why is 1.0.3 so easy

[Wiseman]

True, but same push-and-pull problem. People would complain about 30 minute launches

That's always been my issue with RO and other rescales. I love the idea of a scaled-up system, as it solves the majority of fiddly issues with reentry heating and engine balance, but those launch and burn times drive me crazy after having spent a year at vanilla scale.

[SoWeMeetAgain]

The main thing is that you have learnt how to build a better rocket since those days. Try it in .90 (or whatever version you first started with) - you will find it easy now.

"Broader audience by making it child-easy?" - it is meant to be a game accessible to children, and that is a pretty patronising sort of statement.

The lowered dV to get to orbit certainly helps, but it also makes getting the turn (and shape of rocket) right more important - not a terrible balance, although the size of rocket required to get to orbit has always been rather small imho.

are you trying to say that it is patronizing if I say that children cannot do as good as adults in pretty much everything?

That you like to spring new information that nobody knows on people further down the thread? (Since we don't know anything about your KSP pas)

You are getting better at KSP?

That maybe they forgot to adjust the Flea booster for 1.0.3? (it does seem more potent).

how was there new info in that? I stated right in the opening both that I have just recently started, that it was not super easy in 1.0.2 and that it is now in 1.0.3

[Mischief]

One problem is that as we get better at the game the early part of the game gets easier because we understand how to make rockets.

It isn't getting easier, we're just more experienced. If you want to make it harder you can tweak or mod it.

As a side note you can, for a few thousand dollars, make a RL rocket that could get sub orbital if you had permits, access to rocket fuel and a kerbal class disregard for your own safety.

Ksp plays closer to realism than just about any game out there. You want it harder then mod it. FAR, deadly reentry, real solar system, life support, they're a lot of fun. Don't mistake your better familiarity with the game for a decline in difficulty. Launch to orbit and return are harder than they were in 0.90.

[stevehead]

True, but same push-and-pull problem. People would complain about 30 minute launches

Launch to LEO in RSS only takes about 10 minutes, comparable to real life. Still that is a long time for people with less time/patience.

Although, to add to my support of a 2x solar system, a double-scaled Kerbin doesn't take that much longer to get into orbit than current stock scale.

Edited June 23, 2015 by stevehead

[Matrix Aran]

Launch to LEO in RSS only takes about 10 minutes, comparable to real life. Still that is a long time for people with less time/patience.

Not to mention the real killer with RSS is that if something goes wrong on the last stage, that's 10 minutes of launch you have to do over again. A couple of failures in a row can feel extremely punishing.

In my opinion, 1.0.3 is fine, it's just going to take people some adjusting.

[Wheffle]

Launch to LEO in RSS only takes about 10 minutes, comparable to real life. Still that is a long time for people with less time/patience.

Although, to add to my support of a 2x solar system, a double-scaled Kerbin doesn't take that much longer to get into orbit than current stock scale.

Yeah, 10 minute launches add up quickly. I already drown in KSP for hours and hours without noticing. Still, I'd like to try RSS one day.

I didn't know 2x solar system mod was kicking around. I'm definitely going to give that a try.

[stevehead]

Yeah, 10 minute launches add up quickly. I already drown in KSP for hours and hours without noticing. Still, I'd like to try RSS one day.

RSS + RO is great, but it's certainly not for beginners. You should definitely give it a try sometime. Prepare for a lot of time and effort, but it's so rewarding when you accomplish tasks that are generally considered trivial in stock, such as first Earth orbit (Earth is so huge!), Moon landing, Jupiter flyby, etc.

[KerbMav]

Are we under 3600dV to orbit now?

[Nori]

Just want to point out that suborbital is and has always been relatively easy.

Even in real life (snipped from Wikipedia):

If one's goal is simply to "reach space" horizontal motion is not needed. In this case the lowest required delta-v, to reach 100 km altitude, is about 1.4 km/s. Moving slower, with less free-fall, would require more delta-v.

Compare this with orbital spaceflights: a low Earth orbit (LEO), with an altitude of about 300 km, needs a speed around 7.7 km/s, requiring a delta-v of about 9.2 km/s.

[rcp27]

Two successive boosters put you into suborbit. And not even close. Why? I remember it being a good, nice little challenge to first get into suborbit with only 30 lowtech parts and 18t maximum. Now it's just ... click click done.

This isn't anything new. In 0.90 when satellite contracts came out, I built a standard launch vehicle for these which used two successive SRBs to get suborbital and only needed a small boost from the 3rd stage to circularise, leaving plenty of dV to get to the contract required orbit. I did a bit of testing, and found that because SRBs are so cheap, this was actually cost-competitive with a Mk2 space plane for putting a similar payload into orbit even if I landed back on the runway, because the cost of the SRBs was about the same as the cost of the space plane fuel burn.

