KSP 2 Multiplayer Discussion Thread

[Bej Kerman]

3 minutes 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.

Why does travel between SOIs need to be fake?

[linuxgurugamer]

10 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

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.

Ummm, how is inter-SOI irrelevant?  What about mid-course corrections?  What if, for whatever reason, you have a vessel going to planet A, and realize that it can go to planet B and get more science?  This is something that I do, I launch very-capable probes which have enough delta-v to be able to change destinations.

 

[Vl3d]

13 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Why does travel between SOIs need to be fake?

It's virtual because you can't interact with other players while traveling from A to B. You're outside of any time sync bubble. It's a solo journey. You can stop it and redirect at any time, why not.

But the most important thing is that when you arrive, after you circularize, in order to sync with the local time you have to spin in orbit until the local configuration and time is the one current one for that region, set by the server.

You have only one configuration of the sun - planet - visible moons system around a SOI saved on the server, you catch up to it when you arrive by automatically spinning in orbit (if you want an explanation).

More clearly, the server controls the configuration of the solar system. It lets you plan any maneuvers you want, but they are just a mini-game. In the end you don't control time-warp or the planetary bodies positions.

When you leave, you wait for transfer window as usual. Make the journey, auto-sync with the local time set by the server.

Players don't have local time bubbles, but the celestial bodies do.

[Bej Kerman]

1 minute ago, Vl3d said:

Players don't have local time bubbles, but the celestial bodies do.

I get it now. But what about moons? Planets with moons would also have to be virtual telling from your logic.

[Vl3d]

10 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

What about mid-course corrections?  What if, for whatever reason, you have a vessel going to planet A, and realize that it can go to planet B and get more science? 

You make the course correction as usual. You sync with local time when you arrive. Time during the journey is irrelevant because you don't interact with players outside of celestial body SOI real-time bubble. You can have special case time bubbles for space stations in solar orbit. But the server controls time-warp, not you. You just control the maneuver nodes, play outside of real-time bubbles when on a journey, play in real-time sync with other players when around a planet or a moon etc.

Server syncs time and celestial bodies positions configurations after you arrive and circularize. It's like waiting for transfer windows, but reversed.

Edited April 7, 2022 by Vl3d

[linuxgurugamer]

1 minute ago, Vl3d said:

You make the course correction as usual. You sync with local time when you arrive. Time during the journey is irrelevant because you don't interact with players outside of celestial body SOI real-time bubble. You can have special case time bubbles for space stations in solar orbit. But the server controls time-warp, not you. You just control the maneuver nodes, play outside of real-time bubbles when on a journey, play in real-time sync with other players when around a planet or a moon etc.

Server syncs time and celestial bodies positions configurations after you arrive and circularize. It's like waiting for transfer windows, but reversed.

Ummm, how?  Your previous statement is diametrically opposite of this. You are contradicting  yourself.  Your previous statement said:

Quote

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.

If you don't control time warp, you can't make a course correction

[SkyFall2489]

All of the major MMO type changes I feel like change the game too much, such that is no longer the Kerbal Space Program we know and love. Sure, an MMO with semi unrealistic physics or a strategy game without much piloting would be great fun, but it is not the point of KSP2. The original KSP1 is a game of engineering, manual piloting, and some realistic orbital mechanics, and many of these ideas just change the game too much to be KSP2. I'm not saying they are bad ideas, they are just great ideas for a new franchise / series.

[Bej Kerman]

1 minute ago, SkyFall2489 said:

All of the major MMO type changes I feel like change the game too much, such that is no longer the Kerbal Space Program we know and love. Sure, an MMO with semi unrealistic physics or a strategy game without much piloting would be great fun, but it is not the point of KSP2. The original KSP1 is a game of engineering, manual piloting, and some realistic orbital mechanics, and many of these ideas just change the game too much to be KSP2. I'm not saying they are bad ideas, they are just great ideas for a new franchise / series.

I agree.

KSP literally started out as a little game where you built a rocket and manually piloted it as high as you could. No autopilots there.

[Vl3d]

31 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Planets with moons would also have to be virtual telling from your logic.

I've thought about this. Only the map view is virtual from a multiplayer point of view.

