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

[pipercarman]

To be honest it would make it easier. As I can't be asked to make calculations, so I normally make a overpowered ship and it works.

[tater]

25 minutes ago, Ixenzo said:

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.

Assume that perhaps science mode s where noob players are steered to to learn the ropes.

Instead of a mere "milestone" award, have that milestone actually meaningful in terms of data given the player. Delta v is not a complex concept, and in fact every player that actually tries to leave orbit (or rendezvous) already sees for every single maneuver node they already use. Having that number appear once they get to orbit, for example, as something they cannot miss, is a little learning experience. It could be a pop up window upon reaching orbit the 1st time in a given save of that mode. "Congratulations on reaching orbit! You've discovered that your spacecraft needs 4500 m/s to achieve orbit, any less than that in the VAB, and you won't make it!"

To continue with your random player example. They get to the Mun, and plot a node to get back, but come up 50 m/s short on their maneuver node. They in fact chose a poor place to do the burn, and actually had the dv to get home, but only know that they now have 0 LFO left. Had the game bothered to tell them they had XXX dv remaining, and their sloppy, plotted burn used XXX + 50 dv, they'd have perhaps tried out nodes in different places of their orbit to see what if anything worked. Instead, they learn "moar boosters" when the craft they made was perfectly suited for the job.

 

Edited March 31, 2016 by tater

[AlanP]

Here my question. They already calculate thrust vectors and the like, when you preform a burn. Couldn't they just use the available fuel to extropolate the dv and TWR? It seem to me you just use the same code you have elsewhere.

Thanks Squad great game.

Edited March 31, 2016 by AlanP

[fireblade274]

8 hours ago, theorigin said:

I am really curious about this too!

The only mods i (ever use) are KER and KAS (<- this is a must have in stock too!)

if at the very least they would allow for placing struts in space, id be a happy camper. That's the only thing I use KIS/KAS for

[tater]

34 minutes ago, AlanP said:

Here my question. They already calculate thrust vectors and the like, when you preform a burn. Couldn't they just use the available fuel to extropolate the dv and TWR? It seem to me you just use the same code you have elsewhere.

Thanks Squad great game.

In short, no. Every unit time that passes during the burn decreases the mass of the craft and changes the twr and remaining dv.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Hcube said:

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.

Even without an in-game delta-V calculator it makes perfect sense to have the delta-V information for a burn displayed.  I've seen players back in the day figure out how much delta-V they had available based on that number and the rate at which they were burning fuel (ChickenKeeper24 used to do that).  Plus, there's nothing stopping you from calculating it by hand.

And, as has been stated literally to death in this thread, it is a non-trivial problem to have a delta-V calculator that works 99% of the time in KSP, so while there may not be a valid "gameplay" reason for both, there is a very valid reason why only one is in the game at this time, and the one that's there is very useful even without the other.

[klgraham1013]

7 hours ago, Padishar said:

• They consider the Unity 5 upgrade much more important to spend developer time on especially given the complexity of the problem and the availability of mods that already provide the feature.

Possibly, but I'd argue that dV and TWR readouts are more important than resources, plane parts, and many other features in the past few updates.

[Hobbes Novakoff]

@regex, this may be one of the few times I actually agree with you. People seem to think that SQUAD can just type some maths in and it would be done. That's not the case. First, because of difficulty calculating thrust vectors and whatnot, though I'm fairly sure that it can be done given time. Second, because how the hell are you going to implement that in the UI, in a way that's friendly to new players? To those of us who are not enamored with the game enough to go on the forums and post about it, DV is basically a meaningless number. While you may think that sticking a gauge in one corner might be good enough, it's not, especially for a new player who doesn't have the time to read through a zillion pages of tutorial, and might end up just skipping the page on Delta-V because it sounds like some unnecessary advanced concept? Personally, here's how I think it should be done. Have a window that you can open. It contains basic statistics about your craft, L-W-H, mass, crew, etc. (like the Engineer's Report) as well as some info about the performance. By "some info" I mean text, saying "This rocket [will/won't] be able to lift off, [you should be fine/add more engines]." Also, something describing the range, maybe with a nice gauge. Also, account for player skill. "This rocket will easily be able to go to orbit. If you're a good pilot, it'll get to the Mun. It probably won't be able to return, though." Something like that. Then you can click on an "advanced" button (a la From The Depths) to view stage-by-stage dV, TWR, burn time, IsP, thrust, mass, amount of "bits, blips, flops, and fannies," as Yatzhee put it. (Of course you could set this to be default.) The problem is that this requires a lot of dev time, because it needs to be polished and make sense. 

