kerballs

This is awesome. Thank you!

In agreement 100%. In real life, every maneuver would be planned down to the millisecond, days or months or years in advance. While there are examples of reactive maneuvers having to be performed (an STS abort to orbit, for example) and emergency maneuvers (ISS debris avoidance), these are never performed with only a few seconds of lead time. Spaceflight just doesn't work like that - if debris is coming towards you, and you've not picked it up well ahead of time, you're not going to know it's come and gone until your cabin starts depressurizing. KSP, of course, allows for a lot more flying by the seat of one's pants. But that's the fun of it.

And yet, loudly demeaning people in a public space demands attention and distracts from the discussion we're all trying to have. Totally agree. I've realized my thinking is too narrow on this subject. I want parity, but KSP2 isn't simply a reskin of KSP1 (as much as some of its detractors seem to think it is). So I shouldn't expect parity when a critical element of the gameplay loop is still in development. I have no doubt that the ~Various Resources~ will be carefully implemented, and that the devs will consider community feedback on implementation and balancing. I came to KSP1 in about 2017-2018, so the game was feature (and mod) dense by that stage. I wasn't really there for the development process. Gotta remember to have patience.

Everyone has made great points! I understand there's going to be a lot more to this game than what we have now. But in simple terms of basic feature/gameplay parity with KSP1, which is a fair comparison to draw, @DaveLChgo put it well here. The incentive is not only to optimize the launch vehicle for cost as well as part count/performance, but to recover resources. As it stands, I just destroy all my debris and don't think twice about it. The idea of making recoverable boosters is fun, but when my priority is simply getting a vessel to Jool and I can use as many parts as I want with no 'gate', there's zero gameplay incentive to do it. Great point! It could absolutely be something as simple as "steel" or "copper". Boom, right there, you've got incentive to recover as much hardware as possible . . . so long as the basic resources are in sufficiently short supply, or resource requirements scale appropriately. Great point, and I had missed that dev commentary. The important thing to me is that there simply be more early game constraints. Bootstrapping the beginnings of a rocket program is really fun. @Periple if you dropped the unprovoked *tips trilby*-evoking condescension and intellectual cosplay we could all have a much more pleasant time challenging my opinions. Your borderline hostile attitude is, if anything, the worst display of good faith ITT. I suppose I ought to hold my tongue until resources hit. Presumably, those resources will matter on Kerbin and in the bootstrapping stage as well as during expansion and mid-game. Perhaps a better way to frame my OP would have been in the context of feature parity. Despite the addition of For Science! there is a missing element of challenge and incentive, particularly in early game. Those constraints matter a lot to me and I wish there were some system in place to give me that feeling. I'm in a weird limbo where I really love KSP2 and for some reason I don't want to go back to KSP1 despite all it offers. Some strange circuit in my brain makes me feel as though it's 'wasted effort' to play and invest further into KSP1 - I want to feel committed one way or another, but KSP2 is missing about 10% of what I need in order to really FEEL that gameplay loop parity. Maybe I ought to just go play it and enjoy myself, lmao!

I will preface by saying I know currency is not planned for KSP2. And I understand why: the addition of more complex resource management systems later in development are (in the eyes of the dev team) sufficient to 'replace' the challenge/reward cycle of currency in KSP1. However, I do still feel that currency was a key part of my motivation to play KSP1 and is something I will miss. Let me explain. Until For Science was released I had zero motivation to play KSP2. I do not do well in a sandbox. My particular flavor of ADHD derives motivation and joy from tiered unlocks and restrictions, and terrible melancholy and boredom when allowed a totally blank slate with free everything. So like the rest of you, I was thrilled when 0.1.0 gave us an actual gameplay loop. This is how Early Access should have been released. (As an aside; Take-Two made an enormous PR goof pushing the developers to release a mostly broken sandbox. They undermined their developers terribly and presumably broke a lot of trust. I hope someone in management realizes that their decision had a massively negative impact. Take-Two chose to make this investment in KSP2 knowing that it was going to be complex and bumpy road to full release: they should have either trusted their development leads to know when the game was ready, or not made that investment at all. Anyway.) I'm about 100 hours into KSP2, about 70 of those after 0.1.0, and it's very enjoyable! I have not played KSP1 (which is still more stable and features many mods I loved) since For Science. This is 1/3 because I want to support KSP2, 1/3 because KSP2 is genuinely beautiful and fun and contains baseline improvements, and 1/3 because I'm motivated by the new challenges. But I'm still missing currency! I have no motivation to optimize my spacecraft beyond what is needed to achieve mission goals. Some form of finite resource, or ongoing challenge/reward system, is the ONLY way to implement this type of gameplay motivation! There is simply nothing to stop me from strapping as many "expensive" rockets as I want to a ridiculously overbuilt station core. There are no limits. One of the things I love most about KSP1 is actually the early game grind. You have to game the contracts and do some repetitive launches to earn money. Sometimes, later in the game, you blow a bunch of cash on a big rocket and the mission fails. For me there is actually joy in having to grind some simpler unmanned missions to earn money for the more important stuff. It's evocative of real-life challenges. Real-life engineering isn't just about mission profile optimization, it's about economy, and that's cognitively stimulating!

