FTL travel/special relativity

[Guest]

6 hours ago, Master39 said:

as already is with the comm network in KSP

Disabling CommNet does damage the game. It trivialises probes and makes a significant swathe of the tech tree cosmetic only. The fact that it's optional also makes it harder to build upon it -- to pick a trivial example, "deploy a relay constellation" contracts: you'd have to first check if CommNet is enabled, and you probably wouldn't even bother because the contract would be wasted on players who don't have it enabled. CommNet is a perfect example of a feature set that should not be optional.

The same is true of LS: for it to be worthwhile at all, it needs to be integrated into the strategic/abstract/economic layer of the game. That means it won't be possible to silo it off as a separate, optional system -- it would break large swathes of the strategic layer the same way switching off CommNet breaks swathes of the tech tree. 

Make it for everybody, integrate it into core gameplay, do it well, or don't do it at all. Making it optional is the worst option.

[steve_v]

24 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

...it would break large swathes of the strategic layer the same way switching off CommNet breaks swathes of the tech tree.

Which it doesn't, because relay antennas were simply added to existing nodes alongside existing parts, and non-relay antennas are also used to transmit science. It turns the new antenna parts into cosmetic variations on the old ones, that's it.

I'm not arguing that the same would be the case for a hypothetical life-support system in KSP2 (I'd like to see more built on it than was on commnet), but claiming that disabling commnet breaks the tech tree is patently untrue.

 

24 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

The same is true of LS: for it to be worthwhile at all, it needs to be integrated into the strategic/abstract/economic layer of the game.

While this is a nice idea, I don't think we know enough about the "strategic/abstract/economic" aspect of KSP2 at this point to make much comment on how deeply life support could or should be integrated into it.

I seem to recall an existing thread on life support in KSP2, any particular reason you've decided to flog that horse over here as well?

Edited February 26, 2020 by steve_v

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, steve_v said:

Which it doesn't, because relay antennas were simply added to existing nodes alongside existing parts, and non-relay antennas are also used to transmit science. It turns the new antenna parts into cosmetic variations on the old ones, that's it.

It makes a significant number of parts in the tech tree redundant, it makes significant distinguishing features on other parts redundant (probe control points), it disables significant behaviours on yet other parts (probe cores). That counts as "breaking large swathes of the tech tree" in my book.

11 minutes ago, steve_v said:

I seem to recall an existing thread on life support in KSP2, any particular reason you've decided to flog that horse over here as well?

For the same reason you're discussing CommNet on a thread that's ostensibly about FTL travel and special relativity, I expect. Discussions drift. If the mods decide to split threads as a consequence, that's up to them.

[steve_v]

24 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

It makes a significant number of parts in the tech tree redundant

Four parts. Out of 300 or so.
 

24 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

it makes significant distinguishing features on other parts redundant (probe control points)

Recent and relatively minor additions to another four parts.
If someone doesn't want commnet, it follows that they have no use for this feature either.

 

24 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

it disables significant behaviours on yet other parts (probe cores).

Disabling that behaviour being the primary purpose of the option, irrelevant as far as collateral damage goes.

Should commnet have been mandatory? Possibly, but that was Squad's call, not mine or yours.
Did making it optional upset anyone but you? I heard no cries from the community to remove the option at the time, so I'm going with no.

 

24 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

For the same reason you're discussing CommNet on a thread that's ostensibly about FTL travel and special relativity, I expect.

Which would be replying to you, right? Guess I'd better stop doing that then.

Edited February 26, 2020 by steve_v

[Guest]

48 minutes ago, steve_v said:

Did making it optional upset anyone but you? I heard no cries from the community to remove the option at the time, so I'm going with no.

That's because people do not understand the indirect impact that optional features like this have. People complain continuously that the game is flaky. The also complain continuously that contracts are dumb and career mode is sparse.

What most people don't realise is that the fact that large swathes of the game are optional make it more difficult to address either of these concerns. It's harder to test and debug, therefore it's flakier. It's harder to build career gameplay if you need to continuously check which systems are enabled -- and consequently you avoid creating career gameplay that requires options to be switched on, unless they're super simple (high-G adventures f.ex.).

Newbies also complain repeatedly about things that are easily addressed with optional features (such as autostrut in Advanced Tweakables). 

I.e. as far as I'm concerned the community is complaining about this -- they're just not complaining about the characteristic itself, but its indirect consequences.

Look: I understand why all this stuff is optional. SQUAD decided that they do not want to break people's craft designs or careers if it can be avoided. Introducing atmospheric heating broke just about all return modules except through blind luck. Introducing CommNet broke every career based on probes. Maybe that was the right call to make, as it minimised short-term rage and thereby helped grow the player community. (I don't think so because mods make many players stick with older versions anyway; back-compatibility breaking changes would have worked the same way with the stock game.)

However, if you're only considering the impact on the game itself, all these options are unambiguously bad. More importantly: if KSP2 retains the same set of options despite starting from a clean slate out of deference for the original, then it will be worse for it.

Edit: you're right @steve_v, this is off-topic for this thread, so I made a new one: 

 

Edited February 26, 2020 by Guest

[steve_v]

1 minute ago, Brikoleur said:

People complain continuously that the game is flaky.

Perhaps they do. I for one spend 99.9% of my complaining quota on game engine problems and regressions in core systems, none of which are related to optional features in any way so far as I can see.
I certainly haven't heard any complaining about commnet issues, which is apparently the poster-child for misguidedly optional features.

