Wheehaw Kerman

And yet the game managed to become what it is, and engage and amuse us for over a decade, with none of that in it. There’s just something unnecessary about it. It gets low budget B grade sci fi into a cartoony educational sandbox allegory for humanity’s exploration of space. It adds no value to the build and fly, and locks the dream onto rails going someplace some of us don’t care about. Edit: I shouldn’t be so negative. I would be sad if KSP2 forced some sort of plot or story into the gameplay. I’d be fine with the odd anomaly here and there, and I shouldn’t assume the devs are going to make them important to the game or have them affect gameplay.

I really, but really hope not. The game doesn’t need any more story than Kerbals building and flying the dream you dream for them.

Hopefully this will be on the same level as all the other anomalies; the Duna face and SSTV, the temple and UFOs, the Magic Boulder, the whale on Laythe, the Kraken on Bop. If the new Munarch artifact and the other stuff actually become central to the gameplay as opposed to things to just visit, I’ll be a wee bit upset. I really don’t want Stargates or having technology get unlocked via discovering artifacts. The story of Kerbals’ reach for the stars under their own power (as a metaphor for our own) is much more inspirational than any tabloid-inspired sci fi could be. Of course, this could all just be marketing. I think I’m going to spend some time this evening cheating a massive munition into a Munarch in KSP1 to see what happens.

I’m just going to stay optimistic. It could be that the team has whomped up some sort of storyline straight off the front page of the National Enquirer, but hopefully they’ll keep the anomalies tastefully restrained peripheral elements as opposed to making them central to the gameplay. I’m solidly on the Kerbals First and Only side. On the positive side, did anybody notice the Beta gameplay stamp?

I wouldn’t waste time worrying about this happening. It’s totally contrary to the spirit of the game and the devs have given precisely zero indication that this will ever be a part of the game. ”We came in peace for all Kerbkind.” -Jebediah Kerman almost certainly.

This kind of thing is why I don’t identify as a gamer. I’ll save my whine for any major issues with 1.0, if there are any bad enough to be worth whining over.

It’s still EA, with whole chunks of the game to follow. Don’t be surprised if they add more buildings later.

My disappointment is immeasurable and my day ruined.

Makes sense. Switching the editors never really served much purpose…

Sorry if I inadvertently insulted you. That was not my intent. You play the way you want to. I’m not arguing, nor implying, that you need to “man up” when playing a video game or do anything else of the sort. Beyond recommending Apollo 13, of course. It’s about as Kerbal as you can get in a movie about real life spaceflight. Great stuff. What I am saying is that I hope KSP2 does is use its trade-mark “Cartoony Realism(tm)” to fix the gaps in KSP1. In other words, apply more of the same winning formula. Realism matters to a point in KSP, and you’re absolutely right that some lack of realism is essential. None of us can afford to hire NASA levels of admin staff to help with the paperwork that comes with a real space program, but that’s not the kind of realism that anybody wants. The sort of realism that I want to see is stuff like life support, comms delays, and radiation, that any six year old with internet access knows about be addressed in the same manner the game does the rest of its subject-matter. Electricity is a great example: it’s on the same level of importance to mission success in real life as life support. Would you be able to enjoy playing the game with the infinite electricity cheat turned on? Sure, to a lesser extent. Could all the arguments of the folks who don’t want life support be made against electricity? Absolutely yes. It adds complexity. You need to slap a few extra parts on each vessel. You have to manage it in some cases. It increases risk that you’ll lose a long term mission. It isn’t critically essential to however you want to define “the core game” or “gameplay”, or whatever (unless you’re an electrical engineer). Do you play with infinite electricity always turned on, and no batteries, panels, or RTGs? I’m betting not, and I’m going to accuse you of actually enjoying the electricity system . I expect that taking a rough guess at battery needs and spamming a few panels is as much part of your design process as it is almost everybody else’s. This is what I am getting at when I say that realism makes the game better. More Cartoony Realism, not strawman hyperrealism. Enough points of failure to make us learn from failed missions, enough gameplay to make us scramble memorably, a bit more fun in the VAB, and better Cartoony Verisimilitude(tm). More of what made KSP1 great.

