KSP 2 Multiplayer Discussion Thread

[purpleivan]

11 hours ago, Cheif Operations Director said:

Griefing is hard in KSP due to the travel times and target zones. I agree with you but I can not see some 8 year old just do around dropping orbital bombardment devices onto a pin sizes colony. They can do damage but let me real here, I 9 year old is not going to sit there for 2 hours to align the orbital trajectory of a space station kill vehicle. A mechanism where the host can revert to a save may be good and prevent this. 

Maybe, but the rule of "theres a mod for that" might apply.

[Cheif Operations Director]

23 minutes ago, purpleivan said:

Maybe, but the rule of "theres a mod for that" might apply.

You could give people different debug permissions. Also allowing you to revert a save may prevent the consqunces of griefing

[Kerbart]

11 hours ago, Cheif Operations Director said:

Griefing is hard in KSP due to the travel times and target zones. I agree with you but I can not see some 8 year old just do around dropping orbital bombardment devices onto a pin sizes colony. They can do damage but let me real here, I 9 year old is not going to sit there for 2 hours to align the orbital trajectory of a space station kill vehicle. A mechanism where the host can revert to a save may be good and prevent this. 

You can undock a shuttle from a station, back up half a kilometer and go full throttle on the main engine.While a retrograde impact will carry much more kinetic energy, even a modest 50 m/s will cause sufficient mayhem. Griefers will find a way. As @Geschosskopfmentioned, the best way of preventing it is perhaps just to be sure about who you invent.

[Shadowmage]

On 8/19/2019 at 7:43 PM, razark said:

In a way that will annoy a large group of players, make another group question the abilities and/or parentage of the devs, and a way that everyone will state could have done better.

I'm not sure there is any other way to implement multiplayer in a title such as KSP, which is based on travel times ranging up to potentially decades.

So... I'll second this sentiment.  It doesn't matter how they implement it, it will be wrong for one reason or another (either physics will be broken, or gameplay will suffer) for a large portion of the playerbase.  Two irreconcilable and opposing concepts.

 

But... I'm personally curious how they have 'solved' this issue.  I cannot personally see how it can be solved properly, so am genuinely interested in what they have worked up.

[Kerbart]

12 hours ago, TBenz said:

Uh, what? Seriously, KSP deathmatch? Do you... Do you understand how any other multiplayer sandbox game works? This is borderline nonsense. There are plenty of ways to do multiplayer that don't involve the kind of arena competition that you seem to associate with "multiplayer". You might want to better familiarize yourself with how a mechanic works in other games if you are going to start a thread spouting doom about it.

It’s going to be somewhere in between those two extremes. The very attractive nature of KSP is that it’s not the software developers who decide how the game gets played, but the players.

There will be deatmatches, capture-the-flag tournaments and what not, if there are enough players who like to do that. Why not, if people enjoy it? Having a mechanism that ensures a level playing ground (whitelisting mods, etc) seems a reasonable request in that context.

The MSFS around-the-world relay races had a “Duenna” add-in that needed to run to ensure that no shenanigans were pulled. And perhaps that’s the way to go for it—mods. But well-written in-game infrastructure is usually more reliable and secure.

[Kernel Kraken]

Personally, I don't get why people don't want multiplayer in KSP. It gives people more optiond on how they want to play the game, and I kinda want to try it. It wouldn't affect the people who don't want it, and the people who want it could get an officially supported feature that would probable be less buggy than mods as there's money to be made in it. I don't get why there's a debate. Just add and ignore it if you don't want to play it.

[Curveball Anders]

Just now, Kernel Kraken said:

It wouldn't affect the people who don't want it

That's big question.

Can they add MP without it changing anything else in the game?

[Kernel Kraken]

59 minutes ago, Curveball Anders said:

That's big question.

Can they add MP without it changing anything else in the game?

Yes. 

Play Game> Multiplayer> Server List/ create server> join game

Play game> load pre existing world/ create game> sandbox or career?> play game.

[RealKerbal3x]

I’m looking forward to multiplayer. It’ll be interesting to see how it’s implemented, and it’ll be fun to play with my brother like we always do with Minecraft.

I used to be a bit of a cynic of KSP multiplayer before KSP 2 was announced, but now it’s been confirmed and we can put an end to people constantly begging the developers to ‘add multiplayer’, I’m excited for it.

Edited August 21, 2019 by RealKerbal3x

[Curveball Anders]

8 minutes ago, Kernel Kraken said:

Yes. 

Play Game> Multiplayer> Server List/ create server> join game

Play game> load pre existing world/ create game> sandbox or career?> play game.

And how about all code written to support MP?
You really think that will be completely separate from the SP code?

That would be a completely insane way of coding, so the code will be integrated.

