Soda Popinski

I haven't heard about this. Can you give a link?

I mean during the lag time between the release of the game and the release of your favorite mod. Some mods, are a great, but not exactly popular. I'm still specifically thinking about kOS, as that seems like it would be quite involved and really changes the gameplay.

That's a good point. Before I installed KCT, I still had a few SSTOs to save funds and for a little role play. I'd have to store them somewhere at KSC near the runway, and re-fuel them with a tanker, and taxi them to the runway. It would be easier with the KCT inventory system. Note, the KCT inventory system lets you refuel and modify craft in the inventory. If you do a modification, there's a short construction time.

The thread is talking about a hypothetical construction time aspect. The current KSP1 Kerbal Construction Time mod does have a ship inventory system. I've got a small fleet of SSTOs, mostly ready to go, with each having different specializations. I've also got a stock of recovered boosters ready to slap on new 2nd stages to. I've also got a bunch of cars for my hype-train inspired space train, with a locomotive and a few tankers docked in orbit, an uncrewed locomotive en route to a rendezvous, a science lab/caboose section and lander waiting for a reconditioned launch pad, a probe car, an ISRU unit, and a RCS tank / heat shield being fabricated.

It's why I really enjoyed SCANSat as a way to figure out biomes (which is nerfed a bit by KER) and elevations. It made you work to get that information to know where to land to hit other biomes.

Interesting idea. I'd imagine interstellar distances will also be scaled down, like planetary distances, so the closest star will be, say 0.4 light years away. At that distance a big James Webb style space telescope could probably get quite a bit more detail on exoplanets than we could imagine. Something like Kepler, or since this is Kerbal Space Program, "Kepler," would be able to find hundreds or thousands of exoplanets. I'm pretty sure the devs will only be modeling at most a hand-full of other planetary systems.

Here's another idea inspired by Elite: Dangerous. In that game, at 6:00 am UTC every day, the servers shut down for 15 or 30 minutes and the galaxy updates based on the actions of the player base. I could see a small player run server with 2 to 4 players on it running a similar mechanic, where you play at real-time most of the time, then every 6, or 12, or 24 hours or whatever the game time-warps to the next "alarm" point or maneuver-node. Optionally, the player who's alarm went off can let time-warp continue when they're done, so the next player can take their turn. This would let a few people play with interplanetary or even interstellar travel.

I asked if there were any issues with 1.10 on /r/kos, and got a reply that it's broken. Not a lot of details, unfortunately.

With confirmation that colony resupply missions can be automated once you do it manually, I'd hope something like a built in MechJeb would still go through the launches (that you could even watch if interested), instead of simply changing a number in the savegame file. This would require the game engine do different physics instances (not sure how that would work with time-warp), but I'm expecting different physics instances already with multi-player being a thing.

I heard kOS doesn't fully work with 1.10. Anybody know what specifically isn't working? Or is it completely broken?

It doesn't if you only launch one mission at a time. I typically have a bunch of missions going on. I like to do orbital construction, so I have to plan ahead for this sort of thing. I get that it's not for everyone, but you should get that it's of value to some people.

I think we can expect a lot of functions currently provided in mods for KSP1 to be in stock KSP2 in some form or another, such as upgraded textures, Kerbal Engineer, colonization, etc. So my question is, what non-core gameplay mods will you miss, and can't wait until KSP2 versions come out? For me, I'd have to say Kerbal Operating System. Learning to program rockets has added a whole new layer to the game for me. Now way do I see that being in stock KSP2.

I boot up my game running Kerbal Construction Time, and I want to get something big into orbit. It's too big for my small fleet of re-usable SSTOs that are sitting at the ready. So now I have to decide if I want to build another conventional rocket, use a recovered booster and build a new second stage, or continue working on my large SSTO (first one since beta). For me, I like how it gives a purpose for building reusable craft. So for me, it adds to the gameplay in career mode. If I just want to muck about with no constraints, I can fire up Sandbox mode. Should it be stock in adventure mode? Seems like a good fit when thinking about colonies, but I have my doubts the devs will put it in.

I do have to say, playing with Kerbal Construction Time makes SSTOs make a lot more sense. Just re-usability goes a long way.

A big part of the fun challenge for me in KSP is applying my mighty vaguely remembered high school programming skills to Kerbal Operating System scripts. Sure, it'd easy enough to do it manually, but why do something in 15 minutes that I can automate in only 20 hours of bad coding and bug squashing? Pardon the typos.

The eyes look more spherical and symmetrical (size wise). Previously, the right eye was slightly taller than it was wide. Also, at least Jeb (?) seems to be focusing both eyes in the same direction. It makes him seem less unstable.

Space Odyssey: Our first big look at Kerbal Space Program 2

That's a good point. So I'm probably wrong, but that could be a placeholder so they don't need to worry about uranium's real density in the final game. If they go the other way and get specific on the fuels, will we see a break-down in things like Liquid Fuel to specific fuels for specific rocket types? I sort of hope not (or at least save that for "hard mode").

Unless KSP2 goes more into the weeds than KSP1, I'd expect it to be a generic "ore" and not Helium-3 specifically. I suspect the specific types of engines we've heard about are short-hand for the basis of what may actually become less specific in the game - like how KSP1 has "liquid fuel" as a catch all for RP1, hydrogen and maybe methane.

What is this "Mars" you speak of?

I suspect we may be over thinking this. Do recall most people (including me) don't play with Real Fuels. So the current benchmark is "Liquid Fuel" which seems to cover everything from RP1 to liquid hydrogen. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the new engine tech currently being called "metallic hydrogen" or "inertial confinement fusion" will be named something more generic in the final game, like "liquid fuel" or NERV (instead of NERVA) or RAPIER (istsead of SABRE) so they don't need to be constrained (or day I say, confined) to the real-life performance and limitations of this technology. For people who do want that level of realism, I'd expect mods will fill in that niche.

I could see in-game use of having the warp-drive function like the Frame-Shift Drive from Elite: Dangerous, where you use it for interstellar travel, but would use something less exotic/expensive for interplanetary travel, like metallic hydrogen. That said, I believe the devs said they don't want to do any FTL travel. If it's fine for Kerbin to be 1/10 the size of Earth, I don't see why we couldn't have another planetary system 0.4 light-years away. That'll make something like the Orion or Daedalus drive more feasible without resorting to FTL. In-game, the metallic hydrogen rocket looks to be something between NERVs and the pulse nuclear rockets. It may be a bit silly since I'm pretty sure an Orion drive is more technically feasible.

As a physicist, do you think it's more realistic to harvest substantial amounts of negative energy exotic matter to power an Alcubierre drive ship? If they're in the same realm of feasibility, then a metallic hydrogen drive seems like it would be obsolete by the time it was developed, when a gas core fusion rocket could provide over double the ISP and seems relatively feasible.

I think a good compromise would be to have pilots level up to be able to dock. That way if the player can't do it, eventually they'll get a pilot that can.

Has it really been this long? Episode 4 is up, with Episode 5 following in a couple of weeks.