Is there any known Recommended requirements for KSP2?

[Kapitalizing Every Word]

So currently I have a VERY bad pc (a6 7480 CPU RX 550 2GB GPU and 8GB DDR3 RAM) and I know for sure it will not be able to run KSP2. So I want to know if there is any recommended requirements so I can plan my upgrade or at least don't get hyped for playing KSP2 knowing that I will never be able to afford a good enough PC

[K^2]

We don't really have anything concrete, but I would aim for something circa capabilities of PS5 for CPU min spec. That would mean AMD Ryzen 7 3700X or Intel i7 10700K. There is every reason to expect that while KSP2 will be much better optimized, it will still, just like KSP, be very CPU hungry. So while I fully expect Intercept to make every effort to make the game run well on PS5, I have serious concerns about anything at lower spec. So I think that's the low bar to aim for and, if you can afford to, I would aim higher.

On the graphics side, it's a lot harder to say. The GPU on PS5 is very close to AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT, but you will probably be able to scrape by on way lower spec graphics. You will definitely want something capable of DirectX 12, but something like GTX 1060 might actually be adequate, depending on how quality settings are set up.

However, unless you absolutely must spend money on a new PC right now, I would wait. Both because we'll probably get better indication of what we need and because there's a huge shortage of anything silicon right now, so prices on CPUs and GPUs are kind of outrageous. It looks like it should start improving in the next few months, however, so probably hold off a bit.

[Kapitalizing Every Word]

Thanks! 

8 hours ago, K^2 said:

AMD Ryzen 7 3700X or Intel i7 10700K

Will it be THAT high? I thought that if they try to optimize it it will probablly need a 1rst or second gen ryzen otherwise the game will be nearly impossible to play for a lot of people  due to third gen ryzen CPUs (and 10th gen intel too) being expensive I think that developers wont aim for a processor that good to be equal to the PS5 due to it also being very difficult to buy .

 

8 hours ago, K^2 said:

very close to AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT, but you will probably be able to scrape by on way lower spec graphics. You will definitely want something capable of DirectX 12, but something like GTX 1060 might actually be adequate, depending on how quality settings are set up.

These sounds pretty reasonable though with the game's incredible graphics update we might have to need a 1070 or maybe a little better but I think it is possibly a very accurate prediction.
 

 

8 hours ago, K^2 said:

However, unless you absolutely must spend money on a new PC right now, I would wait. Both because we'll probably get better indication of what we need and because there's a huge shortage of anything silicon right now, so prices on CPUs and GPUs are kind of outrageous. It looks like it should start improving in the next few months, however, so probably hold off a bit.

Yes and... no
I live in a country that has its own economic crisis going on so while I know I should wait for the prices to go down Internationaly with the chip shortage ending the prices will go a lot higher here (they are already a lot higher than its original ones with a RTX 3090 costing 5000 USD) homever I will wait and see if the prices go down or if the recommended specs are not tht high so I can afford a new but not that new PC for KSP2

[The Aziz]

10 hours ago, K^2 said:

So while I fully expect Intercept to make every effort to make the game run well on PS5

Friendly reminder that they want to release it on PS4 too.

But while PS4 is nearly a decade-old tech, I wouldn't trust similar tech in a desktop. I expect the game to run on something similar to my old rig: at least 4 core 3.something CPU, 16G of memory and relatively decent GPU, like GTX 1060 or equivalent.

[Dr. Kerbal]

5 hours ago, The Aziz said:

Friendly reminder that they want to release it on PS4 too.

But while PS4 is nearly a decade-old tech, I wouldn't trust similar tech in a desktop. I expect the game to run on something similar to my old rig: at least 4 core 3.something CPU, 16G of memory and relatively decent GPU, like GTX 1060 or equivalent.

My old computer laptop Windows 7 is old tech. I would recommend not using that. 

[K^2]

5 hours ago, The Aziz said:

Friendly reminder that they want to release it on PS4 too.

I honestly don't know if it's relevant anymore. I know the site says it's coming to PC, PS4, and XBox One, but they haven't even updated it to include PS5 and Series S/X. This game is coming out mid to late '22 now, not early '20.

