Xenon and On

[t_v]

5 hours ago, Master39 said:

Sure enough we don't need to increase TWR of any engine.

Just like the Dawn the Nerv having a low TWR will work just fine with background and under warp maneuver execution (that they already confirmed 2 years ago) and it will be useful to introduce the player to those concepts in preparation of the interplanetary and interstellar engines having even lower TWRs and weeks or even months long burns.

I’d like to second this. The LV-N is extremely nerfed and unbalanced in KSP 1. A lot of the balance “fixes” really just made things worse. And the LV-N, despite having a high isp, is one of the worse engines in the game. But that is not the case for KSP 2. With persistent thrust through time warp, the LV-N does not need a thrust augmentation and it actually fits the balance pretty well. If you want the KSP 1 LV-N fixed, then ask the KSP 1 devs to update it. 

[RealKerbal3x]

1 hour ago, t_v said:

If you want the KSP 1 LV-N fixed, then ask the KSP 1 devs to update it. 

Or just make a quick module manager patch, then you can change the stats to whatever you want.

[TheSameKerbal77]

I recall the devs saying that you can see the kerbals all the time (the cockpit windows are clear) are we gonna get that for the colony’s windows? Keep the game a little more consistent as well I give the kerbals some more glory. I’d love to see that but you have a lot on your plates already so do take this into consideration and keep up the good work the game looks awesome and can’t wait to crash... i mean build colony’s and strand...I mean send kerbals around the (universe?)!

[SciMan]

The ISRU converters (and need for heatshields) are what should introduce the concept of heat management, decidedly not the engines. Doubly so since when the LV-N was "adjusted" to have a tendency to overheat, the mere concept of heat radiators (and reentry heat) wasn't even in the game yet.

It's an OOOOOOOOOLLLLLD stat of the LV-N. Did I mention the part where they INTENTIONALLY made this engine bad "so that it doesn't replace all the chemical engines when you're in a vacuum"? I probably mentioned that before.
That's a bad design decision, and if you're going to do that, you might as well not even put the LV-N engine in the game.

The WHOLE POINT OF A NUCLEAR THERMAL ROCKET is that it's BETTER than a chemical engine. If that means it has to move to a higher cost node in the tech tree, fine.

The reason (in KSP 1) that the LV-N shouldn't have any of these "bad habits" is because we don't GET anything better than it. There is no "LV-N but we worked out all the bugs". So the one we DO get should be the one that they already worked out all the bugs (like the obscenely high mass, and the utterly arbitrary tendency to overheat).

Being able to do engine burns while under time warp isn't what's needed for the LV-N. That's a solution for the ion engine's thrust being too high right now. The LV-N is not at all like an ion engine. It produces a significant thrust (even tho 60kn isn't a lot, it's a lot more than the single-digit kilonewtons of the very-much-too-high-thrust ion engine in KSP 1). What I'm trying to say is that even in the sad sorry state the LV-N is currently in in KSP 1, it is still a "High Thrust" type of engine.
IRL, burns with such engines are supposed to last anywhere from "less than a minute" to "maybe 20 minutes" for chemical engines. And considering that the IRL NERVA had a thrust greater than the IRL RL-10 (an upper stage hydrolox engine) with roughly double the specific impulse, I'm not convinced that "thrust while on rails" is the solution for the long burns of craft attempting to use the LV-N.

 

And still nobody here in this thread has given me a satisfactory answer as to why I can make a chemical rocket stage that performs better than a nuclear stage.
Better how? Let me show you the ways:

1. Chemical stage beats LV-N stage by having a lower part count (mostly because radiators, but also because long 5m fuel tank + KR-2L Rhino engine = good stuff, compared to needing like 20 LV-N's to get a similar thrust to A SINGLE KR-2L Rhino)
2. Higher TWR overall (those LV-N's are HEAVY, so heavy that in fact my best idea of how to best use them is not as an engine but as a piece of ballast for a submarine

By the numbers, the downsides of using a chemical stage are quite minor in comparison to the upsides. When I do the math, I figure that I sacrifice maybe at most a couple kilometers per second of delta-V when comparing the chemical solution to the nuclear one. That right there is wrong. That right there should be "you sacrifice maybe 5 kilometers per second for choosing the chemical engines". That's how much better nuclear engines should be than chemical ones.

