LameLefty

Yeah but … his rover rocket video last night was infuriatingly BAD. He has a massive weight inside a giant faring cantilevered off a long and spindly rocket. I’m an aerospace engineer by education and early career - that kind of rocket has NEVER worked well in KSP until recent years’ patches that artificially amplify the strength of joints far beyond what a real rocket structure would tolerate. No a real rocket wouldn’t all apart at the staging joints, but it WOULD crumple like a long skinny tin can, and then blow apart in a conflagration as the propellants escaped the pressurized structure and mixed uncontrollably. Had Matt spent less time fighting with his long skinny heavy-nosed rockets and built something shorter with side-mounted boosters, he’d have had much better luck getting to orbit.

Yep, and not just for planetary or moon encounters. They’re terrible for orbital rendezvous planning and trying to dock with a target vessel. The fact that closest-approach numbers aren’t visible full-time is right up there with the decision to not show Ap/Pe numbers without a mouse-over. This is a baffling and retrogressive UX design decision.

In any case, I actually loaded in the save several times in a row, if only to watch Tim C. Kerman smiling beatifically as the lander collapsed around him. I was reminded of this film classic and laughed every time.

How do you classify the bug where you’ve landed a ship on Duna and gotten out to plant a flag, and saved, then when you come back the next day and load the game, your legs fall through the terrain, break off the ship and everything tumbles over? Is that a terrain rendering bug, a parts-attachment bug, a save corruption bug, or some combination of the two?

That’s the issue. When I tugging all six axis lines on the node controls, I have to stop and mouse over the indicator to see the numbers. That’s garbage UI, right up there with losing the Ap/Pe numbers without a mouse over. Don’t tell an old man how to use the navball. I have made every docking I’ve ever attempted in KSP2, completely manually. Besides which, I have never used MechJeb to dock in KSP even waaay back in March 2013 when I was first learning the game. It was (and is again), all about “pushing” and “pulling” the prograde and retrograde velocity indicators on the navball with thrusting toward or away from the target indicator. Anyway, here’s a protip for those asleep at the switch for the past … what? 5 or 7 years? @NavyFish’s Docking Port Alignment Indicator is much superior in terms of teaching you how to do it manually and EFFICIENTLY, without spamming dozens of hundreds of units of mono prop. I desperately hope that tool gets ported to KSP2.

Man, the new Map view trajectory UI makes rendezvous so much harder than is has to be. There's no distance indicators at closest approach - just have to eyeball the icons and get them as close as you can. It can certainly be done, but it's so much easier in KSP1. (And easy as flying a kite to fly a completely manual docking with Docking Port Alignment Indicator, once you have a good close approach and null out most of the relative velocity). Also, the velocity indicator does have a Target mode, but it doesn't seem to display a sign before the numerals - so it's not immediately obvious is you're closing or receding.

Sure - practice your manual flying and remember the early days of KSP. I’ve already flown manual precisions landings to two Munarches, the anomaly on Minmus and even managed a manual parachute landing at the anomaly on Duna within 330m of my target, all by instinct and eyeball. I plan to send a big probe to Jool and several moons this afternoon after work. There’s plenty of fun and challenge to be had even despite the bugs and deficiencies.

They’ve been pushing numbered “development” branches regularly, usually several a day, since depot was created. You need to watch for “staging” and “public.” EDIT: They’ve already pushed “development” and “development3” both within the last five minutes. Chill your jets, folks, and wait for “staging.”

There was another “development” branch pushed a hour ago this morning, so not yet, unfortunately.

