TROPtastic

I think any "realistic solar system" would be better implemented as a mod to the base game. It would be a bit strange to canonically tie the Kerbal universe to Earth, and the game would require extensive rebalancing to support planets and moons that are ~10x larger (if I remember the correct scaling from Kerbin to Earth).

I won't mention the colour picker because that's been sufficiently requested by many, so here's my gameplay list in rough order of "easiest to hardest to implement" (I'm not a developer so take this with a grain of salt): 1. Different tuning of SAS to make aircraft fly more smoothly and with less oscillation. 2. Better + more stable driving physics to make rovers as viable as they are in real life. 3. Propellers (for atmosphere and liquid use) added with the breadth and polish of current engine parts (to allow naval vehicles and aircraft from small Ingenuity drones to large transport planes and helicopters). 4. Being able to mod the UI to change its appearance completely, going as far as KSP1 appearance (can help make certain elements more legible). 5. KSP1 DLC content added to KSP2 for gameplay parity, especially Robotics (can be paid DLC if perceived as having significantly more value/completeness than KSP1 Robotics). 6. The ability to discover lore features/points of interest without having to look up a YouTube video or stumble upon them (telescopes and radars?). 7. More detailed aerodynamics and hydrodynamics to make hovercraft, ground effect aircraft, and submarines possible. 8. Weather effects on Kerbin and other planets that can be avoided or flown through (to make flying more challenging and interesting). 9. Procedural destruction for procedural parts, rather than an entire (massive) part going poof all at once when it collides with something. 10. A rocket scripting language to make automated stage landings possible (pushing stock/DLC KSP2 above stock/DLC KSP1). People have already posted great feedback, so much of this is already on your radar. Thanks for requesting our input and ideas.

That's different from creating an obligation to purchase a service when none previously existed, which usually doesn't fly if it wasn't specifically outlined in the prior ToS. Ars Technica has a few legal analysis comments in their thread, like this one and this one. I think the TL;DR is that even if Unity can make this retroactive change without being sued and defeated (unlikely), the costs won't be enough to force a project as big as KSP2 (or Cities Skylines 2 for that matter) to change engines mid-project. That is so expensive and complicated it is rarely done successfully. Both games are backed by large publishers who would rather eat the cost and then never develop a Unity game again.

The devs have Intercept absolutely have builds (multiple) with more features than what we have access to as part of the KSP2 EA. I would bet $20,000 on this, since no game company does development work on the live build. Instead, what we see is a more stable, cut down version with only the features that are deemed ready for broad use. In one of the recent interviews with Nate Simpson, he mentioned that he has already played a prototype version of colonies and really liked it. This makes sense when you think about it: developers have to test things and incrementally build up code to make sure it works, without immediately trying to build out a 100% polished version that might not even have the final game mechanics.

Overexposed, I can't say (that may be subjective or a visual mod), but the strobe explosions are from a specific weapon used in the video. You can watch this other video for a more general overview of Just Cause 3 explosions.

I'm pretty sure you're right as far as AAA games are concerned (there may be glorified tech demos out there somewhere with 3D explosions). Even JC3, a game which is built around massive explosions, uses well-blended 2D animations rather than 3D volumetrics. The effects look quite good in motion, so they are appropriately cool and spectacular when you're actually playing the game. I think there's a temptation to think "2D < 3D, therefore 2D explosions < 3D explosions!" However, we're not living in a post-scarcity world, so ordinary gaming PCs don't have the processing power to simulate 3D explosions in the detail that people expect (to borrow wording from another cool developer). Clever lighting tricks like increasing the brightness and light in a scene for a few frames of an explosion will hide any clipping through the ground while it occurs, while allowing artists to create lots of variation and complexity in a performant way. As others have said, long-lasting, visually impressive explosions are what's important, and I trust the devs at Intercept to take the best approach for this

Completely agree. I think ShadowZone said it best when he said "I don't want to be a Kraken wrangler, I want to be able to enjoy myself without creating constant manual backups of my save games because I cannot trust the game to work as intended." Making KSP2 from the ground up should hopefully solve all the annoying bugs in the KSP1 codebase.

