Westinghouse

Exactly the same thing here. I have no interest in contributing to a forum if posts are going to be removed by moderators like that. Removing posts that include personal attacks is one thing, but removing genuine criticism about the path of development? That's bang out of order, it's blatant censorship.

It's not at all off topic, is it? The subject of this whole thread is about one celestial body occluding another. That leads naturally to questions about the absence of the feature in the current game. At the end of the day, it's their game, they can put it at whatever priority on the list they want. But not implementing it properly will forever leave them open to the accusation that KSP2 is a dumbed-down/simplification of the original game.

Well I tell you what, I really appreciate hearing that! I really do. Nertea is absolutely someone we like hearing from, even if it just sparks discussion (his heat transfer blog for example) And like I said, we love communication! When I say it's underwhelming, I really just meant it just shows we're eager for news.

Yeah, I'm not sure about how you got to this reasoning. What these responses to the devblog are a sample. A sample of enthusiastic KSP players. And I don't agree with your 40/30/30 reception - I'd say the feeling is we're a bit underwhelmed. For example, did you really have to call up NASA to ask how an eclipse works? That sounded like PR fluff to me. Still, some communication is far better than none! There's that whole thread on the forum of course about the lack of communication and engagement (and no, silly memes about Capybaras on the Discord don't count). One thing about the solar eclipse coding example - it brings up the whole suggestion about something along those lines hasn't been implemented for CommNet signals occlusion. Maybe we should have some more communication from Nate about why that decision was taken (or just add it back in, like the original game!)

It's not the worst thing if we get mad at them from time to time. It's because we all care about them making KSP2 into a great game. I wouldn't say we need daily updates, but weekly updates devblogs like this are lovely, and like I said, stimulate discussion. Personally I think they got cold feet and went quiet last year over the reaction to Nertea's heat flux devblog. Obviously it can be difficult and stressful for them at times, but that's what they signed up for with EA unfortunately. Openness and some external pressure can be healthy at times. The very worst thing is not that we get mad, it's if we simply lose interest and this forum becomes a ghost town. If that happens, the franchise is dead.

I might be a bit critical, but I'm still delighted that they post things like this. Anything is better than nothing, and the radio silence they have at times is frustrating. I'm personally very interested in reading into their technical solutions to things like this, and if anything the posts stimulate discussion and debate. The big, big problem with the attitude of 'just leave them alone and let them cook' is that they've had a huge amount of development time already. They're more than four years behind the initial release schedule and they appear to have problems simply sticking to self-imposed deadlines such as the bi-weekly K.E.R.B. report. That unfortunately points to serious project management problems at Intercept, maybe inherited from Star Theory before them. If they had been more open with what they were working on, many problems we've encountered could have been flagged much earlier by the community and fixed, for example wobbly rockets, the hard-to-read font, lack of IVA, the lack of an interplanetary manoeuvre planner, the big Parts Manager interface.

See, if that's true then it makes me question whether these people are the right people to be in charge of the KSP franchise. Obviously I get they want to market it to a broad range. Having Kerbal Space Program become some sort of educational standard for STEM to be sold to schools and education institutions is probably some Private Division marketing executive's wet dream. But the fact of it is that launching spacecraft is hard. Any player capable of launching a rocket into orbit around Kerbin and sending it to the Mun will easily be able to get their head round radio signals back home being blocked. I wasn't playing the original game before CommNet was introduced but the concept always seemed fantastic to me, forcing us to think ahead and build relay satellites. Passing out of site from the homeworld and out of contact with Mission Control always seemed magnificently ominous and eerie to me, making me imagine what a lone Apollo command module pilot would have felt. Maybe the devs are being forced into these silly decisions by clueless PD executives and managers. But if instead this development team really are determined to make a dumbed down 'Kerbal for Kids', maybe they should switch to making mobile games for iPhone instead.

Didn't the original game have multiple CommNet ground stations placed around Kerbin to prevent this? Correct me if I'm wrong, I'd have to open up the game to check, but I remember seeing 'relayed through Island Station' or something. Yeah, but this game has been in development 6+ years now. If CommNet hasn't been implemented properly yet, is it likely to ever be? Things like CommNet being missing seriously makes me wonder what they were doing for all that time. If you are correct and that doing calculations for all Active Craft hampers things, I'm worried that they're being seriously handicapped by their decision to simulate all active vessels. Instead of calculating the area, couldn't this be done more efficiently by just using a cosine equation? Get the vector from current position to the Mun or occluding body, get the vector from current position from to light source (Kerbol) or CommNet relay, and compare the two vectors with a cosine (past a threshold of close to 1.0 or -1.0, I forget which) to see if they're intersecting. The distance to each object is also known, which tells which body is occluding which, and also the radius of the planetary body will be known, which along with the distance allows the area or field of view to be calculated - a Solid Angle measured in steradians. This value along with the cosine value can be used to attenuate the light intensity (or block a signal). This calculation has the advantage of being more lightweight and therefore be run on multiple planetary bodies and vessels. I wouldn't be surprised if CommNet from the original game used some kind of similar calculation.

