MechJeb in Stock KSP2? [Split from another thread]

[Dman979]

Play nice, please. Everyone's entitled to their own opinion about what should/shouldn't be included in the new game- there's no need to get too feisty with each other.

Carry on.

[shdwlrd]

4 hours ago, herbal space program said:

(edit) ...And as I think about it, that is actually one of my biggest issues with all those MechJeb features being available in Stock. It encourages the design of lousy ships that only the computer can fly. A good plane or spaceship should be easy to fly. Realistic designs moreover need to include some margin of error, like Neil Armstrong had with the LEM to choose an alternative landing site at the last second.  Papering over all that with MechJeb takes away from that whole aspect too.

Surprisingly enough, MJ can't control a poorly designed rocket or plane. If the CoM and CoL is too far out whack, MJ will crash the craft faster than the player. Make a offset thrust rocket and you will see MJ fail almost every time. (It took me 6 months of tinkering to get my KSOS patches to work with MJ. And I still have to override MJ until it reaches 100m/s.) Set MJ to fly a multi engine plane and create an asymmetrical thrust situation and MJ will crash it. (PA will account for asymmetric thrust, MJ won't.)

Edited July 30, 2021 by shdwlrd

[K^2]

34 minutes ago, shdwlrd said:

Surprisingly enough, MJ can't control a poorly designed rocket or plane. If the CoM and CoL is too far out whack, MJ will crash the craft faster than the player. Make a offset thrust rocket and you will see MJ fail almost every time. (It took me 6 months of tinkering to get my KSOS patches to work with MJ. And I still have to override MJ until it reaches 100m/s.) Set MJ to fly a multi engine plane and create an asymmetrical thrust situation and MJ will crash it. (PA will account for asymmetric thrust, MJ won't.)

There's a pretty big difference between the kind of design that's hard for a computer to fly and one that's hard for human to fly. There's an overlap, of course, but it's not a one-to-one. Generally, computer control is good at fast corrections, which allows aircraft with unstable static equilibria to fly true. Think of balancing a broom on its end. Humans can do it pretty well when the dynamics is slow, such as with a long broom, but try the same trick with a pencil - this is where computer can take over and have no problem keeping things balanced.

On the other hand, a lot of rockets in KSP end up with dynamic instability. The kind of setup where if you don't mess with it, it seems stable, but if you start making adjustments, there is a tendency to over-correct, and the rocket starts building up oscillations. You know, the sort of thing that you have to fly with SAS off? Humans can usually work with this type of instability. It's not great, but manageable. A computer, unless it's very carefully designed to handle this specific kind of problem, is going to be worse than just letting go of controls entirely.

Of course, there are also design problems that are fixable. Asymmetric thrust is a good example. It's super easy to correct for it, especially, if you allow the control system to individually control thrust of the engines. In fact, making this work and having a stock system that can provide stability is actually a pretty good argument for having an assist.

I also think there's a lot of ground for a compromise. Nobody thinks SAS is bad, even though it clearly assists in flying the craft. I would try to build on top of that and come up with something that helps like an assistant for complex craft that need it rather than a replacement for human pilot.

[Guest]

4 hours ago, mattinoz said:

MechJeb just seems like a glory box of everything automated but also a bit of a black box that doesn't encourage exploration.

This, Mechjeb has everything inside of it, so much that's it's basically useless to argue about it directly, it's basically just a little less generic than arguing if you want KSP to be a videogame or not.

A lot of the problems Mechjeb solves can be solved directly, yes, KSP1 tutorials are so lacking that an autopilot mod can do a better job at it, but that doesn't mean that we have to bring over the terrible tutorials to the sequel and then use a stock MJ as a patch.

Let's talk specifics, let's get down to the details, what kind of automation we want?

I want the game to give me more information, to have my futuristic spaceplane have a little more tools and autopilot features than a WWI plane, I want atmospheric prediction and I'd like the supply run system being able to pilot a rocket in the background with whatever payload fits the "certified" fairings and mass, and land back its reusable boosters. All of that given through a "certification" gameplay loop that requires you to fly and test the various components of the system separately (I already do that a lot when playing KSP1).

I could do most of that with MJ in KSP1 (and a little roleplay), but MJ can also bring bad habits, if you have more than a few hundred hours of KSP and there's still something you can't possibly do without MJ (not that you don't want, that you can't) MJ itself is most likely the cause of it. You brobably picked up some bad habit when flying or designing crafts that MJ corrects or it simply replaced the training you need to master that skill. I don't want this aspect of MJ being anywhere near KSP2.

