KSP2 will have axial tilt!

[coyotesfrontier]

According to this interview, KSP 2 will feature axial tilt, though it will be more pronounced with bodies not part of the Kerbol system:

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/features/interviews/an-in-depth-conversation-with-the-creator-of-ksp2/

"One new thing that we have now is axial tilt. The planets in the original KSP tend to be aligned perpendicularly to their ecliptic orbit and we are now able to essentially have seasons, because the planets can tilt a little bit. Obviously we don’t want the planets in the Kerbolar system to feel radically different from the original, so we might only be fiddling with that a little bit in terms of that system"

[Francois424]

That is good news.  More chance to get an Uranus analogue (or anything interesting out there).

[Drakenred65]

Only a little bit? 

Just a 1 degree change in inclination is enough to send you into deep space!

 

I think we should hold out for radical change! Maybe make it a semi random change in e a i Ω ω ν θ and f depending on difficulty. 

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, [email protected] said:

Only a little bit? 

Just a 1 degree change in inclination is enough to send you into deep space!

 

I think we should hold out for radical change! Maybe make it a semi random change in e a i Ω ω ν θ and f depending on difficulty. 

They will not change the old planets to much. For other planets i don't think its restrictions. 

[GluttonyReaper]

(and the fans rejoiced!)

[M_Rat13]

So, does this mean we'll get a planet like Uranus, and have the chance to make funny jokes about it?

 

[lajoswinkler]

I just hope what we saw with Duna was just a trailer designer's error. If it gets flipped like Uranus, the whole polar cap makes no sense.

I took the liberty of making the screenshot better by removing the ugly skybox.

[Geschosskopf]

I'm not rejoicing.  I don't see this as adding anything but bother to the game, making it less accessible to the young and less enjoyable to the older but less-serious players.

But oh well, nothing I can do about it so no use complaining.

I just hope KSP2 will provide in-game instrumentation to allow planning launches to happen for the inclination you want, and a time you can set to warp to that point in time.

[pschlik]

Oh imagine the confusion when you need to put your resource survey scanner at an orbit which isn't vertical with respect to the game's arbitrary direction of 'up.'

[ThatGuyWithALongUsername]

46 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

I'm not rejoicing.  I don't see this as adding anything but bother to the game, making it less accessible to the young and less enjoyable to the older but less-serious players.

But oh well, nothing I can do about it so no use complaining.

I just hope KSP2 will provide in-game instrumentation to allow planning launches to happen for the inclination you want, and a time you can set to warp to that point in time.

They've already said that the Kerbol system is staying the same. I think by the time you get to interstellar travel you should be able to handle axial tilt. You have to have new challenges for experienced players, right?

[Geschosskopf]

1 hour ago, ThatGuyWithALongUsername said:

They've already said that the Kerbol system is staying the same. I think by the time you get to interstellar travel you should be able to handle axial tilt. You have to have new challenges for experienced players, right?

#1, they did NOT say the original system is staying the same, just that it won't change "much".

#2, this is NOT a challenge.  It's just a bother that adds little or nothing to gameplay..  Just like EVERY SINGLE so-called "realism" feature that has been begged, demanded, and sometimes added to KSP over the years. 

It's exactly the same as re-entry heating, for example.  Pointless.  Stick on a heatshield and never think about it again.  Just add cost, mass, partcount, and overhead, for zero gameplay value.  Planet axial tilt is in this same category.

 

[coyotesfrontier]

1 hour ago, Geschosskopf said:

#1, they did NOT say the original system is staying the same, just that it won't change "much".

#2, this is NOT a challenge.  It's just a bother that adds little or nothing to gameplay..  Just like EVERY SINGLE so-called "realism" feature that has been begged, demanded, and sometimes added to KSP over the years. 

It's exactly the same as re-entry heating, for example.  Pointless.  Stick on a heatshield and never think about it again.  Just add cost, mass, partcount, and overhead, for zero gameplay value.  Planet axial tilt is in this same category.

