Change your mindset!

[Kerbart]

I had a bit of an epiphany last night which might come over as blindingly obvious until you seriously reflect on it: the games (1 & 2) are not the same.

I was about to give up playing KSP2 until the first patch comes out (hoping it will get a lot better from there) staring at yet another effed-up orbit and discovering that , after a successful recovery, Jeb, Bill 'n' Bob were no longer on the roster. I have one messed up station on a 40° inclination that needs fuel to straighten its orbit. As I built a refueler probe, a bit more resilient to the various bugs I had ran into at that point, it kinda struck me what I was doing wrong: I'm building and flying as if I'm playing KSP1.

The hardest thing is unlearning what we've learned, and with what we're used to, and start playing it again as if you've never encountered the game before.

Once you let go of those "why can't I do..." and accept shortcomings just as "'tis the way it is" the game becomes a lot more enjoyable.

• Noodly ships? Don't build flying Burj Khalifa's. Build flying pancakes. We used to do that in 0.20. The problem will get fixed, but as with any engineering problem, deal with what you have at hand.
• Decouplers don't decouple? Easy, don't activate engines in the same stage as you fire a decoupler. Yes, it should work. No it doesn't always. So don't do it.
• Reload the game -- while that is a recipe for disaster too, I've learned that when things don't work but should (decouplers, stabilizers), simply reloading the game can fix it.
• Don't try to do things the game can't do. I have a habit of deactivating tanks on refueller tankers so that precious content doesn't get used. Well, the game doesn't support that yet. Or fuel priority. I can ragequit, or simply shrug and say, I guess I have to pay more attention and redistribute what I have in my tanks on the way to a rendez-vous. Which, by the way, taught me that fuel transfers are now amazing. So there's that. Complex missions relying on docking/undocking all the time, assembling ships with robotics? Maybe now is not the time for that.

During the KSP1 evolution we've gotten used to being adaptive, especially when new features were added to the game. We can choose to be a bit resilent (I never adapted the "go up to 10km, then slem your ship in a 45° angle" launch style as I found it unnatural), and at the same time just be flexible in what the game currently demands for play. Some of that you can't control, but where you can, adapt, don't get frustrated with it's wrong — just play along, work with the game, not against it, and hopefully it'll get better over time.

 

[Casellina X]

Hang on... it can't be that easy... can it?

[regex]

Quote

I had a bit of an epiphany last night which might come over as blindingly obvious until you seriously reflect on it: the games (1 & 2) are not the same.

I've been operating under this assumption since I got the game.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

7 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

Decouplers don't decouple? Easy, don't activate engines in the same stage as you fire a decoupler. Yes, it should work. No it doesn't always. So don't do it.

decouplers blow up ships when engines are idle.  Decouplers blow up ships when engines are spent.

It's not as easy as that.

8 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

Reload the game

I find that if I don't reload the game for each individual ship I intend to build that the previous ones built and flying become forever corrupted.

Workaround?  Load game.  Work on and fly one ship.  Close game.

Rinse.  Repeat.

The problem is that even with this workaround - I get ships that won't stage correctly - and even if the stage separation happens, the lander stage gets called 'debris' and all I have is a spent booster as the named ship (with no pod of any kind attached)

[mcwaffles2003]

Just now, regex said:

I've been operating under this assumption since I got the game.

Same, I don't expect this game to be KSP 1 cause it isn't KSP 1. Things are about to get much weirder and unintuitive for a bit when the genuinely new type of  content comes out.

For now I get that things get funky in space and when trying to make larger missions so instead I've been working with low count ships and land vessels, playing in a region I don't normally focus on. The game has issues with high part numbers and attachments? Make simple things.. This games in it's infancy and Im playing it with that in mind instead of finding the extremes and getting mad when I find the outer boundaries aren't that far yet

[tstein]

That is nto the problem for me, the problem is simply that simple thigns do not work.

Example:

I  tried several times to put thing in orbit with fairing byt the fairings  simply disapear while the ships is ascending and then the content inside the firing start to levitate forward away from the accelerating rocket.

I tried  doing Side fuel tanks that feed central tank  so I can  eject mass during ascent... but  fuel  flows  sometiems BACKWARDS...

I tried  landign in the moon, and when I touch down the kerbal inside the ship continue  its inertia trough the ship and  trough the floor of the planet...

 

That is not a  case of not being KSP1, it is a case of being mostly an LSD simulation.

[shdwlrd]

2 hours ago, Kerbart said:

I'm building and flying as if I'm playing KSP1.

