Opus_723

I know there are tons of features still to implement and I'm not saying that robotic parts needs to be bumped ahead of anything. My only concern is that it has never been listed as a planned feature, and I think omitting them would be a huge mistake. I really can't overestimate how much robotic parts changed gameplay in KSP 1. Before robotic parts there were so many little tasks that you knew you should be able to do but all the solutions seemed really forced and janky. Then Breaking Ground came along and we got such a flood of creativity into the game, and little things like deploying rovers became 10x more natural. I just hope the devs consider this a priority for eventual inclusion. I'm not gonna worry about when, it's just the if that has me concerned. I hope they don't underestimate what a game-changer it is.

I don't get why everyone is acting like the number of *vessels* is a big hurdle to the use of N-body physics. The very obvious approximation to make would be to have the planets on rails through a long pre-calculated N-body trajectory and vessels just responding to the resulting time-dependent field. It's not like our spaceships are gonna move the planets (or each other) appreciably anyway. The *real* problem with N-body physics is not having an easily referenced analytical solution for vessel trajectory previews, especially with dynamically adjustable maneuver nodes. You'd never be able to calculate trajectories fast enough to use maneuver nodes as we know them. This is also why I think Rask and Rusk are doable though. Give them their own SOI, then put them on rails and then you can tinker around with the well-studied restricted three-body problem for the vessel trajectories.

Could someone clarify exactly why we are saying a frozen Minmus isn't possible? Kerbin is an Earth-analogue, and the "Snowball Earth" hypothesis is taken seriously enough by scientists. I don't see why Minmus couldn't have something similar going on?

I remember when I first tried out the KSP Demo and I wanted to dock two ships together because I lost one in orbit and wanted to rescue it. So I strapped a bunch of landing gear to one ship to make a "grabber" and it actually worked! Then I did some googling and realized that the full game had docking ports and I immediately bought it lol. And now we even have robotics! Lots of fun times with KSP, and that will never go away. Excited to see what's in store for KSP 2!

Honestly all I really want is an easy user-friendly way for multiple people to log in to the same universe and modify what's there. You could do that right now by passing a save file around with some coordination, but if it were built in, I could open up the game and see that a friend has added on to my space station, etc. Being able to play at the same time would be a big bonus, whatever compromise they make on the time warp, but just letting other people change the world while I'm gone would be really cool. I have a buddy who is thinking about getting into the game, I would love to leave stations and ships around for him to find as he progresses to orbit and interplanetary space.

I don't know enough about Private Division to say whether this is atypical or not, and I know they have other games to promote, but it looks like they've booked a rather large booth in the expo hall for PAX East at the end of the month, about half the size of Nintendo's area. So they'll probably have quite a bit going on and maybe we'll hear about KSP 2 then.

I wouldn't worry too much. I don't know what the thinking behind it is, but lots of studios don't bother with that sort of hype micromaintenance. I think every game I've ever played that had a forum community had periods of nervousness over "why wouldn't they be trying to keep us hyped unless something terrible has happened?" Long periods of silence from devs are pretty typical, especially for a game that hasn't yet released.

Patched Conic SOIs like KSP1, n-body Dynamics, or something else? Lagrange points?

Because it's fun. If we get private servers, me and my friends will probably collaborate on building an interstellar empire, but at some point one of us is going to turn and begin the orbital bombardment, I know it.

Orion engine submarine

That's encouraging! I would have guessed that integrating out the ship's trahectory would be too prohibitive for the smooth flight planning we're used to. In that case, I completely agree that putting the planets on rails but integrating out proper ship trajectories in the resultant time-dependent n-body field would be a wonderful compromise. The effect of n-body dynamics on the ship is, I think, where all the cool *rocket* science lies, not so much the effect on the planets.

Question for people familiar with the Principia mod: Does it update your trajectory immediately and smoothly as you burn, or adjust a maneuver node, the way stock does? That seems like the biggest number crunch to me, I'm curious how Principia handles it.

I currently use a mod to move my navball out of the center of the screen because I feel like it crowds my view of the spaceship itself, so I personally like the layout here a lot.

Did I miss the memo that games just stop being fun when sequels come out?

I could definitely see some sort of 3-SOI scheme working alright, and I think that's probably what they will do. You don't actually have to do true 3-body physics for a small ship in a binary system, so it's actually not *that* crazy, but... They would, I think, have to integrate out your trajectories instead of having an analytic formula like the conic sections. That probably won't reconcile with our need to watch long trajectories update smoothly and instantly as we change velocity. EDIT: On the other hand, I just learned that there is an n-body physics mod for KSP1, so maybe the integration can be done faster than I presumed. If that mod works, then they could totally do the small mass approximation to the 3-body problem easily.

The screenshots on the announcement page look like they're in-game (I think?) and although they're not as high-quality as the trailer they look really good, and the art style is very similar.

I'm just a little nervous that the multiplayer is going to be something like co-op Making History missions instead. I'm crossing my fingers hoping it will be more like sharing a Minecraft server.

I have a buddy who loves space stuff, sends me updates on SpaceX launches and everything. I tried to get him into KSP once but the learning curve is kind of steep and he really wanted some way to do multiplayer with me. He doesn't really enjoy playing games by himself, he just wants to socialize with his friends. All I really want is to be able to share a solar system with a friend or a small group of friends, and I will be ridiculously happy if that happens.

THIS IS MY HYPE TRAIN

I'm still reeling about multiplayer. Can we get an idea of what *sort* of multiplayer it has? Like, are we talking shared solar systems or are we talking co-op missions a la Making History?

Woah.... WOAH. Wait, how does the *multiplayer* work? There's so many ways.... how? I've always wanted to share my solar system with a friend like a Minecraft server.... Is... something like that happening?

I've been playing around with trying to fashion the Klaw into a sort of harpoon that can be fired at a distant target, but unfortunately the Klaw doesn't engage a target unless it collides at very slow speeds, so it's not nearly as fun as I had initially hoped. Does anyone know of any mod parts that will grab things like the Klaw, but still engage the target at moderate to high impact speeds?

I never did buy Making History, but if I can use the robotic parts in the Mission Editor, I have.... ideas.

I wanna hear more about this! Keep us posted. I'd like to try something similar on Eve.

If you saw the freely rotating hinges and thought "I'll bet making a rope out of those and attaching a command chair to one end and a rocket to the other would be fun..." Then I'm here to confirm: Yes. It's very fun.