Is it true that most KSP players never go interplanetary?

[Warzouz]

1 hour ago, theTyke said:

I don't think the docking process in itself is the pain to learn. It's trying to get the rendezvous with the not-so-nimble stock maneuver node system (especially if the target sits in a high orbit).

The maneuver system might also be part of the issue why people don't do interplanetary travel (combined with the pain of learning when the transfer window to a certain body is open and learning about the deltaV needs of a trip).

The rendezvous manoeuvre is probably the harder thing to master in KSP. But your don't need it to go interplanetary. I remember doing my first Duna/Ike mission with 2 vehicles send on the same day with a dedicated lander. Their design was very near my previous Munar lander.

As for interplanetary manoeuvre, the manoeuvre tool is also very clumsy. It works fine with Mun/Minmus but very user-unfriendly for planetary encounter.

 

[teag2]

After my first few times sending interplanetary ships manually, I just use MechJeb for all of them now. It gets kinda boring sending them repeatedly 

As for the people talking about docking: My latest interplanetary ship was a giant nuclear tug with a 2 kerbal Duna lander that had all the science, and it didn't use any docking. In fact, I have explored Eve, Duna, and Jool and haven't done any docking. I have docked before, but it's much easier and more practical to just send it all up in one launch 

[Codraroll]

I played KSP for months and had quite elaborate space stations in orbit of Kerbin, the Mun and Minmus before I even considered a Duna mission. Leaving Kerbin is a very high treshold.

There is something psychological about leaving the home SOI. Early-game, you become quite attached to your little green fellows, and sending them off into the great dark takes a bit of a build-up. If you strand them on the Mun or Minmus, you can slap together a rescue mission and save them in a week or two. Returning safely home from those bodies isn't hard either. You'll usually have fuel enough to make orbit, and from there the trip back home is just a trip down Kerbin's gravity well. Hit for the center of the system, aerobrake until suborbital, release parachutes, and call the rescue chopper.

Going to other planets, though, means that you'll have to aim into the boundless sky, and hope you hit your target. Then follows a great timewarp, a year or more of game time may pass while you're on the way, and then you have to brake down, make orbit around the target planet, and then land. Until you've tried, in Stock you have no way of knowing whether you've packed enough fuel. And Kod help you if you plan to return to Kerbin. On my Duna mission, I had barely enough fuel to make a circular orbit around Duna, and I had to attempt four landings before I managed a configuration that would leave me enough fuel to rendezvous with the mother ship afterwards. And then I had to assemble a rescue craft to get the trio of astronauts home again. That craft was basically just a Hitchhiker with a drive section, and after assembly and refuelling in orbit it had enough dV to get to Duna (after another great timewarp to optimize transfer windows), rendezvous with the stranded ship in Duna orbit, timewarp again, and then bring the astronauts back to Kerbin orbit. Then I had to send up another craft to land the Kerbals.

All in all, my great mission required orbital assembly of two craft, several failures, hours of game time, and while I had built the aforementioned elaborate Kerbin, Mun and Minmus stations within the first year and a half of game time, the Duna mission pushed the game clock to somewhere around mid-year-5. I had spent all of two minutes on Duna's surface, collecting a few hundred points of Science, planting a flag, then packing up and leaving. A tremendous effort compared to what I got out of it, and compared to how quickly I had proceeded in Kerbin's SOI, this felt like I had wasted four in-game years on a single mission. Like my Space Center had been sitting there useless, collecting dust while I was away. That's when I decided to install some mods, to at least make interplanetary travel easier. Or maybe to just get more stuff to do in Kerbin's SOI.

As it stands, I think we need more reasons to get to the outer planets, and/or skipping stones to go there. I feel colonization could be a step in both the right directions, as it'd be a less daunting task to launch a Duna mission from, say, shipyards on Minmus. And with a base down on Duna, Dres isn't that far away. You'd get a reason to bring Kerbals to other planets, you'd get more transfer windows (Kerbin -> Jool, Duna -> Jool and Dres -> Jool would rarely overlap, and it'd be a simple matter of picking what planet you wanted to launch from), and since ship construction on other planets would be vastly more expensive than on Kerbin (at least, at first?) you'd find a good use for those Funds that keep heaping up. Is upgrading the Tracking Station to level 3 a matter of pocket money? Try levelling up the Vall shipyard, then reconsider the state of your wallet. Alas, this requires work so extensive that hasn't even been done with mods. I'm not sure if it's even theoretically possible. Maybe Squad will address the issue one day? For the majority of the player base, I dare say it's way more important than adding new planets.

