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Well, their problem is they spaced out the updates even more. This gets you more time but it further increases expectations for what your updates contain, and I’m not yet sure if it was wise of them or not. I hope they delay the patch to add more features, instead of coming up with an update comparable to what we had before when the space between them was much smaller. I have a similar feeling that they bit more than they can chew. I hope they do the right thing and leave the smart people some room to work and talk, and quit marketing nothing burgers.

Cheaty post to unbury the thread, but seriously, it would be nice to have a megathread like this to talk about lore.

YEAR 3, DAY 149 - LIBRA 3 Crew: Lebro, Malgard, Genenie After some redesigns to Libra Orbit, Jeb's Junkyard shipped us their new model just last week. This flight is quite important, as it's the first crewed test flight to dock with Kerman Station. Much like the flight plan of Nova 3, Libra 3 will spend about 10 days at Kerman Station. As usual, the flight has two pilots and one engineer, just wring out the spacecraft as thoroughly as possible. If this flight is a success, the Libra Orbit will be free for a tourist flight for Kerman Station. And there's a long line of Kerbals who want his once in a lifetime experience. While all of them are of... the higher classes, one Kerbal in administration put forth the idea of "affordable space travel". What?! Who let this guys into the meeting?! Fire him immediately! Liftoff of Libra 3! Jet engine separation. Libra 3 is in orbit (The ascent, I must say, was quite painful though. I genuinely got mad at the game, and had to take a break to cool down. That's why there's a lack of screenshots.)! A maneuver is planned out, and the Libra Orbit begins to make its way to Kerman Station. While braking at Kerman Station, the Libra Orbit ran out of fuel! Good thing it was moving slow enough that RCS could slow it down. It was quite the nerve wracking experience. But, in the end, the spacecraft successfully docked to Kerman Station. Oh yeah, and the fuel issue was fixed. The MPCF is VERY over engineered. I could just put some of the fuel from its tanks onto the Libra Orbit, and everything is perfectly fine. The station's looking... a little cluttered right now. Also, for the next 10 days it may be a little cramped. On the bright side, they have more lab assistants, and more friends to talk to. So everything may have worked out fine. We would like to congratulate Jeb's Junkyard and their engineers for their tireless work on the Libra Orbit! It has now entered the books as a perfectly functioning spacecraft, and is also perfect for providing a cheap way for resupplying Kerman Station and sending tourists into space!

It only renders the thread useless for discussion of war mods, or at least that's what my intent was. We shouldn't go right to "we only talk about war mods here" when the topic of the thread doesn't mention war a single time, yet that's exactly what happened with the past few pages of posts. So I suggested that those who wish to discuss such things take their discussion to their own thread. My approach with these kinds of things is often "start off with a blunt instrument, and hone it as needed". So I started off with something very general, to avoid people trying to weasel their way out of it with the old "this isn't that, so it still belongs here" kind of thing. Same reason a lot of places that have need for a moderation team have a rule that goes something like "If you're trying to explain how you're not breaking the rules, you're breaking the rules". But really what I was trying to see no further discussion about in this thread was "war mods and if they're workable and how they'd work and blah blah blah", I won't get into it again. It's not that I'm trying to globally stifle that discussion. I'm just saying that there's too many posts about war mods in this thread within the past few pages, compared to how many people have or will actually install and use war mods in KSP 1 or 2. So I suggested creating a new thread for that thing. If I sounded like I wanted ALL discussion of how a specific kind of mod would work to go to its own thread, that's not what I intended. It's pretty much just the talk about war mods that was bothering me. But I guess if it gets too involved and "stuck" on any one type of mod, I'd probably get a little irritated. Same with how I get irritated when talk about how time warp works seems to be the only thing that ever got discussed in the multiplayer discussion thread. I'm not interested in what everyone's stuck on, no matter what it is. I probably formed my opinion about that subject in a few minutes, and it's gonna stay that way, and I see no need to discuss it further, so the thread should probably move on to another sub-topic of whatever it's about, and yet it gets stuck on one subject for MONTHS. It's like nobody can tell when someone's not willing to be convinced, and so the discussion just goes endlessly in circles, occasionally devolving to less-than-civil discourse. That's how the multiplayer discussion thread died. It's quite irksome to me. I don't like seeing threads die like that. And it's irksome enough that it's the kind of thing that makes me stop browsing the forums for that day. But I don't just stay perturbed at a problem and not try to solve it. So that (thread specific) rule is what I came up with so far to potentially prevent this thread from circling the drain.