[klgraham1013]

5 hours 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.

Nathan, you're awesome, so take this as my opinion and not an insult to you.

Players critiquing a game shouldn't care about how hard it was to program.  Judge the product on it's own merits, as compared to what it's attempting to do, and to it's peers.  Transformers doesn't become a good movie because that CG was gosh darn hard to make.  In my opinion, KSP is harmed by not having these readouts.  Also, asking someone who criticizes a product to "do it better themselves" always irritates me.  People should be allowed to criticize without being a creator themselves. 

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, klgraham1013 said:

Also, asking someone who criticizes a product to "do it better themselves" always irritates me.

@NathanKell was specifically addressing those who think this is something Squad can crap out in a few days without thinking, not the criticism of "we would like this in the game, it is a crucial feature".  The reason the feature has been pushed off until after the Unity 5 update likely has something to do with its complexity.

7 minutes ago, Hobbes Novakoff said:

Second, because how the hell are you going to implement that in the UI, in a way that's friendly to new players?

Exactly.  And how will it look to advanced players?  I'll bet you that even after we get one in the game I'll still be installing KER or MJ because it'll have more information in a format I'm used to.  Friendly to new players is not friendly to advanced players, and ideas on what is needed and what is not will likely vary wildly between devs inside and outside the company.

[AlanP]

1 hour ago, tater said:

In short, no. Every unit time that passes during the burn decreases the mass of the craft and changes the twr and remaining dv.

That seems like it should be relatively easily calculated or estimated?

[kiwi1960]

it MUST be a conspiracy.... they don't want us going to any other planet.... especially not Duna!! (there be aliens on Duna!)

 

 

[tater]

 

1 minute ago, AlanP said:

That seems like it should be relatively easily calculated or estimated?

It's not fundamentally incredibly difficult, particularly if everyone built rockets that looked like rockets, but they don't. It has to deal with the bizarre crafts that many people make.

 

[NoMrBond]

Weren't dV and TWR were planned features for 1.0? I mean they were stated as such in February 2015

I believe it was HarvesteR who later said they weren't included because they weren't ready

[AlanP]

19 minutes ago, tater said:

 

It's not fundamentally incredibly difficult, particularly if everyone built rockets that looked like rockets, but they don't. It has to deal with the bizarre crafts that many people make.

 

Those rockets still function in the game(mostly). therefore the complex parts of the calculations are already being done in the game at the point of burn?

What I saying is all the elements are in the game already. From there it shouldn't be an enoumous leap to conbined them in a form to calculate Dv and TWR. They don't have to reinvent the wheel just assemble it.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, AlanP said:

Those rockets still function in the game(mostly). therefore the complex parts of the calculations are already being done in the game at the point of burn?

No.

2 minutes ago, AlanP said:

What I saying is all the elements are in the game already. From there it shouldn't be an enoumous leap to conbined them in a form to calculate Dv and TWR. They don't have to reinvent the wheel just assemble it.

Well then, there must be some other reason why everyone is claiming it's such a non-trivial problem to solve.