But in the mean time,Kerbin's SOI acts as the lone safe island in a giant ocean. It's the only planet to ever be "home", and if you want your Kerbals to ever return, you have to construct craft capable of both reaching the target and get back home, which is very difficult with the few tools and limited readouts Stock provides you with.

[septemberWaves]

It took me about 100 hours and the installation of MechJeb to finally go interplanetary (I sent a Venera-style probe to Eve). It took me a bit longer to realize that MechJeb had a bunch of autopilot features other than the manoeuvre planner, and consequently to learn how to dock and how to do a proper gravity turn. But since then I've had no difficulties at all going interplanetary, and I love to make increasingly large MMSEVs (Multi-Mission Space Exploration Vehicles) for going just about everywhere. It's incredibly challenging to learn how to go interplanetary in stock (or at least it used to be, I imagine the in-game wiki now helps) but once you know what you're doing it becomes very easy. And if you're anything like me you end up wanting to go further than the stock game has, and start installing planet packs and even new star systems. I expect "most" players who are surveyed say they don't go interplanetary because many of them are probably new to the game and have yet to learn how.

[mrclucks]

Going interplanetary is hard.  This is the first time in a year and a half that I have played a science/career mode and had both the know-how and proper tech to build something to go interplanetary, muck about, and return home with some nice science or screenshots but I do not have mechjeb installed and thus have to do all interplanetary transfers myself.  I do know the general gist of how to transfer and a very rough approximation  of on what angle is need from kerbin to other planets, but I'm still wasting hundreds of DV  on very rough and inaccurate burns.

KSP really needs to change their manuver system to enable players to easily manuvers tend or hundreds of days in ahead instead of only 1 orbit at a time( and a LKO orbit isnt even an hour so there's alot of clicking)

[nosirrbro]

I've been interplanetary for a very long time but it did take 40 or so hours for me to even make an eve probe, and I bet the vast majority of players haven't even got 30 hours in.

[KerikBalm]

6 minutes ago, Codraroll said:

I feel colonization could be a step in both the right directions, as it'd be a less daunting task to launch a Duna mission from, say, shipyards on Minmus. And with a base down on Duna, Dres isn't that far away. You'd get a reason to bring Kerbals to other planets, you'd get more transfer windows (Kerbin -> Jool, Duna -> Jool and Dres -> Jool would rarely overlap, and it'd be a simple matter of picking what planet you wanted to launch from), and since ship construction on other planets would be vastly more expensive than on Kerbin (at least, at first?) you'd find a good use for those Funds that keep heaping up. Is upgrading the Tracking Station to level 3 a matter of pocket money? Try levelling up the Vall shipyard, then reconsider the state of your wallet. Alas, this requires work so extensive that hasn't even been done with mods. I'm not sure if it's even theoretically possible. Maybe Squad will address the issue one day? For the majority of the player base, I dare say it's way more important than adding new planets.

But in the mean time,Kerbin's SOI acts as the lone safe island in a giant ocean. It's the only planet to ever be "home", and if you want your Kerbals to ever return, you have to construct craft capable of both reaching the target and get back home.

Well, as far as colonization, there is ISRU added... Duna in my career feels like a "home"... I've got 400 tons of "stuff" -space station- orbiting it (a large portion of which is fuel... which was expended, then replaced with stuff mined on Ike and Duna, also a large portion are the docked ISRU vessels since the station is full, they aren't on the surface mining more). In orbit I've got a large return vehicle, nuclear tugs with docking ports, one with a grabber. On the surface: a rover, asurface hab, a solar aircraft (modded propulsion)... a reusable duna lander, if I can get a craft to Duna's SOI, I can grapple it/dock with it, and fuel it back up, a crippled craft can have its kerbals moved to a station or surface hab. I've even got a modded Xenon ISRU (only works on planets with atmospheres). Laythe will be like this too... with a bigger surface hab, and more stuff for going around the surface.

