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Here's Your First Look at Kerbal Space Program: First Contract


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For that purpose, a key to max throttle immediately (i.e. FloorIt) would be better.

I agree 100% with that but I just don't see why everyone has their panties in a bunch over the game not having the throttle at 0% on the pad; at least those that want 0% can hit "x" and then throttle up while doing their count-down role-play or something, and those who want 100% have less travel time.

Edited by regex
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I agree 100% with that but I just don't see why everyone has their panties in a bunch over the game not having the throttle at 0% on the pad; at least those that want 0% can hit "x" and then throttle up while doing their count-down role-play or something, and those who want 100% have less travel time.

Gotta agree with regex here. Let's not make a mountain out of a molehill.

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I'm just hoping that setting the throttle to 50% means that they are finally going to fix the throttle to work correctly sometime soon. Instead of this weird flyby wire thing they have going now.

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I agree 100% with that but I just don't see why everyone has their panties in a bunch over the game not having the throttle at 0% on the pad

My panties remain entirely unbunched, I'm just wondering what their reasoning was behind this. "To help newbies have fun" is not a valid reason. My point is I'd have to throttle up anyway - why implement this at all? It honestly wasn't worth the effort (however meagre it may have been) implementing this.

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I'm just hoping that setting the throttle to 50% means that they are finally going to fix the throttle to work correctly sometime soon. Instead of this weird flyby wire thing they have going now.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. How would you prefer it to work?

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What's invalid about it?

As things are, a new player slaps space and nothing happens. He doesn't know that space has done its job, he doesn't immediately think "hey, no throttle", he has to go back, re-read stuff etc. That is unfriendly. This way, he hits space, the engines light but not a lot happens - at least he knows that space worked! At the same time, being at 50% means the rocket isn't going to go up so hard and fast that he can't adjust, especially if he is working from a tutorial and has to read instructions while he is flying.

Anyway - who wants to start on the launchpad with zero throttle? I can't think of any reason why a player would want to light the engines at 0%. Most pros will want to start at 100%, but not all will want to start at that high a thrust. 50% is a good compromise - newbies are assisted, thrust junkies get 50% help towards their next fix and anybody who needs less than 100% will find it slightly easier than working up from 100%.

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Why stop at auto-throttling? Why not get KSP to autostage and launch your rocket for you? Why not just let it do everything for you?

There comes a point where you have to say 'ok, newbies need to learn how to play the game now'. Auto-throttling is that point

Auto-throttling is that point hmm? It's like, I don't know, the first thing you do in the game? No, I mean like: The first 10 seconds of the flying mode. You gotta get people into the game, then they'll want to learn more. I dropped out of learning Orbiter because it didn't teach me much of anything about how to use it, at least not soon enough. If simple things like this mean more purchases for the game, and gets more new people involved, you know Squad is all for it and so am I. Point? Get 'em hooked and they'll be on wiki looking up phase angles in no time.

if they don't learn the key to throttle up (and they won't, because it's already done), how can they play the game? They'll run into all kinds of problems with cutting throttle if they never taught themselves or looked up what key to press. And if they do know what key deactivates throttle (X), they won't know what key reactivates it. Because it was already done for them beforehand. Sure, they'll learn eventually

This argument is in circles. They won't learn? or they will? here's the truth: They won't learn if they move on to another game. If they get some rockets crashing into grass and like the game, they most certainly will learn. By your post I take it you've never experienced any "problems" (LOL) regarding the operation of your vehicles? Yea, there's more to learn than a throttle, if they play the game they'll learn that and more.

and then it'll get as irritating as other players find it. In short - I know how to throttle up, I don't need the game to do it for me. Newbies don't know how to throttle up, they shouldn't need the game to do it for them.

Oh, ok... I get it now! This is about you :). You know what? There's so much I could say, but I'll just say this: You throttle up without thinking now, right? Nothing will change. Period.

You say this is in regards to throttling but it seems as though it's a much larger issue which I see surfacing often within this community. It's that many find the need to criticize features that they haven't even used yet, why is that? Perhaps some feel as though they are clearly more aware than the developers. Not to be rude but, you aren't. Actuallyif you truly care about the game (and believe me, sometimes I have my doubts that the trolls here actually care about this game) then please realize that "critiques" should be after careful thought and actual play-through. Unneeded criticism poisons the attitude of the community and the guys working on the game.

