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Probes require commnet infrastructure, turning one launch into potentially a hundred. Even with a level 3 tracking station, you'd require the biggest antenna to talk back to the DSN, and even then you'd need other comm relays in the way to keep control all the time. The command pods being all less than 10 tons mean they're negligible as payloads and you always have control no matter what.

Reported Version: v0.1.5 (latest) | Mods: none | Can replicate without mods? Yes OS: windows 10 | CPU: Intel i5 4690K | GPU: NVIDEA GTX 1070 | RAM: 16gb When throttling up before you should, PAIGE goes beatbox mode. She can only talk when thrust is 0, but as soon as there's thrust she gets in a loop of starting to talk https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1039965578754007060/1149998890121187368/Kerbal_Space_Program_2_2023-09-09_11-24-26.mp4

We talk about this one: This is ksp1, ISRU, everything is dim, different kerbal model, different solar flare... To come back to the post, a lot of creative use of the procedural wings. I don't know if the devs thought players would have used them like that lmao.

Answers to some questions we had to skip over during the AMA but I still wanted to get to: Alexoff What percentage of the parts in KSP2 was created by you personally? Depends how you measure it. Effectively zero because I don’t do the asset work, by one definition. In terms of maybe inception/concepting, in the EA release I’d say I had a hand in about 10%? What is the largest part will be in KSP2? The largest part I have in my list right now is in the 80m+ size category. It’s a lot harder to measure these colony parts versus vehicle parts though… Do you participate in the creation of parts for the colonies? I participate in the concepting and design phase yes. It’s where I’m focusing a lot of my ‘thinking time’ these days. Colony parts are both similar and different from vehicles – in what they look like, how they assemble, etc. As we get to those milestones we refine our designs from player feedback. How difficult is it to add a new part to KSP2? Is there a big difference? Is it harder than creating a new part for KSP1 for a modder? Most things in KSP2 end up being more complex than KSP1. As an example at a basic level the PBR shading model that we use requires more texture maps than KSP1. That is mitigated by having access to internal tooling and a faster iteration loop (click Play in Unity rather than load the game). Stephensan is there any more concepts for more air-breathing engines like the J-90 smaller or larger There’s been team interest in larger air breather engines, but as always that’s not so simple – adding an air breather of say, 2.5m size requires us to also look at the supporting parts in that size, like intakes and cockpits, so the player can have a good experience when using those engines. That balloons the required work significantly. I would want to push out the different technologies rather than footprints first. Nuclear jets, propellers, all unlock interesting new player stories! is there gear that is going to be angled from the fuselage not straight up and down and finally more tires/wheels in the concept stage, or even remotely thought of... We definitely have people who want that on the team . LunarMetis How will the sizes of different stars be scaled with respect to Kerbol? Will they be scaled at 1/3 their real-life analogs like Kerbol and the Sun? Specific scaling of the actual meshes is less important than defining their specific insolation numbers for input into solar panel math but yeah they’ll be Kerbol-relative. How do you plan to implement proper motion of other star systems, and how do you expect that to add to the challenges of interstellar travel? Hah, interstellar travel is going to be hard enough already. Proper motion is something we need to balance carefully there. Pthigviri Hi, Chris! Im sure you've been deep in colony part design. What are your thoughts on greenhouses and simple life support with snacks for example? How do you see conveying that colonies are both real places where kerbals live and 'working machines' much the way vessels are? Honestly I don’t like basic life support (by basic I mean something like having Kerbals on a ship consume a resource). I’ve played all* of the KSP1 mods for it, and I haven’t found something that is interesting and holds my interest beyond frustration for more than a few hours – just not my cup of warm beverage. More seriously though, systems like this need to have a bunch of considerations: - They need really carefully crafted player stories. Those stories need to support lots of different player archetypes – not just advanced players. - They often should work on a carrot rather than stick-based approach. KSP has a lot of sticks right now. - They need scalable solutions that are plannable and toolable. That’s a big thing and that’s where LS gets expensive in dev-hours We have some things in the works around Colonies that ape some of the ‘results’ of life support, which I hope will get at the idea of colonies being a little more kerbal-involved than just plunking Kerbals in a command part. * I think all? It has been a while, maybe some new ones have cropped up. PDCWolf Has the concept of heating changed at any point based on the feedback posted to its thread? I read every post in the thread, which was nontrivial because it was a long and uh, vibrant thread. The short version is no, the long version is yes but… A lot of the interesting discussions sat around things that are further down the roadmap, and they provided us with a couple additional things to consider. Interestingly, the player stories we have were well aligned with the comments that I read, but the way the player stories were addressed were not unanimously approved. That’s fine – part of the EA conversation– and in particular with a lot of discussion being on items later in the roadmap, this makes me confident in the iterative model. We’ll get the basics of the system focusing on reentry stories out to everyone. We’ll evaluate how that works with the playerbase. As we move towards the next milestones, we can use the information encoded in the thread, which I’ve collected internally, to make sure we’re making choices (engineering or design-wise) in conjunction with the feedback from reentry to get good solutions. One thing that jumped out for me was that there’s a lot of talk about macro vs micro solutions. I’ll be the first to admit that the current solution is a macro solution. So future design work will probably focus on whether there’s more microscale interaction to look at. If I know the peak or average specific heat flux a vessel is gonna go through on its final orbit/landing spot, what stops me from just adding enough negative heat flux parts to counteract it? Nothing. That’s what you should be doing. Of course, it’s not really that simple. If this is atmospheric heat from going fast, adding a big radiator is likely to just increase the amount of next flux, because it has a large surface area. Most heat mitigation tools need something else too – a radiator might need electricity, which means you need to supply that, which will enforce additional constraints. Considering its possible uses on the automated logistics network, long missions, and just straight up anything that only requires time to pass, how do you balance not timewarping versus just letting things happen in ultra-fast time? These are the best questions because they’re the hard ones. Often we trend towards supporting a player path that doesn’t reward excessive timewarping, but doesn’t exclude it either. A good case study is resource extraction and deposit concentrations. There’s