SciMan

Unfortunately, the issue is... in stock KSP2. Nothing that mods do can change it. In fact, I'll quote part of the mod author's posts from previous replies in this thread to answer more completely: Like I said, it's a vanilla KSP2 "not present content" (I hesitate to call it a proper "Game Bug" when it's "missing" because it's "not there (yet)" not because it's "there, but broken"). The issue boils down to this: The code to have an engine consume resources during time warp is in the game, and is (partially, as you've noticed by the rate not depending on the time warp setting) working. However, the code to change a vessel's orbit during on-rails time warp due to applied thrust from engines or other factors, is not yet present (and so it keeps changing, at the X1 time warp rate, because it doesn't consider the time warp setting in the math to change the orbit, which just makes the whole thing not work right).

I'm gonna start off by saying that I haven't read this entire thread, so my apologies if I miss out on some critical details that have been gathered since I stopped reading, but I read a whole page that was mostly "the same stuff" and I have my forum settings showing me the maximum number of posts per page. So IMO this whole discussion has been going in circles, headed nowhere. I think I have the key of what is missing from the science system that is irking some of you. Flavor text, or lore dumps. Text that serves no gameplay purpose (which is why it's not in yet, remember this is the FIRST iteration of the science mode), intended to convey information not critical to any of the gameplay loops in the game currently. That's all that's missing. Just info not critical to the gameplay loops. Heck, I can tell they're going to add that later, because some of the time when you do a science experiment it just spits a raw localization tag at you instead of a "generic you did the thing" message in your language of choice. ...and yet everyone in this thread seems to be eager to judge KSP2's science system by the same standards as the KSP1 science system. Doesn't that seem at least a little bit unfair to KSP2? KSP2 barely learned to crawl, and you're already throwing hurdles and high-jumps at it. My whole point is this: Give it time, this is only the first of many major updates to KSP2. Even the version number of KSP2 tells a story. Version 0.2.x.x. If it was version 0.8.x.x or higher, I'd be right there with you complaining, because there wouldn't be much time left to change it and something would be clearly wrong with the core of the game. But it's not. It's real early in the development of this video game. The fact that we're even able to have anything to play and give feedback to at all is incredible. The gameplay loop itself? I love it. I don't have to click more than once to run all the experiments, I always get the full value of a science experiment, and they always transmit entirely or not at all. Perfection. The only part I don't like about it is a game bug: ALL experiments that take time to complete will pause upon crossing a biome border, even the ones that are very pointedly NOT biome specific (such as orbital lab results). What we have right now with the science system is a FRAMEWORK with a lot of PLACEHOLDER stuff in it. But it's a fantastic skeleton for what is to come. When it gets fleshed out, I don't see any reason we can't have just what people in this thread are looking for, plenty of extra data about the celestial bodies in question, and probably the kind of data that would be useful for planning out where to put colonies on the various celestial bodies as well. You're all correct, all of that is "not in the game". But you're forgetting the operative word. That word is "Yet". As in all of that is "Not in the game.... yet".

The trusses might not be needed "now", but we already have one part that (if the simulations for it were in the game as well) we'd need trusses for. That little 1.25m nuclear reactor part. Notice how it's nuclear. As in radioactive. As in "keep far away from crew" Sometimes you just don't need 20m of fuel tanks, because that reduces your TWR, and you can't use hab modules becuase... well you're trying to keep the crew AWAY from the radioactive thing. Same with the nuclear thermal rocket engines. When the game is more finished, I'm sure we're going to have radiological constraints on where we can safely put parts, almost certainly for crewed parts, but maybe for sensitive electronics like experiments and probe cores too (to a much lesser extent, but you'll still not be putting a probe core right up next to a SWERV, for instance). That's where the trusses are "needed". They keep the atoms that are extremely energetic and begging for a reason to give away their energy (including "no reason", as in radioactive decay) away from the section of the vessel that houses the squishy and "harmed by that much energy" sentient biological entities (the crew). So it's more of a "we will be very glad that these parts are in the game later, when it is more finished" than it is a "why are these parts in the game, they're just dead weight".

