Kerbart

I was going to say "you're wrong" but looking back at the KSP1 version history... you have a point although not entirely The KSP1 updates came about every two months, not that different from KSP2. But for a long time the game remained in Sandbox only, so that's where you are wrong. However... you're right in the sense that every update brought new content. Usually just new or revamped parts, but that did offer something new to play with. You're right; we get bug fixes (and by Jove are they needed), but only bug fixes. In that sense, what we're missing are the non-milestone updates. Something like re-entry heating goes in great. KSC colliders. Parachutes for Kerbals. More parts. More QOL upgrades. I think in that the issue is not that the milestone update should have come out earlier—with the buggy state it might still be too early, but you're absolutely right that nothing new is added to the game. KSP1 was definitely different in that sense.

It's risky to be dogmatic and polarizing. I agree that it's more an RPG than a simulator, but that doesn't mean it doesn't simulate. But the emphasis is on playing, not simulating. Wobbly rockets is a great example. Badly designed rockets will fail. The community in genera revolts over that and when a video is showing how an absolute ridiculous design still shows some wobble the reaction is "it still wobbles." Or the discussion on heating. Clearly, "we" want the game, not the simulation. And while I don't agree with all design decisions, overall it makes the game more fun.

I agree that there will be a significant group that walked away from the game and only might come back when there are absolutely raving reviews. And magazines and review sites will only do that at the 1.0 release, not before, I would think. Convincing the doubters will be very hard. The game probably has to exceed expectations (although at this point they will be very low in that group) and basically live up to the hype Nate created with his speech. And that group will not take his words, but rather how the game lives up to those, as the measuring stick. And that will be a very tough standard to pass In the grand scheme of things, yes. But compared to the August release, player count has gone up significantly, with peak count being much higher and even the downturns still have a higher level than right after the August release. That's a new trend; in the past the release peak would quickly subside and make way for "business as usual" but 1.5 seems to have more sticking power. Of course it's still too short after the patch release to tell, and the numbers will certainly drop—they always do. But I don't think they will drop to earlier levels by the time 0.2 comes out. Having said that, the thousands of advocates for the game on social media are gone. Even if 1.5 is the turning point in the sense of reversing the dropping trend of active players, building up player count will be hard and I doubt it will ever return to what it was at EA release.

I don’t agree fully with that. Essential is pro-grade hold and those were offered very early on. The rest is nice to have, and it increases accuracy but it’s certainly not essential. And to get your pilots the full skill set you hardly need toleave the Kerbin system (yes you do, but just, no complex missions needed) In general I think that tieing skills to experience makes more sense than to attributes (like g-force tolerance) as there’s a far more logical relation.

But, in this discussion, let’s not ignore the other side of the medallion that comes with free enterprise and quick efficient solutions driven by profit: cutting corners. SpaceX’s progress is fueled by a willingness to experiment and fail, but a company like OceanGate showed us what happens when you don’t have the rightchecks and balances built in.

I don't know about NASA but I doubt they're rife with corruption. However, their budget depends on congress and senate approval and that is a different story. The budgets quickly get tagged with projects where money has to be spent in certain states. That adds complexity and extra costs. In addition, those budgets are set in stone and take ages to get approved, so that adds to a lot of inflexibility. SpaceX toyed around with CF tanks, concluded "nah, that doesn't work" and is now building Starship out of stainless steel. That could never happen at NASA.

Yes, but while it's wobble, it's not the "wobbly rockets wobble" that will be addressed in 0.2.0 (due to physical demands outside the rigidity envelope of the vehicle stack), and I'd say it warrants a different bug tracker. The problem is similar to using hinges with massless parts in KSP1, where a ship will shake itself to pieces under the right circumstances (I propose calling it "the shakes" to distinguish it from "true" wobbly rockets). I'm clueless how physics works in unity, but given that it has to do with (nearly) mass-less parts in KSP1 I suspect it's a matter of (phantom) forces acting on light parts, if not causing a division by zero then at least floating point rounding issues (hello Kraken). Clearly it needs to be addressed, but when it's listed under "Wobbly Rockets" and that bug report gets archived then nothing is going to happen with it, so I suspect it's better to treat it for what it is -- something different.