When on a planet you see the moons position. You go to orbit, circularize, set maneuver nodes to travel to moon, press go. Game waits for transfer window, you arrive. You auto-sync with a server defined local time around the moon (by spinning in moon orbit - you don't control this part).

The problem you have now is that you have a different solar system configuration for each SOI if you switch colonies or vessels. But it's irrelevant, you sync to the one you're in and when you leave you auto-wait for a transfer window in orbit (you can't cancel the journey after this point of course).

24 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

If you don't control time warp, you can't make a course correction

You are on a journey, you are outside of time when there are no players around. You can change destination without any issue. You go from maneuver node to maneuver node or pause the journey and create new maneuver nodes. But multiplayer only exists after you arrive in the time bubble and auto-sync to the local system configuration set by the server.

Let me phrase it more clearly: You don't control time warp in a multiplayer context. And the journey, from a multiplayer point of view, is just a map view / maneuver nodes single player mini-game. Just so you don't feel bad that actually it's just fast travel.

Edited April 7, 2022 by Vl3d

[Bej Kerman]

1 minute ago, Vl3d said:

Only the map view is virtual.

The map view is supposed to be a direct reflection of the world you're in. What do you mean when you imply that the normal view is real and the map view is virtual?

[t_v]

3 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

No autopilots there.

*no forced autopilots. People still use SAS, and it is a great accessibility feature for people who can’t line up their craft perfectly. 

[Bej Kerman]

Just now, t_v said:

*no forced autopilots. People still use SAS, and it is a great accessibility feature for people who can’t line up their craft perfectly. 

SAS isn't the same as not having to touch your craft.

[SkyFall2489]

I think they are trying to find a way to remove direct physics simulation from long distance travel, having you just set manuvers, auto execute them, and drain ship fuel appropriately, with no time warp within SOIs. Not sure entierly how it would work out, but why reinvent the wheel?

Plus, time warp is used for other things too. Such as waiting for crew respawns, waiting for ISRU to fill up your tanks, and more.

[t_v]

2 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

SAS isn't the same as not having to touch your craft.

What is your definition of an autopilot? Orientation control, engine control (like with RCS) both? I also don’t think that people should have no input in their flying but what is the difference between reading a button to orient your craft precisely and pressing a button to activate engines at the precise moment to touch down properly? Both are ways to make the experience more accessible at the cost of user input. Where do you draw the line?

11 minutes ago, SkyFall2489 said:

 

I think they are trying to find a way to remove direct physics simulation from long distance travel, having you just set manuvers, auto execute them, and drain ship fuel appropriately, with no time warp within SOIs. Not sure entierly how it would work out, but why reinvent the wheel?

 

If you are talking about while controlling the craft, then I’m pretty sure that the ship will just be packed, and will be fully simulated with physics and everything while doin g maneuvers. If you are talking about in the background, then routine missions will be automated while regular missions in the background won’t have their physics simulated but will not perform maneuvers automatically. 

[Bej Kerman]

1 minute ago, t_v said:

Where do you draw the line?

That's a line I'm still trying to nail down. Obviously a player shouldn't be able to avoid having to put some skill and knowledge to practice.

[Vl3d]

26 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

The map view is supposed to be a direct reflection of the world you're in. What do you mean when you imply that the normal view is real and the map view is virtual?

Map view only reflects the configuration you are playing in. When you create a journey, map view shows you a configuration from the time of the transfer window. Press go -> spin in orbit to transfer window -> accelerate. You've left the multiplayer real-time bubble. Map view shows you on your journey, but it does not reflect any server-defined SOI system state. It's virtual, outside of time and outside of multiplayer. When you arrive, server syncs you and map view reflects the local configuration.

23 minutes ago, SkyFall2489 said:

warp is used for other things too. Such as waiting for crew respawns, waiting for ISRU to fill up your tanks, and more.

You can't have large scale multiplayer with physics warp. Build faster craft, better ISRU. No warping on/around the local celestial body.

Crew can respawn to your colony or vessel (if there is a probe core or a kerbal that can be possessed).

