hatterson

I posted this elsewhere, but I'll say it here again: I totally understand the developers (presumed) goal of not teasing a player by allowing them to make a maneuver plan that they can't actually complete, however it still needs to let me do it anyway. They can still warn players either via a setting they have to explicitly toggle off (so you can only get yourself in that situation if you really want to) or via a warning message when making the node along the lines of "your current vehicle does not appear to be able to compete this node. Are you sure you're doing what you want to do?" Aside from the use cases mentioned above of RCS, another option is something I do somewhat frequently when I don't have something like transfer planner in game. I have a satellite in something like an 80x80 orbit around Kerbin. I want to go to Duna with a heavy payload or something so saving dV is nice. As such I want to know if there's a way I can do something like a Mun gravity assist to get me there. My options are: 1.) Build and launch a vessel assuming it can happen and then potentially spend hours fiddling with maneuver plans trying to get it to work; or 2.) Load that satellite and create a node. Spend ~2 minutes seeing if it can happen. If so, cool build and launch the real rocket. If not, oh well, just strap on another few boosters. That also applies to things like asteroid captures where you're trying to figure how much dV you need to intersect it and what your relative speed will be at encounter.

I've performed Mun and Duna/Ike apollo style mission without issues. For both I launched docked since the main reason for having them upright in the stack to start (escape tower) wasn't available. Went to Mun, undocked lander, landed, came back, docked, transferred Kerbals, undocked. Panicked that I had forgot science, redocked, realized it was all there, undocked, flex back to Kerbin. Went to duna, undocked lander, landed at duna, launched lander and came back to dock, transfered to Ike, undocked lander, landed, came back and docked, transferred everything and fuel, and went back to Kerbin. It's hard to see in the screenshot due to light, but it appears our docking style was the same. Top mount on the command pod and top mound on the lander.

Although I agreed in general and I found myself saying "Man I wish I could open multiple parts at once" at first. As I played more I found myself not needing that. The primary uses I had for that in KSP 1 were fuel transfers (now handled via resource manager), Kerbal transfers (kerbal manager), and science collection (science button if relevant). Rarely I'd use it for heating or similar on some descents but even that's not relevant with being unable to see part temperature in the part menu. Out of curiosity, what are you wanting multiple parts "pinned" open in KSP 2 for? The only real reason I've found this far is for resuming science experiments, but that's only due to the bug with the biomes and non-biome specific experiments so once that issue is resolved that use case goes away.

Reported Version: v0.2.0 (latest) | Mods: none | Can replicate without mods? Yes OS: Win 11 | CPU: Ryzen 9 5900HS | GPU: RTX 3070 Laptop version | RAM: 16GB Severity: Low - purely a UI popup, no impact on gameplay. Also a full reboot of the game resolves it. Frequency: Uhh, high I guess since it's 100% reproducible and happens 100% of the time in the given situations, but in terms of actual gameplay it would be low since you rarely run into it Description: If you load an exploration save, exit to main menu (not exiting the full game), then load a sandbox save, and launch a vessel to 10k meters you'll receive the popup informing you to check in with mission control Reproduction Steps: Start or load any exploration save. Exit to main menu. Do not fully exit game, only go to main menu. Create or load any sandbox save. Launch vessel to 10km altitude or simply load one that already fulfills 10Km above Kerbin. Receive "Science Reward Available" popup informing you to return to Mission Control to submit mission brief. Expected Behavior: I shouldn't get a popup about mission control in a game mode where it doesn't exist Extra Notes: It appears that this happens each time you load a sandbox save when a vessel meeting the initial exploration mode contact criteria once you've had an exploration save open including quick saves and quick loads (e.g. if I load a save of a vessel in LKO and receive the popup, then f5 + f9 will pop it up again). Additionally, you can already have completed the initial mission on the science save and it still seems to trigger it over on the sandbox side. I loaded my exploration save where I'm well into tier 3 and it still causes it to happen next time I'm in sandbox LKO or launching. Included Attachments:

For equivalent sizes, solid boosters are either lighter than engine + fuel tank or very close in weight. Thumper is 7.65T whereas 3x FL-T400 tanks + LV-T30 "Reliant" engine is 8T. Hammer is 3.56T whereas FL-T400 tank + LV-T30 "Reliant" engine is 3.5T. Flea is 1.5T whereas the lightest non vacuum engine at that tech is the Reliant at 1.25T for the engine alone even without fuel.

