KSP 2 Multiplayer Discussion Thread

[Guest]

20 minutes ago, ImANoob said:

has anyone considered that with the method of timewarp discussed earlier on this page, the game will need to register thousands of years of passage of time to simulate it to other players, and that if your space station from 100 years ago is harmed by someone back then, that you won't be able to do anything abut it? So i thought, how about players can literally just make their craft move really quickly when timewarping. I know this system has its flaws and could potentially ruin a mun race where both craft are in space if you just timewarp to the mun, but with refinements made, i think this timewarp solution could work.

No, nothing is "recorded", your crafts are in your timeline (basically your personal save file), if you sync up with someone else your timelines get simply merged as long as you play at the same speed and split again based on ownership as soon as one warp hahead of the other.

In the map view you can see all the crafts from all timelines, maybe with a green "+[h:m:s]" if they're ahead of you (and you can catch up with them) or a red timer if they're behind (and they have to do the catching up).

Edited February 5, 2021 by Master39

[Mr.Evil]

What if time warp will only count for the system in which you enable it? Within one system the time difference of your friend, will not be so high. 

If you travel interstellar, time warp could only count for the ship, which is in interstellar area. (A special gadget, which manipulate time on ship, could be an explanation). 

 

[Bej Kerman]

49 minutes ago, ImANoob said:

has anyone considered that with the method of timewarp discussed earlier on this page, the game will need to register thousands of years of passage of time to simulate it to other players, and that if your space station from 100 years ago is harmed by someone back then, that you won't be able to do anything abut it? So i thought, how about players can literally just make their craft move really quickly when timewarping. I know this system has its flaws and could potentially ruin a mun race where both craft are in space if you just timewarp to the mun, but with refinements made, i think this timewarp solution could work.

Dark Multiplayer is on the right tracks. Players should not be able to control another players' time warp.

[Wubslin]

Ok guys, with all the talk about timewarp discrepancies I want to make some (rambling) assertions about the actual timescales and ship propulsion characteristics that might actually be experienced in the game.

We have via (Gameinformer?) a picture of the main flight screen UI of KSP 2. (For the record, I think it's decidedly beautiful. But I digress.) Anyway, of the now front-and center timewarp bar we can see that the little selector is centered on the fourth nock out of eight, which is indicated to be 100x normal speed. If each additional nock is  assumed to be an order of magnitude, that means that the maximum timewarp factor is now one million times normal speed, ten times the maximum value in the original game.

What does that mean? Well, it depends on how gameplay is going to be designed. I'm really doing Fermi ballparks here, so for the sake of simplicity let's say that flying from Kerbol to some reference star is intended to take on the order of ten minutes. Note that could be five minutes, it could be forty. Just ballpark order of magnitude, ten. So, what does ten minutes at a million times speed get you?

19.03 Earth years, AKA 65.19 Kerbin years.

So we're expected to make interstellar transits that take more than one year and less than a hundred, which in this reference example is 20 years. In terms of multiplayer lag times this means we should expect to have to catch up by decades at times, provided the game ends up being designed that way.

 If the reference star is five light years away, basic naive newtonian math would have you at an average speed of about 0.26c, and given a brachistochrone of half acceleration and half deceleration you actually would hit 0.52c at the halfway point. Lorentz factor makes this math up to 17% off from true at that point, but whatever.

Accruing 156 million meters per second in ten years using this math corresponds to a constant acceleration of 0.5 m*s^-2, aka 0.05 G. What can that tell us about the implications of ships and engines in the game, then?

For one, this on the surface is a ludicrously powerful drive if it's pushing any real tonnage to that reference star. In fact I'd be inclined to name it the endgame torch drive, simply because of the fact it would enable you to reach half the speed of light. If KSP 2's "reality-inspired" engines acted anything like they would in real life, and I assume they would, then somewhere I have made a wrong assumption. The Daedalus drive was only ever designed to reach single digit percents of c, and drives like project Orion provide so much acceleration and comparatively similar dV that interstellar flights conducted using them would probably look more like an impulsive transfer. Reaching half the speed of light is quite simply not something that actually happens, and in fact it makes me want to believe that those multi-G "Expanse flight" crazy brachistochrones will be entirely confined to interplanetary missions in KSP 2. You're either burning hard and coasting for years or you're pulling milli-G acceleration if you're going to another star.

