KSP2 will have axial tilt!

[ThatGuyWithALongUsername]

36 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Radiation still kill cancer cells, in short its good for you up to neutron bomb levels.

Relevant-ish XKCD: https://m.xkcd.com/1217/

[Superfluous J]

14 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

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?  

In the end, I slowed down with engines in space until I was going under 1km/s then entered without a heatshield. When the flames started I kicked the engines on again until they were out of fuel and then I dropped the slow-down stage. The rest was the lander, which survived the rest of the still-pretty-harrowing atmospheric entry with the aforementioned solar panel losses, and then landed with parachutes.

Perfecting this took multiple test runs, and this is after I gave up on trying to slow down using just the atmosphere and heat shields because they never worked well enough. The heat shield was fine, but the rest of the ship would invariable wander into the airstream and some critical part or other would explode.

I even tried enclosing the entire ship in a huge ball of inflatable heat shields. That had fairly comical - but ultimately unsuccessful - results.

[Francois424]

5 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

In the end, I slowed down with engines in space until I was going under 1km/s then entered without a heatshield. When the flames started I kicked the engines on again until they were out of fuel and then I dropped the slow-down stage. The rest was the lander, which survived the rest of the still-pretty-harrowing atmospheric entry with the aforementioned solar panel losses, and then landed with parachutes.

Perfecting this took multiple test runs, and this is after I gave up on trying to slow down using just the atmosphere and heat shields because they never worked well enough. The heat shield was fine, but the rest of the ship would invariable wander into the airstream and some critical part or other would explode.

I even tried enclosing the entire ship in a huge ball of inflatable heat shields. That had fairly comical - but ultimately unsuccessful - results.

Yeah my conclusions where the same.
Instead of dragging useless heatshields, just bring 4 cylinders of fuel only for decelerating.

The inflatable heat shield isn't bad, but even that is not perfect.  Most ppl need to put one on top and one down the bottom to make them work.

[ModZero]

36 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

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.

That doesn't change the fact that facsimiles of real conditions are, for plenty of people, inherently fun. You might not be one of those people. The fact that other people was a shock to me as well, but I got over it by the time I was 9.

36 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

Add some solar panels and/or RTGs in the design phase, and never worry about EC again during the mission. 

...you've never ended up with solar panels that weren't oriented properly to the sun? I mean yes, it's easy to optimize away the fun of many of the systems in KSP, and yeah, not every system is worth the effort, but we're talking about axial tilt here, not modeling the fluid dynamics of the propellant tanks.

36 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

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?  

...that's starting to sound like quite a lot, actually. And it adds reentry heating, which is highly evocative of space flight. People don't know a lot about space, but they know you need a rocket, getting back means you get hot (even if they're often confused as to why exactly is that happening) and you might run out of oxygen. It's not much of a space game if you remove too much of that, I mean even space operas sometimes remember (sometimes quite suddenly) that there's vacuum inside and/or reentry is hot. None of this is necessary, a "game" I'm toying with (to learn Rust and ECS mostly) doesn't have even have graphics (how's that for an expensive thing that "doesn't affect gameplay"), but we generally want it.

Also using the term "gameplay" seriously should get people instantly banned from the Internet, don't @ me.

Edited August 25, 2019 by ModZero

[jpinard]

7 hours ago, pschlik said:

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.'

huh?  You're kidding right?  I mean, axial tilt doesn't matter.  The only thing that changes with axial tilt is the amount of sunlight, temp, and day/night lengths based on where the planet is in its orbital cycle.

[Gydra54]

3 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

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.

...

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.

I really fundamentally can't understand your position. Do you oppose fuel resources? After all, a competent player would just ensure they have enough DeltaV to go wherever they want. Fuel wastes computational power, slows the game and inflates part count with fuel tanks. Why even have an atmosphere at all? What a waste of computing resources. Actually, what is even the point of the game? Why not just have a big red button that says "do mission" that gives you a nice black screen with comic sans saying "you win"?

[pschlik]

2 hours ago, jpinard said:

huh?  You're kidding right?  I mean, axial tilt doesn't matter.  The only thing that changes with axial tilt is the amount of sunlight, temp, and day/night lengths based on where the planet is in its orbital cycle.

