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True. But it doesn't hurt to talk hypothetically and brainstorm solutions. Fact is we know the studio is shut down. We know a number of KSP2 devs have been laid off. And we haven't ruled out that it might be ALL of them. We don't know if the roadmap is on the table. And if it's not I think a class action lawsuit is something worth discussing if for any other reason than to help strengthen consumer protection. It's rare that a AAA company cancels a game in EA. And if you believe it's wrong for a company to essentially break its word just because a few lines on a corporate website says that's ok then we need to fight that policy in court. If the game is cancelled or the roadmap is no longer on the table, we shouldn't waste this opportunity to strengthen consumer protections.

You must have missed the part where I literally said: I'm not trying to be difficult, but you seem to not read all of what I post. I was pretty clear that I'm not a lawyer, that I didn't talk to one, and that whoever takes this up needs to. Please make sure you read what I write instead of making assumptions to drum up drama.

After doing some research this morning, a class action lawsuit against Take Two is viable. While both the EULA and the Terms of Service both indicate that you must use a mediator or 3rd party arbitrator to sort out differences before going to court, there is legal precedence in multiple states that allow for this clause in the Terms to be thrown out, with action moving through the legal system without mediation. The big issue here becomes what state to file a lawsuit in. You have 3 choices: The state the company is headquartered in (New York); The state the game was developed in (Washington); The state you purchased and play the game in (for me, Nevada, as an example) Because we are talking about a potential class-action lawsuit here, the state in which an individual purchased and/or plays the game is nearly irrelevant. And considering that a lot of gaming (in a general sense) happens over the internet, no one state where a person plays a game has jurisdiction. So that option is out. Filing in the state the game was developed is a viable option, provided you can prove that the majority of the work was done in that state. Again, the internet and remote work - especially during and because of the COVID-19 pandemic - make this difficult to ascertain without getting cooperation from the company/developer you want to sue. So this option is probably not the best one. This leaves filing in the state that the parent company is headquartered in. This is the best option for class-action lawsuits as you are trying to gather as many people as possible together who have a common interest and/or complaint about the product they received. New York General Business Law section 350 allows for the protection of consumers against false, misleading, or misrepresentative advertising in products that are sold to the general public. While it doesn't specifically call out digital media, it is considered to be included in this section. Furthermore, New York Civil Practice Law and Rules sections 901-909 deal with class-action lawsuits, providing the framework for how and when consumers can get together and file a class-action. I would like to point out that all of my research stems from a host of Google searches, as well as getting clarification on things from ChatGPT. Yes, I talked to the bot this morning because that is the easiest way to get definitions and information these days. How accurate that is remains to be seen, so take everything I stated above with several grains of salt. But if you really want to go this route - and I'm going to be frank and say that I doubt this would lead to anything substantial in the long run - what I've stated above is probably the best information you'll get from a non-lawyer. So talk to a legal professional before going anywhere else on this.

At this point, not surprised, just disappointed. I knew this was a mess on launch but I gave them my $50 anyway because I wanted to support it. But clearly someone high up said to shove this out to early access way too early and unstable and feature incomplete to inject cash into someone's pocket. It should have been at least as feature complete as KSP1 before launch, if not have 1 of the new flagship features or 2, like multiplayer or colonies, or physicalized asteroid belts, you know, the trailer bait. I hope the project lives on in some productive fashion, either in another studio or made open source. From the offset though for my part the problem seemed to be Unity and how it was implemented. KSP2 never made significant stability changes to how KSP1 worked, large craft would still bring supercomputers to a crawl etc. and it didn't help that the game implementation was, hey, stack 30 of this same part together and let it all wobble every tick. There didn't seem to be much tricks used under the hood to make the game stable, because it can't decide if it's a space crash simulator or a space program game. So lo and behold, let's calculate all these trusses every tick, let's not lightweight these parts/payloads hidden behind a faring at launch, and watch framerate go poo and watch things spontaneously wiggle themselves into a billion pieces, let's make it practically impossible to maintain fixed orbits for all your relay sats because of floating point error, etc. - those kinda issues bug me more than a lack of multiplayer and colonies, the base game should be running and operating a lot smoother, and a lot more like a refined game that knows what it wants to be. Extremely Weird. It leaves the community to run wild with our thoughts and no direction, and the silence is deafening. If there was short term hopefulness for the direction of the game you'd anticipate an official word from someone at the studio other than the boilerplate 'talk when we can lol' that we have. It leads to deductive inferences, like either nobody at the studio can talk competently about the future of the project, or because they are part of the layoff, they don't want to, like the community manager appears to have effectively said 'no, I'm not polishing this turd for the higher ups anymore, I'm mentally checked out, have to figure out how I'm going to eat this July.' And that would be completely understandable, despite frustrating as a supporter? backer? gamer? customer? victim? mark? In this debacle. And the corpo statement just reads as 'no no no this wasn't a rugpull, please don't delist our game and issue millions of dollars of refunds, new infrastructure update in 2 weeks! Make Kerbal Great Again!' For all we know it boils down to putting the game in maintenance mode and keeping it propped up like Bernie from Weekend at Bernies.