[Hobbes Novakoff]

46 minutes ago, regex said:

Friendly to new players is not friendly to advanced players

Which is exactly why I suggested an "easy mode" where it tells you whether or not you can get to orbit, as well as "advanced mode" exposing all the numbers. I'd probably still use KER for the in-flight readouts. In general, Squad needs to figure out a way to put lots of numbers and readouts onscreen while still making it mesh with existing UI. All respect to KER, but the info windows have about as much visual appeal as an Excel spreadsheet.

[cantab]

Personally I would be happy with just lowest (in editor) or current (in flight) stage only. That's plenty adequate for simple rockets and should be a lot simpler to program than trying to do a multistage one.

[Pthigrivi]

So yeah. At some point I do think this is worth doing. Im also not a programmer so I never feel like it makes sense for me to pass judgment on dev time. I like KER and Mechjeb's readouts but there's a lot of information there and I can also see the devs being leery about dumping all that on new players. I've also said before I totally get the value of trial and error. Doing things over and over and failing and slipping into inefficient designs may not be the most time-effective way of learning, but it does give you a kind of intuitive sense of how these things work and how they don't that's absolutely valuable. Early on when I was playing I just broke out the calculator and honestly it taught me a lot to break these things down manually. At some point though, once you've been to the Mun and Minmus several times and are starting to plan a big Duna mission, maybe with multiple launches and a dozen or more stages, I think it would be a huge help to offer tools like this. Once you go interplanetary there's so much going on that taking this little load off, giving players some clear, efficient tools to free up time to focus on deeper strategies like ISRU and surface exploration and reusable landers only helps players do more impressive things and get more out of the time they spend playing. 

[Malah]

Yes, a dV/TWR readout would be awesome

I want something like this:

[mcirish3]

Guys it is extremely hard just to get an accurate local clock on any of the planets in KSP and the planets are all on rails (which is why as of right now one does not exist, since I have not made it yet and I don't think anyone else has tackled the problem) I can only imagine how hard a dynamic DV is to calculate *shivers*

[Pthigrivi]

9 minutes ago, cantab said:

Personally I would be happy with just lowest (in editor) or current (in flight) stage only. That's plenty adequate for simple rockets and should be a lot simpler to program than trying to do a multistage one.

Maybe, but to me when you're doing simple rockets having a dV calculator isn't really something you need. Its not till you've been playing for a while and things get really complicated that both intuitive prediction and manual calculation become really difficult and overly time consuming. I tend to think you could leave the calculator locked until you upgrade the VAB and SHP to tier 2, but once you have it should be multi-stage. Perhaps a tier 3 upgrade could add a drop-down that would show TWR's for different bodies.

Edited March 31, 2016 by Pthigrivi

[tater]

The problem is not instantaneously determining the dv of the remaining bit of a single stage during a burn (though even that can have issues with some bizarre craft), it's anticipating what those numbers will be in the future. You need the data in the VAB, or it's not really useful. Now a "total burn time" for a given stage is easier (assumption of 100% throttle), but that doesn't help too much for planning (though it might let you know the craft in the parking LKO can make the X minute burn for Duna with the transfer stage alone).

[blowfish]

6 hours ago, Hcube said:

i think that this situation is just like having the pricetag but being unable to look how much money you've got in your wallet

I think that's called a credit card

[Guest]

31 minutes ago, Hobbes Novakoff said:

All respect to KER, but the info windows have about as much visual appeal as an Excel spreadsheet.

Well that's what I'm saying, I want an Excel spreadsheet, not something someone might find "visually appealing".  Spreadsheets are packed with information I need for planning, like burn time, sea level TWR, space TWR, sea level delta-V and vaccumn delta-V, tonnage wet and tonnage dry, all that kind of thing.  Putting it in a "spreadsheet" makes it legible and compact.

E: and yes, I understand the need for a pared down version for new players, my point really is that we still don't even have altitude to ground outside of the IVA or orbit information on the flight screen, I have zero reason to believe Squad is going to provide me with a spreadsheet.

Edited March 31, 2016 by regex