drhay53

I pretty much always come back and try to start a new save every few months, but I can never find any goal anymore that keeps me playing past the first 5-10 hours. I really want to find some combination of mods that's just right but I never can hit the sweet spot. I always end up frustrated with bugs or performance or lack of documentation. I will say that 1.9.1 seems to have much better performance than I was used to. But then after a while I got dismayed that a lot of good mods weren't updated from 1.8. So then I went back to 1.8 for a bit. But then I was upset that I was playing on an older version of the game. Then I realized I didn't like the tech tree I'd picked. And eventually like always, I fizzled out again. I have 3000 hours and I've never done a kerballed mission to anywhere outside of kerbin except duna. My problem is I always want to do some kind of complex construction based save that makes stations and bases really useful and interesting but I haven't found the right combination of mods that doesn't end up driving me crazy. But anyway, I came back because I'll always come back. There's never really any specific reason except an itch that desperately needs scratched for a bit, before I remember why I never make it very far into a save anymore.

I still love the concept of this mod and I've got this nagging feeling in the back of my brain to come back to KSP for a while and try it out.....

I work somewhere that does a lot of software development, and I have a slightly different view on the DLC paradigm. I think that DLC is mostly a side effect of the shift in software development practices over the last 20 years, and the flexibility provided by (mostly) everyone being connected to the internet. With the shift to agile software development trickling down to everyone, the idea is that you prioritize features that offer the most value to your customers, and you release early and often to receive feedback and constantly re-prioritize the next features. In the long run, this provides more value to the customer (and by extension, more money for you) than fronting the entire cost of development, but releasing features that it turns out nobody likes. This is partly why we see so many "early access" games these days. The cutoff for when to release the game is a decision that companies are making based on a number of different factors; and of course, in general, these people are all trying to make money. So they're trying to strike a balance between what gamers are willing to pay for, versus how much profit they will make, and how long they can pay to continue developing the game. Of course, they have to pay the development team to continue working on the game. People are expensive. Releasing DLC can be seen as an infusion of cash to keep developing the game for longer. I personally think gamers would be much more upset if companies released games, fixed a few bugs, then stopped doing anything to them and moved on to the next project. This being said, I have my limits as well. I don't buy Paradox Interactive games, for instance. The point I'm trying to make here is this; DLC is the result of fundamental shifts in the way the software industry works. Because of that, it's not going away. KSP 2 will have DLC. To me the question of whether or not it should is completely irrelevant, because it will. Period.

I had some time and found it directly in the earnings report released today. https://ir.take2games.com/news-releases/news-release-details/take-two-interactive-software-inc-reports-strong-results-13?field_nir_news_date_value[min]=2019 Announced that Kerbal Space Program 2, the sequel to the beloved original space sim, is in development and is now planned for launch on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One during our fiscal year 2021. The original Kerbal Space Program has sold-in over 3.5 million units worldwide, and earned a Metacritic rating of 88 and a Steam user score of 91%. Of course, I agree with everyone that this could mean anything from a month to a full year. No way to know until the dev team starts communicating again.

According to a "call with investors", KSP2 has been delayed until FY2021. https://www.pcgamer.com/kerbal-space-program-2-is-delayed/ I couldn't find a deeper source than the article itself that is making the claim, but I find PC Gamer to be reputable. I didn't spend too much time trying to track down the call or a transcript. EDIT: here is the earnings report and quote. https://ir.take2games.com/news-releases/news-release-details/take-two-interactive-software-inc-reports-strong-results-13?field_nir_news_date_value[min]=2019 Announced that Kerbal Space Program 2, the sequel to the beloved original space sim, is in development and is now planned for launch on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One during our fiscal year 2021. The original Kerbal Space Program has sold-in over 3.5 million units worldwide, and earned a Metacritic rating of 88 and a Steam user score of 91%.

I am utterly flabbergasted that this question has been asked so many times.

Interestingly I just watched the gameplay video again on a different YouTube channel and didn't notice the issues I had seen before.

What basis do you have for saying this?

You have to be watching certain areas of each scene to see it, but I would estimate that I was watching something running between 15-25 FPS

You can clearly see the frame rate variability in every scene in the video

I don't know where you're getting your numbers from and I have no real baseline to evaluate them. My secondary concern is about garbage collection. After 2000 hours in ksp, when I try to fire it up these days I end up stopping due to these issues: 1) garbage collection frustration 2) frame rate issues 3) problems with the surface of bodies (wheels suck, craft bounce around, bases blow up) Since colony building is a core part of the game, I'm stoked that number 3) should be very solid in ksp2. I fear that we'll still end up with GC issues and frame rate issues and the early alpha video doesn't do anything to alleviate those concerns for me. I don't have the technical expertise with unity to evaluate your claims as to why that will be better in the final product.

I'm not particularly encouraged by the consistency of the frame rate. People will say "but it's just alpha footage" to which I will say, I will probably want to install as many mods as I have memory for, and if performance is even remotely iffy at this point in the stock only game, modded performance in ksp2 is likely to drive me away just as it has in ksp.

