I don't understand the fuss behind ARM

[Pecan]

Ah yeh olde slippery slope argument...

I was not trying to make any argument as I am really bored of the the "don't like it, don't use it/mod it" responses. It was possibly presumtive of me to suggest designing, flying and navigating were the three main features of KSP and it is, of course, pure sepculation as to whether any autopilot functionality will ever become stock. What is unarguable is that now there is no need for anyone to put much thought into vehicle design - the obvious, easy option is more-or-less the right one as well.

Race Into Space is a lot of fun (and free!) and the idea of KSP as a 'tycoon' game (reported somewhere in this thread) has a certain appeal. Such a game would, again presumably, retain building, flying and navigating as secondary features to the science/reputation/cash/contracts career mode. Whether anyone sees that as a 'slippery slope' or 'polished game' is up to them but it will definitely be very different to KSP as we know it.

[sal_vager]

What a lot of players seem to forget is that in sandbox mode there is not supposed to be any more challenge that what the player sets for themselves, all parts including the most powerful are already available and it is the players choice to use them.

Yes you can just put together the most powerful everything, fly anywhere and call it a day, the same kind of thing is true in other sandboxes, such as Minecrafts creative mode or Garrys Mod.

Unless players limit themselves then yes, sandbox is "easy".

Career mode exists to give structure to the game, the most powerful parts are not available at the start, craft design becomes important and the player can experiment with piloting styles over construction, for an example take a look here at Stilgar2300's career game, where he is trying to stop an asteroid that will hit Kerbin in 89 days (now 5 days from Kerbin SOI).

Look also at the challenge forum where people post challenges to accomplish certain things, it is rarely the biggest most powerful craft that is the most successful, the point being that we limit ourselves to certain criteria and see what we are capable of.

Having ready access to all lego ever made in unlimited quantities can be fun for some, boring for others.

Let others have their fun, it does not impact you but trying to limit their game because you are unhappy impacts them.

[78stonewobble]

I was not trying to make any argument as I am really bored of the the "don't like it, don't use it/mod it" responses. It was possibly presumtive of me to suggest designing, flying and navigating were the three main features of KSP and it is, of course, pure sepculation as to whether any autopilot functionality will ever become stock. What is unarguable is that now there is no need for anyone to put much thought into vehicle design - the obvious, easy option is more-or-less the right one as well.

Race Into Space is a lot of fun (and free!) and the idea of KSP as a 'tycoon' game (reported somewhere in this thread) has a certain appeal. Such a game would, again presumably, retain building, flying and navigating as secondary features to the science/reputation/cash/contracts career mode. Whether anyone sees that as a 'slippery slope' or 'polished game' is up to them but it will definitely be very different to KSP as we know it.

There's a good reason for those responses, since the argument opposing this basically boils down to:

"This is how I prefer my Kerbal space program and I thus think it should apply to everyone else. The game should actually be molded to fit my subjective needs, not others."

That is presumtious and egotistical.

You say there is now no "need" for anyone to put any thought into vehicle design, because there is one most "efficient" way to do things now. Well, there has allways been a most "efficient" way to do things and that hasn't stopped people from trying out a multitude of different designs and ways of doing things.

So what's really inarguable is that having an "easy option", as you so derogatorily call it, doesn't really matter much, as long as there is also options to do it another way.

[John FX]

Squad is currently saying that it wants the career mode to become a tycoon game. One common feature in those games is that you get new stuff that makes old stuff obsolete. If we can't have that in KSP, it certainly cripples the career mode as a tycoon game.

You have condensed what I have been trying to say for a while very well there. I completely agree. I am of the opinion that if the engines were balanced for sandbox it would destroy career gameplay and there must be a choice made as to which is more important. I want a career game that is fun to play and has meaningful tech development. I am willing to upset sandbox balance to get that. Hopefully it`s not an either/or situation but if it is then that is my opinion.

