twich22

I like to build big ships. This means I spend countless hours in the VAB meticulously placing parts just right so that the ship is flightworthy. It requires a fair amount of precision in order to ensure the vessel flies straight and has balanced physics, as well as to ensure that the vessel is structurally sound and will not tear itself apart during flight. So during these hours long builds, anything in the VAB that makes my life difficult, or worse, forces me to revert to a previous saved version of my vessel, is something that makes the game less fun. So, here are the issues that I have noticed in the VAB: -The green outline of parts actually obscures the edges of the parts you are trying to align. So if I want to perfectly align the edge of a part with another part, I cannot actually see the edges of the part i am placing due to this large green outline that is overlapping with the edge of my part. Not good. -Parts manager is extremely slow on larger vessels. Parts manager is opened with the right mouse button when hovering over a part. in the VAB, the right mouse button is also the camera control. This is not a good combination. Often the parts manager is accidentally opened when trying to move your camera in the VAB. This is extremely annoying. Might take a few seconds to open it then you have to close it again. Whats worse, this can sometimes happen when you are attempting to place a part. This should not be possible but it is. -VAB too small. The VAB is rectangular. 2 of the sides of the VAB are nice and long, which is fine. However, the other 2 sides are narrow. This is a problem as when you rotate your camera in these directions there is not enough room and your camera ends up all wonky and you cant really meneuver it properly or see what you are doing. So you are limited to only 2 angles of vision for the most part instead of 4. - There should not be any UI elements floating in space in the VAB unless you toggle them on or somehow choose to have them pop up. Imagine you are trying to place a part, but there are a bunch of floating UI elements around your vessel. These UI elements do something, I am really not sure what though, as I have never needed to use them. Toggle shroud? or change colors? Or in some other way alter parts. These UI elements also like to follow your mouse cursor. Sometimes they appear over your mouse cursor when its hovering near a part. Now, imagine you are dragging a part towards your vessel and you want to place it. But unfortunately a UI element has appeared over your mouse cursor, and now instead of placing your part, you are now attempting to open some unknown UI interface. Not good. Now you have to reorient your camera to try to find an angle so that the UI element is not over your mouse cursor while trying to place the part. - The "rotate" and "translate" part function UI is crap, no offense. First, it should probably be split up between rotation and translation into 2 different UI's. Having 6 different arrows which all look relatively similar jammed into a small space which also happens to be near an assembly of parts all of which are clickable is a recipie for bad things. Second, they are not easy to click. Sometimes you think you clicked it but you didnt. For some reason the edges of the arrows in the UI are not exact. They should be changed to something much more defined and easier to identify when you have actually engaged the UI and when you have not. 3rd, because the UI is overlaying other things that are clickable, you might accidentaly click something behind the UI instead of the UI itself. 4th, there is no UI element that helps you get a sense of direction/orientation/angulation. Its hard to tell if your part has been rotated to the appropriate amount to align properly with ground/assembly/other part. 5th, it might be easier to have the rotation keys be in a separate UI window instead of as a floating UI. This would make them more reliable in terms of location and orientation, as well as prevent them from having anything else around them that you might accidentally click. However they can work as floating UI as well. - It can be difficult to get your part to attach where you want it to. Because attachment nodes are "sticky/grabby", any time you are trying to place a part near any attachment node, it will jump to attach to the attachment node regardless of whether or not that is where you want to place the part. The opposite can also sometimes be true. If you have an attachment node surrounded by other parts, it can sometimes be challenging to get a part to attach to that node, as it instead wants to attach to surrounding parts. There should be a way to exclude either attachment nodes or other parts from the possible sites of attachment at will. I think a simply key to either toggle on/off each function, or a key that you can hold, is the best option. For example, 3 different toggleable states: one for attaching to both attachment nodes as well as sides of parts, one for attaching to only attachment nodes, and one for attaching to only the sides of parts. This will allow for the player to be much more precise when building craft without having to find ways to work around these limitations. - Symmetry modes and mirror modes can be further refined to be based on vessel or individual part. For example, maybe I want 6x symmetry around a specific part that has already been placed on an assembly using 4x radial symmetry mode, or maybe I want to add 2x mirrored symmetry to a 4 x radial symmetry vessel. Separating out symmetry modes further into part based or assembly based symmetry mode might be a good feature to add at some point. I know there are probably significant challenges/limitations with this but if its possible it would be nice. - It was nice to be able to save an assembly without having to make an entire new or separate workspace for that assembly. For example if you have 2 assemblys on the same workspace but only want to save 1 of them, or want to save each assembly separately so you can later merge. Right now I dont think there is a way to do this. Instead you have to save both assmblys together, then delete 1 assembly and save the other assembly under a different name, then revert back to the 2 assmblys and delete the other assembly and save a 3rd time under a 3rd name. Not very user friendly. - The save function is cumbersome and confusing. Its not clear what the difference is between workspace name and vessel name. These names also seem to change sometimes. Sometimes vessel name is displayed, and sometimes workspace name is displayed. So depending on whether you changed the workspace name or vessel name or not, you might not be able to tell the difference between 2 different workspaces because they have the same vessel name and that is what is being displayed. If there is no real functionality between these 2, then just get rid of the redundancy. Otherwise, change it to make it uniform and much more clearly distinguish the difference between workspace name and vessel name. For example, workspace name is ALWAYS the name displayed, except in cases of X,Y,Z... We dont need to have 2 names all the time it gets very confusing and overwhelming very quickly. - save function is also a bit cumbersome at times. I dont want to have to click 3 times every time I want to save as well as have an interface pop up. One way to fix this would be to add toggleable options to the save UI so that clicking "save" in the VAB will simply save the vessel. You can add toggleable options to automatically override the warning that you are saving over a previously saved vessel. Best option of all, add a toggle that will force the game to automatically add, incrementally, a number to the end of a vessel when you press the save button. So Vessel becomes vessel 1 becomes vessel 2 becomes vessel 3. Or vessel 1 becomes vessel 1.1 becomes vessel 1.2.... etc. This way, you can save a ship with one press of the save button, you dont need to open any UI or click anything extra, and you dont have to worry about overriding a previously saved vessel because each save is a new vessel name (unless for some reason you already have something with the name Vessel 1.2) Ive got to go for now but ill post more later, probably to a new thread, when I think of more stuff.