DISCLAIMER: This IS NOT a suggestion, request, or complaint. I DO NOT believe that hyper realism is somehow "superior" to the more loose approach KSP and its sequel have taken, and am in fact quite fond of the planetary systems of both KSP1 and KSP2. I am merely using the familiar Kerbol system to talk about planetary science, both for my own amusement and hopefully yours too. The Kerbol system in KSP1 is a setting filled with novel fantastical worlds, but others are hard to tell apart at a glance (particularly Mun, Ike, Dres, and even Tylo to an extent). KSP2 sought to not only bring unique character to these worlds, but also improve the realism of what was previously established, all while making as few modifications to the system's recognizability as possible. This endeavor is not something to be overlooked, and the results are very admirable. However at the same time, I'm a worldbuilder, one who particularly focuses on realistic planetology and has far too much free time. And having had time to stew over KSP2 over the last week and a bit, I want to share my unique perspective on the Kerbol system and what changes I feel could have been done better, as well as what choices I would have made were scientific feasibly my only concern. Kerbol: Carrying over from KSP1, its much larger than what you'd expect for a solar analog. The reason for this is so that it matches the apparent size of Mun in Kerbin's skies for eclipses. However, imo I don't think Kerbol being smaller would take away from this in any way. Additionally, Kerbol is also much redder than a solar analog, looking about 2000-2500 K (for comparison the sun is 5775 K). The lensflare is significantly whiter, looking to be around 4500-5000 K. Moho: Moho obviously draws inspiration from Mercury. The brownish color appears to be rust, however this would likely require an atmosphere to maintain the high oxidation state over geologic timescales. It is also a notable departure from Mercury's ironically iron poor crust and mantle (fun fact), but more than doable. Eve: In the original KSP, Eve's oceans were comprised of "explodium", which presumably is some form of volatile hydrocarbon based fuel. KSP2 reimagines these liquid bodies as molten sulfur instead, and I am very pleased with this. Molten sulfur is an often overlooked fluid on Earth, occasionally occurring as "blue lava" in terrestrial environments and in volcanic pools at the seafloor. However, while sulfur is a very common element in terrestrial worlds, getting enough of it to form deep oceans is practically impossible even with extremely extensive volcanism. Even then, you'd likely require greater sulfur abundances, which would likely reduce density due to iron sulfide in the core. This is in stark contrast to the high density we see with Eve, with an inferred core mass fraction similar to Mercury. Additionally, this does not provide a particularly satisfying explanation for the relatively thin atmosphere of Eve as sulfur cannot sequester CO2 back into the mantle like water. So unfortunately as much as I love the idea of molten sulfur, I think long chain hydrocarbon like parrafin or asphalts would have been better options. A hydrocarbon ocean also lines up very neatly with other observations, as the more reducing conditions would discourage CO2 formation, instead favoring CO, C2H2, CH4, and H2 like in titan's atmosphere. Additionally Mercury's crust is actually quite carbon rich (with graphite making up a few percent of it by weight) so assuming similar processes on Eve would give a large body of reducing carbon to work with. Now as for why Eve is purple, maybe its some retinal based phytoplankton in the atmosphere? Not the best, but still far better than the iodine or fullerene explanations. Gilly: Not much to be said. It's a lovable little potato. Kerbin: I could probably go down a rabbit hole about climate models and tectonics and all sorts of things. But honestly even with realism in mind it serves its purpose as an Earth analog well enough. Mun: I could not have asked for a better interpretation geographically, though offsetting the mare from the near side may conflict with some models for the lunar surface dichotomy. A part of me wishes it wasn't such a perfect moon analog, as it lost what little unique character it had left, but I suppose its larger size and closer proximity will have to do. Minmus: Oh boy, I can certainly see why the dev team struggled to figure this thing out, and tbh I'm stumpted myself. Glass is a good step up from ice, but just creates new problems. Naturally occurring glasses do not make glistenning flat fields, they make jagged boulders which only when sheared reveal their reflective shine. Those of you familiar with Minecraft may recognize obsidian as one of the most popular volcanic glasses, but there are others. Unfortunately most require shock cooling in the presence of water to form, which needless to say is difficult to explain on Minmus. That being said, I gotta give the dev team massive credits for finding something that at least could resemble Minmus. Still, what could Minmus be instead? My best guess would be to once again turn to hydrocarbons, a forming comet long since devoid of water, with only dark organic material and rock. over geologic timescales the tar would be fluid enough to relax into flat almost "lakes". Duna: Obviously Duna is Mars. We all know this, but it actually misses the mark in a major way. This version of Duna is plastered in craters, which while interesting, doesn't line up with the geologic processes we expect to be occurring there. Like Mars, Duna should be tectonically active, especially with Ike for tidal heating. Volcanism and other tectonic processes can do great work in erasing craters from the surface. Also unlike Mars, Duna has a rather respectable atmosphere, and the aeolian erosion should further help to smooth over craters. But speaking of the atmosphere, another unexpected facit of Duna may emerge: precipitation. The atmosphere of Mars is rather thin, and so temperature variation across latitudes is high. As a result, the poles act as very effective cold traps for water ice, keeping the rest of the planet dry. Duna's much thicker atmosphere reduces the strength of these cold traps, as evidenced by the atmosphere itself (Mars' atmosphere is actually limited by the vapor pressure of CO2 at the poles. So because Duna has a thicker CO2 atmosphere, we can infer much higher polar temperatures of >170 K compared to Mars' 140 K). While not much, this does allow for more moisture in the air and cloud formation, which will inevitably come down. This means we can expect snow covered regions extending past the polar ice caps, particularly in lowlying regions and craters. Mars actually does have a few snow-filled craters like Korolev, which are astoundingly beautiful. However in addition to snow there is likely also rain, as Duna's higher pressure can keep water a liquid, and thicker CO2 atmosphere should enable reasonably warm summers. While I don't like the idea of actual lakes or seas for Duna, I do think riverine terrain could be featured much more strongly to imply seasonal melts and drainage paths. Ike: I appreciate the effort that went into diversifying Ike from the other grey worlds, with extinct volcanism being a distinct feature. However, with that being said I really don't feel this was executed very well. The current volcanoes are mentioned as being extinct, which means active resurfacing is no longer taking place. As such, we should still expect significant cratering (at least more than Duna) on Ike. Additionally while stratovolcanoes are a neat touch, more expansive flat volcanoes and basaltic lava fields would be more accurate, as our own moon also has a history of volcanism. If activity does continue to the modern day, one might also expect some discoloration around the volcanic regions, like a very desaturated and far less extreme version of Io. It’s also possible that there could be some discoloration through surface oxidation, either from material delivered from Duna or native oxidation via a trace volcanic atmosphere (ie less than what KSP defines as vacuum) which is also similar to what is present on Io, though the low temperatures there freeze most of it out. Dres: First off, love the rings. And the equatorial