But there's a hidden qualitative downside to using the chemical solution. It's boring. I wanna use the shiny nuclear engines, not the "you've had something like this since maybe your 5th hour of playing Science mode" vacuum-optimized chemical engines.
I WANT to use the LV-N. But it's not worth it. This gives me INTENSE cognitive dissonance, because the results of the math are basically directly opposite to the results I expected. Not only are they unintuitive, they're perverse in that the chemical rocket solution is "by design" always better than the nuclear solution, for the reason of "Because HarvestR and/or NovaSillisko said they shouldn't be too good or we won't have any engine variety". Who are they to say that there SHOULD be engine variety? That's not how it works IRL, and that's not how rockets work at all.
Yes, HarvesteR made the game originally.
Yes, NovaSillisko made the original model for the LV-N.
That doesn't mean they had a good idea of what they should act like as far as the numbers go.

Heck, the Mainsail (yes, that mainsail) used to have a tendency to overheat just like the LV-N does now, granted it wasn't particularly severe, but it was there. That happened for a reason that was good at the time, but has been coded out of the game subsequently (Engines used to have their heat animation tied to how hot the part physically was, meaning to progress the animation you had to make the engine itself actually hot, but now we don't have to do that anymore because a new PartModule was created to handle linking the engine heat animation to the position of the throttle instead).
It is my strong opinion that when the Mainsail lost its tendency to overheat, the LV-N should have as well.

 

For what it's worth, in my own playing of KSP, I entirely remove the ability of the LV-N to generate any kind of heat (via commenting out one line in the engine's part config file). That and reducing the dry mass by an entire metric ton makes the LV-N into something worth using on something other than a spaceplane with a very specific design.

[Pthigrivi]

Well we already know there will be at least one more NERVA engine and I personally hope there are 4 or 5 variants with different applications like Nertea’s Kerbal Atomics mod. They could potentially run on LH2 with O2 augment modes, and consume Uranium. That would be plenty of play-balance for the higher performance.

Edited November 20, 2021 by Pthigrivi

[SciMan]

Well so long as they only "consume" uranium to build them on or around another planet, I guess that's fine.

Having a limited core lifetime is problematic, because the idea of being able to swap out the nuclear fuel elements of a nuclear reactor of any type is quite a tedious and dangerous and time consuming ordeal, and that's just for nuclear power plants where the reactors were built from the start to have replaceable fuel element bundles. I'm not so certain that the fuel element bundles in a nuclear thermal rocket would be so "easily" serviced, and that's not to mention that even if you do have a hot cell large enough and well-equipped enough to service a nuclear thermal rocket you'd still probably have to have the "no longer useful" nuclear thermal rocket's reactor core just sit in a cooling pit for at least 6 months or more for enough of the fission products with short half-lives to decay so that the level of radiation coming off of the (semi-permanently shut down) reactor core isn't too high for your hot cell to handle, because even things designed to work on "highly radioactive" items have their limits on just how much radiation they can protect you from.
And then you go and make ANOTHER leap and say we'll be doing this in space? I don't like that idea, it reeks of "you can do anything, anywhere, any time" which just doesn't work in a setting that doesn't have either Star Trek levels of technology or outright Magic.

So to me the choice is either "Nuclear thermal rockets are only useful for a limited period before you must figure out a way to safely dispose of the now radioactive mess", or "Nuclear thermal rockets in KSP 2 don't simulate the fact that the core will eventually not be able to create enough heat to run the rocket engine anymore" and I like the second option of those two because I don't like the idea of anything that approaches a "part failure mod" of any kind, as I have more than enough problems to deal with on my plate when everything's working as I intended it.

