc. This might make possible whole new types of missions and spacecraft. 

The same applies to signal delay, which (as an optional feature) may incentivize actually having crewed missions and habitable colonies. The game designers could come up with interesting ways to implement automation of tasks, not necessarily an equivalent of kOS. This is their job, after all. Of course, it is harder to do when you deal with interstellar distances, where delays may be years-long, but hey, it wasn't my idea to add these!

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39 minutes ago, Master39 said:

random part failures

I don't think OP said anything about random part failures, but about part reliability. Part operational lifetime limits is to unmanned missions what life support is to manned mission, a way to introduce mission time as a gameplay element, they go hand to hand to build a game mechanism introducing both more depth and more realism to a contemporary spaceflight, more real life grounded playstyle. KSP is a relatively casual, goofy rocket and orbital mechanics game. That doesn't mean there isn't any room for something else in the subgenre.

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2 hours ago, garwel said:

it's not about my skills

I'm saying that players, with KSP 2's on boarding, won't spend 100s of hours learning to land on the Mun. They won't even spend 50 hours learning to put a basic colony on Eeloo. In fact, most tutorials on KSP were good enough to get players to the other planets and KSP 2's tutorials will be even better. KSP 2 sure as rain will not need to simplify spaceflight to get players to go interstellar, and you don't need to make people scared it's somehow going to turn into EVE or something. Your post is built on a very faulty premise to put it lightly.

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1 hour ago, garwel said:

This is why you need a game designer: to find interesting and creative solutions instead of just making a few Blender models and adopting some latest DirectX effects. There are ways to make part failures challenging and fun other than just adding an RNG "mission over". This could encourage such essential practices in real-life space engineering as redundancy (not needed at all in stock KSP) or testing. Or it could be overcome with maintenance, repairs (manual or robotic) etc. This might make possible whole new types of missions and spacecraft. 

55 minutes ago, Gotmachine said:

I don't think OP said anything about random part failures, but about part reliability. Part operational lifetime limits is to unmanned missions what life support is to manned mission, a way to introduce mission time as a gameplay element, they go hand to hand to build a game mechanism introducing both more depth and more realism to a contemporary spaceflight, more real life grounded playstyle. KSP is a relatively casual, goofy rocket and orbital mechanics game. That doesn't mean there isn't any room for something else in the subgenre.

The two were two examples just to show how there's more subtlety in the example and not just a "What I like it's deep and meaningful what they did is shallow and lazy" like the picture depicted by the original post.

But yes, I started from the assumption that "Part failures" means what part failures usually means when modding it in, since OP was talking about modding the game to be more difficult.

I have no problem on paper with parts having an operational life, or with parts having wear and tear, as long as no random elements of any kind is added to it. Every failure must come from player error and not some dice roll in the background. 

 

1 hour ago, garwel said:

The same applies to signal delay, which (as an optional feature) may incentivize actually having crewed missions and habitable colonies.

You can incentivize that without removing the ability to manually fly your probes. Like by making bases useful and their uses linked to the presence of kerbals on site. Colonies shouldn't work without kerbals present, especially the fuel refining and craft building and launching portions of them.

 

1 hour ago, garwel said:

The game designers could come up with interesting ways to implement automation of tasks, not necessarily an equivalent of kOS.

It's either kOS or removing all challenge because all the gameplay of probes is replaced with a single "do the cool thing" button.

And you're thinking it creates problems for interstellar missions when the problem comes much earlier: It's basically impossible to design and fly realistic flying probes with signal delay. Not some far future sci-fi interstellar probe, Ingenuity the helicopter that's on Mars right now becomes something you can't replicate in KSP without having a crew in orbit around Duna.

But all of this has been discussed again and again in the respective threads.

 

The point here is that you're presenting your personal preference as some sort of objectively better option, a deeper and more meaningful game, when it's really just that, a personal preference.

You're proposing to make doing the same things people used to do in KSP1 more difficult, instead of adding any real new destinations or objectives. They choose to focus on expanding the game further, fully knowing that the kind of gameplay you seek is going to be covered by mods anyway. I've launched from Kerbin for every kind of mission countless times, I don't care about making Kerbin bigger or adding more stuff I have to put on the rocket to keep my Kerbals alive or adding the possibility for my rocket to randomly explode. Building a colony on the Mun and running a whole space program from there? That's intresting. Want a more hardcore experience? Let's build a colony on EVE, and run every mission from there.

More busywork and obstacles doesn't make a game better, at least not for everyone.

It's a different direction from what you hoped, that's for sure, but that doesn't mean it's not as thought out as the one you would have liked.

 

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4 hours ago, garwel said:

The science system and, more generally, career progression is rather bland at the moment and doesn't really incentivize exploration. All kerbals are largely the same, differing only in their professions and experience levels. Planning gravity assists and other complex maneuvers is extremely difficult with the way the map works.

For some of these points, the devs are specifically working to address them. The science system is TBC, but the whole career progression is being rewritten from scratch since Intercept also sees the problems with KSP1's career system. Gravity assists and complex maneuvers may be easier with the new maneuver planner (which is confirmed to account for long duration burns), which would actually make the game more accessible without simplifying it.

Kerbals being largely the same outside of professions and experience levels is true, but those two aspects make individual Kerbals quite different from each other. I appreciate what it's like to fly a brand new pilot in a new save without access to SAS and maneuver pointing. I'm not sure what else could be done to make Kerbals functionally unique without distracting from the core "build aircraft/spacecraft gameplay".

