Overheat and the Training/Tutorials - Difficulties for New Players

[Chonner]

To welcome in 1.0 I decided I would complete all the training and scenarios as I've never done them and wanted to check out the much improved tutorials. I know what I'm doing when it comes to KSP, but just thought I'd try them.

I already found the odd minor bug in the some of the earlier tutorials (which I've posted some bug reports of over in the support forum), but now I'm on the Asteroid Redirect Mission Part I training, and honestly I cannot ever see a new player ever being able to complete it without doing some substantial external research to learn about the new heating mechanic and how to play around it, when really you should be able to complete a tutorial solely based on the information contained with it (and previous tutorials).

The only time overheat and it's subsequent destructive results are mentioned is way back in the early flight tutorial in a passing sentence, but now it now appears to be such a crucial game mechanic in both how you build and how you fly a ship, it really needs a more thorough covering and explanation somewhere in the earlier tutorial.

Moving specifically to the Asteroid Redirect Missions, the suggested manoeuvre node already in place when you start the training is 850ms-1. You tweak it a bit to get your encounter down but it is still around 850ms-1.

If you are to attempt to do this manoeuvre in one go the provided ship undergoes rapid unplanned disassembly after about 200ms-1. This is mostly due to its poor design with the nukes being attached to tiny FL-T100 tanks which overheat and explode way before the nukes do. It is very hard to see that teh FL-T100s are overheating, and the only way to manage your burn it to bring up the debug menu and enable Thermal Data in action menu, which a new player definitely will not know how to do.

Really you need to split the burn into 3-4 sections allowing the engines and FL-T100 to cool down in between, and this probably needs to be explained, or the design of the provided ship needs to be changed to a much better one that works with the new heating mechanic (Attach the Nukes directly to the jumbo? Or puts some solar panels on the FL-T100 to act as radiators?).

So in summary, the heating mechanic needs to be properly explained somewhere in the tutorials, including how to keep track of the temperature of parts that are not in the staging sequence (which is another problem, I don't think we should have to go into the debug menu to bring that up, at least not basic temperatures), and the Asteroid Redirect Mission Part 1 needs to be updated to be either easier to complete through a better craft, or properly explained so you can manage the heating.

Just my 2 pence.

Edited April 28, 2015 by Chonner

[kerbander]

Thanks for that. Makes more sense now. I started playing KSP today, going through the tutorials, but overheating problem was confusing indeed.