Does ANYONE remember the old way to play KSP?

[kmMango]

7 minutes ago, AHO said:

These kinds of threads go absolutely nowhere. Putting people down for how they want to play a single player game only causes unhappiness.

This. KSP gives you access to an entire solar system, and a vast array of parts to explore it with. You can drive along the canyons of Dres using the rover wheels... or build an absurd jet-powered dragster to jump the VAB. 

There is no right way to play. Some people like fire and explosions, some get a kick out of building extremely elegant, efficient craft. Both the smoke-belching cluster of SRB's and Mainsails and the streamlined nuclear transport can get you to Duna. Which is better is a matter of opinion.  You are entitled to yours, but nobody else is obligated to follow it.  

[KerikBalm]

On 3/24/2016 at 3:34 PM, Yobobhi said:

 It seems like most of the current players are either people who are obsessed with Delta-V numbers, or total noobs that just make a plane and manage to make it into an orbit with .5 eccentricity.

Nah, there's lots of people obsessed with other things... we got a train guy here... I loves me my cargo spaceplanes. I love doing a reusable space program (not single stage) like the originally envisioned STS. I don't obssess over dV, but payload dimensions, and mass to orbit. I don't do things most efficient, but fun.... like this Mun cargo transporter:

http://i.imgur.com/zfSHD0M.png

Yes, I have a dV readout there...but thats not a lot of dV, but its also plenty to get down the the surface and back with hundreds to spare.

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They have added all of these heavier and heavier boosters, with more and more efficient engines, but no new planets or moons.

Luckily, they made their game easy to mod, unlike some other games... i wouldn't be surprised if they eventually incorporate OPm as stock. I myself have modded a planet:

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We have enough Delta-V with these new things to go interstellar

LOLz No

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Even though I have had tons of Duna missions, sunrise on another planet still amazes me in KSP. So why has the spirit of exploration and wonder gone over to the spirit of sounding accomplished and having large amounts of Delta-V?

What is your hangup with dV? After I do a probe mission, I like to do manned missions... and I find both "wonder" on the planet, and in the ship against the blackness of space and the stark barren landscapes of other worlds

The isolation of even a large jool mission like so:

http://i.imgur.com/AKDGVc9.png

(note the KR-2L booster doesn't leave kerbin's SOI)

At least its isolation and a feeling of being alone with no chance of help until I get a colony going:

http://i.imgur.com/tOOCGxR.png

and the ability to move stuff around the surface:

http://i.imgur.com/VvAcAD5.png

http://i.imgur.com/fDMamG9.png

Then it stats to feel like there is help nearby if needed... but I certainly don't do that for every body... the only thing on Eve right now is an unmanned rover, and debris from the manned mission (certainly no reusable shuttles moving stuff up and down from the surface of Eve)

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over to the spirit of sounding accomplished and having large amounts of Delta-V? I mean, I still only use basic rockets, just because the acceleration feels more exciting than any ion engine. ... why act like going to another planet is a routine thing that you get a little picture badge for when you can be thrilled by dust kicked up by your engine as you land on an alien world? Why settle for a tiny blue glow when you can see the trail of flame and smoke from a rocket? Why go for Delta-V when you can go for a craft that makes you happy?

You're really hung up on dV... the ion engine? lol, I almost never use that thing, most people on the forums say as much, its TWR is really low, who has the patience for that? even LV-Ns try my patience... thats why you see a lot of my designs with aerospikes, poodles, and KR-2Ls. My mk3-cargo + 2.5m rover family of craft makes me happy... and I'm not just going to cram in the dV, nor am I a noob that barely gets to orbit with some horribly eccentric orbit.

Do you see me posting little badges?

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It still makes me anxious when I see re-entry heating lighting up my heat shield, even though I have gone through hundreds of re-entries.  No matter how many parachutes I deploy, it will always relive me to see the g-meter rise and the chutes grow wider as they fully deploy.

I remember the old days of LOL-smashing into the soup-osphere without a care in the world, its better now, No?