4 hours ago, garwel said:

So instead I add challenge by having more realism through mods. Then even a simple landing on the Mun may require more effort, and brings more feeling of accomplishment, than going to Eeloo.

I know not everyone plays like this, and it's ok. However, I'm disappointed that my play style seems to be discouraged by KSP 2's design. 

If I'm understanding this part and your OP correctly, you choose mods to add challenge to KSP1 beyond what is available in the base game. If this is true, how will this be discouraged by KSP2's design? Mods are confirmed for the game at some point, and you will still have the same freedom to change your experience once the mod ecosystem is built up. Yes, some mods may perform somewhat worse than if their functionality was built into the game, but I don't see how KSP2 discourages your playstyle any more than KSP1 does. 

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1 hour ago, Laikanaut said:

I expect KSP 2 will be mostly the same as KSP, a sandbox experience with a half-finished campaign/progression mode that ends up with endless attempts to complete it by modders (since it's not even on the roadmap). The difference is that learning the patched conic style of orbital mechanics through gameplay is only fun once - once you know how that works there's nothing more to do with it, and so your key mechanic is simply fiddling around with maneuver nodes to visit planets with different textures and height maps. The appeal of new graphics is not something that justifies such a high price tag, KSP 2 does look great but it's still lacking the same depth that KSP was lacking.

It's strange that this seems to be supported by most of the players on these forums, who only want a sandbox mode with more parts and more planets to visit and more easter eggs. Maybe the publishers have done their research and know this, and so everyone thinks that everyone is happy with this outcome.

I just don’t think this is the case. Most people here have been pretty open about the deficiencies with KSP1’s career system—grindy science, procedural contracts, the lack of mapping and flight planners and dynamic resource challenges, etc—and we are all holding in our minds a pretty high standard for what it would take to turn KSP from a promising but garbled play experience into a truly great game. Especially with colonies there could be so much more than just understanding basic transfers. The real fun (at least for me) comes in designing really efficient mission profiles—motherships that break off several modules that reassemble in orbit to harvest critical resources and combine with other reusable infrastructure to do much more than a simple flags and footprints mission.
 

I understand the motive to cynicism, but most of the decisions we’ve seen Intercept make have been pretty thoughtful and many have been truly inspired. I think they are laying the groundwork for genuinely crazy puzzles involving navigation and landing, resource prospecting, heat management, radiation, basic life support, and interplanetary supply routes—all stock. Im also pretty hopeful about the way they’re dealing with progression and population with boom events. We’ll have to wait and see how experiments and the tech tree are being handled as well as kerbal classes and skills but those are open and contested debates here and Im sure will be hashed out in the EA process. The best we can do is to offer thoughtful and open feedback as things play out. 

33 minutes ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

Thinking about the part failure thing, it is a thing that happens to real spacecraft, and is something that the  engineers who design them have to mitigate.  A parts failure system that drives intelligent redundant approaches to design wouldn’t be a terrible thing…

This is one of those things the devs have wisely left to mods. Yes of course in real life redundancy is important, but in an already incredibly complicated and unforgiving game you don’t want players to feel like they have to put 2 or 3 of every part on a vessel to know it will perform as expected. For the sake of good gameplay we can assume these parts are all well tested. 

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31 minutes ago, Laikanaut said:

I fully agree that they're jumping much too far ahead with the current approach, and gameplay in these regions will by necessity remain shallow and uninteresting as a result, because they don't see anything interesting to do there.

Right, aside from establishing and growing colonies and stations, harvesting and processing resources to build new vessels with thus far unexplored dynamics like radiation cones and brachistochrone trajectories, and linking everything together with supply routes to form an interplanetary civilization there won’t really be anything to new to do. 

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On 12/8/2022 at 8:09 AM, The Aziz said:

Funnily enough 

Lol this geeked me :D

On 12/8/2022 at 8:09 AM, The Aziz said:

Multiplayer KSP is pretty meh for me anyway, probably won't use it unless I somehow have an equally nerdy friend who would spend thousands of hours in KSP with me.

Where do I sign the contract :cool:

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7 hours ago, Laikanaut said:

I think you are being sarcastic, but this statement is somewhat correct in the context of Kerbin/Mun, which is what I was referring to in that comment. If I wanted more things to do in the game in these bodies, none of these features you mentioned offer that.

Of course they do. Kerbin has a much deeper gravity well so the ability to live off the land and build and fuel vessels on Minmus or in Munar orbit offers huge advantages. I usually set up fueling tankers from Minmus to LKO even in KSP1 because it allows me to deliver everything to orbit dry for that exact reason. It allows much smaller launch platforms that are easier to recover on Kerbin.  Now, if you never plan on leaving KSOI then yeah there’s no real point in building infrastructure that makes going to other planets easier. But getting that big majority of players who never left the nest to branch out and explore ever deeper is one of the big goals of KSP2. 

Oh and as to radiation, heat management, and LS we don’t have 100% confirmation but there is a radiation symbol in the VAB next to CoM and CoL implying that its a design consideration thats worth an overlay. We’ve also been told heat is important enough for large engines that procedural radiators were worth adding. And though we don’t know what it will look like they have mentioned that food or snacks will be important to colonies and we’ve seen greenhouses in early colony renders so its likely LS will have some simple and forgiving implementation. 
 

And granted KSP2 isn’t exactly what I would have designed if it was tailored to me and me only. Id be happy if it was a full-on factorio-esque city builder, but I know its not just being tailored for me and there’s a good happy medium most players will enjoy without getting overwhelmed by finicky management mechanics and lets them get straight to what makes KSP special—designing and flying lego rockets. 

Edited by Pthigrivi
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