EDIT: Perhaps I should specify, the reason I dislike part failure mods is that it introduces the potential for the player to become confused by the difference between "your craft failed because you're design is flawed" and "your craft failed because of a random event that's largely outside your control".
Additionally, being forced to "roll the dice" to see if my craft works or not and then if it doesn't work, getting penalized (merely by "lost time" aka "I can't get those minutes of my life back", if nothing else) even if (especially if) that failure was something I could not have forseen or prevented, it just really makes me frustrated.
I feel so strongly about this that if there's a part failure element to KSP 2 then I will either seek to mod it out myself, or I will stop playing the game and return to KSP 1.

Edited November 21, 2021 by SciMan

[EnderKid2]

I really don't get how you're getting overheating issues. In all my usage of the things (without radiators), they tend to stabilize at a core temp of about 1000 kelvin, which is toasty, but not close to overheating.

Edited November 22, 2021 by EnderKid2

[SciMan]

I cluster them. To be specific, 7  of them, on a EP-37 engine plate, with that plate connected to a long Mk3 liquid fuel tank.

That's the best I can do with the least parts when it comes to making the LV-N work, and yet I need to add MORE parts in the form of radiators to keep the blasted thing from overheating.

Yes, I've noticed that it does take a very long time for the heat to climb to the level where it will start making parts explode. But I have NOT noticed it ever stop climbing, even when I spam like 20 large deployable radiators. In fact when I spam that many large radiators, the problem I then run into is MORE OVERHEATING, in the form of the stock heat bug, which basically sets all the radiator temperatures to their maximum, effectively disabling them all. The only way to stop that is to shut down every single radiator on the vessel, and then wait an excruciatingly long time for the entire craft to cool off to temperatures well below whatever critical temperature triggers the stock heat bug, at which time I can re-activate and/or deploy all the radiators again.

It's just so much trouble that I go "Hey I want to use shiny LV-N", remember the stock heat bug, and immediately delete the entire craft that I had designed that uses the LV-N.

This is why I comment out the heat generation of the LV-N.

[TheSameKerbal77]

On 10/16/2020 at 5:57 AM, linecrafter said:

mr nate sir this is cool and all but what about showing off really cool stuff
like
u know
multiplayer????

They did claim that that is coming up eventually but like many other plays on the forums said “They’ll likely release information about this near the release to get hype up for sales” - My version of that.

Unless I missed something this is coming. So just hold on a little longer.

And of course GREAT WORK on the game keep it up and never lose hope Devs!

[tstein]

On 11/21/2021 at 4:17 PM, SciMan said:

EDIT: Perhaps I should specify, the reason I dislike part failure mods is that it introduces the potential for the player to become confused by the difference between "your craft failed because you're design is flawed" and "your craft failed because of a random event that's largely outside your control".
Additionally, being forced to "roll the dice" to see if my craft works or not and then if it doesn't work, getting penalized (merely by "lost time" aka "I can't get those minutes of my life back", if nothing else) even if (especially if) that failure was something I could not have forseen or prevented, it just really makes me frustrated.
I feel so strongly about this that if there's a part failure element to KSP 2 then I will either seek to mod it out myself, or I will stop playing the game and return to KSP 1.

The first part  can be dealt with CLEAR messages in a clear interface.  Also the  roll the dice thing can be made that you only roll the dice when you  operate a certain part above a certain specification. The same way some forms of stress cause immediate break in KSP. We can have a middle ground where it does not explode.. but every  period X it rolls a rice with y% chance of  failure. That would allow people to play safe or to push the risk if they wish .

[SciMan]

There really wasn't a need to necro this thread just for that, but in any case I don't think part failure belongs in KSP 2.