definitely fun in seeking out and finding the best deposit for mining. Obviously though timewarp makes that kinda moot in timing. You could just start mining a hypothetically low-grade deposit and warp for 50 days. That tells us that time and rate -based mechanics need to have more to work well. A specific example here is that a newly accessible resource should be constrained differently – challenging location, resource transport limitations, etc. We try to move the real player decisions to things that are interesting with and without time as a mechanic. Mostly hypothetical examples, but here’s a few ways of thinking of these things on top of my head: Put a locational constraint on something. If you need to do something in orbit over a specific part of a planet, make it take longer than the average orbital cycle. This might encourage a player to put a satellite in GEO orbit over that place. If you do the work to put it in GEO, you get the benefit of being able to timewarp. Use binaries instead of gradients. Does ore concentration really benefit from a really detailed gradient from 0.0001% to 100%, or can you look at it as a yes/no? Trade that, see if you’re damaging player stories with that simplification. Use supporting systems. Sure, you could mine that deposit at high timewarp. But the deposit is on a planet with a day length of 200 days, and you need power, and the area has no fissionables. How are you going to power it? If you solve this problem, it is satisfying and you get a cookie. You did the work, enjoy your timewarpable extraction! These are really big problems we look at for all of the more complex systems because hey, an interstellar transfer could be 100 years. Players will timewarp that and that’s… the whole length of a KSP1 campaign. Fun with and without timewarping like this is essential. Socraticat What are your favorite tips and tools for new modders? My biggest tip is to do what you want to do and not focus on what others want. Lots of the most creative KSP1 mods didn’t hitch themselves to any one concept of the game, and that’s what made KSP1 modding so successful. You want RO? You’ve got RO. You want to launch kerbals in a cardboard box rocket? That’s there too. You want life support? Oh hey there’s about 5 different concepts out there to pick from. Also don’t try to form a team day 1 . Get some experience, release some stuff, and the team will come to you! Tools - Blender is an amazing piece of free software, and there are a ton of good coding tools out there for the software-minded as well. It has never been a better time to be an independent purveyor of these kind of things, you don’t need to suffer through e.g. gmax or the trial version of Milkshape3D anymore. Royalswissarmyknife Is there any consideration of 1.875 meter parts Building out a whole family of 1.875m parts that includes the core stuff (engines and tanks) plus the necessary ancillaries is a lot of work and not something the team is committing to right now. Strawberry While we do know it wont be added in the short term, the team has previously been wishy washy if radiation/life support will make it into the game. Are these topics something that the team has decided wont be in the game until maybe after 1.0, something the team has a firm answer on what they want to do with but does not wish to disclose it (though if you do wish to disclose please do), or something that the team is geniunely undecided on See answer to Pthigviri about LS stuff. Radiation is a bit more interesting to me because I have a fair bit of history in mods with it, and I’ve eagerly assimilated the early concept work the team has done for KSP2. There are two tradespaces in terms of vessel design, point sources and ambient radiation that we at least nominally want to think about including. Ambient radiation is basically a time trade. How long can you spend in a radioactive environment? You can throw things like radiation shielding, storm shelters, etc but ultimately it all comes down to time to Bad Things. It’s harder to help a player to plan. You have to give them tools to determine how much radiation there is around somewhere and how to figure out how long they can spend there, etc. Point radiation is nuclear engines and reactors. This is harder to implement but is definitely relevant in terms of craft design, because it is a big part of why fictional interstellar ships look the way they do. Interestingly it is easier to model and communicate to the player because you know lots of the variables at vessel build time. One of the messy things here though is that as soon as you throw in radiation, you railroad players into building ships with nuclear engines in a very specific way. We have to craft a solution that hits a nice middle ground. See this comment. I’m candidly going to say that we don’t have the ideal solution in the bag right now – but that’s what EA is all about. I’m sure I’ll write some kinda discourse on radiation eventually for a dev blog and everyone can weigh in on why I’m wrong :P. Pokaia Are there any features you modded into KSP 1 that you are bringing into KSP2? What is your favorite? I wouldn’t want to port anything specific without a good justification, but I really want to bring in more planning tools. The only ones I built were around heat and power management, but yeah. Something like that. One of the cool things about this job is that I get to start again, so to speak, with the support of people who have been in the industry for a while. So if I want to bring in nuclear reactors, I can take my concepts from Near Future Electrical, talk to some Real Designers ™ and get their opinions on what works and what didn’t work, and make something cleaner for KSP2. Filip Hudak What are next parts that are comming into the game? Science parts! But also those gridfins we teased a while ago should appear. stoup Are there any kinds of parts you're going to be adding to KSP2, that as far as you know, weren't even really available as mods in KSP1? Some unexpected bits and bobs, maybe The entire colony loop is more or less stuff that was never really available in KSP1 mods from a system perspective. Modding KSP1 was really wide though – hard for me to say. Kalessin1 Are all parts from Your mods to KSP1 will be implemented in KSP2? Especially large solar panels, station parts & MK4 spaceplane? Hah, no not at all. I like to re-use concepts, but this is a great opportunity to start afresh and to fix some stupid things I did in development of those in my mods. Gotta somehow get more Thunderbirds in the game though. Cocoscacao Will we get all size variants for all parts? Example, hydrogen tank with the smallest radius, only has long option. Why "semi procedural" parts weren't considered, where you can select a tank and set its lenght/radius to some of the predsfined available values? You definitely have me to blame for no smaller hydrogen tanks – just don’t think they’re useful with the low density. Why wobblyness still exists? What are design choices and reasons to keep it, if there is a way to remove it? If there is indeed a way to remove it... I have a post on my thoughts about this as a player. Generally though – it’s not where we want it to be and we’re trying to figure out how to get it there. That’s extremely non-trivial, there are various posts in the forum that do a good job of explaining some of the whys. SAP KSP How advanced will the Kerbal's technology be, will there be very advanced parts such as anti-particle devices? We’ll definitely get way up there in the tech tree. I do want to keep those under wraps for now tho. Infinite Aerospace Are you able to tell us 'something' about science and career modes, there's been an alarming lack of any real