allanp11

My suggestions? As posted in the UI/UX mega thread.... Yeah, like many have said the font is very hard to read in places, especially numbers. The VAB stage info doesn't have much information. In KSP 1 you could see start weight, end weight, isp (useful if you are mixing different engines), burn time, delta V, thrust and TWR. You could also select which of these is visible. I would like that back for KSP2. I don't know if this is a physics thing or a user experience thing, so it might not belong here, but I think it can be remedied with some extra UI controls. The user experience of rover wheels is terrible for moving anything other than tiny rovers. The rovemax TR-L2 wheels are pretty big, bigger than a kerbal, and look like they are suited to moving heavy, 20+ ton loads up and over hills and valleys at a slow but steady pace. Right now, they are geared to do 58m/s, which is 130mph! That's fun for a small buggy, but when I want to move and dock heavy assemblies on the hilly ground, I don't need to do that at 130mph. I would really like to have 2 new sliders for the rover wheels. One is gear ratio to allow me to decrease top speed but increase torque, and the other slider is power, so I can increase the overall power at the expense of increased electricity consumption. Right now, 4 of the the TR-L2 wheels just rolled my 20 ton lander to the middle of a shallow depression and did nothing after that. This definitely needs fixing for colony's. At the highest power setting and biggest gear ratio for torque, the rovemax TR-L2 wheels should be able to move a heavy lander up a very steep slope, steep enough to tip the whole thing over backwards if you're not careful. The maneuver plan is very hard to adjust correctly. I would really like a separate fine adjust tool similar to what KSP1 had. I would also like to plan more than 1 maneuver plans ahead, and to see the deltaV cost of each maneuver plan. Being able to set the maneuver plan on the line that appears inside the SOI of the body you get an encounter with would also be great. I want to see if I have enough deltaV and thrust to slow down enough to get into an orbit, instead of just hoping I don't whizz by. Sometimes maneuver plans can come upon you very quickly before you have had time to adjust it. I would like the ability to set and adjust the maneuver node while the game is paused, or maybe even better to have a few time warp options below 1x speed, so we could have 0.5x, 0.25x and 0.125x warp settings. This would give us more time to adjust the node but also seeing things happen in slow motion might help us understand why the blasted large landing legs are exploding when landing at 2m/s! The new closet approach windows are better than in KSP1, so thank you for that. However, the closest approach keeps disappearing despite adjusting to get it closer. It will do this even though I'm not getting an encounter yet. Then when I get it to reappear the window is gone and I have to reopen it again, which usually means closing the maneuver plan I'm working on, only to re-open the closest approach window, then I have to hope that it stays open when I reopen the maneuver plan. The maneuver plan I'm working on closes when right clicking the PE to keep the PE displayed. It can be hard/impossible to select the right thing when zoomed out in map view. In Kerbin's SOI I might have an orbiting satellite or 2, the mun, munmus, Kerbin itself, and a closed maneuver node I would like to reopen. When zoomed out in the map view they are all on top of each other. I would like to be able to click and then choose which one of those things to select if there are multiple items there. I would also like the ability to show/hide map view elements, unless that's already there and I have yet to find it! When attempting to EVA I often get the error message saying something like EVA is blocked due to obstacle. I think whatever the EVA check box thing is, it's too large, and it would be nice to be able to see that hit box while building. Have it be toggleable on and off of course, it could be an option that appears when you right click the command pod/seat to show EVA check box, and have anything that clips into it be shown in red. in the VAB, the way symmetry works can be confusing. If I place two radial fuel tanks then I go to strut between the tanks and the main body, sometimes it will put two struts on one tank. the symmetry of the one side tank I click on is respected over the symmetry of the whole ship. It would be nice to have different symmetry modes to select between part symmetry or whole vessel symmetry, or select which part build symmetry is applied to. Also, bring back remove from symmetry option. When moving up/down ladders, sometimes I have to place the small three rung ladders in weird places/angles to get a claimable path back to the command module door. However, when attempting to climb these ladders, when pressing F to go to the next ladder the kerbal hops back to the previous one. In these cases it would be nice to be able to right click any ladder and have a "grab" option on the selected ladder. If the ladder is within range they will hop to that ladder. Which of the open/closing circles that appear on a body's SOI is the entrance and exit can be confusing. Maybe this could be improved. For now, for anyone else who is struggling to remember which one is which I use this. As I ENTER the room (SOI) the door (circle) OPENS. As I EXIT the room I CLOSE the door behind me. to the above I would also like to add... Landing legs could do with being better. The Large landing legs seem to just want to explode even when landing at 2m/s. Also, when landing on anything other than perfectly flat and level terrain, the craft seems to want to tip over or even bounce onto it's side. Can the landing legs be made to compensate for non-level terrain to keep the craft pointing directly upwards, instead of at a 90 degree angle to the ground. It would also be great if the landing legs could be made to raise/lower the craft at will after it has landed. Imagine if you want to retrieve a detached buggy. You have a docking port on the buggies top side, and a docking port on the crafts underside. Drive the buggy underneath then lower the craft onto the buggy to dock. this would also help with getting ladders low enough to the ground, while also allowing for a large enough safety gap under the engine for landing. Separators/decouplers are too explody! I built a cool, apollo type lander in KSP 1, where you have a descent stage, then to lift off you activate the ascent rocket at the same time as decoupling from the descent stage. But I can't get this to work in KSP2, it just blows up, especially when you need to use a more powerful ascent rocket like a vector engine. I know they are working on one of these things already, the maneuver node fine adjuster, but wanted to include it anyway just to make this a more complete list of what this player would like to see for the game so far.

