Lisias

"I will stick with the users, it's where the money comes from. "

Do you really want people that bought the game answering that right now? There's not enough bad reviews around, and you want more?

Rogue style so? https://zenorogue.medium.com/what-is-the-difference-between-roguelike-and-roguelite-4c0fdc403db#:~:text=Roguelikes are often classified as,of roguelikes as strategy games. In a way or another, we need to find a definition for it - we can't sell what we can't describe, and we can't sell something and deliver a different thing. No Man's Sky is described as "Action, Adventure" (https://store.steampowered.com/app/275850/No_Mans_Sky/). MS Flight Simulator, besides not being the best simulator available (X-Plane is used for Pilot Certification, by God's sake!), is described as "Simulation" (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1250410/Microsoft_Flight_Simulator_40th_Anniversary_Edition/). You will find a lot of games using "Simulation" on the description, but all of them (when not really a pure simulation) also had additional key-words as "Action" or "Adventure" or whatever to help correct describe the game. Like this thing I just found, Fae Farm, described as "Action, RPG, Simulation" , https://store.steampowered.com/app/2230110/Fae_Farm/ . As a matter of fact, I found GoG way more precise about KSP¹: Genre "Simulation - Building - Sci-fi", tagged "Indie, Science, Exploration, Funny, Open World, Sandbox, Sci-fi, Difficult, Space, Physics, Education" https://www.gog.com/en/game/kerbal_space_program .

My grudge with the RPG thingy is about how parts' features are being implemented, and yes… I was triggered by the heat discussion. On Hollow Knight, when there're powerups and spells that when applied allows me to jump higher and sustain more damage. Ok, Hollow Knight is not an RPG neither, it's a platformer, but you got the idea - on RPGs, you buy abilities that are magically applied and improve your chances while rolling the dice. (and, nope, I don't think it's so hard to define what's a RPG after all). The new heat system is acting like a spell: just attach a radiator, and magically all the heat from the craft will be dissipated - as a spell from Hollow Knight.

Probably less, and horrible reviews. Absolutely horrible. I don't need to work in games for decades to HAVE AN IDEA about how things are not going well for KSP2. Nope. The bad reviews didn't budged, and the positive reviews kinda plummeted in the last 4 days. We are talking about the aftermath of the last patch (0.1.5.0) that bought us some serious improvements.

Moved from the host thread: So I'm afraid we need to fix Steam Shop! Because this is exactly how they are being sold!!! https://store.steampowered.com/app/220200/Kerbal_Space_Program/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/954850/Kerbal_Space_Program_2/ So, in essence, you are claiming that KSP¹ and KSP2 were being falsely advertised all these years? Since we are here… KSP2 is really an indie game? Moved from the host thread: You see… It would not be a bad spinoff from the game - just think about something like Squeak, those the environment is a workbook where you need to build something that would fulfil the requirements mimicking the Space Race and later missions. With well defined targets and objectives, overly simplifications of the mechanics are acceptable, as the objective of the game would not be a sandbox with lego building and physics simulation! And it would be a marvellous tool to teach about STEM and Space Fare. Just don't call it a Simulation, and I will be sold!

On the following thread: I decided to challenge the KSP2 definition from being a de jure et de facto sucessor of KSP¹, or a Fantasy RPG with space fare thematics and spells and powerups disguised as technology. The discussion, unsurprisingly, risked degenerating into an exchange about what's a RPG and what's a Simulator, derailing the host thread. So I decided to transfer the discussion to this one. Original post (edited on the host thread)

— POST EDIT — Discussion (hopefully) transferred to a new thread to avoid derailing this one: Ping @kdaviper and @Periple

I will stick with the users, it's where the money comes from. So properly answer my question above: it's KSP2 a fancy fantasy RPG on a space fare thematics with spells and powerups, or a de jure et the facto KSP¹ sucessor? No wrong answers, but we, players, need to have this answer so we can just make our choice and, eventually, stop peskying the devs and just go play something else. The only wrong answer is the bait and switch tactics, as they usually backfires sooner of later. You can't have the cake and eat it too!