information regarding the two. Well! Science mode is cool. It is designed to be a progression-based mode that takes the aspects of KSP1’s Science mode that we like and build upon them to create a solid progression experience that has higher level of agency and approachability. You can expect the return of the experiment loop, with changes, and the inclusion of a very different mission paradigm from Career. One of the fiddlier aspects of the last few months has been taking our full set of concepts from KSP2 1.0 and figuring out how they break down into the early access structure. Delving deeper, what can we expect from science mode, is it the same ‘click and reward’ setup as KSP1 or are you going for a ‘science over time’ sorta approach more akin to Kerbalism? The system as designed is independent from things like Kerbalism, but you could say there’s some concepts that aren’t dissimilar in there. It has been a while since I have played with that mod tough. We definitely want to get to more player agency in science. Instead of it effectively being mandatory to hide 4 tiny science experiments on every craft you send anywhere, we want you to make a more informed decision about what you take with you, and make the actions you take a bit more specific too. I should write a little dev blog on this. What sort of part numbers are we looking at, is there going to be the same sorta number of experiments as KSP1, or significantly more? What does that entail, are the experiments something more dynamic this time, looking at things like NASA’s GRACE mission for example? I should definitely write a little dev blog on this. Similar number, more impactful. In terms of career mode, is there a more dynamic contract system in place rather than the rather ‘rinse and repeat’ system of KSP1? There’s still going to be funding, reputation? I believe we are on record about not using the same framework there. Funding and reputation weren’t our favorite systems and didn’t have the gameplay impact we wanted. As a side question, stations and bases. Are these going to have something of a real use this time around, given that stations were limited to more or less just fuel depots in KSP1. I'm thinking more along the lines of long term research projects, with big pay-off for significant durations of time. Is there some sort of requirement to resupply the stations, perhaps required crew rotation, stuff like that? The progression we want to deliver for bases and stations mirrors IRL conceptions about how these things should work. You will start out with outposts that have limited utility – let’s call that KSP1-like. Fuel depots, maybe comms relays, etc. As you progress through the tech tree, you’ll get access to stuff that provides them with greater utility. That’s shipyards and docks, fuel factories, launch pads, etc. Eventually you’ll get the biggest parts, which are mostly focused on giving you the full capabilities of the KSC at a colony. A core piece of the utility in my mind comes with resource gathering (which is a ways off in the roadmap,) when the specific positioning and configuration of a colony becomes really important. Placing a colony with good access to progression-related resources and having easy access to heat management/power sources will allow you to build specific functions and cool vibes into each colony. Crew rotations and resupply are not currently something we would want to enforce. I hope that when we get resources and delivery routes fully operational though, that this is something modders will hit really hard because the framework of stuff like delivery routes will be there. TheAziz Pineapple on pizza or not? I don’t like it, but recently I was made aware that liking baked potato pizza was weird so I can’t really judge. Superfluous J Having done both, what do you think are the main differences between adding a part (or set of parts) to the game as a modder, vs as a paid member of the team? Accountability and justification are big. It’s easy enough to incept a new part as a generalist modder. I just say that I want it and make the time to model/integrate/QA it myself. In a professional context, that involves the use of studio resources and we have to balance that versus other work we want the staff that would be executing that work to do. A new part needs a concept, it needs artist time, it needs designer time, and it needs QA time. We have to really be sure we want a part before we do it. Pat2099 Will the salt water nuclear engine make a return? I’d like instead introduce the artisanal nuclear fresh water engine, using only the purest Vall-ian glacial meltwater and hand-centrifuged Pol-ian uranium. But yes. TwoCalories You've made several mods for KSP1 in the past. Will parts from any of those mods, like Restock, Far Future Tech, Near Future Tech, and Stockalike Station Parts make a comeback in KSP2? Never exactly, though there’s similar roles. I have a 3.75m command pod in Near Future Spacecraft that is pretty similar in role and profile to one in KSP2, for example. What was the transition like going from being a modder (or, more honestly, a pillar of the modding community) to working on the development team? It was really weird to come into the project and find pictures of my work as references in the team wiki. But it has been great. We have a really solid team working to replicate what amounts to 10 years of hard KSP1 development work. Ways to go though. Justspace103 Is the same approach to design & diameter consistency going to be applied to KSP2, similar to what you did with ReStock? This is already ongoing – we sneak in consistency work where we can depending on the team’s bandwidth. We’ve sorted at least a dozen parts since EA release. The part-ists are probably sick of my hOw’S tHe SiDe CoUnT questions. Mushylog Hello Chris Adderley. How detailed will the reentry VFX be, on the vessel's parts? Will we be able to see the heat propagate relative to what part of the ship is hitting atmosphere the most? (As in, will there be a glow on the entire vessel that spreads as atmosphere becomes more dense, in a reentry? Or will the heating visuals display in every single parts of the vessel individually?) I will leave this one completely to allow future dev communication to represent it. It’s really cool and I think the path to get to what we think is our final solution would be a fun thing to tell people about. Heretic391 What steps is the development team taking to make KSP2 accessible and appealing to new players who may not have played the previous game or are new to the genre? Obviously, the tutorialization we worked into EA will continue as we add new systems. Eventually though we want to enable players to do more with the same skill level. There’s some really big difficulty jumps in the game, and while we are more confident in the ‘get into orbit’ jump, we still need tools and strategies to tackle the next one, which I’d peg as going to another planet. After that, go to another solar system. I saw a really cool concept from the UX team about this last week which made me squeal in happiness. I hope we get to it. VlonaldKerman Can you give some more detail on the supply route system? Can you automate the construction of supply vessels, or does a vessel have to be built to assign an automated route to it? In other words, when the route is finished, does the vessel have to be intact? That system is a ways off and while I think our concepts are pretty solid, they have to survive another round of detailed design, and the EA feedback we get through that time period. So let’s save that for a dev diary later. Intactness is an interesting thing that the system does need to consider. On the one hand, we obviously want you to not crash your ship to