bulge does suggest a complex history with past rings long since lost, as obviously the present rings cannot have fallen to the surface and still be present. However, I think the Iapetus inspiration went a bit too far with the two-tone design. The reason for this is quite simple, it doesn't work for Dres. For this we must take a brisk detour to see why Iapetus looks the way it does. TL;DR, dark dust from Phoebe coats the leading hemispheres of all the major Saturnian moons, and because Iapetus has the longest days its the only one that got hot enough for a feedback loop of bright ice sublimating leaving darker organics causing more sublimation etc. Now, Dres doesn't have any way to preferentially deposit dark material on it, and even if it did, being much further in its already hot enough for this feedback loop to occur over the entire surface (which is why Ceres is actually very dark). So unfortunately this just cant work here. However, cryovolcanism can create bright spots on the surface (like Ceres), and brighter ring material can at least lighten the equatorial region, so not all is lost. Jool: Jool is still just a big green gas giant. Why is it so green? honestly aliens putting paint in isn't the worst option. Plants can be green, but to completely cover a gas giant in such a brilliant shade requires an exceptionally large biomass. Chlorine enrichment is also a non-starter, since you really can't enrich gas giants without some absurd tomfoolery or enriching other stuff as well to make it a moot point, chlorine isn't even that green, and it would form chlorides and sink below the visible cloud deck. As for Jool's moons, one might be familiar with the fact that Jool's moons are extremely unstable if actually simulated. This is for two reasons, one: they are in a laplace resonance, which is pretty trick to actually keep stabilizing, and two: they're just SO DARN MASSIVE. For comparison, Jool is 80 times more massive than Kerbin, comparable to what Saturn is to Earth. Tylo is 80% the mass the Kerbin, compared to Titan being just 2% the mass of Earth. And Jool has two other moons nearly as large. If I were splitting hairs, I'd probably do some combination of making the moons less massive, making Jool more massive, and opting for a less troublesome resonance chain and greater separations. But that is quite a departure form the architecture of KSP1, so its understandable why they didn't. Laythe: Keeping Laythe's oceans liquid is a challenge. It'd be trivial to just add enough hydrogen or methane, but oxygen puts a cap on how abundant those can be. CO2 freezes out of the upper atmosphere; nitrogen oxides break down too quickly; natural antifreeze mixtures can’t get cold enough; tectonic heating, while great for interiors, does nothing for surface temp. The only real option is to turn to CFCs, potent and long-lived GHGs which can also handle low temps and oxygen, but you'd have to rely on biology. The oceans would probably end up with some hydrochloric acid in it and both them and the atmosphere may turn slightly green from chlorine. Regarding its terrain, Laythe’s only terrain seems to be crater rims, which really doesn’t line up with the thick atmosphere, and active geology. As presently depicted, Laythe should have terrain far more similar to Kerbin, albeit heavily inundated, with a higher focus on volcanic island chains. Laythe's terrain is also pretty monotone, and some color variation would be nice with dark basaltic volcanoes and lighter shores. Also because greenhouse heating is responsible for Laythe's clement temperatures, you shouldn't expect any latitudinal temperature variations, and so the poles would be no colder than the equator and thus iceless. Vall: While I love the dichotomy between its hemispheres, the explanation for it is troublesome. Unless Jool was far hotter (either through a young age or very high mass), its radiation cannot be the cause for this disparity. Jool’s gravitation influence will however produce increased tectonic activity at the poles as well as the leading and trailing points (as seen with Enceladus, Dione, Miranda, and potentially even Titan)vbut there really aren’t any signs of activity on Vall at all beyond the single crack revealing the subsurface ocean (or more likely a liquid inclusion in the icy crust above it), so more signs that this world is indeed active would be good. It’s also lso worth noting that Vall is far less dense than either Laythe or Tylo, suggesting a higher water mass fraction. We also see this in Jupiter’s outer moons, but unlike them, Vall is sandwiched between two more rocky worlds. Were Vall swapped with Tylo, it would fit better compositionally, but this would create its own problems. Tylo: I love the new Ganymede-inspired direction of Tylo, and think its perfect fit. My only real issue with Tylo is its higher density compared to Vall. As previously mentioned this could be resolved by swapping the two, but that would also mean Tylo would be more active than Vall. Alternatively reducing the density of Tylo and/or increasing the density of Vall would be the simpler option. Bop: Bop is an interesting case. I like its irregular appearance and love the massive crater. But at the same time, being more massive than both Minmus and Pol, small rounded worlds, one would expect Bop to be similarly shaped. I think the easiest solution would just be to swap the sizes and masses of Bop and Pol. Pol: It clearly draws inspiration from Io, with a volcanic and sulfur covered surface. Unfortunately this conflicts with its distant orbit, where tidal heating is pretty negligible. Pol is mentioned to have a high radiation environment, which if the result of very extreme radioisotope enrichment might be able to resolve this contention, however that would necessitate an interstellar origin of Pol, which is disfavored by its low inclination orbit of Jool and synchronous rotation. This explanation would fit better if instead Pol were not tidally locked to Jool and orbited at a greater distance and much higher inclination (30-70° / 110-160°) Alternatively, Pol could be moved to a more circular orbit interior to Laythe where tidal heating would be sufficient to drive volcanism. Its high radiation environment would then be the result of its volcanism producing a plasma torus around Jool. Eeloo: I have my doubts that Eeloo would be active enough to produce its observed features (bright surface and large ravines) with its relatively small size and in the absence of any companions. Its lack of a nitrogen atmosphere is also a bit troubling, as it suggests processing within a circumplanetary disk to reset its volatile composition. One possible interpretation from this is that Eeloo is an ejected moon of Jool, though I am unsure of the feasibility of it entering a 2:3 orbital resonance after this. This would also suggest a much more chaotic history of the Joolean system, making orbital resonances between its moons unlikely. Additionally, Eeloo would become inactive after its ejection so a darker and non-reflective surface would be expected. So what’s my overall take on things? I like it. There is a clear attention to detail that has been put into making the objects more realistic while preserving the existing content and diversifying the system. I feel greater realism could have been achieved if greater departures were taken, which I feel I’ve adequately illustrated. But realism was not the sole goal of the development team, and it’s extremely important to keep that in mind. Again, I am not claiming that realism is somehow better. A lot of people couldn’t care less if the world they land on is realistic or not, and that is certainly a respectable opinion that I too have on occasion. Fantastical environments can give rise to unique gameplay challenges that pure realism often cannot. Does it really matter if Tylo’s probably too big and dense? Of course not. It’s a fun challenge to go to and without its size and gravity that would be diminished. Heck, this entire time I’ve been glossing over the scale of the Kerbol system. Obviously its smaller than irl, which results in all sorts of weird densities, but it makes launching easier and more approachable. However at the same time, when realism can add to a world to make it more unique, I can’t help but feel it’s a missed opportunity.