Interesting designs? Perhaps. Engineering possibilities? Not at all - I'm afraid you have a dissonance between design and implementation. It's exactly that plumbing routing what makes engineering very hard. Ok, we can abstract part of that engineering challenges so players don't need a PhD on Aerospace to make something reach orbit, but too much abstraction and we have an RPG with spells and powerups instead of STEM. Now, people need to take a decision and stick with it. EXACTLY what kind of game is KSP2? No wrong answer here, but it need to be properly answered because right now I'm seeing a trend of bait and switch on the marketing, positioning KSP2 as a STEM game but delivering a fantasy RPG with KSP¹ thematics and orbital mechanics… As a matter of fact, you gave me an idea for a mod... Well, I'm calling them by the name I found in the Physics.cfg - granted, they may had misnamed it but, anyways, KSP¹ have something called convection on its guts. (link is for a 2015 post, but I just confirmed at least one of the attributes is still found on 1.12.5). And, yet, they got abyssal performance until recently. Not saying Nertea is wrong, but they may be doing shortcuts on the wrong places - sometimes, it worths to kill some FPS for a feature. That said, something that I would love to have simulated is heat transfer on RESOURCES. I would really enjoy pumping cold fuel into hot tanks to cold them, and then pumping back into a cooler and so goes on. Having every part between the fuel tank and the cooler influencing and being influenced by such resource's temperature would, by itself, a feature that would surely make things interesting - we would have to manage heat in the same way we manage fuel. Of course, since the question is the same. The failure on associating the answer to the question is yours, there's nothing we can do about!! You are not understanding. People are getting here to "get the opinion", and then spread it out there, not vice versa. And a good part of the anonymous readers are here to get support, as only the very basic and known problems are usually tackled down outside this Forum. About most anonymous being here for the mods, it's yet another example of how Forum can be seen as a good heartbeat exactly by the reasons you gave: anonymous readers can't do anything but to read Forum, so if they are here is because they need to read something about the game, and so we have interest in the game. You can even infer how KSP is doing around the World by checking these numbers over the timezones - China appears to have a very significant user base… Being the reason I said Forum by itself is not enough. The hate pictured on lousily or not moderated at all channels is not reflected here because such hate is actively removed here. However, I had noticed that things are changing on reddit - at least on the most populated reddit about KSP, I had noticed a lot of vitriol (including some old ones) being removed from the channel 2 days before the launch of the last patch. If such posts were being systematically removed, I would hadn't noticed it, but this happening specifically about 2 days before the last patch launch surely caught my attention. Moderation on reddit is getting a bit overreached, as it appears - I wonder what will happen if Reddit fulfils the promise of allowing voting for demoting moderators there... Only one in twenty six customers complains, the others twenty five just goes away. Silently. Things would improve considerably if we would have a definitive answer for my question above: KSP2 is a fantasy RPG game with some orbital mechanics, or a de jure et de facto KSP¹ sucessor? Because it's not a minor detail on the whole system: managing heat is one of the very most important problems of space fare! I'm disappointed that you are failing to address the importance of the second most important engineering problem on every space craft ever built by man, second only to the propulsion itself. @PDCWolf had explicitly detailed exactly what worries him on the new thermal abstraction, explaining exactly what was being removed from the simulation and why it makes it shallow and meaningless, essentially removing it as an interesting challenge from the game. He's complaining that the new thermal system essentially does to heat what removing mass from the fuel would do to craft designs. So, hey… Let's remove mass from the fuels too! Why bother with it? This would also "opens up much more interesting design and engineering possibilities".

