hatterson

What's the point of doing *anything* in KSP (1 or 2) once you've done it once? Because doing rocket things is fun. It can be challenging to land 200 tons on Minmus and that alone can be a motivation. If that's not a motivation for you because you've already done it in KSP 1, then I'm not really sure what else to say except that you'll likely be happier just waiting until interstellar stuff comes out so there's something that isn't in KSP 1. Simplified and not tedious are a lot different than magical. There is absolutely nothing positive about a game forcing you to fly an identical mun -> LKO supply mission that you've flown 30 times already just so it's not "magical" Saying to a player "prove you can do this and then we'll automate the monotony of it" is actually an excellent choice for 99.9% of players. If you really want that back, I'm certain someone will make a "resources can only transfer when the player manually flies them around" mod Yea but once I've done one race against other players at the bottom of the Dres canyon what motivation is the game giving me to do more races or race in different places????

1.) 100% completion of in game missions 2.) Building colonies and resources management 3.) Sandbox mode 4.) Mods Obviously 2 and 4 are very limited or non-existent right now, but that's what the roadmap is for. Obviously if the team just said "OK, games done, we'll fix up some bugs and call it good" they'd get (rightly) destroyed for even making a new game that adds nothing to the previous game, but that's not the plan. This update adds the initial bones of the science system that will underly some of the future updates. It also provides a reason, albeit a little thin and contrived, to do certain missions. It also gives you some crazy missions that force you to build some totally unnecessary craft to accomplish. No one ever needs to land a 200 ton thing on Minmus to accomplish current goals. There's absolutely no reason to land more than a single Kerbal on Eve, never mind 10 at once, Space Stations have zero use, etc. but you're prompted to do these things to show you that they can be fun to try even after you're learned your way through the base system. If that's not the motivation you're looking for, then frankly this update isn't really for you, and it seems like you're waiting for a different update and complaining that this one isn't it.

One of the primary and stated goals of this tech tree design is not to overwhelm new players with a million different choices they don't understand. Sure you and I can look at RCS thrusters vs reaction wheels and know the use cases for each. Or we could look at a tech tree that has 4 different types of rocket fuels and the engines to go with them and know what it makes sense to pursue for our goals. But new players or frankly 80% of even experienced players? They would just look at it and not understand a difference between hydrazine, RP-1, and liquid methane. Or they'd build an upper stage full of methane and accidentally attach a kerosene engine to it and then be frustrated when it doesn't work. It feels like you're arguing that the system should have been designed with the experienced/expert players in mind and if new players want to enjoy it well they better git good. That basically goes against what KSP has been from the very beginning, and a design goal of KSP2, which is the fun and wacky rocket simulator that, if you want, you can take way too seriously via mods.

They've stated that things like resource scanners and mapping stuff are planned for the colonies and resources systems. So the plan is absolutely for there to be a reason to do a polar orbit in the future when you're scouting out where to mine or where to place your colony, but currently there isn't a reason to do it.

If you're building craft the way that 99% of KSP players do/will, then actually there's a ton of room for differing paths through the tree. Obviously if you're building mun flyby rockets for your first launch then you're gonna have enough science to just crush the relevant part of the tree but that's not the way that the vast, vast majority of players will interact with the system. No, the missions and discoverables won't be different, but I'm not sure what a science system could possibly do to alleviate that in a static game universe.

I did an Apollo style Duna and Ike mission and didn’t have issues. Fuel stayed normal the entire time, could transfer back and forth, etc Do you have a save from before? Are you able to reproduce it if you load that save and run the mission again?

Perhaps you could lock the "delta-v at X atmosphere height on body Y" behind doing an environmental survey on that body to get at the pressure, but the base delta-v (vacuum) calculations aren't gonna change for a rocket engine. It would make sense to also be unaware if you can use an open cycle engine on a given body unless you've done a survey there. I think a lot of this type of stuff might be added with future milestones like colonies (having to scout planets for various locations). I'd agree in general that a kerbolpedia would be fun to show extra data to the player, but I'm not sure how much you really want to force a player to do advanced science to play the game. The educational/inspirational nature of KSP hasn't been to force the player to actually learn these topis to play, but rather to preset information (like ISP or delta-v calculations), make it fun, and then see if the person playing wants to research that independently. Yes you could prompt them a bit more in game to say "hey all these numbers actually mean something, wanna see what?" but I don't think you want to realistically force them to engage in that if they don't want to.

So you mean something like an environmental survey?

TBH if this is the level you're going to simplify it to, then the entirety of KSP is dumb and pointless. All you're doing is staging and creating a couple maneuver nodes in a marginally different place the entire time. The point of science mode is so that you don't just launch 500 ton landers to Laythe on your first launch. It's fun to build up a program, make decisions on what to pursue, etc.