It's conditioning, because most people do want the combo. You stand in a spot, listen to people say the same things over and over for hours, and automatic mode kicks in and you start punching the buttons while putting as little thought into it as possible. Not to mention there may be other things going on, especially when it's busy. When I worked the window, I also had to make sure the cooks were cooking what we needed, side items were prepped, keep an eye on the front counter, make sure the lobby was kept up, handle customer complaints, talk to one customer at the window and one on the speaker, count change, keep 4 or more different orders straight so I could verify my packer was doing it correctly, and make sure the order I was handing out the window was the right one. While filling drinks, too. Edit: Further, corporate probably has an order to try and upsell whenever possible.

A Ship of Theseus with minds. I wonder about that as well (and about people who talk about uploading consciousness to a machine, my intuition is that it's a copy, not the actual person). With something akin to Neuralink, I suppose I get around some of the issues. You start storing some memories in an external device (external to your gray matter, though it might be inside you), are those memories organically "you" if backed up, etc, when you call them forth seamlessly? Seems like they are. If you could then offload more and more brain functionality to the external device, then at some point you're walking around, and the external device might as well be you—it stops feeling like a copy, at least intuitively. This line of discussion reminds me of talking about Star Trek transporters in a dorm room, and how they are clearly killing you (my take) and replicating a copy (Ship of Theseus be damned).

Regular advertising. No whiskey commercial will ever tell you that you won't become a chick magnet without a hideous headache next morning. You need 3rd party sources. That's normal. and I'm questioning those too on occasion... It gets progressively harder because it dissolves into speculation (or even more ridiculous stuff, check a few posts above). Those with positive opinions usually end up with something like: "You can't know that yet", which is fair assessment... I can't. As an example, my biggest worry is the implementation of calculating heat transfers, electric and fuel consumption on so many active vessels. I have no idea how that can be done. There's a whole thread on it, where a few members contributed with their thoughts. I'm still in the dark regardless. Probably my ignorance on the subject. If so many people are committed to see that implemented, I guess they have some idea how. Or all of that talk is just cat urine, and the game will cease development at some point... But now we're getting back to speculation. I hope more dev diaries will be released...

