KSP 2 Multiplayer Discussion Thread

[Catto]

good!! good idea!! write that down!!

[Pthigrivi]

1 hour ago, t_v said:

Right, but in the leapfrog model, the target does pop out of existence. You are trying to rendezvous, and then you suddenly see the other ship has been greyed out and you can no longer dock. The alternative that I was proposing is that you see how the orbit is changing, or if they exit the SOI, you see that the ship is no longer there. 

This would really only happen immediately after another player had docked or undocked to that particular station or vessel relatively near in your future. Remember you don’t need to be ahead of other players, just other vessels’ last interaction, and getting from place to place takes time, usually enough time to catch up. If you’re within a year or so of other players most of their stuff should be fully available. 
 

And I thought what we came to was that in local bubble you still need everything to behave relative to your timeframe once you enter a new SOI so you can dock with things, and you only synch once you enter physics range? Was that right? So you’re still looking at recordings/projections of vessels positions most of the time, they just are probably more recent? To me thats a bit confusing but maybe in practice people would get used to it. I know you also don’t like the idea of non-interactable vessels so its hard to say who’s right. 

Edited November 13, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[t_v]

5 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

This would really only happen immediately after another player had docked or undocked to that particular station or vessel relatively near in your future. Remember you don’t need to be ahead of other players, just other vessels’ last interaction, and getting from place to place takes time, usually enough time to catch up. If you’re within a year or so of other players most of their stuff should be fully available. 

Your example was one of trying to dock while someone else changed the orbit of the target vessel. If no one is changing the orbit or interacting with that vessel, docking works the same way in both systems. If someone does interact with the vessel, as in your example, then in the leapfrog model the craft becomes inaccessible and in the cyclic model (people have been using Local Bubble to mean several things) you would see the effects of that interaction.

7 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

And I thought what we came to was that in local bubble you still need everything to behave relative to your timeframe once you enter a new SOI so you can dock with things, and you only synch once you enter physics range? Was that right? So you’re still looking at recordings/projections of vessels positions most of the time, they just are probably more recent? To me thats way more confusing but I know you also don’t like the idea of non-interactable vessels so its hard to say who’s right. 

That is correct. If someone is in a 100km circular orbit, when you warp they warp (seen from your perspective). However, this creates a spatial desynchronization because they don't see their craft warping. So, when you dock, that spatial difference must be resolved by warping to the point in the orbit that the owner of the craft sees. You are seeing projections of people's crafts, but they are more recent, as they reflect the real orbit or trajectory that the craft is in, just on a different point along the orbit. Effectively, instead of having two greyed-out craft (one for the craft at your time and one for the craft at their time) you see one craft that you can interact with that represents where they are in the "present," give or take one orbit. The reason I think you need two ghosts in the leapfrog model is because you don't want to have players placing their ships in the exact orbit of yours and griefing you from the past. 

[SkyFall2489]

5 minutes ago, t_v said:

Your example was one of trying to dock while someone else changed the orbit of the target vessel. If no one is changing the orbit or interacting with that vessel, docking works the same way in both systems. If someone does interact with the vessel, as in your example, then in the leapfrog model the craft becomes inaccessible and in the cyclic model (people have been using Local Bubble to mean several things) you would see the effects of that interaction.

That is correct. If someone is in a 100km circular orbit, when you warp they warp (seen from your perspective). However, this creates a spatial desynchronization because they don't see their craft warping. So, when you dock, that spatial difference must be resolved by warping to the point in the orbit that the owner of the craft sees. You are seeing projections of people's crafts, but they are more recent, as they reflect the real orbit or trajectory that the craft is in, just on a different point along the orbit. Effectively, instead of having two greyed-out craft (one for the craft at your time and one for the craft at their time) you see one craft that you can interact with that represents where they are in the "present," give or take one orbit. The reason I think you need two ghosts in the leapfrog model is because you don't want to have players placing their ships in the exact orbit of yours and griefing you from the past. 

wait, so what's this leapfrog thing?

Right now, I'm still for the encounters model. It doesn't allow huge servers, but play with a friend or two is totally fine.

[t_v]

3 minutes ago, SkyFall2489 said:

wait, so what's this leapfrog thing?

Right now, I'm still for the encounters model. It doesn't allow huge servers, but play with a friend or two is totally fine.

It is probably best explained by someone else, but as a summary, it is similar to how DMP and LMP work. All the players can be in their separate times and the game plays perfectly consistently, similar to single player, but you can also interact with other players' ships. In order to mitigate wackiness though, you can only interact with ships that haven't been interacted with in the future. Planetary positions are consistent between players who are at the same time, and when you want to catch up to other people, you just warp forwards until you are at the same time as them. 

