KerikBalm

The stock system is way too small and needs to be scaled up. I just can't go back to 1x and stand to see how small planets look from low orbit

If your computer can handle it, the visual mods, in particular, Parrallax: Also, Scatterer, and Kopernicus (if for nothing else, than a rescale using Sigma Dimensions Rescale, to go to at least 2.25x)

There's more to life than photosynthesizers. They already gave Laythe Geysers So I wouldn't be opposed to finding stuff like this: Or, you can do as I did, and put it around another star, problem solved. I never found Duna's atmosphere to be a problem with heat, primarly due to Duna being small with low gravity ,so you don't come in that fast. Note that the "fuel for decelerating into a Mars Orbit" (Duna?) will be less than fuel needed to land with less atmosphere. Whatever the density your craft can sustain without overheating, you aim for that for the aerocapture. Thicker or thinner atmosphere just changes this to a higher or lower entry corridor. It doesn't change the fuel requirements, and you can still do a direct descent. A thicker atmosphere then saves you on thrust and fuel needed for touchdown. On top of the mass savings, it also slows down the landing, and if thick enough can make it entirely passive, making it easier in terms of piloting skills. It just plain makes landing easier.

More atmosphere makes it easier to land, not harder. On my custom system, I increased its surface gravity 25%, and cut it's atmospheric density/pressure by a factor of 3 : making it a much better Mars analogue. Landing became much harder SSTO spaceplanes are still viable at 3x and 4x scale. I routinely was making ones that take >100 tons to orbit, although payload fraction was much worse than stock where it can be around 50%, the larger scales it drops down to like 10-15% Trees? No sunlight is way to weak there. That's why I moved laythe to another star entirely in my custom system.

Fair enough, I'm doing more searches now, and there does seem to be quite some variety in the scope responsibility of that job title, so there is some ambiguity. If Nate wasn't the boss of KSP2 like I thought he was, ie the person directly between the team and their T2 overlords, the. His responsibility is much lower. If there was a separate technical director that kept promising him capability X that would serve the creative goals, but he kept failing to deliver, then it seems Nate would be in the position escalating the issue up the hierarchy, or reducing the scope and such to align with the (crappy) capacity being delivered by the technical director

Who hired the coders? Who lead the team? Who didn't ensure that steps were taken to fix the code? That's like saying that the captain of the Titanic wasn't responsible for the sinking because he wasn't the helmsman, nor the lookout, nor the radio operator. The "creative director" does more than just set the aesthetic style. He was supposed to oversee the whole development of the game to ensure his creative vision came to fruition. This encompasses not just the art and graphics, but the game engine and its performance. If he didn't recognize the poor performance of the engine, and take steps to rectify it, that's his fault If he did recognize the poor performance of the engine, but didn't know which steps to take to rectify it, that is his fault too. If he did recognize the poor performance of the engine, and did know which steps to take to rectify it, then he clearly failed to actually implement those steps, because the game engine as not fixed, so that's his fault too. No way out of it. He led the team, for years, and it ended in disaster. He is the person most responsible for its success or failure, as it failed, that's on him. My claim was that the code was an unsalvageable mess. I am referring not to aesthetics, but to function. The problem is at the very core of the code. While it may be neatly formatted and look neat now, it would be a mess to try and fix, by that I mean a very arduous and complex task. I maintain that the code is unsalvageable. It was built on a bad foundation. As the years went on, building on the bad foundation, the situation only got worse and worse as it would get harder and harder to fix the foundation without tearing down everything built on top of it. Had he acted properly, early on he would have refocused what resources he had into fixing the problem with the game engine. Instead, it seems he focused most of his resources on graphics and aesthetics. KSP2 could have succeeded at a much lower scale if it just provided a solid game engine, especially considering the modding community for KSP. All he needed to provide was a "platform", and people would have bought it. Instead, he provieed a rotten foundation, but tried to put a nice coat of paint on it. Yes it is, he was responsible for the coding team It's a fact that Nate led the team, whether or not he wrote a single line of code, he had authority over the coding team, and the means to see that the code was resulting in a very buggy and poorly optimized game engine. He failed to have the code fixed (by making the team fix it, or firing them and hiring those who could). It is his fault. He was responsible for the scope and vision, he was the creative director. His fault lay not in failng to stick to a previous scope or vision, but failing to adequately adjust his vision and manage his team and resources to a point that what his team was producing and his vision aligned. It seems like he just viewed himself as the idea guy, and completely failed on the management of his team and resources.