I get your point, and your experience is a welcomed addition to the usual atmosphere of these forums, but I think that, as @Bej Kerman said, you're overselling modded KSP1 a bit. Let's not talk about the technical part, and focus a bit on the mere artistic side, KSP1 seems to be made out of assets raided from 20 different games. The fact alone that KSP2 has an art direction makes it better, something that even Restock+ struggles to do. Let's talk about the new VAB system, an unified building environment, with the same rules for both planes and rockets and all that magic happening with saving crafts and sub-assemblies and working together on multiple of them in the same environment without having to go though loops. I spend more than half my time in the VAB, that alone for me personally is worth 20-30€ if it was a KSP1 DLC. I admittedly don't know anything about what's going on under the hood, but on the thing I can see, whenever they speak or show anything I see an amount of competence and thoughtfulness that was never there with KSP 1 development. I'm already taking into account bugs and feature missing at launch, I'm pretty sure we're not going to get the automated supply runs systems until much later in the EA as they're probably going to ship it with resources, and I'm not going to be surprised if the non-impulsive maneuver planner is missing to from the first release, and I wouldn't certainly start to plan some long lasting save file with a tour of the Kerbolar system on the launch day release, but as someone that had my last two big interplanetary projects blocked by the Kraken bugging out random parts of my mother-ships I say that basically the same applies to KSP1.

Then I don't ask, how it should distinguish nail (a sharp iron stick) and nail (a finger cover). P.S. Just noticed, that it's very dangerous to talk to AI in English, "Open the chest."

Leg 10: Kermundsen -> Harvester Jeb's plane gets fixed up in a jiffy. Off to Harvester Airfield! These weirdly shaped mountains are a result of "polar pinching", where a planet's texture is distorted significantly at the poles. Back on grasslands now... Over here it's almost always sunset, so nothing special. The airfield is on the top of that plauteau... Just before landing, Jeb experiments with activating his suit parachute. But this only causes the plane to spin out, so he has to cut it. Ho-hum. Leg 11: Harvester -> Kerman Atoll Now this time, the engineers try putting the OneOscar in a tricycle configuration. Hopefully this will stop it blowing up. What interesting buildings this airport has. A observatory, many hangars, and a spaceplane hangar-thing??? How intriguing. Leaving the mountains behind me... i thought i only had one visual mod why this look so aesthetic or something? Approaching the Kerman Atoll. And yes it's a big kerbal face. This sunset has been going on a long time thanks to our speed eastwards. Jeb don't mess this up- *vine boom* Leg 12: Kerman Atoll to KSC (i hope) Well that was quick. Bye, suspiciously large airport on a tiny island! This kerbal face is so menacing up close... ] THE MUN!!!!!!!!!!!!! and besides that I'm flying blind. Jeb:Wait is that the Kola Airport Jeb: That really is the Airport. And that's the KSC! Jeb: Better not botch this up when everyone's watching. Jeb: Nailed it! Shortly after Jeb lands at KSC, he is quickly brought into the Admin building to talk to Gene. Jeb: Hey Gene, can I have my job back now? Gene: I wouldn't want to, but we would look bad if you went through all that trouble for nothing. So welcome back to the team! Please don't do anything idiotic... Jeb: Of course I wouldn't! This flying house is very safe I promise! ------------------------------------------ Big thanks to @Socraticat for the plane ideas! I guess this is the end so bye!

Too much talk about a funky little teaser, not enough talk about how incredible this all sounds! Honestly it fixes a problem I didn’t realize I had with KSP1 in that rocket launches sometimes didn’t feel impactful enough for how powerful they were. Absolutely love the time and investment you’ve put into this. Have to wonder what the fancy futuristic engines are going to sound like…

They label themselves a hard sci-fi, non-open-world starfighter sim a la Star Citizen. Their dev team profiles have notable names on them. They namedrop big things. But am I the only one who fails to see a connection between rather ordinary starfighter sim gameplay that goes on on the screen, and the hard sci-fi fluff they push on the side? Visible lasers, extremely close-range dogfighting, some of the ships noticeably lack radiators, one of the ships has pronounced atmospheric features... hell, it seems there aren’t any SC-style gimballed weapon moints!