I like history and how humans tend to repeat the same mistakes and not notice when things start to look bad. I could give other examples, such as the scam that ended up blowing up and leaving millions without homes or jobs in 2008, but it is more convincing to talk about WWII, from which money is still made. Captain America and Wonder Woman are my certificate.

They're the kind of people we've always looked for, the kind who drop money and don't talk or question.

Like the majority of the community, I am sickened by what is happening. I feel like we got bamboozled, even worse now than when TT put the game on sale 3 months after selling it at a premium price. I was pretty vocal then that it smelled fishy, and that it reeked of greed that the company would sell it at $50 to those of us who wanted it right away, but then decreased the price as a "sale" to get more buyers. It sounded like they were fishing for more revenue to justify keeping the lights on, and some of us were pretty loud about that. Couple that with the complete lack of communication we had to go through. EA, at its core, is supposed to be a way for developers and consumers to interact while a product is being developed, right? They push out an incomplete game, we buy it, we give feedback, they communicate that they've received feedback and are implementing x fixes, we get the updates, we give more feedback, they talk to us, round and round we go. Right? Not here. Not with KSP2. We begged for the company to talk to us. Tell it to us straight; we aren't going to be upset if you have to delay or come back and say that things aren't going the way you wanted them to. Just talk to us. That's all we asked. And they refused. They got our money and then left us in silence. Sure, we got a dev blog about this lighting issue, or eclipses. We had, at one point, the KERB to tell us what they were working on...but then they took issues off that list before stopping it altogether. All told, we were taken for a ride. And we paid for that privilege. The company said "Hey, we've got this thing that isn't done yet, but give us cash and we'll call it EA and you'll eventually be rewarded". And like horses to water, we lined up and shelled out our hard-earned money. Which they took, and then gave very little - if anything - in return. We paid for the right to be ignored and shut out of development news. We paid to have the community fractured, friends yelling at each other, and the company laughing at us the whole way. We paid to go through this. This exercise is exactly why I didn't get into EA releases with other games that are in my library. I only 1 time before entered EA or a beta-playing phase of a game before, and that was for Harebrained Schemes' Shadowrun. Which went off without a hitch, by the way. But even with that good experience, I had read too many times where things just fell apart and didn't work. Heck, I was close to going in on Cyberpunk, and I'm glad I didn't. But KSP? I couldn't resist. My better senses were telling me to wait, but my heart over-rode them. And Take Two broke it. All told, and to finally respond to what you wrote (I took long enough to get there, didn't I?), I doubt anyone gets a refund. Doesn't matter if you went Epic or Steam, the refund "rules" are pretty clear: less than 2 hours played, less than 2 weeks after purchase. And TT will hide behind that as a way to make sure they don't have to fork the cash back over to Steam or Epic. It would be a nice gesture if they did...but it won't happen. That money is already pocketed and spent (so to speak). So what can we do? Nothing. Not a damned thing. Sure, we can post and protest. Sign one of the petitions going around right now. Take up coding and try to create your own game if you must (even I downloaded the Unreal Engine last night and am going to give it a whirl). But nothing we do is going to amount to anything. We aren't going to change their minds, we aren't going to get our money back, we aren't going to be able to save the franchise or the studio or the employees who are out of jobs. Nothing we do in the end will matter. Where does that leave us? Hopefully being cool to one another. Perhaps talking about KSP1. Maybe finding other games to enjoy. But KSP2? Gone before your time, and we barely knew ye.

hey don't talk about him in the past, he'll still be a great modder and the guy that made KSP2's atmospherics look amazing in like a month.

Scott Manley was steering away from KSP yes but I do feel if the game was good or got good he would’ve made some videos because 1. It’s still fun 2. It would’ve made money. 3. He likes teaching space and it would’ve helped with that. I’m sure he would’ve done new tutorials, probably one career play through, and the occasional video demonstrating something he’d like to talk about in real space. Having got none of those, I think his views are clear. ShadowZone may have presented a very optimistic possibility, but he made a clear line between the facts and the theories, and presented multiple possibilities. I really do think he made a good video on the situation.