OK, you keep saying "heating" but you aren't being specific enough. The ISS exists in the thermosphere, nothing on the ISS explodes or gets red-hot. Things in KSP, at 60-65km... are exploding, or getting red hot. One of these things is not like the other. One of these is measurable physical phenomena that we have observed (IRL thermosphere). The other one (KSP behavior) is a bug, plain and simple. If they WERE trying to model the thermosphere (they're not), it wouldn't be exploding parts, because the devs don't want "Space is hard and you should feel lucky to make something get to orbit", they want "Let's make a fun game that isn't overly punishing for reasons that we aren't even going to explain to the player". What is happening right now is exactly "overly punishing for reasons that the developers haven't even tried to explain" which points me at "this is a bug" not "the devs are clever".

I'm not expecting miracles. I'm not even expecting new features. All I want is a game that doesn't do things that drive me to stop playing it. Right now: Game has a bug where sometimes it will suck all the fuel out of your upper stage for who knows what reason. Makes me not want to play. Game has a bug where if you use ANY engine plates, but especially the 5m ones, your rocket turns into a noodle. Makes me not want to play. Game has a bug where instead of a decoupler detaching the spent stage behind your engine, it'll detach the engine you connected it to from the rest of your rocket (unhelpfully including the spent stage, which remains firmly connected). Makes me not want to play. Game has a bug where if you use any form of landing gear on your craft, and deploy it, your trajectory goes from a nice circular orbit to... well not that. Usually suborbital. Makes me not want to play. I'm sure you get what I'm trying to say. I could probably use up the rest of the character count describing bugs I've encountered that make me not want to play. All I want is for things to work as I expect them to work. Even if that's different from how they work in KSP 1. I want decouplers to decouple the thing they're supposed to decouple. I want fuel flow to go where it's supposed to go. I want engine plates to be some of the strongest parts you can make a rocket out of, not some of the weakest. I want landing gear that don't act like a single-physics-tick kraken drive (even if that means they act like a regular kraken drive). We were supposed to SLAY the Kraken, not LAY the kraken.