[mcwaffles2003]

4 hours ago, Master39 said:

Let's talk specifics, let's get down to the details, what kind of automation we want?

I just want something that can "help" me set up my maneuvers and do burns for me. I like how I can tell MJ: at periapsis I want a burn that makes my new apoapsis "x" then execute that maneuver.

I still need to know orbital mechanics and I know how to do these maneuvers, they're not hard, just tedious after the umpteen trillionth time.

A flight assist would be nice as well. No automated takeoff/landing necessarily (wouldn't mind if it was in though), but set alt to "z", set heading to "<x,y>", set speed to "s" type of thing. I might actually fly stock if this is in the game.

On the side, I'd like something that can keep my resonant orbits stable with the ion thruster aboard so I don't have to realign them every year or so from their periods being 0.2 seconds off from average

Edited July 30, 2021 by mcwaffles2003

[Bej Kerman]

14 hours ago, AlamoVampire said:

I strongly staunchly disagree. I am going to use myself as an example to demonstrate why its absolutely a must have mod for some and why it absolutely be made stock (also gonna say it now: kerbal engineer got partially made stock when some of what it offers became stock, so precedent and all). 
There are players who cannot learn how to do certain things like rendezvous and docking by reading a wiki article or a thread here or even watching countless youtube videos. I am one such player. I watched Scott Manley, Das Valdez and countless others do countless dockings. I read absolutely everything I could find. I considered myself educated enough to try. I failed. Over and over. Again and again. No matter how hard I tried I never could nail it. Id either come in way too hot and careen by or I would get painfully close and run out of monoprop. No matter what I did, no matter how many hours Id spend trying, Id fail. Know why? For all the text I could read or videos I could watch they all missed something so basic it was always ignored. How does MY ship perform! 
 

Mechjeb was an absolute godsend to me. I strapped that lil bugger onto my ship and let autopilot guide me. I would watch as it would take MY SHIP and show me how it flew. I watched and I learned as it made my ships waltz gracefully (usually lol) to each other. 

Orbital mechanics works pretty much the same for all vessels, so I don't get where you're coming from. Any other newbie could have just let MechJeb do everything and never learn how to rendezvous themselves. Besides that, KSP 2 will be improving the tutorials, so learning how to rendezvous should not be an issue. MechJeb can be a good mod, it just doesn't work in stock where everything is supposed to be hands on.

8 hours ago, Stratennotblitz said:

the issue with kerbin is it's low gravity, in reality when you touch the ground you will bounce but not as hard as the game wants you to think, hopefully the base game will add some sort of suction when landing just like docking

Kerbin's gravity is the same as Earth. Everything in the Kerbol system is 1/10th real scale, but to counteract that, everything is much denser.

[AlamoVampire]

1 hour ago, Bej Kerman said:

Orbital mechanics works pretty much the same for all vessels, so I don't get where you're coming from. Any other newbie could have just let MechJeb do everything and never learn how to rendezvous themselves. Besides that, KSP 2 will be improving the tutorials, so learning how to rendezvous should not be an issue. MechJeb can be a good mod, it just doesn't work in stock where everything is supposed to be hands on.

I could not make 2 ships reach the same spot at the same time no matter how hard i tried. Mechjeb taught me.

so if everything is supposed to be hands on, no kos, no ker, no mods that add anything that takes the burden off you the player should be made stock?  Is that what you are implying? Because in all honesty, that feels like the road youre on. I said it before, I will advocate for it again:

mechjeb becomes stock (or its functions under a new name) and gets a set of toggles so that those who do not want it can turn it off. Kinda like commnet. This option lets everyone win. We ALL get what we want. I honestly do not know why this option seems ignored by everyone. Its clean, it works, we all get what we want. Yet this debate lives on. 
 

so, recap: mechjeb is made stock. In full. It gets toggles to enable or disable it in the menu (like commnet, perma kerbal death etc etc etc). Those who dont want it can turn it off. Those who want it can turn it on. Both camps in this near decade long debate get what they want. This frankly is my position. This is where (sadly i feel compelled to say it) I am walking away. I cannot say any more on it. 
 

082407302021

082707302021

adjusted my presentation

Edited July 30, 2021 by AlamoVampire

[Bej Kerman]

2 minutes ago, AlamoVampire said:

I could not make 2 ships reach the same spot at the same time no matter how hard i tried. Mechjeb taught me.

