Lord Aurelius

Issues like this are usually the result of process failures (like the failure to use a syntax checker for the config file with the merge, and possibly a deficient process for verifying part values in game match those intended, which is also known as requirement verification). Mistakes happen and I don't blame the devs, but this is pretty basic industry standard stuff so it's surprising these very obvious issues weren't caught before release. It's not like it's a weird edge case or complex system behavior.

For certain types of players and gameplay at least, definitely.

Yes, as has been discussed quite a lot already in this thread, KSP1 doesn't really have any time management gameplay and doesn't have game-time costs for anything.

KSP1 may be a bad management game, but the devs themselves said on the game's Steam store page that career mode was intended to be a management game mode: "Kerbal Space Program features three gameplay modes. In Science Mode, perform space experiments to unlock new technology and advance the knowledge of Kerbalkind. In Career Mode, oversee every aspect of the space program, including construction, strategy, funding, upgrades, and more. In Sandbox, you are free to build any spacecraft you can think of, with all parts and technology in the game."

Remember that we're talking about KSP2 here and how we would like to see it improve over KSP1. Yes, KSP1 career is a bad management game, but it's still described as a management game mode by the devs themselves (see the Steam store page description for career mode). I want to see this aspect of the game vastly improved in KSP2, and time management is a staple of management games that KSP1 handles rather poorly. That's not to say I want KSP to strictly be a management game, I'm perfectly happy with these systems being limited to a career style game mode, with sandbox/science type games still available for those who don't care for the management side of things.

Agreed, unless you're flying in atmo, launching/landing or doing silly rocket/rover/vehicle hijinks, the vast majority of most missions are done on the map screen setting maneuver nodes and warping between them. It most definitely is a building game though, my time in the VAB/SPH trumps all my flight time by a large margin.

That's all I'm asking for. There are times when I just want to build and fly rockets without the other considerations as well, but when I'm in the mood to actually build and manage a space program I want it to be the full package including time management and its supporting features, not the half-baked career we have now. This is what I hope to have as a game mode in KSP2.

From the Steam store page description: "Kerbal Space Program features three gameplay modes. In Science Mode, perform space experiments to unlock new technology and advance the knowledge of Kerbalkind. In Career Mode, oversee every aspect of the space program, including construction, strategy, funding, upgrades, and more. In Sandbox, you are free to build any spacecraft you can think of, with all parts and technology in the game." That description for career mode sounds awfully like a management game to me.

1. Yes. 2. Agreed. 3. Strongly disagree. Forcing players to wait RL time is terrible game design. Warping past it removes the RL delay, but not the in-game passage of time and its associated implications (vessel rendezvous, transfer windows, life support, etc). See several of the above comments discussing this, especially from @KSK. 4. Only if you make the assumption that any in-game time management is forced on every player and is implemented poorly such that the game is wasting your time IRL. 5. Again, see @KSK's excellent comment on this. Not everyone enjoys time management (and I absolutely agree that nobody should be forced to do it if all they want to do is fly rockets), but plenty of other players do. My final point is that nobody is saying this should be forced on everyone. Every time I've mentioned it, it's been in the context of an optional difficulty option (although I'm inclined to agree with @KSK in that it would probably work better in its own game mode specifically designed around program management). The problem with just leaving it to a mod is that it will always be somewhat hacky and half-baked (the exact situation that would likely result in it being annoying and tedious overall), but a stock implementation would allow for much better overall integration. I can agree to disagree, we've both stated our opinions and reasons for them.

I'm not trying to force my game mode on anyone, and I apologize if it came across that way (plus I'm not a dev so it's literally impossible to force anyone else to play the game my way). I've merely been attempting to explain why I would like to see this sort of time management gameplay added as an option in KSP2. I'm all for that kind of gameplay, but I also enjoy the feel of running a space program which to me at least necessarily involves time management. Again, that's what different game modes and difficulty options are for. In terms of why I want to see it implemented in stock, there's a level of integration with other game systems and overall balance that's pretty much impossible to achieve with mods.

I'm not sure I'm understanding what you're getting at here. Are you trying to say that since the maneuver node waits are an emergent delay of the orbital mechanics the time warp is removing a problem, but in the case of construction time a new feature would need to be implemented for the timewarp to again remove? Fair enough, for me personally I feel that time management (via life support and construction time) is a critical enough part of RL space travel that it only makes sense to implement it in the base game in some way. It doesn't need to be overly complicated, and IMHO players have enough general experience with things taking time to build in games that it wouldn't be difficult for them to grasp that a rocket takes time to build, especially if the UI clearly showed how long it would take.

I guess it depends on what direction the devs want to take the game. If KSP2 is going to move away from being a tycoon/management game and focus on just being a rocket building and flying simulator then you may be right that this system is overly complex and doesn't really add anything. However if the devs want to improve the management aspect of the game then time management is a huge aspect of this type of gameplay and needs to have a full suite of construction time and related features to properly flesh it out.

Transfer and rendezvous windows, and contract time requirements already provide this. Life support (which has already pretty much been confirmed for KSP2, which is what we're talking about since this is the KSP2 section of the forum) provides even more incentive. I also wouldn't mind part degradation over time as an option to prevent RTGs from being the ultimate power source.

Our universe (at least with current tech) clearly shows that you can't poof rockets into existence on the launch pad instantly. Quite the opposite, building rockets and preparing them for launch is very difficult and time-consuming and planning for it and designing reliable multipurpose launchers is a huge part of space programs. Sure, there's not a hard physics equation on how long a rocket takes to build, but RL shows that it most definitely can't be done instantly, and making it happen is much more of a convenient arbitrary rule that saying it takes some amount of time.

Read some of my earlier posts. The added gameplay is time management to improve the space program management side of the game (time management is a staple of management games). This isn't a timer intended to waste your time like so many bad mobile games have. This is intended to make game time a valuable resource when building rockets. When you design your rocket, the game calculates how long it will take to build based on your manufacturing capability. Then when you want to launch, you click build and have the option to either auto timewarp to when it's ready or start construction so you can go manage other craft. This would also make reusable SSTOs much more valuable since they could be turned around quickly, since KSP really doesn't have the mechanics to explain why people are so interested in them IRL. I know some people just want to fly rockets and couldn't care less about managing a space program, but for those who do enjoy the tycoon/management side IRL time management with rocket lead times and launch windows is a huge consideration that KSP doesn't even touch on and I would like to see that addressed in KSP2.

You guys are making the assumption that the only way to implement it would be a forced system with no way to disable it. Sure, if something like KCT was added to KSP1 without any way to turn it off there would be a lot of anger. Same thing would have happened with CommNet when people suddenly lost contact with their probes. However if it were added as a completely optional difficulty option (like was done with CommNet) then it's there for players who want it and can be properly integrated into the base game and can properly interact with and be balanced for other game systems. There's sometimes I just want to do that as well, and that's when you play without construction time enabled.

It does matter since other vessels and celestial bodies in the background will be moving during construction.

So spacecraft should just teleport to their maneuver nodes instead of having to timewarp to them? Isn't watching that timer countdown to the maneuver pretty much the same thing? Like I said in my earlier post, time management is a staple of management/tycoon games. That doesn't mean that the VAB launch button can't have an option to warp to vessel complete and then launch so the game experience is the same as it is now. Or that it even has to be a required game option, disabling these sorts of things is a perfect use case for sandbox and custom games. Yes. KCT handles this very well IMHO where you can choose to upgrade your vehicle production lines in addition to the other VAB upgrades. IMHO it adds another layer of strategy to career (I guess it will be called adventure in KSP2) since if you think you might need to do a rescue/resupply you'll need to plan ahead and build the rockets ahead of time and have them ready to launch and can't just summon them out of thin air from funds instantly.

You seem to be confusing RL player time vs in-game time. When I refer to construction time, I'm not referring to the awful mobile-inspired countdown timers where you have to watch the timer tick down until your rocket is ready. I'm referring to it as something where you see you have a launch window a year out. You have multiple missions you would like to send, but not enough time to build all of them so you need to be smart about your use of that time. You design your vehicles and payloads (while the game is paused) and while designing the game tells you how long it will take to construct so you adjust your design accordingly. When you're done designing, you click "warp to completion" and poof, it's done. But that feature wasn't skippable because it utilized the in-game time resource, and all the planets/craft/etc continued to operate in the background. I disagree that construction time should be restricted to mods. KSP has long advertised itself as a space program tycoon, and without time management elements the game is sorely lacking on this front. In terms of skippable features being a waste of time to implement, I disagree. Different people like different aspects of the game. Since we have sandbox, career is 100% pointless and skippable if you're just wanting to launch rockets, but it's still there and a lot of players want it because it provides a challenge and sense of progression that sandbox simply doesn't. You also seem to still be assuming that players will be FORCED to use this system. To be honest, I would consider this to be a faulty assumption. All the new difficulty systems in KSP1 (reentry heating, comm networks, etc) have been OPTIONAL, the devs have NOT forced any new features on players and are very aware that there's a significant chunk of the playerbase that doesn't care about the management/planning side of the game and just wants to build and launch rockets (which is perfectly fine, different people play the same game for different reasons).

The most annoying thing to me about KSP is the overall lack of game cohesiveness. There's lots of half-baked systems that don't really mesh well together, especially with career mode. I know this is a result of KSP1's development process (most of the time it felt like the original devs didn't really have a plan and were just adding random stuff until they decided to madly rush towards 1.0) and is more than likely going to be resolved in KSP2.

Time itself is a resource. Many, many games use it as such, especially strategy/management games. The timewarp saves RL time, but events in-game still progress so the player still needs to weigh how much time they have before a launch window vs how much construction capability they have and what mission vehicles and payloads they have the ability to build in that timeframe. I agree it has the potential to be annoying if not done correctly and could make the game significantly more challenging (especially with regards to life support), which is why I would advocate for this to be a difficulty option like the current comm network system which isn't enabled on a normal difficulty game, but might be default on hard and could be toggled on/off to fine-tune the difficulty. I don't see how this would alienate people, many of the same arguments have been used against any kind of stock life support system where the assumption is that it's forced on everyone and is a worst-case implementation. Given that we have the ability to fine-tune the difficulty in KSP1 and turn off features like reentry heating and comm network requirements, I seriously doubt the devs would force everyone to use the system (especially for sandbox and custom games) and I expect that if they did put the feature in, they would also put some thought on how to make it not overly annoying given that's how reentry heating and comm networks came in (they were done by mods for years before they became stock).

Many of those same arguments against time warp for construction are equally valid for launch windows. For me, the point of construction time is to require players to plan ahead and not just be able to slap together and launch a recovery mission 2 seconds after a Kerbal gets stranded or you notice a launch window. Plus it could also encourage standardized launch vehicles instead of a bunch of one-offs. Right now in KSP the need to plan ahead is pretty much nonexistent with the instant construction (and also pretty much impossible without mods due to no in-game tools to do so), but IRL rocket lead times are huge and I would like to see this reflected in KSP2 in some way.

I like the idea of craft construction time. Compared to something like life support it's nowhere near as critical to game balance so it should be fully optional and maybe only enabled by default on hard difficulty though. If it were to be implemented in KSP2, I would like to see it more or less copy the KCT mod. Specifically, I want the ability to queue up multiple rockets and save them in a hanger/inventory so I can have spares ready to launch at a moment's notice. Additionally, I would like the system to be smart enough to allow sub-assemblies to be saved in inventory, so players can have a hanger full of universal boosters ready to go and a bunch of payloads, and be able to put them together with a fairly minimal integration time. For construction, there should be an easy way to timewarp to completion time. Research, vehicle recovery and astronaut training should also be included. Rocket testing would probably need to be done in the sandbox, although I wouldn't be opposed to a vehicle simulator in career mode that lets you choose terrain type, atmosphere and gravity (or pick an explored celestial body from a menu to set all the parameters) to see how the vehicle fares.

Laythe is clearly the moon of choice. Blue skies, oceans and beaches as far as you can see. /s On a more serious note, I would go for the Mun first. The slightly higher dV requirement is trivial compared to the much higher encounter difficulty of getting to Minmus.

I've long thought the same thing, that KSP needs a proper mission planner. In addition to what you've already described, I can see it also automatically creating maneuver nodes to use in flight, providing KAC type functionality and even limited automatic maneuver node execution, and generally providing an outline of the mission instead of players needing to calculate and track everything outside of the game.