We're getting there, but there's still a ways to go with this UI. I am constantly squinting. It is still simply not readable . . . especially the slashed zeros. I write slashed zeros. I like them. But not in this game, lol. I appreciate what you're going for with the pixelation, stylistically speaking. But for a game with this level of information density, what we have now is really a step down from KSP1.

There are life support mods for KSP 2 currently available. I don't love the implementation. They strike me as either too easy or too hard, by virtue of their conceptualization. With the timescales at play, it isn't sensible to have to micromanage Kerbals (unless fully roleplaying/simming real-world missions in which case maybe that works for you). For me, I'd like to have something that requires a large up-front cost outlay ($$$ - this is one reason why I already miss currency in KSP) and/or the setup of a simple supply chain, after which point the life support becomes fully self-sustaining. Thus it does present an immediate mission-critical goal and require some investment, but does not threaten to bog down a player who is juggling even two space stations and an active interplanetary transfer. I was always hopeful for a tether mod in KSP1 but never found a mod which implemented it. I still think it an excellent idea.

Thank you for putting it to the community! When I broached the topic I was not expecting to open a dialogue, but now I'm curious. My last addition to this specific conversation is to push back on an expectation that most users will default to a rigid, dismissive framing of Steam as "some third-party software"; etc. Certainly, the KSP playerbase overlaps with GNU enthusiasts who eschew for-profit distribution channels, but I expect the opposite. CKAN itself is third-party software, no? As a licensed distributor, Steam was a de facto second-party/publisher when Squad was still self-publishing pre-2017: a significant, possibly even pivotal role in the game's arc of commercial success. And to the vast majority of PC gamers, Steam is hardly a fringe utility. Consider that Steam DB aggregates 2015-forward KSP1 sales estimates of between 3.5 and 6.25 million copies. If 1 in 100 buyers still actively play the game with mods, that could be 35,000+ active Steam players leveraging CKAN as their package manager today, myself included. Presumably, many enjoy the Steam platform to some degree (myself included). I like the centralization of my library, social features, and the pleasant brain-tickle of accurately counted playtime. In summary, 1) much of the community uses Steam; 2) integration offers potentially desirable features; 3) other popular 3P mod managers default to integration; 4) thus, as CKAN is by and for the community, offering up-front transparency and an obvious path to optional integration would certainly seem to square with its mission of enabling an open management and compatibility framework atop the vanilla game. I am new to these forums, though not to KSP. Before responding, I read some of pjf's initial 2014 CKAN release thread. It's evident that CKAN has been shaped by much discussion and occasionally passionate discourse. It's been a long time since I participated in a community software effort and it's enjoyable to dip my toes back in - I'm looking forward to being active during KSP2's development. Thanks for engaging with me on this point.

You are completely right. This bug report was invalid, and should be ignored. As a quality-of-life issue I believe it warrants discussion. The issue has been closed out on GitHub and HebaruSan has provided an explanation to me: This bug report stemmed from my own long-running misunderstanding of how Steam handles games based solely on my experience with Fallout 3/NV/4 Script Extender and NMM/Vortex Mod Manager. These were the only mod managers I had used prior to adopting CKAN for KSP1. When you launch Fallout 3/NV/4 from the vanilla install folder executable, from Fallout Script Extender, or from the mod manager which points to either executable, the game is immediately launched within Steam. I still do not fully understand how this is different from other games' functionality, or why KSP behaves differently. All my games are on Steam and I want my playtime tracked. For me, launching the game independent of Steam is both unexpected and undesirable behavior. This behavior is not disclosed on initial CKAN deployment. Disappointingly, I only noticed it after failing to track hundreds of hours of time in KSP1 and about 50 hours in KSP2. Other users may find this to be undesirable and unexpected behavior in the same way I did. Others like @pbristow may find this to be "zero-trust", user-centric and expected behavior. In either case I think more visible documentation of this behavior could be easily added to CKAN to prime unwary users such as myself.