You're not doing the same thing over and over again though. Especially on lower difficulty (higher science value) settings, the missions flow so you're pretty constantly doing a new mission/going to a new place. You do a short atmospheric/suborbital flight, then an orbital one, then you go to the Mun, then Minmus, then Duna, then Eve/Jool, etc.

That sounds like a great game mode or mod for advanced players. It sounds awful for new players. "You unlocked a new engine, yay!" "What does it do?" "dunno, figure it out I guess" The tech tree/R&D setup is an abstraction of the process of designing and building brand new parts. Part of scientists designing new parts would obviously be understanding the specs of them (at least under known conditions). You could absolutely have a mod/game mode where players play a lot of the "testing" part of that, but that's far more of a thing for an experienced player to do than a new one. Plus that wouldn't actually make it any more interesting/engaging, it would just add a bunch of extra mind numbing steps to actually get to properly use a new part. Yay I unlocked a new engine, guess I'll run my routine set of three test flights that I've run a dozen times before to see what it does.

I think a few easy improvements could be done to the process that would help a lot. These may not all work, but here's some suggestions: Add a "don't flash button/don't collect if experiment has already been done/returned" option, default it to on. It's annoying to have the window flashing at me immediately upon launching a new vessel when I've already launched dozens of crewed vessels. Add a "hide results worth 0 science" filter to the research inventory window Add either a text or dropdown filter to the research inventory window to find things (edit: I just now noticed the filter thing on the top right, so I suppose it's there but it's not super clear) Display the time the experiment was captured Allow sorting by science value, time captured, type, data size, etc. and default by last captured to make it easier to see what just happened. Separate data vs samples in the window Add more silly text and make it more obvious. I assume the text itself if on the long term roadmap, but in general it should be easier to see it, especially when you're just starting. It's really easy to miss that each experiment has some text about it

As @EchoNovemberDelterreferenced, the follow up contract (BIG 'N HUSKY) which you can get before completing this one FWIW), says to go land 300 tons on Duna (100 more) and references that additional number both as numerals (300 tons) and text (one hundred tons of additional mass) so likely wasn't a fat fingered issue. "We delighted you with our LIL CHONKER vehicle, but 200 tons to Minmus is kid stuff. Now it's time to hit that growth spurt with the BIG 'N HUSKY, one hundred tons of additional mass for all your Duna exploration needs!" That one offers a more reasonable 2400 science, but that's still fairly low considering the mass of the vehicle. In general these two missions (any maybe more beyond?) seem to be a "this is a ridiculous request" type setup/mission, and in general it's fine to have those types of missions, but it should be more clearly communicated to the player via mission description by having the description say something like "This missing is ridiculous, can you believe we're being asked to do this? And for such a puny reward?" that way it's clearly communicated to the player that this is more of a "lol why not be silly" mission instead of real mission to complete. The fact that LIL CHONKER is available when you have relatively few missions unlocked also makes it important to communicate that this is a bit crazy since players will have far more inclination to do an "optional" mission when it's one of only 2 or 3 they have.

I had this occur on my save as well. Panels were fine outside of Jool SoI but as soon as I got within the SoI they said they were blocked. Time warped further in system and somewhere around 500,000 km away from Jool they magically started working again. After they started working in Jool SoI they seemed to keep working in Jool SoI even if I let my encounter pass and ended up really far away again Upon entering Tylo SoI they occluded again until I was about 2600km from Tylo. The rest of the SoI changes I had on that mission (Tylo -> Jool -> Vall -> Jool -> Tylo -> Jool -> Laythe -> Jool -> Jool high atmosphere -> Jool orbit worked fine. I had tried quick save/load, full save/load and full reboots of the game but would always get panels blocked when entering Jool first time and Tylo first time. I have a zipped save file from shortly before the Jool SoI change if it's proving difficult to reproduce.

Edit: From forum

Err, I was thinking of a different part, the probe core. Either way the concept works if you launch the command pod first and EVA off the launch pad, then launch the rover and walk back up to it.

I've found it easiest to simply launch the rover, drive it off the lauchpad, then launch a command pod, eva, and walk over to the rover. My solution to this is to basically duplicate the docking ports. The part hard attached to the module is a construction port, but then attached to that is another normal docking port. Yes it adds some more parts and loses a bit of stability, but it gives you the ability to dock to it normally and when you want to construct things you just remove the doubled port and deconstruct it in space (getting some materials back). Yes the construction port and docking port are back to back (which makes the editor say it's an error, but who cares).

Definitely looks like something I'll have to give a go. Would it be possible to include a few more screenshots in the OP (specifically of the tech tree and some of the new parts)?

It shows because Minimus (along with all other planets/moons) are actually rotating. When you're sitting on the surface you're "orbiting" minimus at roughly 9.5m/s as that is your speed relative to the center of the planet. If you're trying to land, what you need to do is click on the blue box that has Orbit in it. That will switch the velocity mode to "Surface" That will give you your speed relative to the surface below you, which will exclude the default 10m/s that Minimus spins at. You can see a similar thing on Kerbin when launching a new ship by clicking on the same blue box (it should say surface when launching). It will go from "Surface 0m/s" to "Orbit 175m/s" because when you're on the surface of Kerbin you're moving at roughly 175m/s Let me know if you have other questions on how that works.