Anyway, I'm forced to conclude something from my analysis is amiss. It could be that this screen has either an un-upgraded timewarp bar, or that its last setting is NOT merely a million times normal speed. Alternatively it is possible interstellar distances have been shrunken as the Kerbolar system was in the name of gameplay consideration. The only alternative to either of these options is that the game contains ships capable of exceeding 10% of c, and I refuse to believe that's the case. End conclusion, either wait times will be on the order of centuries at least or else the stars are gonna be really close together.

Ramble over.

 

 

 

Edited February 6, 2021 by Wubslin

[Bej Kerman]

1 hour ago, Wubslin said:

Ok guys, with all the talk...    ...Ramble over.

I like to think the new and improved timewarp won't be entirely stepped but will allow you to smoothly increase the passage of time - I'd rather this over KSP 1's sometimes jarring steps which can lead to accidentally flinging past things because you decided to make the journey a bit quicker.  Side note, the output on the right hand side of the bar looks like it can be typed in.

[Wubslin]

48 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

I like to think the new and improved timewarp won't be entirely stepped but will allow you to smoothly increase the passage of time - I'd rather this over KSP 1's sometimes jarring steps which can lead to accidentally flinging past things because you decided to make the journey a bit quicker.  Side note, the output on the right hand side of the bar looks like it can be typed in.

I think the seven segment dealio is just a stylistic thing. But, maybe there will be features you can temporarily enable like "stop timewarp an hour from apo/periapsis". A button that does that would be nice. Although I make it just fine by spamming F5 before warping anywhere.

[TBenz]

3 hours ago, Wubslin said:

The only alternative to either of these options is that the game contains ships capable of exceeding 10% of c, and I refuse to believe that's the case.

The original Project Deadalus proposition was meant to reach 0.12 c and we know that engine design is going to be in KSP. While that doesn't necessarily mean we will be seeing the same level of performance, I don't believe it is off the table. I also think it's very likely that the distances will be cut down to "kerbal scale". 

[Guest]

5 hours ago, Wubslin said:

so for the sake of simplicity let's say that flying from Kerbol to some reference star is intended to take on the order of ten minutes.

One of the feature they talked most about is the ability to run those brachistocrone trajectories in the background, while you're doing other things so the main game design constrain with time warp and travel times won't be the time the player is forced to stare at a ship slowly accelerating or decelerating.

They also repeated multiple times that, when asking to astronomers for help, they almost always get as a reply that the galaxy is way more variable than they expected and if I'm not wrong that in one specific occasion included star density.

The Kerbol system is already a lot different and scaled down compared to our own, playing with scale and distances is already an accepted thing in the franchise, I totally expect KSP2 to be set in some sort of local denser than normal star cluster and that interstellar distances are scaled down like everything else on top of that. 

[Wubslin]

3 hours ago, Master39 said:

One of the feature they talked most about is the ability to run those brachistocrone trajectories in the background, while you're doing other things so the main game design constrain with time warp and travel times won't be the time the player is forced to stare at a ship slowly accelerating or decelerating.

They also repeated multiple times that, when asking to astronomers for help, they almost always get as a reply that the galaxy is way more variable than they expected and if I'm not wrong that in one specific occasion included star density.

The Kerbol system is already a lot different and scaled down compared to our own, playing with scale and distances is already an accepted thing in the franchise, I totally expect KSP2 to be set in some sort of local denser than normal star cluster and that interstellar distances are scaled down like everything else on top of that. 

0.12c is like 20 times less energy than 0.52c.

And sure distances may be contracted, but I still maintain that the developers want interstellar flight to take on the order of ten minutes. Aside from stupid long gravity assists that some players do, no competently planned flightpath is longer than just a few minutes in KSP 1 and that's by developer design. In the name of designing a fun video game I don't expect that the amazing people at Intercept will make us do any three hour transits regardless of whether we have to tend to them or not. So again, either timewarp gets beefier or the distances are smaller like you said.