I am still blaming Nate, the guy clearly mismanaged his resources, focusing too much on looks and neglecting the game engine. It's his fault that the code is an unsalvageable mess. I can't blame T2 for cutting their losses after what he did.

To be clear, the KSP1 devs that moved to KSP2 are gone now. As far as it is known, nobody is working on KSP2, and the only hope is that some company buys the rights and completes the development. This last possibility is a pipe-dream

Well, I ended up wanting to make a binary star system in memory of the dream that was KSP2, so I got a bit distracted, but have changed up the kerbol system. See my post here: Soong is getting Ike and Minmus (Duna gets Gilly instead, and Eve gets nothing), and procedural asteroids. Soong uses Saturn's color map, and is smaller than jool, in that same proportion as Saturn to Jupiter. Don't have the rings working quite right yet

1x scale is too small, but after 3x, then 4x, then 6.25x, it got too tedious, I would rescale the system to 2.25x (1.5x scaling to orbital periods/dV requirements) Tilt the entire system 8 degrees so that kerbin has seasons and it's a little more complicated to go interplanetary Make it a binary star system, with star #2 1'000 to 2'000 "KU" out. Add a Saturn and Uranus/Neptune analogue. See my linked thread for more details

This sounds like a terrible idea. Every sale now is a sale that won't happen after further development. Any developer (TT or a buyer) is going to do complex financial calculations that basically come down to: "If I invest X in further development, I expect Y in returns, I want to maximize Y-X". You may see more sales now as sending a message that the market is out there and you may hope that it makes a developer estimate a larger value for Y. I think they are going to look at the market for the developed product, estimate the total sales, and then subtract the amount of sales that have already occurred, to reach the number of expected additional sales. Buying more may make them estimate a higher total sales number, but my guess is that for every 10 additional sales now, they are going to estimate a total sales number that is between 0-9 higher, and thus total sales - current sales will decrease. Aside from rewarding failure, it may make people estimate that sales for KSP2 are saturated, and actually lower the financial incentive for further development. Best case scenario is that the IP is undervalued, and sold off to someone who will do right by it and make a nice profit for theirselves in the process.

Not visible at all so far. It seems to just have new bugs, and even unfixed bugs that KSP1 had fixed. It broke things in new ways, such as orbital decay even when things should be on rails, iirc. Its based on multiple sources, and evident in the team's imbalance towards artists vs software engineers.

I'm going to have to disagree. While Take 2 seems to have made some boneheaded decisions, it can't be denied that they did provide substantial resources. They clearly invested tens of millions. I saw one estimate of 50 million. I think Nate deserves his share of the blame for misallocation of the resources he did get. It seems he was entirely too focused on the visuals and not focused enough on core engine and gamplay considerations. He doesn't deserve all the blame, but he's certainly not free from blame either.

At what scale do you feel the need to nerf? It's hard to come to a good number. I figure real chemical rockets can get 450 Isp, and in stock, you get 350, so that's a 7/9 dV multiplier, and dV needed scales with the sqrt of the size multiplier, so no nerf needed at 6x (roughly 60% RSS scale) Except that stock tank mass ratios, engine TWRs, and assorted part dry weight are terrible compared to real stuff. It's why I settled on 4x, and was happy with that until I added the system 1000 KU away.... takes a long time to get there, even at max time warp with a ship packing 120km/s of dV (60 km to get there, 60km to stop) Going to 2.25x already cut that by almost half and made everything less grindy For a career, I plan on duplicating the nuclear lightbulb engine, calling it an Epstein drive, and using KRnD to buff it, and only it - the buffs only go towards the interstellar engine Interstellar here is a weak sauce version, but something not to ambitious. From what I've read, most multi-star systems are much closer (too close to have a solar system like ours around one of them). On the other hand, Proxima centauri is 13000 AU away from Alpa centauri, so 1000 KU seems like a reasonable compromise to me given gameplay limitations

