macegee

Here's an interesting question regarding Kerbal version of SLS. Is it gonna have fairings? Unmanned (cargo) versions of SLS have them. Or would it be cut, since there're no fairings in the stock game anyway, and there's no practical need for them?

Like you've said yourself, staging frequently gets things wrong. Maneuver node burn time - same thing, the way it works is very far from ideal. But since there's a need in such system, some solution must be found. And it was found by the developers in those cases. So as by the developers of MechJeb and Kerbal Engineer, and other modders on various other cases. Also, I'd like to quote Harvester: So there's no need touch the technical side of the subject. For one, that's a bit too extreme. Second, I've been playing this game for more than 1.5 years, and still love it. I've been to Eve just yesterday. If it's not fun for you at this point, well.. Does it have anything to do with game itself? Tell us. This is exactly why we're here. Sorry, what? Yep, exactly my point. They still got terms of service, that's been quoted here at least two times, I think. Saying that certain features are 100% planned and some others are considered to be implemented is okay, as I see it. Latter means that it's still in the plan, and if there would be time to make them, and if they'd turn fun enough after being in the prototype. And people would have right to criticize either of such decisions. It's fair. Again, it opens up a dialog. Even between us, players. Actually, there's more to this question. There's already so many mods that there's no need to prototype much of anything to see how would it work. It's probably has been done already by someone, and you can see how it works by looking at the mods themselves and player feedback on them. That simplifies things even more. As I've said in the OP, of course, they won't ever say it to our face. And, you're right, community itself is filled with such an attitude. But look at this exact forum section. "Already suggested list" topic, for example. For one, it's not official topic, made by an ordinary user. Which is really convenient, since SQUAD don't post this type of things. But still, it's there, and it's filled with links to the mods. That makes me feel like I'm being treated the way I said I feel. I'm actually glad that you've brought this up. It made me think. For one, explosions that reentry heat and g-forces provide you are also "Very Kerbal". Second, docking also requires you to somewhat limit your designs and attach additional parts to your craft. RCS affects your craft designs even more, since you not only have to take RCS fuel with you, you also have to balance your craft and placement of RCS thrusters in a way that when you use them it won't shake your ship the way you don't need it to. So yeah, I think the requirement to use heat shields when they're needed is fair.

And we're back. I did some changes to the OP. Please continue by expressing your thoughts on the subject of design decisions in question. We've heard quite a bit of good statements so far.

Uhm.. Now I'm even more confused. What does it have to do with MechJeb? I'm really lost here. I'm not judging based only on what's inside the game already, I'm talking about the concepts that devs use and describe to us. By the time the game is finished I'd still be playing it, regardless of what they do. But right now we can discuss and criticize the concepts that are used to make it. Guys. You can look at it that way. But don't forget about all of the other game mechanics that's already there - ship designing, ascent, orbital maneuvers, rendezvous, docking - most of these are even more challenging than knowing how to deal with reentry heat. And on the bright side, it adds more ways to die, more explosions, and need to attach more boosters to your craft if you feel like it, after adding some extra weight (heat shields or more fuel). Both sides win, IMO.

Unfortunately, there's a limit as to how much devs can do, so it's not good idea to add optional stuff for minority of players, especially if it doesn't fit "the vision" of the stock game. But I'm trying to figure out how many of you think if things in question are actually important. SQUAD has all the rights. And we have the rights to criticize them if they change directions, yes. I think it's natural. It opens up a dialog. Yep, sorry about that. As I've said before, I'm a Russian, so I'm not that perfect in expressing my thoughts in English. What I meant to say is that some of the people get frustrated, but technically everyone would be grinding - meaning that they'd have to do same things over and over again - redesign their ships that didn't have enough fuel, or send a refueling mission, and even simply flying the same flight again to achieve what was suppose to be achieved. Or calculate stuff by hand. Do you agree that technically it is a grind? I don't want to express thoughts on behalf of everyone else, of course. I know that KSP isn't a simulator per se, even if it's marked as one in Steam (with tags "indie", "early acccess" and "simulator"). And I know what simulators are. You can find my name in the credits of the DCS A-10C simulator game manual, as "Mikita L0ckAndL0ad Machatov". I don't want KSP to become more "hard-core" or "harder". No. I want to see it grow more in-depth. I'm a game designer myself, so I know very well that there should be a balance between realism and fun. It is the key, actually. Said Deadly Reentry mod doesn't make the game harder, there're other things with the same magnitude of difficulty within the game. It just expands it in depth. And if we're talking about making the game easier for more casual players - delta-v/twr/burn time info is exactly what would make their life easier, as others pointed out, it's easier to understand space travel and rocket design with having these indicators at your disposal.