KSP 2 will make tutorials better so we'll see faster development in newcomers, nor will newcomers find themselves completely unable to rendezvous.

3 minutes ago, AlamoVampire said:

so if everything is supposed to be hands on, no kos, no ker, no mods that add anything that takes the burden off you the player should be made stock, and if it was made stock strip it out, like the kerbal engineer like readouts, heck, dump action groups too right? Is that what you are advocating for? Because thats the feeling I am getting from you. I said it before, I will advocate for it again:

Action groups do not automate spaceflight and have to be manually assigned; you are pulling a strawman fallacy as hotkeying the process of digging inside your craft for 2 thermometers is completely different from an autopilot doing everything for you.

4 minutes ago, AlamoVampire said:

mechjeb becomes stock (or its functions under a new name) and gets a set of toggles so that those who do not want it can turn it off. Kinda like commnet. This option lets everyone win. We ALL get what we want. I honestly do not know why this option seems ignored by everyone. Its clean, it works, we all get what we want. Yet this debate lives on. 

Then you can just sidestep the core of the game; flying your vessel and furthering your skills in orbital flight.

5 minutes ago, AlamoVampire said:

so, recap: mechjeb is made stock. In full. It gets toggles to enable or disable it in the menu (like commnet, perma kerbal death etc etc etc). Those who dont want it can turn it off. Those who want it can turn it on. Both camps in this near decade long debate get what they want. This frankly is my position. This is where (sadly i feel compelled to say it) I am walking away. I cannot say any more on it. 

Alright, good day to you.

[mcwaffles2003]

58 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Then you can just sidestep the core of the game; flying your vessel and furthering your skills in orbital flight.

Flying your vessel yourself is not core, only that the flight is realistic. At least thats what the devs say:

I happen to agree with them.

[Guest]

6 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

I just want something that can "help" me set up my maneuvers and do burns for me. I like how I can tell MJ: at periapsis I want a burn that makes my new apoapsis "x" then execute that maneuver.

I still need to know orbital mechanics and I know how to do these maneuvers, they're not hard, just tedious after the umpteen trillionth time.

A flight assist would be nice as well. No automated takeoff/landing necessarily (wouldn't mind if it was in though), but set alt to "z", set heading to "<x,y>", set speed to "s" type of thing. I might actually fly stock if this is in the game.

On the side, I'd like something that can keep my resonant orbits stable with the ion thruster aboard so I don't have to realign them every year or so from their periods being 0.2 seconds off from average

I wouldn't honestly be against any of those, not entirely, not as the first thing unlocked as you start the game in progression mod, maybe, and maybe that first one being one of the perks of the highest level pilots, but not openly against it.

The plane part is basically what I'm saying when I say that I want planes be a little more advanced than WWI warbirds, an altitude and heading hold aren't anything new:

Quote

The Sperry Corporation developed the original gyroscopic autopilot in 1912. The device was called a “gyroscopic stabilizer apparatus,” and its purpose was to improve stability and control of aircraft. It utilized the inputs from several other instruments to allow an aircraft to automatically maintain a desired compass heading and altitude.

Source: Wikipedia

And even automated landing, provided that you have the right hardware on the runway/landing pad (linking to the colony building / KSC upgrading system?), it's not out of this world.

 

But if you categorize it as a generic "I'm in favour of MJ" you'll suddently find yourself in the same side of the argument of @AlamoVampire who's basically asking for flying skill to be some disregarded "hardcore mode" relegated in some corner of the advanced settings menu, which is quite a bit more than your list and go out of the "let's talk about QOL features" and into "I want KSP2 to have an entirely different set of gameplay ideas at its core".

(Which yes, is what you're explicitly asking for if you say that you don't want to have to learn how to rendezvous and docking) 

 

1 hour ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

Flying your vessel yourself is not core, only that the flight is realistic. At least thats what the devs say:

I happen to agree with them.

That's a huge stretch of what is written in that image if I ever seen one, if we want to go that way it's also not explicitly stated that KSP2 isn't a comic book or a boardgame.

If we presume that they're talking about a videogame we can also presume that we're not supposed to be spectators of the "realistic spaceflight" pillar or it wouldn't be there in a discussion which is clearly about KSP gameplay:

On 4/16/2020 at 4:04 PM, Intercept Games said:

Even with infinite time and money, KSP2 would not make a colony system as complex as a game that is dedicated to them. Why? KSP2 is a game about building and flying cool rockets, so our colonies serve rocket gameplay.