Oh yes it does matter. To get complete coverage of a planet with a survey, you need to be in a polar orbit. And axial tilt means the poles are off the vertical. Thus, with axial tilt, a polar orbit and vertical orbit are two completely different things.

[Gydra54]

6 minutes ago, pschlik said:

Oh yes it does matter. To get complete coverage of a planet with a survey, you need to be in a polar orbit. And axial tilt means the poles are off the vertical. Thus, with axial tilt, a polar orbit and vertical orbit are two completely different things.

Well, hopefully they would provide you with information about the degree of axial tilt and relative inclination to the equator. That would solve that problem.

[Kerbinchaser]

SEASONS???!!!
Oh yes, this sounds amazing!

[jpinard]

1 hour ago, pschlik said:

Oh yes it does matter. To get complete coverage of a planet with a survey, you need to be in a polar orbit. And axial tilt means the poles are off the vertical. Thus, with axial tilt, a polar orbit and vertical orbit are two completely different things.

Oh I see what you're saying.  To achieve the easiest scan coverage with a single satellite.  I thought you were talking about scanning to pick a place to land and I was like, "who cares what temp or how bright it is?"  LOL.

[Geschosskopf]

3 hours ago, ModZero said:

That doesn't change the fact that facsimiles of real conditions are, for plenty of people, inherently fun. You might not be one of those people. The fact that other people was a shock to me as well, but I got over it by the time I was 9.

Well, there's Orbiter for that.  Go live out your real-ish fantasies there.  Don't force your preferences on everybody else who would rather do things differently.  

Seriously, the main thing I object to is folks thinking THEIR way of playing is THE ONE TRUE GOD, and demanding the devs force that down everybody else's throats.  That's so intolerantly narcissistic.

 

3 hours ago, ModZero said:

...that's starting to sound like quite a lot, actually.

If so, then you haven't been paying attention.  So I shall continue...

 

3 hours ago, ModZero said:

And it adds reentry heating, which is highly evocative of space flight.

But to what point?  Problems are only problems if there's no relief in sight.  But if the game provides the antidote, then it's not really a problem.  And thus a waste of computation.

Re-entry heating is only a problem if the player makes a serious mistake in either design or execution.  Do neither and the whole system is all just a waste of computational resources.  Sure, you can say KSP is all about "learning by failure", but for anybody who really cares, such mistakes only happen once.  Likely on some totally unrelated thing, but that one mistake teaches them to take EVERY variable into account forevermore thereafter. 

So basically, THE MOST that any so-called "realism" feature can do is punish those who'd rather just have fun and not be bothered and those who,  for whatever reason, lack the intellectual capacity to foresee such problems and get kicked in the face by them repeatedly.

I, personally, don't like to kick such people.  Nor do I like to spoil the fun of those who'd rather not be bothered.  If I wan't some "realism" feature in my own game, then I can add a mod or,  perhaps, a difficulty setting for it.   And by doing so, I leave everybody else to do what they want, without trying to force the way I play my games on them.

I see no evidence that you can claim as clean a conscience.

 

39 minutes ago, Gydra54 said:

I really fundamentally can't understand your position. 

Then you've never thought it through.  Try again.

[HebaruSan]

10 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

Problems are only problems if there's no relief in sight.

So let me get this straight. You would be in favor of re-entry heating, if it made it completely impossible and unsafe to return from orbit? If you were guaranteed to burn up no matter what you did, then that would be acceptable gameplay in your book?

[ModZero]

5 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

Well, there's Orbiter for that.  Go live out your real-ish fantasies there.  Don't force your preferences on everybody else who would rather do things differently.  

...irony is strong with that one.

5 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

Seriously, the main thing I object to is folks thinking THEIR way of playing is THE ONE TRUE GOD

...quite extremely strong. Godly, one would say.

13 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

So I shall continue...

...but why?

And it escalates. Seriously, you're currently getting really upset that some people enjoy something, and a thing might not be for you. You know, I have a sandwich, and it's also not for you.

7 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

So basically, THE MOST that any so-called "realism" feature can do is punish those who'd rather just have fun and not be bothered and those who,  for whatever reason, lack the intellectual capacity to foresee such problems and get kicked in the face by them repeatedly.