create a delivery route. However, we also don’t want to disallow multi-stage approaches to routes. You should be able to create a delivery route with a two-stage rocket. It won’t be as resource effective as a single stage one, but particularly for routes that launch from high G or atmospheric planets, we need to have a design that eventually supports this. It is possible that this could be delivered in phases for effective development – consider a V1 of routes that focuses on single-stage-to-place deliveries and a V2 that is more comprehensive. Also, will metal to build basic rockets and methalox fuel be limited in the early game, or will there be infinite fuel on Kerbin? If so, how is this balanced against the ability to send an arbitrary number of refueling ships to a colony, as opposed to what I think you probably want to encourage, which is ISRU? If you want to create an interstellar empire based on shipping methalox light years from Kerbin, I don’t want to discourage that. That’s kinda cool and would be a big investment in player time and resources, so we would reward that by not constraining it. You’re also probably not going interstellar on methalox… so you are going to be incentivized to not do that in a particular way. Psycho_zs In KSP1 some realism enhancements can be achieved with a relatively simple MM patch, because those mechanics are already in the game, but not used in stock (i.e. engine spool up time, throttle depth limits). Are there any realism mechanics that you wanted to put into KSP2, but couldn't because of the gameplay balance? Any of those that you or somebody else sneaked in for config tinkerers to find? What are the limits of stock realism options and will there be something extra under the hood, in a space between stock and full blown mods? Yeah some of those do exist in the game. Part of that comes in the engine module that supports most of the ‘fancy’ stuff from KSP1 like spool up. As for new things, yeah I’m pretty sure there are some things we’ve asked for but not ended up using. I can’t really think of them off the top of my head. NovaRaptorTV What's your favorite part of the game to work on? I really enjoy the small part of my job that’s artistic – making sketches, concept models and stuff to pass over to the team is quite fun. I also like to make the project plan go brr, ticking off things on milestones makes me happy. M4D_Mat7 Will there be hydrolox fuel type given how we already have hydrogen as a fuel type for nuclear engines? If we get the NERV-US in that will be a need for Hydrolox there. jaypegiscool Are there going to be more design challenges implemented with more fuel tanks and such? E.g. will there be fuel tanks that don't have a centered COM? Fuel tanks are a basic component of ships that we don’t want to have players need to manage too much. There are some interesting trades about that for far future fuel types though. As we get there we’ll examine if they’re interesting to support or whether to leave it to the modding community. norminaluser Are there plans for adding nostalgia/legacy parts? aka, adding some revamps of the KSP1 parts? I mean, some old users would be delighted with these. I’d argue that anytime we have a part that comes from KSP1 it is already a revamp, so I’d be interested to understand what that actually means to you. barrackar In the upcoming Science update - does conducting experiments give you science points? Will there be a tech tree? There will certainly be a tech tree, and science points! For colonies, do we know if/how lifesupport will work? Simple colony expansion or more complicated management of individual resource routes? Will users be surveyed for whether or not we want lifesupport? See answer about life support from Pthigviri. For interstellar, will there be astronomy aspects required to detect/map the other system(s)? Fun things for the future! I can’t be more specific at this time. poodmund Why Quenya and not Sindarin, Telerin or Noldorin? Do you have something against Elves that went to Middle Earth? By the Ninth, I must know the answer. The real answer is that the corpus of Quenya is a lot more complete than say, Sindarin, so when I went to try to learn it, that’s where I went. piotr.__ What real life concept / scientific work gave you the most headache? Is there something you are really proud of, that your creations will introduce to players? Heat and radiation are the hardest concepts to map to gameplay, so I’ll say those. Every time we get a system that is showing a new scientific or engineering reality I get excited. Example - with 0.1.3’s new extensible engines, we’re showing the community that doesn’t follow aerospace precisely than extending engines exist and are useful in some ways. bygermanknight#0 (554725693590732801) Are we going to get some engines like the Orbital Maneuvering System from the Space Shuttle because the current (and only) monopropellant engine is not very liked among the community. The Puff is pretty OMS-like. I’d turn that around and say that something more conventional in terms of attachment modality is probably more useful than something that tries to ape the OMS a lot. M4D_Mat7 When will we see more interiors for the command parts? We want to fully define the IVA system and experience before we commit to more interiors so we limit possible rework. Will the team add RCS to the space shuttle front cockpit section eventually? This is not planned. suppise How do you go about balancing new engines with twr/isp/cost/size/etc? Check out the Engine Archetypes dev blog for the framework – but the overall concepts we use are related to… · Spreadsheeting versus comparables, · Looking sneakily at how mods have done things when possible, · PLAYTESTING Follow up question, with the full 1.0 tech tree, aside from cost/resources, will there be a reason to still use the basic methalox atmo/vac engines we have now, over newer engines/fuel types? Resources accessible to a colony will drive this. Say you’re mining a frozen ice ball of a planet with water ice – that’ll be something that would drive you to hydrogen engines. However, maybe you’ve got a colony on a world with trace atmosphere of CO2 – that might make methalox attractive. mgb125 I routinely exceed 150 parts for spacecraft in KSP 1, would the team consider a higher baseline for the “typical” vehicle? Do you have stats on how many parts players use for their EA KSP 2 craft? We are building our analytics pipeline to give us that data. We have lots of legacy data from KSP1 to help us in the meantime. sylvifisthaug So someone in the KSP2_general channel have pointed out that the "brass line" vacuum engines in KSP2 have some resemblance to your previous modded content as Nertea. How is the process like with implementing these similar designs into KSP2? Do you do it entirely by yourself, texturing and all? Do you do 3D models, coding, or maybe nothing? You just manage the team to do it? I do very little of those things. Effectively I… 1. Try to incept the concept and discuss its utility with the rest of the team, 2. Make sure we can support it with the engineering that has been done, a. There’s a whole side thread about when we need to ask for new gameplay functions. 3. Make concept models, 4. Hand it off to the art team, 5. Coordinate other things we might need for the model – VFX, SFX, animations, 6. Come back once we’ve got all that sorted and do the final integration into the game, and some tuning later on. If you as a team manager delegate others to recreate your parts, how does it feel to let others rummage with your own engines? To be clear, we’re not really recreating parts – when things are similar, there’s often just convergent evolution. But our art team is equal to the task!

