Brofessional

The dev branches on Steam continue to be updated, so someone is working. The question is whether or not any work continues after the end of June.

Possibly, but I think a total change in ownership would heal some of the reputation damage. You can't be mad at the new owner for something the previous owner did. They would have to show that the IP is in good hands though, which is one reason I think a remaster would be a good start. I'm not super optimistic that anyone is actually going to buy it though. T2 is probably just asking too much.

You'd have to really believe in the IP to spend the kind of money they're presumably asking. It would be a long term investment, but my guess is that they would discontinue KSP2 and salvage what they could into a KSP1 remaster. After that they would be in a good position to start fresh on a new successor, be it KSP3 or whatever. Hopefully utilizing some of the experience learned from doing the remaster. It sucks for everyone who paid for KSP2, but early access is a gamble like that. Sometimes you lose.

Well the layoffs aren't fully in effect for another month. There's at least one person still working because the dev branches on Steam are still being updated daily. The question is what happens after June 28.

An official collaboration is not likely since T2 owns the rights, but it's not far fetched to think some ex-Kerbal devs might be interested in working on Juno. For all it's problems, KSP2 did a pretty good job on the art and characters, which is exactly what Juno is lacking in.

Intercept as a company could still be alive even if the physical office closes. It could change locations and/or undergo major restructuring and continue working on KSP2. I'm not getting my hopes up, but until we get some official news we just don't know. Maybe when the layoffs go into effect in June/July we'll finally hear something concrete.

T2 employs over 10,000 people worldwide, 70 people isn't even 1%.

i7 6700k is 8+ years old now, getting quite dated. As long as KSP2 is using Unity/PhysX there isn't going to be any breakthrough in part-count performance though. They can reduce the number of physics calculations going on by "welding" parts, but the tradeoff there is simulation accuracy. The tricky part is doing that in a way that "just works" behind the scenes and doesn't conflict with what the player is trying to accomplish at any given moment.

That's something I noticed about the existing missions, the game goes straight from landing in any mare on the Mun to landing within a specific 1km circle. It's easy for us veterans but that's a pretty big jump in difficulty for beginners. At that stage most new players probably haven't even really performed radial or normal burns, and suddenly asking them to do it with high precision is a bit of a stretch. Of course they do have to learn those maneuvers at some point, and they are not forced to go straight into the next main mission, but I think it would help to have some missions in between that ease them into using normal/radial burns. Like a mission to land anywhere on the Mun's north pole or something. Hopefully the addition of colonies and resources will fill the gaps when they are added.

I think the problem is mostly with the user interface and how the experiments are just instant with no clear pop-up about what you've just done. It does get listed in the reports menu but that thing is messy and difficult to read.

That will likely be addressed as more roadmap features are added. Once there is a resource cost for recruiting new Kerbals there will be an incentive to keep them alive.

I definitely want a fleshed out commnet with occlusion and such at some point, but it's also not a terribly high priority. Better in-game tools and visuals is a must though. For example there needs to be some form of stock stationkeeping to prevent satellites drifting when you time warp.

Welcome improvements. I hope the clouds themselves get upgraded in the future, they look like they are rendering at a lower resolution or something and it kinda ruins the whole image.

Other people have already said it better and in more detail, but I'm definitely not a fan of the pixelated style for font and icons/etc. It's harsh on the eyes, often difficult to read, and many of the icons are monochrome and samey looking which makes them hard to distinguish at a glance.

I would guess that some things got tweaked to make it run smoother inside the game. The fluttering effect is actually a bit overdone in that older video though, if you look at real videos of Falcon 9 fairings re-entering, the plasma stream coming off of the outer edges of the vehicle is very smooth and persistent. What's missing is the turbulence in the low pressure area behind the spacecraft, the extended tail of plasma, and maybe some sparks from ablative material burning away. All that extra detail just to look pretty can get computationally expensive to render though, especially when it has to work on any insane object the player might throw at the atmosphere.