@ShadowZone released a new video today on a list of things that KSP2 has to avoid in order for it to be a game with more success and player engagement than KSP1. I won't make a full summary here (the video is worth watching), but the list of items covers mission-ending bugs related to landing gear, wheels, docking, and the usability of the orbital maneuver planner. I fully agree with the list, and I'd go further to say that solving these problems is necessary but not sufficient to make a game that is more successful than KSP1. We know that the devs are working on some other aspects to make KSP2 more accessible (the cool looking tutorial animations), and hopefully there will be an in-game incentive to leave the Kerbin-Mun-Minmus system that was lacking in KSP1.

I imagine all of those will appear soon enough in the EA launch media in less than a month. Even if they don't, only a few community members will have to record their gameplay for us to see what the game is like before purchasing it.

These are the most likely explanations in my opinion, since it's easy to have a conversation along the lines of "Hey, I need some gameplay footage." "OK, I'll quickly record something from the build I'm working on and send it." However, I wish the pre-release marketing (the things that are captioned #KSP2 and Beta Gameplay, the footage distributed to media) only had representative graphics so that we didn't have to wonder for another month about what we can expect. Oh well, at least it's only a month and we'll be able to decide for ourselves.

In certain shots in this video, modded KSP 1 looks very good (I would argue far from "not even close" to as good as KSP 2). The grass around the KSC moving in waves with the wind, night-time formation lights contrasting with long afterburner exhausts, and the glow of Kerbol backlighting a vehicle through the atmosphere. Of course, you can watch the rest of the video and see pixelated shadows, low-res textures and low-poly terrain and part models, so I wouldn't say that KSP1 looks better overall than what we have seen of KSP2. However, KSP2 should be able to match the visual quality of these cherry-picked scenes considering they are building the game from the ground up. Edit: I'm glad that Nate Simpson is seemingly on the same page as me for my last comment, since he said that KSP2's graphics "have to be peerless". Of course, it is subjective what is considered "peerless", but I'm hopeful that EVE Redux and Parallax will push KSP 2 to be as good as it can possibly be.

For some of these points, the devs are specifically working to address them. The science system is TBC, but the whole career progression is being rewritten from scratch since Intercept also sees the problems with KSP1's career system. Gravity assists and complex maneuvers may be easier with the new maneuver planner (which is confirmed to account for long duration burns), which would actually make the game more accessible without simplifying it. Kerbals being largely the same outside of professions and experience levels is true, but those two aspects make individual Kerbals quite different from each other. I appreciate what it's like to fly a brand new pilot in a new save without access to SAS and maneuver pointing. I'm not sure what else could be done to make Kerbals functionally unique without distracting from the core "build aircraft/spacecraft gameplay". If I'm understanding this part and your OP correctly, you choose mods to add challenge to KSP1 beyond what is available in the base game. If this is true, how will this be discouraged by KSP2's design? Mods are confirmed for the game at some point, and you will still have the same freedom to change your experience once the mod ecosystem is built up. Yes, some mods may perform somewhat worse than if their functionality was built into the game, but I don't see how KSP2 discourages your playstyle any more than KSP1 does.

Presumably so that the same functionality is more visible. For the blocked EVA example, a pop up warning that appears right over the part in the VAB would be more obvious than a notification in a closed panel. Alternatively, the devs could automatically open the engineering report and highlight the warning as soon as it appears.

You're welcome, and thank you! The observations in your video are great, and my mind was blown by you pointing out that the orientation markers now change depending on whether you are in surface mode or orbit mode I updated the first post with some timestamps to your video since there's some cool stuff people should check out. Looking forward to your thoughts as a UI/UX professional once you get your hands on the Early Access release! Clearly this is a sign that the vertical speed indicator wasn't super useful in its KSP1 form, isolated away from the navball and without colouring to show what rate of speed was "bad".

I agree that a lot of KSP1's aerodynamics aren't intuitive, especially for new players given the observations you've talked about. I think Intercept could go a long way to making the aerodynamic system easier to understand (perhaps that's what they want feedback for in Phase 1 of early access?) by getting rid of these inconsistencies and unintuitive behaviours. However, I'd like to address this line in particular as a KSP1 FAR noob: I personally found the FAR mod to be a bit confusing to understand, in terms of the different readouts that are presented to the player in the VAB/spaceplane hangar. It's quite possible that most of these statistics were actually just "FYI", but if they weren't and they were indicative of all the stats you had to consider to make a flyable, controllable plane, it might well be too complex for the average player. However, Intercept could choose to implement a FAR-like aerodynamics model and only surface key indicators to most players (and do many calculations and optimizations behind the scenes), with detailed statistics and tuning offered to advanced players at the press of a button. That might be a good way of implementing a complex flight model without turning the game into XPlane or MSFS, for example.