I'm like Einstein. I think "God should not play dice". I accept quantum physics, but when it comes to game mechanics that are based on deterministic things, the result should not have any randomness in it, ESPECIALLY if that randomness has been added "artificially".

IRL, things either break or they don't. They're either operating within acceptable limits, or they're not. You go outside of acceptable limits, and the thing breaks immediately.
To be clear, I'm referencing that things can be operated at "more than 100%" for a certain amount of time and still be within operating parameters.
If the engine is properly manufactured and it explodes when it was "within operating parameters", then the numbers associated with defining the operating parameters need adjustment, or you need to make changes to the engine to make it actually meet the operating parameters.

Rocket engines should be similar. The Merlin engine that SpaceX uses on the Falcon 9 for example. The first version was originally a very modest rocket engine. Now after many upgrades, and updates to the allowable operating parameters to reflect the changes made to the engine, it's RELIABLY capable of being reused at least 10 times while simultaneously outputting like 150% more thrust than the design was originally certified at.

That's IRL. Now let's talk KSP.

In KSP, rocket engines could be rated to provide 100% thrust forever, and more than 100% thrust for a specific amount of time (say 105% thrust for 10 minutes or so).
There can even be several ratings, say 105% for 10 minutes, 110% for 3 minutes, 120% for 30 seconds, that kind of thing.
Technology advances could increase the amount of thrust that is considered "100%", or alternatively allow the engine to operate at above 100% for longer periods of time.

So for an expendable rocket launching to equatorial orbit from KSC you'd set the engine at 105% and never have a failure ever, because you did the math and stayed within the operating parameters.
 

Recovering a vessel at a colony or orbital VAB or KSC would reset the timer, because you could handwave that they refurbish or service the engines during the time they're stored at KSC or wherever.

You go over that time limit, the engine explodes.
That's it. That's all there is to it.
No reduced thrust, no ISP loss, the engine just has a RUD.
If there are other engines too close to the one that exploded, they might suffer a RUD of their own as well because of being damaged by the explosion of the first one (just like the N-1 did).

Stay within the operating parameters, and nothing goes wrong. You did it right, and so you're rewarded.
RANDOM part failures don't reward you for doing it right. Instead, they sometimes punish you even tho you did it right. We don't need to simulate the extensive testing and certification process for a new rocket engine, that's not for KSP that's for "Rocket engine development simulator" which is a whole separate game.

Edited December 14, 2022 by SciMan

[Drakenred65]

There’s a few games that have parts failure as a part of the base game, or as optional or as a difficulty item, I prefer In a game like this, for it to be opt in, because honestly there is already  enough built in difficulty

[Vl3d]

13 hours ago, [email protected] said:

parts failure as a part of the base game, or as optional or as a difficulty item, I prefer In a game like this, for it to be opt in

 

 

[Lettuce]

19 hours ago, SciMan said:

IRL, things either break or they don't. They're either operating within acceptable limits, or they're not. You go outside of acceptable limits, and the thing breaks immediately.
To be clear, I'm referencing that things can be operated at "more than 100%" for a certain amount of time and still be within operating parameters.

19 hours ago, SciMan said:

So for an expendable rocket launching to equatorial orbit from KSC you'd set the engine at 105% and never have a failure ever, because you did the math and stayed within the operating parameters.

19 hours ago, SciMan said:

You go over that time limit, the engine explodes.
That's it. That's all there is to it.

Just a minor correction since I'm in my 3rd year of engineering, with things that are under cyclic stress like an engine would be, there is what's known as a fatigue strength, which is the stress that a material can endure for infinite life, with materials like steel the limit is very distinct and for other materials the plateu in the number of cycles they can withstand is less obvious.  If you go over that limit it could last for a while but will probably break after a while like you said, but if something goes over whatever number of cycles that you predict it would last under a certain stress above that fatigue strength it won't just instantly break, the chances of it breaking increase over time however until it eventually shears.