[Docsprock]

Build rocket. Launch. See how high it goes.

Build next rocket: Add more boosters, add more struts. Launch. See it go higher than first rocket. Hmm, pattern detected.

etc.

That's the old days to me.

[Jas0n]

On 3/24/2016 at 7:34 AM, Yobobhi said:

space center had palm trees

When did the space center have palm trees?! I've playing long enough to remember the great forum apocalypse but I have no memory of palm trees. 

[Corona688]

It had palm trees, very briefly, well before things like RCS existed.  I never saw them except in screenshots, and I think I started around 0.8.5.

[Alshain]

Yes, I remember the old "moar boosters" method of KSP.  It was a lot less fun.

[tg626]

I've been to Duna only once manned and only 2 or 3 times with a probe.  Jool once with a Voyager like probe.  I captured my first asteroid just last night. 

I have the DV chart right on my desk.  I tweak my rockets to do everything I can to not leave debris with resorting to tracking station terminations.  Right now I'm struggling to make a ship capable of getting to Eve for a manned flyby as I don't want to leave chunks behind.  

So even by the numbers I'm still exploring, testing, tweaking, et. al.  

Cause that's how I kerbal.

EDIT: probably worth mentioning, I've been at this since v0.24

Edited June 17, 2016 by tg626

[jarmund]

VERY old days of KSP? I doubt it. I joined with version 0.24, so I guess you could call me an inbetweener, maybe. I've returned surface samples from both Eeloo and Eve, without dV info, but I myself find it far more interesting to properly plan ahead with a mission profile, instead of the trial and error method.

However, I consider this to be all moot, because what is by far the most important aspect of this is: Everyone should (and probably is?) playing the game the way it is the most enjoyable to them, regardless of how the game is played by the majority or what Squad envisioned it. We have @Overland bulding trains, and I can only say that I'm in awe of the ones who manage to find an unintended source of enjoyment to that degree. He plays KSP the way he likes, I play the way I like, youtubers gonna youtube precission engineering, and Booster fans will attach moar boosters. Beyond that, I wish everyone involved good speed with their style of play, regardless of how that might be, as long as it's a playstyle they use because they find it the most enjoyable. 

Edited June 17, 2016 by jarmund

[kmMango]

I'll just leave this here. I think it about sums up our arguments. 

 

[wumpus]

On 6/16/2016 at 6:13 PM, KerikBalm said:

Nah, there's lots of people obsessed with other things... we got a train guy here... I loves me my cargo spaceplanes. I love doing a reusable space program (not single stage) like the originally envisioned STS. 

My "obsession" was building things largely out the "hammer" SRB.  Before 1.0 it was the most primitive part available.  Building Munar/Minmus (and back) vehicles out of "demo only" parts and no asparagus meant adding boosters "layer cake" style (and mostly hammers).

I think that explosive staging is back (some of the early 1.0.x editions made it nearly impossible), but it still isn't the same with the career restrictions on mass.  I always liked to make a bigger ship out of lower-tech parts, and strongly disagreed with Squad's career mode decision to force higher-tech solutions to get around part count limitations (the artificial limitations of the VAB, not any inherent lag issues).

[monstah]

28 minutes ago, wumpus said:

part count limitations (the artificial limitations of the VAB, not any inherent lag issues).

My most hated "new" "feature" of the game, honestly.

Other than that, the "old way of playing" felt pretty dumb to me. Moar Power = Moar Height, Go Up Then Go Left, Reentry Is Straigt Down, and all that. The game has done nothing but improve ever since.

Edited June 21, 2016 by monstah

[KerikBalm]

1 hour ago, wumpus said:

My "obsession" was building things largely out the "hammer" SRB.  Before 1.0 it was the most primitive part available.  Building Munar/Minmus (and back) vehicles out of "demo only" parts and no asparagus meant adding boosters "layer cake" style (and mostly hammers).

