Picard2

I love the new part manager! So much value to being able to see all parts on the vessel in one place, no need to hunt around in the dark trying desperately to find the correct part to click on. The ability to open the part manager in map mode (unless I'm mistaken?) is so useful - de-rate your engines in the map while planning a manoeuvre, open your solar panels, adjust your parachute deployment settings, etc, all from one central menu. Just brilliant to have this built into the game in such a slick way. But! It really should not be what opens when you right click on a specific part. By clicking on a part you've made an explicit choice that you want information about that part, not all the parts on the ship. The ability to see the details for exactly, and only, the part you clicked on has also got a ton of value. And I feel like this is where the disconnect comes from in the comments I've seen in Youtube videos - people frustrated that they don't need to see all parts on the ship when they right-click the engine. And really, you don't need that. So totally support the suggestion in this thread - was going to make a similar one myself. Please don't remove the new part manager, but improve it by implementing a part-specific version for right-click. You could maybe go even further by having a 'pop-out' or "up" button on the right-click display to open this out in to the full part manager or something. The mods that added central part lists in KSP1 were always really useful - but crucially they didn't remove the standard "one part right click" method.

Yep, this does sound great. Loved the telescope mods in KSP1, designing missions around getting a scope up into a particular orbit with sufficient power etc; having this built in as a core part of the progression sounds really exciting.

Agreed. Although the state of early access release kind of wrecked my hype, this thread has revived it. Scansat, resource scanning, a genuine need to visit planets, to send multiple missions. By far my most enjoyable playthrough of KSP1 involved lots of Scansat, such compelling gameplay and always felt much deeper than build a single satellite with all the science modules. Had to actually design missions to meet power and orbital criteria, send return missions to extract resources... Imagining what could be done with a similar system built into the core is really exciting.

Thanks - was not aware of this.

I'll be honest my first reaction was a little negative. I always play career, never sandbox or pure science. Much prefer the sense of progress of starting from nothing, doing missions, gathering science... But yeah the pure randomness of the stock contracts is just not exciting. And I really don't think I've ever run up against money as an actual constraint - it's always just so abundant as to be basically worthless. This, on the other hand, sounds like it could be - if done right - absolutely amazing. Running actual missions with real value beyond some abstracted 'funds'? So good. Want to launch that nuclear powered engine? Now you have an actual reason to scan those planets, to mine that uranium, to set up your logistics stations. So much potential for exciting and engaging gameplay here - potential way beyond 'funds'. If done well. I wonder if there's scope here for some sort of procedurality in the resource distribution? I mean, something not just like 'this spot on Mun always has 5,000 units of metal' - so every playthrough you always go to the same locations (and once you know where resources are / search online, you never bother to scan). But like 'these various spots have a certain percentage of units metal in this range' - so you might know that Mun always has these resources, but always need to scan to figure out where to build your base.

I agree. The overall UI direction seems really good - love how clear most things are, the way so much useful info is clustered, and the general sleekness of a lot of it... But the pixelated / blocky features (text and some of the buttons) do seem to clash with the sleekness. It feels a bit like two different UIs mashed together.