In that picture you can see that the stress over the fatigue limit wears the part down until it snaps when it can't handle the load. For this reason I agree with having ratings for using the engine more than 100% for a limited amount of time cumulative through out the mission, but let's say you used the engine at 105% for a section of the mission, it could be warranted that now your engine is no longer able to sustain 100% thrust for infinite life. but from a gameplay perspective I can see that it would be limiting and not very fun to implement that, but moving onto my main point, I think if you go over the rating say 105% for 4 minutes instead of 3 minutes the game begins to roll dice after those 3 minutes for whether or not your engine explodes would be a fair and fun way to implement random part failure, letting players who want to take the gamble have some suspense in the game when coming in too fast on landing or realizing their orbit isn't going to be complete before reentry on 100% thrust. But overall I agree that when you're operating withing 100% thrust you shouldn't have a random failure like that. 

[Vanamonde]

This forum does not consider something a necro unless the info in the thread is out-dated. 

[tstein]

On 12/14/2022 at 4:37 PM, SciMan said:

IRL, things either break or they don't. They're either operating within acceptable limits, or they're not. You go outside of acceptable limits, and the thing breaks immediately.
To be clear, I'm referencing that things can be operated at "more than 100%" for a certain amount of time and still be within operating parameters.
If the engine is properly manufactured and it explodes when it was "within operating parameters", then the numbers associated with defining the operating parameters need adjustment, or you need to make changes to the engine to make it actually meet the operating parameters.

 

No that is nto how the real world works, becuase manufacturing process are not perfect.  We would not had  hundreds of plane crashes in history if  things worked as you describe.

[Wheehaw Kerman]

On 12/14/2022 at 2:37 PM, SciMan said:

I'm like Einstein. I think "God should not play dice". I accept quantum physics, but when it comes to game mechanics that are based on deterministic things, the result should not have any randomness in it, ESPECIALLY if that randomness has been added "artificially".

I like your operating parameters idea.  
 

That being said, industrial design and manufacturing aren’t physics.  Engineers, machinists, QA guys, and other techies touching every one of the thousands upon thousands of parts making the insanely complex systems that are rockets, and the insanely complex systems that build, transport, launch, communicate with, recover and refurbish them, all have bad days.  So do their managers.  Vehicles failing, sometimes rapidly and unplannedly, are a thing.  And that has added tragedy and drama and excitement to the history of space exploration.

As I’ve said before about life support, every time KSP1 added more realism, the game got a bit harder and much more satisfying and enjoyable.  This was due to the added drama and excitement and occasional tragedy.  I see part imperfection as the same.  It’ll force us to make better, more redundant spacecraft, bring engineers, and do more with them.  It’ll add drama and excitement and occasional tragedy to the game.  I see this as an absolute win.

[Bej Kerman]

On 11/15/2021 at 10:15 PM, SciMan said:

Everyone always pulls out the "60s tech" excuse. That's no excuse!

It's funny I never replied to this until nearly 2 months later because I was never quoted, but here I am 

On 11/15/2021 at 10:15 PM, SciMan said:

The issue is TWR on the dang burn to get on an interplanetary trajectory!

Perceived problem: low TWR

Actual problem: thrust not possible when doing on-rails warp, and just generally the idea of a high-TWR mothership using 60s tech

The idea of a high-TWR mothership with its own compliment of landers and stuff is silly until you're looking at post-60s tech like Orion drives, so NERVAs having a very low TWR just simply is not a problem. This is exactly how KSP is meant to work - low TWR and high ISP or vice versa, no free lunch. The problem is that KSP doesn't provide adequate tools for dealing with long burns. It gives you a barely stable physics timewarp option, but it doesn't even go to 5x nor does it have an option to use lossless physics in cases where structural stability is a problem. If KSP had persistent thrust from the getgo, then we'd all agree that the NERVA is balanced as it is.