For one thing, it will give an indication if it's going to be representative for the lifetime of the game. With its unique subject and gaming mechanics, everything takes just much more time than your average FPS, RTS or platform game where pretty much all of the mechanics are known territory. If that's the case, we can expect each milestone to take a long time. Or was the initial charter wrong and had the project to be rebooted from scratch two years in? Development actually goes along fine but the fresh restart meant everything happens two years later. Milestone updates will follow much quicker. we're also just curious (I'd say with the character or the game, curiosity is a more-than-average treat among its players). If you bring your car to the garage for an oil change and you expect to pick it up at the end of the afternoon, you'll probably ask them why it was delayed if it takes four days. And “that’s proprietary information” would make you unhappy. Clearly not the same thing, but given that we’re passionate about the product, why would we not be curious why the release was delayed so many times and still came out of the shop with the wheels missing and the engine mounted backwards?

Agree. If the kitchen sink has no scientific value there wouldn't be a reason to include it. So, if it had scientific value, you'd want to include it, but alas, The Science Jr. can “only” be equipped with everything but the kitchen sink. That's how I read it and I don't see anything wrong with it.

Words, not actions. The intervals between patches seem to increase, and the average age of a bug seems to increase, not decrease. Despite words—something IG management is very good at—when looking at what's being done about it the results are still meager. And saying "mistakes were made" is a gross understatement of how badly the publisher has been in acknowledging that, despite their claims otherwise. the game was barely playable in the early releases.

For me it looks like 1.5 is where we expected the EA release to be. Buggy, but playable enough to give feedback and then with monthly patch cycles the game would be in great shape by now. I'm still worried about Creative Management cavalier attitude (denial?) towards bugs. My fear is still that we'll hear them crow "all bugs are slayed" with 0.2 because the two biggest complaints of the community have been addressed, and the rest will get the "tis the way it is" treatment. As you mentioned, there are a lot of day one bugs that remain ignored until today, a full half year after release, and that makes you wonder how serious the attention to bugs is. The anniversary patch (0.2.1) — yes I'm optimistic [/s] that after the 0.2 release the team will push out a patch in a mere two months — will tell us more in that respect.

Confirming bug to be still present in 0.1.5

While nay-sayers (and I'll admit I've not been super positive about KSP2 lately) will point to mitigating factors* the 0.1.5 patch is the first where active players on Steam exceed that of the previous release. (I have no illusions that the Steam numbers represent real playercount but they do provide an insight in development over time). https://steamcharts.com/app/954850#3m * the 0.2 hype, and timing of the release picking up some extra of the regular weekend peak

Also, bring back shift = select entire ship. Clicking the root part is hit & miss; sometimes it picks up the entire ship, mostly only what got added underneath it.

1.5 is a step in the right direction. Still, the talk is just that—talk and pretty pictures. We've seen that before and it disappointed before. I'll be overjoyed if 0.2 delivers, but I'm not hyped about it. I'll wait and see.

August 1969. Just too late to catch the Apollo 11 fun. Or, in reality, manned US spaceflight until the space shuttle. I did remember Skylab re-entering the atmosphere, and Soviet cosmonauts setting all kinds of long duration records, which looking back, looks insane when you realize how cramped those Salyuts were.

Still unrealist. What I'd really want to see are little gremlins trying to tear your ship apart, just as in real life!

I like how you don't have to go through four menus to exit the game.

Tipping your rover is not required. I had a rover that was all messed up merely from the transition of VAB to runway.

My biggest fear is the impression that IG that they don’t think the bugs are a big deal. According to their messaging the game was great fun to play from day 1. They’re not pouring a lot of resources into bug fixing (there’s no way to explain the snail pace otherwise). The community backlash on the amount of bugs in the game seemed to surprise them. So, now that game status had advanced from “completely unplayable” to “playable but frustrating” my fear is that bug fixing will get even less priority. I can already hear the creative director crow “We fixed orbital decay and rocket wobble. The game is now bug free!” and the dozens of sheer annoyances will be there for years to come, just part of the KSP2 lore. Will the colliders on the KSC ever be fixed, for instance? It seems that the 3D artists have already moved on to other projects like grid fins.

The coordinate reset jitter that occurs every 1000m depends on mass. A light rover will be tossed in the air, a heavy rover will change its direction a couple degrees, when you venture around the KSC grounds it’s not a big deal but it’s an issue with a lightweight rover on Minmus.

That's so unrealistic! Towers don't need that in real li... oh wait.

Almost as tired as of the bugs in KSP2 itself. The solution to the problem seems simple: squash the bugs. Makes me wonder why the dev team doesn't do that with more gusto.

But not from a realism standpoint. KSP2 is the pinnacle. It's incredibly hard to get anything into orbit, let alone larger payloads. And missions will fail for the most bizarre reasons, often without prior warning.

Technically yes, but the answer suggests he used ground based telescopes, which he didn't do either. Kepler did experiment with the newly invented telescopes but only after he had already published his work on the orbits of the planets.