The standard thing also to say at this point is, game in alpha, subject to change, no guarantee etc etc

EDIT :

What a lot of players seem to forget is that in sandbox mode there is not supposed to be any more challenge that what the player sets for themselves, all parts including the most powerful are already available and it is the players choice to use them.

Yes you can just put together the most powerful everything, fly anywhere and call it a day, the same kind of thing is true in other sandboxes, such as Minecrafts creative mode or Garrys Mod.

Unless players limit themselves then yes, sandbox is "easy".

Career mode exists to give structure to the game, the most powerful parts are not available at the start, craft design becomes important and the player can experiment with piloting styles over construction, for an example take a look here at Stilgar2300's career game, where he is trying to stop an asteroid that will hit Kerbin in 89 days (now 5 days from Kerbin SOI).

Look also at the challenge forum where people post challenges to accomplish certain things, it is rarely the biggest most powerful craft that is the most successful, the point being that we limit ourselves to certain criteria and see what we are capable of.

Having ready access to all lego ever made in unlimited quantities can be fun for some, boring for others.

Let others have their fun, it does not impact you but trying to limit their game because you are unhappy impacts them.

QFT

So much this.

Sal, you are a voice of reason. People should read carefully what you have written.

Edited April 13, 2014 by John FX

[_Aramchek_]

Maybe a better move would have been to teach majority of people how to build efficient rocket to achieve such goal, but nothing can be done with people who don't want to learn.

Because everyone who doesn't play the game how you think they should "just doesn't want to learn", right.

Efficiency appeals to some, and then some of us like to make, huge powerful monstrosities that do as well or better than the "efficient" designs.

Regardless, again, to re-iterate the point though, you can totally still do that if you want to though, there is literally nothing to make you choose the new parts if you do not want to use them.

You can still make some weirdly overly elaborate, asparagus staged thingy if you want, nothing is stopping you or anyone else from doing that.

[m4v]

New parts doesn't have to make old parts obsolete. The mainsail doesn't make the parts that came before obsolete, but if you don't unlock it you won't be able to launch larger missions, same with ARM, they don't have to be grossly over the top for be useful to everyone.

[Rakaydos]

I hate it when people talk about an engine's power like there is only one axis. Theres three, and potentially four once we get money.

Absolute Thrust decides how much stuff an engine can lift

Thrust to Weight Ratio deturmines how fast it can be lifted

ISP shows how efficently it burns fuel.

And with budgets, it is my belief that Cost should be an approximation of overall effectiveness, within a fairly narrow range. (IE: A Skipper costs less than 4 LV45s and a cluster adapter)

The Absolute thrust of the SLS engines is fine. In fact it's a bit low. But the TWR and ISP are ridculus. Bringing the rockets in line with other engines isnt going to mean they are lifting any less, it just means you actually need to hit the spacebar a few times.

[boxman]

I'm not sure why everyone is complaining. Personally, I'm, reserving judgment until a budget is implemented. If the SLS parts are too cheap/OP, then I will engage in negative discourse. Until then, I will enjoy building rockets that actually look like rockets, thanks to the SLS parts.

What about us who play sandbox mode?? This is a game that was semi reliastic in many ways to real life and they are now destroying that balance making some parts so overpowered that the game is becoming more arcade. Not only that, but it also makes other engines obsolete even though those engines are those that are infact closer to reality. And this trend has been going on for several versions now.

There is really not much sense of achievement when it becomes so easy to launch massive stuff.

They should have just added a scifi tab and put these overpowered unrealistic parts/engines there.

[boxman]

It's called progression. Once you progress in a game you unlock better parts. If you don't like the way Devs intended this game to be feel free to use mods or stop playing. We are probably going to get more 3.75m parts in the future and then you'll actually be thankful to have the new parts to lift heavier payloads.

By the way the developers never said every single engine added to the game in the future would be no better than already existing engines.

This was not the original vision of the game. This is a new trend that has started since it was released on steam and played by more casual gamers.