You don't need to build a vessel on Minmus... just build it on Kerbin, get it to minmus, and fill it back up with ISRU.

[DChurchill]

28 minutes ago, Warzouz said:

As for interplanetary manoeuvre, the manoeuvre tool is also very clumsy. It works fine with Mun/Minmus but very user-unfriendly for planetary encounter.

Which is why I've been to Duna and Eve using the stock system, but I won't do it again unless MJ ceases to function. The stock maneuver node system is just so painful to use in an interplanetary scale.

Edited May 17, 2016 by DChurchill

[p1t1o]

1 minute ago, nosirrbro said:

I've been interplanetary for a very long time but it did take 40 or so hours for me to even make an eve probe, and I bet the vast majority of players haven't even got 30 hours in.

Back in the day, if a game was good for 30hours, you considered it a pretty good deal! I bought a game for 60GBP about a year ago, it made me cringe and my wallet nearly cracked down the middle, but about a week later I realised I had 60hours on it.

Compare it to the price of a cinema ticket!!

But anyway, I dont know how much we can say about the portrion of folks who play KSP but who aren't active here. I doubt many folks will look twice at KSP unless they are pretty interested in space/orbits/etc. I know I looked twice and look where I am.

[Kevin Kyle]

I find that leaving the Kerbin system and going interplanetary is no different than going to the Mun. Only thing that really changes is the distance and required dv obviously increase but the principle is still the same, So instead of Kerbin being the main body, the sun becomes the main body until you arrive at the target planet. I dont use mechjeb but I do use the launch window planner. Once I have the general launch window, I keep messing with the node until it comes into it. I also use the dv chart so I know I have what I need to get there. After you have done it once, it becomes a lot easier to have faith that you can get there and back.

[Alshain]

It did take me a while to get past Minmus, but keep in mind, those stats (which we haven't seen btw) are skewed by the fact that a lot of the career game takes place before leaving Kerbin's SOI.  No matter how good a game is, there are going to be a lot of players that get bored or realize the game is not their kind of game before they get any further than that.  If we were able to somehow get stats from only the people who truly enjoy the game, I think you would find it would be different.

[KerikBalm]

Well thats why I previously said that I think the question should be refined to

4 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

Lets not consider people who bought the game, but have barely played it... and only consider those that played enough to have returned from Mun/Minmus. What I want to know is:

#1) What percent of those people have gone on to interplanetary missions?

#2) For the remaining portion: what prevented them from going on interplanetary missions next?

 

PS, as noted: "The forum community is conspicuously smaller than even the 30,000 Steam ratings (let alone the total number of sales!)"

Posts by forum members about what planets they've visited aren't reallly relevant... its far from an "unbiased" sampling of KSP players, so it doesn't help answer #1. A post about what was holding you back before going interplanetary, would help answer #2.

Its not worth asking why someone hasn't gone interplanetary if they haven't made it to one of the moons.

So how much of a barrier is this interplanetary step, and is another "stepping stone" (a dwarf trojan planet) warranted?

Edited May 17, 2016 by KerikBalm

[Pecan]

52 minutes ago, Codraroll said:

I played KSP for months and had quite elaborate space stations in orbit of Kerbin, the Mun and Minmus before I even considered a Duna mission. Leaving Kerbin is a very high treshold.

There is something psychological about leaving the home SOI. Early-game, you become quite attached to your little green fellows, and sending them off into the great dark takes a bit of a build-up. If you strand them on the Mun or Minmus, you can slap together a rescue mission and save them in a week or two. Returning safely home from those bodies isn't hard either. You'll usually have fuel enough to make orbit, and from there the trip back home is just a trip down Kerbin's gravity well. Hit for the center of the system, aerobrake until suborbital, release parachutes, and call the rescue chopper....

This.