So, to reiterate: today's technology is low TWR and high ISP or high TWR or low ISP. The very point of the low TWR of the Dawn and NERVA engines is that you're not getting free lunches. It's not imbalanced in any way, this is just the way modern rockets are and KSP is designed to reflect that.

[obney kerman]

On 1/2/2023 at 9:17 AM, Bej Kerman said:

post-60s tech like Orion drives

I hate to be the one to say it, but Project Orion was also '60s tech. Year of design does not always indicate performance, especially not with rocket engines.

The point Sci-man is trying to make is that even since the 60s, designs for solid-core NTRs like NERVA all had a LOT more thrust than the NERV in game does now. The actual NERVA's vacuum thrust was around 300kn, and the NERV's is 60kn. The actual one was still a lot less high-thrust than a lot of other chemical engines, but it still had at least a fair amount, enough to be used as a sustainer and not just solely a deep-space engine.

Think of the tradeoff this way: Chemical engines get high thrust for medium to low efficiency, electric engines get super-high efficiency but with absolutely miniscule thrust, and NERVAs get about twice the efficiency of the chemical engines (but nowhere near the electric drives) for a moderate amount of thrust. You can still reflect that thrust-versus-ISP tradeoff dynamic while keeping true to the actual capabilities of a nuclear thermal rocket. In KSP2, let's say, the updated NERV could have something like 120-150kn of thrust with the same isp, letting it be a little more useful as a sustainer while still being outclassed in thrust by methalox engines and in efficiency by electric ones (and potentially outclassed in both of those by more exotic types of nuclear engines that could come to KSP2, like the SWERV(?), but we're not there yet).

[Guest]

On 1/2/2023 at 3:45 PM, Wheehaw Kerman said:

As I’ve said before about life support, every time KSP1 added more realism, the game got a bit harder and much more satisfying and enjoyable.

That's true about gameplay, not realism. Just chasing realism doesn't make for a good game,

Plenty of ways of making a game boring with additional realism.

Removing the timewarp would make the game more realistic.

The rocket taking a full day to go from the VAB to the launchpad would be realistic too.

And, why not? Let's add months of testing on the pad, and all the paperwork associated with a rocket launch.

 

If that's "Not the kind of realism you're talking about", it is because you're not talking about realism at all, you're just filtering it through a "what realistic feature would make good gameplay?" filter.

[Wheehaw Kerman]

4 hours ago, Master39 said:

That's true about gameplay, not realism. Just chasing realism doesn't make for a good game,

Plenty of ways of making a game boring with additional realism.

Removing the timewarp would make the game more realistic.

The rocket taking a full day to go from the VAB to the launchpad would be realistic too.

And, why not? Let's add months of testing on the pad, and all the paperwork associated with a rocket launch.

 

If that's "Not the kind of realism you're talking about", it is because you're not talking about realism at all, you're just filtering it through a "what realistic feature would make good gameplay?" filter.

I’d argue that your statement holds true for things like CoD; realistic weapons, military discipline and tactics and terminal ballistics would kill that game.  I think KSP is actually the opposite.   And more importantly, I think you’re underestimating how much lack of realism actually detracts from the game for non-casual close-to-SME players.
 

As a spaceflight history nerd from birth (one of my earliest memories is trying to stay awake for one of the Moon landings), I learned a *lot* about spaceflight as a kid, to the point where the sound and aerodynamic maneuvering in vacuum really got my goat when I was watching Star Wars for the first time in its first theatrical release.  Having seriously dated myself, I’ll now out myself as working in a field related to major project procurement.  So I also get how complicated and hard it is and how much time it takes to build large technically complex projects with nine figure and higher price tags.

So being able to roll out immediately procured and built multi-Saturn-core monstrosities with freshly recruited crews in literally a few seconds of game time?  Yeah, it irks me.  And glossing over R&D and testing, and planning and procurement?  That’s a whole lot of fun lost.  And the crawler way out to the Launch Pad being entirely ornamental?  Yeah…

For some of us, the game is simply the best, most realistic full spectrum soup to nuts, JFK speech to flying the landings space program simulator on the market.  And anything that detracts from that realism, and any noticeable omitted realistic detail, detracts from the game.