Edited April 7, 2022 by Vl3d

[Bej Kerman]

3 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

You can't have large scale multiplayer with physics warp. Build faster craft, better ISRU. No warping on/around the local celestial body.

No-one wants to be forced to build faster craft or wait hours for their orbit to come round. This is a bad idea - every player needs physics warp.

[Vl3d]

36 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

No-one wants to be forced to build faster craft or wait hours for their orbit to come round. This is a bad idea - every player needs physics warp.

Why do you NEED physics warp on/around the planet aside that you're used to it in single player KSP1?

Can't wait 1 minute to land with parachutes? Set your parachute to deploy at a lower altitude.

Can't wait for ISRU tanks to fill? Add more drills and converters.

Can't wait for the space station to come around? Do a better rendezvous maneuver and design a faster rocket, park in orbit and set an alarm.

Isn't it a transportation game? Journeys take time, you can't time-warp rover circumnavigation.

Why would you want to regularly desync all the players just because of impatience and bad time-management skills?

Physics time-warp kills multiplayer unless you constantly pop in and out of existence. But that's usually called cheating by using a hyper-speed wall-hack "assistant".

Edited April 7, 2022 by Vl3d

[SkyFall2489]

7 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

Why do you NEED physics warp on/around the planet aside that you're used to it in single player KSP1?

Can't wait 1 minute to land with parachutes? Set your parachute to deploy at a lower altitude.

Can't wait for ISRU tanks to fill? Add more drills and converters.

Can't wait for the space station to come around? Do a better rendezvous maneuver and design a faster rocket, park in orbit and set an alarm.

Isn't it a transportation game? Journeys take time, you can't time-warp rover circumnavigation.

Why would you want to regularly desync all the players just because of impatience and bad time-management skills?

Physics time-warp kills multiplayer unless you constantly pop in and out of existence. But that's usually called cheating by using a hyper-time wall-hack "assistant".

It's just that KSP2 is meant for players of KSP1, so it's best to not drastically change up the whole game.

I'd at least like for KSP2 single player to be mostly like KSP1, and if a multiplayer system changes up the whole game so much that KSP2 single player must be also drastically changed (such as eliminating timewarp) then it won't be the same game.

Oh, and there's a mod called Bon Voyage that allows time warping rover travel.

Edited April 7, 2022 by SkyFall2489

[SciMan]

@Vl3d

To be quite honest, with the gigantic distances involved in KSP (and KSP 2 looks to be no different), and the amount of time that your typical person has (per day) to dedicate to video games (maybe an hour or two in total), you will need some form of time warp. Physical time warp, on-rails time warp, it doesn't matter. It has to exist. Space is simply too big, even "inside a single SOI".

Not many people (and that even counts the people that already play KSP 1) have the (IRL) time to play any video game for more than 4 hours a day.

Do you realize just how actually long you'd have to play KSP for in order to accomplish something as simple as flying around Kerbin? Not even DRIVING around Kerbin, I mean flying around it in a supersonic aircraft. Do you realize just how much more fuel that burns than the same thing, but with a much more reasonable (and higher payload capacity) SUBsonic cargo aircraft?

The whole thing about space is that no matter how fast you're going, you're still going slow if you're not going faster than escape velocity.

"Just build a faster/more capable XYZ" you say. That quickly runs into limitations of technology (not having good enough engines), thermals (can't make your craft out of heat shields, and ablator is finite anyways), or your actual computer's ability to keep up (eventually the craft is made of so many parts that the game is forced to run at 5FPS, and I don't think anyone likes that idea).

This goes double for ISRU. I already make craft that have say 40 large drills on them. And even on the richest Ore deposits on Minmus, that's still not enough ore input to keep up with the demands of just a SINGLE large ISRU converter. With a "reasonable" craft design, that isn't just "spam everything until your computer begs for mercy", fuel production rates are still plenty good enough with time warp. But if you change it so that nobody has time warp unless it puts you into some absolutely arbitrarily defined and IMO poorly thought out "virtual" instance for the sake of traveling between SOI's, then suddenly it takes literal weeks of letting the game run (without you touching the keyboard or mouse) just to get a measly few thousand units of ore.