So much talk about colonies and interstellar travel. I don't want any of these if the game is in a state like this. Devs are constantly hyping what should we expect... Multiplayer Colonies Interstellar travel I think they should first assure people that state of the game is going to get better, because if until now orbits are unstable, it is impossible to build more crafts. For now, it's a single mission game (if you overcome the bugs). Somehow it frightens me how it will work all together with al the features they promised. The base game is not working well at all.

And exactly how did you arrive at that conclusion? Go check out what some of the things people who got inspired by this game have went on to do. Kinda like when I was 7 years old, my Mom won a hot air balloon ride. Now you might call it "just a balloon ride" but that day, I knew that I wanted to be in the sky...like as a career. And it has influenced many of my big decisions since. If you've got an entire village getting on someone's case because their balloon didn't break the sound barrier, I can't say anything besides the fact it's just a balloon. Not on vacation they aren't. Developers deserve vacations. It's hard to talk about a game you like or have hope for if any discussion is going to invite pessimism. Implement submillimeter precision for interstellar distances, run several systems of colonies in the background... simple, right? Here's something that's simple: drop any pre-2020 expectations because the old technical manager was out of their depth with these promises KSP 2 is still trying to reach.

If you are using the patreon volumetric clouds and not the standard ones, they are yet to be optimized and frame drops are to be expected, we aren't really allowed to talk about those here though because they aren't free yet. If not, then I really have no idea, sorry.

Speaking of skepticism, I've been doing a bit of a deeper examination than I usually do. The following is entirely speculative, wildly so even. You know how people talk about whether they ever mentioned 1000+ parts ships and such... Of course the reality is they've never mentioned any number, only hints here and there. We don't know the part budget they have in mind and they refuse to put a number on it, so speculation is sure to come up. Now, if you go around the bug report subforum, you'll see this new one (which I recommend you upvote as it's pretty critical IMO): I... couldn't really think of that as a bug, maybe inefficient or hard to scale, but not a bug: we want colonies, orbital shipyards, miners, processors, thrusting vessels and such to work whilst we're away, we also want the heat system and to work whilst vessels are unloaded... At the same time we don't have any effective way to differentiate which vessels shouldn't be part of this system: Heat buildup and such could take a really long time, so just assuming equilibrium doesn't work, thus all vessels should remain simulated. Almost any vessel could be used to thrust whilst in warp, so all of those should be part of the simulation as well. Lastly we definitely want colonies and shipyards with their logistic lines working (we know there'll be a proof of concept system so logistic journeys don't load yet another vessel in the simulation). Of course there's a lot of simplification to be made: Colonies can extract to an abstract pool of resources to not account for individual tanks (unlike ships), craft in equilibrium and unloaded can probably ignore the whole heating system, and probably a lot more that I'm missing, so the system can be reduced a bit. But still, the system is not really scalable as more craft are added... and I can't imagine how multiplayer handles it (if it even attempts to at all). Then I remembered the stuff that has been shown the whole way about colonies and interstellar, and the stuff said on the interviews about those topics. Everything hints to monolithic "One big part for a lot of stuff" pieces being the norm. Plus now procedural parts help cut down some of the main part-count wasters like wings and radiators, like this single ring part transforms like 40 into one: So, they have this seemingly inefficient system that doesn't scale well with partcounts, they're really trying to stop us from lego-ing solutions to certain stuff like we would in KSP1, and they also have a clear aversion to tell us the partcounts they're aiming for... Once again my nose picks up a sour smell.

I have thought about teaching at nearly every career change I've had over the last 30 some odd years. Never pulled that particular trigger (until now). For a while I thought my path would take me to college or law school where I could Professorize - it seemed the most obvious choice. Oddly, my friends who are Professors talked me out of it. (It would take too long to explain everything - but do talk to some folks currently in the college / university system before deciding) I was able to get a full teaching certificate for my state without having to go back and get a (nother) masters degree. High school students really do need talented people - and having 'real-world' experience is a bonus. That said - it ain't as easy as it looks. Thankfully my background involved a LOT of teaching (some classroom, much impromptu) - so I know how to run a class. But your first year is a LOT of work - especially if you don't inherit the prior teacher's materials / plans. Even when you do, you discover that they cover the material in a way that doesn't jibe with your philosophy. The cool thing is that you generally have the freedom and flexibility to teach however you want, so long as you are meeting the broad requirements. It's also really cool to see kids making connections that never occurred to them - they're terrible poker players... you always know when you are getting through! All of which is to say 'after 3 weeks, I still like it!' ;D

The game is still a barely playable hot, buggy mess. When I can put a rover on Mun next to a lander without encountering decaying orbits, jumping landers, and disintegrating time warps then come talk to me about playability and enjoyment. Currently the game remains an exercise in frustration because of how little actually works.