The hardest thing is unlearning what we've learned, and with what we're used to, and start playing it again as if you've never encountered the game before.

Yep... building and flying like KSP1 has bit me on a few occasions in the couple hours I've been able to play. 

I have to agree. You will need to change your habits to play KSP2. You don't really need to relearn how to play. You just need to adjust how you play.

[The Aziz]

No reloading in the world can fix the broken trajectories that effectively prevent me from returning home. If that's what the game can't do, then I'm not playing.

[Sea_Kerman]

1 minute ago, The Aziz said:

No reloading in the world can fix the broken trajectories that effectively prevent me from returning home. If that's what the game can't do, then I'm not playing.

does the tracking center say your vessel is landed?

[Nuke]

i was actually kind of more disappointed by the similarities than the differences. there are some things in the original game i had hoped would have been replaced by better systems rather than a copypasta or crude reverse engineering of the original systems. i was disappointed to see space tape make a return. if you need to build interstellar ships and colonies, you are going to need to move some mass. so a far less granular approach is desirable. if ksp1 was space lego, then ksp2 needs to be space duplo.

stock procedural parts are a good touch. but i think id extend it beyond just wings. especially in the structural components. you know how many times in ksp i would install a gigantic mod pack just for some structural widget that wasn't available in my current set of parts, or mod in parts. so being able to spin procedural adapters willy nilly would go a very far way.

im not going to gloss over any of the bugs. were seeing a lot of the same bugs that plagued ksp1.  and really how well they deal with those is going to affect the long term outcome of the game. its too early to make predictions, but a week without a point release is understandable, two is suspicious, and more than a month is serious freakout territory. i hope we dont find ourselves there.  

Edited March 3, 2023 by Nuke

[Speeding Mullet]

I'm having a really enjoyable time taking playstyle turns.  When I want to push some bugs I build something more complicated and what I find I log.  I accept that this is what I'm doing so it doesn't frustrate me.  Then when I've had enough of pushing bugs, I do something like build a plane and check out the amazing scenery of Kerbin, or design a Duna flyby probe within the limitations of the bugs I now know about.  From doing this I can tell how incredibly rewarding this game will become over time (and in a lot of areas already is), and I don't get burnout doing it.  I'm very excited for when the bugs start to get knocked over.

Sound epiphany OP!

SM

[Klapaucius]

There is so much to do in KSP, that if  bug hinders something, I just try something else. 

[RocketRockington]

It's interesting how for 4 years here it was all about raising the expectations above what KSP1 - that it was going to be more performant, more stable, far less buggy, etc.   And suddenly a large fraction of the community seems to be about lowering their expectations.  But I get the sense it's the same portion of the community that was being unrealistic about the game before launch now being dogged about how we shouldn't expect much from it post launch.

[mcwaffles2003]

23 minutes ago, RocketRockington said:

It's interesting how for 4 years here it was all about raising the expectations above what KSP1 - that it was going to be more performant, more stable, far less buggy, etc.   And suddenly a large fraction of the community seems to be about lowering their expectations.  But I get the sense it's the same portion of the community that was being unrealistic about the game before launch now being dogged about how we shouldn't expect much from it post launch.

Well yeah... the games not finished. I'm still hyped for when it is finished and expect the game to function much better than its' predecessor, but for now Im just treating EA like an interactive dev diary. My expectations for the final game aren't lowered because EA isn't what my expectations were projected at.

But hey, I guess optimists will be optimists regardless of the situation, but at least I'm enjoying the time I'm having.

Also, this wasn't in KSP 1  :

Spoiler

 

Edited March 4, 2023 by mcwaffles2003

[Wheehaw Kerman]

18 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

decouplers blow up ships when engines are idle.  Decouplers blow up ships when engines are spent.

It's not as easy as that.

I find that if I don't reload the game for each individual ship I intend to build that the previous ones built and flying become forever corrupted.

Workaround?  Load game.  Work on and fly one ship.  Close game.

Rinse.  Repeat.

The problem is that even with this workaround - I get ships that won't stage correctly - and even if the stage separation happens, the lander stage gets called 'debris' and all I have is a spent booster as the named ship (with no pod of any kind attached)

Decouplers work most of the time.  If you’ve read much Soviet spaceflight history, this is actually an extremely realistic feature :).

5 hours ago, RocketRockington said:

It's interesting how for 4 years here it was all about raising the expectations above what KSP1 - that it was going to be more performant, more stable, far less buggy, etc.   And suddenly a large fraction of the community seems to be about lowering their expectations.  But I get the sense it's the same portion of the community that was being unrealistic about the game before launch now being dogged about how we shouldn't expect much from it post launch.

