"Time based mechanics" aren't fun, but we're shoving one in at the last minute...

[John FX]

Going to a planet is a time based mechanic. The whole game is a time based mechanic. if you say time based mechanics are no fun then the game itself falls into that category. Waiting for resources to be drilled is a time based mechanic, will that happen instantly?

I suspect not. I do not agree with the statement "Time based mechanics are not fun"

I myself like Kerbal Construction Time in a career game with remotetech, FAR, DRE, persistentrotation, kerbalmass, solarpanelfix, and saturatable reaction wheels.

Before now I have misssed a launch window as the ship was not built, missed a munar burn as my craft was spin stabilised pointing to a maneuver node and my batteries drained and I had to use the 1/4 of a second with a little power per revolution to stop the spin and point my panels to the sun and catch the window next orbit, by which time KSC had moved relative to my target so I did not have a signal path to make the burn so I had to come up with another solution.

It was the most interested I have been while playing KSP for a while now.

E :

You get mad at SQUAD for changing their minds suddenly and implementing this, yet you said earlier that you enjoy time-based game mechanics... I read every post from this thread, and it feels like you are just bi***ing about them not telling you they have changed their minds. Get over it seriously ! What are you, 6 ? You get something that you wanted but still are unhappy enough to create a complain thread about it...

I really don't understand your point.....

(how about we wait till the 27th to discuss about those features ? We know nothing about it)

Myself I see the frustration that comes from years of suggesting features like this only to be told that it will never ever happen then once beta has ended, and with it the chance to make suggestions within an early access framework, time based mechanics are put in almost as an afterthought when someone on the team realises that the thing they have been told for years is actually right.

Edited April 22, 2015 by John FX

[hawk_za]

I got no problem with the devs changing there mind but I do hope they thought this one through as the consequences of this change can be quite drastic ...

having said that this dev team is one of the best dev teams out there and quite frankly they have proved beyond anyone's doubts that there are reasons they are doing things the way they are choosing to do them.

SO I say lets sit back wait for 1.0 release and see what it is like if it turns out to be game breaker then let the flame wars and hate post begin till then we really cant tell anything about this choice.

Think of it this way image we had started out with the game in its current state so many people would have been scared off by its complexity and scope, but as the game developed so did the core player base to the point were squad feels comfortable adding in realistic aerodynamics.(it kind of scares me to be honest but it is something I have been waiting for)

The average new player has allot to come to grips with things most of us now take for granted (retrograde and prograde as a silly example)

start adding too many time based mechanics really starts to make career tough for them

as it is I spend way to much time designing my crafts.

as I keep track of

weight

electric reserves

electric depletion rate

science transmit rate

quantity of fuel per stage

delta v per stage

thrust to weight ratio per stage

cost to company

all of which I find myself struggling to balance

start adding life support and you can see why I say it gets hard for new guys (hell it would make life hard for me

always remember adding weight to a vessel increases the difficulty of getting that vessel to its intended target

now don't get me wrong i'm all for a BASIC form of life support, but maybe in patch 1.1 or 1.2 as it has got to be properly implemented

all the tutorials, stock craft and new parts have to be updated/made and not to mention how many games would be broken by the implementation of this feature

just my two cents on this topic

the hawk

[Robotengineer]

What if the lab has to be the active vessel and out of time warp during the time period? That way you can't just go back to the space center and time warp to get science.

I personally would hate that system.

[Xavven]

Devs are probably already on their way to lock this thread from the heat it's generating. Why this is something to get so upset about, I don't understand.

[Greenfire32]

You get mad at SQUAD for changing their minds suddenly and implementing this, yet you said earlier that you enjoy time-based game mechanics... I read every post from this thread, and it feels like you are just bi***ing about them not telling you they have changed their minds. Get over it seriously ! What are you, 6 ? You get something that you wanted but still are unhappy enough to create a complain thread about it...

I really don't understand your point.....

(how about we wait till the 27th to discuss about those features ? We know nothing about it)

The frustration comes from SQUAD violently disregarding time-based mechanics because they're, "not fun," and then adding a time-based mechanic at literally the eleventh hour before 1.0 release.

[Broax]

People do have the right to change their opinion... Specially when so many users wanted this feature. If anything I just agree it came too late (and the inclusion of a simple "snack" life support system would be much appreciated as well)...

From what I understood from that position at the time is that they felt these things could introduce another level of unwanted micromanagement and, at the same time, would be easy to exploit (through timewarp). They try to mitigate the "exploitability" by making the player transmit the science periodically and the benefits from a gameplay perspective on the other hand are very big as they work as an incentive for the player to build manned off-world bases and space stations for something other then bragging rights.

