Casellina X

That was a nice turn. I definitely need to practice this sort of technique.

I threw this doomed piece of space junk out into the aether. It told me there was no Comnet access but I had an antenna and more than enough power. Strangely enough, I had throttle control and the ability to stage (although via the button and not the spacebar). Stupidly overpowered, 13k+ dV in vac, launcher stages jumped between 5-7k dV. I probably had close to 3 minutes of continuous burn, straightish upwards. I may try again with a victim Kerbal.

Since the patch, deleted my old save and started fresh. Went back to basics with the second SRB (flea? thumper?) and did a couple of short flights into the ocean. Built a simple orbiter and landed it in the desert - I was aiming for KSC but underestimated how much drag was affecting the craft. Then built something to take me to Minmus orbit. Plans changed on the fly when I discovered a 15km orbit appeared to be too close and I was losing altitude. Turned an orbit into a landing. Ended up being my softest ever landing ~0.2m/s. I have enough dV to return to orbit but I'll leave Val there for a while. Just about time to find another crater in the solar system to explore.

There's probably 4-6 camps of players: Those who build something that never leaves Kerbin. Those who reach orbit but that's about it. Those who reach the Mun, even Minmus, and are relatively comfortable doing stuff within the Kerbin planetary system. Those who can reach every point of the Kerbolar system - and even get back! I'm in camp 3, capable of stepping into camp 4, but without the confidence (yet). Keeping the Kerbolar system more or less as it was in KSP1 lets us solidify that confidence in a familiar place, and eventually move to camp 4 and beyond. From an exploring new frontiers point of view, there's probably nothing for the veteran players besides a few easer eggs in this iteration of KSP. While Intercept solidifies the base for KSP2, us camp 1-3 folks can solidify our bases, and hopefully by the time interstellar components are available, we can join you folks.

Trust me, I get where you're coming from. I've said in another thread my thoughts on the price (expect $50 to become $70 at the 1.0 release).

Depending on financial ability, expectations about KSP2, and understanding of the concept of "Early Access", $50 is K2 levels of steep. For various reasons I don't agree with it being a steep price, but I understand why some see it that way.

I plan to protest the legality of those sidepods. They seem primarily for the outwash effect and that goes against the spirit of the regulations. Ross Brawn won't be pleased.

Set phasers to "Outrage".

I'd prefer the Navball in the center. Distance-wise, it's closer to the action so I can orient myself. Moveable UI elements would be useful. Sometimes the Navball itself seems busy, cluttered. I remember a screenshot where it was a blue/blue instead of blue/brown setup - that Navball was preferable for me. I need(want) to see burn times and TWR return during flight and VAB construction, and inclination. The rest I'm not that fussed over. Pinable menus/labels would be a welcome return. In some ways, I guess I just want the KSP1 flight UI, with the KSP2 visual style.

Much more preferable than taking a picture of your screen with another device... or the tried and true path to the picture on your local machine.

To drive this point home, a game I'm playing just pushed an update that fixed some ray tracing aspects. In the process it seems to have broken some light occlusion in other places.

For the people going interplanetary, how are you figuring out transfer windows? Just setting up a node and fiddling until you get an SOI intersection? Or are you actually doing some sort of planning work to get a maneuver?

My cynical take on this, working at a company that near constantly restructures internally, is that some middle managers will get the axe and their work and direct reports will be shoveled under some other middle manager. Pressure will come from up top to "deliver value" quickly, so the product owners and project managers will squeeze development teams for higher velocity per sprint (assuming Scrum/Agile). The people who do the grunt work will grimace and attempt to deliver, ultimately falling short of extremely unreasonable expectations, more blame will follow, the cycle begins anew. Meanwhile Discord/Reddit/Forum users will decry the developers ability to deliver on real or perceived promises, ignorant of the diligent work going on behind the scenes, and behave as if the sky is falling. I feel for the faces of the community like Nate and Dakota because they wind up as direct targets of the outrage machine. I also feel for the nameless, faceless folks who have to do the heavy lifting because the load very rarely lightens.

Funny enough, the state of the game is conducive to people like me - capable of pushing beyond Kerbin, but not confident to do it consistently. So I'm currently in the "playing with satellites" phase. This one was sent up on a comically unstable rocket. It's a wonder I was able to circularize where I did. This one went up on a much more stable and overpowered rocket. Enough dV remaining to be dangerous. I think I stumbled upon a Stack Separator issue where on separation it just erases whatever you cut lose. Although that might be a side effect of zero persistent debris.

