Why I don't want interstellar travel

[Bej Kerman]

12 hours 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).

1. One could think you're making your posts on the silly assumption that KSP 2 is, like KSP 1, being developed with no plan, by amateurs. That's simply not true and I'm fairly confident that everything you said is going to go out of the window in a few months; it's being developed and planned out by experienced individuals. Unless they handed development back over to Squad right this second, which won't happen, you won't find any "half-finished" things because this time there was actual rhyme and reason to the development of each feature. The new tidy flight interface makes that much apparent.

12 hours ago, Laikanaut said:

The difference is that learning the patched conic style of orbital mechanics through gameplay is only fun once

2. That's if you don't bother finding fun and interesting ways to abuse it.

9 hours 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.

Refer to 1,

[GoldForest]

1 minute ago, Laikanaut said:

Considering that early access offers a half-finished game without any requirement to complete anything beyond the initial version, which in KSP 2 is currently advertised as a sandbox with less features than KSP 1, I find this evaluation amusing.

 

Less features than KSP 1? Barring resources and career mode, there's not a whole lot of KSP 1 missing from KSP 2. If anything, KSP 2 EA launch will give us a more improved KSP 1 experience until the later updates like Colonies and Interstellar drop. Improved map view, improved performance, better graphics, new parts, etc. The missing features from KSP 1 are kind of balanced out by the new features added in by KSP 2, imo.

[Bej Kerman]

30 minutes ago, Laikanaut said:

1 hour ago, Bej Kerman said:

Unless they handed development back over to Squad right this second, which won't happen, you won't find any "half-finished" things because this time there was actual rhyme and reason to the development of each feature. 

Considering that early access offers a half-finished game without any requirement to complete anything beyond the initial version, which in KSP 2 is currently advertised as a sandbox with less features than KSP 1, I find this evaluation amusing.

You're literally incorrect. I do believe it was made clear that the initial version will have more features than KSP 1 and that everything else in the roadmap is already in a good state telling from in-dev screenshots.

Baseless assumptions that contradict evidence go nowhere.

Edited December 11, 2022 by Bej Kerman

[Pthigrivi]

2 hours ago, Laikanaut said:

I remember this scenario and the easiest solution was just delivering filled tanks to orbit from Kerbin, which would immediately rendezvous to fill the empty interplanetary vessel. I thought it would be advantageous to deliver fuel from the Mun or Minmus, Minmus turned out better due to the lower gravity, but still the problem of extracting the fuel and sending it to LKO was a lot more complicated and time consuming than simply launching filled tanks from Kerbin. Adding in the fuel necessary to get from the surface of Minmus to LKO, wanting to aerobrake to save fuel in the LKO circularization which requires time and multiple passes, and then finally dealing with rendezvous - it's easier to just launch fuel from Kerbin. This was aided by the development of a rendezvous method where I could estimate the right time to launch and generally reach rendezvous within a single orbit, so it took very little time and effort.

See I think creating incentives that are so strong that players will always play one way is not actually what we're after. I found that setting up fueling from Minmus easier and you found launching from Kerbin was easier. That's okay! And of course both options will be much less time consuming with automated supply routes, and the ability to actually build whole vessels outside of deep gravity wells will change the calculus again. This is why I mentioned chess earlier. The idea isn't to just keep adding rules on rules on rules, its to carefully tune them so that lots of players will find lots of different strategies that work for them. For instance we've talked in the past about how the game might work without money. Now, on the surface one might think "well now there's even less incentive to build off-world because everything is free" but that doesn't necessarily need to be the case. I think a good solution would be giving KSC a fuel/resource depot that refills over time up to a certain cap, and would require spending science to upgrade. That would mean players could either invest at home in bigger and bigger launch vehicles from Kerbin or could invest science in developing colony tech and develop that way. If you're spending resources at KSC then its really just a starter colony and obeys most of the same rules, it just happens to be in a deep gravity well and under a thick atmosphere. There are also now boom events to consider, which may hold some unlocks and bonuses that encourage players to actually land a probe on another planet rather than grinding endlessly away in KSOI. You deliberately want those incentives finely balanced so that there are always interesting strategic choices. 

Edited December 11, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[Pthigrivi]

3 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

You're literally incorrect. I do believe it was made clear that the initial version will have more features than KSP 1 and that everything else in the roadmap is already in a good state telling from in-dev screenshots.

Baseless assumptions that contradict evidence go nowhere.