Who’s angry? I’m not. did I label you for having an opinion other than my own? You did that with me but I’m not bothered. i am however bothered when you don’t like your medicine. anyway so this doesn’t get me banned maybe we call It a day and agree to disagree or whatever is appropriate around here to end a heated talk.

thank you all. I think I finaly understand it.. to a user level. Its funny how KSP has been a better math teacher than my math teacher. I always just assumed I was dumb when it comes to math. But when people take the time to sit down and answer my questions. I get along in the end x) This quote reminds me of when my father talk about how he prefere win95 xl to the new one - he says it makes some errors that 95 xl didnt.. I always just shrug - I dont ever think I asked xl to do anything advanced enough to figure out x) But man.. people bantering about calculators is why I love this forum.

They deleted the post where I gave my opinion on where the development was going and suspended me for a week with a warning not to talk about it anymore. Now I don't care, this is dead, and the people who moderated already have their checks and are emptying the desks.

-=R&D_UPDATE=- CommNet - Satelites and the Molniya Orbit I figured a good way to continue with this blog - would be to alternate between a R&D post and a Mission Execution Post. Where all the theorycrafting on "how to solve the challenge", will be poured into a post first, and then I follow that up with a Mission Execution Post. I have a feeling that a lot of good discussion can come from making a theory and testing if it worked... at least it will give people a chance to say how wrong I am in my calculations and theories - and stop me before I do something really silly Or better yet.. give people something amusing to read. Any way - Without further ado - here is next challenges Before we talk about the 2nd challenge I am going to ignore it for a little while, and focus on the 3rd challenge first = 3 CommNet Satelites in Orbit around Duna - To me that screams for a Molniya or Tundra orbit. - Something I've been wanting to try out for a while now. If you dont know what a Molniya or Tundra orbit is - See spoiler section bellow: There are 2 reasons why I am thinking about a Molniya Orbit: A Geostationary orbit will not have Line of Sight to the poles of the planet - and It would make sense for future settlements to be near the poles were there is water ice. So a Tundra and Molniya orbit is necessary for such an settlement to be able to communicate with KSC. (Roleplaying) Since the orbit is highly elliptical, it will be more likely that none of the satelites are hidden behind Duna - which should be able to have reliable coms with KSC with fewer satelites and that there are no signal loss to KSC. (except when Kerbol is in the way) Now how do I propose to make a Molniya constellation around Duna you ask? My plan is this: Get 3 long range satelites to Duna and space them 120­° from each other around the planet, 0° inclination. Get them to burn to a 60° inclination to Duna while maintaining ~120° separation. (hopefully the burn will be quick.) Have them raise their Apoapsis to 6700km. (half a sidereal day - see vehicle design section to see how the AP is calculated) Now to complete this task - the Molniya satelites needs a carrier with an antenna strong enough to get signal from Kerbin. If you guessed that this will be the satelite from challenge 2 you are correct. My crazy idea is to make a Satelite Carrier - deploy it to Duna and put it in an orbit where I can space out the 3 Molniya Satelites in a 100km orbit - Then perform the 3 steps to deploy them at their correct molniya orbit (Pe: 100km Ap: 6700km) . After this the satelite carrier will deploy the 6 small cube satelites evenly on the 100km orbit - which will provide signal around the equator. Once that is done - we will see how much Δv it has left on the Satelite Carrier and find a good plan for that. If this sounds like it's going to be difficult... I agree... This will be a test of my patience and precision. Resonant Orbit Planning: Now I thought I would have to sit and actually use my brain to calculate the correct orbit periods etc for launching the satelites to get their space even across the orbit - however I was gifted this great tool that does it for you. Use this to plan the spacing of satelites. When I plot in 6 satelites orbiting at 100km I get these ranges: The smart thing about planning around 6 satelites LOS is that it resonates with the 3 Molniya satelites - which will be deployed on every second orbit instead of every orbit. If you - the reader - sees that I have made some terrible error.. please enlighten me Now the parameters of the mission has been planned. Now it is all about designing the vehicles. <<<<<<<<<<Designing the Vehicles>>>>>>>>>> The CommNet Satelites: Left: Cube Satelite - Right: Molniya Satelite. Molniya Satelite: 1064 Δv Cube Satelite: unknown (25kg of Monopropellant and 2 RCS thrusters. - more than enough Δv) Now for the communication satelites the Molniya Satelites are the ones that will be most demanding. They will have to burn from a 0° inclination to a 60° inclination - then raise its apoapsis to match ½ a sidereal day... Now.. How to calculate this number was lost on me. Even though I could find the equation online multiple places I could not get google to calculate it propper. So I asked for help on the forum, and help was received. Thanks to @K^2 and others for helping me wrap my head around this. To aid others (and myself in the future) I have decided to save the process here: How to find the AP: To find the AP for your desired Molniya Orbit you need to first find the Semi major axis of your orbital period - you do that with this equation: If you punch that into google so it looks like this: You should get this number: 3,719.831km - which is the Semi Major Axis for a ½ a Duna Sidereal Rotation Period. Now this number is the distance between Apoapsis and Periapsis - you may think "but that is an oddly big number" - at least that is what I was thinking. But that was because I "forgot" that there is a planet in between, and that the distance we are shown is taken from the "sea level" of the planet/body. We there for have to subtract the planets diameter. (or radius*2) Now - I have decided that I want a PE of 100km above Dunas Surface - So to find the AP you have to use this formula: This should give you a distance of 6,699.662km - which I have rounded up to 6700 km - With 1064 Δv I hope we have enough Δv to finish both maneuvers. (it seems like it should be enough?) This formula is "plug and play" so to speech - you can go to the wiki and lift the numbers, pick your PE and find the AP for any body you want. If you want to know more read here: The Cube Satelite: If we look at the Resonant Orbit Calculator numbers: See spoiler section bellow: we can see it only requires 40.4 Δv to lower the AP to 100km - I therefore decided that it would be more cost effective to just give the small satelite 25kg of monopropellant and 2x RCS thrusters to decrease the AP. This makes the satelite much lighter than if it had actual engines - and I can carry much less fuel - thus making the satelites much lighter. The Satelite Carrier: Satelite Carrier with 6 cube satelites and 3 molniya satelites. Carrier: 2091Δv The carrier will have 2091 Δv which should be ample since it's going to be launched from LKO: 80km and the Δv map shows it only requires 1690 - 1700 to transit to Duna Low Orbit. See spoiler section below for reference: Now - one does not need to look at this monstrosity of a satelite twice to see it wont fit in the small cargo bay for the SDG... So My "promise" to make everything fit within the small cargo bay only lasted until the next challenge... *Teehee*because - of course this was the only excuse I had for a glider re-redesign - It wouldn't be me without it. The SDGv2: Left: SDGv2 - Right - SDGv1. When I first flew the SDG on Challenge 1 - there were 1 obvious thing that struck me. It does not need the docking array. The vehicle is not meant to dock with K.G.01, like the Multi Fuel Gliders are. So I can do away with that and get more cargo space already - without changing the center of mass and drag a lot.. - how ever.. the satelite is still too long... But I figured I could add a bit of Tube in the end where the vertical stabilizers are and sort of have the satelite twist itself out of the glider... That being said.. I can easily see things go "wrong" though here... namely: A theoretical comparison of me getting the satelite out of the cargo bay. Nothing has ever gone wrong from banging sensitive electronics out of the box... *cough cough* - Luckily Kerbal tech is sturdy tech... Here are the two cargo spaces clearly visible - The SDGv1 still loaded with the probe that was send for the Duna Fly By of Challenge 1. and here a side by side comparison. Luckily the weight savings of ditching the docking port means that even though the Satelite Carrier is pretty heavy at 8.06t - double the payload of its cusin, the Multi Fuel Glider - it only increases weight by 2.22t. Something I am confident that the 1st stage will not have any issues getting into orbit. Weight distribution across platforms: Multi Fuel Glider:.............................................................25.34t SDGv1:................................................................................22.28t SDGv2:................................................................................27.56t <<<<<<<<<<CONCLUSION>>>>>>>>>> The plan has been made, Math has been calculated and vehicles designed accordingly. Stay tuned in to see if the plan survives first contact with reality. See you in the next one.