After several months I felt a bit guilty that I hadn't even tried to go somewhere else so I went to Duna just to prove i could.
Then I went back to the whole system of stations, tugs, ferries, etc. that I'd been playing about with in Kerbin SOI.
There is so much you can do with Kerbin and its two moons that can be done at any time (no wait for transfer windows) and is at least potentially 'rescuable' since it's only a few hours/days away.  It took nearly a year before I'd done everything I wanted to in Kerbin SOI and started going interplanetary as a matter of course.  That was only because I wanted to find every Easter Egg and have a transport-tycoon newtwork across the system *grin*.  I was and am quite happy to carry on with Kerbin SOI operations while interplanetary missions drift their way to encounters so don't need to time-warp a huge amount.  In a typical game I'll have at least 30 flights in progress at any time - yes KAC is vital to me!

As to the whys and why nots; I don't think docking should be blamed as most people who make it that far will probably be docking ships to their stations anyway.
Transfer window and dV planning are far more likely to be the suspects just because most people will want to make sure long-term missions at least stand a chance of success.  That said, I was showing KSP to a couple of people the other day and they were just happy to see Duna, even though the thrown-together ship had no chance of landing or returning (design by committee when the majority of said committee just want something that looks impressive).  In the end it comes down to the fact that realistic space-exploration, even in the simplified form offered by KSP, isn't easy and unless people have enough interest to read (or watch videos since not so many seem to understand the concept of literacy these days) about and learn the mechanics they just aren't going to get very far.  Ah well, if they have fun throwing rockets at the sky that's good enough.

[Red Iron Crown]

32 minutes ago, Kevin Kyle said:

I find that leaving the Kerbin system and going interplanetary is no different than going to the Mun. Only thing that really changes is the distance and required dv obviously increase but the principle is still the same, So instead of Kerbin being the main body, the sun becomes the main body until you arrive at the target planet. I dont use mechjeb but I do use the launch window planner. Once I have the general launch window, I keep messing with the node until it comes into it. I also use the dv chart so I know I have what I need to get there. After you have done it once, it becomes a lot easier to have faith that you can get there and back.

Needing a "launch window" is exactly why the principle is different. Get into Kerbin orbit and you can play with a node until you get a reasonably cheap intercept with Mun or Minmus. Same can't be said for going to another planet, if it's the wrong time of year then no amount of node fiddling will make it cheap.

The issue is that the game tells you exactly nothing about when those transfer windows occur. And it's a very tough thing to trial-and-error.

[suicidejunkie]

3 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

I think that's a great idea, though I think it should be a small planet. Maybe even a Pol/Bop type with a Gilly type moon. That would be a great stepping stone because you could ALWAYS go to it in the exact same, describable way without ever waiting for a transfer window.

Forget Gas Giant 2, I want a Kerbal Trojan!

Also, there needs to be a horse hidden somewhere on it.

[Cairol]

I played KSP for a good while now. but I also are on of those that hadn't got to Duna yet...
I use RemoteTech. So I had the fear that my satellites would de-arrange themselves on their orbits when I do fast forward for years and years to get
transfer windows for other planets.
Now I cheated them into perfect orbital periods to avoid this, because I really don't want to reposition them each time I go somewhere far away.

Another reason is, that my rocket designs all failed to make it to Duna and back.
I need to make them larger with more d/v, and if I do so, it get's more difficult to get them to orbit in one piece.
Then I had problems with my Nervas to overheat o the long burn. Then I had problems with the thin atmosphere of Duna to get a proper aerocapture wihtout
overstressing the craft.
So I failed and failed...a spiral of problems.
I'm working on my satellite deployer to get there "soon", but I really struggle here.
It's not like I don't want to visit those other planets... It's just that I'm obviously missing some strategies to do it properly.
In those youtube videos it looks so easy. Those guys fly every brick and every SSTO to Duna. But I couldn't yet.

[luizopiloto]

I am pretty sure 100% of KSP player base never gone interplanetary... I know only one guy that played KSP a bit and have gone to the Moon... Unless all that UFO conspirancy stories are true...

