0.16: No more x2 time warp?

[togfox]

I didn\'t put this in the bug forum as it\'s not a bug.

Is it just me or has x2 time warp disappeared? You now have x1 and x5 warp (plus more) but no x2. This would be fine if you can do x5 in atmosphere or close to the surface but you you can\'t. This means a descent from 70km down to zero has to be done all the way in x1 warp (real time).

Just me? I use mechjeb only - has that messed with the warp? I really really really don\'t want to sit through a 5 minute unpowered descent from LKO and if I \'end flight\' then I\'ll miss the satisfaction of actually finishing the mission.

Loving the rest of the patch but this is forcing me to take longer to do less.

[Spoot Knight]

2x time compression was removed so 100,000x could be used instead. A much better tradeoff I think; orbiting Kerbol doesn\'t take absurd amounts of time now.

Edit:

Also, allowing 5x compression to work in-atmosphere would simply do the same thing that 2x did.

[Vostok]

X2 was removed, I believe, because of physics problems with double timed physics calculations. This freed up a \'slot\' in the GUI for 100,000x warp, which is now in the game.

In short, x2 was buggy.

[togfox]

x2 worked fine when descending from LKO. It now takes MINUTES to land a craft and that whole time you\'re just watching.

A de-orbit burn in Mun orbit now takes MINUTES to execute because you can\'t quick warp to the braking point.

Coasting to AP after gravity turn use to take SECONDS - it now takes MINUTES to clear the atmosphere (from about 50km -> 70km) and that whole time you do absolutely nothing.

Okay, so we can orbit the sun faster. So what? Who actually does that? We don\'t have extra planets (yet).

Loving the work SQUAD are doing and they aren\'t gonig to make every right decision every time and I think this is one of those moments.

I\'m now taking longer to do less. Meh. I shall play regardless and SQUAD still have my support.

[E. F. Kranz]

Yeah, it sucks.

Also, no 2X roving.

[Thobewill10]

Quoted from Harv

There\'s no technical reason why we couldn\'t add more warp rates, but it would require us to tweak a lot more stuff (altitude limits, UI assets) than just replacing one warp rate with another.

The pressing issue was that we needed to remove 2x warp, because physical time warp causes a lot of really ugly issues that we\'d all do better to avoid. You can try it on 15.2 if you want. Get a heavy ship at the pad or runway, and warp to 2x. Notice how it slumps down because of the decreased solver accuracy. Then, warp into 5x, and notice then how the ship retains its slumped state. Warp back to 2x then, and the ship will slump farther, because that first slump now became the new default position. Repeat this a few times, and your ship will have melted into the ground.

Needless to say, that pretty much destroys any hope of a consistent physics simulation, so we removed 2x warp, and modified the way vessels maintain their parts positioned, so that they always retain the original geometry from the craft file.

So, 2x warp may be gone, but what we gained far outweighs what we had to remove.

Cheers

[Endeavour]

Doing a reentry is painful in 0.16. I usually just cheat and end the flight. When I see that it will take 11 minutes to get from 70km to 30km on reentry, I am very frustrated.

But overall, 0.16 is great, and I will be playing it constantly.

[KevinTMC]

I don\'t miss 2x speed that much--since based on how wonky it was in 0.15, it would surely tear lots of 0.16 ships apart.

If it were feasible to implement a max-warp override, however, that would be a lifesaver. Not just for re-entry, and not just at lower levels either. On one of my last flights in 0.15.2, I was returning a Munar flight to Kerbal, and ran out of fuel just as the periapsis dipped to about 65,000 meters (with the apoapsis remaining over 3 million meters).

I\'m stubborn and weird, and was also curious to see just how slowly this orbit would decay, so stuck it out even though the warp dropped back to 2x on every single orbit. But boy, was that painful, compared to if it could have been hacked to stay at no less than 100x until the periapsis dropped at least as far as 30,000.

[RayneCloud]

Doing a reentry is painful in 0.16. I usually just cheat and end the flight. When I see that it will take 11 minutes to get from 70km to 30km on reentry, I am very frustrated.

But overall, 0.16 is great, and I will be playing it constantly.

To be honest, I don\'t have a problem with it. If you\'re that impatient mate..then, well, don\'t know what to tell you.

[maxpanic]

If you\'re that impatient mate..then, well, don\'t know what to tell you.

Cool way to address a customer\'s complaint, mate.

[Spoot Knight]

It\'s not like 2x is going to come back if it screws with the physics, so what else is there left to say? Everyone\'s going to have to deal with it whether they like not having 2x time compression or not.

[Endeavour]

To be honest, I don\'t have a problem with it. If you\'re that impatient mate..then, well, don\'t know what to tell you.

It\'s more that I don\'t always have a lot of time to play at once. I usually play in 30 minute bursts throughout the day, and it was a nice convenience to have.