Well, its worth a shot at least, with the most recent news I have been thinking of actual realistic ways microtransactions could be implemented without directly harming the game with some suggested prices to go along with it.. Also aswell even if they say "no microtransactions" it seems that they need if it if there is rumors that the game is going to be cut, or we will lose developers... As of right now we don't know the situation for ksp 2 and the team.. "unethical" or not if stuff is "cheap" some people will find a use of some things useful while others don't if there was a unethical way to monetize it instead of just being free QOL the game might be better for income.. (problem is t2 launched the game in EA when it was a YEAR away from being anything useful, pretty much destroying the reputation of the game).. Custom Kerbal Creator / Custom Director Kerbal - 5-10$ USD This is a highly requested feature for ksp 2, being able to create customer kerbals, i think if the feature was free it would allow a certain amount of cosmetics but the paid would allow all cosmetics in ksp 2. Custom Director Kerbal, could be a pfp a kerbal that is "the director (which is you btw)" that would be able to interact more "kerbal friendly" compared to just the characters talking to the "screen", this could also be used as PfP for saves or in multiplayer settings you could use your custom director to be the pfp instead of either a custom photo or your steam pfp. This could be a little high, but i think the amount of work that is required to get it running and then making sure it works on multiplayer/ (if) there is more cosmetics it would allow "People to create kerbals of there own imagine" Custom Flag Implementation - 3-5$ USD Quite a few people request this to be a main in-game FEATURE, there is a mod that does this however the mod misbehaves a lot and does the stock flag instead of the custom one, They can be extremely high detailed flags I think they could make it a microtransaction that is cheap enough that almost anyone could buy it but it would not affect the users if they didn't have it, A Few CC's and a lot users could want such a thing in game. I think this shouldn't controlled in the sense of company censoring what photos are and are not allowed. In multiplayer it should be the owner of the server or local server that should be able to "remove" the offending flags and have an outright option to ban users from uploading and using Custom Flags.. Users can have as many as they want and can be limited on multiplayer if the owner so chooses. This will also include adding "parts" to add large flags that wrap around crafts in many sizes, or just straight huge flags that could be lit up by lights, and stock ksp 2 flags can use this for free. Hex Color Editor - 3-5$ USD Cheap easy mod that adds Hex color fine control to the game (Unethical) in my mind and should be free, however using Spicats Suggestion if all UI updates was approved i don't see why this couldn't be a paid feature its cheap at relative cost and would make users VERY happy, while also not breaking the bank, Supporter Pack #1 - 15-25$ USD This would include a "Music Bouns" of 1 additional song for each situation, planet, and ambient noise, The music is one of the key notes that i have found and have seen many others saying its "very good" for the game. This would include a "Banner Around PfP" or Color Change or A Speical Title.. saying that you purchased the supporter pack.. Would include a special flag(s). Be able to put custom crafts in the menu screen(s) We do not know if multiplayer would even have pfp or titles however, i think it would be a cool thing to add. yes this is pretty much try convince to keep intercept games with ALL of there developers with a job, is absolutely silly to think that we will sit down with people getting fired, and only getting corporate talk. These could be microtransactions that keep small amount of income coming to the game to show people might be interested besides the absolute devestion of trust when the game got forced to be released. (perhaps don't launch a game a year to early and then try to can the developers when we are getting remotely close to an actual game cause of your mistakes cause you are down a few million dollars..)