 

But re-entry does add gameplay value, in addition to realism. Aerobraking used to be ungodly overpowered, all you had to do to get to Laythe was the transfer burn, and Laythe's atmosphere would do the rest. With re-entry heating, you have to think twice about coming into an atmosphere, as well as when designing your ship beforehand.

Kerbin's axial tilt, if I'm reading this correctly, won't change by much, so all you'll have to do is tilt a little at launch. That's it. And in exchange, you get seasons, realism, more planet possibilities, prettier screen shots from high orbit...

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, Geschosskopf said:

#1, they did NOT say the original system is staying the same, just that it won't change "much".

#2, this is NOT a challenge.  It's just a bother that adds little or nothing to gameplay..  Just like EVERY SINGLE so-called "realism" feature that has been begged, demanded, and sometimes added to KSP over the years. 

It's exactly the same as re-entry heating, for example.  Pointless.  Stick on a heatshield and never think about it again.  Just add cost, mass, partcount, and overhead, for zero gameplay value.  Planet axial tilt is in this same category.

 

Re-entry heating changed the game a lot in that you can not pull off stunts like doing an 4km/s burn towards Eve and aerobrake you station. 
Nor can you do an Jool return and enter Kerbin retrograde. 
You can pull off this stunt on Duna however as the low gravity don't speed you op so much before hitting the atmosphere. 
Pulling that stunt off was an project, I named it hardbrake. 

Yes it will make accurate landings a bit harder but on fast rotating bodies you have to compensate for rotation anyway. 
Small inclinations don't matter much but large one will have effects, it will make the poles easier to access during the summer while an planet with Uranus level tilt will have very long nights. 

[ThatGuyWithALongUsername]

2 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

#1, they did NOT say the original system is staying the same, just that it won't change "much".

#2, this is NOT a challenge.  It's just a bother that adds little or nothing to gameplay..  Just like EVERY SINGLE so-called "realism" feature that has been begged, demanded, and sometimes added to KSP over the years. 

It's exactly the same as re-entry heating, for example.  Pointless.  Stick on a heatshield and never think about it again.  Just add cost, mass, partcount, and overhead, for zero gameplay value.  Planet axial tilt is in this same category.

 

Oh, wow. I started another argument, didn't I... not dropping this *quite* yet, can't resist, sorry. I guess TWO can play at the "write increasingly longer slightly angry posts at each other about opinions, despite both being valid opinions and there being no chance of actually convincing anyone of anyhting" game.

#1: Oh, you're right actually. Found an interview just a minute ago actually confirming that slight axial tilt will in fact be added. They *did* say that they don't want the Kerbol system to feel radically different, so they might only be tweaking that slightly. That shows suggest that, say, Duna is not going to become Uranus, despite what the trailer shows. (Source: VGN)

I still don't think this will be unfriendly to new players because it's not really that hard of a concept (kind of how you describe it in #2) and it will rqlly only become important when you get to interplanetary travel, which brand new players won't be doing yet. But I still take a huge, huge issue with #2.

#2 Seriously?! I've never heard this issue before. Everything in KSP is a "bother." The entire point of the game is to run into problems and fix them. You could say the exact same thing about trying to plot a transfer window in the first place! KSP has always been a game grounded in real physics, and so the most obvious parts of physics (the parts that seem unrealistic when not included) should be implemented. Obviously that does not include many, many more subtle things, but physics you can see outside your window have every right to be included.

 

And that re-entry heating example... what?! That is a pretty famous part of space travel right there. I assume the idea of it not being modeled is just to assume every capsule has heat shielding already. Well, first off, a regular capsule heat shield isn't going to be enough to, say, aerobrake from an interplanetary trajectory. That's a new challenge that I thi k definitely added gameplay. You have to plan trajectories way more carefully now. And what if it isn't a simple capsule? Granted, I may just be really bas at flying spaceplanes... ok, I am really bad at flying spaceplanes... but still, it's not as simple as dice into the atmosphere and assume you'll survive since you have heat shielding with that one. You have to use piloting skills! And it you're trying to, say, aerobrake a mothership st Jool or land on Eve then you have a pretty big design consideration to take into account of how to protect it from heating. It isn't as simple as slapping a heat shield on it.

