SPOILER-FREE: Data-mining yields good news

[MarcAbaddon]

Thing is I looked at the code myself and a lot of the information here is wrong. The 'custom physics' is a wrapper that ends up calling Unity's RigidBody. So it's still Unity doing the heavy lifting.

There are a lot of intriguing namespaces and a bit of code in the Assembly (AutoPilot, Delivery Flights, resource generation some basic colony stuff), but it is really hard to tell how advanced it is at the moment. There's obvious functionality missing where it is not possible to tell whether it was removed on purpose or is just not done. 

[K^2]

9 hours ago, VlonaldKerman said:

What did they have at the time that they announced the game in 2019? They said it would release in 2020. You're saying they restarted right before the other game was close to releasing/being done?

I should preface this with saying that it is a hypothetical - I have no insider knowledge, and I wouldn't be able to share it if I did. So while I'm basing a lot of this on information we've had and my industry experience, there are educated guesses sprinkled in between. Anything I claim about motivations of people and companies behind this is entirely my own invention and I can be 100% wrong.

People have seen a rough pre-recorded tech demo behind the closed doors at 2019 E3. Some phone-captured footage of it is floating around. I'm assuming, the original pitch for KSP2 was to base it heavily on KSP, give it a graphical update, and add colony mechanics and a second star system. You know how some sequels could have been a big DLC? That's what I suspect the original scope was. Star Theory seems to have been an even smaller studio^*, and with T2 purchasing Squad in mid-2017, proper production of KSP2 at ST couldn't have started until late 2017. In order for them to be ready by early to mid-2020, I can't imagine the scope being much larger than that.

In 2019, it was likely decided that there is enough interest to make it a bigger game. I imagine Nate S. was the main driving force behind that push from the Star Theory side, having a bigger creative pitch, one that would eventually become the KSP2 we know now, ready to go. I think the reception of KSP2 teaser at E3 was the big signal that everyone involved was waiting for, immediately giving a green light to that larger vision. So, you know, everyone who cheered for KSP2 at E3, well done. Unfortunately, that didn't go well for the Star Theory as a company. As we know, the negotiations for extended development time and budget broke down, Intercept was created, and KSP2 was effectively rebooted.

^* Star Theory was reportedly around 30 people before a fraction of these people jumped ship to the newly founded Intercept. Intercept's site currently claims 40 employees, but since ST was independent and Intercept is managed by the PD, I suspect a larger percentage of Intercept are directly involved in game development. So I would estimate the Intercept's dev team to be about 50% larger. That doesn't translate directly into time spent on a project, but it gives you a rough idea.

 

6 hours ago, MarcAbaddon said:

The 'custom physics' is a wrapper that ends up calling Unity's RigidBody. So it's still Unity doing the heavy lifting.

Yeah, we knew that. The customizations have to do with time-warp stability and continuous collisions to prevent tunneling at large relative velocities on collision. There was also some talk of LoD for physics, effectively freezing some joints at certain times, but I don't know if that's been implemented. The actual collision detection, constraint solving, and rigid body simulation is on Unity's side. So this is exactly what we expected to find there.

Edited March 9, 2023 by K^2

[RocketRockington]

@K^2  Your argument above does nothing to explain why the game was restarted.  If internal people looked at what Star Theory had done and said "Hey, good job, you did well' and then wanted to make a bigger game, then nothing that happened after makes sense.

1. If you have a working mid-production game you don't scrap it and start over.   There's nothing in the 2023 roadmap that wasn't announced for the 2019 game so there should have been nothing that needed to be redone completely.  If you're just expanding the game - fine, give it more time

 - This is backed up by the fact that the current KSP2 doesn't do anything that even the KSP1 foundation wouldn't support except multiplayer and *arguably* interstaller.   Both were  2019 features, so presumably if it was a 'good game' in 2019, it had the foundations for multiplayer there.
- The current KSP2 is awful.  If the 2019 version was good - then why the restart?  Likely the 2019 version was not on track to be shippable at all..

2. If you have a company that's done good work, you don't gut them and force yourself to be in a place where you have a year-long lull rebuilding a team just because you want to expand the game.  Even if they want a bit more money for it - that isn't done.  

3.  You don't announce you'll be shipping in 2021 if you had a full restart because you insanely gutted the team that built the good version in 2019 and then also had nothing you carried over from it so you had to restart the project - ESPECIALLY if you're expanding the scope of the project.

So with all those things making your pet theory highly improbably, I'll propose my own theory, as developer with a decade and a half in the industry.