My high expectations for the game have not changed.  If it’s this buggy and feature-poor when version 1 launches I will be disappointed.  Given that we’re a week and a day into the very first Early Access version, I am not disappointed.  The game currently meets the temporary lower set of expectations I formed based on the communication from the devs - the EA announcement, road map, spec sheet, ESA event videos, etc.

There is a fix for the issues a lot of people are having.  Settings > Expectations > EA > “Realistic”.

Edited March 4, 2023 by Wheehaw Kerman

[tstein]

1 hour ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

There is a fix for the issues a lot of people are having.  Settings > Expectations > EA > “Realistic”.

Sorry, not true. Check  Sons of the FOrest. EA title, released same day as KSP 2  and  well, barely any frequent  or critical bugs at all.

[Wheehaw Kerman]

1 minute ago, tstein said:

Sorry, not true. Check  Sons of the FOrest. EA title, released same day as KSP 2  and  well, barely any frequent  or critical bugs at all.

Zombie shooter, right?  There you go.

[tstein]

1 minute ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

Zombie shooter, right?  There you go.

Survival game and I will say it  it is NOT less complex than KSP2. Contrary to what so many believe KSP2 is a VERY VERY simple simulator.  We basically have a SIMPLE physics engine and renderer, basically no other mechanic, yet KSP2  fails to even  make a  GUI that works.  I develop software for 30  years, including some SEVERAL times larger and more complex than ANY  game ever made and there is not excuse for the presentation state of this game, it is  simply unprofessional. While I know game industry is the least professional of  all software industry ( maybe with the exception of web front end development)  this is still  behind  the state of most  EA games.   Lat year I played UA: Dreadnoughts EA and  the community  was enraged by the state of the game.... and yet it was  at least an order or magnitude  better than KSP2 (and again it has  way more complex features than KSP2).

 

an EA game is supposed to have content missing and minor bugs, some mechanics  needing polish, but the core must work. A save/load system that fails 1 every 3 attempt, a laucnh button that does nothign and get you stuck in VAB forever once ever 5 designs, a VAB that suddenly erase ALL parts when you add that last one part,a GUI that spam  340 times the same message... all these are NOT acceptable for an EA because they are  NOT  high complexity issues, they are result of bad priorization.

[Wheehaw Kerman]

1 minute ago, tstein said:

Survival game and I will say it  it is NOT less complex than KSP2. Contrary to what so many believe KSP2 is a VERY VERY simple simulator.  We basically have a SIMPLE physics engine and renderer, basically no other mechanic, yet KSP2  fails to even  make a  GUI that works.  I develop software for 30  years, including some SEVERAL times larger and more complex than ANY  game ever made and there is not excuse for the presentation state of this game, it is  simply unprofessional. While I know game industry is the least professional of  all software industry ( maybe with the exception of web front end development)  this is still  behind  the state of most  EA games.   Lat year I played UA: Dreadnoughts EA and  the community  was enraged by the state of the game.... and yet it was  at least an order or magnitude  better than KSP2 (and again it has  way more complex features than KSP2).

 

an EA game is supposed to have content missing and minor bugs, some mechanics  needing polish, but the core must work. A save/load system that fails 1 every 3 attempt, a laucnh button that does nothign and get you stuck in VAB forever once ever 5 designs, a VAB that suddenly erase ALL parts when you add that last one part,a GUI that spam  340 times the same message... all these are NOT acceptable for an EA because they are  NOT  high complexity issues, they are result of bad priorization.

The first half of the second paragraph sets out a checklist for EA games, and then the second half just ticks all of those boxes but with really angry language and caps and a personal opinion on what an EA should be.  I get that you’re upset and disappointed, but that doesn’t change the fact that the game is in the state that it is, that it’s still quite playable as is, and that things can only get better.

Nate posted this yesterday.  Have you read it?

 

[tstein]

1 minute ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

The first half of the second paragraph sets out a checklist for EA games, and then the second half just ticks all of those boxes but with really angry language and caps and a personal opinion on what an EA should be.  I get that you’re upset and disappointed, but that doesn’t change the fact that the game is in the state that it is, that it’s still quite playable as is, and that things can only get better.

Nate posted this yesterday.  Have you read it?

 

No this is not personal opinion. Check the requirements STEAM  make on  EA. That is not my opinion, that is the  industry LEADING platform opinion, the very platform that  basically invented EA retailing .