[shdwlrd]

2 hours ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

And anything that detracts from that realism, and any noticeable omitted realistic detail, detracts from the game.

You are saying it yourself, KSP is a game. KSP is not a true to life simulation. So KSP begin a game first, then a simulation, not every little detail required in RL doesn't need to be accurate or even added.

[Wheehaw Kerman]

47 minutes ago, shdwlrd said:

You are saying it yourself, KSP is a game. KSP is not a true to life simulation. So KSP begin a game first, then a simulation, not every little detail required in RL doesn't need to be accurate or even added.

Simulations are games, and games that benefit from close modelling of reality.  What I am saying is that every time KSP has improved its modelling of reality, from betterish aerodynamics to re-entry heating to communications, it has become more enjoyable, both because of the added challenge and the increase in realism.  By removing jarringly unrealistic aspects of the game, KSP becomes better.

I agree with some of us that there is probably a point of diminishing returns out there, but KSP1 still had a way to go before it got there.  I hope the devs will implement at least the  glaringly obvious low hanging fruit like LS, radiation, and comms delays in KSP2.  If they make those options toggleable like KSP1 did, they’ll let the easy mode proponents dial the realism back to a level they like, and improve the game for the realism proponents.

Edited January 4, 2023 by Wheehaw Kerman

[Bej Kerman]

14 minutes ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

 What I am saying is that every time KSP has improved its modelling of reality, from betterish aerodynamics to re-entry heating to communications, it has become more enjoyable, both because of the added challenge and the increase in realism.

Indeed

I don't recall anyone complaining about Squad making the atmosphere not a soup, and I don't think people would complain if Intercept went full FAR with KSP 2's aero model.

[Guest]

19 hours ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

So being able to roll out immediately procured and built multi-Saturn-core monstrosities with freshly recruited crews in literally a few seconds of game time?  Yeah, it irks me.  And glossing over R&D and testing, and planning and procurement?  That’s a whole lot of fun lost.  

Once again you're skipping over pure realism and automatically turn it into a gameplay opportunity when talking about it.

It sounds like you're filtering the realism through a "what realistic feature will make a good gameplay loop".

 

If that's the case no problem with that, that's how new gameplay is supposed to be added to KSP.

 

The problem comes when the added realism comes just for its own sake, without any consideration for what it means for the gameplay overall. I've seen and played dozen of games and sims getting lost in ever more complex simulations of realistic features only to lose the focus and just become random messes of things happening for entirely realistic reasons that are out of the control of the player.

 

As an engineering game (before being a simulation), in KSP every error must come from the player, it's not realistic, I know, IRL crap out of the control of the pilot or lead engineer happens all the time, but it's crucial.

If KSP were some realistic spaceflight simulator with realistic planets and realistic rockets it would have died half a decade ago, the key aspect of the game is not replicating what happened IRL, is coming up with your own space program and, with that, your own mistakes. Learning how to overcome those, how to make a better iteration for your next launch is the core gameplay element, and whatever new realism element is introduced must be designed around not changing that.

 

16 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

Indeed

I don't recall anyone complaining about Squad making the atmosphere not a soup, and I don't think people would complain if Intercept went full FAR with KSP 2's aero model.

KSP2 chasing realism without considerations for gameplay, would also realistically mean that most if not all manual piloting to be removed from the game and replaced with the player learning how to program an autopilot from scratch.

Dealing with signal delay instead of manually piloting your probes.

And, realistically, you should mostly be stuck to LEO, and spend 4 times as much time to even reach that orbit.

 

We can argue all day long about a better aero model, but the quest for purity in the simulation skips all of that, goes beyond any consideration for good gameplay and into the land of "this is a sim, not a game", which is the reason almost all sims are terrible games.