1. Star Theory was failing to deliver.  What was shown in 2019 was smoke and mirrors, chewing gum and duct tape.  Nothing that was the foundation for success.   They were meant to be shipping in early 2020 and they had at best a prototype.    Reporting about the breakup says that they were also asking for more money and time, so this version has some credence  and Take2 looked at a failing developer that also wanted a payday and said 'Nope'

2. Take2 took it over and took some of the team, gave them an extra 1.5 years to ship in late 2021, because they at least had that prototype working, and the team sold them on the idea that with that extra time they would be able to ship what they'd originally promised - Take2 likely did this because at least they wouldn't be essentially blackmailed by Star Theory.

3.  The project leadership was the same as Star Theory's though - while Take2 thought they were solving the problem (the owners of Uber Entertainment/Star Theory out of the loop) they just transplanted it.  So even though they had this working prototype, essentially the same feature set as the target from 2019, and more time - they failed to get far enough.   But T2 owned it now, so they gave the team more time.  Hence the delay to 2022.    Likely at this point not too much progress had made because its hard to staff up a dev team, they only got their Tech director in late 2021, who would have been doing the engineering hiring

4. More delays, more slow development, more spin.  Another delay to 2023.

5. Take2 gets fed up with Intercept's delays, tells them they have to ship something, so Intercept scrambles - they know their big features aren't ready, but they're a dysfunctional developer, can't manage scope, are perpetually too optimistic about their capabilities, and are only really good at selling a vision, not executing on it. so they dither on things till relatively late - what to remove from the build, what not to, etc.

6. Finally they make the call, and they had to cut out a LOT to get something functional - and that didn't leave them enough time to debug the release build.  Hence why we got the KSP2 EA in the state it's in.

The only part that really makes me wonder here is - what happened to the Star Theory engineers.

T2 carried over from ST the design, production, and art leadership from some LinkedIn sleuthing.  And much of the staff.  Not the engineers though.   And this is weird even in my theory where Star Theory had been doing badly (its even weirder in your theory where they'd done well).  KSP2's core need is good engineering - both because its a very systems-driven game, and also because engineers are hard to staff for, esp. in the Seattle area.

Not many of the Star Theory engineers had been at Uber that long to be Uber loyalists.  Not so they'd be people who'd stick with what was clearly a sinking ship.  So, even in the case where they'd done poorly, you think T2 would have taken some to maintain knowledge of the code.  

My only guess here - supported by how high the turnover for engineering in Intercept has been, and how the end result has the majority of its problems in the state of the software vs the assets (the design is hard to judge because so little new is present) - is that the Intercept leadership, for whatever reason, really does not work well with engineers.

Edited March 9, 2023 by RocketRockington

[K^2]

1 hour ago, RocketRockington said:

If you have a working mid-production game you don't scrap it and start over. 

Except that it happens all the time. I've played nearly finished, never seen by anyone outside the studio games at every major studio I've worked at. One of these I've worked on myself before it got unceremoniously canceled. I've also looked at a couple of examples of games that did get handed over to another studio, including one that got fairly good response after its production reset. (Over 10M sales) In this case, the original work by the original studio is not widely known. It got ported to a completely different engine, so other than the Maya/Photoshop assets, no work on it survived the transfer. And yes, the version on the original engine was mid-production at least.

1 hour ago, RocketRockington said:

If you have a company that's done good work, you don't gut them and force yourself to be in a place where you have a year-long lull rebuilding a team just because you want to expand the game.

Except we know this is what actually happened, as pretty much the entire creative team has been ripped out of Star Theory games and brought over to Intercept, including the creative director for the game. You don't do this if you think the team is doing poorly. Game's director is literally the first person you blame for any production problems. If you think the team did poorly, you don't bring the director.

You might, however, do this if you can't reach an agreement with the executive leadership of the original studio, and you think you can poach all the talent along with all the assets and take a risk on the disruption. Especially, if you think the development needs to be rebooted anyways, because you think a larger scope will require a tech update. Which is what we saw. Most of the critical hires for Intercept post new studio formation have been in getting technical talent for an overhaul that wasn't needed for the original game. The people that ST would have had to hire anyways, and face delays while these people are onboarded.

1 hour ago, RocketRockington said:

You don't announce you'll be shipping in 2021 if you had a full restart

You obviously never had to deal with a board of directors trying to please investors.