Hmmm, I would say no. The reason is if a player launches a probe interplanetary, their instinct is to immediately time warp ahead to when that probe arrives. In that whole period of months of time warp, they're effectively discouraged from taking on any missions in the Kerbin system, unless they have some sort of Alarm Clock mod. Going interplanetary too early means the player loses focus on Kerbin/Mun/Minmus missions, which I think form an excellent playground environment for training new players in spaceflight. Of course, It's a sandbox game , like @regex says- the player is perfectly free to do anything they want! But the cultivated primary missions created by the developer to introduce new player to the game I think should be targeted at small incremental steps within the Kerbin system at first. Going straight to a precision landing on Duna immediately after Minmus is just too much. It risks scaring off newer players. The original game 'gated' this in a very nice way by limiting the KerbNet strength until enough funds could be gained from missions in the Kerbin system to boost the signal strength (I don't know if KSP2 is has a working KerbNet, I understand they're using a similar signal strength system in Kitbash Model Club). I mean, yes, there are endless paths to take. It's part of the reason KSP is such a superb game format. But for the primary missions the Devs need to narrow down on one route to ease in new players. I just think the U.S. incremental route is best. Doing it the crazy Soviet way seems wrong - for example they failed to master docking before starting on space stations and a lot of the early Salyut missions failed. They also left that poor dog to die up there.

This is a great point. In the recent dev streams of them landing on Duna, they're using a combination of wings and parachutes to try and perform a precision landing. Seems like they're just making it harder for themselves. Very well put! This is a very important point - at the moment the player is being handed the locations of the mission destinations on a plate. It makes the current mission layout just a sort of 'follow the paths to the monuments'. I completely get why the Developers wanted to do this - they were probably super eager to show off all the cool artwork they've built, but it gets boring pretty fast. It's been mentioned plenty, but a mission system like SCANsat would be excellent to allow players to discover the monuments and biomes themselves. What exactly is so dumb about following the U.S. path, out of interest? It seems to me like a nice set of incremental steps, each mission slowly building on the experience gained from the previous. Reach space on a suborbital launch - Freedom 7 Reach Earth orbit - Friendship 7 Perform an EVA - Gemini 4 Perform a rendezvous - Gemini 6/7 Perform a docking - Gemini 8 Leave Earth's influence and orbit the moon - Apollo 8 Land on the moon - Apollo 11 Perform a precision landing on the moon - Apollo 12 Drive around on the moon - Apollo 15 Build a space station - Skylab Obviously the mission plan doesn't have to follow this exactly, KSP2's currently skips the rendezvous and docking for example. But it seems to me like a good series of steps to introduce a new player to space flight within the Kerbin system before heading out to Duna. As opposed to the soviets who appeared to have skipped the suborbital step and later went straight to space stations. Other mission happens can happen at the same time in parallel of course, for example sending unmanned probes out to pass by and collect science from Duna and Jool before heading there with live Kerbals. This also removes the complications of having to bring Kerbals back. Something I've noticed from a few recorded playthroughs on YouTube is that a lot of newer players seem comfortable just leaving their Kerbals stranded on the surface of Eve or Laythe (this is something I absolutely never did in the original game, I always made sure to be able to bring my guys back home).

Maybe you're both not understanding - the problem is that it's forcing the new player out of the Kerbin system way too early. @pschlik explains the problem about five posts down in this thread. The rendezvous missions serve the purpose of training the new player to maneuver and operate in orbit. The 'save a kerbal stranded in Mun orbit' missions from the first game got tiresome after a while, but the first time doing them they were very fun and exciting. Teaching the player how to perform a rendezvous is explaining how an efficient Hohmann transfer orbit works, which is exactly what 'the correct angle' interplanetary transfer window talk is all about.

I hugely disagree with this, it sounds like you're advocating keeping things that don't fit the game simply to annoy people. I'm the same as @Dakitess, I find the humor a bit forced and even cringeworthy at times. It adds to the kiddie vibe of KSP2 that I don't particularly like. It also doesn't make sense how you have to go to Mission Control and 'tell' her that you've accomplished a mission. Surely she would know this already? "Oh gosh, you've landed on the Mun?" What exactly is she doing sat there in Mission Control in front of rows of computer banks drinking coffee, has she really not being keeping track of your current mission? I also agree with what other people have said, the Duna missions come far too early. Rendezvous and docking missions in Kerbin orbit need to come before anything interplanetary.

@Dakota, I wasn't the poster who called it 'PR fluff', but it definitely came off a little too stage managed. My suggestions for the next would be to 1) have someone other than an Intercept Games employee moderating and asking the questions, and 2) do the talk while the subject of the session is playing the current build of the game live. Here's an interview Scott Manley did years ago with the developers of KSP1 - Talking With The Developers Of Kerbal Space Program At GDC 2014 - YouTube It's certainly not perfect - you can see the Squad Community Manager hovering awkwardly in the background recording the session, and the devs are a bit guarded at times talking about upcoming features in the game (ion engine thrust and acceleration under timewarp it appears were still being discussed). But by having an independent journalist or fan asking the questions does give it a better feel of authenticity. With 1), obviously I get why you would instinctively want to keep control of the process as much as possible. But remember - the person doing the AMA can always answer "no comment" or "I'm not sure about the answer to that" if a question comes up that might be outside of their remit. And 2), the part about seeing the developers playing the game live, we really haven't seen enough of this throughout KSP2's development history - we've instead been seeing a bit too much of screengrabs, still images, pre-rendered trailers, storyboards etc. Even the art director here loading up some of her creations in the VAB would have been much nicer to see.

I just found about this mod from reading the MechJeb discussion thread. Really great to see @schlosrat! Looking forward to testing it out

The exact quote was "We're killing the Kraken...." Kerbal Space Program 2: Episode 5 - Interstellar Travel - YouTube The guy in the video did have to check himself immediately after saying that. But by making statements such as this, it is definitely reasonable to say they have been over-promising and increasing expectations.