Edited August 25, 2019 by ThatGuyWithALongUsername

[magnemoe]

Now the real big news in that article is burns during warp, yes real warp like 1000x, this is an insane change making low trust / high isp engines very strong. 
You have the obvious orbital mechanic issue that you can not use this to do an escape burn without breaking it up in lots of smaller burn but in deep space it would work well, I imagine it will simply increase the acceleration of your craft so 0.1 g at x100 will look like 10g. You will get the same errors as doing an injection burn but in an much straighter line but over longer time.  

Also even with stuffs like Orions orbital mechanics changes to how far ahead of target does we need to aim. 
Hohmann is dead and its no point going interplanetary before you have orion. 
Exception is if its very hard to unlock the new parts. 
And one issue with the orion is that the fuel is nuclear bombs who is pretty expensive. This might well be an major downside of it compared to later fusion drives. 
 

[Geschosskopf]

2 minutes ago, coyotesfrontier said:

But re-entry does add gameplay value,

2 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Re-entry heating changed the game a lot 

Um... nope.  None, zero, zilch, nada.

Since things settled down after all the trauma of 1.0 +/- several "hot" fixes, have you ever lost a ship to re-entry heating?  Are you ever going to?  Do you know anybody who has?  The answer to all these questions is "NO!"  Why?  Because we slap on heatshields which totally solve the problem, whether it be landing at Eve or aerobraking at Jool.

IOW, reentry heating really has ZERO gameplay consequences AT ALL.  Just put on your prophylactic heatshield and you're golden.  The net result for gameplay is EXACTLY the same as before re-entry heat---you do whatever the Hell you want with atmospheric interaction.  The only differences now are that 1) you have remember to add a heatshield in the design phase, 2) this adds extra mass, cost, and partcount to your ship, and 3) your computer is bogged down doing numerous pointless heat calculations and keeping track of ablator burning off,  none of which will EVER have any effect on the survival of your ship because you followed "safe reentry practices".

This is why all the "realism" things folks always go on about are counterproductive.  Add the preventative part(s) and the problem goes away, gameplay doesn't otherwise change in the slightest, but the enforced computational overhead needlessly chasing its tail remains.

 

10 minutes ago, ThatGuyWithALongUsername said:

Oh, wow. I started another argument, didn't I...

Nope. The above argument has been going on since KSP 1st went public because some folks mistakenly think "enhanced gameplay" means "adding an effectively useless heatshield to a ship that didn't need one before", and similar stuff involving anything else in the real world that's not (or wasn't) in KSP.  As long as the game provides the solution to the problem the so-called "realism" feature attempts to add, there's no point in having the problem at all, because it only adds useless computational overhead.

 

10 minutes ago, ThatGuyWithALongUsername said:

#2 Seriously?! I've never heard this issue before. Everything in KSP is a "bother."

I think you misunderstand....

What is the point of the game?  To me and, I think, most players, it's "build rockets and go places".  Does making folks wait for the proper time of day to launch enhance that or not?  No, it just gets in the way.  Does having to deal with this real issue fundamentally change the basic mechanics of getting from Kerbin to Mun?  No, other than the delay and perhaps the need for an additional plane change somewhere along the line, so you need a bit more dV in your transfer stage.

This is what I define as a "bother".  Something that adds nothing fundamental to gameplay, just an irksome thing you have to take into account in the design phase, then have to time your launch for.  But after that, it's business as usual.  So why bother?  Just keep everything with zero axial tilt and you'll never notice.

Seriously, do you expect EVA Kerbals to be able to ski and iceskate on some days but not others?  I don't.  So what's the point of having seasons?