I don't think what we got on launch day is even a game that deserves the name "KSP" with any number after it, not even as the next version of KSP 1. Not only is there an incredible amount missing BEYOND what was put in the roadmap as "explicitly not present on release", there's loads of basic functionality missing that nobody ever said wouldn't be in the game (non impulsive burn planner, optimized resource calculations, etc). No. Not only that. Instead, the features we DO have are basically like someone was given a bunch of "shiny graphics" aka 3d models and textures and UI assets, and then given 6 months to assemble some sort of space flight simulator sandbox game out of it. As expected given that particular context, only 10% of the things are working in any way consistently, and it's only the most critical things (UI navigation.... and that's about it, and even then sometimes not even that). What is needed is a ground-up reboot from the beginning again, but you can keep the art assets. Start over, this one's no good. Or if you don't start over, consider doing some basic functionality testing and not letting features out the door if they don't work. And I don't mean "they worked once, that's good, send it". I mean detailed "we tried really hard to break it (we even invited Danny2462 and SWDennis and EJ_SA) and it doesn't break" kind of testing. (EJ breaks things in a way that he gets more functionality out of them than was intended, but the other two break things in the "destroy the universe or divide by zero" kind of way). That kind of testing is what I feel like I'm doing when I fire up KSP 2 right now. But I stopped playing it because I don't feel like I'm even giving feedback that would be relevant to what they might be working on now, because they probably cut off this branch as "release".... right when they announced the release date. It does feel like no useful coding work on basic functionality has been done since then. It's kinda hard to keep playing a game when it's not acting like a game. And KSP 2 is not acting like a game. It's acting like "version 0.001 build 3" of a tech demo that was never intended to be a finished game in the first place. And that just kinda drives a knife into the goodwill I had for Private Division and Take-Two. I don't hold Intercept Games accountable for this. This has "publisher said push it out the door or you get no more money" written all over it, and it's always sad to see a game die like that. Management always thinks it knows how long coding the game is going to take, and is ALWAYS wrong about it (because it always takes longer). Marketing always fails to keep expectations in check. Those are two constants in game development at least at the current time. Knowing those two things, the fate of KSP 2's release should have been known since it was announced. And then the pandemic happened, combined with the transfer from Star Theory to Intercept Games, and it all just got even worse. There was OBVIOUSLY critical knowledge lost during that transfer, and the whole work from home thing just doesn't work when you need to talk to someone face to face to make them understand just how important something is or isn't, or how much you really don't have done but can't say because it makes you look like you're not doing anything useful (those are all problems that can be solved but not easily if you're expected to "look like you're doing something" no matter if you're doing something or not). Point is, either PD or TT Interactive said "Don't care, didn't ask, light this candle or I'm gonna tear it down around your ears" and Star Theory just basically didn't have a choice in the matter but to say "Alright, here's that train wreck you ordered" and that's exactly what we got. We got a train wreck of a game. And that's being generous, because we only got 25% of a locomotive, and 10% of 1 freight car. I already played more than 2 hours, so I'm no longer eligible for a refund. But if I had needed the money I spent on KSP 2 for something else that same day, I would have had ZERO problems asking for a very much deserved refund. IMO they have a lot of nerve charging any money at all for this game in the state it's in right now. But what do I want? I don't want the downfall of Intercept Games, or Take-Two Interactive, or Private Division. No. I want this game to become a case study in how to make a bad release of a game, so that the whole video game industry can finally learn that it's been doing things the wrong, stupid way for over 10 years now (or at least the AAA gaming industry has), and finally start releasing games that are FULL GAMES ON RELEASE again. Day one DLC doesn't matter to me. Neither does day one patches. What matters, is that the game is playable upon release. KSP 2 is not currently in a state I would call playable. I keep playing it for a short time here and there to check if anything's changed, and every time I do that, I encounter some kind of bug (often the same "rocket is too wobbly, build smaller and don't go anywhere other than LKO" bug) that just frustrates me so much I stop playing for at least that day if not more. I don't really mind having the game run at 5 FPS with my RTX 3070 Ti GPU and i7-9700k CPU running at 4.6 Ghz (overclocked from the stock speed of 3.6 Ghz), with my 32 GB of DDR4-3200mhz ram. I can make the game lag that much with a rocket that has only 50 parts. Yes that level of performance is unacceptable, considering that it took over 500 parts to get that level of lag in KSP1, on my previous system that wasn't even close to as good as the one I'm using now. But I've played KSP (and other famously low FPS and/or unoptimized games) for so long that 5 FPS is something I can still play in. Right now I'm looking at KSP 2 like a disappointed father looks at their kid. It's the "I'm not angry, but this is unacceptable, and you need to do better, now take a moment to think about what you've done that got you here" look. I'm sure you know the feelings that look gives you. I know I do. It's true. Given the circumstances, I'm not angry at Intercept Games. But it is undeniable that they need to do better. In fact, once they iron out a lot of the bugs, they need to basically do a second launch campaign for this game, because everyone saw the state the game is in right now and went "Nope, not playing that until it gets better". Like I said, they should only do that 2nd launch campaign once they get it into a state where it's performing adequately and rockets aren't falling apart for no reason or turning into noodles because you used the "wrong" part. Oh and about those noodle rockets: Wobbly rockets need to be exterminated. It's no longer "cute" and "oh lol kerbal" when you have an interplanetary mission to Jool sitting on the pad, you go to launch it, and it folds in half and explodes on the way up. "You just need to use more struts" you say. Guess what, tried that, no change. Well, OK, this time it folded 90 degrees and then exploded. So it bent less, but it still exploded. I've made rockets that have literally half the part count made up by struts and only struts (no other structural parts), and they STILL bend and explode. In fact, sometimes putting more struts on them makes them explode SOONER. There have to be other ways of introducing a structural consideration into the design requirements that don't involve the rocket flexing like it's made of a pool noodle and not SOLID METAL TANKS AND BEAMS AND THINGS THAT GENERALLY DON'T BEND. We don't even have the ability to control what auto-strutting is happening, if there is even any of that happening at all. What ever happened to that Physics LOD thing I was hearing about? That made it sound like it would make rockets LESS wobbly, not more. Another feature that couldn't make it to release day?