Some of the terrain tech they've been showing off is pretty expensive. Not a huge factor for PS5, but I've recently worked on standing up something similar and we have been testing it on PS4. Which ran alright, I guess. But it was starting to eat into frame rate and this was on a custom in-house engine at a AAA studio, so it was actually pretty well optimized to do this work. KSP2 is supposed to run this with Unity. Even with as much shifted over to compute as possible, CPU is going to struggle a lot.

Then we should talk about the core game. Yeah, they're optimizing it. But they are also adding new features. Continuous collisions are new. Time warp will have to support a lot more physics if we're going interstellar. Colonies. None of it has to get particularly expensive, but this is a small team making a big game. Not everything's getting optimized out of the box.

I don't think PS4 being a target is realistic. PS4/XB1 are either getting dropped or back-ported with a lot of features cut. At which point, the development platform for KSP2 is going to be PS5. That's going to be the benchmark for "good enough" performance in a lot of QA. Which means, maybe they can optimized it a lot better, but there is high risk they don't, and PS5 CPU will represent a realistic minimum spec.

That's not a guarantee, and it's entirely possible the min spec will end up lower, but if you want to forecast and buy something now that will be nearly guaranteed to run KSP2 well, that's your target.

7 hours ago, Kapitalizing Every Word said:

Will it be THAT high?

So as I explain above, it's not a guarantee. It might end up a lot lower, but PS5 will very likely be their benchmark, which means that optimizing the game for lower spec CPU is not going to be nearly as high of a priority.

And it's not that wild on the CPU side. Prices on 3rd gen Ryzen and 10th gen iCore have come down significantly. Either of the CPUs I've listed is ~$300 in US right now and sales are frequent. Which is still expensive for a CPU, but it might not even end up the most expensive part of your build. The GPU you want to pair with this will start in $300 - $400 range and goes up from there. If you want to play other modern games, probably way up.

This is an interesting opportunity to consider on-board graphics, though. AMD's APU design is actually quite beefy, and if you can find a way to purchase something like Ryzen 7 4700GE, that can almost certainly cut the mustard on graphics for KSP2. It's a lot weaker than PS5 GPU and is Vega 8 based, rather than RDNA2, but graphics are way easier to make tunable, and I'm fairly confident that Intercept will try to target lower tier GPUs. Now, the catch is that Ryzen APUs are an OEM part, meaning you are only supposed to be able to get them with pre-builds. There are some on the market that are reasonably priced, though, if that's what you're going for. Alternatively, I know people have been able to buy CPUs and boards meant for OEM at wholesale prices from less reputable sources. It's a risk, but if you're familiar with these markets, it might be a great option.

I almost want to recommend the Intel's i10700K for the same reason, but I'm not nearly as confident that the onboard graphics there will do the job. It's also going to be inadequate in a lot of other games, so it's a very shaky proposition. I still like it as a gaming CPU, but running it without a dedicated graphics card is very meh. A 12th gen iCore CPU with integrated might actually be perfectly fine for playing KSP2, if rumors are to be trusted, but then we're back to the problem of trying to buy the latest and greatest, in this case, something that hasn't even been quite released yet. So you probably won't be able to save anything overall with this setup, sadly.

And yeah, it might go way down from this target. I just don't think even anybody at Intercept knows at this point where it's going to land, so if you buy a CPU now and you go well bellow these specs, you're taking on a significant risk that you'll have to upgrade for KSP2.

[J.Random]

On 8/3/2021 at 10:48 PM, K^2 said:

I honestly don't know if it's relevant anymore.

It depends on whether memory supply issues are going to be fixed or not in time for release. PS4 may still be a more prevalent platform than PS5 this time next year for all we know.

[Souptime]

I cant wait to turn my laptop into an IED after downloading KSP 2!

[K^2]

8 hours ago, J.Random said:

It depends on whether memory supply issues are going to be fixed or not in time for release. PS4 may still be a more prevalent platform than PS5 this time next year for all we know.