[SkyFall2489]

47 minutes ago, t_v said:

It is probably best explained by someone else, but as a summary, it is similar to how DMP and LMP work. All the players can be in their separate times and the game plays perfectly consistently, similar to single player, but you can also interact with other players' ships. In order to mitigate wackiness though, you can only interact with ships that haven't been interacted with in the future. Planetary positions are consistent between players who are at the same time, and when you want to catch up to other people, you just warp forwards until you are at the same time as them. 

The DMP/LMP model is called Subspace warp, referring to how the players at different times are in different subspaces. It does seem to be a pretty good system, with most of the little bugs knocked out given that it has been implemented in KSP1.

I have an LMP server, and subspace usually works fine.

Only thing though, what about PVP combat? Your enemy's space battleship could simply escape to the future, and if you chased after them the battle would be delayed indefinitely. Maybe have some way to have 2 players agree to lock their warp to eachother or to 1x?

 

EDIT:

I guess KSP really isn't a space combat game. Looking at Children of a Dead Earth, a space combat game with realistic orbital mechanics, it looks like the problem of multi player time warp is solved by only having one player against AIs. The AIs plan their maneuvers in advance and are executed during warp instnatly.

 

After thinking about it, what if:

1. all players are at the same time

2. everyone must agree to warp together

3. Then, time warps by the agreed amount

 

Actually, mayeb it's better to be able to lock the warp of multiple players in agreement in combination with leapfrog/subspace. Normally it works that way, but players can agree to lock their times temporarily for combat or other reasons, like formation flying across the same transfer window.

Edited November 13, 2022 by SkyFall2489

[t_v]

4 hours ago, SkyFall2489 said:

Only thing though, what about PVP combat? Your enemy's space battleship could simply escape to the future, and if you chased after them the battle would be delayed indefinitely. Maybe have some way to have 2 players agree to lock their warp to eachother or to 1x?

 

EDIT:

I guess KSP really isn't a space combat game. Looking at Children of a Dead Earth, a space combat game with realistic orbital mechanics, it looks like the problem of multi player time warp is solved by only having one player against AIs. The AIs plan their maneuvers in advance and are executed during warp instnatly.

 

After thinking about it, what if:

1. all players are at the same time

2. everyone must agree to warp together

3. Then, time warps by the agreed amount

 

Actually, mayeb it's better to be able to lock the warp of multiple players in agreement in combination with leapfrog/subspace. Normally it works that way, but players can agree to lock their times temporarily for combat or other reasons, like formation flying across the same transfer window.

Yeah, the thing with multiplayer space combat is that it will almost exclusively be strategy and ambush. In real life, crafts that are close together in space (and velocity) have a lot of time to react, and usually can plan things out ahead of a confrontation and in the hours following it. However, in a game with time warp, the amount of time it takes to plan a trajectory is a significant percentage of the time it takes to intercept or evade someone. On top of that, you can't just hit someone who has already warped away because that would feel terrible. So in a KSP 2 combat mod, there will likely be a condition that ties players' clocks together if they are actively in combat. 

[magnemoe]

4 hours ago, SkyFall2489 said:

The DMP/LMP model is called Subspace warp, referring to how the players at different times are in different subspaces. It does seem to be a pretty good system, with most of the little bugs knocked out given that it has been implemented in KSP1.

I have an LMP server, and subspace usually works fine.

Only thing though, what about PVP combat? Your enemy's space battleship could simply escape to the future, and if you chased after them the battle would be delayed indefinitely. Maybe have some way to have 2 players agree to lock their warp to eachother or to 1x?

EDIT:

I guess KSP really isn't a space combat game. Looking at Children of a Dead Earth, a space combat game with realistic orbital mechanics, it looks like the problem of multi player time warp is solved by only having one player against AIs. The AIs plan their maneuvers in advance and are executed during warp instnatly.

After thinking about it, what if:

1. all players are at the same time

2. everyone must agree to warp together

3. Then, time warps by the agreed amount

Actually, mayeb it's better to be able to lock the warp of multiple players in agreement in combination with leapfrog/subspace. Normally it works that way, but players can agree to lock their times temporarily for combat or other reasons, like formation flying across the same transfer window.

