Squadcast Summary 2015/07/03

[FlowerChild]

I was specifically addressing:

Yeah...sorry. Went into soapbox mode as the perceived "need" for such information, and how new players are almost inevitably told they absolutely must have it, has always driven me a bit nuts

[DuoDex]

I can say that in my opinion, you are needlessly complicating your game if you don't use some sort of dV readout.

But each to their own.

Finally, it looks like Squad will be adding some sort of feature like this to stock, so soon this discussion will be immaterial.

[FlowerChild]

I can say that in my opinion, you are needlessly complicating your game if you don't use some sort of dV readout.

Interesting standpoint given I've been playing the game as it was designed, and as repeatedly stated as the design intent by Squad. That stance may be changing now (or shortly), but it definitely wasn't the case in the past.

IMO, it's not about complicating things as much as it is about playing how I personally enjoy things more. I enjoy a seat of the pants approach to most games, whether that involves driving a car, flying a plane, or putting something into orbit, and I've never found something to be so difficult in KSP that it would require additional information to make the task easier.

Edited July 5, 2015 by FlowerChild

[DuoDex]

Interesting standpoint given I've been playing the game as it was designed.

And yet you seem to have created your own mod for the game. Do tell if that's 'playing the game as it was designed'.

Like I said : 'to each their own'. Everyone likes to have the game their own particular way; that's the beauty of mods. Personally I feel that if you have not tried a dV readout you should give it a shot - you might like it!

EDIT : Missed your edit. Looks like we're on the same page

Edited July 5, 2015 by DuoDex

[cantab]

In fairness delta-V calculations only do one thing: help you not run out of fuel. While that's essential to a successful mission it's only one of many things essential to a successful mission.

[FlowerChild]

In fairness delta-V calculations only do one thing: help you not run out of fuel. While that's essential to a successful mission it's only one of many things essential to a successful mission.

I'd say that's a fairly major thing though, and running out of fuel has lead to many of the best scenarios that have occurred within my own games.

Like back in 0.9 I ran into a situation where a crewed vessel ran out of fuel while performing a burn to return from the Mun. Resulted in an periapsis that swung close by Kerbin, but didn't contact the atmosphere. Was playing with limited life support, so they were essentially doomed.

Wound up putting together a rescue mission that managed to intercept them while they swung past, transfer them to a fresh capsule, and then deorbit it, in what was probably one of the most epic experiences I've had in the game, and it's not an isolated incident either. I'd say that many of my best experiences in the game have resulted from running out of fuel due to my guestimates being off.

And yet you seem to have created your own mod for the game. Do tell if that's 'playing the game as it was designed'.

Yes, to make things harder...while still not using a deltaV readout.

I'm not saying that everyone should play as intended. I do find it odd however that a moderator would essentially be dismissing a player's views on how they enjoy the game as being "needlessly complicated" when it represents how the game was originally designed.

Like I said : 'to each their own'. Everyone likes to have the game their own particular way; that's the beauty of mods. Personally I feel that if you have not tried a dV readout you should give it a shot - you might like it!

And I'd say the same to everyone that was told it was impossible to play the game without, probably before they even had a chance to learn to play without that info, or to determine if they enjoyed it more that way.

EDIT : Missed your edit. Looks like we're on the same page

Sorry, I'm a habitual editor, and I missed yours too apparently

Edited July 5, 2015 by FlowerChild

[Lord Aurelius]

It seems to me that it would be a fairly easy thing to make the dV indicator completely optional, maybe tied to a difficulty setting.

For me personally, I prefer having that information readily available since I find the seat of the pants approach to space annoying simply because without it you'll have a lot more trial and error. Some players find this fun (nothing wrong with that), but I tend to find it tedious and frustrating after awhile, especially since an interplanetary mission (and any mission with landings) can take up a good chunk of real time even with warping.

In my mind, a dV/TWR readout is in the same category as center of mass/thrust/lift. Technically not required and you can often guesstimate with enough experience (or calculate it yourself if you're so inclined), but it's very useful information to have when designing and (for me at least) helps in understanding how to build good rockets by quickly showing the relationship between a design and the effective dV without extensive trial and error.

[FlowerChild]

It seems to me that it would be a fairly easy thing to make the dV indicator completely optional, maybe tied to a difficulty setting.

Oh, I'll just mod it out (or not, we'll see as like I said, I'm not even certain I care that much anymore), so I'm really not worried about it personally. I'm also not a fan of excessive options in games either, so I'm perfectly happy with Squad making a decision on it and sticking to it as "the way to play". If I want something to be different, I'm more than capable of changing it myself, and I sincerely doubt many people would use such an option anyways, as I know I'm in a very tiny minority in playing this way.