I think that explosive staging is back (some of the early 1.0.x editions made it nearly impossible), but it still isn't the same with the career restrictions on mass.  I always liked to make a bigger ship out of lower-tech parts, and strongly disagreed with Squad's career mode decision to force higher-tech solutions to get around part count limitations (the artificial limitations of the VAB, not any inherent lag issues).

Play sandbox or science mode?

Although I will say the part count limit is a bit bad to me, but the mass limits "make sense" in a way.

I guess part count is a crude way of measuring vessel complexity... and it sort of makes sense that a more complex vehicle needs a better VAB

[wumpus]

2 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

Play sandbox or science mode?

Although I will say the part count limit is a bit bad to me, but the mass limits "make sense" in a way.

I guess part count is a crude way of measuring vessel complexity... and it sort of makes sense that a more complex vehicle needs a better VAB

I was going to play "pre-unlocked career" (just so I could see the percent returned from recycled spacecraft) when I heard about the "leadership initiative" strategy and how it emphasized "firsts" over missions.  I'm not sure it will pay (on 80%, the reputation gate is nasty), but I'm still on career (hopefully not retracting landing gears will remove my phantom torque).

[Mjarf]

As long as your way of playing involves spending large amounts of propellant, I approve it. 

[Corona688]

On 6/16/2016 at 4:13 PM, KerikBalm said:

What is your hangup with dV?

Now I'm imagining "Aces High" with "dV" instead.

Jump in the cockpit and start up the engines
Remove all the wheelblocks there's no time to waste
Gathering speed as we head down the runway
Gotta get airborne before it's too late.

Running, scrambling, flying
Rolling, turning, diving, going in again.
Running, scrambling, flying
Rolling, turning, diving.
Run, live to fly, fly to live, do or die
Run, live to fly, fly to live. Delta Vee!

[Tw1]

I think there's something that can be taken away from the op here, at least about exploration, even if it's not quite the intended message. 

When designing a game, story, toy, play equipment, etc, leaving stuff out can be as useful as adding in. If you sprinkle in sparse, ill defined details, that gives the brain a starting point, imagination fills in the rest, and does so in all kinds of ways. In a playground, a simple metal wheel on a fence can become the controls for all kinds of things. 

When you add more detail -say you replace the generic wheel with one that looks like it's from a racing car. The kids can still imagine it as controlling a plane or boat, but doing so requires more brain power than before, because now the cues which say "This should be a car" need to be overridden. 

In KSP, we can take this a little further. In the olden days, things were still undefined. Science was still coming. We could hop from planet, to planet, pretending to discover and explore, with the thought that we'd someday we'd be doing it for 'real'. 

When "sceince" came, it was... Underwhelming. And the closest thing in stock to mapping... Had a simplistic, immersion harming instant result. The "Biomes" aren't exactly bad, but they don't have much subtlety. Two Mun crators may look different to the discerning explorer, but to the game they're both "highland crators". 

So while they've added much too the came, in a way, somethings aren't quite as they used to be. 

On 15/06/2016 at 6:55 PM, RocketBlam said:

It's the nature of the beast. The thrill of exploration eventually fades after you've landed on every planet and moon multiple times.

Also, now that I think about it, there really isn't any "exploring" in KSP. There's nothing out there to "find". 

This is part of the problem. Unless you've got an eye for subtlety, most of each planet is pretty samey. If only science was about photographing landforms and recording data, rather than collecting points... 

On the subject of old KSP, old Duna had a few more dramatic landscapes IMHO. 

On 16/06/2016 at 3:52 PM, Kaiser82 said:

There is always something special about a well tuned craft, or a clunky, barely flying pig someone made for fun.

Or a well tuned flying pig which looks like it's been thrown together in a junkyard.   Some of my favourite craft have been ones with the Frankenstein/home made aesthetic, yet despite their looks, they performed admirably. 

This is one concern in recent KSP versions for me. The parts are becoming more uniformly styled, and heading towards a commercial space look, over the beautiful mishmash of old. 

Case in point: The mk1 cockpit, going from fighter jet to commercial, and the inline loosing its patternation and becoming structural part + glass bubble. 