[BigStar Aerospace]

You know I honestly didn't think what I said would affect this thread for so long, if we keep battling over things they will never be solved, everyone needs an equal opportunity to time warp, the young players need someway to stay safe, blah blah blah, look at how well the space economy is doing in real life, right now we in the U.S. are in our second space race against a communist nation and this time it's against China, I think we just need to implement a governmental mechanic into it and reach peace slowly, yes there will have to be a war aspect but if you look at it, things balance out, KSP2 is going to be more than KSP with new tech and animations with a dash of new solar systems, but if it truly wants to be what KSP can't it needs to take the bull by the horns to get the gold, a high-risk approach but we will all reap the highest rewards the gaming community has seen in decades! So are we all in this together seeking for the best possible outcome or are we just here to get a new game?

Edited February 12, 2021 by BigStar Aerospace
Spelling error

[PlutoISaPlanet]

20 minutes ago, BigStar Aerospace said:

You know I honestly didn't think what I said would affect this thread for so long, if we keep battling over things they will never be solved, everyone needs an equal opportunity to time warp, the young players need someway to stay safe, blah blah blah, look at how well the space economy is doing in real life, right now we in the U.S. are in our second space race against a communist nation and this time it's against China, I think we just need to implement a governmental mechanic into it and reach peace slowly, yes there will have to be a war aspect but if you look at it, things balance out, KSP2 is going to be more than KSP with new tech and animations with a dash of new solar systems, but if it truly wants to be what KSP can't it needs to take the bull by the horns to get the gold, a high-risk approach but we will all reap the highest rewards the gaming community has seen in decades! So are we all in this together seeking for the best possible outcome or are we just here to get a new game?

CCP HAS ENTERED THE FORUM

[BigStar Aerospace]

oof

You know, that kind of hurts on the inside now that I think about it! Why is it that you say that?

6 minutes ago, PlutoISaPlanet said:

CCP HAS ENTERED THE FORUM

 

[BigStar Aerospace]

Yeah that's a big oof for me and I don't know what to say.

Edited February 12, 2021 by BigStar Aerospace

[PlutoISaPlanet]

1 hour ago, BigStar Aerospace said:

Yeah that's a big oof for me and I don't know what to say.

WE WILL WIN THE RACE

 

 

 

 

 

(This is just a joke btw)

[Wubslin]

Alright, through the power of procrastination I've come up with a chart for how I think multiplayer timewarp could possibly work. Apologies for the diagram, the more I thought about it the more complicated and incomprehensible it got.

I have drawn out a "spacetime diagram" of sorts to try and represent how I think the issue of timewarp will be handled in KSP 2 multiplayer. The diagram is centered around a single planet with two moons, with a purple moon in a circular orbit close to the planet and a pink moon in a circular orbit further away from the planet. The diagram is a snapshot in real life time, representing an instantaneous moment exactly 10 minutes after the host player (Bob) has fired up an instance of KSP 2 multiplayer using a game he had created yesterday. To better understand the chart, I've labeled six points (circled) which represent in true chronological order what has happened so far in gameplay for today. If the time is italicized that means it's in-game time. Real life time is in bold.

 

1. Zero minutes of game uptime: Bob fires up KSP 2 on Steam, and decides to load up his existing multiplayer game. He's the host, so if he quits out of the game or logs off no one is able to join his game and play with him. Immediately upon launching the game Bob launches into low orbit of the starter planet. He then decides he wants to travel to the pink moon.

2. Five minutes of game uptime: Bob performs an injection burn, beginning a basic Hohmann transfer which will take him up to the altitude of the pink moon. He enables timewarp, such that he'll get there in two minutes instead of hours from now.

3. Seven minutes of game uptime: Bob exits timewarp and does a circularization burn to insert into an orbit around the pink moon. His path, in dark green, represents the lazy orbital period around said moon. With nothing better to do, Bob enables a great degree of timewarp such that an entire Kerbin day (five hours) would pass in less than  a minute. He exits timewarp thirty or forty-five seconds later, for no other reason than for this diagram to be easier to read. While Bob has been performing these last few steps his "present" in-game of time of almost three days is the universal present; he is currently the only player in the game.