So, question: did you enjoy watching Apollo 13? Because bringing Jeb, Bob, and Bill from something like that would be an amazing KSP moment. My second fave KSP moment after my first successful Mün landing was during a no-reaction-wheel/RCS-only Soviet-style Münshot. The lander ran out of RCS fuel in that big canyon that runs north-south and started tumbling. I used a series of full-throttle descent burns every time prograde ran in the right direction to get the LK-Alike into something resembling an equatorial orbit (I wasn’t thrilled with the infinite restarts thing), rendezvoused the LOK-Alike with it, spacewalked the LK pilot to (relative) safety (being somewhat unthrilled with the OP jet pack), and got them home on fumes. The whole mess was an unmitigated blast, far more memorable than any of the many, many hitch-free Münshots I’ve run. And I built the next iteration with more monoprop, picked a more conservative landing site for it, and pulled it off. I don’t really think it matters what causes the sudden adversity leading to the sudden need to go into Failure Is Not An Option mode. I’ll take a heroic scramble to save the mission over a milk run every time, even if most of them result in a round of posthumous Hero of the Koviet Union medals. And I can only wonder why people don’t find that fun. Adversity makes for greater challenge, which makes for more learning, and sweeter success. Over-easy overpredictable games are boring. I do agree that KSP shouldn’t be turned into a perfect simulation. What I am saying that there are still some areas where it could benefit from its trademark cartoony approach to simulation, and that glaring absence of that Cartoony Realism(tm) in certain areas detracts from the game and gameplay.

Simulations are games, and games that benefit from close modelling of reality. What I am saying is that every time KSP has improved its modelling of reality, from betterish aerodynamics to re-entry heating to communications, it has become more enjoyable, both because of the added challenge and the increase in realism. By removing jarringly unrealistic aspects of the game, KSP becomes better. I agree with some of us that there is probably a point of diminishing returns out there, but KSP1 still had a way to go before it got there. I hope the devs will implement at least the glaringly obvious low hanging fruit like LS, radiation, and comms delays in KSP2. If they make those options toggleable like KSP1 did, they’ll let the easy mode proponents dial the realism back to a level they like, and improve the game for the realism proponents.

I’d argue that your statement holds true for things like CoD; realistic weapons, military discipline and tactics and terminal ballistics would kill that game. I think KSP is actually the opposite. And more importantly, I think you’re underestimating how much lack of realism actually detracts from the game for non-casual close-to-SME players. As a spaceflight history nerd from birth (one of my earliest memories is trying to stay awake for one of the Moon landings), I learned a *lot* about spaceflight as a kid, to the point where the sound and aerodynamic maneuvering in vacuum really got my goat when I was watching Star Wars for the first time in its first theatrical release. Having seriously dated myself, I’ll now out myself as working in a field related to major project procurement. So I also get how complicated and hard it is and how much time it takes to build large technically complex projects with nine figure and higher price tags. So being able to roll out immediately procured and built multi-Saturn-core monstrosities with freshly recruited crews in literally a few seconds of game time? Yeah, it irks me. And glossing over R&D and testing, and planning and procurement? That’s a whole lot of fun lost. And the crawler way out to the Launch Pad being entirely ornamental? Yeah… For some of us, the game is simply the best, most realistic full spectrum soup to nuts, JFK speech to flying the landings space program simulator on the market. And anything that detracts from that realism, and any noticeable omitted realistic detail, detracts from the game.

I postulate that superstitious Kerbals do not believe in astrology. Instead, they practice RUDomancy; they study the patterns of debris thrown by RUDs to divine the intentions and future actions of the Kraken.