Different channels, different metrics. These 20 to 50 users that keep posting here are trend setters, those opinions usually get echoed there. The inverse is also true so, nope, just Forum is not enough. Something that I learnt over the years, Forum's heartbeat is kinda reflected on reddit et all (or vice versa, or even besides - I didn't managed to establish causality) and the number that matters the most is the anonymous readers ones. This Forums os a source of curated information, after all. There are content creators, content replicators and content consumers. The metrics we need for the task at hands are the content consumers. And you think those assumptions (some of which aren't assumptions) are not grounded on reality. They are. Ignorance ignores their own ignorance - the path to wisdom is not knowing about everything, but knowing what you don't know. This path is beyound most people, including on the Game Industry and is the very reason things are how they are. We don't need to know exactly how many players KSP2 have, it's enough and sufficient to know if it's a growing or shrinking trend. And the knowledge we have, besides incomplete and imprecise, is good enough to the task at hands. We are filling blank spots YOU know nothing about, something completely different. As an example, I don't need to know that Gravity is exactly 9.80665 m/s2 (what's not, we used this number by definition) to know if something will break or bend if I let it fall from the table. Since my objetive is to have things over the table that will not break when falling, once I know the object's resistance I can use 10 m/s2 (or even 9, why not?) that it will serve me the same - it's a freaking table, not a suborbital trajectory. Do you get it now? I couldn't agree more (but I'm still trying). The problem is not the assumptions. The problem is the absolute lack of consequences. As an example, I don't mind KSP¹ tendency to wobble on bad designs. As a matter of fact, I really like it (besides the wobbling reflecting a tree structure, instead of a more real life equivalent spars, spines and reinforcements). I don't mind even the auto-struts (except by that absolutely stupid bug happening since 1.2.2). What I mind is the lack of consequences on using auto-struts! They should add mass and cost to every part being auto-strutted, that would made things interesting. I completely agree with @PDCWolf when he complains about how shallow the game is becoming. This game were intended to use STEM as an entertainment and learning tool, but right now is just a somewhat 3D Hollow Knight using engineering as scenario but without any engineer on the creative and development teams! Parts are nothing more than spells and powerups. How do you plan to promote STEM without STEM professionals around? It's like trying to teach Math using teachers of Literature! Alternatively, perhaps this is intentional - KSP2 is not a STEM entertainment and learning tool, just another glorified RPG or proto SHMUP intended to allow people to be condescending to themselves by pretending they are doing something "hard". With all the due respect, I don't think you understand the game enough. Ideally you should out the radiators on the part that most need it, but if your design doesn't allow it, you need to compromise. One viable compromise is to attach parts with LOTS of thermal mass on the target part, and then shoving the radiators on these parts. Or in parts attached to these high thermal mass parts. There're parts with better convection than others. There're parts with better conduction than others. There're parts with more thermal mass than others - worst, with variable thermal mass. And all of that parts have different skin and core heat capabilities. Making these work the way you want are the challenge, not merely attaching parts by aesthetics in a glorified sudoku pattern. The whole reason to bother with all of this is, hell, to solve problems. You remove problems to be solved, you remove content from the game.

That’s true, tens of thousands must enjoy the game in silence and that’s why they don’t have the time to comment. Lucky them. YOU may know nothing, but some of us can infer something from available data. Most clients are silent because most clients are not playing the game. We may not be able to know for sure how many people bought KSP2, but we can use SteamCharts as a heart bit for the current user's interest on it and the last week we had daily peaks of about 400 users (versus the historical low of 40 last month. So, yeah, we have about 10 times more active users in the last week than the worst score, and about twice the peak of the previous week. So we know that the game stats are improving for now - but the peaks are already dropping, yesterday we had a peak of 200 against ~320 one week ago. We also know that KSP2 had a peak of 11K concurrent users at launch (an impressive number) on Steam (what happened just 10 months ago). Since Steam is known to have about 75% of the online userbase, we can infer they sold about 16K copies on the very first day (given or taken, as we don't know exactly how many users fire KSP2 outside steam launcher). We also know that only 1 on 26 customers complain, the others 25 just walk in silence. So it's safe to assume that for each complain you find about a bug, at least 20 others customers had quit playing the game. From the initial of 16K to about 600 (estimated peak this week after the last patch, i.e. 450/3*4), we have about 26 leaving users for each one still around. DAMN, that 1 to 26 heuristics appears to work! Obviously, I'm abstracting refunds and new sells, but yet we can have a very good general idea of what's happening. YOU don't know nothing. Don't project your ignorance over the rest of us.

