nikokespprfan

Also, positing that something low on the realism spectrum is somewhat realistic paves the way for me to posit that all the stuff you mentioned is high on the realism spectrum is actually somewhat unrealistic. We need the scale for ICF fusion, but who says that that scale must somehow be attainable. This is not my point, that would be childish. But what kind of speculation do we allow. Where do we draw the line of magicness? When it comes to all drive that don't currently exist (maybe with exception to orion, and nuclear-electric, which have political reasons against nukes in space.), all of it is grey area. What are we willing to accept. If it is indeed true that they want the metallic drive to transition to the even better drives, then I'm fine with that, even though it is a little out there.

I envy you. I live in the netherlands, there is just too much light pollution. I realize I implied that no one ever sees the milky way, which I didn't mean. I just meant that there are plenty of reasons not to see the milky way.

But still, have you ever seen the milky way, I've never seen the milky way, and tried it at the telescope park at La Palma when I was there. And that was at night. During the day, which also happens sometimes, you'll be hard-pressed to see any stars at all. All of this, even though I know that the sky is seeded with stars of the milky way. A variable skybox would still matter, even if you posit that eyes, not camera's, are seeing them.

Besides, by virtue of things being near-future technoloy, you cannt know (let me know if I'm wrong about this) if it will ever work. Take a fairly sized collection of near-future drives, such as the one in KSP2, all of which have a chance of not aging well in this way, what are the chances that any signle one of them would not age well in this way. It's drastically higher chances. Since any ne of the drives turning out to be unreal will lead to you claiming the team failed their quest, it seems an inherently bad idea to even pursue near-future drives. If they did, then people would recognize this logic and worry that some of the drives were going to be magic oooohhhhhhhhh.... negative mass is very sketchy, PBS spacetime predicted many perpetual motion machines when using it, and that frankly gives me any reason to be highly skeptical of it.

metallic hydrogen" --The entire thread Here is an exerpt from a dev interview I translated this morning. It is English, voiced over in German, and then translated back to English. (G's why can't they just use subtitles, why does everyone need to be so proud of their language to insist on voicing it over </frustration>). Interviewer: Can you take a closer look at new vehicle components and perhaps also new drive systems and the like? Nate: Actually, we have an expert in drive systems. His name is Dr Uri Shumlak from the University of Washington. And honestly you know, well I take all the blame on my own shoulders if these propulsion systems in any form should not be as 100 percent of the real target. We have done our best to ensure that these machines remain rooted in real science, even if we are only telling a story. Since I've never seen a functioning rocket with metallic hydrogen as a propulsion system at this time, of course, I can not guarantee that the same rocket in our game in any future will somehow still have something to do with real existing rockets of this kind , Let's stay with the metallic hydrogen technology. The point is that the metallic hydrogen actually remains stable at normal room temperature. Such a substance was only produced in the laboratory a few years ago, so this is a brand new technology. But the fact that they have been able to make a little bit of this material is enough for us to use it as a possible fuel for our Kerbal rockets. With such a fuel you could namely develop rockets that can exert twice as much thrust as conventional chemical rockets. Unfortunately, this material burns at 6000 degrees Kelvin, which causes almost any matter to melt immediately. Therefore, a major challenge is to dilute the Mettalic hydrogen so that the temperatures are not quite as high. By the way, some of the vehicles in the trailer, especially at the beginning, the Lunar Lander Module, have exactly that drive, namely a vacuum-certified metal hydrogen propulsion system. Well this is just the first advanced technology that you get after the normal liquid fuel rockets so there is really something you can still discover. We will certainly be able to talk more about this at another time. https://youtu.be/ftLT_puDtxo

I personally think that KSP2 will miss not having multitask tools/features and automated recurring missions. It allows you do complex missions, divert attention, and avoid micromanagment. Factorio for example has a system where you can play at every level of complexity, and when things get too big to handle by hand, that's where automation comes in. The result is that people can do amazing things in factorio. Now KSP is not factorio, but these tools could help tremendously. You could have mission control go from 1 person employed (linear missions) to multiple people employed (negative time warp for X people at a time) to an entire team being employed (automated missions). Kerbal alarm system is necessary.

I personally hope this is one of those issues that simply does not get recreated in the process of rebuilding the game.

I asked for any feature, not necessarily new features. Features already in the game where fine too. But that is me rumbling about things. Moving on. understandable points made in the entire post. My experience is actually that the implementation of these added features is a quite nice balance between leaving stuff out and going one station too far on thye complexity train. Then again, my view on KSP is in between "making ships and fly them places" and "lets fail and learn from it". It has to be simplyfied, and I find it tends to be without getting too complex, and without losing the essence, but that is just my taste. Ahem, read his post. his post clearly states how this can both be true: There you have it. So may I please ask you to heed the following:

+1 on variable skybox brightness

Here is the german transcript stolen and edited from the subtitles and here is the english translation, edited for clarity.