Adding MP functionality without adding code complexity is impossible.

The question is rather if they can hide that from the users.

 

Edited August 21, 2019 by Curveball Anders

[Kernel Kraken]

3 hours ago, Curveball Anders said:

And how about all code written to support MP?
You really think that will be completely separate from the SP code?

That would be a completely insane way of coding, so the code will be integrated.

Adding MP functionality without adding code complexity is impossible.

The question is rather if they can hide that from the users.

 

The flowchart I posted was for the menus, I kinda misunderstood you. I feel like something like that could be handled like garys mod- it's the same game but for multiplayer, all your PC is doing is running the same code as normal and getting updates from the server. I'm not a coder by any means but I think it could be done like that, correct me if i'm wrong. So far all the games i've seen with that approach are on source so I'm not sure about unity support.

EDIT: I don't see how code complexity is a bad thing other than dev time. 

Edited August 21, 2019 by Kernel Kraken

[KarmaEdiitor]

Might sound weird or whatever but I'm tryna launch rockets with my friends. is this possible?

[Dman979]

Overlapping threads have been merged. Please, please, look in the correct subforum for a thread about your topics before posting a new one. It makes my job easier.

[Aghanim]

Having multiplayer KSP with both multiple players single ship and multiple player multiple ship opens up possibilities, such as:

• Space VATSIM
• Star Trek Bridge Commander style game with DIY spaceships
• The Expanse space battle reenaction
• Finding a way to defend space station
• maybe space FPS like Shattered Horizon?

Imagine:

9 hours ago, Kerbart said:

You can undock a shuttle from a station, back up half a kilometer and go full throttle on the main engine.While a retrograde impact will carry much more kinetic energy, even a modest 50 m/s will cause sufficient mayhem.

To prevent this, the station owner install some point defense cannons and railguns that will destroy high velocity objects within a certain radius. Of course, before getting shot down, the shuttle will be warned to decelerate. Then when there is more traffic to the station, there will be space traffic control coordinating traffic to the station.

The problem with multiplayer aside from timewarp is whether KSP2 physics engine can scale to multiple "processors" as in multiple cores or even GPUs. There should be a limit to how many parts per players to prevent a single player to make the whole server lag out and crash

[Incarnation of Chaos]

59 minutes ago, Aghanim said:

The problem with multiplayer aside from timewarp is whether KSP2 physics engine can scale to multiple "processors" as in multiple cores or even GPUs. There should be a limit to how many parts per players to prevent a single player to make the whole server lag out and crash

I mean there's literally nothing preventing someone from just making a mod with the mother of all thermonuclear weapons which would only be a single part and cranking up the particle effects so much that once activated it would take down a server. I think that the idea that we should implement things to prevent griefing is the wrong way to approach it; measures should be in place for certain but we should accept griefing WILL be a thing. And offer the host of the server/game a suite of tools to recover from it when desired; save states or something similar.

This way people can still derp around but it's no harm done if your "Fun" becomes a projectile with orbital velocity bearing down on someone's colony they've been building for months; they watch the light show and then cut the server to restore it from a backup or something. Or they decide to deal with the situation at hand and rebuild.

That being said i think whenever a server is created/hosted there should be a ROBUST panel of filters and tools available; you should be able to exclude modded installs or randoms from joining. You could also have it to where HOST can add/remove mods but GUEST cannot; so they could only play with the selection you already combed over. 

This is all assuming KSP multiplayer is an actual lobby/server system and not just social features bolted on the outside.

[Aghanim]

19 minutes ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

I mean there's literally nothing preventing someone from just making a mod with the mother of all thermonuclear weapons which would only be a single part and cranking up the particle effects so much that once activated it would take down a server.

The good thing is that as far as I know all modable multiplayer games with custom game mechanics mods requires the mod to be installed on the server by the owners because the server should have the authoritative state of the game to keep all the clients in sync. Also having random players install arbitrary mods on the server is huge security risk. Of course client only mods that doesn't alter any game mechanics can be installed by the players, for example part reskins. I'm not sure where autopilot mod belongs to which category though

Of course recovery tools is still important, not just to fix griefing but also for general backups

Edited August 22, 2019 by Aghanim

[danfarnsy]

11 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

But... I'm personally curious how they have 'solved' this issue.  I cannot personally see how it can be solved properly, so am genuinely interested in what they have worked up.

Good to put "solved" in quotes, as there's not enough information right now to suggest that they've solved it, past tense. I'm curious too!

Working together to build stuff sounds exciting. Flying separate ships, aligning for docking, delivering supplies and new station modules, returning crew to fulfill contracts, races... it could be really fun. Also, leaving aside the griefers, accidental mayhem would be awesome as long as you're playing with good people (there are lots of good people).