That is... dismissive, patronising, and incredibly offensive. You seem to be trying to refer to accessibility features in games, which are good, but you don't actually care about what & why of such features, so you end up like so many people using social justice language without care for its actual content: saying things like "lack the intellectual capacity." Stay in your lane and don't pretend this isn't about you. Because you might just be talking over the people you just pretended to care about.

16 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

Then you've never thought it through.  Try again.

...also, pretending that you care about disability and then insulting other people's intellectual ability is really extremely ironic.

[Gydra54]

16 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

Then you've never thought it through.  Try again.

It's hard to think through something that clearly wasn't thought out well in the first place...

[draqsko]

12 hours 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.

If they keep KSC at near 0 latitude, you won't have any issues launching into the inclination you want without time warp, at least no more than exists already in stock KSP 1. The issues with launching into an inclination come from launching from a higher latitude which limits what inclinations you can reach without either a dog-leg maneuver on ascent or an inclination change after orbit. If you are near the equator, you can launch into any inclination you want, if you were at the real KSC's latitude, you can't launch below 28 degrees inclination without fancy maneuvering.

Edited August 26, 2019 by draqsko
spelling

[Tw1]

 Kerbin is the beginning planet so for convenience, keeping it close to zero makes sense.
I recall a post from years previous which suggested something like Kerbin could have the same axial tilt as Minmus, but Minmus sit in the plane of the solar system. But IDK.
I'm a fan of keeping the familiar system close to as is. That set up works well for introducing you to spaceflight.

If you land anywhere on another planet other than the equator, you already have to think about incination, so I don't think it's going to be a bother, but with new planets, they could do some pretty exotic things. A targeted landing on a planet with a strange rotation would be quite a challenge. 

 

Edited August 26, 2019 by Tw1

[OHara]

KSP already allows the kind of axial tilt that gives you seasons.  The entrance of the Mohole, for example, is in darkness over the Moho winter.  But, all the planets' rotation axes are parallel; all the equators are aligned to the galactic plane in the skybox, which was helpful for orientation when I was a new player.   With the constraint to have all the rotation axes parallel, the axial tilt of planets can only vary due to their orbits around the Sun being tilted, their inclinations, so none tilts more than a few degrees.

The Real Solar System mod tilts the solar system, so that all planets have axial tilt near 23°.  Venus is given a negative rotation rate to effect its near-180° axial tilt. 

I would hope that in KSP2 the nav-ball and default camera orientation, when inside a planet's SOI, orients to the poles of that body, so that polar orbit looks vertical on the nav-ball and camera.  I also hope that axial tilt is used sparingly in KSP2.

1 hour ago, Tw1 said:

I recall a post from years previous

I think you might be remembering this one, with the nice picture by guigui30000. 

There are some good thoughts there about how to keep the initial game-play simple: the first launch site on Kerbin's equator,  Mun's orbit in Kerbins' equatorial plane, etc.

[Tw1]

On 6/1/2014 at 12:20 AM, guigui30000 said:

I think axial tilt would be great !

And there would be no issues for beginners. As my english is poor, here is an amazing drawing for everybody.

This is the one. Let's bring the diagram here to discuss.  I don't think it would be much harder, like this.

I do hope the new devs have spend some time picking the ideas from discussions past. There's a lot out there - a wide range of people will come up with far more ideas than just a few.

[Milkywegian]

9 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

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.

Then I say remove orbital mechanics and atmosphere from the game, no bother at all, you would just need a 3 part craft and no more useless part calculations

[Superfluous J]

3 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

Well, there's Orbiter for that.  Go live out your real-ish fantasies there.

And for you there's Elite Dangerous. Quite a good game and even has real sized solar systems. If that's too much, try No Man's Sky it's actually quite good these days.

[Milkywegian]

21 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

And for you there's Elite Dangerous. Quite a good game and even has real sized solar systems. If that's too much, try No Man's Sky it's actually quite good these days.

Well in Elite Dangerous spaceships require fuel, so......

[nikokespprfan]

@Geschosskopf

I'm trying to understand your opinion in good faith. As to do this, I am going to make a few guesses. please don't get mad at me for guessing wrong.