For me personally, I prefer having that information readily available since I find the seat of the pants approach to space annoying simply because without it you'll have a lot more trial and error. Some players find this fun (nothing wrong with that), but I tend to find it tedious and frustrating after awhile, especially since an interplanetary mission (and any mission with landings) can take up a good chunk of real time even with warping.

Yup, I can certainly hear that. For me, I enjoy the iterative process of developing a series of increasingly more powerful launchers over the course of a game and as I tackle harder tasks. I do use trial and error, yes, but the number of mistakes I make is actually relatively low due to that incremental approach. It's not like I just start up a new game and decide "ok...off to Eeloo I go"

The mistakes do make things interesting when they do occur though

[Commander Zoom]

KSP (via maneuver node and navball-arc): "This maneuver will cost you exactly 47.2 m/s of delta-V."

Player: "Great! How much of that do I have right now?"

KSP: "Oh I can't tell you that, it would spoil the surprise."

Player: "... are you ****ing ****ing me??"

SQUAD: "Nope! Working as intended! More fun this way!"

Player: "...." (throws up hands, walks away, installs mod)

(credit to severedsolo back on page 2; this is just my own version/paraphrase)

Edited July 5, 2015 by Commander Zoom

[FlowerChild]

KSP (via maneuver node and navball-arc): "This maneuver will cost you exactly 47.2 m/s of delta-V."

Player: "Great! How much of that do I have right now?"

KSP: "Oh I can't tell you that, it would spoil the surprise."

Player: "... are you ****ing ****ing me??"

SQUAD: "Nope! Working as intended! More fun this way!"

Player: "...." (throws up hands, walks away, installs mod)

(credit to severedsolo back on page 2; this is just my own version/paraphrase)

Driver gets into car, and says "I need to drive 200 miles!"

Car says: I have half a tank of gas.

Driver gets out, slams door, and vows to never drive again.

The above is exactly what I hear when I see the above argument made. Personally, I find it amusing, but entirely unconvincing.

Edited July 5, 2015 by FlowerChild

[r4pt0r]

Driver gets into car, and says "I need to drive 200 miles!"

Car says: I have half a tank of gas.

Driver gets out, slams door, and vows to never drive again.

The above is exactly what I hear when I see the above argument made. Personally, I find it amusing, but entirely unconvincing.

The guesswork is what has kept it fun for me since I've got it, never used math or mods to calculate that stuff. more fun to just slap some tanks together.

If you want your precious numbers, get the appropriate mods.

Edited July 5, 2015 by r4pt0r

[Padishar]

Driver gets into car, and says "I need to drive 200 miles!"

Car says: I have half a tank of gas.

Driver gets out, slams door, and vows to never drive again.

The above is exactly what I hear when I see the above argument made. Personally, I find it amusing, but entirely unconvincing.

A seriously flawed analogy considering that car fuel consumption calculations are trivial compared to working out how far a rocket can get on a particular amount of fuel and it is a lot less serious if a car runs out of fuel than for a rocket...

[Temeter]

Driver gets into car, and says "I need to drive 200 miles!"

Car says: I have half a tank of gas.

Driver gets out, slams door, and vows to never drive again.

The above is exactly what I hear when I see the above argument made. Personally, I find it amusing, but entirely unconvincing.

Ever heard of rocket physics?

[Bill Phil]

The guesswork is what has kept it fun for me since I've got it, never used math or mods to calculate that stuff. more fun to just slap some tanks together.

If you want your precious numbers, get the appropriate mods.

Yeah, it is fun to guess. Unless it's a very serious matter.

I would prefer it to be an option. As long as I don't have to go to the main settings screen to turn it on/off.

[cantab]

KSP (via maneuver node and navball-arc): "This maneuver will cost you exactly 47.2 m/s of delta-V."

Player: "Great! How much of that do I have right now?"

KSP: "Oh I can't tell you that, it would spoil the surprise."

Player: "... are you ****ing ****ing me??"

SQUAD: "Nope! Working as intended! More fun this way!"

Player: "...." (throws up hands, walks away, installs mod)

(credit to severedsolo back on page 2; this is just my own version/paraphrase)

A quiet voice is heard on the wind.

Tsiolkovsky: "I have an equation for that. Why not look it up then you can work out how much delta-V you have."

Screaming at Squad, the player fails to hear this.

[klgraham1013]

I'm not saying that everyone should play as intended. I do find it odd however that a moderator would essentially be dismissing a player's views on how they enjoy the game as being "needlessly complicated" when it represents how the game was originally designed.