And this right here is why the NERV in KSP 1 is as bad as it is. Cut the weight of the NERV by a ton or two, or double the thrust, or both, and then we're talking about an engine worth considering. Why is the NERV so bad in KSP1? Well it's quite simple. Harvester saw the power of the atom, and said "there's no way this thing can be this good.... *edit* and now it's not". He didn't want the NERV to be the "never use anything other than this in orbit" engine that it rightfully should be according to physics (assuming lack of better tech), so they gave it an absurdly low thrust, high dry mass, and made it use ONLY liquid fuel (back when we didn't have properly large fuel tanks for JUST Liquid Fuel, and you couldn't even drain the oxidizer out of regular rocket fuel tanks, meaning the NERV not only was rendered "not overpowered", it was in fact rendered "Why are you using this boat-anchor?", aka worse than the thud was considered for most of KSP1's life. This instead of being the king of interplanetary transfers it was supposed to be. Just goes to show you, don't let a person who thinks they know rockets because they play with firecrackers tell you the specifications of your interplanetary spaceship drive system, because they're basically apples and uranium, not just apples and oranges.

I can attach a craft file to help reproduce this bug, if it helps. I managed to make a rocket that SHOULD be able to put a large lander nearly anywhere in the Kerbol system, but I can't even get it off the ground because the dang "wobbly rockets syndrome" makes it not work. Seems like it happens any time I use the 5m Engine Plate (rocket turns into a noodle, no amount of struts will stop it from being a noodle because that's how Unity joints work apparently, basically this bug would have been hidden if the wobbly rockets wasn't a thing). If I could find out how to extract my craft files from the game, this is where I'd be putting the hyperlink. Just so we're clear, I'm saying that BOTH the "wobbly rockets" AND this bug that I reported need to be done away with entirely. And now for a (for me) short rant on wobbly rockets and what exactly that phenomena is (bug?, feature?, other?, etc.).