Maybe some of the mods that exist may have helped persuade them too...

The general feeling I have towards this update is very positive. I still think it misses some features (like a simple life "snack" support, some of the KIS/KAS mod features and win64 support) but other then that I'm really happy they made this far and think the product is shaping up really well.

As for changing their minds and including some features rejected at first I feel it's a good thing. It IS their product so they can do as they please and it only shows that they are open to community (or other) feedback. Maybe in time some of the features on my wishlist make it to the game as well.

I feel less and less of a need to install mods on 1.0 which means they're doing a good job.

[John FX]

The frustration comes from SQUAD violently disregarding time-based mechanics because they're, "not fun," and then adding a time-based mechanic at literally the eleventh hour before 1.0 release.

Yes, yes it does.

That said, I welcome the first toe being dipped into regarding time as something that happens in the game that can be used as an enhancement to gameplay.

Whilst I can't say I agree with how it was done, I applaud that it is done.

[Karriz]

I don't see anything disrespectful in the Harvester's post that OP linked to. This is really nothing to get worked up about. It's ridiculous to except a formal apology over nothing.

[Ralathon]

Why are you so angry LethalDose?

It seems the only problem you have is "The devs did not outright state that they changed their minds, even if their actions show that they did". Why is this such a big deal?

Then someone else shows up and tells you this, and you completely blow him off. If you are just looking to argue with someone surely there's a better place to do so.

[LongHairedHuman]

Well, you're new here, so maybe you haven't seen how dismissive the devs are/were towards ideas like this. To the point of being disrespectful. It's simply a matter of etiquette when you change an opinion about something that you previously dismissed, you acknowledge it. The devs', and specifically Harvester's, failure to do so is, again, disrespectful.

The development team has a long history of doing a crap job of communicating with the community, and this is just another example. Besides, I'm not expecting an "official letter of apology", I said "acknowledge". I never said that, so stop putting words in my mouth.

Maybe certain developers have certain opinions, but Squad is a team. Don't mistake the opinions of developers with the statements of squad. In team projects, discussions about the product are always ongoing, and changes to the design and plans are always made. It's all for the best possible product.

On another note, it's about time you read the Terms of Service. You should have read it when you bought the game. Especially this line.

Squad is under no obligation to maintain any level of communication with the player community, choosing to do so at their own discretion.

[Red Iron Crown]

To me at least, announcement of the feature *is* an acknowledgement of a reversal of the previous position of no time-based mechanics.

Personally, I'm glad to see it, opens up a lot of possibilities.

[Caelib]

Sounds like a good thing to me. If people don't want to use it, then they don't have to

[pizzaoverhead]

I know I'm gonna get hate for this position, but it just drives me up the wall that, suddenly, this mechanic can be fun... It is just so frustrating to see the devs do a complete 180 on these topics without any kind of acknowledgement that of the shift.

You're chastising Felipe for doing a "complete 180", towards a position you support, in light of his improved understanding of the balancing. The action of making and announcing the change is an acknowledgement of that shift. While Squad have often failed in communicating with players, I don't think that this is one of those cases. Felipe has acknowledged that it's a complete rethink of his previous decision, that the newly chosen mechanic is time-based, the benefits of that system, and what he's done to mitigate the difficulties of that system:

• We’ve completely rethought how Science Labs work now.
  
• the data fed to the lab will generate a steady output of Science for a very long time
  
• It should greatly increase the benefits of setting up orbiting science stations and surface bases, however, and also give you good reason to visit them every now and then
  
• The data does decay after a while, and the labs can only hold so much processed data before having to transmit, so don’t expect to be able to timewarp your way to infinite science

To me, this is satisfactory. What would be satisfactory to you? Write a draft announcement to clearly demonstrate what you'd like to see in such an announcement, so that it can be used as an example to Squad for the future.

Really, I think you're missing the point. There are much greater concerns than how it's announced.

I really hope they implement this right, but I'm getting really nervous about the quality of 1.0 with all these features being shoved in at the last minute without any time to test balance.

Its possible that he still thinks its a bad idea but is willing to give it a shot just in case he finds a happy medium.

Implementing a new system which completely changes the balance of the mid-to-late game science system is a huge undertaking with regards to testing unforseen interactions and exploits. Game balance has a history of taking as long to get right as chasing bugs. It's worrying that this has been announced in the final week before release.