I certainly hope there's some kind of public servers because frankly I have no gaming friends. They will have to deal with griefing and I'm not sure how prepared for it they will be. People will intentionally blow up large projects representing hundreds of hours of work spread across many people if they're allowed to, just because they can. Frankly I'm not sure how you allow people to screw up while also not allowing people to intentionally wreck someone's work. I personally don't care that much about MP in KSP, though I'm not opposed to online games in any sense. I've done my thousands of hours in MMOs. I will just say this; KSP online will probably turn into an MMO, whether the devs are prepared for it or not. I'm concerned that it will dominate post-release dev time and attention because people don't behave. So I would like to see something fun but I'm cautiously pessimistic that MP will hurt the SP experience due to developer resources.

I'm not trying to be mean. I understand the situation you're in. It's just, this is not the way it works for pretty much any game.

Why would you?

I pretty much only have two wishes. That I can install many mods without frequent and noticeable garbage collection. That landing and driving on the surface of bodies feels more natural.

Just wanted to chime in and say that I still haven't really played with the mod much, but it will be one of the core mods if I ever start up another save. I tend to play KSP in spurts and I haven't had one in a while. And to be honest, the last couple of times I've started a save, I didn't play for very long. A couple thousand hours of playing, every time I start something up I'm reminded of the limitations of Unity for what I'd like the game to be. There's a lot of things I always "plan" on doing in KSP, setting up bases and stations all over the solar system, but I never seem to get past Mun/Minmus exploration before I don't feel like putting in the engineering to design the missions anymore. I do appreciate all the work you've put into the mod and I read all of the updates and posts as I'm subscribed to the thread. Hopefully I'll give it a try one day.

I'm not sure I have the time to do this, but with module manager you (or someone) could: - take one of the small 1.25m stock tanks. Make it into a new part in your mod's GameData folder (like I think you already have with some other parts). - add the B9 module to it (I think you can do this?) - patch it to include your resources like you already do then you'll have a 1.25m tank available for snacks early in the tech tree.

From what I can tell, the mod patches any part with a B9 part switch module to include its resources. This includes many of the parts in Station Parts Expansion Redux. It and KPBS are dependencies

Just wanted to give some encouraging words to keep you going in development.... this looks really interesting and if I start playing again after this long break, I'll definitely be trying it out. Kinda hoping to wait for some more resource integration as teased in the OP.

I'm an experimental astrophysicist myself (supernova cosmology to be exact) though at the moment I work on HST and JWST data from a technical standpoint rather than mostly research. Once I learned python back in graduate school I found that solving a problem quickly with a monte carlo or empirical approach was usually good enough for me outside of work I like a low TWR for liftoff because it "feels" the least "wasteful". I haven't optimized that this is true, but it seems like it's the right combination of engine cost with necessary fuel; too much TWR and you're probably overspending on the engine, and a cheaper option should be available. That's only true if the engines in your save are well balanced in terms of ISP, thrust, and cost though. I also like the low TWR because it works well with mods like GravityTurn for the ascent profile; typically my launchers are SSTO (occasionally requiring SRBs) and the circularization burn is less than 100 m/s. I feel like a low TWR and a small circularization burn is more "realistic". Since I've been playing with SSTU, I've noticed I frequently don't need SRBs for typical launches, but as you're going through the tech tree, the annealing frequently picks SRBs to punch up that initial TWR while using a more efficient engine once they come off. I don't simulate the ISP atmospheric curve in my procedure, but I do keep track of how long the burns are and the rate of fuel consumption, so the code knows how much sea level TWR will be there when the SRBs come off. I require it to be > 1, which in practice means it's a bit higher than that since usually the SRBs burn for 30-45 seconds and the ISP and thrust have come up a bit. My philosophy for this particular code was "don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough" With SSTU and my code I can build a launcher for any payload in < 10 minutes and I don't have to build a collection of payload-rated subassemblies. I did that once and it took me weeks. And then I wanted to change mods for my next career and most of my launchers didn't work. So I wrote this to be flexible about the options available in any particular save and so that I could build the most cost-efficient launcher for any payload super fast.

"This source code has been transcribed or otherwise adapted from digitized images of a hardcopy from the MIT Museum. The digitization was performed by Paul Fjeld, and arranged for by Deborah Douglas of the Museum. Many thanks to both." Also: https://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/assembly_language_manual.html

As is typical for me, I went for the Monte Carlo like approach. The discrete nature of rocket building makes it a little harder so I had to learn something new to do it. I have tables of engines and fuel tank properties (mostly for SSTU), including SRBs, and I use simulated annealing to minimize the cost that will successfully launch a payload of a given mass. I have grown to love simulated annealing as an algorithm in place of brute force combinatorics in a large discrete parameter space. Launch vehicle is considered valid if dV > 3600 and sea-level TWR is between 1.2 and 1.3. I commend you for the work in your post, but I'm a better empiricist than theorist

The comments are awesome, thanks for that

I thought some of you software folks might find this interesting: https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11