I'm not sure if this was put in intentionally, or it's something not working right, but either way this is a horrible way to tell the player that their rocket broke. I'm not given the option to continue my flight, meanwhile all the thrusters on my rocket shut off and the camera freezes in place and my rocket sails off into the distance. So, on my large rockets (over 750 tons launch mass), guess what happens. I reinforce the rocket's core with a mesh of struts placed on short truss segments so that it shouldn't fall apart. And that's where the trouble starts. It shouldn't fall apart right? Wrong, game says "nope this breaks no matter how many struts you add" I've tried adding literally hundreds of struts on the same dang joint that reliably breaks when launching my rocket (not too far into ascent, but after Max Q), and yet.... it just breaks. So, on large rockets (the kind you'd need to build to go interstellar or even interplanetary), the struts are effectively useless. Why are they useless? Well instead of reinforcing the rocket and making it able to take more strain, even with hundreds of struts between two in-line fuel tanks (where the rocket always breaks), the rocket still wobbles just as much as it did with zero struts. And that means the struts break. And that's where the bug comes in. See, whenever any single structural link on the craft fails for any reason other than "part of a staging event, using a decoupler or stack separator (haven't checked docking ports yet)", the game goes "oh no, your rocket must have entirely destroyed itself, leaving nothing behind, so we'll just take away control from you, shut off all the engines (I think, the effects stop anyways), and give you the "you failed, try again?" screen". I'd much prefer it if I could see WHAT EXACTLY HAPPENS WHEN THAT PART FAILS. Does the vessel keep going? and make it to orbit despite losing a few parts on the way up (as is long-time KSP 1 tradition)? Does the single failure cause a cascade of further failures? With the game in its current state, I won't ever be able to tell if that happens, because all the game tells me about is the first failure, and worse than that it actively takes control away from me. Please, never take control away from the player like that unless ALL the control points on the vessel have been destroyed. And if that's the case, check nearby vessels to see if they have usable control points, and switch to the first one of those that is found. EDIT: Oh yeah, I should probably include all the data about my system just so we're all on the same page: Game version: KSP 2 (Steam) version v0.1.0.0.20892 OS: Windows 10, up to date as far as windows update itself is concerned. CPU: Intel Core i7-9700k, stock clock 3.6 Ghz, overclocked to 4.6 Ghz (water cooled, and this CPU has never given me a single hiccup with respect to blue-screens or anything of the sort) GPU: Asus ROG Strix 3070 Ti, 8GB VRAM RAM: 32 GB 3200 MHz G.Skill Ripjaws V DDR 4 (2x 16gb sticks), on XMP timings 3200mhz CAS 14-14-14-34 Drive the game is installed on: Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2TB NVMe M.2 Solid State Drive Expected behavior: When a structural failure happens on a vessel that is not the result of a decoupling event (such as decouplers, stack separators, and docking ports), the game should continue to allow you to control your craft so you can see if you can still get where you were going despite the failure. Observed behavior: When a structural failure happens on a vessel that is not the result of a decoupling event, control of the vessel is lost, the camera freezes in place relative to the world (meaning your vessel goes sailing off-screen), and you are presented with the "try again, revert to VAB, revert to launch or load a save" screen. This is incredibly frustrating when you've spent over an hour designing a craft to get to Jool and are prevented from doing so by the failure of a single strut on the launch vessel (a strut that might not have even been needed). Steps to replicate: Build a rocket as follows: Start with a 5m (XL) probe core, attach a 5m (XL) nosecone on the front of the probe core, and on the rear of the probe core attach one of the longest 5m (XL) methalox fuel tanks. Now stack a tiny truss segment on the bottom node of the fuel tank (second smallest is the easiest one for building purposes), and then another of the longest 5m (XL) methalox tanks. To reinforce this obvious week point in the rocket stack, use 8x symmetry to put struts between the 2 fuel tanks in the gap created by the truss segment. Then on the bottom XL fuel tank, radially attach 4 of the shortest 3.75m (Lg) fuel tanks, near the bottom of the XL fuel tank, followed by attaching a 3.75m nosecone on the front of these radially attached fuel tanks, and a Mammoth II engine on the bottom attach node of these radially attached Lg fuel tanks. Add launch clamps if you think you want them, it shouldn't make a difference. Now it comes time to truly reproduce the bug. Launch the rocket. and I usually a gravity turn at 1750m altitude, and observe as at least one strut breaks despite your best efforts. No matter what structural link fails first, when it fails, you should immediately notice that visually the engines cut off, the camera stops tracking the vessel, and you are immediately presented with the "interesting quote about failures being part of the process" screen that is supposed to happen when you crash a rocket. However, you'll notice that you didn't crash a rocket. You had a single structural failure on the rocket, that was probably able to be recovered from, were it not for the game saying "nope you don't get to control this anymore". The theoretical workaround would be to enable "unbreakable joints" however that would only work if I could open the developer options, which I can not figure out how to do, so there are effectively zero workarounds. And if you consider using cheats to not be a viable workaround, there in fact ARE literally zero workarounds other than "hope you built your craft strong enough without struts", which the game is woefully lacking in information on how to do that (I've been going on info from my KSP 1 play time). No mods installed, as I don't know of any for KSP 2.

