Will KSP2 ever have parts connecting to multiple simultaneous separate parts? What do you think? (either native or with mods)

[TackleMcClean]

I have trouble formulating my question, but basically a system where parts aren't necessarily a tree-structure, but more like a free form graph of some sort I guess.
Maybe there's already a concise term for this in the community I've missed.

Imagine you're making a space station and you're docking a module via two docking ports. This works.
Now imagine you want to dock something that looks like an L, having two docking ports, together with the existing station also shaped like and L. So you connect two sets of two ports at the same time.

This, for reasons of station stability, and more importantly creative freedom.

I was asking about this on Discord and got an answer like "DUH of course you can't do that, parts work like a tree structure".
I was hoping KSP2 could mean a good opportunity to revisit and revamp the basics of the game, but currently it feels more leaned towards doing most things like in KSP1.

With my limited knowledge of Unity's physics engine and the game code in general I'm curious if perhaps modders have a perspective on this, could it even be done?

[HebaruSan]

28 minutes ago, TackleMcClean said:

Imagine you're making a space station and you're docking a module via two docking ports. This works.
Now imagine you want to dock something that looks like an L, having two docking ports, together with the existing station also shaped like and L. So you connect two sets of two ports at the same time.

If your question is about docking, then stock KSP1 was already able to do this for many years (and KSP2 presumably would be as well):

If you're mentioning docking as an analogy for an enhancement to the VAB, then my guess is that no, they won't do that.

Edited March 8, 2023 by HebaruSan

[TackleMcClean]

Just now, HebaruSan said:

If your question is about docking, then stock KSP1 was already able to do this for many years (and KSP2 presumably would be as well):

If you're mentioning docking as an analogy for an enhancement to the VAB, then my guess is no, that they won't do that.

Oh wow, I didn't think that was possible! Great!

But this wouldn't be buildable in the VAB then still, I guess. Would you guess that's something modding would allow for eventually, or could it be too tied to the core mechanics to change?

[HebaruSan]

35 minutes ago, TackleMcClean said:

Would you guess that's something modding would allow for eventually, or could it be too tied to the core mechanics to change?

My guess is that nobody will try to completely replace the vessel tree structure with a mod, because it makes some important problems much easier to solve.

You're in the VAB and you click a part to pick it up. In the tree structure world, any parts that are attached to it are picked up as part of the group, but the parent part stays in place and is not picked up. You can rotate the picked-up part freely, and since the whole group has just one attachment point to a parent, you can easily place it somewhere else. This is somewhat intuitive if your craft structure isn't crazy, and more importantly it's consistent and repeatable.

Now repeat the same thought experiment in the free-form graph world. You have some part that's multiply-attached to several parts and has several other parts multiply-attached to it and some other other parts.  When you pick it up, which subsets of those parts gets picked up? How do you manage the UI of re-attaching several different connection points somewhere else all at once? How would you explain to users how these things work? This is a larger scope than I would expect modders to take on.

However, there is a KSP1 mod that handles one specific related case. You build your regular tree-structure craft as normal (taking advantage of all UX conveniences that model provides), and then at launch, it checks whether any unconnected parts are close enough to be attached (only for certain attachment nodes, though), and if so, it adds physics joints between them:

You might very well see something like that for KSP2 as well at some point.

Edited March 8, 2023 by HebaruSan

[twich22]

50 minutes ago, TackleMcClean said:

Oh wow, I didn't think that was possible! Great!

But this wouldn't be buildable in the VAB then still, I guess. Would you guess that's something modding would allow for eventually, or could it be too tied to the core mechanics to change?

I have not tried multiple docking ports yet in KSP 2 as docking ports are so bugged at the moment. However, in KSP 1 you could theoretically build it in the VAB, it just would not be fully 'connected' until you launched the craft. 

Imagine trying to build a ship in the shape of a square. there is no way in the VAB to connect the 'tail' of the ship to the 'head' of the ship (with the exception of using struts and calling that a connection). 

However, if you put a docking port on the head and on the tail and align them very closely, when you launch  your ship the first thing the ship does when it loads into existence is connect those two docking ports. So now you have a completely connected square shaped ship. 

At least, thats what I recall. Its been a while since I have done anything like that in the VAB. I used to create custom docking ports for a stronger connection. Instead of a ship docking with another ship via 1 docking port, I would build my own docking port system with 5 or more docking ports all grouped together, so that when you launch your craft or dock a ship you have the strength of multiple ports and multiple 'joints' connecting your two ships. This makes actually using thrusters while two large ships are connected via docking ports much more viable. 

[Booots]

1 hour ago, HebaruSan said:

My guess is that nobody will try to completely replace the vessel tree structure with a mod, because it makes some important problems much easier to solve.

You're in the VAB and you click a part to pick it up. In the tree structure world, any parts that are attached to it are picked up as part of the group, but the parent part stays in place and is not picked up. You can rotate the picked-up part freely, and since the whole group has just one attachment point to a parent, you can easily place it somewhere else. This is somewhat intuitive if your craft structure isn't crazy, and more importantly it's consistent and repeatable.

Now repeat the same thought experiment in the free-form graph world. You have some part that's multiply-attached to several parts and has several other parts multiply-attached to it and some other other parts.  When you pick it up, which subsets of those parts gets picked up? How do you manage the UI of re-attaching several different connection points somewhere else all at once? How would you explain to users how these things work? This is a larger scope than I would expect modders to take on.

However, there is a KSP1 mod that handles one specific related case. You build your regular tree-structure craft as normal (taking advantage of all UX conveniences that model provides), and then at launch, it checks whether any unconnected parts are close enough to be attached (only for certain attachment nodes, though), and if so, it adds physics joints between them:

You might very well see something like that for KSP2 as well at some point.

That was literally the first thing I tried to do in KSP 2 to see if I’d need to re-make my mod for the new edition. I’ve already submitted feedback to the Devs outlining how the ReCoupler mod does it, so hopefully it’ll be part of the default KSP 2 game eventually!

[Strawberry]

Currently if you make something like this, the engine will connect to only one of the decouplers on the other side. This means that setups like this are impractical as they increase the wobble of your spacecraft a lot.

What I propose is if when attaching parts, if multiple joints line up at the same time while construction, all the joints will snap together instead of just one. This will allow construction of things like this without it breaking apart massively

[Fermentation]

I was really hoping that KSP2 would have moved away from using a tree structure for the ship.   

In my use case, I would like to be able to attach more than one radial separator to a side mounted engine stage.   
This would let me skip having to add a bunch of extra struts to firm up a wobbly side-mounded booster stack. 

Also, I ran into this when attempting to build ring shaped ships

[Maria Sirona]

Totally thirded

[Starhawk]

Overlapping threads, one from KSP2 Discussion, have been merged.

[thewhitemetroid]

It would be nice to see some kind of "weld" feature implemented, maybe even a part that serves this specific purpose. The weld could just attach to the first part selected as far as the tree is concerned. With some tolerance value established for distance and alignment to another part, if part "A" with weld attached were within tolerance to part "B" then a "weld" could occur and simply establish a physics connection.   Behavior could be like a docking port but obviously should be a rigid connection. It's not like we have no precedence for working around this problem because struts basically accomplish the same thing, just not a very elegant or complete solution. 

Honestly I fail to see how they can not implement some way of getting around this problem with colonies in pipes. This will be an obvious issue when constructing a colony that, unless the plan is to make colony construction parts generic and just big units that snap together, without solving the problem in an intuitive way will result in a lack of creative freedom. Rocket and vehicle design is one thing but a colony is a different beast.