Oh my, this went quite far from the time I last had a look.
Let me tell my story: I am Playing KSP Enhanced Edition on PS4. - No Mods obviously. So everything that was not in the Core I do not have... Without the Breaking Grounds expansion being available later, no robotics, no moving parts, no action groups (all science had to run completely manually) - that was a huge hurt for larger crafts, limiting the objects I did want to visit.
Landing on the Moon was already very painful, as back in the days you had only Elevation over Sea Level. I included a stage that would drop just the decoupler to the ground. Just in Order to get the Distance to the decoupler on the ground, to know how far above I was. This was really showing me, I need something in the UI I do not have access to, and almost discouraged me from playing any further.
Next I tried Planes. I simply could not gather the information where I am in relation to the runway, until I was already over it - which is to late for a maneuver. I tried to set up markers again, but still could not land on the runway. So I started to land next to the runway on the Grass - much easier, but much less satisfying.- Again a big disappointment for missing some UI features that would allow me to do tasks that should have been simple.
And Flying Planes is always annoying - you do not have a stability assist that allows you to retain a certain angle to horizon & bringing back the plane to the ground. So if you wanted to fly one around Kerbin, it would be all manual, as there was no stability assist for planes - which would have been great, because flying once around Kerbin took mostly longer than the average time between bluescreens, bringing you back to the last auto safe, rushing to the tracking station and selecting the vessel, trying to re-stabilize it before it crashed. That could have been a so much smoother experience, by just a simple feature - at the same time I often wished for a Zenith and Nadir lock mode.
(I think Dev diary covered the fun of building a plane already pretty well. Another feature that I wished for here would be to be able to see the CoM full and Empty at the same time, or even to get the coordinates of these.)
In this Game Information is Key, and getting the Velocity Components, or with my trajectory suggestion knowing 10km away from the landing that you are 20m left of the Runway, and at the right descent velocity - invaluable. Then it would feel like you drove some high tech plane, and not a badly folded paper plane. However introducing all this numbers to early, will scare the players off, and for most of the time many of the numbers are not relevant, so there has to be a possibility that the player can adjust the UI with different Presets of numbers he wants to have shown.
With this in mind I think the game should reach people, get them invested, and allow them to set themselves more and more challenges. But it should be fair - like it was said in the Dev diaries. KSP2 will equip the player to do the stuff instead of being frustrated about the UI. That should not be automation, but putting them in control. And encouraging them to learn in a playful manner, which could also mean looking up the basic math, and strategies to solve this.
My thoughts on the different Topics:
Resource Penalties:
This is a Physics Simulation, I understand perfectly, that recovering a Vessel from far away costs Money in Career Mode (For the Launch of some Recovery Vessel and its fuel consumption, crew, time and effort), however I would not understand why suddenly the content of the vessel should change. So the further away I land, I need potentially more fuel (or Energy - for a Electrical Powered Rover Recovery), and obviously the cost would scale with the vehicle size. But 500t of ore being annihilated into nothingness, sound for me like a very nasty thing in a Physics simulator (E= m c2 tells us that has some consequences). Additionally, a game should be rather with rewards, than making the penalties a nuisance, so I do not think anyone would want to do such a thing like the feared penalties.
Precision Landing:
For the challenge, and for some mission parameters selected (Landing on high enough elevation on Eve to make it back, getting into a mountain Ridge, to get Optimal Solar Output, placing a lander into an interesting Biome, Getting to Visit an interesting ?-Location) precision may be key, so players will attempt it. I would be thrilled if KSP2 would no longer feel, that you fly on sight alone once you leave the orbital view.
The main satisfaction is managing a difficult task, making a plan and executing it. More tooling to execute the task would be appreciated, and would even give the players deeper understanding and situational awareness, while keeping the challenge to a level that an achievement stays an achievement.
How to implement the additional information:
I like the concept that the UI evolves with the tech tree. The Idea that something like a Precision Trajectory and Information being tied to some infrastructure sounds also great for me. I would imagine, to get precision position data, you would need some kind of telemetry & communication - so a RADAR and Comms to the vessel. That RADAR could be the base also to set up a trajectory (similar to the Controllers) in the range of the structure (giving the possibility of having different technical tiers with wider range). - This would make physically sense, and players would do their first missions without it, learning the basics, before getting more and more information and capabilities (which might be overwhelming for a beginner). This being similar to the Delta-V Simulator during Rocket building and Advanced Orbital Information would perfectly fit into the concept, and would give a sense of achievement unlocking the next level UI, having even more information and control.