 

Edited July 30, 2021 by Master39

[Bej Kerman]

2 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

Flying your vessel yourself is not core, only that the flight is realistic. At least thats what the devs say:

I happen to agree with them.

Realistic Spaceflight means nothing when you're sitting in some adjacent room eating popcorn while MechJeb does all the work

[herbal space program]

39 minutes ago, Master39 said:

I wouldn't honestly be against any of those, not entirely, not as the first thing unlocked as you start the game in progression mod, maybe, and maybe that first one being one of the perks of the highest level pilots, but not openly against it.

The plane part is basically what I'm saying when I say that I want planes be a little more advanced than WWI warbirds, an altitude and heading hold aren't anything new:

And even automated landing, provided that you have the right hardware on the runway/landing pad (linking to the colony building / KSC upgrading system?), it's not out of this world.

 

I have no problem at all with whatever MechJeb features getting unlocked  in  some normal level of Career difficulty as  you demonstrate in-game that you can do those things.  Even the MechJeb mod as it exists now  only unlocks its features incrementally as you advance up the tech tree,  precisely to keep you from using it as a crutch to avoid all the deliberately imposed challenges of early career. I mean, what is even the point of having a progression of more and more capable  pilots, probe cores, and remote control units in the tech tree if you can just slap all that on your ship from the get-go? It all only makes sense if you have to earn these features of convenience by jumping through the hoops that the career game sets for you. And isn't that how pretty much all computer games  work in campaign mode? And having said that,  as you point out there  are some MechJeb features that don't currently exist in stock that I actively want the stock game to have, above all some kind of pitch angle hold for planes. But I want those to have to be earned as well, unless you are playing in either sandbox or some kind of Beginner Career mode.

Edited July 30, 2021 by herbal space program

[shdwlrd]

8 hours ago, Master39 said:

Let's talk specifics, let's get down to the details, what kind of automation we want?

Yep, let's talk specifics.

With rovers and walking Kerbals, I would like a cruise control. I don't want to be pressing W the whole time. For example in Valheim if you press Q the character will continue walking without any other input. I don't want to have to use a hacky trick to hold down the W key when I want to do a driving tour of the area. Waypoint guidance would be a nice addition, but not necessary. 

With aircraft I would like a basic hold function. So you don't have to have your hands on the keyboard or controller the whole time. Some automatic subsystems like spoilers and auto braking upon landing. Visual references near the craft when lining up to a runway or landing spot. Optional auto leveling of wings to help the keyboard users.  Again waypoint guidance would be a nice plus, but not necessary.

Something to help with hovering and pointing out the your horizontal movement. 

I would like auto execution of maneuver nodes. Not because I'm lazy, but because it's more accurate that I can be. Plus it would be helpful when you have an unfocused burn happening. 

Suggested time and orientation depending on craft type for deorbit burns to increase accuracy for pin point landings. Something to help with suicide burns taking TWR into account.

I can't think of any useful suggestions for the background transfers without some idea of how it will work. 

[Stratennotblitz]

13 hours ago, shdwlrd said:

Surprisingly enough, MJ can't control a poorly designed rocket or plane. If the CoM and CoL is too far out whack, MJ will crash the craft faster than the player. Make a offset thrust rocket and you will see MJ fail almost every time. (It took me 6 months of tinkering to get my KSOS patches to work with MJ. And I still have to override MJ until it reaches 100m/s.) Set MJ to fly a multi engine plane and create an asymmetrical thrust situation and MJ will crash it. (PA will account for asymmetric thrust, MJ won't.)

true! a human can control a crashing planes in this game better than a robot, yesterday I was trying to dock a return sample rover to a lander and get the science and it was on the moon's North Pole, meaning that I couldn't drive automatically with the automated rover, so I had to do maneuvers to avoid blocking my antenna, another example is after returning the sample in low mun orbit I choose to rendezvous automatically, and mechjeb put the orbit at -10 km so it wouldn't skip faster than 4 times, so I boosted the orbit and made a Homman maneuver to then dock, mechjeb can teach people but it won't do excrements for you, DO NOT TRUST MECHJEB

1 hour ago, herbal space program said:

I have no problem at all with whatever MechJeb features getting unlocked  in  some normal level of Career difficulty as  you demonstrate in-game that you can do those things.  Even the MechJeb mod as it exists now  only unlocks its features incrementally as you advance up the tech tree,  precisely to keep you from using it as a crutch to avoid all the deliberately imposed challenges of early career. I mean, what is even the point of having a progression of more and more capable  pilots, probe cores, and remote control units in the tech tree if you can just slap all that on your ship from the get-go? It all only makes sense if you have to earn these features of convenience by jumping through the hoops that the career game sets for you. And isn't that how pretty much all computer games  work in campaign mode? And having said that,  as you point out there  are some MechJeb features that don't currently exist in stock that I actively want the stock game to have, above all some kind of pitch angle hold for planes. But I want those to have to be earned as well, unless you are playing in either sandbox or some kind of Beginner Career mode.

