Strawberry

Im personally really curious if theyll hide anything inside of the gas giants.

After thinking on it, I think itd fit best if the class system remained, and was actively a thing in both colonies and spaceships, and there was various subsystems of these classes. Both colonies and (with the addition of large command pods) ships, will have a lot of kerbals on them, and these kerbals playing a large role in how you play seems good. I think it would work best if there was a passive system for colonies that lead to kerbal classes taking on a pyramid shape, to where you have lots of kerbals who dont have much talent, a group of kerbals who are decently talented, and one or two leader kerbals who are very talented at there class. Any of the kerbals you can take on any spaceship, but taking kerbals will impact how your colony runs, while your high tier kerbals will work great for expeditions, thatll come at the cost of making your colonies worse. This makes taking out your kerbal players for expeditions a big deal. I think this will promote investment in your kerbals, and lead to players caring a lot about some kerbals, and make the loss of those kerbals feel bad. This would also promote shifting kerbals around to help out with colonies (such as moving the research director to a new colony in order for them to speed up the growth).

I dont think itll start like that, as resource distribution and balance will just need a lot of fine tuning and testing, but I do have hopes for it ending up like that (though probably not as fully developed which is honestly fair, ksp2 has lots of priorities it has to aim for).

It's definitely possible to just run that magnetohydrodynamic generator in reverse and instead use it to accelerate the propellant in specific ways, it's been a pretty well studied field for electric spacecraft propulsion. I think from an engineering perspective its a bit of newer ground, but honestly I dont mind that as it's pretty scientifically sound, personally Id like it if the parts in ksp2 just so happen to add something new to potential design, instead of solely using only what was directly thought for it as it just seems really cool and potentially really helpful. Injecting more propellant will generally just lead to higher thrusts, as you have more working fluid to use, this is why turbine engines are so efficient, they can pull in huge amounts of working fluid from the air. The thing for rocket engines is you also now have to carry that working fluid, making that tradeoff generally less worth it as you will generally worsen your isp by doing so (notable exception is in the case of metal triprop engines as mentioned earlier). Heavier atoms are worse at this, but they will work for this, the main reason why you'd want to use heavier atoms is for chemical nuclear thermal hybrids, where you use oxygen as an afterburner for a hydrogen nuclear thermal rocket, as that chemical reaction produces additional thrust at the cost of isp.

The use of cesium would decrease thrust and isp (even if by a little bit as I doubt youll need to dope the fuel with much cesium to get it easy to move), as heavier propellant is way less good as a working fluid. If you look into metallic tripropellants, you'll see that while the metal oxygen reaction is far more energetic, without that lightweight hydrogen present to be a working fluid, the isp is far lower then a triprop setup. This would be a reverse situation to where you're adding propellant that serves as a worse working fluid, thus reducing isp (but again likely only by a little bit as you probably dont need to add much cesium)

To me Id like balanced variability, the ability to adapt and perfect your vehicles to various areas and incentives to do so. I think a good test for this would be if you were to start with a colony with limited resources on a non kerbin planet, how would you progress? If you were on moho, you have lots of fuel in the form of radioactive materials, and you have a lot of metals to make your rockets, but you have little access to propellant. This means in order to not drain up resources from your colony, you should focus on using highly efficient nuclear technology and minimizing propellant usage, using nuclear thermal (then nuclear lightbulbs for lower stages), and then swapping to fission fragment engines for upper stages as soon as possible. If you only had a colony on Eeloo, you have lots of fuel and propellant in the form of water, but you have very little structural materials, meaning you should focus your vehicle making on very high reusability, and having each rocket be self landing in some form. For Jool you have access to a wide array of resources, but each moon is specialized, meaning your best route is to play wide and colonize as many nearby moons as possible. etc etc, I think things that push you towards strategies that normally wouldnt be considered would just be incredible, and vastly change the direction of runs.

If the game has basic life support, send out several lifeships into the void of space and just leave them there to travel forever in the void. Seems like fun

Optical rectennas would be cheaper to produce, far more efficient, and use easier to obtain materials, there's one catch though, the manufacture of these requires nanoscale technology that we do not possess yet. Optical rectennas seem fitting as an upgrade for solar power generation, that while a straight upgrade to normal solar panels, come at the cost of needing additional research, and higher capital investments to produce, meaning that colonies cant build them from the get go.

Just guessing here, but I think the basic idea is that this is the water doped engine, and the water gets injected into that area, causing it to rapidly expand, and the mostly water metallic hydrogen mix comes out in that star plume, while the hotter more productive and pure metallic hydrogen end products come out the bottom. Its not the most efficient thing in the world, but it means your engine isn't a molten bundle of junk. The star plume not damaging other parts nearby seems like either an oversight, or just something that was intended to be gotten too, doubt its an active design choice.

I think these classes have to remain in some form at least. Considering that colonies appear to hold hundreds of kerbals, there will need to be an application for these kerbals, and having some kerbals be engineers, some be scientists, and some be pilots will offer good reason to get lots of kerbals.