As suggested by HebaruSan in the Early Access announcement thread, non-impulsive most likely means that thrust maneuvers in the maneuver planner won't be modelled as having all the delta-v be spent at a single instant (the KSP1 model that created the advice to "take your total burn time, divide it in half, and then start burning at that length of time before the maneuver node"). This new maneuver planner will be very useful for anything that requires long periods of thrust, such as ion engines in general and future engines on interstellar transfers. However, the details of how it will be implemented will certainly be interesting (hence this thread).

Thank you for being open to feedback and reading through our comments here! From the sounds of it, the new navball will have markings closer to KSP1's style, where the heading lines are in 45 degree increments without attitude markers but the cardinal (0°, 90°, 180°, 270°) pitch/attitude lines are still finely spaced (to 5 degrees), as pointed out here by @Pthigrivi and here by @t_v. I know I found the labelled 10 degree pitch marks to be super useful while following Mike Aben's tutorials on how to get to orbit efficiently. Especially now that we have a heading callout and tape, we probably don't need more than 45° intervals for heading. I can second some of the other comments asking for up to date UI images and videos, since that will steer our feedback in directions that are more useful for the team. Could be a good topic for a future dev diary in the next couple of months?

I hope that the devs/Private Divison/Take 2 take Steam's regional price suggestions into account when setting prices for KSP2. Steam looks at various cost of living indicators when suggesting prices for different regions, so there's an opportunity to make the game affordable for people in LATAM or Eastern Europe or wherever while still making sure that players in NA and Western Europe pay a reasonable price. Steam requires players to purchase titles using payment methods from the region they have set their account to, so I imagine that people trying to score KSP2 for cheap by switching regions would be stopped.

I agree: the KSP1 navball looks naturally spherical, so it's immediately obvious that you're looking at a 3D surface: I feel like with the current navball UI, we have a somewhat awkward mix of mostly flat colouring, text & markers that are curved as if the navball was a sphere, and dithering at the edges to add some retro shadow aesthetics. If such a thing existed and was compatible with KSP2, I would be tempted to make a very questionable financial decision