I personally like the layout of the UI, but not that it doesn't have boxes around it. This is because it combines the visual complexity of the scene with the visual complexity of the UI outlines, while what I really want to be focussing on is the information on the UI itself. Sure the UI gets in the way sometimes, but what is the use of Seeing a little more down if you have complex UI shapes in the way anyway, I just don't see how that makes things better.

@Geschosskopf I'm trying to understand your opinion in good faith. As to do this, I am going to make a few guesses. please don't get mad at me for guessing wrong. What would you consider a gameplay-feature that adds complexity to your mission, that actually adds valueable gameplay. Say: the fact that in KSP 1, you have to launch a spacecraft from the KSC? After all, this means you have to radically redesign your ship in order to even get it to orbit. That is not a minor feature, it is a serious hindrance, a serious problem, one you can overcome, but not with great ease, and definitely not with just slapping on new parts. (although one can always argue that you just slap on more boosters, but hey, you get what I mean,) And of course there could be the nuance here that this doesn't mean it is vital, as being able to earn offworld launch sites is something to shoot for, something to earn, which might or might not add gameplay on it's own. Vitality is not what I'm arguing, just whether or not this is a feature that would qualify as useful in your book. if yes, I suppose that you don't like the trend of KSP becoming increasingly more complex via small-ish features, but that none of these features are actually gamechanging enough to find it interesting to spend time to deal with them over and over. if no, I suppose you come to the game to fly around self-build ships in a cool solar system without being told that reality is more complicated and your frist design doesn't work. Like an annoying brother/sister not being able to suspend disbelief in a movie that you are enjoying, you don't want to be told that this little *eyeroll* complication would make this not function in real life. Either this, or your principle is to advocate for KSP being such a game for others. if none of the above, what would be a feature you think adds valuable gameplay. oh, sorry. you already explained it my bad. "It's build rockets and go places." That is the core of the situation, then, since those damn "realism guys" see KSP in a different light: namely "lets fail our way to learning how to build something that actually will do the epic space stuff that I want it to do."

something new is said, too tired and too dutch to translate right now. Stuff about life support and next-gen engines

well played

Now that would be cool.

ignore this post

now you say it, I think you are right, this would be very well suited for a DLC .... Well damn, it is strategic as well. Every feature we know the game to have with regards to colony building is in the vein of what I described, no bad stuffs there, and anyone who complains that Life support shouldn't be in the game is satisfied because a DLC is not necessary to have, there you have a very hot community issue resolved. well, the point is mainly to tell the game that the directed transfer of materials, crafts and kerbals just happens. The rest is for aesethic purposes, and making your colony feel alive. It's not really necessary, but a very nice to have.

What about the entire "you are using radiating nukes near civilisation" -issue. You are worrying about cost why is it not so simple? because things are never that simple. Ahhh, the complexity of real life....

Good luck!

I personally think Life support is a necessary part of setting up colonies. I'm not for LS for all missions, just for colonies and motherships and bases. So here is my outline for my favorite form of lifesuopport: Hibernating Stable-State (HSS) Life support Life support is not needed or implied in small missions. It only becomes inportant for bases, colonizing vessels and ships that otherwise have lots of kerbals. A base can be brought in a stable state so the player can divert attention. (This seems to be what the devs want too) One stable state is hibernation. It happens when kerbals are denied Life support. Kerbals don't consume during hibernation, but the base loses it's lab/factory/luanch site abilities due to lack of wake personell. Kerbals only die in hibernation when electricity is then additionally cut short. Since every base of LS-mattering size should have power gen on board for other things, and because a shut down base doesn't spend it on anything else, this does not happen very often. The other stable state is self-sufficiency. The goal for a player is to get a base self suffient, then once reached he can divert attention. A player can play resource gathering/restocking mission to achieve said goal. The player can then request those missions to be launched regularly without his supervision, to avoid micromanaging. The game will simply be replaying your actions. The above fact is fun because it means that kerbals continue to make the same stupid mistakes you did every time, and yet always they succeed in their goal because you did. It's derpyness too successfull to find annoying. Then there are the resources to keep them alive Snacks, noms or food: kerbals hibernate when denied Juice, soda or drinks: kerbals hibernate when denied Air: kerbals hibernate when denied Poopsies: A harmless mountain of them builds up outside the base when not dealt with properly. There are resources to keep the base operational building materials: cannot build crafts without this all necessary fuels: cannot build crafts without this electricity: cannot build crafts, cannot operate laboratories, cannot process raw materials and cannot sustain hibernation without this. The game monitors self-suffiency because it is needed for that milestone system the devs have been talking about, so you, dear player, will be in the know of all of this. TL:DR there is a game loop where you try to make a base self-sufficient, including missions in order to get that to work, once succeded, you can divert attention. Additionally there are safeguards against neglect causing death in the form of hibernation. Bring the base food and it will wake from its slumber. In conclusion: you have to really mess up to kill the kerbals by Life Support. You'd almost need to try.