Delta-v isn't a solution per se, but an indicator. We've got lots of them already. We've got center of mass, center of lift, actual mass during flight, orbit altitude in meters. Why do we need all this? I'm pretty sure it's possible to play without any of this, even without looking at your orbit in map view. Some people actually play like that, from the IVA view. But they've got options to know more info. It's true. This is why I'm interested to hear how many of you feel the same as I do. That's a valid point. But why then they would work on tutorials separately? I explained at least a few times already why I consider his statement wrong. Do you have anything to add to it? Interesting thought. But too optimistic. It's fairly clear that said features are not gonna see a light of day, at least until 1.0, and doubtfully, not even after. This is what I think by looking at how development goes. Uhm.. This idea looks really weird to me, to tell the truth. Especially the "skills" part of it. I don't get it. Answered the same question already. Reentry heat still allows aerobraking and even aerocapture. Even aerobraking without heat shield is possible. Yes, of course, I was saying that about the tech tree itself, not the idea of it. And I think it's okay to critisize it while it's still WIP, since the general concept of how they want to fill the tech tree has been discussed by the devs already a few times - they see it as a tutorial to introduce parts to the player. This affects what's exactly in the tech tree. EVA reports alone can make lots of science. There's simply not that much of probe-sized stuff there yet, and I didn't hear devs saying anything about that there will be eventually. And that's bothering me, cuz I think there should be enough of both of them. I didn't mean to sound as if everything's a pure luck in this case. Of course, player skill matters here too. But it's still a guesstimate. A leap of faith. There're millions of ways of doing UI in games. They use gauge plus numbers for maneuver nodes. It's a valid design decision right there.

Exactly what I'm trying to tell. Harvester himself told us many times that he doesn't want the game to become grindy. While flying blindly might be fun for some people, it's gonna be frustrating for others, and, actually, for everyone - to become a grind. Even doing calculations by hand all the time IS a grind. You still can do aerobraking with Deadly Reentry. You don't even need heat shields if you do it the smart way, in the upper atmosphere. Doing an aerocapture (making your orbit stable in one go with the help of atmosphere after coming in from another SOI) is still possible with reentry heat enabled. You just need to plan for it, using heat shields. I think it's a good trade-off - if you want to do aerocapture, you need an additional stuff for it to work. Can you expand your thought a little bit? I don't get it. I'm a Russian, actually. Regarding multiplayer. Actually, I think you're right. I remember the old CMs (Damion and Skunky) saying that multiplayer isn't gonna happen. And now they're not a part of the SQUAD. So yeah, this is what a lack of an actual open roadmap does - people get cofused, rumors spread, even community managers make mistakes on what they say to the public, and then drama comes. This is why I'm pro for being open and transparent from the start. But that doesn't mean that you don't have to be careful with what you say.

Unfortunately, with how things are going, I don't think something like that is gonna happen. But surely, it would be great if I got proved wrong. True, but that doesn't mean that we can't criticize things some of us find questionable and/or wrong, and discuss it, like we do here. That's why I said "don't really" instead of more definitive "don't". Sometimes they do, but even then they're not completely open to us, but actually very vague and inconsistent. One more thing. My last e-mail with another Q&A session (we've had one a year before that) to Maxmaps that I sent him 3 months ago got completely ignored. Not even "we're busy", or "we can't answer these community questions you've gathered at this time", no anything. That's what I mean by saying "not really listening". I don't say we're being ripped off. No, on the contrary, KSP is one of the awesomest games out there. But it's still an Early Access game that's not finished. The way I see it, the tinier and vague bits of info we get from time to time, the more drama comes. Any incidents that happen (including the one with DLCs/expansions), actually happened because of lack of transparency in the first place, and inability to write statements that are not vague. I'm an IT systems engineer myself, a programmer, and also a Mission/Game designer. It's a lot of us here. Even NASA guys play this game. I guess most of us can recognize the kind of work Squad does. So? Does that make Tsiolkovsky rocket equation less important? During the last Devcast a term "delta-v" was used two times by Harvester and once by Maxmaps. Why is there a need to pretend like it's some kind of magic? This is why I'm not asking SQUAD for anything anymore. I'm here only to discuss their decisions with other players. I've said that like a dozen times already. Here you go. "Do it yourself" is an attitude that's even worse than "there're mods for it, stop ranting" one. Even though I'm actually considering making a computer game at some point in my life, this is not why we're here.