[karolus10]

Kerbin is pretty small so getting to the orbit didn't take too long, especially with old drag model and lack of warp in early versions, getting to the edge of space is plain easy when compared to reaching orbit.

[rtxoff]

Better it's easy at stock and you have to mod it to make it harder then the other way round, you can't expect a kid to download and install a bunch of mods to make it playable.

[Arsonik]

Not to mention the real killer with RSS is that if something goes wrong on the last stage, that's 10 minutes of launch you have to do over again. A couple of failures in a row can feel extremely punishing.

In my opinion, 1.0.3 is fine, it's just going to take people some adjusting.

You can quick save in atmo since the last couple of versions.

[Wheffle]

You can quick save in atmo since the last couple of versions.

That helps, but you're still SOL when you get into orbit missing a part or something.

Which happens all too often for me

[Slugy]

are you trying to say that it is patronizing if I say that children cannot do as good as adults in pretty much everything?

On average you could say that, but how far would you have to look to find a kid who was better than you at, for instance, chess, or a 2nd language, or CoD, or writing a poem, or gymnastics, or acting, or for that matter, KSP? And that leaves out the rather obvious one of learning and remembering new things ...

So "Broader audience by making it child-easy?" - yes, that is a patronising, and stupid, statement, that's why I commented. IMO it used to be more easy and more easily accessible: the more forgiving pre 1.0 aero model made silly shaped rockets and rapid atmospheric turns common. Lower dV to orbit is not the only thing to consider.

There is a difference between making something that is easily accessible, and something that is easy - KSP is a good example of the former, and it can be as easy or as hard as you make it. An educational and absorbing game that can appeal to a bright 10 year old, and a 60 year old is a fine thing. I'd have loved it at 10, shame it was decades too late.

[jwenting]

and of course getting back down safely just got a whole lot harder... Unless you're on an extremely shallow trajectory you're going to hit the ground before you've slowed down enough to get out of the reentry heating, let alone enough to be able to deploy your parachutes (which now get ripped off at 300m/s or so).

[KerikBalm]

KSP has never put realism first,

While I dislike when games stupidly deviate from realism (example: in EVE UV lasers have a shorter range than microwave lasers... ...... no gameplay reason, just switch the names and color...)

I'll give this game credit for introducing more realism to spaceflight than I've seen in any other game (well, at least cross-platform... I'm on a mac now, and can't run orbiter).

People who play learn *real concepts*

* Oberth effect

* Mass ratios/dV/the rocket equation/Isp

* transfer windows/hohman transfers/bieliptic transfers

...

etc

Sure the radii are too small, the part masses are too high, the max temperature is too high... etc...

Its not N-body...

But the core gameplay focuses on realistic spaceflight *mechanics*

That you can simply adjust the scale and some values in the .cfg files to get your RSS and realistic parts, tells me that they did put realism at the core, and its small tweaks to bring it out.

They first started with realism, and then made gameplay concessions...

[Juicy]

Except with the late drag-mess of 1.0.2, reaching orbit was never really hard. It was always about managing remaining dV and landing. Heck, even Mun landings had detailed tutorial videos. Except for explaining the controls, launching a ship never really needed any tutorial till .0.2.

[regex]

They first started with realism, and then made gameplay concessions...

I dispute that, given KSP's development history, but it's a moot point and not really the focus of my argument, which is that KSP is more focused on gameplay than making things more realistic. In other words, "KSP has never put realism first". Case in point, everyone wanted a better aerodynamic simulation (aside from a few weirdos) but no one wanted a bigger solar system to go with it (aside from a few weirdos), which leaves us in the curious position that FAR + 0.90 stock put us in (less delta-V to orbit punctuating just how small Kerbin actually is). That's not a bad thing, it's just not what I want to see in the game (fortunately it's eminently moddable).

[SoWeMeetAgain]

On average you could say that, but how far would you have to look to find a kid who was better than you at, for instance, chess, or a 2nd language, or CoD, or writing a poem, or gymnastics, or acting, or for that matter, KSP? And that leaves out the rather obvious one of learning and remembering new things ...

So "Broader audience by making it child-easy?" - yes, that is a patronising, and stupid, statement, that's why I commented. IMO it used to be more easy and more easily accessible: the more forgiving pre 1.0 aero model made silly shaped rockets and rapid atmospheric turns common. Lower dV to orbit is not the only thing to consider.