 

What would you consider a gameplay-feature that adds complexity to your mission, that actually adds valueable gameplay. Say: the fact that in KSP 1, you have to launch a spacecraft from  the KSC? After all, this means you have to radically redesign your ship in order to even get it to orbit. That is not a minor feature, it is a serious hindrance, a serious problem, one you can overcome, but not with great ease, and definitely not with just slapping on new parts. (although one can always argue that you just slap on more boosters, but hey, you get what I mean,) And of course there could be the nuance here that this doesn't mean it is vital, as being able to earn offworld launch sites is something to shoot for, something to earn, which might or might not add gameplay on it's own. Vitality is not what I'm arguing, just whether or not this is a feature that would qualify as useful in your book.

if yes, I suppose that you don't like the trend of KSP becoming increasingly more complex via small-ish features, but that none of these features are actually gamechanging enough to find it interesting to spend time to deal with them over and over.

if no, I suppose you come to the game to fly around self-build ships in a cool solar system without being told that reality is more complicated and your frist design doesn't work. Like an annoying brother/sister not being able to suspend disbelief in a movie that you are enjoying, you don't want to be told that this little *eyeroll* complication would make this not function in real life. Either this, or your principle is to advocate for KSP being such a game for others.

if none of the above, what would be a feature you think adds valuable gameplay.

 

16 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

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.

oh, sorry. you already explained it my bad.

 

"It's build rockets and go places." That is the core of the situation, then, since those damn "realism guys" see KSP in a different light: namely "lets fail our way to learning how to build something that actually will do the epic space stuff that I want it to do."

Edited August 26, 2019 by nikokespprfan

[magnemoe]

3 hours ago, Tw1 said:

This is the one. Let's bring the diagram here to discuss.  I don't think it would be much harder, like this.

I do hope the new devs have spend some time picking the ideas from discussions past. There's a lot out there - a wide range of people will come up with far more ideas than just a few.

Thanks, I thought it would affect landings but it would just affect transfers between planets. 

[Geschosskopf]

2 hours ago, nikokespprfan said:

What would you consider a gameplay-feature that adds complexity to your mission, that actually adds valueable gameplay.

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

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 firmly believe that being (nearly) "all things to all people" is what makes KSP so popular and so long-lasting.  Everybody can find something fun to do in it and, as their skills improve and tastes change over time, they can add complexity as they see fit.  But this should always be their own choice, at the time of their choosing.  Thus, I always argue strongly for keeping the game as flexible as possible, and against universally imposing things that reduce players' freedom of choice and action.  I see such things as doing nothing but shrinking the community, by driving some existing members away and discouraging some new folks from starting.  Pretty much every "realism" feature falls into this category.

I came to KSP from decades in Orbiter.  As such, for nearly all my KSP career, I have done hideously complex missions using lots of realism mods.  FAR, DRE, RT, life support, pretty much everything except RSS (seen enough of that in Orbiter).  But I realized that's just me.  Others don't like such things.  So I have never advocated making any of these things stock---quite the opposite (ESPECIALLY no stock life support).  I don't want to force my views on others.

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.

That's my whole point.  Adding "realism" features ultimately hurts the game by limiting the ways you can play it, and thus the number of people it appeals to.  And advocating for this or that "realism" feature is forcing your own opinion on others, largely out of egotism.  It appears to irk some folks that others, in the privacy of their own single-player games, do things differently, so they want to rain on their parade.  Just look at some of the responses I've drawn here.  For example, trying to justify the addition of reentry heating by claiming that before, aerocapturing was overpowered.  I have to ask, to whom was it overpowered?  Obviously not the person who said this, or he'd have used DRE or just avoided touching Jool's air at all.  And if it didn't affect him, what business was it of his if others exploited the lack of heat if that's what they thought was fun?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that we have to remember that KSP is a game which, like poker, can be played in a multitude of ways.  We need to keep it that way, and remember that others like to do things differently.  As long as what they do has no effect on us, then we should leave them to it.

[sh1pman]

25 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

Adding "realism" features ultimately hurts the game by limiting the ways you can play it

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

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