[Doc]

My bucket of nickles...

 

MP 'seems' like a fantastic option for Kerbal, but we all have lots of questions on how it would actually play out, especially given the tensions inherent in making the game.

The obvious attraction is that multiple players can 'collaborate' on projects which scratch their own particular itch, but also have parts they don't really like. For instance, I love designing and building ships & bases, but once I figure out that they are actually possible to assemble, I get bored. Some folks love the sim aspect of cruising their rover around or their crane and actually putting stuff together. So we can co-op. I deliver cool base modules, they stack them up. We're both happy. Yay. 

Or you can run in a more 'competitive' mode, where multiple space agencies are vying to be 'the most awesome' - competing on a space race, for colonization, for science etc. 

The problem comes with the tension in how the game works; to be coop, we need to be able to interact with our fellow players constructions. To have the power to interact in kerbal is to have the power to destroy. If the power to destroy exists, there are going to be griefers. It is known. 

In all cases, we have some real problems with synchronization due to the 'time warp' nature of the game. We *need* time warp to accomplish any of the goals in the game - even a mun mission is nuts if you try to do it in real time. So time warp is a given. That right there is, I think, the essential problem with MP. How do we allow for people to conduct missions according to 'their own' schedule, without ruining other peoples planning. I honestly don't have any idea how to make this work well in anything outside of a very friendly group of players. 

But lets just assume that they come up with an elegant and effective way to keep everyone in sync. 

That still leaves the issue of ship interaction <-> ship destruction being a huge risk for bad player behavior / griefing. Even in a small group of friendlies, the massive frustration that everyone would experience if Bob got drunk, and accidentially mistimed his retro burn when approaching our 2 year old station, would be *brutal*

One thought I have been having alot recently is the idea that solving bad player interaction could be countered by putting a ship/station/base 'on rails' - so that its configuration, orbit, etc was converted into a semi-static object, which you can't affect via physics. Things like docking ports etc could still be 'active' to allow for interaction, but it would be more like as if the VAB had a docking port bolted to it. This would allow players, via some sort of process to put some things 'into statis' and beyond the ability of other players to interfere with. It could be done in alot of ways, but simply having 'ownership' of a ship and then a toggle to put it 'on rails' or not would be easy. Likewise, a 'merge ship' option could be easily implemented, so that once you dock to a ship on rails, you can vote to have your ship 'merge' with the railship, and then the railship owner accepts the request, and poof, your module is now 'bolted' to the on-rails unit. I think that there would need to be a two-step process for putting anything on rails - for instance, anyone in the local physics bubble has to agree, or the server has to majority vote agree, or the server owner needs to agree.

The 'ship on rails' thing is also a possibility for handling different ships owned by other people. It would be possible to treat *every* ship, not owned by you, as 'on rails' and indestructible. That would be a big lever to prevent griefing, especially in competitive games it might be sufficient to just run it that way 100%

This would introduce some weirdness, especially w.r.t. docking; if you just 'bounce' off 

I think something like the above system I describe is how the devs would need to handle a thing like the colonies they are describing, or the orbital VAB structures. Being able to de-orbit the super VAB, or break it, or whatever would be neat for a few people, but super annoying for the great masses. . 

[FahmiRBLX]

My wishlist for Multiplayer includes :

1. Part (Or the whole) of the craft can be controlled by any player whose Kerbal is in any Command Pod of a craft (i.e Not just owner who will be able to take control of the craft). That'll be very useful ince BDAC has been ported to KSP2 and the craft's owner flies a bomber while other players in certain command pods in the plane becomes the gunner. Or air-launching where one will be the launch plane pilot and another one pilots the carried rocket. Or even a player can be dutied to land the first-stage booster and the another one goes ahead with expendable stages.

2. Modlists are available in what might be the 'Multiplayer Lobby'.

3. 15 isn't enough Kerbal shenanigan IMO. 50 at max?

4. Or should multiplayer servers show no modlist, players who don't have certain mods able to see other's modded craft which uses the mod that another particular user didn't have. FSX:SE-style I mean.

5. Multiplayer craft construction. More users can opt to join another user building their rocket.

6. Integrated voice chat system for non-Discord users. Partnership with Discord can be done to achieve this.

Edited August 22, 2019 by FahmiRBLXian

[GoldForest]

3 minutes ago, FahmiRBLXian said:

My wishlist for Multiplayer includes :

1. Part (Or the whole) of the craft can be controlled by any player whose Kerbal is in any Command Pod of a craft (i.e Not just owner who will be able to take control of the craft). That'll be very useful ince BDAC has been ported to KSP2 and the craft's owner flies a bomber while other players in certain command pods in the plane becomes the gunner. Or air-launching where one will be the launch plane pilot and another one pilots the carried rocket. Or even a player can be dutied to land the first-stage booster and the another one goes ahead with expendable stages.