But that answers it right? KSP2 is not KSP1 v2.x.x. It's KSP2 vx.x.x. While components and ideas have been carried forward, it's a separate game entirely. It's not KSP1+ because it doesn't build on the KSP1 codebase, but (according to the developers) starts fresh. Perhaps expecting KSP2 to be KSP1+ is what's leading to a lot of the disappointment folks are having.

I think I recall a GDC presentation about Ubisoft developers coming up with a rules driven validator to confirm that changes to their procedural generation didn't do silly things like places lanterns on top of ladders. Of course, something like this is non-trivial and takes a lot of time to set up, get right, and comfortably integrate into the workflow.

I threw this abomination into orbit The TWR readout was wildly inaccurate, sometimes giving me upwards of 4.0TWR, then at launch proving to be sub 1.0. In fact, launch that made it to orbit was sub 1.0 at countdown and just barely climbed above 1.0 after 5 or 10 seconds of burn. Frankly, I was surprised I made it out of atmosphere, let alone to orbit. Naturally by the time I circularized, there wasn't enough dV to deorbit. I think this is a "more boosters" situation.

I'd call that a successful Mun landing. I think I saw it called out in another thread, but there's some optimization to be had around the HUD. Noticed an improvement on the FPS counter when I stowed it for the screenshot. My legs are woefully inadequate for this lander - it's all I could do to keep it from toppling over before going EVA. Did you know that Q/E while EVA does a little sidestep? I guess the next step is Minmus and beyond. I still need some of the basic functionality from KSP1 to make its way over, so don't plan on seeing a total Kerbol system exploration post, a la @Vl3d.

I'm not sure why they didn't revert to VAB

Hang on... it can't be that easy... can it?

I live in the general area, do software engineering, and my total compensation is only 13% higher than my base. But regardless of how you or I speculate, it doesn't make much sense to do it anyway.

The open positions at Intercept games show the salary ranges. Across everything, it ranges from $55k-$130k depending on the role. So the average salary certainly could be less than $100k per year across the studio and your 60% addition doesn't play out in this case.

I attempted another Mun landing today. Simpler craft, overpowered lower stages that in the right launch window could have sent me directly to a new crater on the Munar surface. I had other plans. Problematic indeed. What you can see in the distance there is my lander stage. Other than having to revert to launch for the trajectory bug, and the fuel flow issue appearing, everything was uneventful... up until about 2m AGL. You see, I played with the leg parameters and apparently didn't do it right. A slightly off kilter landing meant a spring back into the air. Some bad SAS decisions and panic throttling later, my lander was hurtling back towards the surface and a date with destiny. On the bright side, you can see I was managing around 90FPS post-deconstruction.

I'm not familiar with Uncharted, but was that a PC release of something originally on console? Also, what was the original MSRP of that game? I'm not saying any of this as a gotcha, but just to maintain the perspective. If that game had been released on prior platforms then sure I can see that as a $50 game. But I think you're referring to exceptions rather than the rule, especially by mentioning going to third party stores for that $50 number. Also like you said, justifying KSP2 at $70 might be hard. But once again see the perspective of the times we're in. The shift is towards higher cost games. When I saw a $50 Early Access price, I knew how things were going to play out (we'll see if indeed I'm correct). I was comfortable buying in at this price because I appreciated the direction over Stock KSP1. It has issues, there is no way to put that lightly. But I understand that this is a lengthy process. On my end, I struggle to grasp what seems like overwhelming rage at KSP2 and the developers. It's ok to be upset, but people have to remember that other people... are people too. The intensity that people are coming at the developers with should really be dialed down.

Where are folks living, or what year are they in, where AAA games cost $50? The last time I recall a AAA game going for $50 was the PS2 era. From Xbox 360/PS3 on games were $59.99, and thanks to a couple of publishers, these days AAA games are going for $69.99. Now I've said this in another thread, but given that we're dealing with Take Two as the publisher, the expected price of the game will likely be $69.99. Therefore, at $50, it definitely is a discounted Early Access price. Whether or not the game is worth $50, $60, or $70 is up to the consumer to decide. By the way people are reacting to the pricing, they should not buy in now (if they haven't already) and wait for a 50%+ off sale. That's the only chance they'll have at getting KSP2 at any price that seems reasonable to them.