In fact earlier they were going to add things like deadly reentry and other gameplay mechanics to make it more realistic. This has all now been scrapped and they have now done a full turn around.

This is all about attracting the average gamer now so that they can sell more copies than actually keeping player base that care about realism.

It was supposed to focus towards realism with some sacrifices like smaller scale in the name of gameplay. Now with these new engines and the rescale of ion engines they are now leaning more towards arcade.

Edited April 13, 2014 by boxman

[Joonatan1998]

Now with these new engines and the rescale of ion engines they are now leaning more towards arcade.

I think that the new engines are OP, and should be nerfed, but how are they unrealistic??

It is completely realistic that more advanced engines are better.

[sal_vager]

No, there has always been the intention to have a career mode, KSP was released on Steam due to constant requests by the community for a Steam release.

And KSP was never supposed to be Orbiter, it was always supposed to tread a middle ground between realism and fun which it is continuing to do.

KSP still does not have arcade elements and the orbital mechanics that were in KSP from the early days are still here, but many players seem to be blinded by "efficiency", we have the option to build to excess, there is no need to always build the most efficient craft.

Squad continually add more content, features and parts and yet some still complain that Squad just want to "sell more copies", well for one thing this is the games industry, selling copies is a given, and for another, Squad does care about the player base, if they did not you would not see any of these improvements, Squad would just call KSP done.

As before, the only one making you use the new parts is yourself.

[boxman]

@sal_vager

What a lot of players seem to forget is that in sandbox mode there is not supposed to be any more challenge that what the player sets for themselves, all parts including the most powerful are already available and it is the players choice to use them.

I would be okay with that if they added some more part tabs and put these engines under SCIFI parts or similar to suggest that they are indeed not realistic to the real world.

Now you have a bunch of engines mixed together with some leaning towards realism while others towards arcade. If you dont know what to look for and do the math yourself you wont even know which is which. A person starting to play this game now in sandbox mode will probably just end up only using these new overpowered parts without even realizing how far fetched they are.

[sal_vager]

Actually new players seem to get on with KSP just fine.

[cantab]

Now you have a bunch of engines mixed together with some leaning towards realism while others towards arcade. If you dont know what to look for and do the math yourself you wont even know which is which. A person starting to play this game now in sandbox mode will probably just end up only using these new overpowered parts without even realizing how far fetched they are.

You realise it's the ARM engines that are closer to realism, right?

[boxman]

You realise it's the ARM engines that are closer to realism, right?

When it comes to thrust maybe, but not when it comes to thrust/weight ratio. Surely realistic to be able to send up a space station in one go without even having to send it up in parts. And what about ion engines?? Are they now more realistic as well??

[sal_vager]

If your rocket is big enough then of course it is realistic to launch a station in one go, your only limitation is cost.

Feel free to edit the Ion engines to a more realistic 0.1 newton and don't forget a good book for those interplanetary burns.

[Aragosnat]

Do have to agree with sal_vager's post. Guess people fail to realize they cannot get pleased every time. Personally I think the new parts are balanced well. One would think that further down the tech line we would get better more effective parts. As from my way of thinking that is progression. Anything else is either stagnation or regression.

[Dogoncrook]

That would be fine if kerbal had decent performance with reasonable lifters but it doesn't. Until it's 64bit I'd rather have it take fewer parts and stages because I don't want a stuttering blurry mess. I build realistic rockets but before arm, every station I built would inevitably explode or become impossible to rotate because I had to build in much smaller chunks and use more docking ports. Building on the same scale I always have, kerbal finally has a performance level that isn't a flaw I'm putting up with because of how much I like the gameplay.

[Moar Boosters]

When it comes to thrust maybe, but not when it comes to thrust/weight ratio. Surely realistic to be able to send up a space station in one go without even having to send it up in parts. And what about ion engines?? Are they now more realistic as well??