In the same way Companies are obligated by law to respect consumers rights. Now check what Apple and Google is doing. Or even Unity Technologies… Believing that just because someone printed some fancy words on a nice sheet of paper called "Law" will magically make things happen is naiveness. Laws need to be enforced to have some effect, and the sad true is that no one is enforcing such laws nowadays. Did you saw Unity disclosing to any of their shareholders they were going to pull a fast one over AppLovin? No? Neither do I. Do you are seeing anyone in jail or at least being prosecuted due this stunt? No? Neither do I. Kiss Sherman Act bye bye if nothing changes about it in the next months - once the first one manages to walk from such stunt, you can bet your pension funds more Companies are going to follow suit. IMHO these subjects being explicitly ignored on the interview strongly suggests that changes and innovations are out of the menu for some time, as they are focusing on keeping their inner belongings tight right now. Whatever they wanna to announce, it was already announced so except by a little surprise or two they could had kept close to their hearts, there's nothing else to disclose other than "we are working to deliver what it was already promised". What I think it's perfectly reasonable. The next best one (and somewhat cheaper depending on how resistant to alcohol the dude is! ) is to monitor Forums and similar channels for disgruntled workers/ex-workers venting about. The faster the post (as long it make sense, of course) is censored or watered down, the most probable the information is pertinent. There's this old myth about one of my grand-grand-fathers. Brazil, about a century ago, was essentially an agricultural economy so the middle and upper classes were, almost entirely (salvo lawyers, physicians and politicians) farmers or something like that in a way or another. This grand-grand-father of mine had a Chicken Farm - and one big problem for Chicken Farmers were chicken theft, no one bothers to brand a chicken as they do with cattle, after all. So when he had to travel, he hired the local chicken theft to keep his chicken's safe. It was some good money, but still better than losing the chickens - and you can bet your eggs this guy knows how to prevent a chicken from being stolen, what was also good for him as he still could steal chickens from other farms (what was not exactly condone by my grand-grand-father, but since he ended up gaining an edge on the stunt over his competition, it was not condemned neither ). The fact is that there're a lot of "chicken thieves" on the Game Industry (they are everywhere, but apparently they are more numerous here) - some of them pretty liquided by being crossed by someone else, and willing to spill the beans for cheap, or even for free, in reprisal. You only need to keep your ears open while walking on these channels. Sifting the wheat from the chaff, however, is a challenge by itself - it's more intuition than reasoning, an Art and not a Science - so, as usual, we always take them with a significant grain of salt. Getting older has some advantages, indeed.

Are you nuts? Asking information from the people that have every motivation in the World to do not share them to you? Do you think that Unity Technologies had disclosed any of the crapstorm they were planning about the Fees to their shareholders (or to the few ones that would be considering to be) before doing it? This is beyound naiveness…

Someone zoomed on it once, and:

As a matter of fact, buyers are not the only stakeholders on this history. Every single one that bought one single share of Take Two Interactive is also a very important stakeholder. Anyone thinking on buying (or not!) TTI shares is also another very important one. Knowing exactly why so many delays happened, what is being done to mitigate the problem and how this will affect future prospections are of the upmost important to anyone considering investing in the company. You know, not every KSP player is a kid - some of us own companies, and others even invest on the game industry. I wonder that TTI shares on Brazil halved the price in a year for a reason, no? It worths to mention that T1TW34 didn't paid a single cent in dividends on the last 12 months. Try to imagine investing your Pension Funds on something that didn't paid back anything for a whole year… On the bright side, they are slowly recovering in the last 3 months, but still a far cry from what they used to be valued early 2020 or even 2022. How a Company treat their costumers have direct influence on the prospections of income, that by its turn reflects on the expectation of value on the shares in the forecoming months. And, frankly, it's simple like that.

A fantastic cliffhanger for a Kerbal halloween short history that, frankly, I'm surprised no one (AFAIK) explored yet!!!

Nice cover! (and the crazy gal sings as a demon!)

