KSP 2 Multiplayer Discussion Thread

[SSTO Crasher]

12 hours ago, Clancythecat said:

I really don't think this is going to be anything close to an MMO, Nate Simpson goes on record as saying that the KSC has "four landing pads for four players".

Also,  I can see how you can make time warp work for four players, but I cannot begin to imagine how you could coordinate time warp between hundreds of players. 

When did he say that

[Awfulwaffle]

I’ve tried to avoid this thread for a while as it can get pretty heated but it seems calm right now. On the MMO topic, it would be cool if this was true but I don’t imagine the game like this, I imagine  4-5 player ran space agencies. Trading could be done by landing at someone’s trading outpost or even docking to a ship or station. I think wars will definitely happen, as a matter of fact, me and my friends will be harboring war in our server whenever it comes out. We will have merchants and war lords and such. I think this is where the MMO could shine, having people playing their own style in a vast galactic environment, working with each other and forming alliances and teams. It would be a good way to see how people would govern themselves in a position of power, I think either type of multiplayer would work.

Edited September 16, 2021 by Awfulwaffle

[LezRowl]

Regarding the MMO topic.. I personally don't think that KSP 1/2 fits that theme. KSP has been singleplayer for it's lifetime, yes there have been mods for multiplayer, but they never reach the extend of an MMO. Technical details, I expect something like a hundred players to be way too buggy, or even ten players. But who knows, the geniuses behind Intercept Games might come up with way to manage it. Just don't see why the game would have an MMO feature. 

[Wubslin]

On 9/16/2021 at 8:20 AM, Awfulwaffle said:

I’ve tried to avoid this thread for a while as it can get pretty heated but it seems calm right now. On the MMO topic, it would be cool if this was true but I don’t imagine the game like this, I imagine  4-5 player ran space agencies. Trading could be done by landing at someone’s trading outpost or even docking to a ship or station. I think wars will definitely happen, as a matter of fact, me and my friends will be harboring war in our server whenever it comes out. We will have merchants and war lords and such. I think this is where the MMO could shine, having people playing their own style in a vast galactic environment, working with each other and forming alliances and teams. It would be a good way to see how people would govern themselves in a position of power, I think either type of multiplayer would work.

We should just keep expanding the hypothesized scope of what KSP 2 multiplayer will be until someone stops us or announces details. What's bigger than an MMO?

[Irreversible Extents]

I'm excited to see where launch pads/space centers go with this. In multiplayer, I imagine we would have to have more than one launch complex, to avoid two people trying to launch at the same time. It would be so cool to have modular space centers when this is taken into consideration.

Modular space centers in KSP- Never thought I would hear that sentence.

[supervoltage]

I'm going to throw in my multiplayer idea here as well.

Firstly, let's talk about singleplayer world types. What I would like to have is some sort of basic, balanced and friendly hand-built solar system, much like the Kerbol system is currently in KSP1; alongside this, there should be an option to create a procedurally generated solar system, with different parameters available to the player (number of planets, number of natural satellites around said planets, presence of gas giants, ringed planets, binary star systems etc).

For the multiplayer aspect, let's give the player same choices. They can either:

• Generate their own solar system for either a co-op or public session
  • for public session
    • reduce the parameters down to a single "difficulty" parameter which may adjust the star system's complexity, resource amount, cost scaling, etc in a consistent predetermined way by the game
  • for co-op
    • full parameter choices available, keep it as flexible as possible considering it's between friends

As for joining an existing star system or galaxy players could:

