Bej Kerman

Tell it to me in excruciating detail

It's actually seeing more activity than it did before in the last few months. In fact, it's doing way better than Juno which was supposedly gonna compete with KSP 1 and never had the launch day chaos KSP 2 had. Compare to KSP 1 whose activity has remained the exact same, if not following a slightly downward trend.

That is possible and can have reasons for being done, but it's not "KSP on mobile" so much as it is just using your phone as a monitor and a controller.

Firstly, we're not talking about the First Time User Experience itself, we're talking about what it's called and the impact this has on the game's UX. If anything, making the wording less clear is literally the opposite of a clear tutorial option. Secondly, we're allowed to criticise things and we don't have to ask any single member if we can complain about something.

They were willing to show the game's weaknesses, ergo they don't care...? Not sure I'm seeing the logic.

And? Small mistakes build up.

Should be procedural.

Relying on a popup to communicate the purpose of a UI element isn't good.

UX doesn't matter?

I think as handy as an explanatory box would be in a game with no labels for anything, it's still not a replacement for just being clear with how you write labels for things.

Engines aren't categorized by "meant for landing". They're categorized by thrust and how they perform in vacuum vs atmosphere. There ARE obvious types of landing gear though, and none of them have the aerodynamic profile you want for reusable boosters. The Wallaby is massive and its shell has an angular profile. Meant for vacuum use for ships that would overstress smaller gear. The next smaller gears from the Wallaby are also meant for vacuum use judging from the lack of aerodynamic shell or profile, and realistically probably would crumple under a Falcon 9 sized booster. So the problem isn't people not being creative. It's a gap in the parts list that needs filling out. Since we got grid fins I'm confident the gap here'll be filled by something in due course.

And that's something I appreciate and thought of when writing that, but I don't think a giant explanatory box is a replacement for being able to immediately understand what something does.

Yeah no. People aren't going to immediately know what "cadet orientation" means. That much is obvious from the fact the update isn't out yet and it's already confusing people. I'd advise doing away with this obtuse wording cause people so new to the game they're not even done creating their save yet aren't exactly inviting themselves to be bombarded with in-character terminology. A smooth user experience and labelling things in a clear manner trump "it sounds a lot nicer".

I noticed this when building a Jool mothership. The cargo bays are way more efficient than the lightweight semi-trusses.

Restrictions have never incentivized creativity itself. Restrictions can incentivise creative ways around restrictions but "restrictions = creativity" is a tired old myth that exists only to justify nasty amounts of grind in games.

That was literally never a thing.

The problem isn't the Wallaby, it's clearly oriented at heavy craft. The problem is not having a lightweight alternative, something that parallels for example the landing gear on the Falcon 9 and serves to fill the gap between the Wallaby and the next smaller gear.

Since the thread just got necro'd, I want to ask why the solution wasn't just to match orbits with the green guide on the map. As far as I can tell, that was the problem.

Not needing international competition to go to the moon is probably another thing. Less room left in those heads for spite?

They're not low-fidelity, they have just as much fidelity as any other part, but ignoring that, "looks stupid" is a non-issue because their point in being in the game has nothing to do with aesthetics and has everything to do with keeping large rockets upright and making sure probe cores last as long as the vessel is on the pad. They have 0 reason to be any more elaborate.

Is there some impact on gameplay this has? There must be some confusion, when did I ask IG to replace the launch clamps over them going down?

Probably the same as new player experience.

Then elaborate because your request is ambiguous and expresses more distaste for the clamps being simple and having a simple job to do than it does explain what "actual, real world clamps" would add to the game besides being pointlessly elaborate. The launch clamps do their job. "actual, real world clamps" probably adds nothing. Feel free to prove me wrong.

No idea, they work in my experience but the game also gives them around one or two seconds of no thrust to transition between modes.

Just want to point out, because the planner calculates the effects of acceleration on your trajectory from the timer hitting 0, starting it before then can put your vessel on a bad orbit.