I wonder why Squad doesn't want to give us a dV and TWR readout

[tater]

Adding to what regex said about the coding being non-trivial, what about a dv readout that is not precise? Ie: Suborbital, possibly orbital, definitely orbital, possibly escape, definitely escape, and so forth. The readout would be Werner's board with a drawing of a parabola hitting Kerbin, an orbit with a "?" next to it, and orbit and a tangent with a "?" on it, and so forth... Assuming all the boundary value cases fit in there.

[Guest]

Just now, Hcube said:

I don't understand how we can have a ∆v readout for manoeuver nodes

Because that's simply the magnitude of the maneuver vector.

Just now, Hcube said:

and yet we can't know how much delta V our ship has.

Because it's a much more complex problem than you think.

[KerbonautInTraining]

If something happens and it can't calculate it could give an error in the engineer's report i.e.

"Slow down! Our scientists are having trouble figuring out how far this rocket will go. Make sure your staging is set up properly."

[Nich]

Here is an example of a corner case KER does not account for.  Ker says it has over 3000 dv but in reality because of the thrust vectors it has 0 dv.  If you have 2 engines with a 10 degree offset KER would not account for thrust fighting each other.

[Foxster]

1 hour ago, NathanKell said:

Yeah, I encourage anyone who thinks it's super easy to, like, actually write it and prove it.

Because there's definitely thousands of lines of C# involved, and many tears.

Well, yes, to do it from scratch is not trivial. However, why reinvent the wheel? KER has all the code in there and I believe that MJ uses the same code too, so just ask one of those guys if you might pretty please "borrow" it. 

Not forgetting: "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard".

Edited March 31, 2016 by Foxster

[zarakon]

1 hour ago, Hcube said:

I don't understand how we can have a ∆v readout for manoeuver nodes and kspedia explaining what it is, and yet we can't know how much delta V our ship has. It makes literally no sense to me

The maneuver calculation is extremely straightforward.

Calculating how much your ship has left is more complicated when you start considering things like fuel lines, different engine types firing at the same time, and atmospheric changes

[Padishar]

21 minutes ago, Foxster said:

Well, yes, to do it from scratch is not trivial. However, why reinvent the wheel? KER has all the code in there and I believe that MJ uses the same code too, so just ask one of those guys if you might pretty please "borrow" it.

Because, firstly, the KER code is licensed as GPL so Squad would either have to GPL the whole of KSP or would have to negotiate an alternate license (which, given several people have contributed code to it, would be complex, if not impossible).  Secondly, as I mentioned above, the code in KER has various issues that make it not work correctly as soon as your vessel and/or mission plan deviate from a fairly restricted, linear, staged progression (MJ did use it for a time but reverted to its own code that also has similar issues).

21 minutes ago, Foxster said:

Not forgetting: "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard".

Gargling sand is also hard but I'm not going to be trying it any time soon...

1 hour ago, Nich said:

Here is an example of a corner case KER does not account for.  Ker says it has over 3000 dv but in reality because of the thrust vectors it has 0 dv.  If you have 2 engines with a 10 degree offset KER would not account for thrust fighting each other.

That example should work correctly if you turn on the "Simulate using vectored thrust values" option in the settings.

Edited March 31, 2016 by Padishar

[Foxster]

16 minutes ago, Padishar said:

Because, firstly, the KER code is licensed as GPL so Squad would either have to GPL the whole of KSP or would have to negotiate an alternate license (which, given several people have contributed code to it, would be complex, if not impossible).  Secondly, as I mentioned above, the code in KER has various issues that make it not work correctly as soon as your vessel and/or mission plan deviate from a fairly restricted, linear, staged progression (MJ did use it for a time but reverted to its own code that also has similar issues).

My understanding (limited though it is) is that Sarbian uses the KER code in MJ. If he can cope with that, I'd suggest Squad could probably cope too.

It wouldn't be the first time mods and/or their developers have been brought into the Squad fold to get a useful feature and the vast majority of players would, I think, believe this would be an incredibly useful addition.  

Edited March 31, 2016 by Foxster

[Guest]

11 minutes ago, Foxster said:

My understanding (limited though it is) is that Sarbian uses the KER code in MJ. If he can cope with that, I'd suggest Squad could probably cope too.

MechJeb is GPL'd code as well.  Since the licenses are compatible (the same) and the licenses allow sharing (nay, require sharing), there is no issue.  Squad does not use a GPL compatible license so (one of) the project(s) would have to be relicensed.

Quote

It wouldn't be the first time mods and/or their developers have been brought into the Squad fold to get a useful feature and the vast majority of players would, I think, believe this would be an incredibly useful addition.  

Relicensing a project requires the permission of all authors on the project.  For single author projects, such as those included from Roverdude or Porkjet, this is a very simple affair.

Edited March 31, 2016 by regex

[Foxster]

Umm, I'm not a fan of Margaret Thatcher but she did have one excellent saying: "Bring me solutions, not problems". 

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Foxster said:

Umm, I'm not a fan of Margaret Thatcher but she did have one excellent saying: "Bring me solutions, not problems". 

There is a solution, but you're ignoring it in favor of "bring me it NAO!!!"

[Padishar]

4 minutes ago, Foxster said:

My understanding (limited though it is) is that Sarbian uses the KER code in MJ. If he can cope with that, I'd suggest Squad could probably cope too.

Your understanding is wrong.  As I posted, MJ did use the KER code for a while but switched back to its own code quite some time ago.  It isn't a matter of whether Squad could cope, it is whether the player base would accept a stock feature with very easy to provoke issues.

6 minutes ago, Foxster said:

It wouldn't be the first time mods and/or their developers have been brought into the Squad fold to get a useful feature and the vast majority of players would, I think, believe this would be an incredibly useful addition.