2. Modlists are available in what might be the 'Multiplayer Lobby'.

3. 15 isn't enough Kerbal shenanigan IMO. 50 at max?

4. Or should multiplayer servers show no modlist, players who don't have certain mods able to see other's modded craft which uses the mod that another particular user didn't have. FSX:SE-style I mean.

5. Multiplayer craft construction. More users can opt to join another user building their rocket.

6. Integrated voice chat system for non-Discord users. Partnership with Discord can be done to achieve this.

1) This would have to be permissioned access as to not allow players to jump in and mess up someone's flight.

2) Mod lists would be nice.

3) I say let the computer/server decide. If the server can handle 50 people, go for it. If it can only have 5 people, then it will only allow 5.

4) This is a bad idea as with KSP 1, if you don't have the mods, the file won't open at all, thus, in KSP 2 I suspect in multiplayer, if you don't have the mods, you can't load the server or craft files.

5) This is also a bad idea. No in VAB/SPH team building should be allowed. Too much room for abuse. Besides, you can build a space ship in orbit by docking modules together.

6) IVC would be nice, but in-game IVC's are usually sub par. 

[Guest]

One way it could work is drop-in co-op missions. So, to pick a relatively simple example, you could do a co-op stratolaunch, player 1 as Jeb, player 2 as Val. Jeb is in the orbiter command pod, Val flies the lifter. In stage 1, Val is in control. When the stages detach, both players take control of their craft. Jeb flies to orbit, Val flies back down. 

As to timewarp for longer co-op missions, just make it so that the captain of any craft can request a timewarp but it'll only start when all others participating agree, and any of them can cancel timewarp at any time.

Edited August 22, 2019 by Guest

[DunaManiac]

Personally, I am not enthralled with multiplayer but here is what I think multiplayer should be like.

1. The ability to choose a single player world

2. Measures to prevent griefing or accidental destruction of ships

3. Some Servers should have requirements about mods, because what if someone has a part mod installed that nobody else has, there ship would not be loaded at all, so there should be a notice saying stock only, or these mods only.

4. Maybe some kind of chat so that players can communicate without having to own a microphone or use social media.
 

 

Edited August 22, 2019 by DunaManiac

[drhay53]

I certainly hope there's some kind of public servers because frankly I have no gaming friends. 

They will have to deal with griefing and I'm not sure how prepared for it they will be. People will intentionally blow up large projects representing hundreds of hours of work spread across many people if they're allowed to, just because they can. 

Frankly I'm not sure how you allow people to screw up while also not allowing people to intentionally wreck someone's work. 

I personally don't care that much about MP in KSP, though I'm not opposed to online games in any sense. I've done my thousands of hours in MMOs. I will just say this; KSP online will probably turn into an MMO,  whether the devs are prepared for it or not. I'm concerned that it will dominate post-release dev time and attention because people don't behave. So I would like to see something fun but I'm cautiously pessimistic that MP will hurt the SP experience due to developer resources.

[greenTurtle1134]

On 8/21/2019 at 5:18 AM, fulgur said:

I prefer the R∃MEMBER thread's Forgotten-style proposed multiplayer, in which people take turns and after a few kerbal years, you swap to another player with everything which exists becoming space junk which must be found by the next Cycle's players. If this sounds interesting, check out @greenTurtle1134's thread.

Did he just plug my thing? I think he just plugged my thing.

----

Alright, just to provide some more details: This game is set in a version of the Kerbol system where the planet Kerbin periodically resets to the state it was at Year 0. However, everything else remains. Each player will play one iteration of Kerbin, building up their space program from scratch like they would any other game - but who knows what ruins of previous iterations you might find? Debris, ships, even whole space stations could be up there.

Sound interesting? Click this link to see the thread!

----

And just to make it moderately relevant: Succession games have always been a way to "force" multiplayer into a single-player game. Asynchronous multiplayer might be a nice thought, but people are going to want interaction. That's really where the problems come in: what happens when two players meet?

[Bartybum]

Yeesh, couple of people in this thread forgot how to think. MP will absolutely be optional, and it absolutely won't affect SP. I can't read the future, but I can absolutely guarantee they're going to be separate. I have no idea why anyone would even begin to think any other way. Countless games in the world successfully separate SP and MP; it's not like it's some new concept.

The devs have made it a point to show us that they're well aware of what game KSP is at heart. Forcing MP on those who don't want it would go against everything. Peeps are worrying about a non-issue.

Edited August 23, 2019 by Bartybum