One of the tough things in balancing tier 1 is that all of us veteran players, even when we're launching "newbie" rockets, still know the valuable nodes. I know that getting Environmental Science is an obvious choice because it gives more ways to collect points. I know a need a heat shield to do orbital flight (normally). etc. If a new player instead look at the tree and says "oh man, basic docking would be cool" or "hey micro-construction would be fun to build small satellites" they might drop all of their points on things that don't actually help them progress and end up sort of soft locked. So the early nodes need to be cheap enough that you can easily dig yourself out of that hole. Once you've got tier 1 mostly unlocked then it's pretty easy to dig yourself out either by doing Duna/Eve or by just landing on the mun/minmus in different biomes a few times so in tier 2 and beyond you have much more flexibility to ramp up the node cost and slow down unlocks if you're doing slow progression flights. Granted one way this might be alleviated would be to have additional secondary missions like launching into a polar orbit and having the existing secondary missions like launching a satellite and having a circular or elliptical order unlocked earlier since even a newbie can very reasonably do those with only a few nodes unlocked if they're able to get to orbit in the first place (and they're also valuable in teaching new players the ropes) The purpose of solid rocket boosters is raw power. If a new player is struggling to get off the launchpad, its far more natural for them to strap a couple solid rocket boosters to the side than it is to strap LOX stacks to the side.

This also applies to you changing the maximum thrust of an engine. For example if you're doing a gilly landing or something where you want your max thrust to be very low so you actually have some throttle control, then you plan a maneuver, it'll assume you're thrusting at whatever your current max it. If you then update the max thrust, it won't modify the burn calculation until you do something with the node or start burning. The current maneuver planner is actually incredible and a huge improvement on KSP 1 when it works as intended. It takes into account staging events and everything. The only minor issue is that with staging events it assumes they happen exactly on time and the thrust from the next stage is immediately available. Usually the player is gonna be a second or two off on that and if you're using an engine like the tuba, that takes a second or two to extend which delays the thrust. That makes a very minor difference in projected outcome in a single planetary system, it's a bit higher at interplanetary, and at interstellar there likely needs to be some solve for it unless the solve is "*shrug* do a mid course adjustment for a couple m/s dv" I have noticed some minor bugs where it doesn't seem to start the progress bar going down when I start burning, but if I follow the timer it still works. Here's as example showing the staging system working. I loaded up a sandbox with a stupid rocket. Command pod, fuel tank, mainsail engine, stack sep, small fuel tank, trumpet engine. I teleported it into LKO and created a node that was 100% normal burn and this is what it showed: Long shallow turn as the trumpet does it's low TWR thing, the staging event (first plus) then a sharper turn as the mainsail kicks on, then the end of the burn/fuel (second plus). I then reverted and flipped the stages (keeping the fuel tanks with the engines so they each has the same burn time as before) and created the same node. Here's the difference: Sharp quick turn as the mainsail pushes hard then a low slow continuation as the more efficient/less thrust trumpet kicks in after staging. I flew both maneuvers and my final trajectory was very close to the projected, the difference only due to, as mentioned above, inefficiency in stage transitions.

Something like Maneuver Node Controller is an absolute requirement to be in the base game if they want us to do interstellar burns.

Based on OPs suggestion your scenario would work by only fast forwarding 3 months since that was the furthest future point that all players agreed to.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. You can collect a crew observation in a new biome without sending the old one first without issue. It'll save both of them into your research inventory and you can either send or return them any time. If it says already exists, it's because that exact experiment result is already present in your research inventory. At least that's what my experience and testing has shown. There might be some weirdness around the non-biome specific researches that still trigger off biomes like the radiation survey (known issue), but at least with the "standard" ones like science jr and crew observation and similar I've never seen it say already present unless that specific biome is actually already present.

Note that the "experiment already in storage" happens when you have multiple of a specific experiment type on your craft. So when you clicked the button you didn't have any, it ran the first crew observation, stored it, ran the second one and said "hey you already have this" Obviously that needs to be corrected as sometimes it's easiest to just plant a part with 2x symmetry instead of meticulously trying to balance different part masses on opposite sites, but that's why it's happening.

One thing I want to see if a better integration between the missions and the training system. The training system lets players play with all of that stuff and it's great, but I'd like to see it tied heavier into the missions. Give a mission to dock and have the mission lady say "we've set up a simulator for you to test it before you try it for real, click here to use it" and have that go directly into the docking tutorial. Have the mission lady say "you'll need to land at a specific spot on the moon. We've set up a simulator to give you some practice doing that, click here to try it and then do it for real when you're ready" Completely agree on the flight planning tools. Obviously the new maneuver plans are dramatically better in terms of taking time into account but there's still a couple things that really need to be added. 1.) Precise controls. I need to be able to add to prograde instead of having to swing my camera around like crazy trying to find the specific bar to grab and pull; 2.) Multiple plans in a row and being able to flip between them. Right now I can add a second maneuver after my first one, but I can't flip between the two or do any sort of aggregation. But if the end goal is to have colonies, then having a part that's exclusively meant to just make a ship not need colony support somewhat undermines that goal. From everything I've seen about the roadmap, the goal for the big things in the game isn't to be able to design a KSP 1 style mining and converting ship that only a couple dozen tons but can refuel itself endlessly via random mining but rather have a vessel like that need colony support. Thus it makes far more sense to have the colony in place first instead of putting in designs that either don't fit in the long term design. If the long term goal is to have colonies be the primary vehicle for collecting and processing resources (which it definitely appears it is based on what they've said) then resources don't have much purpose outside of colonies without changing that goal.