Do you realize that you just got LUCKY? Now let's talk about all these other times when you get UNLUCKY and end up having to do everything again and again and again and again, or send a refueling mission again and again and again, if it's even possible. And all just because you were unable to plan your flight delta-v wise. That's gonna be frustrating for some players, me included. I don't like to fly blind. I like to plan. But why do I have to calculate such things by hand or use mods just because I like to plan my flights delta-v wise? Seriously, is there an answer for this issue? So much this ^! A very good statement. Can you tell us why do you think so? There are quite a few of developers out there that work on Early Access games and do this, and they're doing quite okay. TB's video discussion (in the OP) addressed this topic quite good. Yes, sure, I'm not against mods, I use them myself. But I'm just talking about attitude. Even in this thread I was told twice to use mods and stop ranting and even try to create my own game. That's what I'm talking about. It comes up every time when someone's upset with the stock game. Like there's nothing wrong with the stock game and dev's vision is 100% solid and should not be debated. Which isn't true. We can and should criticize the stock game.

I say again, I'm actually here to talk to other players about it, and _do_not_ ask devs to change anything. I just want opinions, that's it. Everything I'm talking about was suggested before. But there're forum rules that state "do not suggest this and that" and "do not necro old posts". You want to hear what Maxmaps told me when I asked him about delta-v and other info pages some months ago? Here you go: Answer #1 from Maxmaps from 08.08.2013: Answer #2 from Maxmaps from 14.08.2013: And then we all know what Harvester thinks of it now - we don't get no delta-v indicators. But that's what I do when I have anything to say to the devs - I go and send an e-mail. Now I want to hear your thoughts of such decisions such as this one, to cut another feature. I'm tired by now, will return to those posts I didn't answer yet next time.

Indeed, it's interesting to see what KSP Edu will actually bring. And how would they keep up with vanilla game updates. And how much would they charge for it. Especially knowing that there's a lot of mods with such functions that are free. I also don't understand why would they give KSP Edu for free only to those who have more than one copy of KSP. Who needs more than one copy of a game for himself anyway? Yeah, actually, there was a note to that Bac9's blog post saying that his thoughts are not representing SQUAD's thoughts. It was deleted afterwards, but still, we get the idea that it actually didn't represent it. And now Bac9 isn't part of the SQUAD anymore. While it's true that it's still WIP, SQUAD is clearly not that good at communicating with players. Last KerbalKon was a good example of that. And most of the dev blogs are vague. I'm not even a native English speaker, so didn't really want any of my words to sound at least a bit trollish. Hope it won't derail the conversation. There's been a lot of good ideas already, will try to answer to as many of them as I can.

Actually, as a beginner, if someone would've told me that in order to get in space I simply need a rocket with ~5000 meters of delta-v and TWR of 1.5+, and that won't explode during flight, and I had such indicators in the editor, it would've made things SO much easier. It still does for me, after 1.5+ years of playing. There's a tutorial section for that. Training missions. Why on earth should a tech tree in a career mode be a part of that? I can't understand such design decision.

You're wrong. According to devs, KSP is gonna be "scope-complete" within this year, by the end of it. With 2-3 months for each update, it's gonna be ~4 updates before the "scope-complete". The way I understand it, "scope-complete" is gonna be "feature complete for 1.0".

2. Actually, when I first played with Deadly Reentry, I felt the same. It didn't make much difference. BUT when I played for the second time with it, with Career mode, it made a lot more sense to me. In order to get more science, you have to bring the stuff back to Kerbin. So now I consider Deadly Reentry as another must-have mod. It includes damage from excessive G-force also, so it goes even one more step further. Not to mention that few more ways to explode and die in this game is always a good idea. 4. You're right, probes are lighter. But that doesn't get us probe-sized experiment parts and other means to do science with them. 6. They didn't hire them to integrate their mod features into the base game, but even then, that's not what I was talking about. I'm saying that we're being told "stop asking, use mods" too much. Yet again, I don't need devs to read any of this, they did read such threads tons of times. I'm here to find out how many of you feel the same about the decisions they make.

Note: I won't be replying to such posts where people don't really read what I'm trying to say.