So this is a tricky one. On one hand, yeah, PS4 could still be quite dominant - and, I mean, even 20% of the market isn't something you want to just drop, and that's optimistic for gen 9 - but it's also something that would have been forecasted from about a year back, and I don't think anybody expected launch of gen 9 to be this rocky, despite problems. So it's likely that either PS5 or XBSX is the main target platform - the one most of the development is being done daily. This means that getting everything to run smoothly on PS4 is still going to be a last-minute hassle (it really shouldn't be, but that's how these things go) and if the game still runs poorly on PS4 a few months from release, it might get delayed or canceled. Publishers right now are terrified of pulling another Cyberpunk. So they might just take that loss rather than risk it. Especially, if there will be additional costs and/or delays associated with getting the game onto PS4.

To be clear, a lot of this logic also goes for XBox, so PS4/XB1 are a packaged deal here. XBSS is an interesting special case, but it's only slightly underclocked compared to SX and GPU shouldn't be the bottleneck. This means your best choice for target platform is still PS5, because if your game runs well on Windows PC and on PS5, it's almost a guarantee that it does well on XBSX. You get CPU coverage from PS5 and API/shader coverage from Windows, so there really shouldn't be any surprises other than some mislabeled UI. But some of this is hindsight. It's entirely possible that XBSX is the main target for console development in the studio.

Oh, and you might ask, "Why doesn't everyone just run every platform?" That's actually a lot of overhead. You need one platform to be the go-to for the studio so that it always has a build in good shape. If you have to do this for every platform, that's a lot of effort wasted on fixing issues that aren't actually going to impact the shipped game. One approach I've seen that works well on larger projects is if you have multiple studios, they work on different platforms. But for something of Intercept's size, the most sensible thing is to pick one of the consoles and use it as primary.

[MKI]

On 8/2/2021 at 4:08 PM, Kapitalizing Every Word said:

So currently I have a VERY bad pc (a6 7480 CPU RX 550 2GB GPU and 8GB DDR3 RAM) and I know for sure it will not be able to run KSP2. So I want to know if there is any recommended requirements so I can plan my upgrade or at least don't get hyped for playing KSP2 knowing that I will never be able to afford a good enough PC

My guess is you'll be able to play the game. But I don't think it will be a great experience. 

 

I'm sure KSP 2 will be CPU heavy no matter what, which means the game will run slow regardless of what you do settings wise. I'd use KSP 1 as a gauge for what KSP 2 would run like, with the high likely hood it will run slightly worse due to more expansive gameplay.  Its also possible performance in this area is improved due to increased optimization, and best case you'll be able to fly around blobs to other round blobs. I'm not sure if they will focus on optimization around the orbital mechanics part however, so the game might just play incredible slow

I was able to play KSP 1 on a weak laptop, but the performance was utterly terrible, where gameplay was essentially 1/3rd the normal speed regardless of how big my craft was. This was back in the early days of me playing KSP, and performance never changed much when it came to running the game on my weaker systems.

 

KSP is built on Unity, so cross platform deployments should made easier by the engines to the point its technically possible for KSP to be deployed to mobile. But I'm not sure if the physics calculation can be optimized much further to support such weak systems, so it all goes back to physics and your CPU performance. 

[Kapitalizing Every Word]

13 hours ago, MKI said:

My guess is you'll be able to play the game. But I don't think it will be a great experience. 

Yes I know that but I didn't paln to play with that specs but instead getting an upgrade (a ryzen CPU) the GPU will not be priority since maybe if I lower the graphics settings I will be able to play (I also play in 720p) And even if it's the minimum normaly I think 8 GB ram will do 
... but this is all especulation so I will wait for official recommended specs

[shdwlrd]

@Kapitalizing Every Word instead of stressing about what you should buy now. Wait and save money until a release date is announced. By then the minimum specs should be known and you may be surprised by the options available then.

Edited August 6, 2021 by shdwlrd
Typo

[Kapitalizing Every Word]

@shdwlrd Yes Im not planning to buy now 

[cubinator]

You should definitely have a computer

[PlutoISaPlanet]

Im just hoping it is optimized for console. I do not want another Cyberpunk on my hands!

