Training missions need updating

[Beamup]

I played a decent amount of KSP some years ago (got to Duna and back but not much more), and recently came back to it to see what's new.  I wasn't confident in my memory of details, so I went through the training again and tried to replicate those activities in career.  In short, that doesn't work.  From a bit of poking around at changelogs and Google, it seems that the main (but in all probability not only) culprit is most likely that the Mk1 is more aerodynamic now... but that physics update is not reflected in the training missions.  Because of this, a newbie who does the training missions and then does the exact same thing in career/sandbox will fail utterly, specifically in the context of the initial atmospheric hopper (i.e. first flight).  Instead of 7-10km altitude in the training (similar to my recollection from earlier), the basic hopper from the training - with full power/fuel on the Flea as in said training since the player can't be reasonably assumed to know more at this point - goes to ~25km, accordingly descends much more rapidly, and a Mk16 chute on either default or training settings will either shred before opening fully, or not deploy at all, no matter when it is staged.  Unless you include a couple of goo canisters (the extra drag reverts the current Flea+Mk1+Goo2 to approximately the same aerodynamics as the old Flea+Mk1+Goo2 AFAICT - probably reflecting that the aerodynamics of that configuration were much more dependent on the canisters than I previously appreciated), modify the full-open altitude on the Mk16 to be MUCH higher (in which case the flight just gets tedious as Jeb slowly floats down), or are savvy enough to use SAS to ensure that you fall nozzle-first instead of tip-first (counterintuitive to a newbie, has to be activated before the problem becomes apparent, AND is entirely contrary to the training), Jeb is one dead Kerbonaut.

When physics changes are made in the game, the training has to be updated into consistency with those changes.  It's apparently been long enough since the training was resynced with the main game that it's now massively inaccurate relative to the current physics.  An update is accordingly absolutely called for.  Given that the Flea's essentially only role is (at most) that one first lower-atmosphere flight, rebalancing its capabilities to bring the updated hopper in line with the old one would work with respect to this particular mission.  Other training missions are probably less susceptible to such changes (maneuvers in vacuum being much more objectively calculable from first principles and hence less subject to changes in assumptions), but when it's the VERY FIRST flight a newbie can be expected to attempt, it's a big deal.  And said other missions really ought to be checked and updated too, in order to streamline the experience of new players.

Not necessarily something that's going to be talked about a lot here - this audience is mostly veterans who, if they make a hopper at all, may be reasonably expected to squeeze every drop of potential science from it and hence will do OK thanks to the extra drag of the canisters.  And certainly don't customarily rerun the training at each update.  But for anyone who's entirely new to KSP, it's quite likely to be a dealbreaker to such an extent that they probably won't bother to comment on it - just concluding KSP to be horribly broken and reviewing it accordingly.  The mix of previous experience and recent newbieness lets me both spot the discrepancy AND recognize the implications.  So unless Squad doesn't intend to sell a new copy ever again, attention to this aspect is called for.

Edit: I did look pretty hard for prior comments along these lines, and found none which weren't essentially dismissed as clueless newbies.  Hoping that this will be counted as more convincing.

 

Edited December 22, 2019 by Beamup

[Gargamel]

Like the launcher, the training missions have been woefully neglected for many years. 

[OHara]

You make a good point.  

The physics simulation hasn't changed very much in the history of KSP 1, although pointy craft did become more slippery in version 1.2, three years ago.  Still, the training missions do not introduce players to the real game, and this problem gradually gets worse.

The forum is good for finding out why the game doesn't work like the tutorials (thread) and the real tutorial for KSP is Scott Manley's videos, neither of which helps potential KSP players without fast internet.

The only hope I see is for us users to start posting improved Training Scenarios, using the methods Missingno200 discovered (thread).  I have noticed that Squad has incorporated solutions/bugfixes into KSP after users and modders have demonstrated them, so it can only help.

 

[klgraham1013]

21 hours ago, Gargamel said:

Like the launcher, the training missions have been woefully neglected for many years. 

The launcher is a travesty.  Let's leave the first thing most people may see broken since inception.