I understand your position, but I wouldn't use "original design" as a defense. Any writer, musician (me), director can tell you that the first thing you must learn is to never beholden to your original design. "Kill your darlings", as they say. Your original design will always have problems. For KSP, I believe a lack of information given to the player is one of them.

- - - Updated - - -

A quiet voice is heard on the wind.

Tsiolkovsky: "I have an equation for that. Why not look it up then you can work out how much delta-V you have."

Screaming at Squad, the player fails to hear this.

Not the case. We all know about the equation. We still want a delta-V readout. You're claiming it's ignorance, when it's not.

[Superfluous J]

Driver gets into car, and says "I need to drive 200 miles!"

Car says: I have half a tank of gas.

Driver gets out, slams door, and vows to never drive again.

The above is exactly what I hear when I see the above argument made. Personally, I find it amusing, but entirely unconvincing.

My car tells me how far I can go on the gas remaining. It's pretty accurate too, in spite of the fact that fuel mileage is far less accurate a prediction than m/s is in the rocket equation.

...and I'm not even an engineer.

[pandaman]

IMO there should be a dv indicator in the build editors as standard (maybe for career starting at tier 2 and improving detail with each tier would make some sense). If in flight it was linked to crew skill levels then maybe use both pilot and engineer skill levels (highest present) would be a reasonable solution.

[klgraham1013]

Driver gets into car, and says "I need to drive 200 miles!"

Car says: I have half a tank of gas.

Driver gets out, slams door, and vows to never drive again.

The above is exactly what I hear when I see the above argument made. Personally, I find it amusing, but entirely unconvincing.

My car tells me how far I can go on the gas remaining. It's pretty accurate too, in spite of the fact that fuel mileage is far less accurate a prediction than m/s is in the rocket equation.

...and I'm not even an engineer.

Not a fan of the car versus rocket analogy. There's much more at stake taking supplies to the ISS than driving to the grocery store.

Edited July 5, 2015 by klgraham1013

[severedsolo]

A quiet voice is heard on the wind.I

Tsiolkovsky: "I have an equation for that. Why not look it up then you can work out how much delta-V you have."

Screaming at Squad, the player fails to hear this.

Except that this game is supposed to be accessible even if you don't want to do the maths. Call me lazy, but my time is limited, I'd rather spend it flying than doing sums.

Fair enough, I know some people like that, and that's fine too. Let's put it this way, why would you not want it in the game? If I don't want to use it then don't, but I can if I like

Actually, the ideal solution would be to put it in the engineer report, so you can ignore it if you like.

[Linear]

A quiet voice is heard on the wind.

Tsiolkovsky: "I have an equation for that. Why not look it up then you can work out how much delta-V you have."

Screaming at Squad, the player fails to hear this.

There are equations to work out how much dV you need for the manoeuvre, why bother giving it to us? I'm sure we're all fine with having to do pen-and-paper calculations when trying to play a game.

[regex]

There are equations to work out how much dV you need for the manoeuvre, why bother giving it to us? I'm sure we're all fine with having to do pen-and-paper calculations when trying to play a game.

Yeah, seriously. Why do we have the information in the first place? I thought KSP was all about guesswork and figuring things out for yourself? Why do we even have maneuver nodes... Talk about easy-mode.

[Tarmenius]

Like back in 0.9 I ran into a situation where a crewed vessel ran out of fuel while performing a burn to return from the Mun. Resulted in an periapsis that swung close by Kerbin, but didn't contact the atmosphere. Was playing with limited life support, so they were essentially doomed.

Wound up putting together a rescue mission that managed to intercept them while they swung past, transfer them to a fresh capsule, and then deorbit it, in what was probably one of the most epic experiences I've had in the game, and it's not an isolated incident either. I'd say that many of my best experiences in the game have resulted from running out of fuel due to my guestimates being off.

I have stories like this as well and remember them fondly, as you do. But mine only exist within Kerbin's SOI. When KSP had only Kerbin and Mun, the "trial-and-error" mentality totally worked well as a design choice. Even more so when there was no persistence: Flights never lasted longer than a single play session anyway, so simply ending a mission was common practice. But this is no longer the case. Ending a mission now destroys the crew, flights last through several play sessions and represent many more hours of player investment, and travelling beyond Kerbin's SOI involve more planning and effort despite the fact that a Mun-capable rocket can reach Duna.