 

3 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

The also complain continuously that contracts are dumb and career mode is sparse.

Career mode is a mess because of it's design. It could have a couple of new contract categories if certain features were always-on, but that wouldn't change the dead-end sidequest-system or the fact that career mode was introduced as a beta feature and never reevaluated.

 

11 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

large swathes of the game are optional make it more difficult to address either of these concerns.

Good god man, the only major features that are optional are commnet and g-force/pressure damage. Everything else is cosmetic, changing variables, or hiding buttons.
Where you are getting "large swathes of the game" I don't know.

 

21 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

autostrut in Advanced Tweakables

I'll give you that one, I never understood why we need an option to hide those.
Then again I've never actually used autostruts, because KJR is better.

IMO the mistake here was making wet-noodles in the first place, not burying the fix in an obscure settings page.
 

27 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

Introducing CommNet broke every career based on probes. Maybe that was the right call to make, as it minimised short-term rage and thereby helped grow the player community.

A large part of the potential customer base for KSP2 will come from KSP1 players, and we're quite likely to have similar rage problems IMO.

Whether to make a feature optional needs to evaluated on a case-by-case basis, as was done with KSP1.
If the developers foresee building additional systems on top of a feature, by all means make it a compulsory one. If it's something that is likely to turn new customers and old stubborn KSP1 players off the product, they'll almost certainly go the other way.
Because technical considerations are never the whole picture.

 

 

[Bej Kerman]

Apparently torch ships (ships that can sustain acceleration indefinitely) will be possible in KSP 2. I don't think the top speed will be half c.

[sturmhauke]

It's not that they can accelerate literally indefinitely, they still use fuel. It's that the fuel can be literally any kind of matter, and they completely convert it to energy to propel the ship. The exhaust is basically hard radiation.

[DStaal]

2 hours ago, sturmhauke said:

It's not that they can accelerate literally indefinitely, they still use fuel. It's that the fuel can be literally any kind of matter, and they completely convert it to energy to propel the ship. The exhaust is basically hard radiation.

All we know is that they are 'torch ships'.  Typically that's a broad term that can cover pretty much any engine/ship combination which can have a sufficiently high TWR and ISP combo.

Really, it says virtually nothing about the drives.  We can't say anything with any certainty about them until we get some more information.

[Incarnation of Chaos]

6 hours ago, DStaal said:

All we know is that they are 'torch ships'.  Typically that's a broad term that can cover pretty much any engine/ship combination which can have a sufficiently high TWR and ISP combo.

Really, it says virtually nothing about the drives.  We can't say anything with any certainty about them until we get some more information.

This right here

Torchships can still come under 10% C; Project Orion is technically a "Torchship".

[Guest]

18 hours ago, sturmhauke said:

It's not that they can accelerate literally indefinitely, they still use fuel. It's that the fuel can be literally any kind of matter, and they completely convert it to energy to propel the ship. The exhaust is basically hard radiation.

That's not the definition of "torchship" as far as I know. I always thought it meant a spaceship with an engine that's burning for most of the transfer, i.e. extremely high Isp and usually very low thrust.

[Incarnation of Chaos]

11 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

That's not the definition of "torchship" as far as I know. I always thought it meant a spaceship with an engine that's burning for most of the transfer, i.e. extremely high Isp and usually very low thrust.

Torchships are anything with High Specific Impulse and Thrust, so anything that's efficient and doesn't take 20 minutes to perform a manuever. This means everything from Project Orion to ICF fusion drives and Antimatter fits the definition

[DStaal]

For reference to the discussion, here's what I would consider the definitive explanation of a torchship:

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/torchships.php

[Dirkidirk]

4 minutes ago, DStaal said:

For reference to the discussion, here's what I would consider the definitive explanation of a torchship:

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/torchships.php

it also shows a few designs that could attain a high percentage of the speed of light that could also be in ksp2.

[sturmhauke]

That site is what I was looking at before. It mentions Heinlein as the first to coin the term, and describes a torch drive as what I said. The site gets more into the math and physics of what a torch drive might actually look like, but as far as I can see they all involve some sort of nuclear reaction.

[DStaal]

22 minutes ago, sturmhauke said:

That site is what I was looking at before. It mentions Heinlein as the first to coin the term, and describes a torch drive as what I said. The site gets more into the math and physics of what a torch drive might actually look like, but as far as I can see they all involve some sort of nuclear reaction.

Yes, because E=mc^2 is the only way to pack the amount of energy you need into a reasonable amount of fuel, but it's not *technically* required by what people mean when they say 'torchship' - it's just practically required by all physics we currently know. 

The term doesn't really describe about how they're built - it's about how they perform.

[LittleBitMore]

Wait, hold on a second. This is probably unrelated, but...

RemoteTech has signal delay.

Signal delay + percentage of lightspeed = general relativity.

If RemoteTech makes it to KSP2, we could observe relativity in KSP. Which would be an entertaining experiment.

(Or you could just have really fast craft in KSP. Like using Interstellar Extended engines.)

[Guest]

Pretty sure the KSP2 Torchdrive will be some kind of fusion or anti-matter rocket, since one of the devs called it a blazing white something or other of fiery death or some such... I forget what he said exactly lol but yer, doesn’t sound like low thrust.