Well they might be referring to science and exploration mode. Resources are being held quite far back too. Of course there are also a slew of new things being added for day 1. 

Edited December 11, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[Drakenred65]

Ironicaly my difficulty with KSP 1 had to do with mods, I have a bad habit of loading up on every freaking science mod out there, then tryin to launch with every science package possible.

 

seriously my part count got insane, and the weight penalty? Well I admit that my most recent mun mission basically had me trying to soft land Skylab on the moon, while I pulled it off, I kind of landed in a way that I did not have enough solar power  left to run the lab and the fuel refinery.

[mcwaffles2003]

On 12/8/2022 at 5:23 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).

On 12/8/2022 at 5:23 AM, garwel said:

As soon as I see that things are getting too easy

Uhhh...?

If the game is easy to you then why not just make it to a planet?

On 12/8/2022 at 5:23 AM, garwel said:

To make interstellar travel a relevant part of the game, devs will have to make solar system exploration much easier.

Wait so is the game too easy or too hard?

On 12/8/2022 at 5:23 AM, garwel said:

So instead of adding realism, we'll see "streamlining" of many aspects of the game to rush the player towards colonies and interstellar travel. Instead of a more nuanced simulation of various aspects of spaceflight (life support, radiation, parts failure, thermal regulation, gravity assists, you name it), we'll see far-future or speculative techs that will quickly make space travel trivial.

All of those outside parts failures are likely to be in the game though.

On 12/8/2022 at 5:23 AM, garwel said:

And then we'll have space trade and whatnot, so the game will evolve in the direction of Elite or EVE Online losing much of the charm of the original, nerdy KSP.

So did you want more nuance in the game or it to stay the same?

[obney kerman]

59 minutes ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

Wait so is the game too easy or too hard?

Yeah that's my question too lol, it feels like a lot of the arguments in this thread are just "I don't like that stock KSP1 is easy, so I change every setting and install a ton of mods to make it hard enough for me. Now I'm worried that that stock KSP2 will be easier than my heavily modded KSP1 game." Kind of an apples-to-oranges comparison there.

Personally I fully intend on enjoying interstellar travel as much as I can, but I do understand the need to make the game harder for oneself. But the beauty of the game is that you really don't have to play the easiest version of something. In KSP1, for instance, I'll almost never launch any kind of interplanetary ship that doesn't have twice as many seats as it needs for the crew, because I want to give the Kerbals a comfortable amount of space. In theory I could just strap a mk1 cockpit to a NERV, but I want the added realism (as much as a game about little green aliens going to space can be realistic) of giving the crew enough space that they don't lose their minds on the way to their destination. Putting in similar self-imposed restrictions is a good way to get around the fear of KSP2 being too easy - whether that's overbuilding things to be redundant, NASA style, or refusing to use certain kinds of engines for fear that they'll trivialize the good old fashioned art of a Kerbin - Mun transfer. Other people will take the easy road, but I mean, who cares? They've been doing it all this time already anyway, and they'll keep doing it in KSP2. (To go back to the crew space example, you don't see me getting mad at Matt Lowne for sending 500 kerbs to Laythe on a SSTO with about 1 cubic meter of space per kerbal!)

TL;DR, you can always put restrictions on yourself if mod developers and Take Two both fail at giving you the level of depth you need, just as has always been the option in KSP1. Personally, I think it'd be really fun to see someone manage to build a full colony with only conventional chemical rockets.

(Also, a lot of the suggestions for added depth in KSP2 are hinted at, implied, or outright stated to be coming on launch: radiation protection, life support, waste heat management, better maneuver planning, improved orbit physics,etc. So not all of your restrictions will have to be self-imposed.)

[garwel]

20 hours ago, Master39 said:

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.

I started by saying that this is about my playstyle, but I also think that it applies to many other players who like the complexity and realism in KSP (especially as augmented by mods). In the same manner, you and other people talk about your preferences: you want new destinations, for instance. It's fine by me, and I'm a bit surprised by people who get aggressive simply because I have different opinions about a video game. But well, it's the Internet.

There is one premise I disagree with though: my desires and fears make no sense, because modders will add everything the base game lacks. The very same argument applies to other planetary systems and new parts. In fact, adding new celestial bodies, engines etc. is easier than adding completely new mechanics in the sense that you are only changing game's resources, not its code. If KSP2 has something like a built-in Kopernicus (IIRC, it's been promised) and better engine support for multiple solar systems, anyone will be able to add new planets, stars, moons and whatnot as well as all sorts of realistic or completely fictional engines and other parts. We've even seen with KSP1 that modders are often better at that than game devs.