[RocketRockington]

23 minutes ago, K^2 said:

Except that it happens all the time. I've played nearly finished, never seen by anyone outside the studio games at every major studio I've worked at. One of these I've worked on myself before it got unceremoniously canceled.

I've never seen one that was in good shape that got cancelled for development reason - always because a publisher has financial issues, or decided the market wasn't there. I've been on cancelled projects that looked good internally too.  Thats not what happened here, because T2 had faith in the product - just not Star Theory.  They essentially went on to try to make the project that got described in 2019.

23 minutes ago, K^2 said:

Except we know this is what actually happened, as pretty much the entire creative team has been ripped out of Star Theory games and brought over to Intercept, including the creative director for the game.

We know the team got pulled over - not that the game was in good shape.  T2 may have misidentified where the problems are.  People who are good at spinning are often very good at self promotion as well.

23 minutes ago, K^2 said:

You might, however, do this if you can't reach an agreement with the executive leadership of the original studio, and you think you can poach all the talent along with all the assets and take a risk on the disruption.

Yeah I believe this is what happened.

23 minutes ago, K^2 said:

You obviously never had to deal with a board of directors trying to please investors.

No need to question my credentials.  I've worked on projects with absurd internal dates.  Those dates just don't get announced because often everyone knows they're absurd and knows there will be slippage, but the business end is trying to put the situation in a pressure cooker.  A public announce of a date typically means someone has (unwarranted)confidence in it.  Multiple date announces with massive slips in-between point to severe dysfunction to me.  That happens much more rarely - and ai don't think you'd want to be compared to the projects that do it, like Duke Nukem Forever or star citizen.

Edited March 10, 2023 by RocketRockington

[K^2]

1 hour ago, RocketRockington said:

No need to question my credentials.  I've worked on projects with absurd internal dates.

Au contraire. While you might have experience with the engineering, it's quite clear from your comments that your experience in management is, at best, lackluster. I know how I felt about the projects, where they are, and the dates we were given when I was a mid to senior engineer with no access to the decision making, even when I had been allowed to architect major systems, vs what it felt like in the director's seat or equivalent position, going to the meetings, and listening to CEO tell us what the board wants on the business end of things, and how we can make something that at least technically qualifies without compromising what we're actually making. There's a lot of horse trading. There is a lot of definition stretching. And there are a lot of dates that absolutely nobody has any confidence in, but we technically would have had the receipts for it if someone asked for them.

Some dates only ever exist as Potemkin Villages, and it has nothing to do with the team not being capable. It has to do with someone pulling a trigger early on the marketing and then knowing how bad it will be to announce a 3 year delay the same year.

[RocketRockington]

1 hour ago, K^2 said:

Au contraire. While you might have experience with the engineering, it's quite clear from your comments that your experience in management is, at best, lackluster. I know how I felt about the projects, where they are, and the dates we were given when I was a mid to senior engineer with no access to the decision making, even when I had been allowed to architect major systems, vs what it felt like in the director's seat or equivalent position, going to the meetings, and listening to CEO tell us what the board wants on the business end of things, and how we can make something that at least technically qualifies without compromising what we're actually making. There's a lot of horse trading. There is a lot of definition stretching. And there are a lot of dates that absolutely nobody has any confidence in, but we technically would have had the receipts for it if someone asked for them.

Some dates only ever exist as Potemkin Villages, and it has nothing to do with the team not being capable. It has to do with someone pulling a trigger early on the marketing and then knowing how bad it will be to announce a 3 year delay the same year.

As long as we're giving each other the impressions we have, it's clear you're fairly naive and hopelessly optimistic about the rest, given the amount of experience you claim to have now, but I was giving you the benefit of the doubt...  my mistake.  Also my engineering days are.long past, but I do keep reasonably up to date on the tech side, no way would I claim to be an SE anymore.

I think anyone who has hope in KSP2s management and development, given the facts available,  has very little true industry experience, not at large studios or publishers.  Were you nibbling around the edges of indie dev maybe?   Or maybe you're just blinded by hope. 

If you've been to board meetings, you know the last thing a company wants is the embarrassment of failing multiple public announced deadlines.  It looks bad to the fans and to the shareholders. T2 was hyping KSP2 heavily in it's investor relations comms just recently... thats going to look awful for them now.

You should know that KSP2 is on extremely thin ice unless they can demonstrate ROI from further development spend.  Heck, all of Private Divison is, given that all of their higher cost projects have hit big stumbling blocks lately - Outer Worlds new DLC is being planned massively (just featured on T2 investor relations), KSP2 is bombing (the article before that), and their project with Moon Studios is also likely up feces creek (should have never got in bed with that leadership team).  Ed Tomaszewski (founder/business head of dev of PD) got out of PD when the getting was good November 22, he knew its a sinking ship.  