The walls and ceiling of the VAB sometime act as attachment points for parts in the VAB, especially as you get higher up towards the ceiling. This might break your ship.

Take an adjustable tube. Attach parts to either end. Now open the parts manager and adjust the length of the tube. You will find that the part attached to the "end" of the tube translates laterally instead of vertically along the same axis that the tube is elongating on.

Struts are incredibly finicky and often broken. I am not sure if these are all separate bugs or all variations of the same bug so I will post them all here together. They often do not work with symmetry mode. For example, build a simply craft with symmetry mode on. attach 4 x parts to the side of the craft in symmetry mode. Now take the whole assembly and flip it upside down. Now add a new part to the new top of the assembly (previous bottom). Now, in 4x symmetry mode, try to place struts from the new part you just placed to the 4 radially attached parts. You will find that the struts are not attaching symmetrically but rather are mismatching to different parts. You might also find that you have more than 4 new struts. They will often break and lose their attachments, leaving behind only the attachment nodes without the connection between them. This can be true when: Using the "undo" function in the VAB, deleting struts that you had previously placed, copying assemblys, and merging assemblys. Merging craft with struts on them might change the 'destination' nodes for all the struts on the merged craft. For example, if you have a assembly with 4 x radially attached fuel tanks and struts attached in 4x symmetry mode to these fuel tanks, and then you merge this assembly into another craft and place it, and then merge the same assembly AGAIN and place it elsewhere on the craft, you will find either immediately or as soon as you launch that all struts are now attaching to the first merged version of the assembly regardless of distance between the two attachment nodes. Struts might disappear/break/move when you move an entire assembly. These are the most egregious examples. Im sure there are others I have forgotten.

Any part that is attached to another part might change its rotation when trying to attach one assembly to a separate assembly. This is especially true if the assembly has been rotated or inverted, or if an individual part has been rotated or changed from its original orientation. For example, place a large fuel tank and then place a docking port on it. Then rotate the docking port 90 degrees. Now take the whole assembly and drag it across a separate assembly a few times. You will likely see that the docking port has reset its orientation or changed its orientation to something new. Whats more, If you had symmetry mode on, and had multiple of the same assembly, you might find that only SOME of the docking ports had changed orientation while others remained the same, even though they should be perfectly identical.