The more I think about it, to have all that stuff I mentioned above, basically all of the resource gathering update (which for all we know isn't as big or in depth as I've suggested above) AS WELL AS everything else that's in the colonies update all in one single update, that would be a huuuuuuuge update. But then, lets say we switched things around and had resource gathering first, well that wouldn't make any sense either because why do you have all these resources that we can gather without having any need for them? Such is life when they are developing a game while we are already playing it. So maybe it does make sense to have colonies first even if it is slightly game breaking for the time being, but like you suggest have resource gathering come straight after, so as to fix not needed any resources in colonies. But also they would need to communicate that that is the plan.

Or if they are getting any ideas from it

Well, you do make a lot of good points. However... Do we? I hope that is true, but the way the current VAB on Kerbin works is that we don't need/use any resources to build anything. That makes sense on the home world of Kerbin but not on new worlds we have just discovered. I also hope you're right about needing resources to build a VAB, and have that be a challenging thing to do, instead of something like "Congratulations, you have unlocked a magically OP VAB on Eve!". My comment about throwing the balance off probably should have been that it could throw the balance off, depending on how it is implemented. I'm just thinking that since colonies is coming before resource gathering, then everything that comes in colonies, including potential buildable VABs and the stuff you build within them won't require any resources. Or maybe that could change when resource gathering comes out? Yup. I am hoping for the VAB to have some kind of buildable storage silos that you build on the outside to hold various different goods, which the player would have to stock up, because you'll need not just the fuel, but literally everything to build whatever you create inside the VAB like titanium, gold, plastic, rubber, etc. Then when building in the VAB, each part has a cost of X amount of one or more different items. Maybe instead of requiring you to have a full stock of everything you need to build a rocket up front, you can design anything you want in the VAB just like you can now, without needing any resources, but in order for it to be taken out of the VAB, for it to be actually built and exist anywhere outside of it, then the VAB must be stocked with all the needed resources and fuel needed to build the ship. So you can load up already saved craft files, or build something huge and then you would see how many resources you need to build it. Also very true. I don't think there should be any teleportation of crew or anything else. You can set up autonomous deliveries and such, but everything should be hauled in some way, even if the player doesn't have to do anything once an autonomous delivery route is set up. We do have a phase angle diagram for Kerbin to get to other planets. Maybe someone will come up with phase angle diagrams for all the other planets once there is a need for one, or maybe there will be a window planner inside the game itself where you can select any starting location as well as any destination. But yes, that is another good point as it will likely add another layer of challenge, helping to keep things balanced. You know, while I considered that you might have to go interstellar to find certain mid/end game resources, it never occurred to me that not every resource that's in the Kerbol system would be available on every planet within the system, which would indeed necessitate all kinds of interplanetary journeys.