 

I have read Nate post, and  it smells  like PR deflection. Notice as he does not even   acknowledge the fact that the game has mediocre graphics and physics and yet it is  one of the 4  HIGHER requirements on STEAM. The fact is, the team  was delusional about the player base. They have  a clumsy barebone   physics system, a very  NAIVE graphics implementation (because naive is the only form where you get a game with 2010 graphics that uses resources as a 2025 game, yet they had time to create  a  dynamic  face emotional  reaction  system for the kerbals.  It is a fact, they are NOT PROFESSIONALS, or  they are trying to look like they are not.

Edited March 4, 2023 by tstein

[Wheehaw Kerman]

2 minutes ago, tstein said:

No this is not personal opinion. Check the requirements STEAM  make on  EA. That is not my opinion, that is the  industry LEADING platform opinion, the very platform that  basically invented EA retailing .

You’ve reminded me of that wonderful quote about the Code of the Pirate Brotherhood from Pirates of the Caribbean…

I’ll just point to the EA having been selling on Steam for over a week now as being proof that the EA is in acceptable condition by the Steam EA requirements you cite.

Welcome to the Black Pearl, Mr. tstein.  You better start believing in Early Access, because you’re in one .

Seriously though, the forums and discord and so forth are like a cross between a ball pit filled with an infinite number of poorly socialized monkeys and a massive homeless person brawl in a dumpster that’s on fire because a lot of people seem to need to yell at passerby about how immeasurably disappointed they are and how completely their lives are ruined because the first version of EA didn’t live up to their wildly unreasonable expectations.  That can’t be fun, and it’s certainly neither useful nor productive.  I’d much rather acknowledge reality, and work with it.  How many bug reports have you filed via official channels?

[tstein]

18 minutes ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

You’ve reminded me of that wonderful quote about the Code of the Pirate Brotherhood from Pirates of the Caribbean…

I’ll just point to the EA having been selling on Steam for over a week now as being proof that the EA is in acceptable condition by the Steam EA requirements you cite.

Welcome to the Black Pearl, Mr. tstein.  You better start believing in Early Access, because you’re in one .

Seriously though, the forums and discord and so forth are like a cross between a ball pit filled with an infinite number of poorly socialized monkeys and a massive homeless person brawl in a dumpster that’s on fire because a lot of people seem to need to yell at passerby about how immeasurably disappointed they are and how completely their lives are ruined because the first version of EA didn’t live up to their wildly unreasonable expectations.  That can’t be fun, and it’s certainly neither useful nor productive.  I’d much rather acknowledge reality, and work with it.  How many bug reports have you filed via official channels?

 I advise you to READ the steam  requirements...  and try  to cope with reality. Just because you like something your wishful thinking does not change reality, just make your opinion  worthless because it is obvious that you are enamored with something and you would find it ok if the game poisoned you  and caused cancer.

 

My life is not ruined, I do not  CARE  for the game. If  KSP vanishes that will NOT hurt my life in any significant form , but  I do care for the HYPOCRISY of humans , and   people that pretend this is ok are just hypocrites that feed the bad things in this world. Software industry   is each day WORSE exactly because people  have this behavior of   embracing poison.

[mcwaffles2003]

4 hours ago, tstein said:

 I advise you to READ the steam  requirements...  and try  to cope with reality. Just because you like something your wishful thinking does not change reality, just make your opinion  worthless because it is obvious that you are enamored with something and you would find it ok if the game poisoned you  and caused cancer.

 

My life is not ruined, I do not  CARE  for the game. If  KSP vanishes that will NOT hurt my life in any significant form , but  I do care for the HYPOCRISY of humans , and   people that pretend this is ok are just hypocrites that feed the bad things in this world. Software industry   is each day WORSE exactly because people  have this behavior of   embracing poison.

So would it be better in your opinion if the game was just not released yet into EA? 

[Klapaucius]

My expectations were based on what we were told early access was going to be like, and for the most part, I feel it was accurate. I've been following the updates and posts from the developers on this forum, and not a whole lot has caught me by surprise.

When Subnatautica Below Zero came out in early access, it was buggy, it had no voice over (just text) and about 40 minutes of playtime.  So there is very much precedent for this.

[regex]

5 hours ago, tstein said:

My life is not ruined, I do not  CARE  for the game. If  KSP vanishes that will NOT hurt my life in any significant form , but  I do care for the HYPOCRISY of humans , and   people that pretend this is ok are just hypocrites that feed the bad things in this world. Software industry   is each day WORSE exactly because people  have this behavior of   embracing poison.

Confirming that it is, in fact, about ethics in gaming journalism. It's the principal of the damn thing, don't you get it? Why don't you all agree with me?!?