I could say the same thing for the stabilization systems, you won't learn to pid manually if you have a probe core doing for you, hell why do we even use docking magnets do the real thing

1 hour ago, shdwlrd said:

Yep, let's talk specifics.

With rovers and walking Kerbals, I would like a cruise control. I don't want to be pressing W the whole time. For example in Valheim if you press Q the character will continue walking without any other input. I don't want to have to use a hacky trick to hold down the W key when I want to do a driving tour of the area. Waypoint guidance would be a nice addition, but not necessary. 

With aircraft I would like a basic hold function. So you don't have to have your hands on the keyboard or controller the whole time. Some automatic subsystems like spoilers and auto braking upon landing. Visual references near the craft when lining up to a runway or landing spot. Optional auto leveling of wings to help the keyboard users.  Again waypoint guidance would be a nice plus, but not necessary.

Something to help with hovering and pointing out the your horizontal movement. 

I would like auto execution of maneuver nodes. Not because I'm lazy, but because it's more accurate that I can be. Plus it would be helpful when you have an unfocused burn happening. 

Suggested time and orientation depending on craft type for deorbit burns to increase accuracy for pin point landings. Something to help with suicide burns taking TWR into account.

I can't think of any useful suggestions for the background transfers without some idea of how it will work. 

we need better burn time!!! it's gonna be so hard to change orbit with an Orion exploding each second 

[herbal space program]

11 minutes ago, Stratennotblitz said:

I could say the same thing for the stabilization systems, you won't learn to pid manually if you have a probe core doing for you, hell why do we even use docking magnets do the real thing

That's a very convincing argument. I am convinced that trying to debate with you about how this should all work is a waste of time!

[Stratennotblitz]

5 minutes ago, herbal space program said:

That's a very convincing argument. I am convinced that trying to debate with you about how this should all work is a waste of time!

learn to take a joke, I'm satiring hardcore realism payers

[Pthigrivi]

Another thing that I break down and use is Mechjeb's transfer planner. If you know your launch windows its not a problem to manually create your escape maneuver to Eve, Duna, or Jool, but Moho, Eeloo and to a lesser degree Dres have small SOI's and higher inclinations that can make finding your encounters pretty tedious at times. If I spend more than a few minutes fiddling with widgets I usually give up and have it generate it for me.

Oh--and a thought: you could also constrain auto-landings by making landing beacon part that you can place on the surface with a Kerbal or on a colony's landing pad that can be targeted for landings. That way you could only autoland in a place you've already been. Even manually it be useful for not landing directly on top of your base (which I've done.) I now use a nearby "land here" flag but I hate replacing it every time my landing engines blow it away. 

Edited July 30, 2021 by Pthigrivi

[MKI]

I wrote out a long winding post then realized it really is as simple as:

Mechjeb is useful, mods are useful, mechjeb is a mod, mechjeb could be part of the game like any mod, and its up to the player if they want to use those features.

Unlike specific game play features, mechjeb is just utilities within the game that are useful. To the point large portions have been added to the stock game already.... because again they are useful. There really isn't an argument against these useful utilities, there is an argument you could "cheat yourself out of the experience", but its not all or nothing. I see no logical reason to "wall the player off" from specific features stock or otherwise if they are useful. I can see there being game play balance so you still learn something and aren't given all the tools right out the gate, but at the same time could just play how you want in sandbox with all the tools to do what you want.

 

If the game allowed you to add/remove mods on the fly super easily, it wouldn't really matter what's stock or not either, and I think pretty much everyone would want such a feature even if that means some new player can just go let "mechjeb 2.0" fly without learning a darn thing. While still having other gameplay where you can still fly how you want. Again its not all or nothing, and more is merrier and mechjeb is useful. 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 30, 2021 by MKI

[herbal space program]

5 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

Another thing that I break down and use is Mechjeb's transfer planner.