OTOH, adding completely new mechanics to the game works much worse. In KSP 1, it usually involves various hacks, custom interfaces that feel alien to the stock game and to other mods, lots of compatibility issues, performance impact etc. There is a limit to what you can do with gameplay mods and how well optimized they can be without completely breaking the game or other mods. So in fact, game developers who actually write its code are best placed to add such features. Maybe even more importantly, designing these features, making them balanced, fun and easy to interact with also takes a lot of effort. Unpaid modders who usually work alone or in very small groups can hardly replace a full-fledged game dev studio here. It's kind of unfair to expect them to.

[garwel]

3 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

If the game is easy to you then why not just make it to a planet?

Wait so is the game too easy or too hard?

Like I said, the stock game is very easy (although it wasn't at first, of course), so I'm adding more challenge with mods. I just don't see a point in visiting every planet, neither from the gameplay perspective (I can probably earn all the money and science I need without even leaving the Kerbin system) nor for personal satisfaction: once you've been to one planet, the difference is only the size of the rocket and the textures you see on the screen. So instead I challenge myself to more realistic gameplay: with life support, signal delay, parts failures etc. etc. I wish the stock game in KSP2 offered me more of this, but I'm afraid it will instead offer less in an attempt to make early game even easier and interstellar travel more accessible to the proverbial "average player".

3 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

All of those outside parts failures are likely to be in the game though.

I hope you're right, but so far I've seen very little details of these plans. I don't see it (with the exception of colonization, which is also supposed to very late game in my book) in the roadmap, and it may never really materialize.

[Strawberry]

10 minutes ago, garwel said:

once you've been to one planet, the difference is only the size of the rocket and the textures you see on the screen.

You should try landing and returning from Eve

[t_v]

1 minute ago, garwel said:

once you've been to one planet, the difference is only the size of the rocket and the textures you see on the screen

I am totally fine with you wanting a more in-depth experience through life support, signal delay, etc. but interplanetary missions are very different when going to different planets, and this requires different design principles and not just higher delta-v numbers. I've played with realism mods and I can assure you that the design challenges you face, both in stock and with mods, can be very engaging and vastly different than the ones you have around your homeworld and its moon(s). With your experience, I'd recommend trying it out and seeing how branching outwards adds more depth to the game than more levels of brute force Isp and dV. 

For example, I did my first (sadly un-recorded) Jool-5 mission a few months ago after going back to Stock, and the mission had a lot of considerations to manage. I could have replicated the dV cost by simply having a mission go between Minmus and the Mun a few dozen times, but landing and returning from Jool's moons requires rockets that are different from those that can land on the moons. I had to consider whether I wanted my mothership to be able to land (which meant balancing fuels for each part of the trip) and how much dV each sub-lander should have. I put together an ISRU system to refuel on Pol and consolidated the Vall and Bop landers, but Tylo and Lathe have completely different requirements to the rest of the moons.

One of them is atmospheric and a vacuum-designed craft would not be stable, and the other needs the most dV possible to land and get off of. Designing a lander to be able to get off of both planets (while staying small enough to transport via the mothership) was more challenging than if both planets were just differently sized balls of rock, and presented interesting gameplay. Overall, the mission was a lot more in-depth design-wise than it would have been if all the planets were, as you said, just about the size of the rocket. 

My point is, having these destinations is one way that the game gets more depth. This works in Stock as well as with challenging mods. If you decide to do an interplanetary mission, you will discover another side to all the mechanics you added via mods. Your life support mods now present an interesting balance between longevity and weight, when you only had to optimize for one or the other before, in bases or ships. Your part failure mods are now much more complex and interesting to manage as the complexity of interplanetary landing missions dwarfs even surface bases on the Moon or Mun. Your radiation, signal delay, and fuel boil-off mods suddenly take on a new dimension as you have to manage distances, times, and circumstances that you never had to consider near your starting planet. I'd recommend even attempting a crewed landing on Mars or whatever planet is easiest to get to with your mods, and you might see how people are satisfied with even the simplified mechanics of Stock, applied to interplanetary and now interstellar challenges. 

[Catto]

Pshhhhh i don't want space travel at all

I don't even want travel

[Bej Kerman]

1 hour ago, garwel said:

once you've been to one planet, the difference is only the size of the rocket and the textures you see on the screen

Because Stratzenblitz's EVE infinity sea-level ship works the same way as any other rocket and took 0 imagination to build...