In the VAB, if you adjust the fuel level of a fuel tank, then copy that tank, the copied tank will have a full fuel level instead of the adjusted fuel level.

Thats a nice ship!

Interesting.

Nah. Now I have something to look forward to every few weeks as they release new content. It will be great. Just wait for a few patches until things are optimized a bit. It will get there. Id like to see that when you finally get it up there!

agree. Considering how often game crashes and must be restarted, its annoying having to sit through 10-20 seconds of messages before the game starts loading. Save that for full release if you really must.

Patch 1. I launched a large craft into orbit. After that I was unable to Load any vessels onto the launchpad from the VAB. It would freeze on the loading screen and I would have to restart. This occured even with new campaigns. I fixed the issue by wiping all my game files and doing a clean install. I uploaded the corrupt game folder. I obviously dont know where the issue lies. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/15fl-yF_7ZviPj1RKF47FoGdDzW6keWYz?usp=sharing Recreate the error by going into VAB, Creating a ship with some XL fuel tanks, and trying to load on to the launch pad. I was able to load onto the launch pad by placing just a probe core and launchign the vessle but larger vehicles would get stuck on the loading screen.

Patch 1 seems to be a step in the right direction. Still a long way to go but just take things one at a time and we will get there eventually! I am most looking forward to performance improvement. It took me probably 2 hours to get this rocket from the ground up to 70km. But it made it in one piece! Next time im going to try with a lot less struts to see if it performs much better or if its all due to the number of engines. Once I cut the engines it moves much faster but hard to cut engines while trying to escape from the soup! The only real issue is that while loading the craft into existence on the runway, the shock physics will tear the ship apart. The engines will just fall off. I could have built a more stable launcher to prevent it but I just opted to turn on unbreakable joints/unbreakable parts when loading onto the landing pad and then turn it back off again before launching. Also, I had no reaction wheels on the ship, except maybe 1 in the probe core. Cant wait to see what else I can get into orbit.

I’m thinking it will take at least 2 patches for me to be able to start enjoying it. We will see.

Yea struts are really buggy. You can’t have struts or fuel lines on merged craft or else you get the bug that you have in your screenshot. They all decide to attach to the first ‘root’ merged vessel. If you are implying that struts are not intended for larger craft due to the length limitations, there are solutions for that. You can build extensions using the girders or other building material so that you can connect pieces that are farther away via struts. This was the same in KSP 1. However as you suggest struts are very bugged and break your craft easily if you are not very careful when placing them.

Thank you! We appreciate you and support you 100%! I am glad you are taking immediate action to improve performance by removing excess baggage. The long game is important but right now we need some quick fixes to get us into orbit!

My action keys were working for a while and then stopped working and I havnt been able to get them to work again. Maybe it has to do with numlock or something.

The thing I found that was useful was that it seems like attaching large tanks together radially is an extremely weak connection. The tanks will fall apart immediately, its basically as if they are not connected together at all. So I was using radial attachment points and the main nodes of tanks to provide a much stronger connection. The alternative is lots of struts like you did. The problem with mine was I couldnt get it to flight straight after getting up to speed. Probably too top heavy. It would probably fly straighter if I put the payload on the bottom and 'pulled' the ship up into orbit. Thats what I used to do way back in the old old KSP 1 days when flying a top heavy ship through soup was just not very easy. I would put the lifting engines up, vertically, above the payload, or at least much closer to it, so that it was no longer top heavy. But honestly, I just got sick of all the bugs and all the loading screens, plus my GPU is not strong enough so it takes me forever to launch a vessel into orbit. In the end I just spent too much time doing things besides enjoying the game so I gave up on it and decided to wait until the next patch to play any more.