With talk of class action, I'm going after a joke

I think the thing people are going after with talk of a class-action would be the promises the company made regardless of the product being in EA. All the hype, all the talk about how they'll finish and everything is good. All the tidbits about velocity being good, and timelines are being met. I think this is where people are aiming. And that's a damned hard thing to prove outside of court, let alone inside of one. While there are laws that protect consumers from outright fraud, it's gonna be pretty hard for anyone to prove the company - TT, PD, IG, or some other entity in the umbrella - was intentional in deceiving the community. But, if they want to pursue it...I say good luck, and I hope they have enough cash to see it through.

Assuming he really didn't know what was coming when he wrote this forum post a week ago, it's a good bet Nate is feeling like a broken man right now. His vision of KSP 2 is in tatters and the studio that he helped build is no more. He's almost certainly sick to his stomach about his soon-to-be unemployed staff, many of whom he likely recruited himself on the promise of his vision for the game. Many of them will have left high paying jobs in software, aerospace and other game dev companies to join Intercept. His reputation is in pieces and his future in game development is very uncertain. Even if he somehow falls upwards into Private Division into some sort of executive job, it will likely be some sort of token 'Product evangelist' role for the remnants of the Kerbal IP, probably more out of embarrassment on PD's part and to deflect from their own poor judgement on KSP2's development. Even if he was authorized to make a statement by Take2 legal, I very much doubt he would have the stomach to say anything. He likely just wants to crawl into a hole somewhere. I would love for the whole story of what happened in KSP2's development to come out, it is surely a fascinating tale. Even with NDA's, I'm confident people will talk. The game dev world of Seattle is small. People gossip, especially people with an axe to grind and who devoted years of their professional lives to a project that was so badly mismanaged and eventually canned by Take2. I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest in the next few weeks if we start to see anonymous posts on this forum or Reddit from disgruntled former devs to justify their roles in what happened. Paul Furio, the ex-Technical Director already seems eager to explain his side of things on LinkedIn and Reddit. Non-disclosure agreements be damned, these people have their professional reputations to salvage and will be desperate to tell their side of the story.

Check Intercept discord #announcments Still at work. Can't talk about it.

Announcement dropped.. Dev Team still hard at work "Talk More when we Can" Not in a position to upload to imgur.. check intercept discord or X

Request denied, speculation is fun Granted, anyone attacking someone else for their opinion, belief or perception of the situation has lost the plot. Debate and discussion is fine, but some folks get way too heated and too fixated on being "right" or the ironclad belief that the evidence that convinced them of something MUST be able to convince everyone else of the same, and anyone who doesn't accept it is being [Malicious/Copium/Hateful] and must be attacked. Its really good to talk about this, a lot, it brings attention to the matter, shares information and conclusions, and lets people get an understanding of things. But we're not enemies here, two corpse in one grave and all that