Oh... you're talking about ingame interplanetary travel... ok... nevermind...

[DChurchill]

26 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Needing a "launch window" is exactly why the principle is different. Get into Kerbin orbit and you can play with a node until you get a reasonably cheap intercept with Mun or Minmus. Same can't be said for going to another planet, if it's the wrong time of year then no amount of node fiddling will make it cheap.

The issue is that the game tells you exactly nothing about when those transfer windows occur. And it's a very tough thing to trial-and-error.

This. A thousand times this.

[TimePeriod]

Kerbin, Minmus and the Mun. That's all the places I've been.

[Smitty2016]

I've had KSP since 2014 but the closest thing to interplanetary I've done is sending a probe on a flyby of of Duna. I can dock ships decently but I've never built something powerful enough to go to another planet. I just tend to get burned out after spending hours on a ship and then having it fail.

[regex]

42 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

The issue is that the game tells you exactly nothing about when those transfer windows occur. And it's a very tough thing to trial-and-error.

Definitely.  At this point it requires going into the online rabbit hole, which is not exactly ideal but kind of fits the mold of the more hardcore games out there.

I also personally feel like the maneuver node editor in the stock game is perfectly serviceable; I have no need for a more precise editor even when playing with a fully modded RO (funny because I'm the guy who originally wrote PreciseNode).  About the only thing it needs is a better method of making minute adjustments and possibly an ejection angle display, although that can be easily eyeballed and the recent ability of the widget to remember what orbit it's on while dragging it around the orbit alleviates that to some extent.

[Warzouz]

2 hours ago, DChurchill said:

Which is why I've been to Duna and Eve using the stock system, but I won't do it again unless MJ ceases to function. The stock maneuver node system is just so painful to use in an interplanetary scale.

"Precise Node" mod is also excellent (maybe better than MJ)

[KocLobster]

8 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

When I think of all the time my kerbals will spend there waiting for the return window as well, I then want to make it a more substantial mission, which rapidly snowballs into a very major effort.

This is a pretty big one for me. Missions past Minmus are typically very complicated if you want everything to go right, you don't want to cheat, want to be fairly realistic, use an LS mod, you're a bit of a perfectionist, and you attempt to design rockets with maximum efficiency in mind (both cost, mass, part count to an extent, and not bringing unnecessary dV).....this is my play style.

So those are my main problems. I end up spending a lot of time in the VAB tinkering to make it a perfect mission. Honestly, I need to let go and stop doing this to such a large extent. I spend so much effort building these missions that I don't get to spend as much time in flight, where things really get interesting. Sure, I love designing, but at some point it starts to feel like a chore designing complicated missions.

Also, I've never been further out past Duna, and in the opposite direction, I've only done Moho unmanned flybys, so I still have a intimidating amount of stuff to learn.

My biggest thing is not wanting to have to cheat, or send rescue missions. This is my basis for a lot of things, and it causes me to spend as much time in the VAB as I do.

1 hour ago, luizopiloto said:

I am pretty sure 100% of KSP player base never gone interplanetary... I know only one guy that played KSP a bit and have gone to the Moon... Unless all that UFO conspirancy stories are true...

Oh... you're talking about ingame interplanetary travel... ok... nevermind...

I don't have a citation on this, but I suspect more than one person on this planet plays KSP and has gone to space. Granted, lots of people work for NASA and don't go to space, but I imagine more than a single person plays KSP and has gone off world.

But don't quote me.

[Mister Spock]

I've been to Eve and Duna, plus the Mun and Minmus, all flying manually -- I've never used MechJeb.  (I like piloting and docking myself; to me, automating those things would take much of the fun and challenge out of the game.)  In one recent save, I did add PreciseNode, and that considerably eases the maneuver-node manipulation.  

In my current game, I'm using the "historical contracts" mission pack, which has 500 missions or so, many of which will be inside the Kerbin SOI.  I imagine eventually the pack will take me to Duna or such; we'll see.

 

[AlamoVampire]

ive been to all bodies via probe but kerballed to moho, kerbin ofc, mun, minmus, duna and eeloo. Got it on steam at .21 fwiw