At this point most of us have probably seen the Early Access trailer - including the part where @Nate Simpson showed off the new UI and talked about the tape indicator concept. Overall, it's great that Intercept is looking to real-world systems for design inspiration, but I feel like certain elements of their current UI are a bit lacking in terms of readability and usability (and in fact, could be improved by leaning even harder into modern real-world flight UIs). I thought this thread would be good to summarize some of the comments from the announcement thread and share my own thoughts, including the good parts of the new design! Readability of atmospheric indicator This one was brought up by @poopslayer78, who commented that "the rocket is very tall compared to each atmosphere layer indicator, which makes it ambiguous where layer you're in." You can see the current implementation below: The devs are already working to improve this, which is sweet. Previous concepts below for posterity: It would be nice as well if there was an indicator LED or symbol w/ text to say "You are in space now! No need to worry about drag!" like poopslayer mentioned in their comment, since the topmost box of this UI suggests that there is still some atmosphere with the pale blue dots. Alternatively, KSP1's atmosphere indicator did a great job of indicating that you were in space since the last region of the indicator had no colouring at all: Visualizing the relative depth of the different atmospheric layers as shown in a previous concept would be very cool, particularly if this could change for different celestial bodies. If not, then sticking with equal size boxes as shown is fine. Readability of navball This one was mentioned by @t_v, who pointed out that " the amount of lines and markers on the navball makes it hard to really distinguish specific pitch angles, and the text on the rest of the UI fades into the information surrounding it". I partly agree with this comment, because some views look quite readable for precision orientation (kind of like the KSP1 navball, see first image below), whereas others are definitely hard to read with a combination of dithering at the edges, pixelated numbers, and low contrast secondary numbers (see 2nd image): Nate said that this has already become more legible in a newer build, which is great. The markers shown in the image are different from the KSP1-style normal and radial indicators, but that is most likely because they switch to a KSP1 style in orbit mode. Obsolete criticism below for posterity: Overly "retro" aesthetic of the UI This is perhaps the most subjective opinion, but it's one that I share. @The Aziz said in a post "the pixely font and icons just don't work for a civilization that is about to hit interstellar space. Instead, we landed in the late 90's." I think the dithering and font choice for UI elements is a big part of this, since it causes what would otherwise be a very modern interface to look rather busy, hard to read, and outdated. A bit strange for a society operating advanced jets and (eventually) interstellar technology that is decades or centuries ahead of 2022 humanity. They highlighted these SpaceX UIs which look exactly as modern as you'd expect a flight control interface to be in the 2020s: You can see that SpaceX uses a smooth gradient shadow to indicate the 3D-ness of the navball, without any dithering or pixelation to be seen anywhere I actually don't think the SpaceX navball is a perfect fit for players who will be flying their crafts manually, so having more numbers like the current KSP2 concept and KSP1 is better than having fewer numbers and markings like the older concept below (and maybe like SpaceX too): Personally, I think that something like the real world HUD below would be ideal as a working UI that is in the same style as what we have seen in the past: Everything is easy to read at a glance, highly legible, and uses high-contrast text and colours (even in this photo, which reduced some of the contrast). It also uses the "tape indicators" that the current UI does, so good job devs on implementing them The main area where we could diverge is adding a smooth (non-dithered) gradient to the navball as shown in one of the team's earlier concepts, since we will make more dramatic attitude adjustments than most airliners Summary of likes and dislikes with the new UI Since we were kindly asked to share things we like as well as what we don't like (thank you Fernanda), here is a list of what I think the new UI does well compared to previous concepts: Great stuff The rolling tape indicators are a great way to show critical altitude, speed, and heading information at a glance, and having the indicators scroll based on rate of change will be super cool and engaging. The button outlines on the altitude and speed tapes make it more obvious that you can change between different modes, compared to the older concept I showed above. The mission time is super legible compared to a previous UI concept, and the button makes it obvious that you can switch between MET and UT. Having UI section "titles" like SAS.CONTROL and TIME.WARP = 1.0X will be useful for new and returning players alike The throttle indicator suggests to players that you can adjust your throttle smoothly (including by dragging the handle), which is great for people who may have thought that you can only adjust it in 5% increments or what-have-you. Putting a separate and legible rate of descent indicator right next to the navball is genius, and will probably help a lot of people to not slam into the ground (accidentally, anyway). Hopefully the warning and danger zones update based on local gravity and the strength of your landing gear. The numbers on the pop-out tape indicators are easier to read than the 8 segment style digits of the previous UI and the pixelated numbers of other parts of the current UI. The amount of interval markers on the navball makes it easier to burn at a specific angle and heading compared to a previous UI concept and kind of like the KSP1 navball. The navball will be movable to the centre of the screen to match KSP1's position (source: ShadowZone's October UI video). The radial/anti-radial and normal/anti-normal markers are replaced with North/South and up/down (?) markers when the navball is in surface mode, which is cool and useful (source). At a glance apoapsis and periapsis info is presented well. The map view shows spheres of influence for celestial bodies and more readable icons for when you get in them, which is awesome! (source1, source2) The staging diagram is on the same side of the screen in both the VAB and in flight. The GO button is solid green! And a summary of what was said in the sections above, with some additions: Areas for improvement The previous concept (shown under the aesthetic section) had a very tasteful and legible style of dithering, probably because dithering wasn't used for any elements that were intended to be read. If the team would like to stick with dithering instead of smooth shading, that is probably the way to go. Units should follow SI capitalization consistently to avoid confusion (ex. lowercase "m" for meters", "km" for kilometers, "Mm" for megameters (millions of meters), etc.) - thanks shimmy00! The text on the tapes themselves is a bit hard to read because of the pixelated font. The text in the UI section titles is hard to read because of the pixelated font combined with its small size (the size would be fine if it was used with a normal minimal-serif font). The atmospheric indicator doesn't show neither exactly where a craft is in the atmosphere (KSP1 style) nor the relative depth of the atmospheric layers (older KSP2 concept style) - precision improvements in development The atmospheric indicator implies that a craft is still experiencing partial drag even when it is at its darkest colour due to the chosen dithering. The hinting of where other orientation markers were in a previous UI was very cool (appropriately futuristic) and useful, and that is missing from the latest UI. The removal of normal/anti-normal and radial/anti-radial markers is a step back in terms of rocketry education and general legibility KSP1-style markers are still there in orbit mode! The current navball is hard to read wherever dithering and pixelated numbers interact with attitude lines and oblique view angles (ex. flying straight up from the surface) - more legible in a newer build Having pitch/attitude marks and labels only on the cardinal heading lines like KSP1 would make the overall navball more clear. Because of the dithering on the RCS and SAS buttons, it is not obvious that they are enabled if they are both on. Subjectively, everything pixelated and dithered in the current UI looks too outdated for the level of polish the rest of the game will have. The fuel and oxidiser gauges for engines could get out of hand for a lot of engines (think Soviet N1 level), but hopefully the engine group button lets us collapse all the individual fuel gages into one overall, representative gage. The stage number on the GO button is harder to read compared to a previous UI due to the choice of font and the green on black colour choice. Overall, I know that we're commenting on "pre-alpha" footage and that things could have already changed, but since we're approaching early access, I think its better to get this feedback out now so that we can ensure the best possible reviews at KSP2's EA launch . Thread updated with some of @ShadowZone 's info from his comprehensive summary video, which you should definitely check out!