• Join a friend's currently in-progress star system or galaxy (co-op)
  • either start at the friend's KSC, or at a colony they built
  • automatically share funds, science, reputation, unlocked science nodes, currently active vessels etc
  • time warping to be performed in a queue-like fashion:
    • instead of time-warping whenever each player feels like it, players will set alarms for certain points in time in the future
    • these alarms are added to a server queue
    • any player can trigger a vote to request a time warp
      • when every player votes yes within the server-configured voting time limit, the time will warp to the next alarm
      • if the vote fails or if not every player was able to vote (server configurable), time will not warp
    • physics time warp will not affect other players - a 4x physics time warp is comparatively slow in the grand scheme of things and is really a convenience
      • this way one could go ahead and use the slower time warp to, say, get closer to the apoapsis to perform the orbital insertion burn without pestering other players in the session with such a minuscule time warp
      • this could be server configurable - perhaps could also be unlocked by spending science points/some amount of funds/reputation? or maybe by enabling such a policy in the administration building? who knows!
• Join a public currently in-progress star system or galaxy (fairly low player count - say under 32)
  • players can start on a random celestial body, a random location on a celestial body shared with another player, or in an entirely different star system
  • server owners will set a variable denoting how many players there can be per celestial body or star system; say 2 players per celestial body, only one per celestial body, push it to 10 or further if you want, perhaps 20 players per star system etc;
    • if there are no available celestial bodies for the player to spawn on, the game may generate a celestial body for them - depending on server settings, perhaps a little colony attached to an asteroid in orbit of a star system (or maybe even travelling between star systems), or even an atmospheric planet
  • players are able to establish groups to share resources more easily, improve their colonies, etc
  • players are also able to engage in acts of sabotage or creative ways to deal damage to another players' or factions' base (perhaps reroute an asteroid to hit their KSC or planet)
  • time warp restrictions are loosened
    • any player can locally time warp (i.e. time warp only affects them and no one else) at any time, so long as any of their vessels are:
      • not within a certain range of another player's vessels, at which point time warp voting comes into effect and time warp becomes distributive to the players in range
      • in a faction with the other player in range
• Join a public, in-progress, MMO style multiplayer session (hundreds of players at least)
  • players will take part in the same persistent procedurally generated galaxy
  • new players will start in their own star systems
    • if they wish to join a friend, they may start in the star system of their friend by invite-only
  • main way players will interact with each other will be by interstellar travel
    • interstellar probes sent out may actually end up in some other players' star system

... and probably a lot more that I can't be bothered to write right now. The main gist is that KSP2's multiplayer could take any direction and we won't know until it actually comes out.

I'm excited for it nonetheless, I can't wait to create SRB missiles and aim them towards some of my friends' vessels.

[K33N]

On 9/29/2021 at 11:23 AM, supervoltage said:

 

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that there is a zero percent change the game will have randomly generated star systems.

[K33N]

On 9/2/2021 at 6:39 PM, Jupter said:

 

It has been confirmed that there will be no magical technology involved in the game, including warp drives.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

If KSP-2 keeps the fireworks as usable parts - could we do dogfighting / clown kart battles?

 

Could have so much fun with this!

 

 

Edited November 2, 2021 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[Wubslin]

On 10/11/2021 at 1:08 PM, K33N said:

It has been confirmed that there will be no magical technology involved in the game, including warp drives.

Hydrogen probably doesn't have a metastable metallic phase though, so you might want to label that as magic. It's even less likely that metallic phase would stay metastable if you tried to add impurities for magnetic confinement, either. I'm not mad though. It's just a game and that kind of thing is totally within the realm of possibility. I take the MST3K mantra on this stuff but if we want to shift into maximum pedantry overdrive, just remember that Kerbin is an impossibly small pebble with 1 G and 1 Bar at the surface.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MST3KMantra

[TheSameKerbal77]

On 8/20/2019 at 3:16 PM, Geschosskopf said:

First, I have NEVER wanted MP in KSP.  I don't see it being a good thing for the game and am totally not thrilled that it will be in KSP2.  

It's been a constant theme in these forums since forever that some players have loudly criticized how other players play the game.  Same goes with loud demands for what some consider "realism" features, especially when voiced by folks who think everybody should play the way THEY want to play.  But with KSP being an SP-only game, it's always been possible to shut these folks up by pointing out that what happens in the privacy of an SP game has exactly zero impact on anybody else.  If you want Feature X, get the mod for it and let everybody else enjoy the game as they see fit.  Now, this will no longer be possible.

Worse, there will now be an endless series of whines and rants and demands to "balance" this or that part or gameplay aspect because of perceived issues in MP games.  I see some have already started.  And any repeatable glitch that many might enjoy for humor or rollplay in SP games will have to be removed to avoid it being an exploit in MP games.  So those who don't care about MP and don't want things changed because they like them the way they are will be forced into the cookie-cutter version that the game ultimately settles into. 

I also foresee this forum, which has always been the most pleasant and polite community I've ever been part of, becoming rather less so.  Competition in the game will bleed over into the forum, especially as the player base divides into SP and MP factions who will not be able to agree on much.

I think that MP will mainly be a “play with friends” type and large MP servers won’t be a thing but Nate Simpson said in one of the videos that a big announcement on MP will come so we should make the big assumptions when that comes. But I do agree with some of your points.

[K33N]

I kinda just want a consistent world hosted by the power players where noobs can jump in and play a couple hours a week and trade with the big fish that are colonizing the local star cluster. Like a shared SP save where we don't have to all be online together but still interact. Chill, hands off, community / friend driven.

Edited November 23, 2021 by K33N

[PlutoISaPlanet]

I still believe this game is lending itself to a MMO style, with colony trading. Doesn't mean you can't have 2-4 player "squads" or lobbies, but I see the multiplayer being on a large scope.

[K^2]

44 minutes ago, PlutoISaPlanet said:

I still believe this game is lending itself to a MMO style, with colony trading. Doesn't mean you can't have 2-4 player "squads" or lobbies, but I see the multiplayer being on a large scope.

I'm confident that nothing like this will be part of vanilla game at launch, but maybe we'll see mods. It'd certainly be an interesting experience.

[PlutoISaPlanet]

9 minutes ago, K^2 said:

I'm confident that nothing like this will be part of vanilla game at launch, but maybe we'll see mods. It'd certainly be an interesting experience.

We shall see. I personally would like to see something like this.

[Guest]

15 hours ago, PlutoISaPlanet said:

I personally would like to see something like this.

Why? This isn't ED, to make it work as an MMO they would have to destroy and dumb down everything that makes KSP a great game.

1-4 Players Multiplayer COOP is proper multiplayer (and better than both single player and MMOs), why has everything be either single player or an MMO?

A space game with travel speeds several orders of magnitude slower than ED (Which is already too slow for many) without combat (which seems to be the only interesting thing for the Space MMO crowd) and with realistic space travel and piloting (frankly out of reach for people used to give FTL and artificial gravity for granted and unable to park a Sidewinder on an outpost without auto-docking). Such a game would such both for us KSP fans and for the casual Space MMO players. 

Not to mention the fact that Intercept isn't big enough and doesn't have the resources to actually make an MMO worth playing.

[PlutoISaPlanet]

1 hour ago, Master39 said:

Why? This isn't ED, to make it work as an MMO they would have to destroy and dumb down everything that makes KSP a great game.

1-4 Players Multiplayer COOP is proper multiplayer (and better than both single player and MMOs), why has everything be either single player or an MMO?

A space game with travel speeds several orders of magnitude slower than ED (Which is already too slow for many) without combat (which seems to be the only interesting thing for the Space MMO crowd) and with realistic space travel and piloting (frankly out of reach for people used to give FTL and artificial gravity for granted and unable to park a Sidewinder on an outpost without auto-docking). Such a game would such both for us KSP fans and for the casual Space MMO players. 

Not to mention the fact that Intercept isn't big enough and doesn't have the resources to actually make an MMO worth playing.

To clarify, all I expect from an mmo for ksp 2 is as follows.

On evey planet, their are multiple colonys from your friends and random people. You can merge games from the colonys. This expands the games scope without being unreasonable. I know this is just hypothetical, but I feel this would be a great way to expand the game and make ksp 2 feel more ALIVE.

[Guest]

12 minutes ago, PlutoISaPlanet said:

On evey planet, their are multiple colonys from your friends and random people

If you can't interact they're useless, if you can use them then the whole infrastructure gameplay becomes exponentially easier.

13 minutes ago, PlutoISaPlanet said:

This expands the games scope without being unreasonable.

It just spreads existing gameplay over tens if not hundreds of people, if anything it reduces the scope of the game.

14 minutes ago, PlutoISaPlanet said:

make ksp 2 feel more ALIVE

Space is vast, empty and pretty much dead, if it's crowded it's not a space game.

I can see a tiny window of opportunity for a Death Stranding like asynchronous system tied to the contract system in which you can post your contracts for other players to pick or do missions like bringing something to a specific destination or building a specific craft but that's a nightmare to design and make work and probably still beyond Intercept's capabilities and budget.

 

And remember that anything that anything that makes multiplayer more central to the core experience goes directly against moddability, if you remain in the realm of coop and small private servers you can just require everyone to have the same mods, but if you start to bring random players in each other games and talk about MMO like population the only way to manage modding is to forbid it altogether when playing multiplayer.

[Ashandalar]

22 minutes ago, PlutoISaPlanet said:

To clarify, all I expect from an mmo for ksp 2 is as follows.

On evey planet, their are multiple colonys from your friends and random people. You can merge games from the colonys. This expands the games scope without being unreasonable. I know this is just hypothetical, but I feel this would be a great way to expand the game and make ksp 2 feel more ALIVE.

But why do you expect anything of the sort? You've said you believe it will be MMO-like, but believing it will be MMO-like is an entirely different proposition to just wanting the game to be MMO-like. All we really know about multiplayer at this point is that it's a planned feature, nothing more. My own opinion is that nothing could kill my interest in playing KSP2 multiplayer faster than if the game ends up as you describe.

[PlutoISaPlanet]

5 hours ago, Master39 said:

If you can't interact they're useless, if you can use them then the whole infrastructure gameplay becomes exponentially easier.

It just spreads existing gameplay over tens if not hundreds of people, if anything it reduces the scope of the game.

Space is vast, empty and pretty much dead, if it's crowded it's not a space game.

I can see a tiny window of opportunity for a Death Stranding like asynchronous system tied to the contract system in which you can post your contracts for other players to pick or do missions like bringing something to a specific destination or building a specific craft but that's a nightmare to design and make work and probably still beyond Intercept's capabilities and budget.

 

And remember that anything that anything that makes multiplayer more central to the core experience goes directly against moddability, if you remain in the realm of coop and small private servers you can just require everyone to have the same mods, but if you start to bring random players in each other games and talk about MMO like population the only way to manage modding is to forbid it altogether when playing multiplayer.

 

5 hours ago, Ashandalar said:

But why do you expect anything of the sort? You've said you believe it will be MMO-like, but believing it will be MMO-like is an entirely different proposition to just wanting the game to be MMO-like. All we really know about multiplayer at this point is that it's a planned feature, nothing more. My own opinion is that nothing could kill my interest in playing KSP2 multiplayer faster than if the game ends up as you describe.

I feel that the system I am putting foward would be nice. It may not float everyones boat- which is fine. 

The option to have other colony's of other players appear could be opptional. Or you could merge game. Their are a lot of minute details that go into this.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, PlutoISaPlanet said:

It may not float everyones boat- which is fine.

No, it's not fine, failed wannabe space MMOs are a dime a dozen, I want KSP not another useless ED, Starbase, Star Citizen (just to cite the popular ones) MMO from yet another studio too small to properly manage it.

You can't just make the difference between Skyrim and Elder Scrolls Online "just an option" because such a game would just inherit the worst of both types of games because it needs to have the limits of both to work.

[PlutoISaPlanet]

18 hours ago, Master39 said:

No, it's not fine, failed wannabe space MMOs are a dime a dozen, I want KSP not another useless ED, Starbase, Star Citizen (just to cite the popular ones) MMO from yet another studio too small to properly manage it.

You can't just make the difference between Skyrim and Elder Scrolls Online "just an option" because such a game would just inherit the worst of both types of games because it needs to have the limits of both to work.

I just see an oppertunity with colonys being integral to gameplay.

[SciMan]

@Master39 Ok, I have a bit of a problem in my brain that I need help with.

First off, somewhere in this thread you stated "I think this game is going to be MMO-like".

Then you constantly say that "being MMO-like is the thing that will kill KSP 2" or something to that effect.

Can we all acknowledge that you basically just used your own line of reasoning to shoot yourself in the foot? Your own line of speculation is the very thing you're arguing against.

Would it not be quite a lot easier to admit "hey maybe this is a dang good reason that KSP 2 will NOT be MMO-like"?

Besides, I see KSP 2 multiplayer being limited to a VERY LOW number of "simultaneous users per shared game session", or put another way, you'll probably only be able to have 4 to 8 total players in a given session at the same time, tho you may not have a limit of how many players can interact with the same session (so you'd be able to have "shifts" of players all working on the same save file, so long as no more than 4 to 8 of them are actually playing on it at the same time).

The very thought of having the game be MMO-like in scale is simply preposterous, as you eventually figured out. Intercept games is simply not a large enough entity to be able to handle the smallest of challenges that would come up with something of that scale, and even then, what would there be to actually DO once you reach endgame and have a colony on the surface and in orbit of every single body in all the solar systems? My point is that there is not a viable place for "fetch quests" and "daily quests" and the like that you always find in MMOs.

That and the low player count (enforced by the game, not by the popularity of the game) is why it can't be of the scale of an MMO. For that, you'd need something like procedurally generated new solar systems.

[Guest]

3 hours ago, SciMan said:

@Master39 Ok, I have a bit of a problem in my brain that I need help with.

First off, somewhere in this thread you stated "I think this game is going to be MMO-like".

Then you constantly say that "being MMO-like is the thing that will kill KSP 2" or something to that effect.

Can we all acknowledge that you basically just used your own line of reasoning to shoot yourself in the foot? Your own line of speculation is the very thing you're arguing against.

Would it not be quite a lot easier to admit "hey maybe this is a dang good reason that KSP 2 will NOT be MMO-like"?

Besides, I see KSP 2 multiplayer being limited to a VERY LOW number of "simultaneous users per shared game session", or put another way, you'll probably only be able to have 4 to 8 total players in a given session at the same time, tho you may not have a limit of how many players can interact with the same session (so you'd be able to have "shifts" of players all working on the same save file, so long as no more than 4 to 8 of them are actually playing on it at the same time).

The very thought of having the game be MMO-like in scale is simply preposterous, as you eventually figured out. Intercept games is simply not a large enough entity to be able to handle the smallest of challenges that would come up with something of that scale, and even then, what would there be to actually DO once you reach endgame and have a colony on the surface and in orbit of every single body in all the solar systems? My point is that there is not a viable place for "fetch quests" and "daily quests" and the like that you always find in MMOs.

That and the low player count (enforced by the game, not by the popularity of the game) is why it can't be of the scale of an MMO. For that, you'd need something like procedurally generated new solar systems.

Tagging the wrong person there.

[SciMan]

@Master39 My apologies, it seems I was in fact tagging the wrong person. Your objections to KSP as an "mmo-style" game are entirely valid. @PlutoISaPlanet 's idea that you could have KSP be an MMO-style game doesn't seem to make much sense to me, as it would be incredibly technically challenging to make the game run well enough given that literally every vessel needs its physics to be simulated instead of in most "play some form of humanoid character" MMOs where the most physics that needs to be considered is simple ground movement and maybe jumping and flying that's not at all based on physics so the calculation load per player is just TINY.

Consider that the server would have to be calculating the physics of every single vessel that players are paying attention to in the universe, every frame, except when they're in time-warp, and the size of the problem should dawn on you, because boy oh boy is it a big problem. Standard systems, even something with a Threadripper in it that could dedicate one of its many cores to each vessel, simply wouldn't be enough processing power to handle all that.

And then you go and add the load of all the other things that the vessels are doing, like tracking resource usage and therefore adjusting the mass of the vessel every frame (which impacts the physics again), as well as things like getting in range of another vessel where the physics needs to be EVEN MORE ACCURATE in order to handle close-proximity operations like docking (or just figuring out if the two or more vessels collided with each other at a velocity high enough to cause damage or not, and what that does to the structure of the vessels if something is damaged).

Maybe we'd have enough processing power to do this once we have highly efficient quantum computers or after we figure out how to make processors that don't use silicon as their semiconductor (perhaps germanium or something, the advantage to be had is higher frequencies of operation with a manageable heat load).