If I had not yet upgraded my GPU to what it is now, I'd be in the "waiting to see if I can run it" camp. However, my CPU is an i7-9700k running at 4.6GHz all-core, I have 32GB of DDR4-3200mhz (cl 14-14-14-34, which is better than most 3200mhz ddr4), and I have an RTX 3070 Ti (that I'm pretty sure I bought off a scalper, but I prefer that to the option of giving NewEgg my money). No question that I'll be able to run the game on day 1. And so my plan is to attempt to run the game, on day one. I have other games I can play if that doesn't work out, but I won't be as happy playing those. However, I do have MANY questions about if I'll be able to run the game at native resolution on my 4k 144hz monitor that I just got for Christmas. Actually on second thought, I don't have many questions. I will almost certainly not be able to maintain a reasonable framerate at those resolutions. However 4K gaming is on the rise, and I would be SHOCKED if the game had problems running at 4K other than the obvious framerate issues. If not, I'll still be able to get up to 144 fps at 1080p no problem, and I've played many games like that before. In fact, due to issues with DPI scaling, I run KSP 1 at 1080p, because I already need glasses to see correctly, and I don't like having to look at tiny text in the MechJeb info windows (I've messed with UI scaling both in MechJeb and in KSP's settings, and I haven't been able to fix the tiny text on the Map view orbit info you get when you hover over the AP or Pe or the An/Dn, so I just stick with 1080p where everything's nice and readable). I just hope that this game supports things like DLSS, that way I might be able to run the game at an "internal" resolution of 1080p but then have it DLSS upscale it to 4K to better display on my monitor. KSP 2 would also be a good candidate to use RTX features (for instance to simulate the back-scatter lighting caused by light hitting the terrain first and then being scattered on to the craft, and from there to the camera), but it should be fully fleshed out without the RTX features of course. I sure hope that's not why they require a minimum spec of an RTX 2060.

Just putting this out there, above and beyond what I've already said, the system requirements for a new game are the WORST time to find out that you can't play it. Not being able to afford the game itself is one thing, maybe you can find a friend that will buy it for you. But to expect a friend to buy you a literal $350 video card just so you can play the game, that's asking far and away too much from your friends. Don't treat your friends as a bank, and if you're forced to borrow money from them, pay them back as if your life depended on it. Your life may not in fact depend on it, but your friendship with that friend (and potentially other friends of yours) may very well depend on it. Anyways, back on topic. KSP 2 needs testing with older high-spec GPUs. GTX 1660, GTX 1080, heck even throw a 980 or 970 in there. I personally want to know how this game performs with a GTX 970, because I still have my old PC that had two of those, and if my current GPU ever has a hardware fault I'd like to know I can still play KSP 2 at (much) reduced settings.