So, from where I sit, the original plan of "figuring everything out yourself" really needed to be re-evaluated once the level of sophistication and scale grew beyond a certain point. I think the data SQUAD has which indicates most players don't leave Kerbin's SOI should have been the first hint that something wasn't working as they intended. A core game feature that goes largely unused highlights a major fault in design. One of those, in my view, is the lack of information and tools provided to the player caused specifically by the "trial-and-error" mentality.

Take a hypothetical mission to Vall for instance. Say it runs out of fuel in Jool orbit before getting an encounter with Vall. To mount a rescue mission, I have to re-design the craft, repeat the previous mission events and hope I tweaked it correctly. That's a lot of effort for potentially no reward. It's for similar reasons that classic-style western RPGs have the adage "Save early, save often." Nobody wants to just lose a few hours of advancement in the game, and so most players decide it's not worth the risk to leave Kerbin.

That a dv readout is coming to KSP at all is a great thing. And I can understand the choice to bind it to Kerbal skills, though I disagree with it. Hiding this kind of information behind "gates" is bad game design in my book. As a designer, you ask yourself "Do I want the player to have this item/information?" If the answer is "Yes," you give it to them. If the answer is "Yes, but the player must work for it," then the mechanic you design must be interesting enough for the player to enjoy "earning" it. Making players grind for something you want them to have anyway is no way to build an engaging experience.

[FlowerChild]

Not a fan of the car versus rocket analogy. There's much more at stake taking supplies to the ISS than driving to the grocery store.

In a game?

I wouldn't launch a real rocket without knowing its deltaV either. Launching a few green cartoon characters into space in a game where pretty much everything is made simpler than the consensus reality and just winging it is an entirely viable option? Why not?

The point I was trying to make with that analogy is that knowing the distance your vehicle needs to travel (which is roughly equivalent to the deltaV of a maneuver once you're outside of atmosphere) is useful information regardless of whether you know the range of your vehicle or not (roughly equivalent to the deltaV a vessel has remaining). I do not feel the argument that because one is displayed the other must be as well to be at all convincing as a result. Again...amusing, but not in any way convincing.

I am one of those rare guys that represents any form of opposition to using a deltaV indicator (for myself...really don't care what others do), and what I'm saying is that particular argument does nothing to sway me at all, and I doubt it would sway anyone else either. The inclusion of one piece of information (deltaV of a maneuver) in no way necessitates the inclusion of the other (deltaV remaining) as the "not telling" argument would imply.

Yeah, seriously. Why do we have the information in the first place? I thought KSP was all about guesswork and figuring things out for yourself? Why do we even have maneuver nodes... Talk about easy-mode.

Again man, I consider the *level* of information provided to be an integral part of a game's design. Reducing that to absurdities does nothing to strengthen your argument, just like me saying something like "if the game provides so much information that it devolves into a series of 'press foo button now' prompts, how does that still qualify as a game?" wouldn't strengthen mine (Dragon's Lair and Guitar Hero aside ).

Put another way, I think too little information makes for a crappy game. Too much information makes for a crappy game. It's highly doubtful that anyone would argue for no or total (as in: god like) information in any game, so somewhere in between lays a sweet spot for any particular game that maximizes enjoyment, and that may vary from individual to individual. I think the differences in perception over where that sweet spot lays is essentially what this debate comes down to, and not much else.

There are definitely valid points to your side of the debate that have their own merits, but I think if I'm saying anything, it's that going to extremes like this in trying to put across the point really doesn't help in making a convincing argument. Rather, it just further entrenches people on my side of things due to having rather absurd arguments thrown our way.

Edited July 5, 2015 by FlowerChild

[Robotengineer]

--Snip--

The point I was trying to make with that analogy is that knowing the distance your vehicle needs to travel (which is roughly equivalent to the deltaV of a maneuver once you're outside of atmosphere) is useful information regardless of whether you know the range of your vehicle or not (roughly equivalent to the deltaV a vessel has remaining). I do not feel the argument that because one is displayed the other must be as well to be at all convincing as a result. Again...amusing, but not in any way convincing.

I am one of those rare guys that represents any form of opposition to using a deltaV indicator, and what I'm saying is that particular argument does nothing to sway me at all, and I doubt it would sway anyone else either.

How is it useful information if you have NO IDEA what DV even means, or how much you have? A better car analogy would be this:

Driver: I want to go to the city, which is 200 miles away.

Car: You have 300 megajoules.

Driver: GAAH! What is with these strange energy units?

Maneuver nodes are good for finding where you should start burning, and how long, the DV requirement part of it is pretty useless though if you don't know how much DV you have.

Squad can either: (A) Remove the DV expenditure readout from the maneuver node display, ( Add a simple DV readout, or © Leave it like it is.