Granted. The thread is alive again! So alive that it grew arms and legs and can now walk and talk. (Make a Wish, and Have it Horribly Corrupted)

So I thought we could talk about this image and what makes sense, what's missing, and what might make designing and building surface structures more fun. So from the outset we can see solar panels, the off-world VAB, some tanks of some kind, glass domes, a runway ramp, some kind of semi-procedural habitation block system, and maybe a starter colony hub in the center? Now, admittedly this is a very old image and we have seen much cooler looking reactors and fuel processors since then, so I'm personally hoping quite a bit of work has been put into this system and that it will continue to be refined before colonies are added to the game. First the good. The system looks relatively easy to implement, copying over landing strip tiles for instance (those need more thickness btw) and having support piers automatically plant underneath. Those piers should really have footings (more on that later) but otherwise a pretty doable implementation. And while the VAB and colony hub (maybe?) look like they're plucked out of a different universe I do like that we'll be able to play with larger masses and won't be in a purely modular design world. From an aesthetic standpoint I hope the procedural masses allow more visual definition--larger windows, no windows, alternate textures--rather than looking so generic. Now some room for improvement. Again obviously this is early but what Im not seeing is how this behaves as an efficient machine, just the way design works for most other aspects of KSP. Aside from structural elements and connector tubes all of the major modules and design elements should have a gameplay function--increasing habitation space, production output, power, whathaveyou. We're not seeing production infrastructure, neither fuel processing or materials for rocket and colony parts. There are a couple of domes there for aesthetics but Im not seeing greenhouses capable of supporting the population that would live here. More importantly what is the purpose of the larger massing blocks? Are they living space? Working space? Purely aesthetic? I'll say out of the gate I hope it's not the latter. Even if we do have a lot of creative freedom over how these enclosed spaces are shaped I hope there's some simple gameplay element that increases max population caps and/or production based on overall size. Next let's talk about materials and the kit of parts. The concept of a kit of parts is an important idea in architecture and has obvious tie-ins to a parts-based game architecture like KSP. Right now we're seeing a few different procedural truss systems some with footings and some without, just a couple of the more modular parts from other renderings of inflatable habitation, and this fairly uniform hab-space massing system. I would love to see a few additions to this kit that would add more depth to structural and architectural design for colonies. Web trusses - Web trusses are especially important in ground-based colony design where the loads are mostly vertical (while wind-loads and uplift would be cool, I doubt they're in scope.) This could open a lot of cool design space for bridges, cantilevers, and anything that's doing long spans between support piers. This could be a cool design mechanic depending how much these structures cost in terms of materials. Just as we learned there were tradeoffs between ISP and TWR there would be optimums for distance between piers and truss depth--ideally procedural with the ability to fine-tune. Cable stays/ Tie-rods - This would open a whole world of design opportunity especially for spires and tensegrity structures that use much less material for the same load. This could be an incredible tool for orbital station design where the compression loads are very minimal and what you're really trying to achieve is maximum stability with minimum mass. Im particularly thinking about harmonic wobble resonance when you dock a 1kt interstellar vessel to a station without any tensile reinforcement. Concrete piers, footings, and structural shafts - Concrete is a great material for planetary surfaces. There are a few different options from more familiar water-based carbon silicate based cements to liquid sulfur options. For the purposes of the game I think we could simplify the ingredients to base materials like "volatiles" and "regolith". We've all probably seen the funky 3d printed concrete domes made by robots in mars colony animations but this is not particularly realistic. Concrete requires specific conditions for curing and more importantly rebar or other tensile reinforcement to be stable. Formwork is also at a premium, so precast units produced in conditioned space are much more likely. For the game that's a good thing, as you could have simple set of procedural or modular concrete forms from footings, piers, or hollow shafts with built in egress to support larger buildings. All told I think you could boil ingredients for colonies down to just a few ingredients: Metals, Plastics, Regolith, and volatiles like water or 02 if we're considering LS. There could be some cool evolution as your production increased from harvesting mostly fuels, perhaps converting them to inflatable habs mostly made from plastics, into more metallic structures and later more robust buildings made mostly from excess regolith agregate from larger scale mining operations. You might also see concrete storage casks for some materials, especially the more radioactive ones. Thoughts? We've seen so little on this system so far.