If a modder wishes to take a finite system and use it in an infinite manner, shouldn't it be their responsibility to implement a way to expand that system? I'm not at all opposed to a system like this where a science lab is used to do actual research as opposed to simply increasing transmit value, but making the science system infinite seems to be a solution in search of a problem, especially given that it already was infinite via asteroids, contracts, and strategies.

One thing that's helped me in the past is adding -force-opengl as a parameter to my KSP shortcut. Dramatically cuts down on memory usage and I haven't seen any change in performance (although admittedly I haven't rigorously tested it, just haven't noticed anything while normally playing). .25 was the last time I went really crazy with modded installs and adding that parameter turned my memory usage from ~3.6gb down to 2.1gb. On my less modded .90 install it makes the difference between 2.15gb to 1.15gb

I added a comment on one of the enhancements, but am copying it here for discussion. If you move down the road of a tech tree, and to avoid duplicating a UI/hassle with a UI, does it make sense to integrate it into the stock tech tree system? Potentially making use of TechManager and/or TED - KSP Tech Tree Editor. Specifically thinking of something like anonish describes in this post where you could have the KCT tree be and addon to the rest of the overall tech tree. That would require you to progress a certain to certain milestones before various VAB/SPH upgrades can be unlocked.

I'd say there's two options 1.) Only 1 happens at a time. Reconditioning has to be completed prior to rollout. 2.) Both happen at once, but you can only complete a certain percentage of rollout prior to reconditioning being complete. Part of the rollout time is literally that, rollout. Physically moving the craft from where ever it is hangered to the pad. Then the next part of rollout would be putting it onto the pad and fueling it up. Clearly you could complete most of the first part of the rollout (from storage to beside the pad) regardless of what shape the pad is in but it's pretty hard to plop down a 75ton rocket on top of a maintenance worked who is laying some new metal grate. Implementation may be to have half (or any other percentage) of the rollout able to be completed simultaneously with reconditioning, but the rest of it has to wait. Obviously #2 is more work from a development perspective, but perhaps you could solve it internally by having two 'build queues' for the launch pad. The first handles reconditioning and fueling in a first come first serve method, the second handles 'rollout' Ships have X bp of rollout, and Y bp of fueling. When they're done with the first queue they're moved to the second. If you implement option 1 above, IMO, you should have to spend time to rollback a vessel (perhaps just count the percentage back to zero at the same rate it was counting up) and then rollout the next one. If you implement option 2 above, you should be able to roll out the second second one while the first is defueling or being rolled back (pretend you have multiple movers), but again, only 1 vessel would be able to use the 'recondition and fuel' queue at a time. Lets take 2 vessels as an example. Vessel 1 takes 10 minutes to roll out and 10 minutes to fuel. Vessel 2 takes 3 minutes to roll out and 8 to fuel. You choose to launch vessel one and send it through the system, but when you go to launch you realize that you need vessel 2 in orbit first (maybe it's a com satellite that's needed for the first). At that point you choose to swap the vessels. Vessel 1 begins to unfuel, taking 10 minutes to do so. Vessel 2 begins to be towed out, taking 3 minutes to reach the pad. At that point there's still 7 minutes left of unfueling for Vessel 1 so it simply sits there and waits. Vessel 1 finally finishes unfueling and starts being towed back to storage while Vessel 2 is loaded onto the launchpad and begins fueling. 8 minutes later Vessel 2 is fully fueled. Here, you could either launch, or be forced to wait an additional 2 minutes for Vessel 1 to finish its rollback (under the guise of safety, and not having 2 things at once). Because Vessel 1 was occupying the pad the full rollout (from storage to fueled) for Vessel takes a total of 3 + 7 + 8 (+2) = 18(+2) minutes instead of the base 11 so it gives you some 'punishment' for not planning, but it's not adding a full additional 20 minutes that it would take to store Vessel 1.

That's actually not that crazy from a realism perspective. A kerbal (or human) weighs an awful lot less than a command pod. Any old helicopter can fly out and pick up a kerbal or three and the few pounds of surface samples they have, but it takes a major operation to recover a 3 ton command pod. Sure you could send out one craft to do both, but if the goal is just "hey get out there and pick up Bill" there's no reason to send the behemoth lifter and all it's winches and crew out to the site, just send the cheap little copter and pick them up

Will there be a way to delay recovering stages? Generally I have the funds rewards for things cranked way down, which means I wouldn't want to "waste" money on recovering a part until I actually need it. Or I may not even have the money to recover a stage if it's part of the launch of a mun exploration mission. I may have to wait until my Mun explorer returns to have money to do anything more.