KSP2 will have axial tilt!

[juanml82]

17 hours 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.

 

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.

 

Yesterday I screwed the burn of a training ship heading out of Minmus and into just outside Kerbin's SOI. The "just outside" turned into a highly elliptical solar orbit. The ship has no heat shields, because I expected it to return to Kerbin in a gentle(ish?) descend.

It doesn't have enough dV to return to Kerbin, but I managed to get two intercepts with Eve, hoping the gravity slingshot would allow me to get somewhere (we'll see).

Without reentry heating, I can just dip low enough into Eve atmosphere to aerobreak there, or try the same with a Kerbin intercept. But I can't, because the ship doesn't have heat shields.

[Geschosskopf]

8 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

That’s why you can turn some of them off.

Some.  Can you go back to the old "soup-o-sphere" if that was your thing?  No.  I doubt you'll be able to turn off axial tilt, either. 

And axial tilt sounds to be yet another compromised "realism" feature.  The devs say they're not going to put much of it in the original system, which is the main place it would really matter (especially on Kerbin).  So, there likely won't be enough to satisfy those who wanted it, but just enough to bother those who didn't want it at all.  That's really a poor design decision---annoy ALL your customers.  But that's what always happens when "realism" gets put into the stock game.  Which is why it's best to leave such things completely up to the players.

 

8 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

Oh, and you used to play with Deadly Reentry, but don’t like stock KSP having reentry heating? Amazing.

Pay attention.  What I object to making reentry heating a stock feature. 

[nikokespprfan]

1 hour ago, Geschosskopf said:

I honestly can't think of anything to add, at least at this point in the game's evolution.  Mission complexity is what you make it.  Just as rocket construction is like Lego, so is planning missions.  The game allows you to do pretty much anything you want in pretty much any manner and level of complexity you want  if the game doesn't have something you want to have in your mission, you can either use your imagination and role-play it, or you can get a mod for it.

I asked for any feature, not necessarily new features. Features already in the game where fine too. But that is me rumbling about things. Moving on.

1 hour ago, Geschosskopf said:

But guess what?  We now have stock versions of FAR, DRE, and RT.  Which don't make anybody happy.  Those who didn't want these things at all are stuck with them (some are optional, others aren't).  And those who wanted these things to be stock don't like the stock implementation, so all these things still exist as mods.  And that's what is always going to be the case for any "realism" feature added to the game.  The devs will have to compromise it, trying to appease the "realism"-mongers without alienating (too much) those who don't want these things, and still keeping the game accessible to kids  So it would be better all around, IMHO, to not add these features to the game.

understandable points made in the entire post. My experience is actually that the implementation of these added features is a quite nice balance between leaving stuff out and going one station too far on thye complexity train. Then again, my view on KSP is in between "making ships and fly them places" and "lets fail and learn from it". It has to be simplyfied, and I find it tends to be without getting too complex, and without losing the essence, but that is just my taste.

40 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

Oh, and you used to play with Deadly Reentry, but don’t like stock KSP having reentry heating? Amazing.

Ahem, read his post. his post clearly states how this can both be true:

1 hour ago, Geschosskopf said:

But I realized that's just me. 

There you have it. So may I please ask you to heed the following:

1 hour ago, Geschosskopf said:

Thanks for being civil.  I'll try to do the same.

 

Edited August 26, 2019 by nikokespprfan

[DunaManiac]

I think we are getting a little off topic here. Honestly, if this is going to devolve into thread about realism features, just create another thread.

[ModZero]

> NIHIL INIQVIVS QVAM ÆQVITATEM NIMIS INTENDERE

"Nothing is more unfair than to stretch equity too far."

Well that explains a lot. Blocked

[chaos_forge]

To go back to the topic of axial tilt . . .

I'm 99% sure Kerbin will have zero axial tilt, for the same reason that the orbits of Kerbin and the Mun both have 0 eccentricity and 0 inclination. As the starter planet, Kerbin is supposed to be especially easy to go from/get to. In fact, I would be surprised if the Mun doesn't also have 0 axial tilt.

So new players probably won't encounter axial tilt until they go interplanetary, at which case the should be more than capable of handling it. And I imagine we won't encounter really crazy amounts of axial tilt until we go interstellar.

Edited August 26, 2019 by chaos_forge
accidentally double-posted

[ModZero]

I "agree," I actually expect axial tilt to be either rare or quite limited in the "old" system, but also the new system to be way off the Kerbol's ecliptic.

[Geschosskopf]

42 minutes ago, chaos_forge said:

I would be surprised if the Mun doesn't also have 0 axial tilt.

Does the term "axial tilt" even have meaning for a tide-locked body?  How you could tell if had it or not?

 

42 minutes ago, chaos_forge said:

So new players probably won't encounter axial tilt until they go interplanetary, at which case the should be more than capable of handling it. And I imagine we won't encounter really crazy amounts of axial tilt until we go interstellar.

Not to mention the other stars' ecliptic planes don't have to be parallel with Kerbol's.

[Superfluous J]

6 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

But guess what?  We now have stock versions of FAR, DRE, and RT.  Which don't make anybody happy.  Those who didn't want these things at all are stuck with them (some are optional, others aren't).  And those who wanted these things to be stock don't like the stock implementation, so all these things still exist as mods.  And that's what is always going to be the case for any "realism" feature added to the game.

I never preferred FAR, DRE, RT, Kethane, IR... But I play with and enjoy all of their stock versions and think the game is better for their being added.

53 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

Does the term "axial tilt" even have meaning for a tide-locked body?  How you could tell if had it or not?

Yes. In the game right now, if Ike's orbit was tilted both it and Duna would need axial tilt to stay properly tidally locked.