You're mistaking style and user experience. Making ksp2 style skeuomorphic wouldn't change a thing on its ergonomics (Well a bit on contrast), same as changing ksp1 style to a more "modern" design. That's why I said it's something we can like, because it's subjective. And no, everything in the ksp1 interface is not logical or polished. That was the point of my post, that we should talk about specific points to take the best of both worlds. (We don't even know if we are talking about the flight UI, the vab or the map view). For the improvement of ksp2 over ksp1 (that I don't want them to undo, even if some of those are really tiny things): Flight UI: The staging placement on the right: much more logical, same side in the vab and in flight (and on the same side than the MP, EC... infos) Important flight info located in one place: the navball (I don't know why those infos where separated one at the top and one at the bottom) The navball to the side: highly controversial take but I'm sorry, apart from nostalgia it makes no sense to block the view with this. At least we could change it. We can grab the throtle Fuel remaining showed with numbers Vertical acceleration is a much more readable thing (a round indicator is imo very bad) Timewarp always shown SAS controls are a bit more intuitive (and icons change when you are in a landing/launching situation), maybe a bit too big though VAB: Subcategories: that's saving lives, so much better to have things organized Size on each parts: same when I go back to ksp1 I hate that this feature is not there Craft saves pictures are bigger, it lets me see a bit more what I'm looking at Icons are more logical, coherent and polished (Also a bit bigger sometimes) Translation and rotation tools squished together Map view: Altimeter doesn't disappear when I'm switching to map view Can move the focus with the mouse (not only on a planet/rocket) The maneuver trajectory is shown and is not instantaneous: This one is less of a UI thing (I think?) but still is much more intuitive that way. Orbit tesselation (Dev diary about that: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/201736-developer-insights-9-–-orbit-tessellation/) No need to double click to focus, but right click and click on the button "focus": I think it's better because you're not missclicking and we can focus on our vessel without shortcut. (I went back to ksp1 and omg I can't focus on a planet easily) SOI displayed The UI intercept icons are better for colorblind: This one is not quite perfect because it's actually confusing to know what 1A and 2A means, but I suggested a better solution here: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/215896-intercept-ui-indicator-is-confusing/?do=findComment&comment=4265820 which was improved by Kavaeric (last link of this post)). I wanted to mention this because in a UI we also think about accessibility (and not just make it an option), contrast also falls under that. For the things that ksp1 does better: Flight UI: PAW obviously (but I want both because the PAM is sometimes useful; as linked in my original post: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/218109-bring-back-ksp1s-paw-menu-system-alongside-ksp2s-current-pam-menu-system/) Smaller white space in the PAW (The PAM in ksp2 has too much white space) VAB Info per stages (TWR my beloved) When we grab thing for staging, it's more clear what you grab (It follows your mouse) Map view The DeltaV remaining in the maneuver is shown More saturated orbit colors Most of what I want is here and I won't list them all (Even if it's not all of what ksp1 does): https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/217412-uiux-suggestion-patched-conics-ui-proposal/ Note: I probably forgot a lot of things (Making a UI is hard). I didn't necessarily state features that were missing from ksp2 which can still be added easily without changing the UI (like a maneuver editor) so you would maybe want to add some things in the "what ksp1 does better". I also didn't mention bugs because those are not intentional and are meant to be in the bug reports forum and it's not relevant for the suggestions forum. (Like the maneuver clipping through planets or the PE missing on different SOI). Finally some of the things are not strictly UI. That's how I want to hear about the UI: precise point. Then we can discuss what's specifically wrong. We can't guess what people are talking about when they say "The UI is bad".

Take away... all of human history. So the counterfactual with no atomic bomb research involves no WW1, am I right? In which case fission is discovered and people understand the implications (power/bombs), but no one works the military angle because Kaiser Wilhelm II (he died in 1941) has no military interests, nor does the crown prince—who was kinda hoping Hitler would restore the monarchy, so... nah, he's all in for peace, he probably turns Germany into a hippie commune or something. Without WW1, Ludendorff doesn't send Lenin to Russia. There's likely no revolution precipitated by the terrible losses in WW1 in the first place, so the Tsar is still around, least til he expires naturally. Unsure who follows, his son was not very healthy. Archduke Franz Ferdinand presumably never gets killed, or are we assuming WW1 doesn;t start for some other reason? So his son now head Austria-Hungary I guess. Europe is still the "Diplomacy" map—but totally peaceful. For reasons. And somehow the Japanese, run my militarists after the Meiji Restoration—interested in chemical and even bio-warfare have no interest, again, for reasons. Sorry, they are inevitable. Not if, when. That's all that changes. The US started because they thought the Germans were working the issue—having just discovered fission. That the Soviets did the same is unsurprising. The Germans might have had more luck had they stolen from people working harder on it (espionage), too. The reality is that fission bombs are not hard to conceive of, the stumbling block is the materials. As soon as people try for the peaceful use for just power, they will get bomb grade stuff as "waste," so bombs are inevitable. Yes, I am counting air attack. I was explicit in saying the Japanese Empire was under attack, not Japan (though they had been bombed, once). Japan (meaning home islands) was impacted from the start (not huge in 1942, but increasing over time). They imported all their oil (80% from the US before the war), and most other inputs into their economy. The war started to capture the Netherlands East Indies—for oil. They succeeded, but they never had a large enough merchant marine to supply themselves on their own, and they started a war with... everyone. Then the US submarines of course waged unrestricted warfare on their merchant shipping. This was incredibly effective, though the sinkings right off the coast of Japan were minor to start. Much of their wartime supply came across the Sea of Japan from China, though, which kept them going until our subs owned those waters as well. Japan would need to literally mine Uranium from somewhere they controlled, this was likely a huge limiting factor. Not to mention they just had so few other resources. Minus ww2, do they still occupy much of China, or does our no WW1 counterfactual result in a peaceful Japan? Japan had already lost long before, but they refused to surrender. The bombs absolutely worked, and precipitated surrender. For many years histories would show that Japanese diplomats were cabling home saying they should negotiate, and that they tried to talk to the Soviets. Books before 1996 lack some of the declassified codebreaking information—now we know what the replies were from Tokyo. In short, "No negotiation until after we bleed them on the beaches." (paraphrase). We might have put off the invasion, and merely burned their cities to the ground the "old fashioned way" (including Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which had only been spared as test targets). They still burn, it just takes more sorties. Course the Soviets then invade Manchuria, and the IJA forces in China that had a fairly calm war, then get clobbered by 1945 Soviet power, which would make their previous interaction with the Soviets look like a garden party. They would have likely been killed to a man by the Soviets, just as the Marines had to kill virtually all (they rarely surrendered), so would the Soviets. Only in fixed, old fashioned land battle, no islands... real TANKS (which the IJA lacked and were kinda terrified of). Also artillery. The Japanese were incredibly weak on artillery. So the Soviets grab up much of China, and the US has to invade Japan (which was planned—read Downfall, if you haven't, great book).