2. But how is it different from mastering everything else? There's rocket building, ascent, orbital maneuvers, rendezvous, docking, landing. It's just another essential part of rocketry. 3. As I said before, it is made to introduce you to the parts, having tutorial logic in mind. If it was made with more "tycoon" in mind, it would be structured differently allowing you more control over it. Say, giving you a choice of selecting either manned or unmanned routes from the start, or having a separate "scientific equipment" branch, etc. Do you get what I mean? 4. Yes, of course, you can choose not to do EVA reports. But how do I choose to get more science with probes? That's the point, without more probe-sized things and science score (values) rebalance, I can't. 5. Planned features are vague, and mostly come 2-3 months before the update. And I personally have never asked for release dates. 6. I use mods too, and I'm grateful to the modders very much, and I hope there will be even more quality mods out there after 1.0. They're my only hope, actually. What I don't like is the before mentioned attitude.

At this point, I don't expect them to listen. With this thread I want to hear what other players think of these problems, nothing more. This isn't a "suggestions" section. Also, I don't say that the stuff I wrote are "ideas", and they're certainly not new. I've been playing and reading this forum for the past 1.5 years.

You're right. KSP is amazing, I've been playing it for 1.5 years already, and still play. But the problem is, we're actually not so far away from 1.0 in terms of features. Each update takes about 2-3 months, and KSP should be scope complete (as I understand it - feature complete for 1.0) about the end of this year. So it'd mean not so much time for things to change. But even then, I'm talking about the concepts behind it, that devs use. 2. I meant to say "procedural". There're procedural created fairings. For guys like Whackjob, there can be procedural heat shields. 3. The whole arrangement of it. It's not meant for a tycoon style of gameplay, as it should be, but for a tutorial. 4. As I see it, you should loose more prestige (those 3 prestige-money-science currencies that Harv told us about) if your Kerbals die. Either way, both ways of flying (manned and unmanned) should be supported equally. That's my point. 5. TotalBiscuit is a better speaker in this case, so I'll refer to his , as I did in the OP.6. I get that. But that's what roadmaps are for, and priorities. If people know what's a priority and what isn't, they know what to expect.

Disclaimer: This thread is not a suggestion, and especially not a demand. Just a civil discussion among the players. Author loves KSP, mods and the community, and simply wants to hear your thoughts. Hi everyone. Most of the time, I try to voice my concerns to the devs directly, but I’ve realized that they don’t really listen. So now I want to talk to the general public to see if I’m not the only one who’s worried with how things are going. So here’s the list of things that I find highly questionable and, actually, wrong: 1. My favorite, and a big one - lack of Delta-v indicator for ships and other important editor/in-flight info. According to devs, it would “ruin†the mystery of constructing stuff. In my opinion, the only thing that's ruined is time. Lack of such info wastes our own time that we could spend actually flying instead of re-building or calculating delta-v by hand. Also, here’s an inconsistency - there’s an actual delta-v indicator for maneuvers, and lots of detailed info about the planets. But why, why no more basic info? I get why some of the players don’t care much about delta-v and efficiency. Because the base game doesn't tell them anything in the first place, and they don’t know the difference between playing with Delta-v displayed and without it! So they consider it as a normal thing. I haven’t used delta-v concept for a YEAR of playing KSP, until actually finding the formulas and started to calculate it by hand. Then quickly got Kerbal Engineer, since it’s PITA to calculate things by hand. It takes time, and I’m here to play the game. But now that I know what delta-v is, I can’t see how can I play without using it. 2. Lack of reentry heat. As a Tsialkovsky's rocket equation, it's quite important part of rocketry. Unfortunately, I think devs won’t ever implement it, at least not in a base game. And even if they would, as it was said, it would be done with something like “radiators†that diffuse heat, so they won’t “limit possible designs to take any shapes player might wantâ€Â. Apparently, there’s no such thing as inflatable heat shields and dynamic part creation (procedural parts, like fairings and heat shields). Also, reentry heat makes returning stuff back to Kerbin even more rewarding. As a bonus, it creates more ways to die and explode, which is kinda a theme for KSP. And risks of losing Kerbals vs probe gives you even more choice here. But I’ll talk about probes a bit later. 3. Tech tree as a mean to introduce parts to the new players (being a tutorial). This is just plain silly. Tech tree is not a tutorial, it’s a tech tree for a career mode. Tutorial (Training) is a separate thing in the main menu. I get that it’s still WIP, but I’m talking about the whole concept that developers try to follow here. Harv actually SAID that it’s suppose to introduce parts to the new players, being a tutorial. But a tech tree is actually a part of the tycoon part of the game, so there should be different logic behind it, how it expands. 4. Manned flights give too much advantages over the use of unmanned probes, while there’s little reason not to use kerbals. Also, lack of probe-sized experiments and few scientific equipment. Again, I get that it’s still WIP, but the concept that devs, according to their own words, would use here is that probes would be just cheaper to use than kerbals. But why should they give that much science? You can get so much of it by doing EVA reports from polar orbit by flying over different biomes. You still can’t scoop soil samples with unmanned modules. Or even take photographs and million of other readings. Astronauts in space are mostly there for servicing (mostly to control and repair). Electronics do most of the stuff. Here’s more. Kerbals don’t need to eat or breathe. But probes need to eat, electricity. I can go on here, but that should be enough to make a point. 5. No public roadmap. It’s bad for an early-access game (TotalBiscuit gave a good speech about this issue not some long time ago ). People have to be able to know what’s planned, and what isn’t. Priorities, features that are considered as a "may bes", know about overall progress of the game. But whatever, you can keep people in the dark and be vague with most of the dev blogs. But it seems that they don’t even have their own internal road map. Even if there’s, they don’t stick to it, which defies the whole purpose of having one.6. “There’s a mod for it, stop asking for it†attitude. Devs don’t say that in our face literally, it’d be outrageous if they did, but you know what I’m talking about here, right? I love mods. But they’re not the base game. They’re not maintained by a paid developers. They have bugs, compatibility issues and brake with each update, and frequently get abandoned. The problem with such attitude is that it comes up all the time when someone's not happy with the stock game. Mods are great, but if people think there's something wrong with the game, they have a right to criticize it, without being told to use mods and to create your own game. And #6 brings me to my final words. The biggest problem with everything I’ve just talked about is that I’m 99% sure that it won’t change until the 1.0 release. It saddens me to say that the devs made me don’t care about what they do anymore, because of lots of their questionable (and wrong) actions. So while I still play with joy, I have to use mods, have to start over and over again every once in a while because of it, which is okay for an early-access game if you think of it. But now I just wait for them to finish. Not to see a finished product, but so that mods would stop break and I can have persistence peacefully. It's a long post already, and I probably missed or forgot something, but I'll stop for now. What do you think?