Yes KSP is not an space combat game,  but this is an problem solved in science fiction, in star wars its even special ships designed to prevent enemies to warp away or come in close during warp. 
Kind of like electronic warfare planes or trucks today. It was specialized star destroyers for this but they probably had an AU ranges. Tangent (An much more short range one would be smaller and would protect you from hyperspace ramming, disabling this jammer could make it work. Or how to make that scene work) 
I say in PvP any intercept take you out of warp and give an cooldown who is standard for stuff like stealth or invisibility. 
 

[t_v]

17 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Yes KSP is not an space combat game,  but this is an problem solved in science fiction, in star wars its even special ships designed to prevent enemies to warp away or come in close during warp. 
Kind of like electronic warfare planes or trucks today. It was specialized star destroyers for this but they probably had an AU ranges. Tangent (An much more short range one would be smaller and would protect you from hyperspace ramming, disabling this jammer could make it work. Or how to make that scene work) 
I say in PvP any intercept take you out of warp and give an cooldown who is standard for stuff like stealth or invisibility. 
 

I hope that Intercept does not make provisions or designs gameplay with PvP in mind - space exploration is a challenge enough, without adding in warfare. 

(just to clarify, I have nothing against warfare in space games, or warfare in KSP - as long as it isn't in my KSP experience, and isn't encouraged as part of Stock)

Edited November 13, 2022 by t_v

[Pthigrivi]

13 hours ago, t_v said:

Your example was one of trying to dock while someone else changed the orbit of the target vessel. If no one is changing the orbit or interacting with that vessel, docking works the same way in both systems. If someone does interact with the vessel, as in your example, then in the leapfrog model the craft becomes inaccessible and in the cyclic model (people have been using Local Bubble to mean several things) you would see the effects of that interaction.

In leapfrog, yes, temporarily inaccessible but it does at least behave in a consistent way normal to real physics from every player’s perspective. This is the critical advantage: predictable behavior—there is exactly one reality for everyone, and everything behaves as it should no matter where or when you are, something that is absolutely essential for transfers and rendezvous over a range of scales. And since intercepting a moving object using the maneuver node system is near impossible you’ll have to wait for it to stop moving anyway so there’s no real foul. 
 

In the cyclic model one of two things could happen. Either you view that craft based on its orbit when you entered the SOI and you can time warp independently forming a mini-leapfrog model as positional recordings diverge, or when another player makes a burn it pops out of existence (from your perspective) and re-emerges consistent with the other players’ point of view. If the former then the situation is much the same as leapfrog, you need to wait for it to be at rest anyway, except players may have many vessels in the same SOI all doing different things in different temporal realities, and if the latter not only do you need to wait until the interaction is complete but you also need to restart your approach from scratch because its location has teleported to an orbit and position you could not predict.  I do get why you’re worried about a world of non-interacting things. Im worried the cyclic model creates a much more complicated and incoherent set of realities to solve what could be solved by player communication and some simple efforts to stay on the same page. 

Edited November 14, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[MacintoshKSP]

In a recent KSP2 interview, recently- being an hour ago, Nate Simpson said "and then we'll wrap it up with a nice big bow and deliver Multiplayer which introduces the concept of Agencies." It's hard to explain this in a post, sooo.... here's the vidya.  

 

Edited November 18, 2022 by MacintoshKSP
Inaccurate Title

[Gurkonier]

He already did that back in 2019.

But nice to hear some new infos about multiplayer.

Edited November 17, 2022 by Gurkonier

[Ashandalar]

And if you don't trust the 2019 information after all of the delays, it was also reconfirmed in the early access roadmap...

[Vl3d]

I'll be the first to say that having intra-agency and inter-agency cooperative and competitive multiplayer gameplay does not confirm the MMO theory or the persistent universe theory or the solution for time warp. But... THE DREAM IS REAL!

https://www.pcgamer.com/kerbal-space-program-2-is-going-to-let-you-have-competitive-multiplayer-space-races/

[t_v]

Oh, my answer is gone, I just made a post referencing it. Did it get removed or just never sent? I’ll have to re-write it. 

[Bej Kerman]

21 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

I'll be the first to say that having intra-agency and inter-agency cooperative and competitive multiplayer gameplay does not confirm the MMO theory or the persistent universe theory or the solution for time warp. But... THE DREAM IS REAL!

"Co-operation between players" does not in any shape or form mean "MMO".  Like any other news site, take game journalist sites like pcgamer with at least 5oz of salt; journalists simply cannot be trusted to speak about anything without injecting thrills into their articles at the expense of honesty.

[Vl3d]

23 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

"Co-operation between players" does not in any shape or form mean "MMO".