What are Kerbals if not a representation of the most optimistic, cooperative, and (dare I say it) recklessly enthusiastic aspects of ourselves? We went through this years ago when people were upset by the addition of female Kerbals to KSP1. Back then, the opposition was essentially the same: gender is a people subject, not a Kerbals subject, and thus we should keep the status quo. As a guy, I could kind of see this logic, but the sensible reply was that it was easy for everyone who already had representation in the Kerbal form to say this, since every character up to that point had a "male" hairstyle and male names. In addition, having female Kerbals more accurately reflected the real-world history of human spaceflight and rocketry, which was a huge inspiration to many aspects of KSP1's game design. I think there are a lot of parallels between the situation back then and this request now, with the big difference that multiplayer will cause a lot more people to care about looking unique on their spacewalks and while exploring planets. I think there's no strong argument against either randomly generating Kerbals that could be interpreted as nonbinary (I have no experience as to what this would look like, so I'll defer to those with personal insights) or using a character creator that will already exist to make enby Kerbals for those who want them. Of course, if there are no current plans for a Kerbal creator and the planned random generation will be unsatisfactory, then we can get into a debate on whether implementing a character creator would be more valuable than some other gameplay mechanics that could be implemented.

Personally I think February 23, 2023 has much better rhyming potential, but I imagine that their thought process for Feb. 24 2023 went something like this: We will be able to release in Spring 2023 The game will be EA-ready in late February or early March, and we want to get players feedback and buy-in as soon as possible We want to release on a Friday (Private Division probably has plenty of sales data on which day of the week is best for sales) Thus: Feb. 24 I'm pretty plugged into the war in Ukraine (not mentioning any political opinions, just acknowledging the fact that there is a war going on), and even then I didn't immediately connect the two dates. I think most people won't judge Intercept and PD for releasing on Feb. 24 since doing so would set the bad precedent that we can never do anything positive on that day.

It sounds like you may need to do some troubleshooting: (1) a clean install of KSP with no mods, (2) install Parallax 2 following the instructions, (3) enable existing mods one by one until you replicate the problem (or do a binary search to save time). If you can't get Parallax working even after step 2, you should probably post in the main mod thread for greater visibility rather than here where not many people can help you. Back on topic, I think that KSP 2 doesn't have to follow exactly the path laid out by Parallax 2, as impressive as it is. It's fine if most planets in KSP2 look toned down and serious without things like bubbles or giant red crystals, since that's probably typical for exoplanets in real life. Kerbin looking lush and full of life would be awesome, but apart from that, I like the planets that we have been shown so far by the dev team. Heck, a nice lighting engine will create some spectacular views even without lots of ground clutter:

I don't know if you intended the sentiment, but this comes across as unnecessarily rude. Pthigrivi asked for clarification on what the specific problem is since you seemed informed, you said "I'm not writing up an academic paper for you" (which was not requested, but whatever), and then they asked for clarification from anyone else to explain the problem. You are not obligated to provide an explanation if you do not wish to, so dismissing someone else's question is unproductive.

I think the red eyed Kerbal is an unfortunate victim of the photography phenomenon As for the idea of robotic kerbals in general, I think it would depend on if they could enable new types of gameplay. If KSP2 has cave systems or other areas where rovers can't operate and the environment is too unforgiving for squishy Kerbals, then it's possible that robo Kerbals could be useful. If either one of these things are not true, then I don't see what robotic Kerbals would add apart from coolness.