I like your operating parameters idea. That being said, industrial design and manufacturing aren’t physics. Engineers, machinists, QA guys, and other techies touching every one of the thousands upon thousands of parts making the insanely complex systems that are rockets, and the insanely complex systems that build, transport, launch, communicate with, recover and refurbish them, all have bad days. So do their managers. Vehicles failing, sometimes rapidly and unplannedly, are a thing. And that has added tragedy and drama and excitement to the history of space exploration. As I’ve said before about life support, every time KSP1 added more realism, the game got a bit harder and much more satisfying and enjoyable. This was due to the added drama and excitement and occasional tragedy. I see part imperfection as the same. It’ll force us to make better, more redundant spacecraft, bring engineers, and do more with them. It’ll add drama and excitement and occasional tragedy to the game. I see this as an absolute win.

Sadly, as a facial hair haver, I can’t identify with any of these.

Well said. I don’t identify as a gamer, or hang around in gaming circles, so I don’t know whether this notion of “punitiveness” is widespread or just a KSP forums thing, but I find it really, really strange. Life is punitive as hell in this sense, risk taking has consequences, and failure can be catastrophic as hell. Especially in space exploration. The history of space exploration is one epic saga of engineers and scientists and pilots deploying all their skills and ingenuity to overcome technical challenges and risks, and the consequences of failure were fatalities. Astronauts die when the engineers and scientists and technicians make mistakes. And that is a big part of what makes the whole endeavour of spaceflight thrilling and fascinating and worthwhile. People do strap their tender pink anatomies onto huge tanks of toxic and explosive chemicals and launch themselves clean outside our biosphere. It is sheer heroism in the literal, classical sense. Homer would have been hugely inspired by the Apollo program. And the need for life support is fundamental to the whole enterprise. Which is why I find it baffling that people are so opposed to it on the grounds of this notion of punitiveness, in a game that’s about iterative experimentation in spaceflight. Build an unstable rocket? Not enough fuel? Didn’t pack enough snacks? Forgot parachutes? The crew dies. Back to the VAB, brothers! (It sounds even better in Latin: “redeamus ad vehiculi fabricam, fratres!”)

I just go with the following: Suborbital launches and flybys: [body]Shot [number] e.g. MunShot 1 Tourist missions: TourShot [number]. If leaving LKO, [Body] TourShot [number], e.g. Duna TourShot 1. Rescue missions: Rescue [number]. If rescuing a Kerb outside of LKO, [kerbname] Rescue. Relays: [body]Com [number] e.g. MinCom 3 Landers: [body] [number] e.g. Laythe 1 UnKerbed landers: [body]Probe [number] e.g. EveProbe 48 Bases (including ground science stations): [body]Base [number] e.g. MunBase 1 Stations, rovers: you get the idea… It’s simple, consistent, easy to pick up on of you’re coming back to a save after some time away and keeps all missions to a given body filed together in the VAB/SPH. And I do get a bit of a fifties/sixties scifi vibe from it. A Greek alphabetic system (MunBase Alpha) would dial that up even more, but numbers are clearer.

Amen. I really home we get some nice small sketchy bases in the early stages, like For All Mankind’s Jamestown.

And those unrealistically optimistic breaks with reality detract from the game, IMHO. Some you can address through design (I like having 3 seats per Kerbal worth of living space on anything going farther than Minmus) and play style (not using throttle settings below approx 80%, using RCS in lieu of reaction wheels), but there are still a few things in the game that just don’t work the way they do in reality, and they kind of grate on my nerves.

Thinking about the part failure thing, it is a thing that happens to real spacecraft, and is something that the engineers who design them have to mitigate. A parts failure system that drives intelligent redundant approaches to design wouldn’t be a terrible thing…

If accused, I will of course vehemently deny ever having implied that our project team resemble a pack of feral chimpanzees. Agreed! Cheers!

I think there’s nothing more telling about the quality of the community and the moderators than the fact that discussion over the inexplicable omission of something as critical to actual spaceflight as rocket fuel is has remained as pleasant and civil and rational and polite and fun as the life support thread. Also, anthropology is a great first degree, and nice to meet another one of us in the wild. Mine is a lot dustier than yours is, but it’s stood me in good stead over the years. Visualizing long meetings from a primatologically informed perspective is a great boredom management tool.

If the game doesn’t have optional “SPESS WILL KEEL YOU” life support, a mod that treats life support as being as critical to mission success as rocket fuel is. Which, of course, it is.

I hope so!