4. Eight minutes of game uptime: Several seconds after exiting timewarp and still in orbit of the pink moon, Bob's friend Jeb logs on and decides to join on Bob's game. It's important to note at this point that although Bob's KSP 2 game is very new, it isn't brand new. The day before, Bob had created the game and sat idle in the VAB (thus using no in-game time) while Jeb had joined and immediately "launched" a rocket. Jeb sat on the pad and timewarped to t=0d 3h 0m for no reason in particular, and then logged off. The game thus recorded that Jeb was at t=0d 3h 0m when he stopped playing. Fast forward to today, namely t=8 minutes of the server being up, Jeb has joined back in on Bob's game and finally hit spacebar to launch that rocket which had been sitting on the pad for so long. This event is labeled as the blue X on the origin planet.

5. Nine minutes of game uptime: Bob is still loitering in orbit of pink moon. He's on his phone or something, and disengaged with the game at the moment. He's about to come up on the three day mark of Kerbin's calendar from the game being created. Jeb, now parked in low orbit of the starter planet, decides he wants to rendezvous with Bob's ship and dock with it or smash into it or something. Importantly, he wants to interact with Bob's ship. Jeb hits the timewarp button and exits right at the point he needs to be in order to start an injection burn.

6. Ten minutes of game uptime (NOW): With Jeb joined into the game, a fundamental characteristic of KSP 2 multiplayer has now kicked in. When both friends stopped playing yesterday, Jeb's rocket sitting out on the pad accumulating mission time and doing nothing was considered the "Most Current Present". Because Bob was fiddling around in the VAB, his game's clock had never advanced past t=0. Today however, Bob fired up the game and by himself managed to overtake Jeb as the player with the most advanced timeline - the MCP. At the instantaneous moment described by this diagram I've drawn, Jeb is only at t=2d 0h 0m while Bob is already at t=3d 0h 0m. For Jeb starting his injection burn, there is no corporeal player he could conceivably interact with at that moment. Were his ship magicical and had the ability to teleport instantly to the pink moon, his game time would still be only at t=2d 0h 0m. At that point in the game's time, Bob had already inserted into his current orbit. Since time paradoxes can't be a thing that happens (nor can "Back to the Future" style retroactive screw-overs), were Jeb to go out there he would see a ghosted image of Bob's ship in orbit as it was back when Bob's present was at t=2d 0m 0s. The ghost would not have collision, although it would perfectly mimic whatever Bob was doing at that time.

The future: As the gameplay in this situation would have it, Jeb doesn't need a magical ship to see Bob's ghosted image. As he completes his injection burn and eventually inserts into orbit around the moon, he would if he wanted to have the option to get right up next to Bob's ghosted ship in order to expedite their rendezvous. He doesn't do this however, and instead decides to finally get his game clock synchronized with Bob's. Jeb right clicks on Bob's ship, and selects the "warp to player's present" button. He zings around the pink moon a couple of times (see finely dotted light blue line), and suddenly finds himself caught up at t=3d 0h 0m. So long as neither of them timewarp again, they can now interact and phase orbits for docking or trading resources or whatever.  If Bob had been at the exact same point in space as Jeb at the moment of their timelines catching up, Bob would be the unlucky recipient of a chronological telefrag and both player's ships would have exploded.

 

I hope this concept made some kind of intelligible sense, it sure as hell was about thirty different disjointed ideas in my mind when I drew/typed it up.

 

[PlutoISaPlanet]

39 minutes ago, Wubslin said:

Alright, through the power of procrastination I've come up with a chart for how I think multiplayer timewarp could possibly work. Apologies for the diagram, the more I thought about it the more complicated and incomprehensible it got.

I have drawn out a "spacetime diagram" of sorts to try and represent how I think the issue of timewarp will be handled in KSP 2 multiplayer. The diagram is centered around a single planet with two moons, with a purple moon in a circular orbit close to the planet and a pink moon in a circular orbit further away from the planet. The diagram is a snapshot in real life time, representing an instantaneous moment exactly 10 minutes after the host player (Bob) has fired up an instance of KSP 2 multiplayer using a game he had created yesterday. To better understand the chart, I've labeled six points (circled) which represent in true chronological order what has happened so far in gameplay for today. If the time is italicized that means it's in-game time. Real life time is in bold.

 

1. Zero minutes of game uptime: Bob fires up KSP 2 on Steam, and decides to load up his existing multiplayer game. He's the host, so if he quits out of the game or logs off no one is able to join his game and play with him. Immediately upon launching the game Bob launches into low orbit of the starter planet. He then decides he wants to travel to the pink moon.