I'm just wondering, of the people on the forum, how many out there still use the stock system. If you don't what do you use? Myself, I use my own custom system, that I've slowly built up over time, the whole thing overall is 2.25x rescaled: * I initially was using 3x rescale, then 4x, then it felt too grindy, and I settled on 2.25x when I added bodies really far away, and when I needed higher time warp

Yeah something like this could work, as well as each controlling a craft after a separation event (like air launch to orbit) It would be like soliciting a guest pilot to help with a specific mission. I don't see a MMO style multiplayer as viable

Nah, I plan on making my own custom system I may or may not add life support, undecided Cool base parts are not a priority for me, on site construction so I don't have to send everything to the new star system with a >100 year delay and 120 km/s of dV just to get it there on that timescale

I'm thinking I may reinstall kpbs just for aesthetics. Definitely going to instal that physics hold mod Then, I guess I'll go with simple construction, and moar kerbals. Then it's just interstellar via the atomic age nuclear lightbulb buffed by KRnD, parallax, and my own kopernicus system mods, and I think I'll have the gist of what I wanted KSP2 to be

KSP1 didn't have the problem with decaying orbits (or at least rarely did), and I'm not talking about when vessels are placed on rails. What changed between the two of them? I think this was all going in the wrong direction. Reduce the scope of interstellar. Instead of looking at Sol to Alpha Centauri, look at going from Alpha Centauria A-B to Proxima Centauri - 13'000 AU. Also, I was really hoping for interstellar to be more realistic than 1g torchships. I was hoping to be able to do months long burns with accelerations in the milli-Gs. I recently modded in a star at 4'000 KU in KSP1, infinite fuel cheated, and headed for an intercept at about 60 km/sec, would take about 100 in game years https://imgur.com/BVX4n2k Then I built a MPD powered craft in Children of a dead earth with (probably OPd) nuclear reactors and 120k m/s of dV, but acceleration in the milliG's, with burns requiring months, I figured that's the sort of tech level that interstellar should become viable in KSP2. Nuclear electric, mllliG propulsion, to companion stars mere thousands of AU away. Its a smaller scope, but it seems that KSP2 was lead by artists who let the scope go way beyond what they were capable of

@Krazy1 what mods did you use, particularly for Duna?

Sounds plausible This is not plausible. They will likely announce that KSP2 is dead (development has ended), after everyone has already forgotten about it, and right before announcing good news that makes investors and others forget all about KSP2's failure. The announcement will get lost/buried by other news so that it's negative impact is minimal. Right, but as per my above comment: they aren't going to be falling for the sunk cost fallacy and pouring more money into the burn pit

Expanded KSP1 to add interstellar: The star in question is a binary companion of Kerbol, orbiting at 1000 KU (1000x the distance from Kerbin to Kerbol). This was just a test, most binary stars are actually much closer, then you have cases like Proxima centauri which is 13'000 AU from Alpha Centauria A-B, so 1000KU* seemed like a good compromise to me. I infinite fuel cheated and burned basically straight at it, at over 15G acceleration: Yea, it will take a while to get there... Note, this was done at 4x rescale, so those 1000 KU are 4000 stock KU - proportional to about 1/3 the distance from Alpha centauri to proxima centauri. 1 light year is 63000 au. Proxima centauri is proportionally 67x farther away than something 4000 KU away. Even so, I think I will need Atomic Age's nuclear lightbulb, buffed by KRnD research to get propulsion that can get me the >100km/s needed to get to this binary companion in a reasonable time and slow down at the destination I also moved laythe and my planet "rald" to be planets of the new star (modeled after Tau ceti in size, mass, and luminosity), eeloo replaced Laythe. I am getting way too much illumination from that star half as bright as Kerbol, and 1000 times farther away. Compare how dark kerbin's night was when its dark side was facing away, to Duna's night time side: And when kerbin has light from both during the day, it is quite bright, I must find an appropriate setting to tweak