If the only difference is the size of the rocket then you're not even bothering to learn how you can make these trips more efficiently. You say your playstyle isn't relevant but if your style is to avoid creative engineering then how are you supposed to enjoy a game where engineering is the core of the game?

[LHACK4142]

I have to say I'm kind of with @garwel here. I do visit other planets sometimes, but I prefer to stay within the atmosphere making planes. Why? Because it all gets kinda samey. Launch the ship, wait for window, burn, and land. (I will admit I haven't returned from a planet before, and there is fresh gameplay to be gained in doing so). But it still takes a good while, like 10 hours or something, and all you get is a different color sky and ground. It's definitely cool, but I don't see very much incentive to go to other planets, or star systems, other than saying "I've been there!"

This is probably a really difficult problem to solve, and come to think of it, all open-ended games suffer this in some way (Cities: Skylines: Why bother expanding? Minecraft: Why build a big base?), but I wonder if it couldn't be made better.

[tstein]

On 12/8/2022 at 7:23 AM, garwel said:

I have mixed feelings about KSP 2. It may be to do with my playstyle, but I suspect I'm not alone there.

I've clocked over 4000 hours in KSP 1 and I'm yet to land a kerbal on another planet (not to mention return). There are still planets I haven't even visited. I like the challenge that comes with planning and implementing complex missions, and I like realism of it. As soon as I see that things are getting too easy, I add a mod or change settings to make things more difficult but also more plausible and fun.

Now, with the imminent introduction of interstellar travel, I'm afraid KSP will go in a different direction. To make interstellar travel a relevant part of the game, devs will have to make solar system exploration much easier. Otherwise, what's the point in having these crazy sci-fi engines if the player must spend 100s of hours just to land on the Mun? So instead of adding realism, we'll see "streamlining" of many aspects of the game to rush the player towards colonies and interstellar travel. Instead of a more nuanced simulation of various aspects of spaceflight (life support, radiation, parts failure, thermal regulation, gravity assists, you name it), we'll see far-future or speculative techs that will quickly make space travel trivial.

And then we'll have space trade and whatnot, so the game will evolve in the direction of Elite or EVE Online losing much of the charm of the original, nerdy KSP.

I know the devs want to expand their user base and probably believe all hardcore KSP 1 fans will buy the game anyway, but competing in the mainstream isn't always a wise choice. Anyway, I only have to hope that I got their intentions wrong and/or that modders will augment what the stock game lacks.

I think the point here  is that you are out of the ballpark for what KSP 1 was designed. One should be landing in the moon probably before 20 hours of game (talking for a person with analytical mind that can see when things go wrogn, learn from it and plan  a different  attempt).  With 100 hours I had already  visited Moho eve and Duna.

 

I do not think KSP needs to get easier to explore  other systems,  most of us will probably be there before 200 hours... way before that.

[The Aziz]

5 hours ago, LHACK4142 said:

I prefer to stay within the atmosphere making planes. Why? Because it all gets kinda samey. Launch the ship, wait for window, burn, and land.

With that approach, same could be said about the planes. Liftoff, turn left and right, find the runway, land. 

You could say that all your planes are different, but so are my rockets, so the design phase is still there.

5 hours ago, LHACK4142 said:

But it still takes a good while, like 10 hours or something, and all you get is a different color sky and ground. It's definitely cool, but I don't see very much incentive to go to other planets, or star systems, other than saying "I've been there!"

Other than constant trial and error testing, I don't see why any interplanetary mission would take 10 hours of real time. Every step starting from hitting Spacebar to launch, will take several minutes at most. So again it's the design and learning phase that can take a lot of time. 

And your planes don't even get to see these different sky and ground, so immediately less interesting to me personally.

The incentive? Learning about the planet's mass, atmosphere composition, terrain, and how all these affect the approaching ship. Because you wouldn't use the same lander/launch vehicle for Laythe, Ike, Moho and Duna.  And I know I don't want to land on Mun poles because the terrain out there is just crazy. That's the gameplay, and it always has been. Dealing with what you're presented with. In action games it's fighting with enemies with a set of weapons you have, in KSP is designing a ship that can send you out there and hopefully return, with a set of parts you have.