If you decide that for yourself, that is perfectly fine. If you go around and tell others, what THEY need to find funny and what THEY should think and write according to your perception of the world, you have an issue at hand. Kindly consider that: it is not your role in this world to tell me what I need to find funny and what I need to enjoy. I am happy for you, that you enjoy the game and I wish you lots of fond memories with it. But other people are not you If I would talk to a person interested in the wold of space flight, orbital mechanics and Kerbals, there are very, very good reasons to introduce them to KSP 1 first before urging them to buy KSP2. The price tag is significantly lower, the program is more stable and has more features and the available mods are almost as plenty as the stars itself. Actually, I am playing with my 2.5 year old occasionaly and he is enyoing Kerbals. And explosions. And being able to toggle ladders, landing gears and engines. The thing is, KSP2 is not the only alternative, it is not existing in a vacuum right now. It stands on the shoulders of a green-skinned (little) giant, and from that it is righly judged. I am looking forward to the day I am buying the game and when I can recommend it heartily to others. Alas, this day is not today, my fellow Kerbonaut.

Right now we have a playable Sandbox mode which has been improved immensely with ~700 bugs fixed since launch. The foundation is solid now and performance has also improved. There have been numerous dev diaries, interviews and AMAs. We have a bug tracker and community managers actually talk to us and relay our feedback to the team. The parts look great. We know that the terrain will use a new CBT system, rendering is being upgraded to Unity HDRP, the lighting will be better. We have the buyoncy, heat system and science mode updates to look forward to. The teams are working in parallel on Colonies, Interstellar travel, new star systems - with a lot of unreleased assets to show for. Things are materially improving and the game is continuously getting better. Devs have gone on record that they are going to address the limp rockets issue. There is so much cool stuff in the pipeline. There's every reason to be hopeful and positive.

wow, you know I left the ksp subreddit exactly because of how toxic of a community it had become, I would hate to do the same here. Some people really only see the worst of the worst, and if there is even one tiny bug in a game, you'll never hear the end of it. They bring up arguments like "back in ancient history, the EA was only 15$ and wasn't as buggy". Well, back in ancient history, there were no features in that game either, and every game you bought, EA or not, costed less than half of what you would pay for the modern equivalent. look at NBA2K for example, back in 2013, that game was listed at about 30$, this years version the standard edition is 70$. neither were EA. so KSP1 in EA was half the price of a AAA title full release. Baldurs Gate 3 was 60$ early access. stop using that as an argument, that's just how it is now in almost every studio. that's inflation for ya. You can talk straight to the devs right here on this forum, you are informed of patches on twitter, here and on steam, as well as what is included in the patches and what they are still working on, and if there are any delays. communication is better than 99% of other developers. This is only true for that small toxic part of the community that seems to bleed in everywhere. plenty of people are still optimistic, including myself. but we just leave places where it's starting to become toxic. Like I said, I literally left the ksp subreddit, where I had spent years of my time, because I got so sick of the toxicity. I can understand if YOU have no hope, if YOU have no incentive to continue participating, if YOU have lost your passion, but don't speak for others. There has been many promises made by the team, and there's been many sneak peeks of those promises as well. you act like nothing has been done, but don't know what's happening behind the scenes or what features are included but just disabled until the foundation is strengthened. I know for a fact those features are already there, and I wish I could enable them and play them now, but I'll just have to be patient like everyone else.

Let's not talk about the UI overall layout, that's entirely different conversation. KSP1, while obviously not very ergonomic to use, had all the information on the screen as clear as day. KSP2 went full on early LCD and let's face it, that era did not bring us improvements in readability. That was a compromise we accepted for getting more space, as the screens became flat. But it left us with small letters in weird shapes. The 1st gen console-style ain't helping either. Of course, feel free to discuss other accessibility elements other than the interface.

I have not been able to play KSP2 since launch, First it was stuck on "Pumping Sim Once" and now its "Setting Universe State". I cant seem to find any threads that talk about this. HELP!!!!!

This is a serious topic, and unfortunately, KSP2 fails on all fronts here. And I can only talk about problems with interface, but I'm sure there's plenty more things that can be improved. Plus, if anything, the 0.1.4 made it worse. Look at this Let's start from the top left. The "hamburger menu". Known to exist in most mobile apps, but absent from most desktop applications, except some browsers. Alright, it's a good idea to have a button AND a hotkey (Esc), just like staging does, but does it have to be an actual icon of a hamburger? Probably a snacks joke, haha. Okay, it's there but... it only works one way. There's no button to go back from the menu. Not very intuitive, is it? Meanwhile, a button with similar function (opening a menu of options) in App bar looks entirely different. Next stop is on the right, the GFORCE window. Or is it a Gforce window? Maybe it's crew portait window? And if it is, why does it show empty seats? Where's that cyber Kerbal dummy that devs have shown us ages ago? Anyway, what matters is that the name has a hard time explaining what it is, because the GFORCE only applies to that thin strip on the left. And I think another issue are the window names. Not only they're 8 pixels tall (at 1080p screen), very inconsistent in letter shape - look at any two same letters close to each other, they are not identical because the whole thing is badly compressed, but also inconsistent in letter size and style - for example, the resources window has the title made of 7 pixels, but also the separator isn't a dot, but a hyphen. And the whole theme makes it look like it's some placeholder codename, not an actual thing. Why is it ORBITAL.INFO, and not Orbital Info? Why is it TIME.WARP and not Time Warp? There's no reason to have it like that in a product that's not a prototype available only for the dev team. Font choices. On that one screenshot I counted 12 (Twelve) different styles, including changes in font size. That is the opposite of unified interface, feels more like a bunch of different bits made by 5 different people, glued together to make a UI. We've got window names in two (at least) sizes, orbital parameters (also at least two sized AND styles), the navball there you can find another 3, timewarp window with 2 more, the resource window with another new size, and staging with at least two more. Iconography. There isn't much here but there are two identical radiotelescope icons that do different things. One shows radio connection, the other is Tracking Station. That can be confusing. Also, all planets in the top left list have the same icon of Kerbin. I know it's an icon for "planet" but it's the same for moons. The Navball. Oh the navball. I should explain that I am slightly visually impaired. Wearing glasses, short sighted, astigmatism, recently fighting (without effects) focus/contrast issues in my right eye. And there's no other way of saying this, the new dark mode of the navball looks like crap and is unreadable for me without leaning in and squinting. The tiny, very densely packed numbers blend with the background, the center bird blends with the background lines, the SAS icons can be barely seen against what's behind them. You could say to increase the size of the UI - but I don't think I should. I'm not that blind because, in KSP1, with roughly the same size of the ball, I had no problems reading the numbers. Here though, it's a complete blur. Honestly, the most readable thing in this whole screenshot, is the FPS readout.