  Anyway, feel free to reply, but I'm done with what had started as a reasonable discussion, but now I'm pretty sure you're taking on airs and blowinblowing.

Edited March 10, 2023 by RocketRockington

[K^2]

1 hour ago, RocketRockington said:

If you've been to board meetings, you know the last thing a company wants is the embarrassment of failing multiple public announced deadlines.  It looks bad to the fans and to the shareholders. T2 was hyping KSP2 heavily in it's investor relations comms just recently... thats going to look awful for them now.

If you tell shareholders that the project is delayed to next fiscal year, you can buy yourself a year to distract them with something. If you tell them it's delayed by three years, you might be replaced right now and not get the chance. Name me a major game in the past decade that had its release slip by more than a year whose delay hasn't been announced in increments.

1 hour ago, RocketRockington said:

Were you nibbling around the edges of indie dev maybe?   Or maybe you're just blinded by hope. 

I've held a title of director in a small studio with a modest eight figure funding. I've done engineering and mid-level management on titles well into nine figure budgets. And all of it is recent work that isn't out of date. I have done some indy work, but that was back in the day when I was still a graduate student, before I went into game development full time.

[RocketRockington]

1 hour ago, K^2 said:

I've held a title of director in a small studio with a modest eight figure funding. I've done engineering and mid-level management on titles well into nine figure budgets. And all of it is recent work that isn't out of date. I have done some indy work, but that was back in the day when I was still a graduate student, before I went into game development full time.

lol  I should have known you'd have a director title.    

My latest gig I talk to the CEO and CTO of the studio every week or two to keep them updated, since I concepted the thing.   Also an 8 figure project.    But I'm a lead so I actually still do real work too, while the directors fluff about.   Wouldn't have it any other way.  Director might as well mean 'chief waste of other people's time' at most of the studios I've been at.  Not all, there's an exception to every rule, but most.   Did you know that Intercept has 6 Directors?  (or had, Paul Furio got the ax)   For a 50-ish person studio?   Another reason they're so far behind.

And I've worked for a couple of the big 1st party publisher/devs.  Shipped on more than one 100+ person, billion dollar revenue product.  It sucked but I'm glad I got the experience.   And also shipped on a couple facebook games that were barely worth the few months it took to get them over the line, and I don't even put them as individual entities on my CV..  And titles all the way in between.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Can you two quit dancing about and smooch already? 

[Periple]

8 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Can you two quit dancing about and smooch already? 

 

[Alexoff]

On 3/9/2023 at 10:25 AM, K^2 said:

Again, goal of alpha isn't a nearly-playable game.

It seems that we have not the worst, but not the best alpha version of the game. Well, another three years and there will be beta!

On 3/9/2023 at 10:25 AM, K^2 said:

If you continue arguing that we should be counting 2017, then start by explaining why we aren't counting from 2010. Or 2005, with first release of Unity. Or 1962, when Steve Russel made Spacewar! for PDP-1. Because, clearly, some concepts from that game have been reused in KSP2.

Why then 2020? Why not 2022? I have not heard official statements about restarting development in 2020, they did not say this in the T2 annual reports. For some reason, the stories about restarting the development of the game only appeared after this raw alpha version for 50 bucks. I have heard that one of the explanations for procrastination is to justify your bad work by saying that you started it late because of procrastination, and not because of bad skills. But if there was no procrastination, and the work started on time, then everything would be great.

On 3/9/2023 at 10:25 AM, K^2 said:

Some KSP fans clearly had different expectations of this early access.

I wonder why? Maybe because someone said that the game needs polishing a couple of years ago?

On 3/9/2023 at 10:25 AM, K^2 said:

I'm enjoying it, but I enjoyed getting HL2 leak to work on my PC, because that's what I do with games. I tinker.

Don't you find that such an attitude towards the product, to put it mildly, is little accepted by the vast majority of people? Well, some people like trash movies, whatever, but they are unlikely to impose their opinion on someone about the poor quality of the latest episodes of Game of Thrones. Like - compared to what they usually watch, this is a real masterpiece!

On 3/8/2023 at 11:09 PM, Bej Kerman said:

Because publishers totally haven't ever screwed well-meaning developers over before..