There is a difference between making something that is easily accessible, and something that is easy - KSP is a good example of the former, and it can be as easy or as hard as you make it. An educational and absorbing game that can appeal to a bright 10 year old, and a 60 year old is a fine thing. I'd have loved it at 10, shame it was decades too late.

from your writing I have deduced that you are either a kid or consider yourself to have been better than other kids. Regardless, read up on "a tall chinese" if you will, please.

[Mattux355]

Just to add a bit here. I'm a pretty new KSP player I have only been playing since 0.90 or so I think.

But I have been playing another notoriously difficult to learn game since 2006 called EVE Online.

EVE has constantly battled with players complaining when the devs fixed something so it worked easier and was more accessible. People complained that it was making the game too easy. Over the years we have learned that more accessible of a game through better mechanics doesn't mean the game is necessarily easier.

Punishing your players isn't the same as a good challenge.

Also, since 1.03 I have lost many a Kerbal to re-entry since my capsule do not slow down enough now. I come in nice and flat and the air just DOESN'T slow me down enough! I BARELY get slow enough to deploy my chutes above the water at like 2000m and under 250 m/s or my chutes rip off.

One thing I have learned in KSP is when they keep changing how the atmosphere works it DRASTICALLY changes gameplay. Whatever the devs decide i hope they just make a decision and stick with it.

[Beowolf]

... The problem is just that we are getting an unfinished, unbalanced game with a label on it that says "Finished Game"...

Okay, what you say is true but what recent games haven't released in that same unfinished state? Thinking back over my other recent purchases, Borderlands Pre-Sequel and Far Cry 4 were both initially released with serious bugs requiring hotfixes, and the other indie PC games I play are unpolished messes compared with KSP. Starpoint Gemini II in particular has had a bug that breaks it on my laptop since early beta, never fixed. I have to turn my touchpad completely off or the game thinks I'm always scrolling down. I was part of that early beta, reported it properly, and it's been sitting in their queue for over a year.

So I get your point, but don't understand why you're picking on Squad. It's the state of the industry. As soon as patches became something you can cheaply distribute over the net they all turned their customers into free beta testers. Not just gaming, either. When's the last time Microsoft, Apple or Ubuntu released a new version of their OS without needing to hotfix within a week or two? Sometimes that happened before the net, but then it was an expensive, embarrassing mess so the companies worked hard to avoid it. Not anymore.

Happy flying!

[herbal space program]

Well rockets might be easier now, but AFAICT space planes just got a fair bit harder. My edge-of-the-envelope SSTO designs are all totally broken now.

[Captain H@dock]

Well rockets might be easier now, but AFAICT space planes just got a fair bit harder. My edge-of-the-envelope SSTO designs are all totally broken now.

I really disagree.... I just did about 30 climbs to orbit since I came back home, with a lot of very different profile (from 800 at sea level to climb at 30° to the 1.0.2 way of doing it) and they all seem to work pretty well, I'm using more liquid fuel than before, but I can easily get 1300 m/s at 25K on airbreathing, and my i've got a profile that does 1475 (accelerate at 9000 m, climb at 1100 m/s just enough to avoid burning up, that should be around 15°). All in all I think it's slightly easier, but you have to forget about the 1.0.2 profile and see what works best. Quick save before entering hypersonic to try different things.

And re-entry.... I've only done 2 today and I'm now confident I can glide to the KSP on every attempt, and with no speed brake. I don't know if this was possible in 1.0.2 (I don't think so), but you can manage speed/gliding distance with your angle of attack as soon as 50K. Going to over-shoot the KSP? Set for 30-40° AoA! Going to undershoot? Set for 5-10° AoA! You can litteraly move you landing point forward/backward with this. No overheating issues (though you see bars) in sight. I flew from map view until 2000m from the KSP...

If you wondering about the plane I used, check this thread: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/126304-RAPIERs-and-Turbojets-are-amazing-in-1-0-3?p=2036507&viewfull=1#post2036507

Edited June 23, 2015 by Captain H@dock

[monstah]

People who play learn *real concepts*

* Oberth effect

* Mass ratios/dV/the rocket equation/Isp

* transfer windows/hohman transfers/bieliptic transfers

...

etc

Sure the radii are too small, the part masses are too high, the max temperature is too high... etc...

Its not N-body...

But the core gameplay focuses on realistic spaceflight *mechanics*

(my emphasis)

Also my thoughts. People complain a lot about unrealistic things in this game, but at its core this is one of the most realistic games I've ever played in 20 years, and I love that.