I do think there's something of the achievable, improvised, do it yourself vibe that's getting lost there. Especially now with the tech tree requiring some parts be less effective than others...

 

And Idk, I can also see the case against the larger parts. Yeah, super asparagus strutted like a bike wheel wasn't the most realistic rocket, but there was a certain level of structural engineering skill required to launch large payloads...

It's not quite the same when you can achieve the same just by wheeling out a bigger parts.

 Unless you scale everything up, and decide that orbital assembly is for suckers... 

Edited June 23, 2016 by Tw1

[Kepler68]

i think I'm at about the midpoint between noob with 0.5 orbit and pro with grand tour missions in 5 minutes. i can barely get to and from duna or gilly and i have done a flyby of moho. i still feel relieved when i get those parachutes open returning from interplanetary space . 

[Bill Phil]

On ‎6‎/‎21‎/‎2016 at 0:35 AM, kmMango said:

I'll just leave this here. I think it about sums up our arguments. 

 

 

Here it is...

[Hodari]

I don't think the problem is that they took the adventure or excitement out of the game.  The problem is that no matter how exciting something is the first time you do it, after you've done it enough times, it becomes routine and eventually even boring.  You can still play the game by experimenting and seeing what works...until you've done everything enough times to already KNOW what you need to do.

And even the real space program had this issue.  The first moon landing was exciting and people were willing to throw almost any amount of resources into it.  By the third attempt, Apollo 13 barely even got any news coverage at all until the explosion.  And soon after that, the remaining missions started getting cancelled and no one's really bothered to try and go back since then.

[foamyesque]

I in fact have a screenshot of the palm-tree&pond KSC, which I promptly scribbled all over to show I wanted a Kerbal graveyard :v

 

I've also got a picture which is, to me, the quintessence of old-style KSP:

 

[THX1138]

On 24/03/2016 at 2:34 PM, Yobobhi said:

We have enough Delta-V with these new things to go interstellar,

I'm not sure that's true at all. Interstellar, with stock parts? Can someone else confirm this? I don't know the numbers well enough to actually calculate an answer.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, THX1138 said:

I'm not sure that's true at all. Interstellar, with stock parts? Can someone else confirm this? I don't know the numbers well enough to actually calculate an answer.

You can reach generation ship levels of velocity (≥100,000m/s), about 25 generations of healthy Japanese people (one of the longer lifespan averages; who knows how long Kerbals live) per lightyear, but that's about it.

 

Edited August 14, 2016 by Guest

[Talos]

OP is one of those "Oh I'm old school so I'm better than everyone else" kinds of players. Here I though they only existed in awful shooters, but here we are.
I might be new, but I personally enjoy the idea of exploring new places and sending various things into space. As for planets, just get a mod that adds more planets. Don't wait for Squad if you're that eager for something.

That, or this is just a troll looking to bait.

[samstarman5]

I still remember an old Couch Stream vid with Spooty where he was playtesting 0.17 shortly before it came out. You know, where we acquired more planets.  He had strapped SRB's on multiple stages, and pulled a Babe Ruth by just pointing where to achieve a rendezvous with Jool.  All of this, without any calculations or the like, landed him right where he predicted. To be fair, he was surprised he pulled it off, but it just reminds me you don't need to pull out the graphic calculators or spend two hours before worrying about delta-v and such.

Sometimes going for the Hail Mary is what you need to do.  That, and adding SRB's in unconventional places, too.

10 hours ago, THX1138 said:

I'm not sure that's true at all. Interstellar, with stock parts? Can someone else confirm this? I don't know the numbers well enough to actually calculate an answer.

You only need enough to escape the solar SOI. Once there, you are interstellar.  System escape velocity was achieved back when it was just Kerbin and the Mun, without the Kraken's help.

[W. Kerman]

I was a total noob, but then I learned from the Voodoo masters who you call, hardcore. Scott Manley, Matt Lowne, etc. They are cool people, also, the reason the challenges forum exists was because people wanted moar challenge. Alas these foul foes creep along the this forum, spreading their slime...