That was the part of my comment about "(not necessarily full colonies, but something to either consume or process the resources)" Yes, you could have an ISRU processor where you mine up a resource and convert it into LFO but that, in and of itself, is basically a colony part. Whether that colony is landed on a planet or orbiting Kerbin, it's still essentially a colony.

You hit on it a bit later in the post, but in general resources would make no sense ahead of colonies as they would have no purpose. Science has a standalone purpose and progression mode. Even if that mode isn't super in depth in terms of how to collect science points and a lot of it is hand wavy, the science you're collecting has a purpose, to advance the tech tree. It undoubtedly will be advanced further as more things come out, but even as a stand alone update it provides something. Sure some may not like what it's provided/how it's implemented, but it is something. If you have resources before colonies, you just have numbers going up with literally no purpose. You need to have colonies (not necessarily full colonies, but something to either consume or process the resources) to have any reason to collect them. As far as resource collection being after interstellar, honestly I think a big reason might just be because interstellar is far cooler/a bigger reveal. Resource collection and management is (can be) a really cool logistical mini-game. Interstellar is something totally brand new and far more exciting for the large majority of players.

Unrelated to the fuel transfer issues, is there some way to disable this? I totally understand the design decision of not teasing a player by letting them create a node they can't actually complete, but there has to be some way to override it. In KSP 1 I would frequently grab a random satellite I had in orbit that was nearly out of fuel in order to play around with maneuvers and see if I could do anything interesting like getting a Mun gravity assist to reduce the amount of delta-v I needed to get to Jool or something. Or "hmm, are things lined up that I could do a flyby of the mun and get me to minmus right now?" type checks. I'm never intending to fly the mission with the craft I'm setting up the maneuver on but it lets me know that it's roughly possible and roughly the delta-v it will take if I do launch something. I know that it won't happen exactly, I'm just using what is effectively a dummy craft for a "what if" check.

KSP 2 was *never* sold as "super serious space agency and colony simulator" If you were expecting that and are disappointed you didn't/aren't getting it, that's 100% on you.

It feels like your vision for the game is basically space agency simulator with realism overhaul. Which is fine, and I'm sure they'll be mods to support it. But stock KSP, from it's infancy and in its continued life, has way to high a dose of "lol did you see how that rocket did a flip in the lower atmosphere and I still made it to space" to be that game stock.

I think a reasonably accurate landing projection, including simplified atmospheric drag, is a must for colonies. Showing it on the flight screen might not quite be at the level of must, but it's pretty close as well. That could certainly be something that science could "unlock" where you have to take an environmental survey to let your scientists/engineers properly simulate that.

Please detail, or even just conceptualize, what you'd want in a resource system

No one said that the only thing we should do is launch rockets but KSP, either KSP 1 or KSP 2 in goal state, isn't a game about building detailed interplanetary logistics networks and the day to day of running a shipping company.

I'm not insulting their intelligence, I'm being realistic about the amount of effort and tedium that the majority of players want to go through to play a fun and silly rocket launch game.

It feels like an interesting system, but it seems too much for a casual player. Too high a barrier to entry. Seems like an excellent idea for a mod though. Deep and involved is fundamentally different than brainlessly repetitive. I'm not sure what you want in a resource system in a game like KSP that is deep and involved but not mindless and tedious in execution.

This is also potentially related to an issue I encountered where decreasing time warp would lead to the game pausing prior to reaching 1x warp. I wasn't able to consistently reproduce it the other night, but I'll try again tomorrow to see if I can get some solid steps together.

I like escape loading the menu when in a building. Being able to go VAB -> Mission Control -> VAB without having to load a building scene in between is useful. I agree that hitting escape when flying should auto pause the game. I've lost more than one rocket (and had to revert a save) because one of my kids came up to me and I naturally hit escape to stop the game and pay attention to them. But then when I looked back at the game a minute or two later I either totally missed my maneuver or crashed into the surface or whatever. Perhaps there could be a setting to let time keep flowing in those situations if I explicitly and intentionally want to make the choice to leave it running.

Out of curiosity, what exactly do you want on the various planets? If you have DSP size planets then it's really easy to have unique things all over the planet because you only need 4-5 to fill it up. If you want to do the same on KSP sized planets you'd have to have hundreds or even thousands of landmarks to have interesting things come up frequently.