Thanks!

Edited by Apollyon
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_engine

scroll down to where it says throttling. keeping a rocket engine at max fuel flow will blow it up relatively quickly after liftoff. mostly because of rapidly changing atmospheric pressure. In ksp your isp goes up magically as you climb and thrust stays constant which is very weird. thrust should be dropping as you climb if the throttle is computer controlled otherwise it should just blow up once it over-pressures

Edited by toril
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I had a remarkable improvement on Linux x64 ksp. NO CRASHES. DOUBLED MODS. So, I think that may be unfounded worrying.

There are reasons why the linux64 version is around and stable since forever, and the windows64 version is not :)

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What's invalid about it?

Because: how exactly does it help newbies have fun?

As things are, a new player slaps space and nothing happens. He doesn't know that space has done its job, he doesn't immediately think "hey, no throttle", he has to go back, re-read stuff etc. That is unfriendly.

No, it's called 'learning key bindings'. KSP falls down on this because they're not easy to find in-game and online, but the point remains - when I start playing a new game, I try as fast as I can to figure out what keys do what. It's important for future play - if a sniper-type game started off with you looking down the sights, how would you know what button to press to look down the sights? You'd need to look it up. And you'd need to look it up anyway for future reference. Starting the game already looking through the sights is a big help towards absolute newbies, but entirely pointless towards anyone that's learned that Shift throttles up.

This way, he hits space, the engines light but not a lot happens - at least he knows that space worked!

I don't know about you, but madly hitting keys in the hope they do something useful is not the way I like to play games. Before I realised that Space activated stages and even that staging existed, having the throttle set to 50% would've spelt disaster for me - manually activating an engine only to have it burst into life would've sent me on a panic-stricken button mash to stop it or at least turn it down.

This is of course assuming that a complete newbie either presses Space or right-clicks on the engine. And god only knows what buttons newbies press - IMHO, it's best to leave things so they don't surprise anyone. If the throttle is 0%, pressing Space makes a noise and green bars appear on the bottom right - as you said, at least they know Space worked. But this has the advantage of not tipping over or unbalancing their rocket, or not letting them run out of fuel.

At the same time, being at 50% means the rocket isn't going to go up so hard and fast that he can't adjust, especially if he is working from a tutorial and has to read instructions while he is flying.

Depending on the average newbie rocket, that statement could be wildly inaccurate. Putting the throttle at 50% as default assumes a lot about a newbie: that they'll A, build a rocket that is capable of liftoff at half-thrust B, are even making an LFO rocket in the first place etc etc.. Not to mention that Max says it's to help newbies have fun, not to help newbies launch their first rocket (these may or may not overlap).

Anyway - who wants to start on the launchpad with zero throttle? I can't think of any reason why a player would want to light the engines at 0%. Most pros will want to start at 100%, but not all will want to start at that high a thrust. 50% is a good compromise - newbies are assisted, thrust junkies get 50% help towards their next fix and anybody who needs less than 100% will find it slightly easier than working up from 100%.

Well golly, here's an idea: let me choose what default throttle setting I want. Personally, I'd go for 0% because some of the time, I'm making rovers and the throttle isn't needed. Some of the time, I'm making propeller planes, which (due a glitch in the game engine) will start producing 50% thrust regardless of prop speed. Sometimes I'm making planes. But most of the time, I'm making rockets that have a launch TWR of 1.2 - putting the throttle at 50% make no difference to me because I throttle up anyway but as I said, why even bother implementing this? It honestly wasn't worth the effort.

EDIT:

<snip>

Please see my "realism vs believability" post. I don't care that KSP engines can be started an infinite amount of times because real-life engines have zero impact or relevance to a computer game.

EDIT#2:

<snip>

You really think this is just about me? I couldn't care less about how I play, this is about a feature that Squad, for some reason, has decided to implement. I'm just trying to get to the bottom of why they thought this was a necessary addition to the game. How I play or how anyone plays is irrelevant.