[nikokespprfan]

5 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

And one issue with the orion is that the fuel is nuclear bombs who is pretty expensive

What about the entire "you are using radiating nukes near civilisation" -issue. You are worrying about cost

26 minutes ago, ThatGuyWithALongUsername said:

It isn't as simple as....

why is it not so simple? because things are never that simple. Ahhh, the complexity of real life....

[ThatGuyWithALongUsername]

5 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

Nope. The above argument has been going on since KSP 1st went public

Ah, actually I remember that a bit now. I always found that argument silly since you can turn reentry heating off in the difficulty settings. Here, of course, that doesn't work as well since you cab't turn this off so easily. I still reignited it, though.

Oh, and while we're at it #BringBackTheBarn (JK, I was actually on the anti-barn side. Although with a certain rocket company building things next to- not even inside- tents, it may be a bit more realistic now...)

10 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

Since things settled down after all the trauma of 1.0 +/- several "hot" fixes, have you ever lost a ship to re-entry heating?  Are you ever going to?  Do you know anybody who has?  The answer to all these questions is "NO!"  Why?  Because we slap on heatshields which totally solve the problem, whether it be landing at Eve or aerobraking at Jool.

IOW, reentry heating really has ZERO gameplay consequences AT ALL.  Just put on your prophylactic heatshield and you're golden.  The net result for gameplay is EXACTLY the same as before re-entry heat---you do whatever the Hell you want with atmospheric interaction.  The only differences now are that 1) you have remember to add a heatshield in the design phase, 2) this adds extra mass, cost, and partcount to your ship, and 3) your computer is bogged down doing numerous pointless heat calculations and keeping track of ablator burning off,  none of which will EVER have any effect on the survival of your ship because you followed "safe reentry practices".

 

Right... because they followed safe reentry practices. I can't remember the last time I forgot solar panels, for example. Same kind of thing. And yet, nobody complains about power generation being a thing!

For simpler vessels, yes, it's just one part. But... just one part! Is that really so cumbersome? it's so much more realistic this way! And then there are landers and aerobraking ships that need more complex heat shielding- you can't let your engines be exposed while reentering, and yet you're going to ant them again later. How are you going to deal with this? Yes., of course the answer is heat shields, but you still have to take into account the geometry.

(All that being said, I can kinda get behind integrating heat shield functionality into capsules, since you're never going to need one without the other. Obviously don't do it with lander cans, etc. For the rare occasion you might not need a heat shield with your capsule, just remove the ablator before launching. But keep the heating in, so people can learn firsthand why recovering upper stages is hard, etc.!)

(And yes, I do remember taking off too much ablator on a heat shield and blowing up at least once. The spaceplane stuff is all from experience too, although again I had no idea what I was doing and haven't touched spaceplanes in a long time. Might have been 1.0.x, so I guess that might not count.)

[magnemoe]

14 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

Um... nope.  None, zero, zilch, nada.

Since things settled down after all the trauma of 1.0 +/- several "hot" fixes, have you ever lost a ship to re-entry heating?  Are you ever going to?  Do you know anybody who has?  The answer to all these questions is "NO!"  Why?  Because we slap on heatshields which totally solve the problem, whether it be landing at Eve or aerobraking at Jool.

IOW, reentry heating really has ZERO gameplay consequences AT ALL.  Just put on your prophylactic heatshield and you're golden.  The net result for gameplay is EXACTLY the same as before re-entry heat---you do whatever the Hell you want with atmospheric interaction.  The only differences now are that 1) you have remember to add a heatshield in the design phase, 2) this adds extra mass, cost, and partcount to your ship, and 3) your computer is bogged down doing numerous pointless heat calculations and keeping track of ablator burning off,  none of which will EVER have any effect on the survival of your ship because you followed "safe reentry practices".

This is why all the "realism" things folks always go on about are counterproductive.  Add the preventative part(s) and the problem goes away, gameplay doesn't otherwise change in the slightest, but the enforced computational overhead needlessly chasing its tail remains.

People play the game in different ways, I tend to drop heavy stuff from Minus orbit, standard base with standard booster, 6 km/s with the ore. 