Yep. The OnCopy (or Clone) process is completely screwed. The appalling thing is that I kinda managed to fix it, but then I screwed loading crafts… I know where the problem is, I know why the problem happens, but I need a bit of time to figure out how it happens so I can fix it. At least I spent some time this weekend and found some potential fixes - all of them demanding some refactoring, unfortunately. Since we are here, let me explain the problem: When KSP 1.4.x came in 2018, it introduced a thingy called ModulePartVariants, that it's essentially a Part Switch - allowing the user to choose between different variants, instead of forcing the author to shove these variants as discrete parts. Problem: by some reason, whoever wrote the support on Editor royally screwed up a lot of small features in a very insidious way… On this specific case, things go South when the root part of a subassembly have that ModulePartVariants thing. When this happens, something is run again on the subassembly after TweakScale had done its magic, royally screwing up the parts - sometimes using prefab values, sometimes pulling numbers from that tiny little place where the Sun doesn't shines. In a way or another, your craft is screwed. You will not reproduce this problem on KSP 1.3.x and older, obviously, because Editor at that time wasn't mangled to support ModulePartVariants. This is something that started to happen on the 1.4.x for sure (I'm still playing 1.4.3, so I know). Making things yet more complex, right now I don't even know if some of the misbehaviours are really due TweakScale failing to cope with the mess, of if it's something new being injected by Monkey Patching, introducing new misbehaviours by collateral effect - as it was done recently. This means that all that experience I had gathered over the many idiosyncrasies buried on KSP is not worthing too much, as I need to retest everything from scratch to be sure (good thing I had documented most of them on github, so I have a benchmark). Not even reverse engineering would help, as the patched code is downloaded at runtime and it exists only while the game is running - essentially unpairing the code you have installed on the HDD from the code you are really running in memory. This new environment creates some interesting challenges…

Well, I have so many that usually I would need to ask if you want them in chronological or alphabetical order - not to mention if in the current period or something in the past. Well, the last one is tragically comic - I decided to shove some communication and observation satellites around Kerbol (why not?), and one of them on a polar orbit. Of course, I'm a bean counter stand-up guy, so instead of using a traditional rocket, I used a plane as first stage (more os less like virgin galactic), then used chemical rockets for the second stage and third stage and finally ion engines for the final stage. Interesting enough, it ended up being relatively cheaper than a full rocket solution (the first stage is 100% recoverable, after all). The boring part was to change the satellite orbit to polar in a reasonable time (I'm playing "Make Kerbin Great Again" style, so I need fast results instead of cost/beneficial ones - and I had already saved some bucks using a plane as first stage), so 5 ion engines made the trick - only 4 hours of burning on an orbit between Moho and Eve. I'm on 1.4.3, by the way (the best performatic KSP on my rig). Everything gone perfectly, I got even some Xeon gas to spare - what should had triggered that "ok, this is not normal" feeling. Once I managed to reach the desired orbit, I opened the menu to go back to the Track Station and plan the other two satellites (each one aiming to a 45 an -45o inclination), and promptly clicked on the Revert by accident. Even worst, clicked on the Revert to Launch without even thinking about, so distracted I was - it took me about 3 or 4 attempts until I got the damned orbit right, so I essentially reverted due muscular memory. I closed KSP and decided to watch some movies to cool down.

I know I'm necroposting, but this thread came on the very top while I was goggling for the same thing (I'm getting old, hehe). So I decided to post an answer here so anyone getting here the same way will have the answer available: What you want is a MM patch like this: +PART[ISRU] { @name = IRSU_10x @MODULE[ModuleResourceConverter],0 { @OUTPUT_RESOURCE,0 { @Ratio = 444.0 } } } This will copy the current ISRU part (the "+" thing), then will change it's name to IRSU_10x, then will edit the conversion ratio to 444.0 (10 times the original value, IIRC). Keep in mind: you just created a new part, and any savegame you use it will be screwed if you delete the patch later. I suggest you save this patch on a file called ISRU_10x.cfg, and to place this file on a directory called __LOCAL on your GameData, so you will be able to keep track of it without risking getting it deleted by accident while updating things. <Your_KSP_Root>/GameData/__LOCAL/ISRU_10x.cfg