Talk about loaded questions. My biggest gripe with the talk about performance is that 90% of all the "gains" comes from removing elements from screen. Take a look at how low graphics looked in 0.1.0 vs 0.1.4 and it's pretty damning that there's been minimal performance gains, only fidelity losses.

I'd like to talk about the upcoming bleeding edge releases, which'll be all you see for a while: The next "big" release, release-190, is actually due to be a fairly huge one for users and focus on performance (though there may be a feature or two as well). It'll be happening in the public eye, as bleeding edge prereleases for testing dropping quite frequently. There is likely to be quite a few over the next month or so. You are encouraged to test these in a controlled environment, but as usual, we really strongly advise you either have a "testing" save you don't care about, or backup your save before hand. The first part of these optimizations, the safe part, already got released above with release-189. We are getting more aggressive now. Each release has code that may or may not cause bugs. Testing is important. I only have one bugtester so I'd encourage the community to test these releases if they have time and report back, ideally with performance metrics if they can (before/after fps will do, from landed and/or in orbit is usually good enough. Get landed on a "very distant" body for bonus points in bug testing. All data and scenarios are good and we thank you). We won't release a shoddy product for "moar fps" so that's why I'm expecting a month to get through all the Q&A. But you can help with speeding this along, if you feel safe doing so, by testing prereleases. Optional, but very very helpful. Thanks for reading. And without further delay, the first such release. This one should mainly help while craft are landed with the distant collider fix enabled: New in this latest version release-190 RC1: 1.) More experimental optimizations to the SinkingBody bugfixes, using caching, and benefiting mainly when landed. Known Bugs: 1.) Not exactly a bug, but worth mentioning: The Kopernicus_Config.cfg file is rewritten when the game exits. This means any manual (not in the GUI) edits made while playing the game will not be preserved. Edit the file only with the game exited, please. 2.) At interstellar ranges, heat can sometimes behave strangely, sometimes related to map zoom (be careful zooming out). It is best to turn off part heating when traveling far far away. (I am not sure if this is still relevant as of Release-159, feedback welcome). 3.) When zooming out all the way out in map view at interstellar ranges, the navball furthermore sometimes behaves oddly. We are working on this and monitoring all the interstellar bugs actively. (I am not sure if this is still relevant as of Release-159, feedback welcome). 4.) Very Old craft files may complain about a missing module. This is a cosmetic error and can be ignored. Reload and re-save the craft to remove the error. 5.) Sometimes when reloading a quicksave to KSC, you will get the KSC sunken into the ground. This is cosmetic only, another reload of the same save will fix it. (This error has been around forever, just now listing it). 6.) When you uninstall a mod that had installed a Terrain Detail preset you were using, it may be listed still in the Graphics settings as "New Text." This is by design. If it bothers you, please reinstall the mod that setup that preset, or delete settings.cfg and let it regenerate. 7.) Some mods that used custom Terrain Presets may require you to delete your settings.cfg file and reset your settings with this release. This is rare, but can happen. See this post for details Known Caveats: 1.) The 1.12.x release series works on 1.12.x. The 1.11.x,1.10.x,1.9.x and 1.8.x releases are deprecated 2.) Multistar Solar panel support requires an additional config file, attached to release. 3.) As of release-107, scatter density underwent a bugfix on all bodies globally that results in densities acting more dense than before on some select configs. Some mods may need to adjust. Normally we'd not change things like this, but this is technically the correct stock behavior of the node so... if you need the old behavior, see config option UseIncorrectScatterDensityLogic. 4.) As of release-151, polar generation behavior has changed slightly. Though it will be safer overall for new missions, be careful loading existing craft there. This is probably not lethal but I don't want you to be unaware. Maybe make a save just in case? 5.) The "collider fix" as it's called, which fixes the event in which you sink into the terrain on distant bodies, is now on by default. If you really need distant colliders, turn this off, but you'd best have a good reason (I can't think of any). 6.) The particle system was hopelessly broken and has been since sometime past 1.10.x. Few mods used it, so it has been removed completely as of Release-146. 7.) Because we now unpack multipart PQSCity's correctly, you may find some PQSCity structures are in the earth or floating. Report such bugs to your planet pack author as this is an intended change (only cosmetic).

Do companies have any liability for violations? Not hiring violations, technology transfer violations. Ie: Say they hire a barista (one of the example jobs at Starbase) and employees are having lunch, and talking about rocket stuff. Obviously if any employee was to sell information to a state actor that's an ITAR violation, regardless of citizenship status, then SpaceX gets fined? Lack of diligence in hiring reliable people? Or are employees at a company facility not allowed to talk about work (maybe SpaceX needs to invent the Cone of Silence (when the kids were little I totally would have bought one )? Assuming they do any sort of background check on people, is such a check possible at the same level for someone whose history is mostly outside the US and hence unavailable? Is it more expensive to hire such a person (checks, etc, presumably carry some cost)? Also, does this mean literally no "US Persons" in this refugee category have ever applied for and been denied from any other defense contractor, or is the DOJ going against all defense contractors all the time for this, or does LockMart, etc, simply hire them?

NMS even 6 months after launch was less talk and more updates, including content updates. Not only that but I'll eat my hat and socks if we will ever see an honest apology along with a real explanation of this launch, let alone an expansion to KSP2 released for free for the poor souls who bought the game expecting we will actually progress through the roadmap at a very decent pace (their statements, not mine). In the meantime NMS did so with several feature packed expansions across several years, who were released for free, and they still do it today, many years since launch. Sure, NMS launched bad too, everyone screws up, but what separates boys from men is how you handle it afterwards and if you own up or finger point or just pretend it didn't happen. Which is why I bought NMS on every platform I own to support that kind of attitude and respect towards players. IMHO KSP2 is already too late to be a story similar to NMS, but time will tell.