Laythe base in orbit around Minmus topping up from an tanker after resuply on Minus base and docked with booster.  
Chemical engine burns during most of the injection burn and get dropped, an  9 LV-N second stage burn while cross feeding into the core with all the radial LV-N.
Jool in an year or before this election cycle:) 
Ore was  be converted into fuel trying to get into  Pol orbit using Ike, had it not been for reentry heating I would jut aerobraked and Laythe. 

This was not very practical as the added weight of the 5 inflatable heat shields and structure would still require significant braking before  hitting Laythe. 
It would also add an very high risk. Concision from the hardbrake 2 study was negative. The pilot union protested because 

This looks better than most instagram photos but was overruled. 

[Superfluous J]

33 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

Since things settled down after all the trauma of 1.0 +/- several "hot" fixes, have you ever lost a ship to re-entry heating?

Yes.

33 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

  Are you ever going to?

Probably.

33 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

Do you know anybody who has?

Yes.

33 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

The answer to all these questions is "NO!"

No.

33 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

Why?

Because my experience is different from yours.

33 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

Because we slap on heatshields which totally solve the problem, whether it be landing at Eve or aerobraking at Jool.

I spent hours working on my Eve lander AFTER the hours I spent making it able to lift off of Eve. Those hours were figuring out how to get it to land on Eve without exploding. And believe me, my first attempt was to "slap on heatshields" and it did NOT work. When I finally got something that only lost a few solar panels, I called it good.

As opposed to before 1.0, when I literally came in from interplanetary and hit the peak of the highest mountain on the first try.

[HebaruSan]

37 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

Since things settled down after all the trauma of 1.0 +/- several "hot" fixes, have you ever lost a ship to re-entry heating?

Yes, usually space planes or other craft that are difficult to shield from re-entry heating.
Or pieces of craft that stick out from the shielded airstream, such as experiments attached to command pods. Hope you grabbed the science before re-entry!

37 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

Are you ever going to?

Yes, probably.

37 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

Do you know anybody who has?

Yes.

37 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

The answer to all these questions is "NO!"

...

37 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

Why?  Because we slap on heatshields which totally solve the problem, whether it be landing at Eve or aerobraking at Jool.

They do? That's news to me (especially "aerobraking at Jool", last I checked that was a recipe for instant incineration whether you had a shield or not).

37 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

IOW, reentry heating really has ZERO gameplay consequences AT ALL.

It does? Significant alterations to how we build and fly crafts are not gameplay consequences? I guess I'll jump to the end of this section of the post.

37 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

Does making folks wait for the proper time of day to launch enhance that or not?

Ahh, back to tilt. Yes, it enhances, in the same way Minmus's inclination does. You learn a new trick to avoid paying extra delta V in certain situations, also corresponds to the properties of real world astronomical objects.

37 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

No, it just gets in the way.

...

[magnemoe]

44 minutes ago, nikokespprfan said:

What about the entire "you are using radiating nukes near civilisation" -issue. You are worrying about cost

Kerbals has an tradition to strap 4 LV-N on the sides of an hitchhiker container. 
I guess their DNA have 4 strains and an backup tape level error correction. 
Radiation still kill cancer cells, in short its good for you up to neutron bomb levels. 

Anyway no issue building it on Minmus or using Saturn 5 as strap on boosters. 

[nikokespprfan]

1 minute ago, magnemoe said:

Kerbals has an tradition to strap 4 LV-N on the sides of an hitchhiker container. 
I guess their DNA have 4 strains and an backup tape level error correction. 
Radiation still kill cancer cells, in short its good for you up to neutron bomb levels. 

Anyway no issue building it on Minmus or using Saturn 5 as strap on boosters. 

well played

[Geschosskopf]

1 hour ago, ThatGuyWithALongUsername said:

Ah, actually I remember that a bit now. I always found that argument silly since you can turn reentry heating off in the difficulty settings. Here, of course, that doesn't work as well since you cab't turn this off so easily. I still reignited it, though.