Was it a lie? If Nate Simpson led the development in 2017-2019, then he should have gained enough experience to repeat the game faster even with a restart of the project. Most of the developers remained in the project. They did little in three years.

[K^2]

4 hours ago, Alexoff said:

Why then 2020?

This is a touch subjective, but I'm basing this on when people were being hired. Positions that got posted around Feb 2020 and filled summer-fall 2020 are consistent with game going from pre-production to full production.

4 hours ago, Alexoff said:

I wonder why? Maybe because someone said that the game needs polishing a couple of years ago?

4 hours ago, Alexoff said:

Don't you find that such an attitude towards the product, to put it mildly, is little accepted by the vast majority of people?

Yeah, these parts I completely agree on. This early access is not for everyone, and that needed to be clearly messaged. It wasn't. It was marketed as something that's a bit rough, but suitable for mass consumption, which is not so.

My only point is that I don't think that reflects poorly on dev team by default. You can view it as a red flag, and it's fair.

4 hours ago, Alexoff said:

For some reason, the stories about restarting the development of the game only appeared after this raw alpha version for 50 bucks.

I was saying it in 2020. I can find you quotes if you want. This is why I'm with you as far as disappointment with messaging surrounding this, but also remain cautiously optimistic about development.

It's  clear that we're looking at summer release even if all goes well, which is a delay by any measure, but not an unreasonable one.

[Chilkoot]

On 3/9/2023 at 2:25 AM, K^2 said:

Development on KSP2 that we are seeing now started in 2020.

We have no evidence this is true - only conjecture.

[K^2]

2 minutes ago, Chilkoot said:

We have no evidence this is true - only conjecture.

Addressed in multiple posts above.

[Chilkoot]

Just now, K^2 said:

Addressed in multiple posts above.

But no evidence.  Apocrypha/heresay.

[Jacke]

5 minutes ago, Chilkoot said:

We have no evidence this is true - only conjecture.

Life is filled with conjecture.  Most of history too.  Vital to have primary sources and other supporting information.  Also vital to learn enough of the authors of primary sources to gauge their tilt.  It's tough to do quality history just because of this.

It's the reason why journalists and intelligence analysts want at least 2 independent sources to be sure of something.

Even statements, evidence, and data can be misleading.  It's why experience is needed in a particular field to get good at gauging what is likely going on from what is available.

@K^2 --and others--from my long experience on the forums is knowledgeable and experienced with game development because they've satisfied my threshold that they are the real deal.  Doesn't mean everything they say is of equal certainty or completely free of issues.

But what @K^2 says about KSP2 is their best estimate of what went on, what is going on, and what is likely to happen.  Doesn't mean they're perfect, any more than I am, especially about the future.

You just don't dispose of their shared thoughts with a one-liner.

[Chilkoot]

2 minutes ago, Jacke said:

You just don't dispose of their shared thoughts with a one-liner.

I take issue with conjecture being presented as fact, as we all should.

There's a difference between stating, "I suspect development restarted again from scratch in 2020..."  and saying, "Development did restart from scratch in 2020." The first is a possibly supported standpoint given no direct facts.  The second is borderline misinformation and should be called out.

[K^2]

59 minutes ago, Chilkoot said:

But no evidence.  Apocrypha/heresay.

We've never weighed an electron either, yet we can compute its mass indirectly. Indirect evidence is evidence. If you have a model you have no reason to doubt, and you have observations that fit that model only with certain specific inputs for the hidden variables, that's an indirect evidence of these variables.

Now, if you have reasons to doubt the model, that's fair. But that's what you should be bringing up and discussing, not just saying, "None of us were there, so we can't know." That's just demagoguery. A model is put in question either with observations it cannot explain or with a better model. If you have a better explanation for why there were job postings in 2020 for positions that didn't exist at Star Theory, lets hear it. The way I see it, either Star Theory did nothing, or they worked on a game that's different enough that they didn't need these positions filled. I find the latter more likely, but either way, that means that production on what we know as KSP2 now started with Intercept. If you have a third scenario, let's hear it.

[Periple]

In addition to what K^2 has pointed out, I think there's one very big piece of indirect evidence. The whole drama around Star Theory and the founding of Intercept. If you dig out from LinkedIn who went from Star Theory to Intercept, you'll discover that (almost?) the entire engineering team stayed behind. 

This tells me the following:

1. It would be incredibly difficult for a whole new engineering team to continue work on the previous team's codebase. More so if the codebase was built on top of KSP1, which we know is a mess.
2. There's a reason the Star Theory engineering team didn't switch companies and none of them speak well to the state of the project: either they didn't want to continue working on it, or PD didn't want them to continue working on it.