I was very excited about this ground up redo of the core systems, supposedly allowing vessels with much higher part counts than in KSP1. It is my understanding that part count is even more limiting than it was in KSP1 Also, regarding mods, I did not mean litterally using the same mod, but rather incorporating similar functionality to functionalities provided by KSP1 mods Soo.... they win no points with me here Planned, not yet present after ~7 years of development. Also, KSP1 mods give this functionality. Planned, not yet present after ~7 years of development. Also, KSP1 mods give this functionality. I had hoped that KSP2 would be able ot handle this significantly better with the thrust on rails mechanic, allowing for long low TWR burns, with brachistichrone trajectories, etc. I had hoped for being able to plan maneuvers like with the MPD thrusters in CoDE, but instead it seems there's the same node that plans burns as if they are an impulse trajectory, and equires you to keep the vessel in active focus while thrusting. It is an improvment, but not what was really needed for more proper interstellar travel. Planned, not yet present after ~7 years of development. Also, KSP1 mods give this functionality... Soo.... they win no points with me here Planned, not yet present after ~7 years of development. Also there's no indication they even have a clear idea how it would work Here we need to distinguish between planned scope, and delivered scope. The scope they have delivered so far is underwhelming, and their planned scope is actually still within the limits of KSP's engine, as shown by mods. Maybe they planned for KSP2's engine to handle this scope better, but given the bugs and the performance limits restricting vessel part count, I see no external evidence that this has been achieved, or that good progress has been made.sadsad I really don't understand what you mean here. KSP1's engine allows for procedural parts, as shown by a variety of mods for procedural tanks, wings, etc. The celestial bodies are a high point of KSP2. I don't disagree here. To the point that I would even be interested in exporting their height and color maps, and backporting them to KSP1 though I don't know what level of proc gen KSP2 uses for fine scale detail, I am not ignoring this point: Scattering- they litterally hired the modder from KSP1 who did the KSP1 mod Scatterer. The weather is just cosmetic, no (ie, clouds)? And yes, the art team did a good job. I give KSP2's team credit for that. Its more of the core gameplay elements that I have reservations about. I did not say that. Please don't put words in my mouth. Work has been done on KSP2 for years, it is not clear when Star Theory started on it. Nate has been working on it from the beginning. IIRC, about 1/3 of ST's team left to continue working at IG. There is certainly some level of continuity, and a core team that has been working on KSP2 since before it was announced in 2019. Neither of those are quotes from me. See my points above, and also the following: When speaking of scope, we need to distinguish between the scope they have delivered and what they has planned. What they have delivered after years of work (with the team varying in number and composition over time, but still with significant continuity), and access to KSP1's source code, does not seem to exceed KSP1's scope. 1) I see that the visuals and the detail of the celestial bodies have been improved significantly. Beyond that, (2) I don't see evidence of a more stable physics simulation (more bugs). (3) I don't see evidence of a more optimized physics simulation (has a lower part count limit before performance becomes unacceptable). Points 2 and 3 above are absolutely critical to me. I would have been happy with KSP2 if it was just KSP1 with 1, 2, and 3, and the rest of the planned scope was left to mods. Their apparent failure on points 2 and 3 (as far as I can tell) is the reason for my negativity. My opinion on if they did well or not depends heavily on whether they addressed points 2 and 3. They were supposed to rebuild the engine from the ground up to make it able to do all these things better than KSP1 - huge high part count vessels and colonies. They even stated that they would "slay the kraken" As far as I can tell, they did great work on the art, but left the core engine in a dire state, and the state of the physics engine is why I cannot say they did reasonably well. IMO, that should have been their top priority. I'm left with the impression they were just doing artwork and daydreaming about what the engine would do, and didn't put in the work to make sure the engine could do it.

I have used it before, unless it has changed, it's just a surface outpost mod, with nothing involving construction of new craft. I do like the parts though I think stock parts are sufficient for surface outposts l, so not really what I am looking for. The windmills are interesting, but I plan on modding in my own nuclear reactor. Yes, these are what I am looking for. Of the 3, who are the pros and cons? I may or may not want this mod. Shipping in new kerbals isn't too hard, I can deliver a bunch at once, and don't need to put as much thought into what to send as with ships and other craft

I think they failed here, 7 years, 70 people that's quite a lot compared to KSP2's start I think they gave enough resources for the scope, even if they would have to cut interstellar to something like going for a binary or trinary star system (like alpha, beta, and proxima centauri) - and drop MP Beyond that, it's scope was KSP1 with popular mods properly integrated, and a graphics overhaul. I guess we'll have to disagree It's all speculation, but I think there's plenty of blame to go around