3 cores, three times the number of sensor limits that could be violated. I also think talk of reusability limits being violated is premature. Also, the centre core is never before flown and the side boosters have flown twice. This falcon heavy is a rookie by falcon standards. It could be they've recently encountered a new fleet issue that they're currently keeping an enhanced eye on, or it may be a higher number of scrubs right now is just dumb luck.

I won't enter the matter of the discussion, I haven't seen the video and I won't (never really liked Matt move from good gameplay videos to being yet another sensationalist infotainment gaming channel). But I've skimmed the thread, and I think it's missing an important consideration about Harvester being hesitant to talk about KSP2, or being careful, or whatever is the point of contention here even is. He is a developer releasing a new game, a new only marginally related game with a very different scope and size. Kinda like Obsidian when they released Outer Worlds. How well did it work for them presenting themselves in the marketing with those bold: "From the only true, real, original, and good creators of Fallout and Fallout New Vegas" claims? Well, sure enough Outer Worlds wasn't the Fallout NV 2 people hyped it up to be as a consequence, and they had to spend the last few weeks before release trying to set realistic expectations. Back to Harvester, Balsa never really took off, and I still haven't checked what's going on with the rebranding, but sure enough it's not a good idea to start comparing your still unreleased game/update/rebrand with another game, as it will almost certainly backfire.

I suppose a younger person who might get married later and have someone to leave the money to could err on the side of whole life, and cash it out should they find themselves permanently single. I didn't get life insurance until I was married, FWIW, never occurred to me. I suppose that's a bit like the P-47 pilot I heard give a talk at an 8th AF luncheon years ago. He said that as young men, if during a briefing they were told, "9 out of 10 of you won't be coming home today." every single one of them would be looking around the room thinking, "You poor BLEEPs."

I haven't been following because it's crazy talk. Likely designed to distract the rubes.

You see, this is the main reason I like to talk to people that previously maintained/create any code I maintain (both on hobby as in Day Job®). There're only a few ways on doing things right, but a huge amount of other ways to do things wrong. The more I know about the later, better may chances on the former. However… My personal experience on modding KSP (and I have some reasonable knowledge since 1.2.2, as I choose to keep backwards compatibility on everything I do), is not soooo kind about the team (or at least, part of them) that took over after HarvesteR departure. There're a lot of huge, huge mistakes and bugs lingering there for almost a decade, and they failed to correct fix them - worst, they created worst bugs and unnecessary collateral effects by naively trying to tackle down some of that bugs. There're a few decisions on the thing that really made me mad over the years. I'm not complaining about bugs happening - bugs are unavoidable consequences on doing new things. I'm complaining about they not being diagnosed and/or fixed. Other thing that caught my attention is he explaining how he found the need of doing a more detailed city to play at - since the crafts would be essentially toy sized, things around should be way more detailed than if the crafts were normal sized. People are going to look at bricks, not at walls while playing! Another thing that I found pretty clever: the use of Cities: Skylines as a Scene Editor for the KitBasch's city, taking advantage of an add'on that implemented Open Street Map I think. I'll buy this game as soon as it is on sale (and the thing works on MacOS!) Take in consideration that he signed a (probably pretty nasty) NDA when he left, and I'm almost sure that NDA is still in force. So, there's a chance he was feeling exactly like that (besides I doubt Nate would be the gunner).

Propaganda to appeal to existing vested interests, corporate lobbying to enforce those interests, and internet influencers to mould public opinion in favour of the status quo. Talk is cheap. Talk which is merely telling people what they want to believe anyway is even cheaper.

Skeuomorphism (what ksp1 UI style is) is a design that was trendy around 2010 but isn't anymore, just look at Iphone evolution. Imo it's horrendous but I get that some people are a bit nostalgic about it. And about ksp2, I hate when we bring the UI and people are just binary about it like "ksp1 UI is better" and the opposite. Talk about a specific point because there are horrible choices made in ksp1 (like the placement of things) in the same way ksp2 have some (like the parts manager). Let's try to have the best UI, not the exact previous one with its flaws. The UI changes every single patch, so this UI is definitely not set in stone. (Remember the previous maneuver? A lot better now) I find it a lot more productive to be precise about things and even find solutions rather than say "ksp2 bad, ksp1 UI better" which is frankly not always true. Actually, some previous topics already made that so go discuss specific points here: