KSP 2 Multiplayer Discussion Thread

[Vl3d]

So, I have went through this thread and read most of the comments. I've been looking for material for the compilation thread with cool experiences we would like to have in multiplayer.

I enjoyed reading your opinions and got excited about your ideas sometimes - especially when I saw Nate say that "creating contacts for other players is a good idea". It means that the devs probably pay attention to forum discussions.

But... I have to politely say that we have a major problem in the way we think. 99% of the comments are about how to fix time-warp. Excuse my french, but "bai*se le distorsion temporelle, put*ain".  It's really not our job to solve time travel. Forget about time-warping, escape the mind prison of years of KSP1 gameplay and the game of circles in map view.

Focus on the experiences you want to have. Do you want to look up and see the Mun and a huge refueling space station? Do you want to land on Eve with your friend and then ask another more advanced player to save you? Do you want to see cool rocket launches from a distance and jets flying in formation above? Do you want to see the epic interstellar ship built by other players leaving orbit? Do you want to witness planetary level events using space telescopes orbiting with other players? Do you want to build craft in co-op and trade them? Do you want to have fun races and flights and other mini-games? Do you want to co-op build a colony where other players can visit to witness the amazing vistas? Do you want to be the first to set a flag on Duna? Do you want us to build the future together?

Then stop stressing about "how to solve time warp".

My personal opinion is we do not need time-warp at the level of planetary SOI. Fly and drive in real time. Prepare your rendezvous and set alarms while you focus on another mission.

As for interplanetary, just plan your journey and let the game take care of it, stop micro-managing everything.

Enough with the clown of time-warp!

Edited April 7, 2022 by Vl3d

[Guest]

28 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

So, I have went through this thread and read most of the comments. I've been looking for material for the compilation thread with cool experiences we would like to have in multiplayer.

I enjoyed reading your opinions and got excited about your ideas sometimes - especially when I saw Nate say that "creating contacts for other players is a good idea". It means that the devs probably pay attention to forum discussions.

But... I have to politely say that we have a major problem in the way we think. 99% of the comments are about how to fix time-warp. Excuse my french, but "bai*se le distorsion temporelle, put*ain".  It's really not our job to solve time travel. Forget about time-warping, escape the mind prison of years of KSP1 gameplay and the game of circles in map view.

Focus on the experiences you want to have. Do you want to look up and see the Mun and a huge space station? Do you want to land on Eve with your friend and then ask another more advanced player to save you? Do you want to see cool rocket launches from a distance and jets flying in formation above? Do you want to see the epic interstellar ship built by other players leaving orbit? Do you want to witness planetary level events using space telescopes orbiting with other players? Do you want to build craft in co-op and trade them? Do you want to have fun races and flights and other mini-games? Do you want to co-op build a colony where other players can visit to witness the amazing vistas? Do you want to be the first to set a flag on Duna? Do you want us to build the future together?

Then stop thinking about "how to solve time warp".

My personal opinion is we do not need time-warp at the level of planetary SOI. Fly and drive in real time. Prepare your rendezvous and set alarms while you focus on another mission.

As for interplanetary, just plan your journey and let the game take care of it, stop micro-managing everything.

Enough with the clown of time-warp!

If I wanted multiplayer just to show how awesome I'm at the game to my friends I'd just stream it on Discord, I can already do that with KSP1. 

If I wanted to "plan the journey and let the game take care of it" AKA Autopiloting everything, I'd just join another player stream.

Timewarp is central because without a way to manage different levels of timewarp for different players the multiplayer is going to be barely different than a combination of having specators and sharing saves.

I want to play KSP, multiplayer, meaning that we both have our Space Program, we both have our science, funds (if they are a thing), bases, stations, craft and missions, and we can interact and/or compete as we see fit.

Mun race? Doable.

Cooperative Mun colony while competing for the first to put a Kerbal on Duna and collaborating on a sample return mission on EVE? Done.

Hitching a ride for my scientific probe on your interstellar mothership in exchange for part of my fuel production capabilities? Easily doable.

Without a way to indipendently time warp all of those are relegated to actually playing in turns and not real-time multiplayer. It's not that big of a difference from forum-sharing saves, yes, it would be automated and you get to be a spectator on the other player activity, but in the best case scenario you spend half of your time spectating and half playing, and that's if it is just a 2 people server.

[t_v]

3 hours ago, Vl3d said:

But... I have to politely say that we have a major problem in the way we think. 99% of the comments are about how to fix time-warp. Excuse my french, but "bai*se le distorsion temporelle, put*ain".  It's really not our job to solve time travel. Forget about time-warping, escape the mind prison of years of KSP1 gameplay and the game of circles in map view.

Focus on the experiences you want to have. Do you want to look up and see the Mun and a huge refueling space station? Do you want to land on Eve with your friend and then ask another more advanced player to save you? Do you want to see cool rocket launches from a distance and jets flying in formation above? Do you want to see the epic interstellar ship built by other players leaving orbit? Do you want to witness planetary level events using space telescopes orbiting with other players? Do you want to build craft in co-op and trade them? Do you want to have fun races and flights and other mini-games? Do you want to co-op build a colony where other players can visit to witness the amazing vistas? Do you want to be the first to set a flag on Duna? Do you want us to build the future together?

Here’s the problem: you can’t have any of those experiences without time warp. Colonies, interstellar ships, all of those will require interplanetary travel using Hohmann transfers. Imagine starting a server and then playing for a few days starting Mun missions, then launching minmus missions and having to wait real-life weeks to recover them. Meanwhile, what is there to do? You are stuck at the same tech level. This would kill most if not all servers. Next, your first Duna transfer. You have to wait a real life year to get that science back. KSP 2 will have gone through a major update by the time you finish one mission. And you are still literal real life decades away from being able to start a colony. KSP 3 might already be out by the time you finish your first Jool mission, and almost all of the activities you described are still decades off. 

All of this is to say that the reason people are focused on time warp is because it is a problem that needs to be solved in order to do the interesting things to want to do. 

Edited April 7, 2022 by t_v

[Vl3d]

Let's just end the controversy. So every SOI (moon/planet) has only one real-time-bubble in which all players play real-time. Players never manually control time-warp. But the players can plan journeys.

1. You go to orbit and enter the journey planner / map view.

2. You create all the maneuver nodes  (intermediary and final). You press start journey.

You can't interact with other players during a journey. You don't control time-warp.

3. The game spins you in orbit until the transfer window, does the burn. Or it plays a cutscene. Doesn't matter.

4. The game fast-forwards you to the next maneuver node or directly to your destination. Or you cancel the journey and create another one with new maneuver nodes. It doesn't matter. You can't interact with other players during a journey. You don't control time-warp.

5. You arrive at your target. You capture and circularize. This ends the journey.

6. The game automatically syncs your SOI configuration to the main/server one for that part of the solar system by spinning you in orbit until you catch up. Or it plays a cutscene.

7. Done - everyone in the planet / moon SOI is playing realtime.

Time-warp is handled automatically by the game and is always in sync at server level for the region of the universe you are in. All player gameplay is real-time. Time-warp is solved, you just don't control it.

And basically all inter-SOI gameplay is simulated, fake, call it what you want. Because it's irrelevant. You can have some special cases for travel to space stations in unusual orbits (like around the Sun - they would have their own real-time bubbles). But the same principle applies. You don't control time warp, you just create the maneuver nodes for the journey (including gravity assists) and the game does everything automatically. Basically you leave one SOI and enter another, like in any other multiplayer game that implements fast-travel. If you need an explanation tell yourself syncing is done by spinning in orbit - because that's where time is flexible.

Can we please put the "dream" into the "build-fly-dream" and talk more about the multiplayer experiences we want to have in the game?

Edited April 7, 2022 by Vl3d
clarity

[Vl3d]

And this way multiplayer is a MMO where space agencies compete.

Servers would be public, permanent, per region with a lot of players. What you build never gets lost or there would be very rare resets. You can also set-up private servers.

Maybe you can even invite players into your single player campaign.

Each agency can have max 4 co-op players that can build / fly / do missions together.

Space agencies can also do contracts for other space agencies.

You can physically interact with other players space stations or colonies only by requesting permissions to dock. But otherwise you can trade, emote and communicate.

Craft of competing space agencies are ghosted (can't interact physically). This way you can also have as many craft as possible in a single place (rockets just become a single fly-through part that you can't interact with). But you see everyone.

Each player controls a kerbal per mission (although you can switch). You can switch to your space agency's crafts anytime you want.

There you go, that's KSP2 multiplayer. Greatest game ever made.

Edited April 7, 2022 by Vl3d
boom!

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

Let's just end the controversy. So every SOI (moon/planet) has only one real-time-bubble in which all players play real-time. Players never manually control time-warp. But the players can plan journeys.

1. You go to orbit and enter the journey planner / map view.

2. You create all the maneuver nodes  (intermediary and final). You press start journey.

You can't interact with other players during a journey. You don't control time-warp.

3. The game spins you in orbit until the transfer window, does the burn. Or it plays a cutscene. Doesn't matter.

4. The game fast-forwards you to the next maneuver node or directly to your destination. Or you cancel the journey and create another one with new maneuver nodes. It doesn't matter. You can't interact with other players during a journey. You don't control time-warp.

5. You arrive at your target. You capture and circularize. This ends the journey.

6. The game automatically syncs your SOI configuration to the main/server one for that part of the solar system by spinning you in orbit until you catch up. Or it plays a cutscene.

7. Done - everyone in the planet / moon SOI is playing realtime.

Time-warp is handled automatically by the game and is always in sync at server level for the region of the universe you are in. All player gameplay is real-time. Time-warp is solved, you just don't control it.

And basically all inter-SOI gameplay is simulated, fake, call it what you want. Because it's irrelevant. You can have some special cases for travel to space stations in unusual orbits (like around the Sun - they would have their own real-time bubbles). But the same principle applies. You don't control time warp, you just create the maneuver nodes for the journey (including gravity assists) and the game does everything automatically. Basically you leave one SOI and enter another, like in any other multiplayer game that implements fast-travel. If you need an explanation tell yourself syncing is done by spinning in orbit - because that's where time is flexible.

Can we please put the "dream" into the "build-fly-dream" and talk more about the multiplayer experiences we want to have in the game?

You know why there's all this arguing about the so called "time warp problem"? 

It's because every so often there's someone convinced that having players indipendently use timewarp and the game sync them up when required is just impossible, despite all the examples brought up here, despite multiple mods with multiple solutions to this "problem" having existed for years now.

If you want to talk about the experience of actually playing multiplayer you should just avoid the whole time warp thing, pretend is not a problem.

Starting by posting the nth solution, and one that removes half of the game from the game at that, will only result in another 2 pages of people arguing on the feasibility of an asynchronous multiplayer system with sync-up.

For me, any multiplayer situation I can think of has as a prerequisite the ability of having access to 100% of the game when playing in multiplayer, both me and the other players playing exactly like we play in single player, but sharing the same save and being able to interact with each other, with no conditions or strange rules other than having to be synced up with another player to directly interact with them or their crafts.

Otherwise multiplayer is only good for tutoring and showing off.

So, what multiplayer experience I want to have in KSP2? 3 or 4 players, competing with two of them for the first to do a Duna landing while collaborating on my Duna mission with the third, building a KSS in LKO together and then a Munar Gateway and an Artemis Spaceport on the surface of the mun together, while everyone of us has different priorities and missions going on.

Doing complex missions like the Mars sample return one Perseverance is a part of, with one player hitching a ride on my Duna rover for his helicopter and another planning and building the sample return infrastructure.

All of the above done at the same time, without having to play in turns and wait people around.

Edited April 7, 2022 by Master39

[Vl3d]

Your idea and my idea are the same, except that you want small manually controlled local time bubbles and I want planetary SOI sized real-time bubbles that auto-sync. I really don't care about having manual controls over time warp.

But unfortunately your solution is localized and small. It does not allow me to be on the planet and look up at the sky and see in real-time how a giant interstellar ship is being pulled out of spaceport by small tugs and then lighting it's Daedalus engine. All while other players are flying jets in formation above and 3 huge rockets are taking off. It doesn't allow for hundreds of players + teams.

As stated in my previous post about how KSP2 could be a competitive team based MMO.

53 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

And this way multiplayer is a MMO where space agencies compete.

Servers would be public, permanent, per region with a lot of players. What you build never gets lost or there would be very rare resets. You can also set-up private servers.

Maybe you can even invite players into your single player campaign.

Each agency can have max 4 co-op players that can build / fly / do missions together.

Space agencies can also do contracts for other space agencies.

You can physically interact with other players space stations or colonies only by requesting permissions to dock. But otherwise you can trade, emote and communicate.

Craft of competing space agencies are ghosted (can't interact physically). This way you can also have as many craft as possible in a single place (rockets just become a single fly-through part that you can't interact with). But you see everyone.

Each player controls a kerbal per mission (although you can switch). You can switch to your space agency's crafts anytime you want.

There you go, that's KSP2 multiplayer. Greatest game ever made.

 

Edited April 7, 2022 by Vl3d

[Guest]

44 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

But unfortunately your solution is localized and small. It does not allow me to be on the planet and look up at the sky and see in real-time how a giant interstellar ship is being pulled out of spaceport by small tugs and then lighting it's Daedalus engine. All while other players are flying jets in formation above and 3 huge rockets are taking off. It doesn't allow for hundreds of players + teams.

The biggest station would be a point of light anyway from the surface of a planet.

If you're close enough to see it you're in the same physic bubble anyway.

Also, anything allowing for hundreds of players and an "MMO" experience would be completely outside of what KSP is.

It's not like I hate MMOs, but often enough people seems to forget that coop / small servers with a small number of friends is multiplayer too and, IMOH, the best kind of it.

Edited April 7, 2022 by Master39

[Vl3d]

Nobody's stopping you to make your own private server or to invite friends to join your single player campaign. That's also possible and much more. You can actually do your own thing in a busy universe.

Edited April 7, 2022 by Vl3d

[t_v]

2 hours ago, Vl3d said:

Let's just end the controversy. So every SOI (moon/planet) has only one real-time-bubble in which all players play real-time. Players never manually control time-warp. But the players can plan journeys.

1. You go to orbit and enter the journey planner / map view.

2. You create all the maneuver nodes  (intermediary and final). You press start journey.

You can't interact with other players during a journey. You don't control time-warp.

3. The game spins you in orbit until the transfer window, does the burn. Or it plays a cutscene. Doesn't matter.

4. The game fast-forwards you to the next maneuver node or directly to your destination. Or you cancel the journey and create another one with new maneuver nodes. It doesn't matter. You can't interact with other players during a journey. You don't control time-warp.

5. You arrive at your target. You capture and circularize. This ends the journey.

6. The game automatically syncs your SOI configuration to the main/server one for that part of the solar system by spinning you in orbit until you catch up. Or it plays a cutscene.

7. Done - everyone in the planet / moon SOI is playing realtime.

Time-warp is handled automatically by the game and is always in sync at server level for the region of the universe you are in. All player gameplay is real-time. Time-warp is solved, you just don't control it.

And basically all inter-SOI gameplay is simulated, fake, call it what you want. Because it's irrelevant. You can have some special cases for travel to space stations in unusual orbits (like around the Sun - they would have their own real-time bubbles). But the same principle applies. You don't control time warp, you just create the maneuver nodes for the journey (including gravity assists) and the game does everything automatically. Basically you leave one SOI and enter another, like in any other multiplayer game that implements fast-travel. If you need an explanation tell yourself syncing is done by spinning in orbit - because that's where time is flexible.

Can we please put the "dream" into the "build-fly-dream" and talk more about the multiplayer experiences we want to have in the game?

 

1 hour ago, Master39 said:

Starting by posting the nth solution, and one that removes half of the game from the game at that, will only result in another 2 pages of people arguing on the feasibility of an asynchronous multiplayer system with sync-up.

You are absolutely right @Master39 but I’ll just put one thing down. Real time planetary SOIs are a really really really bad idea. Have you tried running a Mun mission entirely in real time? It is a pain and you have to set an alarm clock to come back to your computer at Mun periapsis. I then did that for a Jool mission starting with a probe orbiting Laythe and by the time I was assisting off of Tylo, I was sick of it. Space is absolutely massive and it takes way too long to traverse for a game, so we need time warp, even in planetary sois. By the time you can boost off of a station and reach another in a few minutes, you have serious Kessler syndrome. 
 

1 hour ago, Master39 said:

It's because every so often there's someone convinced that having players indipendently use timewarp and the game sync them up when required is just impossible, despite all the examples brought up here, despite multiple mods with multiple solutions to this "problem" having existed for years now

I don’t think it is about impossibility but rather about fun. You mentioned the spectator problem (though I can’t actually see where you got the impression that the game would be played in turns) and hopefully you can see that others may have problems with basically having an independent save and not being able to see other players’ actions in real time even when they are timewarping. I’ll point out my ludicrous solution again, that because causality is lost in any case, anyone can time warp indiscriminately and there are special rules for stable orbits where everything in a stable orbit of a target body warps unless it is being actively controlled by another player, in which case a ghost ship warps that can be interacted with. As you said, there are multiple solutions which work well to solve different problems with time warp. But removing it is not a good idea. 
 

As for MMOs, my stance is that if someone wants to face extreme overpopulation and overcrowding in their KSP experience, that’s up to them. 

[Vl3d]

12 minutes ago, t_v said:

Have you tried running a Mun mission entirely in real time?

Build faster rockets, have a server speed multiplier option, make the Mun have it's own real-time bubble, use alarms while doing something else, sync celestial body positions when making orbit but keep them stable when on the ground so you can fast travel even to a visible object such as the Mun etc.

This is a matter of details and I don't have all the solutions. But it's a path towards a greater vision for the game.

31 minutes ago, t_v said:

if someone wants to face extreme overpopulation and overcrowding in their KSP experience, that’s up to them

To which you yourself gave the answer:

31 minutes ago, t_v said:

Space is absolutely massive

Don't you see the beauty of an active universe, of us all building and playing together, meeting at some cool colony and admiring the crafts we created, being inspired? That's the whole point of KSP: if you've had enough, head towards the stars!

[t_v]

12 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

 

49 minutes ago, t_v said:

if someone wants to face extreme overpopulation and overcrowding in their KSP experience, that’s up to them

To which you yourself gave the answer:

49 minutes ago, t_v said:

Space is absolutely massive

Don't you see the beauty of an active universe, of us all building and playing together, meeting at some cool colony and admiring the crafts we created, being inspired? That's the whole point of KSP: if you've had enough, head towards the stars!

Space is massive, planets and moons are tiny in comparison. There is a big difference between having an island (even just one island) to yourself on Laythe and having a massive area of empty space where you put your station. Unique areas are in short supply in a large multiplayer environment, and just having 5000 players have small stations in deep space because all of the pristine space on planets and bodies are taken up is kind of dumb. What is there left to do? Make more supply runs? There’s so many colonies and supply runs already that it doesn’t matter. Explore? There’s nothing left to see except vistas covered with hundreds of bases to the point that they are ruined. You will probably only have a small base on one or two celestial bodies, as every player having a base on every body just isn’t feasible  for a lot of reasons. Even accounting for low and high orbits, which are not good value locations compared to being on the surface, you will still get significant crowding. So the solution to overcrowding is not that space is big- because most of that space is not useful for living in- but it is that you will have to reduce the amount of stuff there is- in other words reduce the number of players (which takes it out of being an MMO)

I feel like by now, a lot of arguments about server size have been resolved in this thread, and the MMO system has some major issues. 

[Vl3d]

I find it funny - I never thought I would ever hear someone worry about KSP overcrowding, considering how empty KSP1 is and how vast the actual Universe is and that we're talking about hundreds-of-kilometers sized planets and moons.

If it's really that successful that we don't have sufficient space to build colonies (even on the ocean) then it means that the game is a massive success. Then we have an extra reason to go to Duna.

And I believe we should be able to place a first-to-plant-the-flag stake on an area. It's extra motivation for the space race. And if I arrive later, I can admire the Elders creations.

But we could have tourist colonies in the best places and buy trips to go there.

Anyway, building a colony in KSP is not easy, it takes time and resources. Besides, I don't know if MMO's actually place everybody on the same server - player base can be split by region.
 

Edited April 7, 2022 by Vl3d

[darthgently]

The current physics engine really couldn't handle a lot of simultaneous MMO activity in physics range, I'd think.  So maybe not so much overcrowding in the sense of real life, but more overcrowding in the sense of CPU cycles.  Build the biggest craft your install can handle and that is probably over the limit of total number of parts across all craft in scene an MMO flavor could handle (overhead for separate craft handling and such)

[Vl3d]

4 hours ago, Vl3d said:

Craft of competing space agencies are ghosted (can't interact physically). This way you can also have as many craft as possible in a single place (rockets just become a single fly-through part that you can't interact with). But you see everyone.

You only render a projection of crafts from other agencies. That means it's just 1 part without a collision mesh.

And you render full crafts with all parts only for you and the other max. 3 players on your team. So you can crash into them by mistake.

I think it's doable.

Edited April 7, 2022 by Vl3d

[SciMan]

MMO's do this thing called "instancing", because ultimately you do NOT want to have to code a game that can handle literally thousands of players all simultaneously doing "interesting things" (in the context of KSP 2, that would be "moving your ship using its thrusters", or "time warping").

Also, KSP 2 will never, NEVER be an MMO. And it's because of money, not because of some problem with "how do you code and/or implement time warp so that it works in multiplayer".

The bigger issue is in fact "how do you pay for the server hosting for all that?". Because trust me, that gets expensive quickly.
And before you say "But why not peer-to-peer networking instead?", I already know that's not going to work.
You simply can't run an extremely popular MMO with a lot of things happening all at once if you use peer-to-peer networking to handle most of the traffic, because of the "edge cases" of (at the very least) "how do you handle the unexpected disconnection or rage-quitting of someone who's computer is doing server-like work related to thousands of other players?", and "What happens if the client figures out they're the host and starts injecting bad or altered data into the equation (it's not hard to cheat if you know how the game communicates, and that kind of cheating is really hard to detect too).
Nobody's solved those problems yet.
Ever have a multiplayer game pause itself right in the middle of a game with an error message of something like "Host migration"?
Believe it or not, that's the best solution we've been able to come up with for the "unexpected disconnection" issue so far.
It interrupts everyone's game while the (new) game host picks up the pieces as best it can and re-synchronizes all the players, and to be quite honest it frequently doesn't work nearly as well as you'd think (leading to the entire game session just being dropped without saving anything).

Peer-to-peer multiplayer only really works for small player counts for a bunch of other reasons besides those, but "host migration" is the one that sticks in my mind the most because it impacts gameplay the most.

So since you have to use the "game is hosted on a server, users connect to server" type model for MMO's, where most of the heavy lifting of the game calculations is done by the server (with clients only sending user input and receiving the most recent copy of what's happened according to the server), most MMO's are based on a subscription-based payment model, simply because that's the only feasible way they can arrange the finances in a way that allows the servers to get paid for.
And since KSP is not based on that kind of payment model to the best of my knowledge, that's not what we're going to get out of KSP.

So in short, no, we're never going to see high player counts in KSP 2 multiplayer. Thousands is literally impossible with the current payment model, so is hundreds, and even if they came up with dedicated server software (leaving the hosting to those able to pay for it on their own), we'd still likely not get player counts above say 16 different people on the same game session at the same time, because of issues with synchronizing that much player activity within the time span of a single game frame. We do still want this game to run at 60FPS right?

 

EDIT: About what I think KSP 2 Multiplayer will look like, I think there's an entire possibility for a player to be "just a craft designer" and barely actually pilot any vehicles of any kind outside of testing purposes to make sure the stuff they build actually does what they want it to do.
It depends entirely on how much they integrate the ability to publish your designs to the Steam Workshop with the funding and/or incoming resource flow of your space agency (and trust me, there's a lot they could do there!).
In fact, an extremely lucrative option (for your in-game "space agency-acting-as-solely-an-engineering firm") would be to focus entirely on designing vessels, and not so much focus on actually piloting vehicles aside from that needed to confirm that they do in fact perform as you expect them to perform.
If the multiplayer is set up so you can buy and sell craft blueprints with in-game money and/or resources (tied in with the Steam Workshop craft sharing system from KSP 1, but likely with many under-the-hood improvements). the more popular your design becomes, the more you'd be able to charge for it.
This means that affording an interstellar voyage could be simply a matter of building the best and/or easiest to pilot cargo or crew transfer LKO SSTO, or Mun rocket, or ISRU-planet-hopper, or whatever mission you want it to fulfill (but ships built to do supply runs would probably be a popular category to focus on, because not everyone has the time to fully optimize those designs).

That would enable MUCH MORE FREEDOM for experienced players who might be making a 2nd or 3rd or 40th new save file without bringing any of their craft files over from older saves (maybe because they want to try building differently, maybe because they installed a new mod and want to see how it impacts the game's progression, who knows?).
This allows for more freedom because all the good designs from the previous save files could be contributing to the funding (or incoming resource stream) of the new save file (since they're all from the owner of the same license key for KSP 2, the game would be able to figure that out (and maybe give you an option to choose if you want to have access to the funding from "sales" (aka downloads) of your designs or not), which would allow you to (for instance) skip the early-game "tutorial-but-not-called-a-tutorial" phases of play, and go straight to playing in mid-game where the player is expected to roughly know what they should be doing.

I know that when I get a new game, I'll play thru it once with no mods, then a second time with mods, and then by the third time I've tired of early-game enough that I'll probably install a cheat or "quick-start" mod that can just give me the items I need to start playing the game right at the mid-game progression point, but it would be nice if I could do that without having the nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I'm not doing it legitimately (not because my feelings are wrong, after all if I'm using a cheat mod, I'm NOT doing it legitimately). Of course, once I get myself established at a nice mid-game progression level, I'll disable and/or uninstall the cheat mod, and progress as normal (or at least as close to it as I can).

Edited April 7, 2022 by SciMan
Added speculation of what integrating craft sharing into the progression system could mean with respect to gameplay

[Bej Kerman]

48 minutes ago, SciMan said:

I think there's an entire possibility for a player to be "just a craft designer"

Well then you've just destroyed what fun MP KSP would be. There's no fun to be had if you're not buzzing your friend's ship in your latest SSTO, but rather watching your spacecraft autonomously, and soullessly, drift by each other waiting for them to finish their tasks.

[t_v]

7 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Well then you've just destroyed what fun MP KSP would be. There's no fun to be had if you're not buzzing your friend's ship in your latest SSTO, but rather watching your spacecraft autonomously, and soullessly, drift by each other waiting for them to finish their tasks.

As you said in another thread, debatable. I think he was referring to the process of engineering a craft, not watching it fly itself (which I personally don’t find fun, but I do find designing craft fun). I personally like doing stunts but for others, that might not be the only way to have fun. There is fun to be had for some people. The important part is that people are choosing to do things this way, whereas with the MMO idea, it removes the entire aspect of transfers from the game, at which point it just sounds like a request for a worse remake of Eve Online. 

[SciMan]

How have I destroyed YOUR fun?
I haven't disconnected your controller, have I?
I haven't forced you to fly your craft on autopilot, have I?
Does the mere presence of an alternate way to play the game bother you that deeply that you feel the need to make everyone else's life miserable?

Besides, who said anything about "autonomously and soul-lessly"?
It surely was not myself.

 

I was talking about selling your craft designs to other PLAYER'S space agencies, as a blueprint with production rights, with the proceeds being deposited in the in-game accounts of your own space agency.

People already build craft. I was just talking about sharing them, and maybe getting something out of sharing them, and maybe that that's enough to make someone want to pick up the game even if they're a hopeless pilot.

The advantage is that LITERALLY ANYONE who understands the concepts sufficiently can do this type of thing, and therefore get some enjoyment out of KSP 2.
THAT MEANS MORE SALES, AND MORE SALES = MORE GOODER, RIGHT?

They'll be able to enjoy the game (to a degree) even if they're an uncoordinated mess that can't play a game for 5 minutes without wanting to throw the controller across the room because they can't get their fingers to do what they're trying to do fast enough to avoid crashing and exploding.

See, it's able to be interpreted as an ACCESSIBILITY feature, rather than a "crutch", which is the same tired and over-played (and oh my god PLEASE just stop it) old argument that everyone brings up every time the slightest mention of the word "autopilot" is brought up.

I'm just so extremely tired of beating that particular dead horse. "Done" doesn't even adequately cover it. I want to be several light years away from the next place on the forums that argument happens. Nothing good ever comes from it, and it always ends with the thread getting locked.
So please, for the love of whatever deity you worship (or not), can we all agree that we have different ideas about what level of flight control automation we want from the game and just collectively decide to not argue about autopilots in KSP anymore?

[Bej Kerman]

3 minutes ago, t_v said:

16 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Well then you've just destroyed what fun MP KSP would be. There's no fun to be had if you're not buzzing your friend's ship in your latest SSTO, but rather watching your spacecraft autonomously, and soullessly, drift by each other waiting for them to finish their tasks.

As you said in another thread, debatable. I think he was referring to the process of engineering a craft, not watching it fly itself (which I personally don’t find fun, but I do find designing craft fun). I personally like doing stunts but for others, that might not be the only way to have fun. There is fun to be had for some people. The important part is that people are choosing to do things this way, whereas with the MMO idea, it removes the entire aspect of transfers from the game, at which point it just sounds like a request for a worse remake of Eve Online. 

That's a better way to put it.

3 minutes ago, SciMan said:

I was talking about selling your craft designs to other PLAYER'S space agencies, as a blueprint with production rights, with the proceeds being deposited in the in-game accounts of your own space agency.

I thought you meant no piloting at all, that's settled that then.

[SciMan]

Well, I'm glad to have been able to clear up that misconception then.

However, there's nothing (aside from the time it would take to implement) stopping the developers from putting in AI space agencies that just kind of do their own thing, and maybe THEY could also buy your designs, and you theirs (which is how you'd get access to the "default craft files" of KSP 2 if there are any), kind of like how Spore pulled the "native wildlife" that populated nearly every planet from a combination of developer-provided creatures, your own creations, and the creations of other players (for better or worse on that last one).

Yes, those AI space agency piloted missions would be entirely on autopilot, but then again you would get no benefit from the success of those AI space agencies missions. In fact, (similarly to KSP 1 rescue contracts) you might get contacted by those AI space agencies to do rescue and/or refueling missions for those space agencies, which would be another way to play that still involves the "fly" part of "build fly dream" (unless of course you have an existing craft that can be set up to perform that mission automatically via the automated supply mission system).

Instead, all you'd get is a nice little source of income (or resources) to dedicate to whatever task you have in mind. And those "rescue contracts" would be a 2-way street, because if you happen to have a vessel get put in a state that you don't know how to get out of (say, it ran out of fuel in a stable orbit around a distant planet or something), you would be able to contact those AI space agencies and negotiate a contract for services like refueling or crew/resource transport (for a fee, of course).
However this would be merely a matter of convenience, as building and piloting your own rescue mission would likely be the cheaper and quicker option, with the downside being that you have to fly that mission (and therefore can't focus your attention elsewhere).

[Bej Kerman]

21 minutes ago, SciMan said:

with the downside being that you have to fly that mission

Implying that selling your designs would pull in that much money.

[Vl3d]

49 minutes ago, t_v said:

whereas with the MMO idea, it removes the entire aspect of transfers from the game

It does not remove the idea of transfers, you just make them with maneuver nodes in the journey planner, press Go, and the game takes care of all the time warping for you.

The function already exists in KSP it's called "warp to next maneuver". There is no point to control time manually just to do some intermittent burns and circularize actions just to desync all players.

You leave, you arrive and automatically time and celestial body positions syncs to current values for all players. Done, then you can all have fun around the planet.

[Bej Kerman]

Just now, Vl3d said:

You leave, you arrive and automatically time and celestial body positions syncs to current values for all players.

How does that work, then?

[Vl3d]

8 hours ago, Vl3d said:

You can't interact with other players during a journey. You don't control time-warp.

5. You arrive at your target. You capture and circularize. This ends the journey.

6. The game automatically syncs your SOI configuration to the main/server one for that part of the solar system by spinning you in orbit until you catch up. Or it plays a cutscene.

7. Done - everyone in the planet / moon SOI is playing realtime.

Time-warp is handled automatically by the game and is always in sync at server level for the region of the universe you are in. All player gameplay is real-time. Time-warp is solved, you just don't control it.

And basically all inter-SOI gameplay is simulated, fake, call it what you want. Because it's irrelevant. You can have some special cases for travel to space stations in unusual orbits (like around the Sun - they would have their own real-time bubbles). But the same principle applies. You don't control time warp, you just create the maneuver nodes for the journey (including gravity assists) and the game does everything automatically. Basically you leave one SOI and enter another, like in any other multiplayer game that implements fast-travel. If you need an explanation tell yourself syncing is done by spinning in orbit - because that's where time is flexible.