[Kapitalizing Every Word]

I've been thinking and maybe they will aim for something that is near the most common hardware on steam (though this is especulation) but In my opinion if they aim for what @K^2 described it will happen something similar to Windows 11 where just a few persons are able to upgrade

[Dfthu]

My rig has a 1660 super, Ryzen 5 2400G, and 16GB of ram. I can can play pretty much every game I throw at it, besides MSFS 2020. So i'd imagine something around my system should good enough.

[K^2]

2 hours ago, Dfthu said:

My rig has a 1660 super, Ryzen 5 2400G, and 16GB of ram. I can can play pretty much every game I throw at it, besides MSFS 2020. So i'd imagine something around my system should good enough.

The problem with this kind of analysis is that most games on PC are GPU-bound. So having a 1660 Super is usually going to be the performance bottleneck on that build, and that's a pretty decent graphics card. So yeah, most games should run fine, and in terms of graphics, there's absolutely no reason I can see why KSP2 should struggle with it. You might have to set vegetation density one tick bellow maximum, if that's a tunable setting, or something like that.

However, KSP was a very CPU-hungry game. KSP2 is expected to be much better optimized, but also has a lot more to do on CPU, so it's still almost certainly going to be limited by CPU performance for most people. And this is where things get complicated.

Like I said earlier, the minimum spec I'm confident in having decent performance is PS5. Because if they can't get it to run well on PS5, they might as well just quit now. On paper, PS5 CPU has more than twice the performance of Ryzen 5 2400G. However, most of that comes from extra cores. In single thread performance, the difference is about 20%-25%. Which is still considerable, but if KSP2 is still mostly bound by single-thread performance and Intercept manages to optimize that thread's performance a little better than PS5 would need, then the 2400G might do just fine.

tl;dr: That setup might be entirely fine for KSP2 - there is no glaring problem that would make me heavily doubt it - but there is no way to be certain at this point.

Good news, though, is that even if your CPU can't handle KSP2, that's the only part that needs an upgrade. You currently have an AM4 socket motherboard, and that will easily take the aforementioned Ryzen 5 3600X, for example, or even something a bit more modern. Obviously, no need to rush for anything, and the best strategy is to just wait until the specs are announced and then consider if it's something worth upgrading over.

[Dfthu]

12 minutes ago, K^2 said:

The problem with this kind of analysis is that most games on PC are GPU-bound. So having a 1660 Super is usually going to be the performance bottleneck on that build, and that's a pretty decent graphics card. So yeah, most games should run fine, and in terms of graphics, there's absolutely no reason I can see why KSP2 should struggle with it. You might have to set vegetation density one tick bellow maximum, if that's a tunable setting, or something like that.

However, KSP was a very CPU-hungry game. KSP2 is expected to be much better optimized, but also has a lot more to do on CPU, so it's still almost certainly going to be limited by CPU performance for most people. And this is where things get complicated.

Like I said earlier, the minimum spec I'm confident in having decent performance is PS5. Because if they can't get it to run well on PS5, they might as well just quit now. On paper, PS5 CPU has more than twice the performance of Ryzen 5 2400G. However, most of that comes from extra cores. In single thread performance, the difference is about 20%-25%. Which is still considerable, but if KSP2 is still mostly bound by single-thread performance and Intercept manages to optimize that thread's performance a little better than PS5 would need, then the 2400G might do just fine.

tl;dr: That setup might be entirely fine for KSP2 - there is no glaring problem that would make me heavily doubt it - but there is no way to be certain at this point.

Good news, though, is that even if your CPU can't handle KSP2, that's the only part that needs an upgrade. You currently have an AM4 socket motherboard, and that will easily take the aforementioned Ryzen 5 3600X, for example, or even something a bit more modern. Obviously, no need to rush for anything, and the best strategy is to just wait until the specs are announced and then consider if it's something worth upgrading over.

The only thing about my PC that it was a pre built. So I got a pretty low poor motherboard as result ( ASRock > A320M-HDV )  I've already upgraded most parts of the PC already and I thinking the next time I upgrade it would  just be best to start new and build my own. Plus the whole shortage isn't helping anything either. If things get a bit choppy in KSP 2 it'll be fine as long its no worse than KSP 1.