Well that was my point. "Because it's fun" and "because we can" can be valid reasons to do something (while also acknowledging the valid reasons to not do something of course!). I was wondering if those were the only reasons there will be to build colonies or will there be something more to it. Having now seen some of the images and concept art posted online, it feels very likely that these fairly large constructions will serve some purpose other than "because it's fun to build". If they are coming before recourse gathering, that might seem pointless as a player, but it might make more sense from the perspective of developing the game for reasons not known to us, so I'm not too concerned about that. Colonies might indeed be pointless when first released but if they become useful later on, well okay, I can be patient, but I do think there would need to be some communication to that effect to prevent disappointment. But what if it's more than resource gathering? What if there's a whole new place-able VAB and launch/landing pad? That seems to feel more in scale with some of the concept art and images posted. And it would help with building much bigger interstellar craft, especially if there's an orbital VAB where you build your craft while already in orbit. I mean, this kinda looks like a VAB...... https://kerbal-space-program-2.fandom.com/wiki/Colonies?file=Ksp_2_yes_you_can_make_colonies.jpg ......and I have heard there's a single rocket engine coming for interstellar travel that wouldn't even fit in the regular VAB. Buuuuuuuut, I'm not sure I like the sound of this. Being able to build a VAB anywhere you like throws off the balance of the whole game. Right now, if we want to sent three kerbals to Eve and back, we have to carefully design, test, redesign, test again until we get a craft that is capable of doing that. But if we can build a VAB on Eve, is that challenge there anymore? How do they balance the ability to do that so that it's not too OP? Maybe it's a unlock in tier 5 of the tech tree. I also don't imagine that you would build a VAB inside the regular VAB and launch it into space, so it might have to be built in sections and assembled on site. Sooooo many questions, what makes a VAB a VAB? Is it the "god" mode tools that we have to build stuff, or the fact that parts just appear out of thin air with no recourses required, maybe there's a VAB module that allows the "god" mode building, then when placed within a player built structure, the whole structure becomes active/usable as a VAB, enabling much bigger and even orbital VABs to be built. The VAB would then have to be supplied with recourses, and these resources even have to be processed and made from ores (such as metal from iron ore, uranium from uranium ore, etc) requiring a slew of other buildings. Then when you are in the VAB building a ship, each part would then have a resource cost associated with it, so a SWERVE engine requires 7 purified uranium, 20 titanium, 5 copper or something like that. Then only if the VAB has been supplied with enough of those recourse can you build it.

I do feel a bit lost when it comes to what their plans are, but also, things can change over years of time given player feedback, as well as their own experience playing the game.

Apologies for the possibly dumb question, but has anyone asked the question of what is the goal of colonies? What is meant to be the incentive to build them? I mean, we build rockets to explore the different planets and moons right? So is building colonies just something to do or is there another reason to build them, like maybe as a refueling station or as a way to cheese science by having it slowly but continuously trickling out from there? Maybe I'm just over thinking it. I mean, why explore other planets? Why collect science? Why play the game at all?! Just because we can and just because it's fun (or hopefully will be when they get most of the bugs out of it!) is a perfectly valid reason to do any of these things. Maybe building colonies is the same, just because we can. I only ask because if there was meant to be some specific reason to build them, for example what if they are a necessary step to travel to other star systems, would we want that? If so, then how does that change our wishes and expectations of colonies?

I have had the docking ports not docking issue also. In one case, when I separated my lander from the mother ship, whilst being in control of the lander as I float away from the mother ship, I right clicked the mothership docking port expecting to find "set as target" but didn't, Instead I found "undock". So now every time I separate I click on both docking ports, and from both ships and make sure all possible instances of the "undock" option is clicked. I looked to me as though the lander and the mother ship disagreed as to the state of the mothership docking port. When in control of the mother ship, right clicking on the motherships docking port didn't show an undock option, only "control from here". The "undock" option only appeared for the motherships docking port while right clicking on it while being in control of the lander.

That is very also very true. And most terrain that you find is far from flat. It would be great if the legs could somehow compensate for uneven terrain, not just via suspension, but by actively moving/adjusting to the uneven ground.

Thank you for the suggestion, unfortunately it didn't work for me this time.

Well I recently found the UI/UX megathread, I probably should have posted this idea there instead of starting a new topic, so I did, with a whole bunch of other ideas too! But there I think I might have had a better idea that being able to make a maneuver plan when paused. There I suggested that maybe there should be two or three time warp setting below 1x speed, so there would be 0.5x, 0.25x and 0.125x speeds. This would allow more time to setup the maneuver nodes, but I think would also be easier to implement, as the game will still be as it is now, they just have to add a few more time warp speeds. That can't be too hard right? Also, it would help the player to problem solve issues, like why my bloody large landing legs are exploding even after touching down at only 2m/s, or some other such problems which normally happen too fast to really analyze like you can in slow motion.

You can normally retract them in KSP2. The little switch next to "heat shield extended" will be flipped the other way with the little green indicator showing. But as it's currently flipped the wrong way I can't retract them.

These wheels, if they were real wheels, would already have a single speed gearbox to convert the many 1000s of RPMs from the electric motor to the 10s or 100s of RPMs of the wheel, likely a planetary gear reduction inside the hub as with a lot of heavy machinery. The gear ratio slider would allow the player to select different ratios, from fast and weak (like now) to slow and powerful. I wouldn't expect the ratio to change automatically as it reaches an incline or anything, like the multispeed gearboxes you find in a car. But if you want you can leave it on a low reduction ratio as it is now, then if you find you get to your destination and it's not enough torque, you can change it to a higher reduction ratio. If this is seen as being OP, then maybe you can easily select the ratio in the VAB but is only changeable after that via a kerbal on EVA, and they must use up a repair kit or something.

Ah okay, I'll take being half right

I don't think so. I didn't see a way how anyway.