It’s like they picked the worst of both worlds. Talking a lot at times but only about insubstantial stuff (amas with softball questions, dev insights into features that were supposed to come a brief window after launch) And then trying to change to a “under promise over deliver strategy” without acknowledging or wrapping up the loose ends of everything they’ve already discussed (reentry heat video was supposedly supposed to come out 11 days ago, has since then not been even acknowledged) all the while not actually delivering everything. It’s like they keep flip flopping on how much to talk thinking that’s the reason the player base is grumpy when, if the game was making progress, they could talk a lot or not at all and many would be happier. Because the communication style isn’t the reason for the backlash, the state of the game is the reason.

I've seen a number of references to Starfield, and I am one of those people waiting for it to release. I'll be posting a poll with this, feel free to respond and talk about it. It's a Bethesda game, their first new universe in 25 years Steam page is here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1716740/Starfield/ I'm really excited about it, I've played Fallout 4, but looking forward to the new worlds to be found and explored https://bethesda.net/en/game/starfield If you have any additional questions or options to the existing question(s), post below and I'll add them

Hardly a deliberate tactic, just passion. Remember that a forum (or any community) is mostly made up of the most passionate people for a project, both positive and negative. Those who don't really care and just play occasionally tend to lurk at best, but usually just don't engage these kinds of spaces at all. The negative speakers are speaking out because they want to be heard - the prospect of driving others away makes that harder, not easier. And its not some effort to tank/punish/etc the developers for it, as again, the majority of people don't interact with communities at this level. They'll see the steam ratings, a few suggested and top reviews, and make a decision there. Folks are upset with the state of things, and they want to talk with other people who are upset with the state of things. Others are ok with the state of things, and they want to talk to people who are ok with the state of things. Both groups want to feel vindicated, justified in how they feel by confirming that no, they're not just crazy or stupid, others feel the same way. Some of those people just take it a bit too personally when they stumble across someone who doesn't feel the same way they do. The community ends up on defense mode, with all members wary that someone's there to tear them down for hate/hope for the project. Which in turn leads most conversations to be snippy and aggressive as everyone takes every quip by assuming the worst. The gap between the groups grows wider, and the outliers become more extreme. Back immediately following launch, the extreme positive side was "Wow this is rough but the bones are so good, they'll sort it out soon" and the extreme negative side was "Wow the games in a terrible state, how'd they think this was ok to release?". Now, six months on, the extreme positive side is more or less saying "Lol why did you expect a full price game to be any good or playable when its got the Early Access label? You're a fool if you expected anything else" and the extreme negative side is "The devs have cut and run, the ones left over can't tie their own shoelaces much less write a line of code, how hard is it to copypaste from a decade old game?". The moderate opinions and positions are still here, but frankly, nobody listens much to them lol, quirk of human nature. So long as these narratives remain so extreme and so divergent, things won't get better in the community. The devs actions will shift the dial one way or another, but from a community perspective its in the worst possible state - Maximum risk of genuine incompetence and failure in the game, and maximum possibility that its all just around the corner. Six months with minimal quality patching is extremely poor. But six months plus change to a major feature release is pretty good. Frankly, until the devs land it, flat on their face or perfectly, its going to continue to diverge. Once they do the narrative will likely unify, either to "Yea it sucks" and "It sucks but recovery narrative NMS guys", or it lands it and goes "It sucked but its turning around" and "I told you guys to stop crying, its great". But all the while, as the passionate community divides and bickers and hopes for some proof one way or another, the real danger is the quiet majority audience. They're not hanging around reading devblogs. They're not digging deep into community discussions and roadmap details and the rocky development cycle the game has. They're seeing a 29% Mostly Negative recent review score on steam, and skipping the game. They're taking a gamble, buying it, having a bad time, and refunding it with a negative review. They're folks who bought the game, tried playing for a bit, left a negative review and put the game down and probably won't come back, alter reviews if it gets good, etc. The easiest representation of this I can see is the mission reports forums for the two games. The first games one is still pretty active, with the entire first page of threads having been posted in this month. KSP2 has six threads that've been active this month, and its first page goes back to April. If the passionate forum goers aren't flying as much, what do you think the casual audience is doing? Nothing much, I'd imagine. Balls in the developers court, but the clocks ticking - This lurch period of uncertainty isn't helping any aspect of the game or the community.

If the devs bring in science trust me most of the discussion will be on science. That’s more interesting for everyone to talk about. I’d like to talk about resources and asynchronous options for multiplayer but it’s hard to have those conversations not even knowing what science will be like. And, to keep this merry go round conversation going, KSP1 was much cheaper than KSP2, was a new idea combining Orbiter like mechanics into a sandbox game without any prior game to get ideas/solutions from, was made by far fewer people, and had more progress down its “roadmap” over any 3 month period than has KSP2 over its lifetime. When your game is less playable with less features than the prior entry in the franchise, is more expensive, and is progressing substantially slower than the first game yeah people are going to get grumpy. If you then apologize and try and start off with a clean slate and return to overpromising and either under delivering or never delivering yeah people will get upset.

Honestly, I think the hard part about trying to stay positive about the future of the game is that many of the things, that would normally be sources of hype, have been proven to be unreliable for people to be putting their hopes in. So of course we can't change that. It's weird feeling like their has to be a dichotomy, between positivity about the game and negativity. I want to be want to complain about the things wrong with the game, but like many others I would also like to see this forum, if not full, at least largely so, of people engaging with the game and enjoying themselves. It's frustrating when the core problem is that people feel that they can't get engaged with the game enough due to all the bugs and whatnot. It's a valid feeling, full stop. I just wish the game was in a state where it was more interesting to talk about what we're able to do in it, than to talk about how difficult it is for us to GET to that point of engagement.