I think manufacturing chains that are more then like 2 layers deep wouldnt really fit ksp2, because transporting things between a colony doesnt seem like a massive hurdle, and this means that this chain isnt really meaningful because the actual difficulty is transporting those raw ingredients, so why not just use those raw ingredients instead? The main reason for manufacturing base components to me would be for a few generic construction components, stuff like magnetic composite, structural unit, etc. I think one thing that would help a lot with opening up gameplay doors is substitute goods, for example if you want magnets for your fusion reactor, you could either use neobydium from an inner planet, manufacture superconductors, or mine tetrataenite from asteroids. If there was a system in place to where the materials that you used had an effect on the performance of the creation, I think that would be really cool however it may be too complicated, but it would also introduce a lot of interesting decisions for players, sure supercritical co2 may be a more effective coolant for bulk applications, but the piping you need for it is far more costly, and helium can get things down to a far lower temperature. I think where a resource fits, a planet should have it, even if its in very low quantities. Some iron would fit on eeloo in the cracks, but itd be very low amounts. The goal of diverse resources isnt to force you to colonize specific areas, its to pull you to colonize them. I feel like He3 on the mun would fit, but Eeloo should be the better place in bulk just because its harder to colonize and wont have too much else going for it. There's definitely something you have to adjust planet by planet (for example dres should be a good source of methalox regardless of anything because its themed as the first planet people will tend to go to/colonize by being a mars clone), however these resource disrepancies should come naturally because these resource disrepancies have a huge role on planet formation (look at how nearly moon on planets past jupiter is basically just a snowball with rare exception). The tricky thing for resource balance with jool is that its inherently pretty diverse, so you dont want the meta to just be colonize jool and no where else because you can get everything there. The big downside of Jool would be lackluster energy due to not much local nuclear power, nor much solar, but those issues are worse on Eeloo. I feel like deuterium on Vall should be an okay amount but still not easy, but you give Laythe low amounts of co2 (thus slowing down open air food production, unless you put in the energy to concentrate the co2) and Vall plenty of co2 ice, thus giving Vall a unique draw to colonize, and adding an additional challenge to laythe colonization. Also you should probably be able to filter out heavy water from bodies of ocean on laythe, while this would be more energy intensive then mining for it on Vall, you could also use local wind power here instead of having to use foreign nuclear power for Vall (or maybe export the power you generate on laythe for Vall based mining?)

I think the early access will contain a lot of the newer engines? Maybe not the late game stuff like torchships, however stuff like plasma engines and non saltwater nuclear engines seem like fair game for day one. These will definitely up the part count, but considering that I think they will simplify the structural units a lot as well (I remember hearing that procedural truss's were a thing), it will probably be less.

All that info seems more fitting for the zoomed out planetary view.

It's intended to be a metallic hydrogen rocket, the nozzle is magnetic to prevent the heat of the reaction from burning the thing up. I assume the star plume is waste products that couldnt be directed downwards, though I feel like theyd still be tilted downwards due to the momentum of the fuel leaving the rocket.

Its possible it damaging nearby parts was implemented, but if it wasnt it should definitely be a thing. I think the star plume would look a lot better if it was angled downwards instead of being 90 degrees.

That image is probably the devs making a dres doesnt exist joke, but if its intended to be a gas giant 2 hint and it got added to the game, and they genuinely forgot to include dres I will laugh very hard.

I like the retro asthetic personally, I think its neat. The north and south indicator seems confusing and not super useful, as north and south depends on the poles, and for when you need to go north or south you can just look at the navball for it. Using north and south instead of normal/anti normal seems really weird as well because north and south are relative to planets, but normal/anti normal are relative to the trajectory you're on. While I get that normal/anti normal arent as clear for new players what they are, if you do something similar to ksp1 to where you arrange them to give the illusion of different depth and heights and have a little ship, it should make it much more clear what those symbols mean.

A thing that makes material distribution balance tricky is that as you go outwards from a solar system, lighter elements become more common and heavier elements less common, and the heavier elements tend to be the more valuable ones, lets change that. A resource economy that would promote moving goods to the inner planets then to the outer planets but not force people to play this way would lead to a positive feedback loop that promotes widespread growth. The materials that are useful for inner planets are easy, these would be your source of radioactive materials and metals, the outer planets material usefulness is a bit more tricky but not impossible. The two main obvious outer planets have great concentrations of hydrogen and helium, hydrogen works as rocket/fusion fuel, helium works as coolant, and helium 3 in specific works as fusion fuel. Beryllium (A great neutron reflector), should also be able to be found in higher concentrations on the outer planets, and lithium can be concentrated through ingenious rocks from water rich magmas, meaning that lithium should be especially common on far off water rich moons with tidal heating (These same pegmatites can also be a good source of beryllium). Now that we have a good playground of resources to mess with, we just have to put them all together in a way that makes things play nicely. Inner planets get far more sun, tend to be tidally locked, and also tend to have high amounts of heavy elements. This means that solar on these planets is dirt cheap on these planets, and the raw resources for making these solar plants are nearby. There's just one catch though, these planets are hot. While normal radiators will work for small colonies, you'll need helium to serve as a coolant for larger ones, and if you wish to do anything with superconductors, you will need helium there as well. This means that the growth of colonies on inner planets is constrained by the growth of colonies on the outer planets. The inner planets will serve as your manufacturing hubs, these colonies will have very cheap power, meaning that your energy intensive production will be best suited here (such as production of metallic hydrogen and advanced components). Before you unlock fusion, the inner planets will also be great sources of radioactive materials to power your outer planets as well. The outer planets will be naturally smaller, but serve to support your industrial hubs and will be a source of rocket fuel to enable this trade. Without the rocket fuel and coolant that these outer colonies generate, its much harder to support your civilization. The outer planets initially will depend on fission reactors with fuel from inner planets, however once you unlock fusions, things get slightly easier. You can now source the fuel for your power locally, however the advanced materials to build these fusion reactors is best obtained from inner planets, meaning that your growth of power for outer planets is constrained by your inner planets. The main upside of your central planets is the range, they don't specialize in any one resource meaning that these planets are way easier to make self sufficient then your outer and inner planets. This means that these central planets will tend to be your first colonization targets for new solar systems as it will give you a much easier time with supply chains. Central planets are also good sources of carbon dioxide and water, this means they're good for growing crops and they are easy to generate methane on, which means colonies on these planets will have a source of cheap and versatile rocket fuel (which gives them another edge for early colonization).