I couldn't give a rats @$$ about gamerblog "reviews." I knew what I was getting (for the most part) by watching all the streamers in the days before purchase, and I knew it was likely to have issues. And it does, several of which are critical and will hopefully be addressed Soon!(tm). But so long as I stick to single-missions sessions at a time (e.g., not a "program" of overlapping contemporaneous in-progress flights all going on at once), I'm having a great time. Tonight after work, for the first time in very close to a decade, I spitballed a lander and lifter design based on my own gut instincts, launched it to LKO, went to the Tracking Station and used timewarp to eyeball a proper phase angle, manually plotted and executed a Duna transfer, made a couple midcourse burns, managed to make a nice orbit, eyeballed a huge plane change and deorbit burn, and put my lander down within 330 meters of my target. No MechJeb, not even Kerbal Engineer. Just the stock in-game dV estimator and my own brain, as an engineer and experienced KSP player. Extremely satisfying. Oh, and the Duna music is great. Do I still very much want a "Day 5 patch" tomorrow or ASAP? You bet, the sooner the better. But the game IS playable, and it IS fun and satisfying.

Your "statues" should also include the one on Duna. His crown has engravings around it which could mean something.

Yep, plus-one. I have to give kudos to the music in this game. I am really looking forward to a soundtrack release.

Ooh, and another branch called "candidate" pushed 23 minutes ago on Steam. Dance, code monkeys, dance for your coins. (I kid, I kid - despite the bugs, I already love this game and its potential - it's been my most-anticipated game of the year for a long time, leading Starfield - also apt to be buggy as crap at launch, btw).

Except in as much as both are Unity-based games named “Kerbal Space Program”, and KSP2 is already shown to have a rash of similar issues share with its predecessor, sure …

How much of this (terrain rendering) is new code, I wonder, and how much “adopted” from KSP1? Because it was ALWAYS a performance “hack” in KSP1 when launching frame-killing rockets to point the camera at the sky and gain 30 - 50% performance back.

I have yet to be able to get a trajectory to reappear once it disappears and the vessel status changes to “Landed” in the Tracking Station,. In each case, once the trajectory disappears, it’s gone for good for me. It almost always happens if I leave a vessel landed on a surface, then change focus to another vessel or the Tracking Station and come back. After I come back, status seems stuck on Landed no matter what. I don’t change focus, and launch again immediately after landing, trajectory displays work fine.

There are other Easter Eggs. So far I’ve seen one on Mun, one of Minmus, and plan to go find the one reported on Duna after work today. There’s also been one reported on Tylo but I effing HATE building Tylo landers so that will probably be this weekend. I expect there are others yet unfounded or to be added as content is added in the coming months.

According to SteamDB, a “RELEASETEST” branch was updated 17 minutes ago. So fingers crossed for some fixes Soon(tm).

My only suggestions for the runways have nothing to do with lighting or striping. 1) I get that there are no winds on Kerbin so we don't really *need* any angled runways, but the sake of returning spaceplanes which may be returning from elliptical orbit, it would be nice to have had at least one, RWY 30/210 would have done nicely. 2) The overruns are generally allowed for takeoffs but not landings, so it would have been nice to see the taxiways extended to the ends of the overrun areas for really long takeoff runs.

I investigated some weird goings-on in space ... Do not click if you don't want to see.

I love the new Minmus. Could it be maybe add a couple more units of Green in the RGB values for the texture files? Maybe, maybe not. I like it a LOT as it is. You know what I *love* about it, though? The new Minmus music! Absolutely love it! I love all the music I've heard so far, but Minmus is my current fave

That is bizarre and I really hope there's more such awaiting elsewhere and/or as the game expands and adds features and content.

If you delete the debris does performance recover? In the Tracking Station, the “trash can” icon to delete debris isn’t working (bug), but you can focus on it, then click on it directly and delete from the context menu that appears.

My “workaround” is to abuse the heck out of the current game system (bug?) that allows us to Recover vessels in the Tracking Station from anywhere, no matter whether landed or in oribt, from any body in the system.

Again, it’s not a “P.A.I.G.E.” thing. You can go to the Tacking Center and recover a vessel from orbit, from the Mun, etc. just by focusing on it and clicking the Recover button. Came in handy with a lander can I had stranded in Mun orbit with no trajectory visible, so nearly impossibly to plan any kind of rescue. Clicked Recover and problem solved, lol.