[Daniel Prates]

On 8/25/2019 at 12:49 PM, 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.

That is a good point. Its like n-body phisics: more realistic and good for the hard-core gamers, but probably way too much for most everyone else.

However.... maybe the more basic bodies could stay the same - kerbin and the mun, certainly - while other more middle/late game destinations like eloo could gain a tilt. Minmus is another good candidate too, perhaps.

Edited August 27, 2019 by Daniel Prates

[Geschosskopf]

32 minutes ago, Daniel Prates said:

However.... maybe the more basic bodies couos stay the same - kerbin and the mun, certainly - while other more middle/late game destinations like eloo could gain a tilt. Minmus is another good candidate too, perhaps.

It wouldn't make a noticeable difference at Minmus, which is already in an inclined orbit relative to Kerbin.  What axial tilt does is effectively put everything into an inclined orbit relative to the planet you're on, even if they actually have a common orbital plane like Kerbin and Mun.  So if Minmus was a bit off-kilter, it really wouldn't change things.  Nor would it make much, if any, difference at any other planet, all of which are more or less inclined anyway.  The only real exception would be if they carried it to extremes and put Jool about 90^ over on its side like Uranus (or Urlum with OPM Tilt) taking all its moons with it. 

Apart from that, however, the only place where having axial tilt would really makes a difference is Kerbin.  Then the standard due-east launch from the equator into equatorial orbit and thence straight off to Mun with no plane changes would no longer work.  Which would definitely make an early, low-tech Mun flyby (before unlocking patched conics) rather more of a challenge.  So why go to the trouble of having axial tilt at all if not to put it there, in sufficient quantity to force players to deal with it?

[Gydra54]

15 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

Apart from that, however, the only place where having axial tilt would really makes a difference is Kerbin.  Then the standard due-east launch from the equator into equatorial orbit and thence straight off to Mun with no plane changes would no longer work.  Which would definitely make an early, low-tech Mun flyby (before unlocking patched conics) rather more of a challenge.  So why go to the trouble of having axial tilt at all if not to put it there, in sufficient quantity to force players to deal with it?

We shouldn't forget that we can build colonies on other planets along with launch sites. This means you can get axial tilt as a challenge in terms of affecting launches without having to change Kerbin's tilt.

[Daniel Prates]

@Geschosskopf I think axial tilt may potentially be relevant from anywhere and to anywhere, if it exists and the degree is significant enough. Even for bodies that are not already in the same plane. May affect for instance the launch window, making a planar maneuver (which you would have to do anyway) more or less of a deal. It all depends on your flightplan I suppose.

What I think would be apropriate is a scaling degree of difficulty as the career progresses. So for instance kerbin+mun could stay as it is, whereas Duna could gain a slight tilt of 3, maybe 5 degrees. You know, enough to make your return flights to kerbin a little more challenging....

Edit: ... because, you know, if you leave from the surface and to orbit, and there is no tilt, you can just point 90 degrees and climb, starting anytime. Time of departure can be now, 15 mins from now, 2 hours from now.... But if you want to leave a body with tilt and want your end orbit to be as close to a given target plane as possible, there is a window where that is less costly. Outside of that window, and you end up in an orbit necessarily demanding some normal/antinormal correction. So my point is, yeah. That is a welcome chalenge. But perhaps not right away on your first flights!

 

Edited August 27, 2019 by Daniel Prates

[GDJ]

I want 23.5º of axial tilt on Kerbin!!


Make the game hard. Make me cry. I dare you. 

;)

[Geschosskopf]

54 minutes ago, Gydra54 said:

We shouldn't forget that we can build colonies on other planets along with launch sites. This means you can get axial tilt as a challenge in terms of affecting launches without having to change Kerbin's tilt.

True.  But in the Kerbol system, the planet the base is on is already inclined somewhat relative to Kerbin, or perhaps the other moons around Jool, so that's a problem you already have to deal with.  So again, my money's on Kerbin having some tilt, or it really isn't worth implementing.

 

29 minutes ago, Daniel Prates said:

But if you want to leave a body with tilt and want your end orbit to be as close to a given plane as possible, there is a window where that is less costly. Outside of that window, and you end up in an orbit necessarily demanding some normal/antinormal correction. So my point is, yeah. That is a welcome chalenge. Bur perhaps not right away on your first flights!

This is why I hope the game provides instrumentation to deal with this.

 

3 minutes ago, GDJ said:

Make me cry. I dare you.  

Challenge accepted   Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but definitely someday, I shall make you cry.  You'll be looking over your shoulder the rest of your life

 

[GDJ]

1 hour ago, Geschosskopf said:

Challenge accepted   Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but definitely someday, I shall make you cry.  You'll be looking over your shoulder the rest of your life

I'm married with 3 daughters. Bring it on!

[nsgallup]

Maybe they can make Eve rotate retrograde like Venus

[magnemoe]

10 hours ago, chaos_forge said:

To go back to the topic of axial tilt . . .

I'm 99% sure Kerbin will have zero axial tilt, for the same reason that the orbits of Kerbin and the Mun both have 0 eccentricity and 0 inclination. As the starter planet, Kerbin is supposed to be especially easy to go from/get to. In fact, I would be surprised if the Mun doesn't also have 0 axial tilt.

So new players probably won't encounter axial tilt until they go interplanetary, at which case the should be more than capable of handling it. And I imagine we won't encounter really crazy amounts of axial tilt until we go interstellar.

Yes, Kerbin will obviously not have any, Gilly can well have some tilt, perhaps dress  
In other systems, a Neptune tilted planet could be cool but probably a bit annoying kind of Moho is annoying with the very long year.