The problem for Take Two is that they are in a position whereby anything they do is doomed. There are only 4 scenarios that play out for them this morning. Scenario 1 Take Two comes out with an announcement indicating that yes, the studio is closing, but they are going to continue development under a new studio. So sorry that this had to happen, and right after we gave Nate the green-light to talk about an upcoming patch, but we're truly sorry and we promise things will be better from here on out. The community will respond with varying levels of "you went through this with Star Theory" and "you have continuously delayed this game" and they'll raise pitchforks and burn TT's buildings to the ground. Scenario 2 Take Two comes out and completely dismisses the rumors and stories, indicating that things are just fine and there is nothing to worry about. So sorry about the misinformation, and right after we gave Nate the green-light to talk about an upcoming patch, but we're truly sorry and we promise that this will not impact KSP2 in any capacity. The community will respond with varying levels of "we've been asking for more communication" and "you have lied to us in the past" and they'll raise pitchforks and burn TT's buildings to the ground. Scenario 3 Take Two comes out and flat admits the project is canceled. So sorry this had to happen, and right after we gave Nate the green-light to talk about an upcoming patch, but we're truly sorry to anyone who purchased the game. The community will respond with varying levels of "we told you this would happen" and "you made all these promises" and they'll raise pitchforks and burn TT's buildings to the ground. Scenario 4 Take Two says and does nothing. No explanations, no messages, no communication. The community will respond with varying levels of "why aren't you telling us what's going on" and "we just know it's canceled so rip off the band-aid" and they'll raise pitchforks and burn TT's buildings to the ground. There is nothing that Take Two can do in the immediate future - today, tomorrow, perhaps the coming weeks? - that will ease tensions and make this all right. Unfortunate for them, and unfortunate for the community.

Ah yes, the bad publisher strawman, specially useless when we talk about a product that got a free pass to delay for 4 years and turn from a complete release into barely working early access. For Science! was a minor patch confirmed.

Let me rephrase this whole upnate into a single sentence: "We're working on showstopping bugs, PQS optimizations, prettier clouds, and also prettier engine exhaust plumes". Now go back to this thread, check what people wanted, and see if this post is that. Spoilers: it is not. If you want to know why traffic is slow, why the auxiliary bridge supposed to alleviate traffic has not seen construction progress in months, why the paint on the road hasn't been fixed and it's still illegible, why your boss insists on not telling you when you'll be getting your next free day... the guy rolling down his window to talk about "look how nice the clouds are" doesn't help.