They're actually still underpowered compared to real life. The most powerful engine provides 3200kN of thrust and weighs almost 10 tons. The Saturn 5's engines each produced 6700mN of thrust, and weigh 8 tons. THe mN/kN cancel each other out due to everything in Kerbin being 10x smaller, but the F-1 engine is still 2x as powerful as what we have here.

The Saturn V was used to launch complete a complete spacestation in the Skylab program, and the early russian Salyut stations were launched complete as well...... so it's perfectly realistic.

[_Aramchek_]

What about us who play sandbox mode?? This is a game that was semi reliastic in many ways to real life and they are now destroying that balance making some parts so overpowered that the game is becoming more arcade. Not only that, but it also makes other engines obsolete even though those engines are those that are infact closer to reality. And this trend has been going on for several versions now.

There is really not much sense of achievement when it becomes so easy to launch massive stuff.

They should have just added a scifi tab and put these overpowered unrealistic parts/engines there.

This was not the original vision of the game. This is a new trend that has started since it was released on steam and played by more casual gamers.

In fact earlier they were going to add things like deadly reentry and other gameplay mechanics to make it more realistic. This has all now been scrapped and they have now done a full turn around.

This is all about attracting the average gamer now so that they can sell more copies than actually keeping player base that care about realism.

It was supposed to focus towards realism with some sacrifices like smaller scale in the name of gameplay. Now with these new engines and the rescale of ion engines they are now leaning more towards arcade.

I play sandbox exclusively, AND I have been playing for quite some time, and I do not agree with either of these sentiments at all.

There was always going to be a career mode, and the gameplay mechanics of the game are as "realistic" as they have ever been, you now just have more and larger parts.

I really do not get having a problem with that, in this game the only real limit is your own creativity.

I use all the same parts I ever have, but now I use them in conjunction with the new parts as well, to build larger and more capable crafts.

The new parts are just fine.

[78stonewobble]

This was not the original vision of the game. This is a new trend that has started since it was released on steam and played by more casual gamers.

In fact earlier they were going to add things like deadly reentry and other gameplay mechanics to make it more realistic. This has all now been scrapped and they have now done a full turn around.

This is all about attracting the average gamer now so that they can sell more copies than actually keeping player base that care about realism.

It was supposed to focus towards realism with some sacrifices like smaller scale in the name of gameplay. Now with these new engines and the rescale of ion engines they are now leaning more towards arcade.

Hmm I'd argue that the fact that they use cartoonish characters does suggest that realism was never the utmost priority versus "fun".

In any case deadly reentry has never been stock in the game, so with that in mind, I ask you this.

What has these new parts removed from the game that you can no longer do?

Secondly... How does it affect your gaming experience with KSP, that another player in ie. singapore uses one of the new parts?

Edited April 14, 2014 by 78stonewobble
bah spelling error

[Rakaydos]

The ion buff was a good thing for balanced engines, as much as the SLS engines were bad.

Now Ion engines are directly comparable to NERVAs for deep space maneuvering- the Ion having a better ISP and more convient form factor, but the NERVA having a higher absolute thrust and TWR. If a third high efficency engine was released, somewhere in the 600 ISP range, we could have balanced engines covering the complete range, from high efficency ions to high TWR solid boosters, staggered between probe, lander, and launcher thrust requirements.

[Rakaydos]

What has these new parts removed from the game that you cannot no longer do?

I was recently barred from participating in a "apollo to moho" challange because I was using a rebalanced engine mod- the challange creator wanted it stock only.

[_Aramchek_]

I was recently barred from participating in a "apollo to moho" challange because I was using a rebalanced engine mod- the challange creator wanted it stock only.

I'm not seeing the relevance here, you were barred from a challenge because it was "stock only" and you were using a mod....by choice.

[Rakaydos]

I'm not seeing the relevance here, you were barred from a challenge because it was "stock only" and you were using a mod....by choice.

Because it is a challange that would be effectively impossible in stock if I ignored the OP parts, like so many of you suggest.