Plus it's not always "add moar boosters", hell, I'd rather send two smaller ships and rendezvous upon arrival at destination, than create an uncontrollable behemoth which takes 10 minutes to turn around. Though, in some rare cases even that was unavoidable. Now thankfully, we'll be getting off world construction, So I won't have to build a rocket that barely fits in the VAB only to send a mining rig to Moho.

 

[tstein]

54 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

Plus it's not always "add moar boosters", hell, I'd rather send two smaller ships and rendezvous upon arrival at destination, than create an uncontrollable behemoth which takes 10 minutes to turn around. Though, in some rare cases even that was unavoidable. Now thankfully, we'll be getting off world construction, So I won't have to build a rocket that barely fits in the VAB only to send a mining rig to Moho.

 

Yup.. last week my Duna attempt in my newest career (every time I create some different restrictions for myself) I  arrived in Duna with 6 ships at same time   gathered fuel from the ones that did not need to land (relayy ships that had some tiny spare load to carry fuel there) for the lander) did the mission, made a very long rover travel..... returned experiments made a final pass at Ike. My engineer  threw away a lot of pieces it would not need for the return, basically rebuildign on site the most minimalistic rocket that could bring him and valentina back to kerbin... and we came  back home.  Each one can create its own challenges and that makes the game fun

[Bej Kerman]

9 hours ago, Laikanaut said:

21 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

You're literally incorrect. I do believe it was made clear that the initial version will have more features than KSP 1 and that everything else in the roadmap is already in a good state telling from in-dev screenshots.

Baseless assumptions that contradict evidence go nowhere.

No kind of progression mode (which includes strategies, currency, contracts, milestones, etc), no science gathering or tech progression, no resources... in what way would you say that this first early access release has more features than KSP? Maybe a few extra parts, procedural wings, new UI... literally zero new mechanics have been added that we know of, and a lot of them have been taken away from KSP.

You're going to ignore the stability, improved graphics, improved physics, greatly improved aerodynamics and wings, and interstellar travel in the next few months after release, etc. all because you don't have a funny little mechanic that locks parts away from you depending on arbitrary milestones? Besides, you're acting like each stage of EA is years apart. They aren't.

Let's face it, KSP 1 is a mess of a game; its codebase probably isn't that much more impressive than the codebase of Microsoft Flight Simulator 4.0. I'd wager we'd have a better product right now if sometime in the 0.17 days Squad had noticed the concept of KSP was getting too big for a codebase Harvester only made for a pseudo-3D mobile game and had rebuilt it from square 1. We only bother with using a game that's easy to crash within 20 minutes of picking it up because we don't have much choice in regards to spaceflight and engineering games. And in just a few months we'll have "just KSP 1" but the first gadget you try building won't immediately crash the game. Why not focus on that instead of getting worked up over the fact you're going to have to wait what'll feel like a few minutes to also see interstellar flight and multiplayer? Frankly, no wait would be as painful as sticking to KSP 1.

29 minutes ago, tstein said:

Each one can create its own challenges and that makes the game fun

Many of the complaints here feel in the same spirit as "LEGO is boring because it's just a bunch of coloured bricks that look the same after a while". If building rockets so they don't topple is boring to some people, then I don't imagine fancier looking planets and more tangible goals is going to do a lot to help.

Edited December 12, 2022 by Bej Kerman

[MarcAbaddon]

Well, I only started playing KSP around 1.1 or so, but while I noticed some physics bugs I don't really think it is that bad.

One thing it definitely doesn't do to me is crash on a regular basis. It's one of the more stable games for me. I had both modded and unmodded career playthroughs with 100+ hours in, without a single crash in that time. What I did have happen is a craft suddenly flying apart when you try to add parts from inventory while EVAing or landed vessels having issues when transition in again later. But game crashing? Not really.

Bethesda games crash to desktop more often to me (though their latest games are better in this regard). It's even relatively forgiving with adding and in some cases removing mods in the same game - mainly, due to how little is persistent. It also was maintained for a long time.

I do think people are a bit over optimistic with the new code base. A lot of the stuff that caused trouble in the past still seems like it is being handled by Unity. And I have seen a lot of expensive AAA games handled by professional teams being a buggy mess. KSP 2 does get rid of a lot of limitation of KSP 1 (such as non-persistent rotation, not being able to time warp while burning, etc.) - even if the programming team is more professional that's all additional complexity which may well introduce brand new bugs.