Sorry for the delay. I did graphs in Google Spreadsheets/MS Excel by using CSV data from Graphotron. My project is finished, btw, all the graphs can be found here: https://picasaweb.google.com/113746879661497233526/KSPBasicPlanetarySurveyXXI

I want resources. Multiplayer would be overly complicated and just not fun.

Oh, and the main thing I forgot to mention is that we still don't even have Delta-V/TWR indicators. I will keep mentioning this time and time again. I'd trade Resource System for stock Engineering info panels, but certainly not for multiplayer.

IMO suddenly going to do multiplayer (feature that was considered as 'dont-even-ask-its-not-gonna-happen' for some time) instead of doing resources (which is kinda important thing for going into space) is the biggest mistake ever for KSP. Hope you don't mind this video here.

You should definitely check my project. Look for charts, especially temperature ones. I haven't finished writing a summary (I did write about this survey in our Russian blog), but most of the info is there in those charts. https://picasaweb.google.com/113746879661497233526/KSPBasicPlanetarySurveyXXI ADDED: Oh, and here's spreadsheet with all the data: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArWRtW_GQue0dG9uM0lpMTV2WmU1VWItNzh1UUFuMlE&usp=drive_web

You see, Squad guys think that they shouldn't put pressure on the new players with a lot of stuff, like with lots of parts for example. Or any other information on the screen, like advanced tutorials and info readouts (said delta-v). Unfortunately, lots of parts isn't what new players are being confused with, it's the lack of said information. I didn't play orbiter before KSP, so unlike you I didn't know what delta-v was until like 1 year after I started playing. But at day one I was at least being able to calculate easy stuff like TWR by hand, on a paper (like out-of-the-game guides told me to). Took me some time, but I was being able to. Then I realized that I HAVE TO install mods just to show me information I want the game to show me. And it's really sad (cuz I want vanilla game). So I feel ya. And the thing is, you should better send this to their e-mail (available on the main site), so they actually have to read it. More people would keep telling them that this game has to give player more basic and advanced information, the better. Maybe some day they'd get that it's kinda important for some and should be made a priority.