For a time, you weren't able to turn off reentry heating.  And you've NEVER been able to turn off the ~1.0-ish atmosphere and go back to the original "soup-o-sphere".  Which, FWIW, was a MUCH more accurate simulation of the expected Kerbin atmosphere than this "wannabe-Earth" thing we have now.  The great fallacy of the realism-mongers is that they equate "realism" with "just like Earth".  But Kerbin demonstrably isn't Earth.  It isn't even in our universe due to its very existence violating pretty much every one of our laws of physics right down to the level of the fundamental forces.  So maybe its physics could be improved upon, but doing so should diverge it even farther from Earthly "realism" than it is now.  Us and the Kerbals don't share a common periodic table because our elements can't exist in their universe and vice versa.

The one thing that can irrefutably be said about realism in KSP is that trying to force Earth-like conditions on the KSP universe is 100% wrong, due to the very different laws of physics that pertain in the KSP universe.  Kerbin couldn't exist in our universe and vice versa.  This argument goes away if you play RSS (aka wannabe Orbiter) but, otherwise, Kerbin retains an average density considerably greater than osmium.  Therefore, it's best practice never to mention "realism" in KSP contexts unless you're talking about how the alien physical laws of the Kerbal universe can be demonstrated.

 

Quote

Right... because they followed safe reentry practices. I can't remember the last time I forgot solar panels, for example. Same kind of thing. And yet, nobody complains about power generation being a thing!

Why would they?  That argument was settled back around 0.23.  No sense beating a dead horse.

But yeah, that's the exact same thing as reentry heating.  Add some solar panels and/or RTGs in the design phase, and never worry about EC again during the mission.  Added value to gameplay:  zero.  Added bother:  remembering to add power to a crewed ship.  Net result:  Increased ship cost, mass, and partcount, and additional useless computational overhead that will never impact the mission.

 

49 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

People play the game in different ways, 

They only play the game in 1 way if they expect to succeed.   There are different routes to this state but all routes share 1 common feature--every hazard expected to be encountered during the mission will certainly be overcome, as is known to be prior to launch .  Otherwise, either 1) the player made a critical mistake either in design or execution, or 2) the player enjoys just slapping things together and trusting in the gods, come what may.  The latter type is doesn't really care about the niceties or they'd have taken them into account up front.  The former type is just temporarily incompetent but that's a self-correcting thing.  Folks who take this seriously hate failure so do all in their power to never have that or any other mistake happen again.

 

47 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

I spent hours working on my Eve lander AFTER the hours I spent making it able to lift off of Eve. Those hours were figuring out how to get it to land on Eve without exploding. And believe me, my first attempt was to "slap on heatshields" and it did NOT work. When I finally got something that only lost a few solar panels, I called it good.

So, um, what else was there to it besides slapping on heatshields?  A few more heatshields to create a wider occluded area?  A fairing also, perhaps?  Changing your descent trajectory a bit?  

 

Quote

As opposed to before 1.0, when I literally came in from interplanetary and hit the peak of the highest mountain on the first try.

But what, really, is the difference at the end of the day?  You make whatever changes are necessary to accomplish your goal.  Add parts, alter flightpath, whatever.  But  when you really do the mission after all the testing, you know that your ship will do the job.  That all the heat calculations going on under the hood are just wasting computational power because your ship WILL work--you already know that.  But you're stuck with the resulting lag because enough people whined about the lack of reentry heating that now we have the nth version of it.  And at the end of the day, it really changes nothing.  We land the ship we want at the place we want.

Edited August 25, 2019 by Geschosskopf

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Geschosskopf said:

have you ever lost a ship to re-entry heating?  Are you ever going to?  Do you know anybody who has?

Spaceplanes, I had to learn how to land on a runway from orbit without burning my plane, it was fun and it still is.

Without reentry heat I would probably avoid spaceplanes alltogether, it wouldn't be as funny as it is now.

Edited August 25, 2019 by Guest