And to be clear, I'm all for time-based mechanics, and if we're including them, then I think life support systems are worth being re-evaluated.

Life support is the missing link needed to balance all other time-based systems. I hope that the coming releases will give more freedom to spend time developing it and other systems, given that the major pushes for career mode and 1.0 are now at an end.

[federicoaa]

The frustration comes from SQUAD violently disregarding time-based mechanics because they're, "not fun," and then adding a time-based mechanic at literally the eleventh hour before 1.0 release.

Maybe they just happened to find one that it is.

I like the idea and the science decay with time, I think it will be fun.

[Scourge013]

I feel I have to chime in, here. The only context I've heard Harv rail against time-based mechanics was when people were asking for a rocket build-time. His rationale, if I recall, was that especially early in the game, having the game make you WAIT to build a rocket didn't make sense, because it was essentially using TIME as a way to keep you from actually playing the game. Especially early game, you usually have to launch one flight at a time because the parts available rule out the longer term interplanetary missions. In other words, If you have no rocket to fly or other flights to fly in the mean-time the game was basically dipping into the cesspool sludge that is "Freemium" gaming. Maybe he shouldn't have said "Time-Based Mechanics" and said "Wait-Based Mechanics." Sure, at a different point in the game, having you wait to launch rockets when you have other flights to manage might be "fun." But the reality is, the way the game starts, it would just encourage the player to mash timewarp rather than manage a schedule or make interesting emergent gameplay-type decisions about missions.

However, this change to the Science lab, is not of the ilk that Harv had railed against and so often. It's more a mechanic to make the player invest in infrastructure-- to give purpose to those pesky one-off contracts that you could launch and forget. If you want the maximum science yield of any body, including Kerbin itself, you will have to invest a Scientist Kerbal and some expensive hardware to get a big ol' heavy science lab in orbit of whatever body you are studying. Time is just used as a way to keep the player interacting with this new sciencey space station--a way to keep you checking up on it every little whip-stitch rather than timewarping to maximum yield then forgetting about it. In fact, the fixed amount of science per transmission coupled with the science decay is a mechanic that is supposed to discourage this type of behavior. They are trying to keep the player invested in checking in with and interacting with stations they create. It's going to be a lot more efficient science point-wise to manage your flights and make a schedule of when to check in with your science stations than it would be to run a "huge" one-off science spam mission to whatever body. This essentially makes an efficiency-minded player make an emergent gameplay decision on when to launch science missions and what kind of insfrastructure they should take along for the ride. No more Stayputnik probes that can "do it all." We have to invest our funds in infrastructure now.

The fact it uses time to encourage this higher-level gameplay is more a point of necessity...almost a coincidence. This is not a "Wait-Based Mechanic" like Harv was talking about earlier--it is totally optional if you want to play this way, plus you get the benefits of having a science lab immediately without needing to wait an arbitrary time for its primary functionality to come online (that is a higher transmission value for science and refurbishing of experiment modules). As I understand this change, no "apology" necessary...because he's not being a hypocrite. This is a different type of mechanic/gameplay goal entirely.

[tntristan12]

LethalDose, man. I understand your frustration, but getting worked up over this isn't going to accomplish much. I do think their addition of time based mechanics was a tad... unceremonious... but try to think of it this way. Maybe now that they've opened up that particular can of worms, we will see more time based mechanics in the future. Even if they didn't explicitly state this, I do get the impression that devs are listening to us!

[Hanuman]

This is dumb, full stop.

[LethalDose]

To any one who can't seem comprehend "the point" here it is from two other sources that aren't me:

The frustration comes from SQUAD violently disregarding time-based mechanics because they're, "not fun," and then adding a time-based mechanic at literally the eleventh hour before 1.0 release.

Yes, yes it does.

That said, I welcome the first toe being dipped into regarding time as something that happens in the game that can be used as an enhancement to gameplay.

Whilst I can't say I agree with how it was done, I applaud that it is done.

As for:

Why are you so angry LethalDose?

It seems the only problem you have is "The devs did not outright state that they changed their minds, even if their actions show that they did". Why is this such a big deal?

Do I need to explain how disrespectful it was before and now, AGAIN!? And yes, that is the issue, they should have stated they reversed, or at least modified, their previous position.

Then someone else shows up and tells you this, and you completely blow him off. If you are just looking to argue with someone surely there's a better place to do so.

The only reason I could possibly have to criticize the developers behavior is to start a fight? Yeah, thanks.