I think that pretty much all the purely informational aspects of MechJeb and KER except perhaps the unmasking of biomes are fine. Regardless of tech level, there's no good reason you shouldn't always know your mass, the dV of your stages, your airspeed and Mach number, your horizontal and vertical speeds, your skin temp, and your terrain altitude.  I guess perhaps the game could make you ship the relevant sensors to know those things, but those should be available very early on.  Similarly, knowing when all the transfer windows occur in absolute time is not something players should be made to calculate on their own.  Perhaps that could be made to require some amount of game progression, but that knowledge should be given early as well. The transfer planning tool should also at least allow you to move your ship forward in virtual time and place maneuver nodes in its future and see what will happen with them. If you are stuck orbiting Tylo and waiting for your Laythe gravity assist to go back home, it would be great if you didn't have to wait for the phase angles to all be right before you can even figure out your maneuver.

[afafsa]

I'm more interested in the ship design and colony development aspect. I have more fun designing a six launch Duna mission and setting up all the orbital trajectories than I do flying the same ascent to orbit over and over. I also don't have the same amount of gaming time I did when I was younger. I frankly don't have the patience for grinding. Give us the option, and if you don't like it, don't use it. This debate doesn't make sense to me.

[Pthigrivi]

1 hour ago, herbal space program said:

If you are stuck orbiting Tylo and waiting for your Laythe gravity assist to go back home, it would be great if you didn't have to wait for the phase angles to all be right before you can even figure out your maneuver.

THIS. So few spend time around Jool they don’t realize what a big deal this is. And maybe I mistook your meaning but if biomes still exist we absolutely need maps of them. You should have to do the work scansat style but its actually insane that you can’t view biome map overlays  in map and flight mode in KSP1, and altitude/topo and slope maps for that matter. 

[MechBFP]

22 hours ago, K^2 said:

Of course, there are also design problems that are fixable. Asymmetric thrust is a good example. It's super easy to correct for it, especially, if you allow the control system to individually control thrust of the engines. In fact, making this work and having a stock system that can provide stability is actually a pretty good argument for having an assist.

I also think there's a lot of ground for a compromise. Nobody thinks SAS is bad, even though it clearly assists in flying the craft. I would try to build on top of that and come up with something that helps like an assistant for complex craft that need it rather than a replacement for human pilot.

This right here I agree with 100%. There needs to be a middle ground between SAS and full fledged auto pilot.

[Stratennotblitz]

1 hour ago, Pthigrivi said:

THIS. So few spend time around Jool they don’t realize what a big deal this is. And maybe I mistook your meaning but if biomes still exist we absolutely need maps of them. You should have to do the work scansat style but its actually insane that you can’t view biome map overlays  in map and flight mode in KSP1, and altitude/topo and slope maps for that matter. 

absolutely!, we need altitude and biome maps, I wanna make a surface access lander with Kos in the future with those maps, the original ksp does not have them and mechjeb assumes it's ground level until it isn't per example a mountain 

so we do need slope, topographic altitude maps/biome (with ground slope in degrees), I wanna make or would like to see a navigation mod made of them, can you imagine a live cam with biome colours, velocity vectors etc 

like the nasa morpheus lander : https://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/exploration/morpheus/index.html

Edited July 31, 2021 by Stratennotblitz

[Guest]

4 hours ago, afafsa said:

I do flying the same ascent to orbit over and over.

Which is why nobody argued against the supply run system, and nobody, even the most hardcore player, would argue if you replace 20 flights of the same booster with different payloads with 5 certification flights and 18 automated ones.

There's quite the design space between "everything manual" and "everything automated" and you could put some interesting gameplay loops in there like certification flights, SpaceX like prototyping, landing hardware setup for autolanding at bases and so on.

4 hours ago, afafsa said:

Give us the option, and if you don't like it, don't use it. This debate doesn't make sense to me.

It makes sense based on what you're asking for, some people here are asking for QOL tools, and I'm all for that, some other people are asking to remove flying as one of the main design pillars of the game and I tend not to like when people ask to make flying optional in my favourite flying sim.

[Kerbal Productions]

On 7/28/2021 at 11:11 PM, Stratennotblitz said:

no normal person would want mods,

In a Discord server I am currently joining (not the /r/KerbalSpaceProgram one) has a lot of people using mods, including me.
Mods have been a great thing for me ever since I had my first mod installed on KSP.
So, modding KSP is not rare; it's very normal. And at the same time, it's great as it adds more fun to the game.