I dislike how flat the current navball looks, the old spherical nature of the navball makes it much clearer to read out where you're at

I do find the implication in this thread that kerbals with male features and male names are nondescript and non gendered, but kerbals with female features and female names are now suddenly descript and gendered very funny.

While the decision should probably be waited till we get to like science or colonies, and more feedback would be needed for this specific thing and from other people, please consider bumping back resource extraction as a stand alone mini stage 4/moving it into stage 4 or something like that, as it involves trade, colonies, (maybe resource), and parts a lot and I think being able to get that clear would be incredible. I'm speaking for myself here so other people please lay down your thoughts, but I wouldnt mind waiting on deb deb if it means that the resource economy is in a much better firm state. There's definitely a lot of design that needs to be gone into managing the availability of your more generalist materials (stuff like whatever will be used as your main structural component (probably iron?), your nuclear power source (uranium?), water, etc) versus the availability of your more focused specialist planet defining materials (like whatever that blue stuff on gilly is), however theres certainly a lot of potential here. I think the generalist materials should lean towards inclusivity with specialization (such as carbon dioxide as a methane precursor being found mostly on duna, however being able to found in lesser quantities on Eeloo, Vall, and then by far the least but still in very workable amounts in your cold traps), while your specialist materials should be very exclusive (such as if minmus is silicon carbide, it readily being available there, but you can find small amounts on rare asteroids and also by mining a lot of Tylo), with some of them being exclusive to only one body, while some of them are just only easy to mine on body. The generalist should support trade while the specialist require it, and the specialist would be your big driver for interstellar trade. Though this last bit should probably be branched off into its own thread eventually but yeah.

As excited as I am to see whatever that second body orbiting donk is, I'd like to see that stellar trade is good before we approach interstellar trade. While interstellar travel has a really high excitement value, I think a big source of the fun and depth in the game will be in how all your colonies interact, and I think itd be good to get it right in one solar system before we move on to having to get it right in three solar systems.

Want the comfort that comes from a orbital ring without all those pesky transportation/manufacture issues? Try tether based artificial gravity! The main gameplay niche this would serve is for small scale missions and as a precursor before you get large rings. This part would function by having the top side have a mass limit, and when deployed, it would rotate 90 degrees, extend the top side and a counterweight out, and then begins rotating. This approach would come with a mass limit for the top side, and the counterweight would have a high weight leading to less mass efficiency. The main advantage of this approach would be that it fits nicely on a vertical rocket and requires no orbital assembly, while the downside would be a lower amount of support for kerbals, and increased weight.

Someone should really contact Nertea and make him aware of this grand intellectual theft!!! We see in the VAB that that command module is Large (aka mark 3), meaning that the base stage of the rocket is larger then that, which is exciting.

What you're suggesting just seems worse for reputation long term? It's generally just best to rip that bandaid off quickly as then people tend to move on quicker. Not to mention, they really havent made that much promises (the depth of colonies hasnt been stated much and could easily just be made into glorified fuel depots, until today we havent had confirmation of a star system outside of Deb Deb, etc), and considering the fact that small groups of modders have gotten similar things out in ksp1 in less time (albeit at an understandably lower quality then what would be expected for an AAA game), it would definitely be possible for them to scramble together something with unpolished functional multiplayer to where people vote on timewarp, another star system with underdeveloped planets, and a few new rocket engines that are mostly just number changes (though this would of course be lower quality then what's fully expected of an AAA game). This still definitely wouldnt leave people happy, but you could make it not a complete cashgrab and itd be far more disappointing then it is upsetting. Delays have a very understandable diminishing effect on hype because the fact that we are here shows that we care about this game, however that's very much known, and the fact that theyre not rushing to release it is to me is evidence against greed being a primary motivator here as developing games is expensive, so if you're going for short term profit as your goal, then youre going to want to rush it out of the door.