I don't think that these system requirements were agreed upon by a group of people that truly had the right information on the market they are trying to sell to. I have a GPU that's better than the minimum by quite a lot, in fact it's near the recommended specs. But MANY do not. Many that make amazing constructions in KSP 1, just don't have a system that can meet that minimum requirement. Not many people have 20xx series cards. Let alone 30xx or 40xx series cards. Why? Simple. Those cards cost a lot of money. Money is the one thing that basically nobody has right now, because we're spending it all trying to pay for food and fuel to keep a car running so we can go get food and get to our jobs. A fancy GPU is in the economic goods category of "luxury goods". Same with a flagship smartphone. Or a VR headset, gold watch, diamond ring, etc. All of it is stuff that you don't technically need to live a happy and healthy life. And right now, people are re-prioritizing their spending to focus on "needs" over "wants", because of the state of the economy and the continuing shortages of things. Additionally a game that needs an RTX 3080 to run at 1440p... isn't by necessity a modern game. Look at New World and what it was doing to 3090 cards (it was melting them) simply because of something like the main menu not having a sane framerate cap on it (so the card would just crank out frames needlessly as fast as it possibly could, and I mean thousands of them per second as the main menu is a simple thing to render, and that's even if you had vsync on which theoretically SHOULD stop that). That and many other things wrong with that game basically killed it and now you never hear anyone talking about it on videos that get lots of views. I don't want that to happen to KSP 2. I think most people would accept it as fact (or a very small logical leap from facts) that the pandemic put a freeze on not just video game development but also the budget people have for upgrading their PC's. That means that even a 2060 makes these system requirements seem a bit... out of touch with reality (and I mean that as in "as out of touch with reality as the head of the now bankrupt PC building company "Artesain builds" was). The reality is that this game isn't being released initially on PS5 and Xbox series S|X. The reality is that most of us are stuck with 5-7+ year old machines, and the GPU shortages didn't matter to the majority of us because none of us could afford those "new but you can't have them because they're sold out" GPUs were still far too expensive even AT MSRP, regardless of whatever the prices had become due to rampant scalping and just high demand but low supply. I'm not coming in here with nothing but complaints tho. I have solutions. Get a system that has a GTX 1080 in it but meets the CPU requirements. And see if it gives good enough performance at 1080p and 1440p. If that doesn't work, bump the resolution down to 900p or even 720p. I started playing KSP on a 900p LCD screen way back when, and those are still very affordable (and you can even get reasonably sized very high refresh rate panels at that resolution for not a lot of money, probably). I have a 4k 144hz monitor. I'm not expecting KSP2 to be able to run at that resolution with just my RTX 3070 Ti. I'm no fool. But even if no optimizations are made, further testing with even lower spec hardware configurations needs to be done simply to prevent people from panicking and swearing that they'll never afford hardware that can reliably play the game. PS5 and XBox Series S|X aren't even "cheap" consoles like the PS4 and XBox One were. People wanted consoles that could game at 4k60 or 1080p120, and they got them. But that makes them cost more. And right now, everyone's counting pennies. So please, test KSP 2 on a few "penny pinching" machines, if only to figure out that no you can't push the requirements any lower. Even if it takes making the game "look like crap", people care more about being able to RUN the game than they care about it looking good. If it has to be degraded to the point that it looks like VANILLA KSP 1, so be it. IMO the name of the game is reducing the cost of that minimum-spec GPU, to the point that someone could feasibly afford it with one week's work at a part time job in the US working federal minimum wage. If you can do that, 99% of the people interested in KSP 2 will likely already have the GPU needed.

I remember seeing something a while back about the terrain for KSP 2. FOUND IT: Yes, it's an unlisted video, yes I found the link on Reddit, but think about it like this. If this is the "test scene for asset review" as the tiny disclaimer subtitle says, why do you think we'd be getting anything less than what's shown? Sure, they'll probably reduce the RESOLUTION of the textures used a little bit to help it run on consoles within the given VRAM limit, but I can't see them toning down the amount of polygons of the surface scatter (not when you're close up anyways, terrain LOD's can load lower res meshes right along side lower res textures, and that's a good thing). But my point is this: Why would they even put that video on YouTube at all if they didn't want to aim for that level of detail in the finished game? And as far as why all those screenshots in the OP looked low-res and similar to KSP 1, well I have an explanation for that as well: The game's not done yet. Specifically, the terrain scatters aren't done for all the planets. On launch, I'd expect they have good high res terrain scatters for (as shown in the video I just linked) Gilly, the Mun, and Pol at the very least. However, we might also get Duna and/or Ike. Remember, the re-do on the Mun's texture and geometry for KSP 1 was one of the last things they put in the game before everyone started working on KSP 2 (and easter eggs hinting at KSP 2). So as far as what I'm expecting from KSP 2's surface scatters, I'm expecting something similar to what you get from Parallax 2's AMAZING physics-enabled surface scatter (if a bit toned down to make it easier to actually navigate the surfaces of the various planets given "normal" wheels and not "wheels made of robotics parts and grip pads" like you seem to need when navigating the terrain you get with Parallax 2). Similar "high visual fidelity and accurate collision modeling" as Parallax 2 at least. Physics-enabled ground scatter for sure (maybe able to be turned off as a difficulty option, but I don't really think we're gonna get that option with how the surface scatter looks). I also remember them doing a video or article where they went into greater detail on how they're making all these "sites of interest" that will cover all the planets (eventually, they might not be all in there on day 1 that we can even play the game in any form). I expect we will have more than enough interesting planets to visit to sate our desire to explore the solar system until they put in the stuff on the next step of the roadmap. I also don't think the roadmap steps will take even 6 months for each one to run its course. Depending on how difficult each roadmap step is (from both a "coding" and an "game art asset creation" point of view, certain roadmap items lean more on one or the other of those pillars), and how much they have ready beforehand for each roadmap step, they could take as little as 3 months to complete a step on the roadmap (so that they can gather adequate feedback from players and testers), or 6+ months (if they don't have much finished on that particular roadmap's goals), but I expect they're working on all of them a little at a time so that they can maintain a coherent gameplay experience. I'm sticking with my estimate that most roadmap steps will take from 3 to 6 months to complete per each goal. OK maybe the first roadmap step gets completed quick because "Yep, it's a game, and it works pretty well and isn't a buggy mess like we feared it might be, so let's move forward" or something like that. But the major point I'm making is that even if the game is a little bit bland when it releases into EA on Feb 24th, I'm sure that as roadmap goals get completed we'll get a more and more complete solar system (and eventually multiple solar systems). Bottom line is, I have no concerns about the level of terrain detail in KSP 2. I'm sure it's gonna be fantastic. And if it's not, well the planets of KSP 2 are supposed to be easier to mod than KSP 1 right? So the mods can fix it (or the mods can get rolled into the base game, just like was done with some select mods in KSP 1).