I know that's not what you want. The drills and converters aren't some magic "instant fuel making system" . They take TIME (and a lot of it) to work.

And besides, they've already said that they're going to be limiting how big of a rocket you can launch from Kerbin's surface. That means that there's a limit to how big of a mining vessel you can launch from Kerbin's surface.

 

Among many other reasons, these are just a few of why your idea of "mmo-like instancing but call it time warp when it's not actually time warp at all and instead some crazy half-thought-out attempt to replace a system (time warp) that we already know works, when time warp as a concept just needs a few little adjustments here and there to handle multiplayer" is not a good idea, and it seems that everyone but you has realized that.

You know how they say "Keep it simple, silly" and "If it's not broke, don't fix it"?
Well IMO, this MMO-like way to handle what time warp already handles is neither simple, nor is it fixing anything that is indeed broken beyond repair.

You haven't just reinvented the wheel. You want us to use half-circle roads and square wheels, when we've had round wheels and flat roads for literally thousands of years.

(this kind of "wheel" is what I'm referring to, yes it works, no it's absolutely in no way practical)

 

 

The major point of what I'm trying to say is that if the KSP devs do what you're proposing, I probably won't be buying KSP 2. And not many other people that play KSP 1 will either. Because it won't be KSP as we know it. Time warp is a core feature that must exist in order for KSP to play like KSP.

Edited April 7, 2022 by SciMan

[t_v]

17 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

Why do you NEED physics warp on/around the planet aside that you're used to it in single player KSP1?

18 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

Isn't it a transportation game? Journeys take time, you can't time-warp rover circumnavigation.

Yes, but the point of time warp in the first place is that journeys won't have to take many hours. This isn't like an RPG where you can justify travel times because the grass looks nice and you'll find a cave on your journey to the destination, this is many hours of staring at one or two slowly shrinking or growing circles and watching the continents very slowly rotate, or just watching a fake skybox. That is unjustifiable for the vast majority of people. Earlier you suggested a faster speed control- isn't that literally just timewarp?

21 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

design a faster rocket,

Not how things work. A certain orbit takes a certain amount of time, you can't change that. The only way to make things faster is to have a high-acceleration torchship, at which point what even is the reason to keep time synchronous since you can get everywhere really quickly. Orbits simply don't work that way. 

24 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

Why would you want to regularly desync all the players just because of impatience and bad time-management skills?

This is a false dichotomy. Yes, the majority solution involves desynchronized time bubbles, which I have to admit I'm not a fan of, but there are other solutions which keep time synchronous while allowing timewarp. All of the problems you are trying to solve have already been solved. Here is one solution that I came up with, I'm not sure if you found it while looking through this thread:

Players can time warp at will, and their ships will be seen time warping in real time by other players. This includes physical and normal time warp. All ships and colonies that they control will also time warp, which is consistent with single player. If a ship is in a stable orbit (it has an elliptical orbit in an SOI which does not hot any other SOIs) and it is not the active ship for the player controlling it, that ship will warp when another player who is controlling a ship in that SOI warps. This fixes all desynchronization problems with rendezvous planning, which seems to be the big problem for you because people were saying other ships couldn't be interacted with outside of a synchronized bubble, transfer windows are fixed because despite the weird trajectories that time warping friends seem to be on, when you reach that transfer window you will be synchronized and will see the trajectory properly. What else... It also fixes the universal time control, because for all intents and purposes, a ship orbiting Kerbin doesn't care what angle Eve is to it, until it has to transfer in which case its transfer window puts it at the right time. 

The thing I would like the subspace bubble solution to address is causality. As far as I can tell, causality is broken no matter what (also in the MMO system causality is broken because spinning in orbit will put some ships ahead technically) and the only "solution" that seems to work is just not letting ships interact in certain ways or in any way until time is synchronized which seems unnecessary and annoying. Because causality is broken, why try to fix it? Let a ship that time warped to another star system be there for another player despite the fact that it technically took a longer in-game time for the earlier ship to arrive. If you don't like this solution, there are others on this thread that fix the problems you have without forcing players to wait weeks to leave Kerbin SOI. 

[Vl3d]

9 hours ago, t_v said:

fix the problems you have without forcing players to wait weeks to leave Kerbin SOI.