2. Five minutes of game uptime: Bob performs an injection burn, beginning a basic Hohmann transfer which will take him up to the altitude of the pink moon. He enables timewarp, such that he'll get there in two minutes instead of hours from now.

3. Seven minutes of game uptime: Bob exits timewarp and does a circularization burn to insert into an orbit around the pink moon. His path, in dark green, represents the lazy orbital period around said moon. With nothing better to do, Bob enables a great degree of timewarp such that an entire Kerbin day (five hours) would pass in less than  a minute. He exits timewarp thirty or forty-five seconds later, for no other reason than for this diagram to be easier to read. While Bob has been performing these last few steps his "present" in-game of time of almost three days is the universal present; he is currently the only player in the game.

4. Eight minutes of game uptime: Several seconds after exiting timewarp and still in orbit of the pink moon, Bob's friend Jeb logs on and decides to join on Bob's game. It's important to note at this point that although Bob's KSP 2 game is very new, it isn't brand new. The day before, Bob had created the game and sat idle in the VAB (thus using no in-game time) while Jeb had joined and immediately "launched" a rocket. Jeb sat on the pad and timewarped to t=0d 3h 0m for no reason in particular, and then logged off. The game thus recorded that Jeb was at t=0d 3h 0m when he stopped playing. Fast forward to today, namely t=8 minutes of the server being up, Jeb has joined back in on Bob's game and finally hit spacebar to launch that rocket which had been sitting on the pad for so long. This event is labeled as the blue X on the origin planet.

5. Nine minutes of game uptime: Bob is still loitering in orbit of pink moon. He's on his phone or something, and disengaged with the game at the moment. He's about to come up on the three day mark of Kerbin's calendar from the game being created. Jeb, now parked in low orbit of the starter planet, decides he wants to rendezvous with Bob's ship and dock with it or smash into it or something. Importantly, he wants to interact with Bob's ship. Jeb hits the timewarp button and exits right at the point he needs to be in order to start an injection burn.

6. Ten minutes of game uptime (NOW): With Jeb joined into the game, a fundamental characteristic of KSP 2 multiplayer has now kicked in. When both friends stopped playing yesterday, Jeb's rocket sitting out on the pad accumulating mission time and doing nothing was considered the "Most Current Present". Because Bob was fiddling around in the VAB, his game's clock had never advanced past t=0. Today however, Bob fired up the game and by himself managed to overtake Jeb as the player with the most advanced timeline - the MCP. At the instantaneous moment described by this diagram I've drawn, Jeb is only at t=2d 0h 0m while Bob is already at t=3d 0h 0m. For Jeb starting his injection burn, there is no corporeal player he could conceivably interact with at that moment. Were his ship magicical and had the ability to teleport instantly to the pink moon, his game time would still be only at t=2d 0h 0m. At that point in the game's time, Bob had already inserted into his current orbit. Since time paradoxes can't be a thing that happens (nor can "Back to the Future" style retroactive screw-overs), were Jeb to go out there he would see a ghosted image of Bob's ship in orbit as it was back when Bob's present was at t=2d 0m 0s. The ghost would not have collision, although it would perfectly mimic whatever Bob was doing at that time.

The future: As the gameplay in this situation would have it, Jeb doesn't need a magical ship to see Bob's ghosted image. As he completes his injection burn and eventually inserts into orbit around the moon, he would if he wanted to have the option to get right up next to Bob's ghosted ship in order to expedite their rendezvous. He doesn't do this however, and instead decides to finally get his game clock synchronized with Bob's. Jeb right clicks on Bob's ship, and selects the "warp to player's present" button. He zings around the pink moon a couple of times (see finely dotted light blue line), and suddenly finds himself caught up at t=3d 0h 0m. So long as neither of them timewarp again, they can now interact and phase orbits for docking or trading resources or whatever.  If Bob had been at the exact same point in space as Jeb at the moment of their timelines catching up, Bob would be the unlucky recipient of a chronological telefrag and both player's ships would have exploded.

 

I hope this concept made some kind of intelligible sense, it sure as hell was about thirty different disjointed ideas in my mind when I drew/typed it up.

 

B O B 

Minions X Kerbals

[Wubslin]

59 minutes ago, PlutoISaPlanet said:

B O B 

Minions X Kerbals

???