This was my worry, that we'd see a repeat of for science, dropping a milestone every december-ish. Mathed out a similar prediction earlier, in another thread, actually. On the specific topic of communication, I do think its just as much of a substance issue as it is a cadence issue. We've spent the last year and change being told there's plenty of work going on it the background, things are progressing great, our internal builds are so much fun - And then the community asks to see it, and we get crickets. And while I totally understand a reluctance to show off anything you're not dead certain you can deliver, it doesn't add up to a lot of people, because the trend of it actually happening hasn't been there, even before the game released at all. Lemme break it down here. The game is announced, the community goes wild. we're shown a bunch of cool stuff. Crickets, corporate drama, some date shuffling, and we don't really see much of anything. For the most part the community understands this, as we're being told that we're getting a full release of KSP2. Nearing the dates, it becomes an early access, and most of the stuff we've been talking about for the years between announcement and now is pushed out to roadmap. The community is disappointed but understanding, and takes the reassurances that what is launching will be absolutely solid as solace. The community then gets the first release of the game, and its pretty bad. We're told it'll be fixed up right quick, and the launch window features will be coming shortly. Then its not fixed up quick, and the launch window features are pushed out almost ten months. When asked to explain this both along the way and afterwards, we're more or less told that its because of parallel development in various features that'll speed up the content cadence. But we're given at most some extremely surface glances of this parallel content, and its extremely difficult to actually identify any signs of meaningful progress. The community requests more information and expresses discontent with what is being provided so far, and is promised some level of improved and expanded communication, but with no commitment to any specifics. At the same time, existing communication avenues dry up, providing even less insight into the active progress of development. This triggers another round of communication concern and inquiry, to which the community is told that all the work time has been put into planning out the next levels of work, and therefore communications can't be prepared just yet. This is followed up by information that suggest the patch cycle is stagnating, not accelerating in its timelines. Those last two parts is where it starts to fall apart, because its a bit of a leap for someone to accept that "We have multiple parallel development streams making content" and "We have nothing to talk about because we're planning what we will be doing next" are both true at the same time. If you've had a year of parallel development streams, it doesn't make sense to the average person that you have nothing to show for it across all the streams - While corporate communications is reluctant to talk about anything meaningful that might end up not getting added, the people who already paid just want to understand what the development team is doing and where it might be going, even if they hear that a thing is later cut for non-viability. But if you can move past that and accept that first combination condition, then the patch cycle appearing to be on the same timeline as the last one doesn't add up, suggesting that at a minimum, the parallel development chains aren't going to yield any meaningful increases in patch rates. Effectively, and likely with no malice, the community now has years of being overpromised and underdelivered to, and the scope of those overpromised and underdelivered situations have been coming in smaller and smaller - First it was the entire thing, then parts of the thing, then update cadences, now patch cadences, now communication cadences - Every step feels like its been backwards to many. And I do want to be clear that it is "Many" and not "All" - I don't speak for the whole community, but discontent doesn't have to, not on its own. This isn't an element of the community being told "You won't get this" and then being mad, this is that element being told "We'll do better" and then not getting anything better, over and over and over - Even if the rest is fine, that group is entirely in their rights to be angry about it at this point, because they're feeling lied to. And I think it shows in the cancellation of the KERB and its reception - People for the most part agreed it wasn't working and were ok with it going, the discontent was that it was the only remaining reliable communication path, and that's the thing we keep asking for. Most of us salty folks don't care if we get communications every week, two weeks, month, or even three months - Within reason, we don't want the game to reach that 2028 date in my quoted post . But what we do want to know is that if you come out and say "First of every month, meaningful update", that I can swing in on May 1st and see something that's actually of substance to the game. Not a filler dev article though, I guarantee you that we'd prefer 2 paragraphs and a screenshot of one singular colony feature sliver or a long piece that ends with "None of that worked so we went to the drawing board" over 10 paragraphs and math diagrams about how clouds in gas giants work IRL but why Jool doesn't do it the same way. That might be cool, but its completely irrelevant to the roadmap we want to hear about. The last thing I want to hear is "We'll provide updates on our plans to provide updates two weeks from now" and then come back in two weeks to hear "So we've discussed the initial plans to create a cadence for communications that'll provide details, but we're pushing out that information a few more weeks, check back later". KSP2 is in a bit of a do or die scenario - Not the game as a whole but its communications. You need to decide publicly and vocally, whether you will actually provide more meaningful information and details on a meaningful schedule, or will you prefer to work quiet and just roll in whenever you feel your ready. Trying to play the middle ground of "we'd love to we're totally working on it and doing it" without delivering is just making the whole thing look worse and throwing a lot of doubt on it. You're setting yourself up No Mans Sky style, nodding along to nice sounding things that people ask about without the seeming ability to deliver. You can look at is as "Look how much damage a single comment about development streams has done to expectations" as a reason to clam up, or you can look at it as a reason to speak more to explain what context was missing from that comment as to the actual development streams. But you need to make a decision. And that's the end of my rant from a community perspective. From a personal perspective, I find it disappointing and frustrating that a fully funded and well staffed studio full of professionals are struggling to meet the standards that indie early access games set in the early 2010's, before anyone even knew how to do any of this. There was this indie game called Kerbal Space Program managed to make frequent and meaningful communication updates to its users, while also having frequent and meaningful content patches and enhancements. These updates were relatively small, simple, not particularly heavily edited, and even included stuff that ultimately didn't come to pass that still informed the community as to what the focus at the moment was, and where things might be going. I am getting more and more of the feeling that our "Communications" are being treated as investor statements and press statements rather than being intended for us.

