Kerbart

Yes, but KSP1 wasn't a sequel. It pretty much started as an "let's see where we can take this" experiment. Bad design decisions are part of that journey. What sours KSP2 is (a) all the bugs that we don't have in KSP1 - delta V bugs, staging bugs, landed status bugs, eva kerbals exerting forces bugs, and (b) simple features we've come to expect like eva parachutes, flags visible in map mode, different markers for different craft types,. So while KSP2 is under development, those bugs do annoy because Intercept does have code that works properly but decides not to look at it. The missing features are even worse. It's not like they can say "we never realized this was a good idea but we finally thpught of it" as they have a working example of what features are a great idea. There's a lot of tolerance towards "inventing things as we go along," but tht's an excuse KSP2 doesn't have/ I don't think the community forgot how bad KSP1 could be at times; it's just that that particular state was a lot more acceptable than in a sequel.

Do you have an antenna? Is the rocket still under control?

Quitting the game requires far less mouse-clicks than KSP1. And it's also a feature I use a lot more than in KSP1. Good anticipation and implementation. So there's that.

Launch for orbit in the 0° direction to get a 90° inclined orbit and let me know how that works out. BUT LAUNCH EXACTLY NORTH. Not 10-15° off of it to counter the Coriolis effect.

Cruise ships do. They enter ports on a nearly daily basis and need to be maneuverable. Container ships, on the other hand, need to be economic; that's the reason they're so large for starters. So it's nearly always single screw, direct drive powered by a two-stroke Diesel engine that rivals power plants in thermal efficiency. This is one of the reasons 50" TV's sell for less than $250, as the transport cost for SEA to the US east coast (nearly 14,000 nautical miles) is nearly negligible. Once the engine stops there's not enough water flowing over the rudder to be effective; even with the rudder operable after backup systems came online. Surely tugs would have been able to stop the ship, but you'd need 4 or 6 tugs, and what for, a contingency that hasn't happened for decades and decades? Your TV would cost $50 more and ocean shipping is enough of a cutthroat business that shippers would pick a cheaper carrier instead, so no one does that. The crew did everything in their power after power went out: Drop anchor — which didn't do anything due to the amount of silt on the channel floor. Contact shore immediately to warn about a possible allision with the bridge. This saved countless lives. Hope for the best as they're now passengers on this ride. Probably desperately trying to get the engine going again. The power failure will surely be one of the things the NTSB will focus on.

The Jones Act prevents unloading cargo on board of foreign vessels in US ports that was loaded from US ports. The FMC really doesn't care what your circumstances are, you will need to get an extension for that. Last time a Jones Act extension was granted, if memory serves me right, was after hurricane Sandy to allow repositioning of empty containers, just to give an idea on how rare those occasions are. Now, I don't think it will be an issue in this case, but it does need to be cleared first and it's not an insignificant administrative hurdle. Because of laws that protect US Maritime interests.

That's going to take an act of congress though. Literally.

Power failure. Perhaps there's a relation with the owner of the ship skimping on maintenance but I doubt it. This was a new vessel (2015), they're incredibly expensive to own and operate so they're generally kept in good condition. As for the crew, they were competent enough to raise the alarm that stopped traffic on the bridge. Had they not done that, the number of casualties would have been much higher. Not exactly matching the picture that you paint (without any credible citations) of a bunch of clowns.

It looks to me that the problem is mainly precision. If you have the ability to focus a laser beam so it converges to a single point at 1000 km, you should also have the ability to focus it in such a way that it is perfectly parallel and doesn't converge at all. Then it's just a matter of projecting that narrow beam wherever you want. The optical systems required should be relatively simple; the main reasons refractors tend to have complex elements is because they need to be consistent through all wavelengths and with laser light you don't have that issue. Likely the precision needed for that is beyond our technical capacities. That doesn't mean we can't do it though; feedback mechanisms can correct things but now you have to observe the target and adjust focusing on the fly. In a combat scenario I can see challenges with that. Then of course there's the energy question. Putting this on a space ship will be a challenge as you'll need a serious powerplant to feed it.

Keep in mind that if your TWR is 1.5, ⅔ of your thrust—and thus ⅔ of the fuel— is spent battling gravity. That fraction goes down as the TWR increases, with a TWR of 3.0 it's “only” ⅓ but we all know what the issues are with launching at such a high TWR. The flatter the trajectory, those fractions go down and if you're able to go fully horizontal, all of your thrust goes into velocity. Yes, there's atmospheric drag and you do have to get out of the thicker atmosphere, but at a 45° angle you'll gain velocity faster to do that.

You can only lose something that is there.

I just hope this will explore new worlds, and new civilizations. To boldly go where KSP1 hasn't gone before.

I'm confused. Artillery would do the job where missiles won't?

You make a good point, and I did not think my words through enough. It's not bad that the game forces the player to explore. There's a lot to explore that players are simply unaware of if all they do is land on the Mun equator. That part I'm very happy about. What's bad—is the very "in yer face" mechanics that are applied. "Land near the monument and get a boatload of science points as a reward." It's contracts, with a different sauce poured on top. Maybe it's just that with only one roadmap milestone unlocked (we're a mere 13 months in the EA release after all) the building blocks are missing to do something more elaborate. But I was hoping for things that require more action from the player. And maybe that'll be done in the future. The monument could have been a "regular" arc with some cracks and the player has to fly into it to uncover it. Or there's a buried artifact, TMA-1 style, that needs a nearby colony to get uncovered, and once exposed to sunlight, it will fire off a signal to the outer planets we have to follow. We wanted story, we got story. And that part is great. What bugs me is that the level of interaction feels like the Seinfeld guy, sitting in his car, honking at women, because he ran out of ideas on how else to get their attention. Learning clues about Kerbal Lore through 12 page mission reports is better than no lore, but is it truly a journey of discovery? Not as much as I think it can be.

Intentionally? Not really. Is it harder? Well, when you're used to things working they way they are supposed to, then most definitely. Exploration mode is harder in the sense that it really forces you to leave the Kerbin system. If a trip to Jool is your daily KSP1 routine then it's not that much harder. Sadly, the improvement over Career is mainly cutting down the reward points. Yes, we need go and on land on Duna. Not because the game makes you want to go there, but simply because it forces you to do so. Basically it's a two-circle Venn Diagram. Reasons it's harder Bugs Missions with further destinations required to progress tech tree Reasons it could be harder but it's not Inclined orbits Axial tilt Persistent rotation Life support Complex resources The latter is of course something the community looks forward to. "To build part X you need resource Y, only available on planet Z." But the community has done a lot of projecting on what they want the game to be, and what's been delivered so far has been streamlined (the word "dumbed down" sounds so negative), so I'm not going to expect too much out of it.