[PlutoISaPlanet]

9 minutes ago, Wubslin said:

???

Just messing around your chart is some big brain stuff

[Wubslin]

4 minutes ago, PlutoISaPlanet said:

Just messing around your chart is some big brain stuff

Sure sure, just didn't know if that was some reference I should be getting or something

[PlutoISaPlanet]

1 hour ago, Wubslin said:

Sure sure, just didn't know if that was some reference I should be getting or something

Your model is good. I just wonder what methods the multiplayer would be

For example, it could be random (you see other colonies and interact)

It could have private servers.

I hope it is liek Forza Horizon 4 where you see ghost and can request to interact with them

[Kernel Kraken]

On 2/16/2021 at 2:09 PM, Wubslin said:

 

This actually makes some sense. It reminds me of a Mario Kart time trial-esqe system. My brain is struggling to wrap around the diagram, but it does make some sense. I can see this being the actual multiplayer system if it ever gets revealed. 10/10 post.

Edited February 21, 2021 by Kernel Kraken
I don't know why the text is like that, just ignore it. I don't think it links to anything?

[Wubslin]

51 minutes ago, Kernel Kraken said:

This actually makes some sense. It reminds me of a Mario Kart time trial-esqe system. My brain is struggling to wrap around the diagram, but it does make some sense. I can see this being the actual multiplayer system if it ever gets revealed. 10/10 post.

I appreciate the feedback. I can understand the diagram being confusing thoug, it was harebrained and poorly planned out (really I did it just to procrastinate something else.) That said, it gets a lot simpler to say "you can only interact with someone with whose world clock is the same as yours".

[DerZerschneider]

- Time And Relative Dimensions In Space -

I really don't know if I understood everything you wrote. (This is mainly due to my limited English), but if I understand it correctly, you imagine the solution as real time for each player whose "past" leaves a phantom veil. I think the idea is good and yet I could imagine that this could lead to a conflict.
The multiplayer limit may be limited to two, then it may still be possible. But with a long journey there are many possible flights, all of which have to be calculated. I imagine it to be complex, but who knows, it might work.

I imagined that another system would run separately from the other and would only be synchronized when they met.
Then we run into the same problem, but hopefully the dayone patch will solve that and we can play first. :D

Edited February 22, 2021 by DerZerschneider
complement

[Habalabam]

To me, the multiplayer scenarios are:

• Mayhem. Let's take the designs and go crazy. Be it flying, racing, fighting etc. I believe the spaceports should have a little distance, but not so much that meeting up with land or sea faring vehicles is impractical.
• Dual campaign. We play in parallel, but we interact. Separate tech trees, separate spaceports, separate installations. You can dock with my stuff, but I still need to activate my valves before you get any fuel. Or I need to grant your kerbals permission to enter.
• Co-op campaign. My favorite. PVE. We co-operate. We can even work on the same design simultaneously (co-op in editor) if we so choose.

I think the most obvious solution to time warp is that the person with the desire for the lowest time compression decides. So, if I desire a 100x time compression, but my buddy desires 1x, then we go with 1x until he ramps it up or surrenders control to me.

The problem then is, what do you do with time consuming stuff such as driving a rover or flying a plane? Must everybody else wait while somebody does that?  I think the simplest answer is "yes".
I think that an alarm clock system is necessary, so I can set the my rocket to give an alarm and go to 1x time compression when my rocket reaches Mun. This leaves me free to play around in the VAB or something in the meantime until my event comes up.

I agree that there can be situations where it would make sense that a person could muck about on the Mun surface at 1x speed and not caring that day suddenly turned into night because someone else needed time compression on the interplanetary scale, but I don't see how this would be practical. This is simply the price to pay for multiplayer. 

And, of course, I want to undertake a mission as a kerbal, maybe even first person perspective only for the hardcore players, with my buddy sitting next to me while we together. With only access to the controls that my kerbal is operating from his/her IVA seat. And we can reenact the Apollo 11 mission.

[Guest]

37 minutes ago, Habalabam said:

I think the most obvious solution to time warp is that the person with the desire for the lowest time compression decides. So, if I desire a 100x time compression, but my buddy desires 1x, then we go with 1x until he ramps it up or surrenders control to me.

That's not "the most obvious solution" that's just not putting any effort in finding one.