I like your thinking, but good luck keeping your aim to the other vessel while moving at those speeds. scratch that, it's not about the crashing, it's about the moving relative to that craft at relativistic speeds, while you are loading the craft. No, scratch that as well, it is just about crashing, since you can just statically move the other vessel by without physics for the split second it is in the loaded zone around your current craft. No-one will notice a single thing. If you slow down just right or crash, you can start simulating normal physics as soon as the relative speed difference gets below the SR-speed treshold that the game uses to know when to start simulating SR. It's an edge case sure, but one with a very simple solution.

yeah, but not regular orbits in the sense that we know of them in KSP 1. What a bummer really, that a system of on-rails SOI's in the lagrange point places doesn't work like real life does, as was discussed earlier in the thread. This makes me know just how valuable the "binary systems are like bodies orbiting a barycenter with combined mass"-perspective is.

However, your concern seems to be that electrical things werent designed/balanced with the same thought that other aspects in KSP do, with reagards to scientific realism. Such thinking and designing and balancing work does not require any code (apart from illustrative examples maybe) and can be done in a design document. Nothing prohibits you of making a design document with all the 1) gameplay considerations, 2) tidbits of interesting info to be inspired from or nod to, 3) advised code-implentation techniques and 4) part balancing tables, that you'd like to pass on to the devs, then posting that on the forums. Heck, maybe the dev's will see it, run at least the mentioned interesting tidbits through one of the teams' designers, and maybe some stuff makes it into the game that way. The devs are known to speak to experts. Especally if it is interesting or elaborate stuff I would not be surprised if they'd consider/read it just because lot's of thinking work is already done, especially when it comes to balancing. From there, any resistance is the same as if you were on the team, where descisions need to be made taking in lots of factors. Just don't forget to explain everything you do extensively, instead of expecting them to reverse-engineer it from the changes you propose, because that strategy will not work very well I can promise you. The only difference is that you don't know for sure wether they check it, and they might not tell you about the obvious problems only they know from their perspective inside game development. Yet maybe they do read it and maybe they post their problems in a reply. So that's your two options: apply for a job at star theory, as @Vanamonde suggested, or be a forum volunteer in the way I described above.

When it comes to relativistic effects, there are two area's where I'd just like to see how the universe behaves: 1) on interstellar travel, and 2) around bodies such as black holes. I just want to see what happens. However, by carefully considering and tuning the content of KSP2, it will not be necessary to have it. We don't have to have black holes, we don;t have to have drives that get a significant enough portion of the speed of light. Yet, I'd feel this as something missing. ------- Two notes on our discussion about relativistic mechanics; The principle of relativity is a thing that exists in the game. Your velocity can currently be measured in many reference frames (even rotating ones), broadly grouped into the categories "with respect to the rotating ground of a body", "with respect to a body moving through wider space" and "with respect to a target object moving through wider space". In interstellar space "body" will mean the centre of the galaxy (if the galaxy is set up as in real life) and "target" will be relative to the target star (which is what we all mean when we talk about reaching sppeds of X% of c). No need of a universal frame here. As for simultinaity, I personally would choose for a KSC reference frame, since most of kerbalkind (under certain assumptions about the wider kerbalkind) will be experiencing the state of affairs in this way. You might say, but relativity but relativity simply says that all reference frames (inertail ones that is) can be seen as the true reference frame, it just becomes problematic if you start messing up what speeds belong to what reference frames. Gamewise, I don't see any of this becoming an issue except maybe for stuff like a universal game time needed for saves and such. Physics simulations can be sped up/slown down in terms of that UGT, but stay the same under the hood, computationally speaking. It doesn't matter for focussing on a vessel that moves with the camera. And well, vessels that don't focus on the camera, they don't need complicated physics, unless you crash things at relativistic speeds.

just a quick question: Do I spy, with both my eye, that no lagrange points are actually stable. Like I know that L1, L2 and L3 are semi-stable and have sort-of-orbits possible around them, but earlier in the thread I got the impression that L4 and L5 are stable. And while they are equilibriums, they don't seem to be stable equilibriums looking at the chart.