Well, I can't say for sure but apparently it's something related to Texture Replacer: [LOG 09:44:17.601] [TR.Loader] Texture compression spared 25.5 MiB = 26.7 MB [LOG 09:44:17.635] [TR.Replacer] Mapped "EVAhelmet" -> TextureReplacer/Default/EVAhelmet [LOG 09:44:17.635] [TR.Replacer] Mapped "EVAjetpack" -> TextureReplacer/Default/EVAjetpack [LOG 09:44:17.635] [TR.Replacer] Mapped "EVAjetpackNRM" -> TextureReplacer/Default/EVAjetpackNRM [LOG 09:44:17.635] [TR.Replacer] Mapped "EVAtexture" -> TextureReplacer/Default/EVAtexture [LOG 09:44:17.635] [TR.Replacer] Mapped "EVAtextureNRM" -> TextureReplacer/Default/EVAtextureNRM [LOG 09:44:17.635] [TR.Replacer] Mapped "EVAvisor" -> TextureReplacer/Default/EVAvisor [LOG 09:44:17.635] [TR.Replacer] Mapped "kerbalHelmetGrey" -> TextureReplacer/Default/kerbalHelmetGrey [LOG 09:44:17.635] [TR.Replacer] Mapped "kerbalHelmetNRM" -> TextureReplacer/Default/kerbalHelmetNRM [LOG 09:44:17.635] [TR.Replacer] Mapped "kerbalMainGrey" -> TextureReplacer/Default/kerbalMainGrey [LOG 09:44:17.635] [TR.Replacer] Mapped "kerbalMainNRM" -> TextureReplacer/Default/kerbalMainNRM [LOG 09:44:17.635] [TR.Replacer] Mapped "kerbalVisor" -> TextureReplacer/Default/kerbalVisor [ERR 09:44:17.663] Material doesn't have a texture property '_BumpMap' [ERR 09:44:17.663] Material doesn't have a texture property '_BumpMap' <snip> [ERR 09:44:17.668] Material doesn't have a texture property '_MainTex' [ERR 09:44:17.668] Material doesn't have a texture property '_BumpMap' <repeat ad nauseaum> From the time the ERR thingies started to happen, they monopolises the log and nothing more is logged until the last logged entry 4 minutes later: [ERR 09:48:08.803] Material doesn't have a texture property '_BumpMap' Looking for exceptions, I found: [ERR 09:44:18.168] Material doesn't have a texture property '_MainTex' [LOG 09:44:18.184] [TR.TextureReplacer] System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object at TextureReplacer.Replacer.initialise () [0x00216] in <ce567d4728574e639ab3ea598d7914b1>:0 at TextureReplacer.TextureReplacer.LateUpdate () [0x0002e] in <ce567d4728574e639ab3ea598d7914b1>:0 [LOG 09:44:18.267] [ModuleManager] Waited 0.000s for patching to finish [LOG 09:44:18.267] [ModuleManager] Applying patched game database [LOG 09:44:18.286] [TR.Loader] Texture compression spared 25.5 MiB = 26.7 MB [ERR 09:44:18.341] Material doesn't have a texture property '_BumpMap' What's settle the case: Texture Replacer killed itself on the LateUpdate due a NFE, and I'm betting that this killed the caller's thread, halting the game loading. You will need to ask TextureReplacer guys for help, I'm lost on this one. In the mean time, I think that removing TR will allow you to play the game in the mean time.

This one is recent, but I can't think on Halloween anymore without thinking on it!

It's the main criticism about Mateba's ones (and any other autorevolver too). An autorevolver is way simpler than a pistol, but still a bit more complicated than a simple revolver - you need proper sealing on the chamber, otherwise the gases will leak and the mechanism will not cock. On the other hand, they are safer to be handled exactly because of that: you can have a finger ripped out on a Magnum .44 if you don't mind how to hold the weapon while firing. Additionally, not every ammunition have enough kick to pull the cycle - common ammo degenerates the weapon's cycle into a double action exactly like common revolvers. But at least you can use ordinary non FMJ (Colt and S&W) ammo on it if desperated, what still makes it more versatile than a pistol.