No, it wouldn't.  However, the issues with the licensing I mentioned are real and, given that I'm pretty sure that at least one of the contributors to the code hasn't been seen for well over a year, it may be impossible to get permission to relax the license.  In any case, the various bits of the code in KER, despite my fixes, cleanup and optimisation work over the last couple of years, could be done in better ways with access to the core game code so it would make sense for it to be rewritten anyway.

Also, making claims about the "vast majority of players" is not recommended, the majority of KSP players have never even heard of KER let alone installed it.

[Foxster]

Just now, regex said:

There is a solution, but you're ignoring it in favor of "bring me it NAO!!!"

Oh contraire, I am not in any kind of a rush as I have no personal use for this, being quite happy with MJ. I just think new players would get a lot of this, hence my curiosity why Squad haven't previously implemented it.   

[Guest]

Just now, Foxster said:

Oh contraire, I am not in any kind of a rush as I have no personal use for this, being quite happy with MJ. I just think new players would get a lot of this, hence my curiosity why Squad haven't previously implemented it.   

Because it's a bigger problem than you think and other work was deemed more important.

Edited March 31, 2016 by regex

[Padishar]

Just now, Foxster said:

Oh contraire, I am not in any kind of a rush as I have no personal use for this, being quite happy with MJ. I just think new players would get a lot of this, hence my curiosity why Squad haven't previously implemented it.   

That has been answered several times in this thread already, have you not been reading it.

They have better things to spend their dev time on.

[Foxster]

3 minutes ago, regex said:

Because it's a bigger problem than you think and other work was deemed more important.

That is certainly what NathanKell suggests. I just think there are ways and means around the difficulty that could perhaps be explored. 

1 minute ago, Padishar said:

That has been answered several times in this thread already, have you not been reading it.

They have better things to spend their dev time on.

In your opinion. And no need to shout, I'm not deaf. 

Edited March 31, 2016 by Foxster

[Padishar]

1 minute ago, Foxster said:

In your opinion. And no need to shout, I'm not deaf.

No, my opinion on the matter is irrelevant, it is Squad's opinion that counts.

Given at least 3 posts had already said it and you were still asking I had to assume you were blind or just not paying attention...

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Foxster said:

That is certainly what NathanKell suggests. I just think there are ways and means around the difficulty that could perhaps be explored. 

And what we're trying to tell you is that those ways and means aren't necessarily possible.  No one is trying to prevent KSP from having a stock craft delta-V indicator here.

[Foxster]

3 minutes ago, Padishar said:

No, my opinion on the matter is irrelevant, it is Squad's opinion that counts.

Given at least 3 posts had already said it and you were still asking I had to assume you were blind or just not paying attention...

I must have missed the three dev posts saying "We have better things to spend our dev time on". Apologies, I thought they were just opinions of players. 

[Wjolcz]

I get why people are frustrated about the lack of dV and TWR in the game. I'm not very happy about it too, but the devs don't do it to make us angry. I'm pretty sure they know it's a needed feature, but at the same time lack the occasion/spare time to work on it for some reason.

So instead of asking "why don't they do something?" you could check out the change log as it is, at least in my opinion, pretty big every update.

[Foxster]

1 minute ago, Veeltch said:

I get why people are frustrated about the lack of dV and TWR in the game. I'm not very happy about it too, but the devs don't do it to make us angry. I'm pretty sure they know it's a needed feature, but at the same time lack the occasion/spare time to work on it for some reason.

So instead of asking "why don't they do something?" you could check out the change log as it is, at least in my opinion, pretty big every update.

If the answer is priorities then fine. I was just curious why such an obviously useful feature hadn't been implemented some time ago, thinking it might have been a gameplay decision. 

[pandaman]

I can't comment on how easy or hard it would be to code, I'll gladly just take the word if those that know this stuff far better than I do on that.

One reason I think it may may not have been done yet, or given a higher priority, is that they also need to decide the best way to include it in terms of how much info and detail and in what way to present it with regards to the UI etc.

The KER way works fine, but it can impose on screen space a bit at times.

[Hcube]

3 hours ago, regex said:

Because that's simply the magnitude of the maneuver vector.

Because it's a much more complex problem than you think.

You misunderstood me. I'm not saying "if it's possible to do it for manoeuvers then it can be done as easily for ships" , i know it's only a vector magnitude.

What i'm saying is that from a *gameplay* point of view it makes no sense to have this ∆v information without any way to know how much ∆v a ship has.

 

Also @zarakon 

Edited March 31, 2016 by Hcube

[tater]

^^^exactly. You get the dv of a burn, and the time, but zero data on how much dv you actually have, or how long your engines can fire---the latter should be trivial (I could be entirely wrong here) for a given stage, as they burn fuel at a fixed rate, and they know the amount in the tank, right?

dv is obviously more complicated as the remaining mass is constantly changing with burns.

[Ixenzo]

Situation: you have to introduce a new player to the game. They may have a Ph.D in rocketry or be a 14 year old kid that has only played shooters before or be a stay at home wife in her thirties. You already have a tutorial system on how to build basic craft and execute basic maneuvers that helps to get a grasp of how things generally work. After that, they begin to explore the game.

You now want to introduce a parameter those players most probably have not seen in their lives before. How do you accomplish that without it being too complex but ELI5-style and 100% correct in terms of physics? Please consider the attention span of an average player.

For a big chunk of people rockets are up-goer machines that work on magic and math. They don't want see the math though, they want magic. If Squad had really concerned this problem, they would have implemented their solution a long time ago. And it's not like this game is short on the community side either.

Edited March 31, 2016 by Ixenzo