EDIT #3: I'm tired of discussing a very minor feature that has little relevance on my gameplay so I'm not willing to discuss it any further. If any dev would like to tell me why they thought this was a Good Idea, I'd be more than happy to listen. Until then, this is blowing out of proportion - I don't care if the default setting is 50%, 0% or 23.653% - at the end of the day, I'm pressing Z before launch anyway. God only knows why KSP devs decided to change such an insignificant thing.

Edited by ObsessedWithKSP
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You really think this is just about me? I couldn't care less about how I play, this is about a feature that Squad, for some reason, has decided to implement. I'm just trying to get to the bottom of why they thought this was a necessary addition to the game. How I play or how anyone plays is irrelevant.

That's cool. You did seem a bit put off by it, indicating it would be an "irritating" feature, when in reality it shouldn't change much on most standard launches.

It would be cool for Squad to give us more information, but I don't think it's necessary and there's probably not alot to it. I don't think they did it to "have fun" or "mess with" new or veteran players, if that's what you were worried about. It's more likely based on feedback they have received. Keep in mind that feedback could also be user generated in-game data. If they see a lot of people pressing space then looking all around with their mouse, going back and forth to VAB, and finally throttling up, this might be a stop gap measure until they add tool tips.

Also, it's not like they wasted time "developing" this feature, it probably took them 5 minutes.

My panties remain entirely unbunched

You wear panties?! :(

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Gonna miss those classic screw-ups where I forget to throttle up before I stage.

"Wait, why did I just - oh F*** ME."

No worries, we'll always have the classic "Launch Stability Enhancers are in the wrong stage" and one of my personal faves, "Decouplers in the first stage."

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I must admit i'm sceptical, as a few others have mentioned they are. This looks like a reimplementation of the toolbar plugin and a half-baked implementation of the Mission Controller Extended mod. Sure, official 64-bit support and a few other tidbits are nice, but...six months of development time for this?

Please prove me wrong on this. :)

Re implentation or not, its new, and not just taken from the mod. It was bound to come anyway whether the mod existed or not.

And a half-baked version of the Mission Controller? This looks 10x better than MC, and I use it. What they have seems to be finely more tuned and balanced, and all the problems of MC gone.

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Regex there are times when automatic 50% throttle is BAD. Lets say you are docking to a station. You are lined up and are coasting in. You have throttle set to 0% and decide to switch to another vessel for a moment to handle another issue. You come back to the vessel docking and BAM 50% throttle and BAM station strike. No, we need an option to kill that auto throttle to 50% crap.

That only applies to automatic 50% throttle anywhere. It was pretty clearly implied 50% throttle is only on the pad.

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Regex there are times when automatic 50% throttle is BAD. Lets say you are docking to a station. You are lined up and are coasting in. You have throttle set to 0% and decide to switch to another vessel for a moment to handle another issue. You come back to the vessel docking and BAM 50% throttle and BAM station strike. No, we need an option to kill that auto throttle to 50% crap.

There's basically no chance this behavior would be in .24.

1) Even now, throttle setting per vessel is saved in the save file, so it would be restoring the save state.

2) If you're within physics range (you are docking...) then the vessel isn't reloaded upon switch, so it's not going to see any throttle applied.

3) There is testing that happens.

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I'm puzzled how many people are too lazy to push the x or shift key...

+1 I totally agree

There's basically no chance this behavior would be in .24.

1) Even now, throttle setting per vessel is saved in the save file, so it would be restoring the save state.

2) If you're within physics range (you are docking...) then the vessel isn't reloaded upon switch, so it's not going to see any throttle applied.

3) There is testing that happens.

You're VOR/ILS mod looks pretty neat. I might have to give it a go. Any plans to add glideslope data for mods like kerbinside?

Edited by UAL002
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Looks good! I haven't played career yet, but I really like the idea of the contracts. Perhaps someone will then be able to build the mod for Space Wine Industries!

I agree with the other commenters, though, about the rocket price lining up with the available funds. I was bothered that they didn't align, made it unnecessarily difficult to see what fraction of the funds are spent.

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