Some of you also appear to be assuming that PD/T2 are just stupid – that they have no idea how game development works, what the impact of changing teams is, whether they can tell if development is going well or badly or a codebase is workable or not, what the target demographic for a franchise like KSP2 is and how and on what they want or don't want to spend their money.

While you can have all kinds of opinions about T2's business practices, the way they treat their staff, and so on (and believe, me I DO!), they do understand the business they're in quite well. They wouldn't have gotten to be the behemoth they are if they didn't.

In sum, I can't see how KSP2's development was not rebooted and effectively restarted from scratch, minus the creative/design aspects which likely carried over, when PD founded IG.

Edited March 11, 2023 by Periple

[Jacke]

14 minutes ago, K^2 said:

We've never weighed an electron either, yet we can compute its mass indirectly. Indirect evidence is evidence.

As an aside, I personally have actually done both the e/m experiment and Millikan's oil drop experiment, which is how the mass of an electron is computed.

[K^2]

2 minutes ago, Jacke said:

Millikan's oil drop experiment

Worst time I had in a lab bar none.

[Jacke]

19 minutes ago, K^2 said:

Worst time I had in a lab bar none.

As I remember, Millikan's oil drop experiment is damn tricky to get right, fiddling with the electric field to suspend a drop and getting a number of runs to have the data to plot so you can calculate the charges and see the quantization of the charges, then see what the charge on 1 electron is.   It's a long time ago, but I think some of the others I had to do were worse, if not running the experiment, then in reducing and analysing the data.

The one I remember the most is doing stellar photometry with a cooled detector and setting up the 40cm scope so that when the secondary switched between 4 positions, it was on the target star, the reference star, and 2 sky spots near to each of the stars.  Had to confirm the data was coming out cleanly for all 4.  Still vaguely remember how to reduce the raw data.

[RocketRockington]

2 hours ago, Periple said:

• It would be incredibly difficult for a whole new engineering team to continue work on the previous team's codebase. More so if the codebase was built on top of KSP1, which we know is a mess.

So your theory is that Star Theory managed to build on top of KSP1's code base - without having a single engineer from the Squad team working for them at the time.  But that Intercept couldn't work off of Star Theory's code base - because of...?   What?    You've trapped yourself in a huge logical inconsistency here already with your oft-repeated, never-improved arguements.

2 hours ago, Periple said:

In sum, I can't see how KSP2's development was not rebooted and effectively restarted from scratch, minus the creative/design aspects which likely carried over, when PD founded IG.

Even if I granted you that KSP2's production code base was started over - which tbh, doesn't seem to be the case given that visible parts of what was working in their 2019 trailer - particularly the VAB - seem nearly identical to what's in KSP2 right.   So I'm granting you a MASSIVE benefit of the doubt here, one that isn't likely the case.

But even if that's the case - typically the first 1/3rd to 1/2 of a project is concept and preproduction.  Writing design documents,  Doing prototypes.  Testing what will and won't work.  So basically, R&D for what you're going to build.  For instance, this is the period of time when Star Theory SHOULD have figured out PQS was insufficient for them - which they didn't do, given today's devblog, or that they  even bother to try to figure out.

So essentially even if they started coding again in 2020 - they should have had a lot of knowledge on best practices, design work, and assets carried forward from Star Theory to use.   Knowledge they either didn't transfer (because the leadership team that came over were bozos who didn't even learn a little about what the Star Theory engineers had figured out) or that they ignored (ditto on being bozos) or that Star Theory's engineers weren't even asked to test (ditto²).   All this still points to a bunch of bad project leadership that wasted a lot of time for not very much benefit - and clearly failed to make up for that time with the 'only 3 years' of development that they did.

Edited March 11, 2023 by RocketRockington

[Periple]

2 minutes ago, RocketRockington said:

So your theory is that Star Theory managed to build on top of KSP1's code base - without having a single engineer from the Squad team working for them at the time.  But that Intercept couldn't work off of Star Theory's code base - because of...?   What?    You've trapped yourself in a huge logical inconsistency here already with your oft-repeated, never-improved arguements.

No, my theory is that Star Theory failed to build on top of KSP1's code base even though they tried, and that attempt wasn't halted until development was transferred to IG. If they had succeeded on building on it, we would be in a very different situation!

Edited March 11, 2023 by Periple