Albert and the Martians “Breaking news from the CNN Election Headquarters. It is currently 10:14 PM and we can finally call it: Al Gore has WON the Presidency; he has reached 270 electoral votes with a victory in Illinois at 100% of the vote in. He is now the first Democratic candidate to be elected to the Presidency since Jimmy Carter in 1976, ending the Reagan-Bush streak of Republican control of the White House.” On Tuesday, November 5th, 1996, Al Gore won the Presidency over Republican candidate Bob Dole. He won the country's vote by campaigning on a staunch platform of addressing social and economic issues, alongside pushing forward science and technology. Gore’s victory though, despite it being the first blue victory since 1976, was not the talk of the country for very long. As four astronauts were preparing to go further than any human had ever gone. They were going to Mars. Robert Cabana, Eileen Collins, Greg Harbaugh, and Linda Godwin are awoken at 5:00 AM on December 2nd to prepare for their launch at 10:00 AM. Space Shuttle Atlantis sits at LC-39A, having been undergoing fueling for the past 3 hours in preparation for launch. Atlantis will launch the crew alongside the two pilots of the Shuttle (John Casper and Llyod Hammond) into orbit, and then perform a rendezvous and docking with the MMETV that sits in orbit now. But this was just one part of a 7-launch marathon to get everything for the first human mission to Mars into space and on its way to the red planet. It began on November 23rd, with the launch of the first half of the MMETV aboard a Jupiter 524-A at 4:26 AM. Following that, the second half was launched on November 28th at 1:17 PM. The two halves then met in orbit and docked together, forming the complete, fully fueled MMETV. Then, on December 1st, the day before the crew's launch, the “MSVs” (Mars Surface Vehicles, the Ascent and Descent Vehicles respectively) were launched together on a Jupiter 544-A, the heaviest variant of the SDLS rockets. The two are launched docked together, with Jupiter’s second stage propelling them to Mars, and then with the Descent Vehicle performing orbital insertion, as it only has to descend to the surface and has greater propellant margins. They will deploy their solar panels and radiators and operate on low power mode until they reach Mars in August of next year, just before the MMETV. That brings us to the morning of December 2nd. At 7:30 AM, the crew reach the launchpad and head up the elevator to board the Shuttle. This will be the last 2 and a half hours they are on Earth until they return in three years. The crew are strapped in by 8:00 AM and ready for launch. Final preparations occur over the next two hours until the crew access arm retracts and the last few minutes of the countdown begin. Upon reaching orbit, Atlantis makes a first OMS maneuver to set up a rendezvous with the MMETV. The catch-up takes about 8 hours, with Atlantis then moving in to dock with the forward port of the MMETV. These docking ports are the first functional flight variants of the IHDS docking port that will be used on Space Station Harmony, and there is no better mission to test them than on Magellan 2. After a successful docking, the crew all work together to move supplies from Spacelab II into the MMETV hab. About half of the supplies and equipment are being brought up on the Shuttle, while the rest will be in the dedicated supply module that is to be launched aboard a Titan IV in a couple of days. Skylab played an essential role in determining the mass and volume of food and water needed for an entire 3-year round trip to Mars; the 200-day missions total supply amount based on crew diets was extrapolated out and adjusted for the additional exercise and work that the Magellan astronauts will be undertaking. With all of the supplies offloaded from the Shuttle, a video conference is held with NASA Administrator Ken Mattingly and outgoing President George H.W. Bush. Although Reagan initiated the Magellan program, HW has seen it through its development and first two missions and has fought hard every fiscal year for the program to get the funding it requires. He has only a few words at this press conference, but he uses them to express his gratitude towards NASA, his appreciation of the Magellan program, and his hope that it will be part of his lasting legacy as President. Pleasantries out of the way, the Shuttle crew return to Atlantis and begin undocking and departure from the MMETV. Atlantis lands the next morning at the KSC and is shuffled back into the OPF for maintenance over Christmas and the New Year. The MMETV crew wait 2 more days in orbit, getting accustomed to their home for the next 9 months. Then, on December 4th, Titan IV rips off the launchpad at SLC-41 carrying the Supply Module. 12 hours after launch, the Supply Module reaches the MMETV and docks on the forward IDHS port. 24 hours pass as the crew continues to get comfortable inside the Habitat, and then, the next night, preparations begin for the most important operation to this point. Trans-Martian Injection. This maneuver has been calculated by computers the size of a room multiple times over the past couple of years. It is the most efficient trajectory to Mars available in the 1996 transfer window and will give the MMETV the most fuel for orbital insertion and return to Earth. At 8:49 PM on December 5th, the seven nuclear thermal rocket motors of the MMETV start up and begin the 16-minute burn to send 4 astronauts on a mission to Mars. 16 tense minutes pass, controllers sit idle in their chairs, watching in utter silence as the velocity graph steadily follows the pre-determined outline on the main screen of the Mission Control room. ABC, CBS, and CNN have cameras in the room as the event is broadcast live on television to millions of Americans. The astronauts sit with their suits on in the forward flight chairs as the slow 960 seconds pass. But eventually, the motors shut off, and Houston erupts in cheers and applause. A nominal trajectory is confirmed, and Bob Cabana, Eileen Collins, Linda Godwin, and Greg Harbaugh are on their way to Mars. Three days later, they become the first humans to leave Earth's sphere of influence and the first humans to enter interplanetary space. Over these three days, the final two chapters of Magellan 2’s departure from Earth are completed. On December 6th, the Magellan Habitat is launched aboard a Jupiter rocket on a faster but less efficient trajectory. Following this, on December 8th, as the MMETV leaves the Earth-Moon system, the EERM rover, adapted for operations on Mars, is launched aboard another Jupiter rocket on a similar fast but less efficient trajectory to Mars. The habitat and rover will be the first spacecrafts to perform aerobraking at Mars to minimize the propellant needed for orbit insertion. With Magellan 2 now on its way to Mars, 1997 begins with the ball drop in Times Square. A few weeks into the year, on January 20th, Al Gore takes the Oath of Office to become the 42nd President of the United States. As humans make their way to another planet for the first time, and a new face in government takes leadership of the country, America looks towards the new century with optimism. A New Era Has Begun.