Yeah but having agencies with multiple players each compete with each other.. you kinda need a lot of time invested in that agency to be able to win a race. So if 2 agencies with 8 players in total decide to create a multiplayer game just for them and spend 50+ hours of real-life time for which they synced their schedules every time.. I'm saying players would have to spend a lot of time in a multiplayer game. So wouldn't it be better if the game allowed for centralized servers where there could be a lot of agencies (thus players) and where everybody played whenever they wanted (no pressure to play together real-time, everyone works for the agency when the can)? Isn't the logical conclusion something like a (mini)MMO where you roleplay the agency / craft / kerbals?

Edited November 17, 2022 by Vl3d

[Pthigrivi]

In many ways what we're really talking about now is "how many players can a server support" which probably isn't knowable, maybe not even by the devs before the other big pieces take shape. Realistically is it 12? 50? 100? 1000? Beyond the technical question what matters is what players feel most comfortable with. In my mind the perfect spot would be a server with 15-20 members, and on a given evening/weekend session you might overlap with 4 or 5 of them. No larger than that. 

[Bej Kerman]

8 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

you kinda need a lot of time invested in that agency to be able to win a race.

Citation needed

"Competition" can mean "let's knock down 30 minutes whenever you're free and see who can get the furthest".

9 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

So if 2 agencies with 8 players in total decide to create a multiplayer game just for them and spend 50+ hours of real-life time for which they synced their schedules every time.. I'm saying players would have to spend a lot of time in a multiplayer game.

Why 8 players? Why 50 hours?

12 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

So wouldn't it be better if the game allowed for centralized servers where there could be a lot of agencies (thus players) and where everybody played whenever they wanted (no pressure to play together real-time, everyone works for the agency when the can)?

Why? What's wrong with just hosting a private game whenever a couple of your friends are free? Why would it need to be centralized?

13 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

Isn't the logical conclusion something like a (mini)MMO where you roleplay the agency / craft / kerbals?

Nope.

[MARL_Mk1]

Old news. 

[Vl3d]

16 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

What's wrong with just hosting a private game whenever a couple of your friends are free?

The fact that you have to go through the resource gathering tech progression phase of the game to do anything. The game would just take too long for it to be a "let's knock down 30 minutes whenever you're free and see who can get the furthest" thing. What you're thinking about is a sandbox-only custom-rules multiplayer system.

21 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

In my mind the perfect spot would be a server with 15-20 members, and on a given evening/weekend session you might overlap with 4 or 5 of them.

That sounds kind of.. empty. How about.. we all play together, but your agency can choose which other agencies it cooperates or competes with? Then you have the ecosystem you desire, but you're still in the persistent multiplayer universe.

Edited November 17, 2022 by Vl3d

[Bej Kerman]

3 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

18 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

What's wrong with just hosting a private game whenever a couple of your friends are free?

The fact that you have to go through the resource gathering tech progression phase of the game to do anything. The game would just take too long for it to be a "let's knock down 30 minutes whenever you're free and see who can get the furthest" thing. What you're thinking about is a sandbox-only custom-rules multiplayer system.

Why not just start an MP save that already has a buffer of resources? Intercept will have to consider the players that can't be bothered with progression and other kinds of fluff when thinking about the options you'll have access to when creating saves.

[Bej Kerman]

7 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

25 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

In my mind the perfect spot would be a server with 15-20 members, and on a given evening/weekend session you might overlap with 4 or 5 of them.

That sounds kind of.. empty.

Because you've spent months asking for an MMO that won't happen. 5 players is a decent amount, you could assemble a large station fairly quickly with 5 people working together.

[Vl3d]

6 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

5 players is a decent amount

No it's not. Come on, all of us together - so we can see the crazy contraptions launching and zipping around in real-time instead of only on the forum, Reddit, YouTube or KerbalX. Come on, jump on board!

Edited November 17, 2022 by Vl3d

[Pthigrivi]

12 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

That sounds kind of.. empty. How about.. we all play together, but your agency can choose which other agencies it cooperates or competes with? Then you have the ecosystem you desire, but you're still in the persistent multiplayer universe.

I guess Im just not really interested in being contacted by lots of people I don't know while playing, and I don't really want to feel like Im swimming through a sea of space junk or squabbling over rich resource locations. If different numbers of people can group together as just 2 or 3 people on a server or 20 or 500, thats totally fine. I think what most of us are saying is we wouldn't want to be automatically lumped into a giant server with thousands of spent stages and abandoned half-considered bases scattered around.