I feel like you haven't read what I've been saying. You just get to orbit, plan the journey and go. It can't be any easier and faster - and it's also real-time planet-side + auto time-warp during the journey + it allows for large numbers of players.

...Look, I don't care about the negativity. There are people that look down at their shoe-strings when they walk, and there are people that look up at the sky. Yes, the former tend to misstep and fall, but at least we feel the wonder.

I just have a dream for a lively KSP game in which we can all play together in the same universe (both co-op and competitive) and we can witness amazing feats of engineering.

I don't care about the details of how it's implemented, I frankly don't give 2% about the time-warp discussion. I wish we got over it and thought about what we want to experience in the game. People are so obsessed in this thread about how to solve time travel, it's like a mind-virus. We don't need to manually control time-warp, it's that simple.

Build a universe, fly together, dream of discovery. There's room in KSP2 for all of us.

 

Edited April 8, 2022 by Vl3d

[Guest]

45 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

I just have a dream for a lively KSP game...

...that has nothing to do with KSP.

46 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

I don't care about the details of how it's implemented, I frankly don't give 2% about the time-warp discussion. I wish we got over it and thought about what we want to experience in the game.

If that was true you wouldn't be proposing a new way to deal with it, by cutting half of the game.

 

47 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

We don't need to manually control time-warp, it's that simple.

Yes, we do. Unless you're proposing to scrap the realistic orbital mechanics. 

In a typical 1-2 hours session playing I want to be able to build a space station, not just patiently waiting that the first module arrives to orbit.

And no, "just build a faster rocket" is not how orbits work.

The game you're searching for already exists and it's not KSP or KSP2, you may be better off with Space Engineers, NMS or any of the other similar space games, they're a dime a dozen nowadays. 

KSP is all about realistic exploration, and without timewarp something as simple as exploring Jool's moons requires either weeks or months of IRL playing time or completely scrapping orbital mechanics and realism.

[Vl3d]

I repeat: it can still be KSP with realistic space travel even as a MMO.

All you give up is being able to control (physical) time-warp on/around a celestial body. But you gain big multiplayer. That's not cutting the game in half.

It would be real-time on/around the celestial body. That's the only place where you don't control time-warp because you don't want to desync the players.

But even in space you can have have special / local real-time bubbles for stations, asteroids and comets.

So it can also be a hybrid system. Just let the server control celestial body system positions and time and auto-sync you to the local real-time bubble.

If I can see you from the ground or LKO, you should be inside the real-time bubble, unless you've already plotted a journey beyond the SOI. In that case you've disappeared.

Meaning that once you get to orbit and plan the maneuver nodes / start the inter-celestial-body journey it's mostly the same as single player KSP1 with time-warping enabled.

You exit multiplayer when you leave. The server just syncs you to the local SOI real-time bubble and system configuration when you arrive in order to re-enter multiplayer.

45 minutes ago, Master39 said:

In a typical 1-2 hours session playing I want to be able to build a space station, not just patiently waiting that the first module arrives to orbit.

It takes just a few minutes to ascend and circularize or do an efficient encounter. It's meant to be a time-saving skill.

I'm proposing some solutions because I want to be constructive and because I want people to understand that it can be done.

45 minutes ago, Master39 said:

And no, "just build a faster rocket" is not how orbits work.

With enough delta-V and TWR you can basically do whatever you want as long as you counter inertia and gravitational acceleration. I'm not saying it's practical, but it's theoretical.

Edited April 8, 2022 by Vl3d

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

It takes just a few minutes to ascend and circularize or do an efficient encounter. It's meant to be a time-saving skill.

I'm proposing some solutions because I want to be constructive and because I want people to understand that it can be done.

Then you launch the second module and have to wait for the rendezvous...

Do me a favour, open KSP, build a 10 modules LKO station at 150KM without time warp, and then come back here talking about how possible is to play without timewarp within the same SOI.

Don't just theorize on paper, try what you're proposing in game before writing, you may find out on your own why it doesn't work and spare us another 3 or 4 pages of talk on time warp, the kind of talk you supposedly want to avoid.