*EDIT* This was determined to be user error. CKAN has a setting for this. Apologies. --------------------------- I originally posted this as a bug report on the CKAN GitHub, because I am running CKAN and many mods. However, this issue appears unrelated to CKAN or modding so I am cross-posting it here. ### Operating System Windows 11 ### CKAN Version 1.34.4 ### Games KSP 2 ### Game Version 0.2.0.0 ### Did you make any manual changes to your game folder (i.e., not via CKAN)? No manual changes. ### Describe the bug Steam shows that I have a total of 46 hours in-game with 0.0 in the past 2 weeks. I am quite sure I have played well over 20 hours in just the last 2 weeks. I want to make sure my playtime is being counted so that the devs and Steam get accurate statistics.  I am signed into Steam when playing. The game does not show as running in Steam when the game is running. CKAN is pointed directly at the KSP2 install folder. This is the original, clean install folder and has not been copied or altered. Not only that, but CKAN counts over 90 hours in KSP2:  Is this because Steam launches the launcher executable, but CKAN launches the game executable? *** UPDATE *** I used my critical thinking brain and launched the game executable directly from the install folder. The same issue occurs. This is not necessarily a bug unique to CKAN but rather to Steam or the game and I'll be posting it on KSP's forums. Feel free to remove this or leave it for visibility. ### Steps to reproduce 1. Launch KSP2 directly from the game executable when signed in to Steam 2. Observe whether Steam registers the launch of KSP2

I have reported a bug here on GitHub. Steam is not accurately reporting playtime when the game is run through CKAN. This bothers me because I want the devs to have accurate metrics - frankly, KSP2 needs the PR help. Also, I want my playtime reported.

Extremely useful. I'm running around 30 mods and I would say this and WASD For VAB are the most critical quality-of-life mods for my playstyle. Thank you!

I found it on CKAN Tuesday, 16-Jan-24 02:22:21 UTC. Downloading because more engines = more fun

These graphics are great and so are your others (the world timezone release map in particular). Props to the artists. Would be helpful for newer players to have an in-game help/glossary menu like Civilization which shows things like these graphics as well as celestial body information/lore. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Don't forget to triple-check staging and kerbonaut loading . . . every . . . single . . . revert. Modlist: Alarm Clock; BepInEx; Commlines; Community Fixes; Docking Alignment Display; Flight Plan; Galaxy Tweaker; HUD; I Wish They Made UI Customizable; KerbalHeadlamp; Lux's Flames and Ornaments; Lux's OAB Extensions; Micro Engineer; Node Manager; Orbital Survey; PAIGE B Gone; Patch Manager; Science Arkive; SpaceWarp; Speedy Startup; The Nuclear Option; UITK for KSP 2; Utility Uplift; WASD For VAB System specs: AMD Ryzen 7 5700X / Asus NVIDIA RTX 3070 / Gigabyte Aorus X570I / Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200 2x16 GB

My copy of the game is vastly more performant on 0.2.0 than on prior versions. Performance + core gameplay loop/progression + burgeoning mod scene = happy me. I am now playing KSP2 full-time and haven't touched KSP1 since For Science. Lots of bugs fixed. Lots of bugs yet to be fixed. Excited for what's to come. Modlist: Alarm Clock; BepInEx; Commlines; Community Fixes; Docking Alignment Display; Flight Plan; Galaxy Tweaker; HUD; I Wish They Made UI Customizable; KerbalHeadlamp; Lux's Flames and Ornaments; Lux's OAB Extensions; Micro Engineer; Node Manager; Orbital Survey; PAIGE B Gone; Patch Manager; Science Arkive; SpaceWarp; Speedy Startup; The Nuclear Option; UITK for KSP 2; Utility Uplift; WASD For VAB System specs: AMD Ryzen 7 5700X / Asus NVIDIA RTX 3070 / Gigabyte Aorus X570I / Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200 2x16 GB

I don't doubt your experience, but let it be known that I personally named my first ship "# Test Mule x001" and nothing weird is happening, except it's crashing because I designed it wrong. Fly safe.

I LOVE the sound design! The UI sounds are fun and intuitive. The sound of a thruster exhausting its fuel supply is satisfying. The music is characteristically peaceful and trance-inducing. The load times are fantastic. I'm getting 30fps average with small vessels on my 1660 OC 6GB (1080p, low low). The intro video was charming. The visual appearance of the UI is going to take some acclimation, but I'm getting the information I need when I need it. I think the textures and shaders are great too - metal looks like metal, and the tank welds and overall attention to detail are top notch. The art and lighting are stylistically true to KSP and are quality without being absurdly realistic. I'm happy to support the developers and get Early Access to this enormously complicated game. I think the folks doing the complaining are expecting too much, too soon. If the game had half of the features and performance it had for me at this moment, I would still be comfortable handing over my money. I'm getting what I expected, which is not immediate perfection but rather confidence in your long-term ability to iterate, communicate, and deliver. You should all be proud of your hard work. Take the weekend to chill.

Thanks so much for your hard work! I love hearing about peoples' journeys through higher education and into jobs they didn't expect. Museum Studies sounds like a really fun major. I've been playing KSP for years but have never been active on the forums - I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to contributing to the evolution of KSP2.