[sneakeypete]

Coasting to AP after gravity turn use to take SECONDS - it now takes MINUTES to clear the atmosphere (from about 50km -> 70km) and that whole time you do absolutely nothing.

Um... it was only a 2x warp. In that case (and all others) at most it would go from 60 seconds to 2 minutes. ;P

[4 IN 1]

Trust me, you don\'t want that 2x warp once proper re-entry in implanted.

[samstarman5]

If 5 times time progression is too fast, then go make a sandwich while you are returning to Kerbin. Unless you plan to do a powered landing, just deploy your parachutes and go check your twitter or facebook page.

KSP isn\'t really meant to be played by the superaction club. There\'s a lot involved to accomplish a lot of different things, in symmetry in how they happen in real life. If it isn\'t fast enough for you, then maybe you need to take some time and think on if KSP is really for you. Or how you can adjust your attitude to really get more out of the game, which is the bigger reward for you.

[Elukka]

There\'s no point in wasting the player\'s time when there\'s nothing for them to do, though.

I\'m sure the technical concerns are valid however. I wonder how it\'d work if you restricted 2x to above, say, 600 meters? I\'ve only seen it cause trouble on the pad and at chute deployment, neither of which would be an issue.

[Cykyrios]

In case no one else noticed, getting back to x1 timewarp from a higher one no longer makes the game freeze for a second or two (that\'s the packing/unpacking Harv was talking about, I guess), so people who think x5 is too fast can switch back and forth between x1 and x5.

Atmospheric flight will indeed be twice as long from now on, but at least it won\'t screw the physics up and get your ship torn apart (in 0.16, it does that already, so you don\'t need timewarp to make things worse ). But how can a reentry take 11 minutes? Do you mean from 70 km to touchdown with your parachute deployed ASAP or something?

[Ciechosz]

Now it doesn\'t hurt me. The problem will appear, when another planets are added. Then there should be added an engine with high specific impulse, but low thrust (ie. ion engine). Accelerating without at least x2 will be pain :\'(

[sneakeypete]

Wild speculation and theory here, but I imagine that that sort of engine may be handled by the calculations at higher warps, instead of be forces acting on your 3d rocket etc as engines are handled now. Harvester mentioned adding (in the future) code that allowed atmospheric reentry to take place under warp, as he\'d found a mathematical solution for it. In theory, the same sort of thing could be done for engines with a constant imput, and it\'d be quite handy for the reasons given above.

[Khrissetti]

The only problem I have with 2x removed is while aerobraking. If I\'m returning from the Mun with a dribble and a fart of fuel it was nice to be able to aerobrake away those thousands of metres, on 1 times zoom this can take a while.

Either way, it\'s a small thing and I\'m sure that after a few missions I\'ll forget that there ever was a 2x warp. it used to bugger up the altimeter anyway.

[adammada]

So, i assume that 'warp x2' works on basis delta_t x 2 on all physics calculations.

I wonder, would it be possible to make some tradeoff like 'leave delta_t x1 , but make as many calculations per second as you can, even lowering FPS\'. You know, something like TURBO mode. So the actual TURBO speed up would depend on computer speed, without changing physics.

[rkman]

If you\'re that impatient mate..then, well, don\'t know what to tell you.

KSP isn\'t really meant to be played by the superaction club.

Oh, that must be why we got 100000x warp.

It\'s not like 1x vs 2x warp makes the difference between \'chill\' and 'superaction'.

And 11 minute is a long time to just sit there (can\'t switch to another vessel while in atmosphere).

Nobody complained about 2x when it was still in, it was not inconvenient or to fast. If anything it\'s inconvenient that we don\'t have it anymore.

Don\'t make it seem as though a feature that was removed because it was buggy, was a bad feature to begin with.

[vexx32]

Well, as I recall, the bugs of 2x warp were so well known, we just accepted that it would take some time for them to be fixed. I knew about them before I even starting playing KSP. I\'d seen droves of bug reports about what 2x warp can do to crafts. It\'s no surprise to me that it was removed; I\'d been expecting it since 0.13.

And in all seriousness, the difference between 1x and 2x was not really relevant for anything. A difference of 5 minutes is not a great deal, if we\'re talking reentry. Just go make a cup of tea or get a bite to eat. If you have that much of a problem with being a little more patient... no, nevermind. I\'m not here to throw insults. Let\'s just leave it at 'it\'s not that big of a deal, and we don\'t really need a rage-thread for it', okay?

[flaillomanz]

I\'m gonna attach an upwards-facing booster on top of my command module, and boost through the atmosphere. That\'ll make up for the loss of warp!

[Dielos]

Although practical, I\'m actually happy it\'s gone, at least for a while. In 0.16, it\'s the first time I managed to land on the mun with an intact lander, and that\'s because I didn\'t have x2 warp. I was always impatient and used it too much, and thus always overshot the last retro burn point, coming so always too fast.

I learned that patience is key for safe landings!