Very nice, well done. I spent 3 days trying to build a stable ship of similar size and was unable to make it work. Im glad at least one person was able to figure it out. The biggest I made was 24 engines. That one worked fairly quickly. The one that took 3 days, seen below, was roughly the same size as yours, 36 engines. I could get it to launch and get it flying to mid kerbin altitude but would always lose control of it because of SAS bugs and such. eventually I gave up on it and stopped playing the game. I think I could have gotten it to orbit if I really wanted to.

Assuming this statement is true and accurate, right now they have every intention of completing KSP 2 as intended. The only question is are they actually capable of doing so. Given that KSP 1 already provides proof of concept, at least for the basics of the game, and also a template they can build on, and given that they have invested so much time already solving the new challenges of KSP 2 like interstellar and multiplayer, I think its a fair assumption to say that it will be technologically possible for them to complete KSP 2 as intended. If that is true, the mystery left is, how long will the process take? The first drop should give us a good indication of the speed with which they are capable of changing things and making improvements. It will give us a benchmark with which we should be able to estimate how long it will take for the game to reach a 1.0 build. Of course, that also all depends on how ready all the new features are like colonies and multiplayer and resources. Presumably these all have already been worked out and developed, and are just waiting for a stable base game to then be added in and optimized.

You are right, for the most part. Except this game doesnt need to be in EA right now. Its still got very obvious completely broken aspects to it, fundamental aspects that you would expect this game to not have be broken at this stage of development. So the reason everyone is upset, and the question we want answered, is why did they release it when they knew just how poor of a state the game was in. Did they just want us to bug test it and give them feedback so they could fix it? If so, how were they so unaware of the problems with core foundational aspects of their game? And why not be upfront about it. The buildup to this game was obviously designed to attract as many people as possible. Why would they do that when they knew this was going to be the response? Did they not know about the problems with their own game? If so, very concerning. Did they need money? If so, why not do this in a much better way that didnt end up liquiding off the entire community. Many of us were there for KSP 1 early access. We have no problem with it, so long as we know what we are signing up for and what the expectations are. Expectations did not come close to reality. Maybe it was just really bad PR. but dont set expectations you have no intention of meeting. Were they forced to release by the publisher (if thats how these sort of things work i dont know). If so, why, and what went wrong, and how were they not prepared for this anyways since they must have known this day was coming. Ultimately, there are just a lot of questions and not a lot of answers. While many of us are well aware of the game development process from an early access standpoint and are confident that one day the game will be in a playable state, we are still confused and concerned about how this release has gone so far. I think it is extremely fair for the community to react the way it has and be concerned for the future of a game they love so much and want to see succeed so much.

While all your points are valid, it doesn't excuse the fact that they released this game in this state at full price or nearly full price. There are two possible scenarios that I can think of: 1. They knew what a poor state the game was in and decided to release it at near full price anyways in an 'early access' status. Now, why they would do this is a bit more complicated and unknown. Pushing the game out forces the development of the game to go from pre-release to post-release, and forces any hidden issues into the light of day. KSP 1 was pretty much entirely developed post-release once the core of the game was stable (pre-1.0 build), so it makes sense that KSP 2 could be done the same way. It provides free game testers and all important feedback to fix their problems. However, there is also the possibility of financial issues and a money grab. KSP has a niche but devoted user base. They knew that we would buy the game regardless of the state of it. So its possible that they chose to exploit the user base for some cash. Why they needed that cash so bad I dont know. But as you said, this game took much longer than it was supposed to, for many different reasons, which all means that it cost much more than they expected to make it. 2. They DIDNT know that a poor state the game was in. I cant decided if this scenario would be better or worse. On the one hand, now that they are aware, they could divert their resources to fixing all the problems that they were somehow unaware of. However it would also indicate extreme ignorance and point to serious flaws in the company that might or might not be easily or quickly fixed. I cant really imagine that this is the case. Which means they must have known what they were releasing to the world. But maybe they just didnt.

have you bought the game yet?

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.

How do I become an offsite tester.

The good news is now that all the people who don't really care about the game or are not hardcore about it and dont want to be involved in its development or werent involved in the development of KSP 1 are out of the picture, the voices of those who actually care about the development of the game and know what they are talking about will not be drowned out by the useless masses. So im totally okay with it for now since the game is in such a bad state anyways and really needs appropriate prioritization of resources to get it to a playable state in a relatively short period of time.