[Bej Kerman]

[snip]

I'm saying it as it is. Each stage of EA isn't far apart and the idea that the game on release is going to be any less than KSP 1 is simply wrong. The next paragraph addresses the fact that playing KSP 1 tends to cause more pain than just waiting, and the one after that addresses the fact that if you don't like the engineering aspect of a game then no amount of destinations will make you enjoy the engineering. Nothing here attacked you.

8 hours ago, Laikanaut said:

I have zero interest in interstellar flight, or interstellar engines, or anything else that is really so futuristic that it's still science fiction, in a game which became my favorite because it kept things grounded in reality and current levels of technology

Again incorrect, everything in KSP 2 is based on realistic technologies.

Either way, I'm glad we could finally concede that KSP 2 does in fact have more content than KSP 1.

Edited December 12, 2022 by Vanamonde

[Bej Kerman]

[snip]

8 hours ago, MarcAbaddon said:

One thing it definitely doesn't do to me is crash on a regular basis. It's one of the more stable games for me. I had both modded and unmodded career playthroughs with 100+ hours in, without a single crash in that time. What I did have happen is a craft suddenly flying apart when you try to add parts from inventory while EVAing or landed vessels having issues when transition in again later. But game crashing? Not really.

That's funny, the first thing I did yesterday was build something in space that'd rotate quickly and fling payloads to higher orbits. Each time it spins up and the payload's docking port joint starts flexing, it crashes consistently. Every single time it reaches a decent speed. I've never seen a game before that crashed within the first hour I started playing it as was intended. If I can't do engineering challenges in an engineering game, what am I playing for?

Edited December 12, 2022 by Vanamonde

[MarcAbaddon]

19 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

I'm saying it as it is. Each stage of EA isn't far apart and the idea that the game on release is going to be any less than KSP 1 is simply wrong. The next paragraph addresses the fact that playing KSP 1 tends to cause more pain than just waiting, and the one after that addresses the fact that if you don't like the engineering aspect of a game then no amount of destinations will make you enjoy the engineering. Nothing here attacked you.

Again incorrect, everything in KSP 2 is based on realistic technologies.

Either way, I'm glad we could finally concede that KSP 2 does in fact have more content than KSP 1.

Oh, come on, as if metallic hydrogen engines are anything but a theory at the moment. We don't even know if it could be a realistic technology. Same thing with fusion drives and other technology for interstellar travel - we know just enough to think that certain avenues might be worth pursuing, but not enough to know which will turn out to be realistic and useful technology.

3 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

It would be appreciated if you kept discussion here productive, rather than claiming "KSP 2 won't crash and burn" is some kind of lie.

That's funny, the first thing I did yesterday was build something in space that'd rotate quickly and fling payloads to higher orbits. Each time it spins up and the payload's docking port joint starts flexing, it crashes consistently. Every single time it reaches a decent speed. I've never seen a game before that crashed within the first hour I started playing it as was intended. If I can't do engineering challenges in an engineering game, what am I playing for?

OK - maybe that's reproducible or not - I'll need to try. But it's not at all the "first thing" someone reasonably new to the game would try. In fact, I doubt even 1% of the player base tried something like. So congratulations on your creativity, but please don't pretend this is normal (as in somewhat common) gameplay.

It also relies heavily on Unity physics, which means it is the sort of engine bug we might have in KSP 2 as well.

[GoldForest]

12 minutes ago, MarcAbaddon said:

Oh, come on, as if metallic hydrogen engines are anything but a theory at the moment. We don't even know if it could be a realistic technology. Same thing with fusion drives and other technology for interstellar travel - we know just enough to think that certain avenues might be worth pursuing, but not enough to know which will turn out to be realistic and useful technology.

Barring Metallic Hydrogen, all other technologies have basis. Fusion drives are based off fusion reactors, which there are a several dozen running today. Heck, even fusion reactors meant for power generation are up and running. Yes, they were only test runs, but they still ran. It's not that hard to take a fusion reactor and turn it into a fusion engine. You basically just remove the protective casing on one side and allow the reaction to create thrust instead of taking the reaction and turning it into power via another reaction. 

And you're forgetting one fundamental thing. All of this is near future tech which means sometime in like 100 to 200 years. That's plenty of time for fusion drives, z-pinch drives, fission drives, etc to be researched, demoed and put into mass use. 

Edited December 12, 2022 by GoldForest

[Akagi]

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

<snip>

This. 

That's a very convincing argument, nice work. Even though I'm a proponent of interstellar travel, I think you have a point. It would be kinda cool if KSP 2 had a "space trading" mode, though.