And yes, I blew him off because he forced opinions and statements on me which I never stated, held, or even implied. Directly, because he said this:

you are making it sound like you wanted SQUAD to make an official letter of apology towards "those who were wronged".

I have to deal with this:

It's ridiculous to except a formal apology over nothing.

Maybe certain developers have certain opinions, but Squad is a team. Don't mistake the opinions of developers with the statements of squad. In team projects, discussions about the product are always ongoing, and changes to the design and plans are always made. It's all for the best possible product.

On another note, it's about time you read the Terms of Service. You should have read it when you bought the game. Especially this line.

In addition to that line, their front page states:

The KSP Team is strongly commited to the project, and we are always listening for feedback from the players.

and I can't count how many times they've been "OMG we love our community"

So thank you for helping point out that they're hypocrites.

- - - Updated - - -

You're chastising Felipe for doing a "complete 180", towards a position you support, in light of his improved understanding of the balancing. The action of making and announcing the change is an acknowledgement of that shift. While Squad have often failed in communicating with players, I don't think that this is one of those cases. Felipe has acknowledged that it's a complete rethink of his previous decision, that the newly chosen mechanic is time-based, the benefits of that system, and what he's done to mitigate the difficulties of that system:

To me, this is satisfactory. What would be satisfactory to you? Write a draft announcement to clearly demonstrate what you'd like to see in such an announcement, so that it can be used as an example to Squad for the future.

I'm not chastising the change, I'm expressing frustration with the way it was done. In general Squad, but even more so with Max and Felipe, have done and absolutely abysmal job with communicating with the community they claim they appreciate so much.

Here, let me quote myself about what I expected or what I would find acceptable, 'cause it really ain't that much:

I expected them to say "We changed our minds about this" or "We looked at this, and realized that we were wrong about time-based mechanics being un-fun and impossible to implement".

That's it! That's all I would have wanted to hear from them. It's small, but it's important. And they couldn't even be bothered.

[Wallygator]

I think this subtle change put forward by Harvester moves the conversation from "Time Based" to "Time and Resource" based.

This is a good thing.

It is not a case of having to say "I'm sorry, I got it wrong and I'm changing my mind"; rather "I've expanded the context of the problem and am now able to build a more effective model".

I think we might give a bit of leeway on this one. Seriously, with this subtle shift, we might see an ever increasing set of 'Real world" based game dynamics.

In my mind, this is the single most important element of the 1.0 release - it could be the tip of a foundational game-play change iceberg. <--- in a GOOD WAY.

Edited April 22, 2015 by Wallygator

[LethalDose]

LethalDose, man. I understand your frustration, but getting worked up over this isn't going to accomplish much. I do think their addition of time based mechanics was a tad... unceremonious... but try to think of it this way. Maybe now that they've opened up that particular can of worms, we will see more time based mechanics in the future. Even if they didn't explicitly state this, I do get the impression that devs are listening to us!

If some people out there can understand my frustration, that's all I care about really trying to accomplish. I just hope some of them are actually in Squad and can help them pull their heads out of their freaking exhaust nozzles.

Beyond that, I can only say I envy your optimism.

[Kerb Johnson]

Wait. So we're getting something that looks like it'll make stations and bases useful and you're complaining? I'm confused.

[LethalDose]

Wait. So we're getting something that looks like it'll make stations and bases useful and you're complaining? I'm confused.

You probably wouldn't be if you actually read what I wrote instead of the rest of community's reaction to it, but I guess I forgot which community I was dealing with.

[Hanuman]

You probably wouldn't be if you actually read what I wrote instead of the rest of community's reaction to it, but I guess I forgot which community I was dealing with.

Really, this nonsense should've been closed by now. Acting like a five year old shouldn't be productive.

[klgraham1013]

I am slightly frustrated simply because there's been some great discussion about time-based mechanics in the Suggestions forums that never really came to anything. I really feel like some of those ideas would greatly improve the game. As far as Squad acknowledging a change, I think, in this instance, actions speak just as loud as words.

Personally, I'm still not convinced they've completely changed their stance on the subject yet.

[Wallygator]

Really, this nonsense should've been closed by now. Acting like a five year old shouldn't be productive.

I respectfully, disagree - let LethalDose have his say - And I think he has done a very good job of expressing his opinion. In some respects I agree that the development trajectory has deviated from the official communicated path ----> So some form of explanation might be helpful from Harvester. An Apology? maybe not. But I'm somewhat in LethalDose's camp in that I would like to understand the logic and support for this fundamental shift in KSP game play architecture.

That said, I really like the fact the the dev team has made the shift. This is really good.