Palshife

Movement on the ladder is not required to reproduce this. I was able to reproduce on a stock Kerbal K2. Fly to Mun orbit (roughly 35km) EVA (just don't let go) Kerbonaut and craft drift apart because they have separate AP/PE altitudes. Time warp. Exit time warp, Kerbonaut and craft "snap" back together, and AP/PE altitudes change. Drift worsens. Orbital decay seems to still be there but appears to be "snap" corrected when certain conditions are true.

While not nearly as hilarious as OPs, here's a similar occurrence. This is a stock Kerbal X-2. Apoapsis is above Kerbin atmosphere, periapsis is below. No thrust, no RCS, no nothing. Giant flat cylinder pointed at the air and we see both the Ap and Pe increasing. "Air braking" is no more. Welcome to the age of "air thrusting." https://imgur.com/a/7TlelWy

If you're having internal discussions, please bring to the table that, at least for me, the silliness was absolutely evident in the writing, the Kerbals themselves, and many of the parts. It was totally welcome. It gave the game heart, and told the player not to take it too seriously. It should be preserved. But, for my sake, I did not get hooked for the reasons you're describing. In my view, the silliness did not necessarily spill over into how the game was played (though you could absolutely play the game silly if you wanted!). The principles of orbital mechanics were not overblown or inaccurate. Kerbin wasn't rendered as a zany, Toon Town landscape. When the rockets exploded they weren't accompanied by a "wah-wah" on a slide trombone. In this, many of us found out that the game was capable of connecting the player with realistic spaceflight, despite the unrealistic Kerbals and amateurish tone. I loved Apollo before KSP, but after? I developed a deep respect and admiration for the space race when I learned how much went in to planning and designing these vehicles, and being able to replicate them in the game was astounding. And then some days I built the weirdest, most unrealistic disaster machines possible, and laughed my keister off watching them tear themselves apart. Keep the silliness. Keep the light-hearted tone and the over-the-top Kerbals. Just keep in mind that not all of us have a laugh when the rocket wobbles and fails when we've tried everything to make it rigid. Let the player decide how silly they want to play. Please don't design silliness into the gameplay, and please don't justify silly emergent behaviors that get in the way of the player choosing how to play. I like KSP2 so far and I'm looking forward to seeing it continue to evolve. I hope you'll bring this back to the team.

It's really not necessary for you to speak for the rest of us so often. We can do that on our own, or choose not to. There are a couple of good discussions going on in here (axial tilt, drag occlusion, etc). Also, pointing out that there's nothing to discuss on page three of the thread is, well, kinda humorous.

I'm assuming they "all" have the same rationale? Just so we're clear, when I said hardly unanimous what I meant was not unanimous. Not unified. Meaning I firmly believe everyone has their own rationale (which means not necessarily my rationale). I was suggesting another situation to explain a drop in play time which you hadn't considered. So it should be clear that I'm not speaking for anyone else. I'd appreciate it if you didn't cherry pick my words to make it sound like I was.

That's presumptuous. The player community is hardly unanimous about the state of the current game. Plenty of us like and enjoy KSP2 (even in its current state). Naturally it's logical to assume that many of us have decreased our playtime as we await more fixes, not because we reject the game in some sort of unified "message."

They explained. The old system was extended, but has bottlenecks and is being replaced. The new system will be faster and prettier.

It's good of you to admit that you think it's cruel to dunk on them like this. It's just the nature of software engineering. You do QA on software. You catch a lot of stuff before it goes out the door. You miss a lot, too. You document the stuff you can't fix in time and you get to it when you can. You take the bug reports and prioritize. QA isn't magic. It's just work. They no doubt squashed a whole lot of bugs before early access that we'll never even hear about. The process isn't perfect, but they're clearly doing a lot right.