Right, you seem to have misunderstood my concept. I meant you DO get separate shield parts that perform separate functions. What I meant was that in the VAB parts list, there would only be one "Shielding" part, which would have a lot of customization options on it (procedural options of many kinds), one of those options would be to change it between "Heat Shield", "Debris Shield", and "Radiation Shield". When you select one of those options, the part would (probably drastically) change its appearance to suit its selected function. So it would look like an ablative (or not) heat shield for the Heat Shielding option. It would look like a Whipple Shield for the Debris Shielding option. And it would look like a relatively thick plate of Tungsten for the Radiation Shielding option. Obviously, because the Radiation shielding option is made of Tungsten, it would ALSO make a VERY good heat shield, provided that you ALSO need the radiation shielding in any case (otherwise it's a poor choice because it's so much heavier than a "normal" heat shield). Tungsten is still Tungsten, and Tungsten is widely known as the metal with the highest known melting point (Carbon beats it out, but Carbon is not a metal, so Carbon might be chosen for a non-ablative "just a heat shield" heat shield). When would you need both radiation and heat shielding? Well eventually the game is supposed to be giving us a bunch of high tech sci-fi engines, and one thing I know about high-tech sci-fi engines is that they tend to spew a lot of radiation, so you're gonna need the radiation shield. But hopefully those high tech sci-fi engines include a few that can be used from sea level of Kerbin (or even Eve), and that means you need the radiation shield, you can probably easily get enough delta-V out of the engines to make an SSTO, and that means you need the heat shield so you can land the SSTO again. And if you're asking yourself "Why land the SSTO?", I have an answer. I don't think it's a good idea to be mass-producing these high tech engines that must cost absolutely absurd amounts of money (so much money that KSP 2 isn't even featuring a money mechanic because EVERYTHING is too expensive and making money to support launching them distracts from the core experience), so why would you want to only use them once? It seems incredibly wasteful to just dispose of them after a single mission, and even if money is no object the engines still have a cost in the materials used to construct them so it's still wasteful to only use them once. And you SHOULD be able to move LARGE amounts of cargo to orbit with these high tech sci-fi engines that spew radiation (depending on the size of the radiation shield you need of course). Additionally, with the routine mission automation feature that's eventually going to be put in the game (I forget where specifically on the roadmap that is at the moment, but it doesn't matter for purposes of this discussion), the rate you can fly these SSTO rockets to resupply your very first Orbital VAB that's probably in Kerbin orbit is determined directly by how quickly they can be turned around, re-fueled, get a new payload, moved to the launch pad, and launched again. Meaning you might not need all that many of them to support an impressive rate of resource transfer.

Why don't we save ourselves the extra words and posts on the useless things and just say it's so far down on the priority list that it's right at the core of the planet? Oh right, that's where turning KSP into an MMO is.