Big list of KSP2 suggestions

[Hweiii]

Improvements to the presentation
In KSP 1 aside from the initial launch and the landing you spend most of your time flying the craft in map view. It would be a shame for the developers to
beautifully shade, light and texture the spacecraft parts just so we can spend 90% of our time not looking at them. This is a difficult problem to solve as it objectively
is easier to fly the craft in map view. Maybe you could add a small orthographic top down view of your orbit around the planet, you could use this for simple stuff such as circularizing
your orbit, and you can use the map view for more complex maneuvers such as rendezvous. Although it would be ideal to only setup maneuvers in map view, but to perform them while looking at the ship.
It would also be cool to have a cinematic camera that automatically chooses good camera angles so that both your spacecraft and the planetary body you're orbiting are in view.

Time Warp improvements
KSP 1 time warp is completely linear, speed in eccentric orbits isn't. This can be a problem as when you are approaching periapsis your spacecraft speeds up rapidly and that has
made me miss my maneuver so many times. The fix for this would be to make the timewarp non linear. So when you are approaching periapsis timewarp would automatically slow down.
And it would speed up as you're approaching apoapsis. Also general improvements to timewarp (like fixing warp to node, or automatically slowing when getting close to a node etc.) would be good.

RCS and reaction wheel balancing
Let's be honest, reaction wheels are very overpowered and not very fun, and RCS is pretty much useless unless you're just learning docking. It's sad to see RCS, which is an integral
part of most real life spacecraft being overshadowed by reaction wheels (which have a much more niche use case). RCS in KSP1 is 100% active continuously throughout rotation
(even though its much more efficient to do a small burn to start the rotation and then another equal one to stop the rotation), this leads
to frequent overshooting and a lot of wasted monopropellant (which takes a lot of space and is generally heavier than using reaction wheels), making RCS and SAS work together more elegantly
would solve this problem. Reaction wheels should only be used on small space probes, and RCS should be used for everything else. At the start of the game you should be
working with small unmanned probes which would use reaction wheels, then you could slowly introduce RCS, flattening the learning curve. In conclusion RCS is really cool and I would
much rather have cool jets of compressed gas be rotating my ship than an invisible arbitrary force. RCS add a lot of interesting depth to ship design which should not
be ignored.

Probes before manned
To be honest, the only reason I wanted probes before manned was because it's more realistic. But after thinking a lot I found a great gameplay reason to implement this type of progression.
People mostly stop playing KSP1 because they get stuck somewhere, I think that is because the leaps from one goal to another can be very jarring (especially in the early game).
Unlocking probes first would be a great way not only to add realism, but to also flatten the learning curve. Instead of after achieving orbit, you immediately try landing and returning from the Mun.
What if your next mission would be just to set a satellite in orbit around the Mun, without the need to return it. This goal seems much easier and
only teaches one simple concept, while going from barely knowing how to orbit to landing on the Mun and returning to Kerbin intact seems like an impossible challenge.
Constantly having challenges that are difficult but doable would make newer players want to continue playing.
Although Kerbals are central part of KSP, they can still be in the picture when piloting probes. Imagine while you're piloting a probe instead of normal kerbal portraits,
there would be a mission control portrait and the Kerbals would react to whatever is happening to the probe,
 they could be screaming as the probe is about to crash,or they could be celebrating a successful landing.

Some minor things
Ballistic entry would be awesome since, if you nerf reaction wheels, the commands pods falling through the atmosphere would only be able to turn using aerodynamics,
so having a ballistic reentry profile would only make sense.
I find it much more fun to dock with a docking camera than just blindly, any way to measure movement relative to another ship would be great.
Non linear thrust would mean that you wouldn't have to mess with the engine thrust menus just to accelerate less than like a 100Gs.
Engines should also not accelerate to 100% immediately, they should take some time to spool.
Engine gimbal should be smooth, would make rockets more stable, and of course, make the game more realistic.

And last of all, just take your time, I have a lot of faith in you guys and I wish you godspeed in the development process.
 I hope that you guys can make the best version of KSP2 possible. Cheers!

 

Edited June 5, 2022 by Hweiii

[asap1]

sound great although personally I would rather have a slider for reaction wheel effectiveness as I often have trouble making craft controllable 

[Magzimum]

Improvements to the presentation

I actually always play with KER installed, which gives a lot of metrics of your craft while looking at the craft. I only use the map view when fiddling with maneuver nodes. So, not really sharing your point of view (pun intended?).

RCS and reaction wheel balancing

I share the idea by @asap1 to put a slider onto that idea, allowing us to tweak it. Also, default should (IMHO) be the current setting, which I prefer.

Real spacecraft carefully save their precious RCS fuel. They only turn if absolutely necessary, and a lot of thought goes into minimizing the maneuvers in space. Also, because it's the real stuff, they can make tiny corrections and hardly ever overshoot a maneuver. They use computers to carefully measure their rotations (i.e. the ISS rotates once per orbit, so that the same side always faces Earth), which we cannot ever hope to achieve with the manual input.

In contrast, in gameplay, I will happily warp forward which freezes the spacecraft in a position (stopping any careful rotation). I also have thick sausage fingers so if I have to rotate the craft I either press the wrong button or press it too long. And if I want to do some space walks or docking maneuvers, I will rotate the (both) craft(s) to use the sunlight to see what I am doing.

In summary, I am very wasteful with RCS fuel compared to the real deal. And that gets compensated by overpowered reaction wheels.

Probes before manned

I think that a slight adjustment in the abilities of the probes is all that is needed. The Stayputnik is really useless. Some SAS (stability assist) in the early game is simply necessary if you want to go anywhere. I don't know how early real spacecraft stabilized in flight (rotate along axis?), but we need a little help.

[Hweiii]

On 9/8/2021 at 5:01 PM, asap1 said:

sound great although personally I would rather have a slider for reaction wheel effectiveness as I often have trouble making craft controllable 

 

7 hours ago, Magzimum said:

Improvements to the presentation

I actually always play with KER installed, which gives a lot of metrics of your craft while looking at the craft. I only use the map view when fiddling with maneuver nodes. So, not really sharing your point of view (pun intended?).

RCS and reaction wheel balancing

I share the idea by @asap1 to put a slider onto that idea, allowing us to tweak it. Also, default should (IMHO) be the current setting, which I prefer.

Real spacecraft carefully save their precious RCS fuel. They only turn if absolutely necessary, and a lot of thought goes into minimizing the maneuvers in space. Also, because it's the real stuff, they can make tiny corrections and hardly ever overshoot a maneuver. They use computers to carefully measure their rotations (i.e. the ISS rotates once per orbit, so that the same side always faces Earth), which we cannot ever hope to achieve with the manual input.

In contrast, in gameplay, I will happily warp forward which freezes the spacecraft in a position (stopping any careful rotation). I also have thick sausage fingers so if I have to rotate the craft I either press the wrong button or press it too long. And if I want to do some space walks or docking maneuvers, I will rotate the (both) craft(s) to use the sunlight to see what I am doing.

In summary, I am very wasteful with RCS fuel compared to the real deal. And that gets compensated by overpowered reaction wheels.

Probes before manned

I think that a slight adjustment in the abilities of the probes is all that is needed. The Stayputnik is really useless. Some SAS (stability assist) in the early game is simply necessary if you want to go anywhere. I don't know how early real spacecraft stabilized in flight (rotate along axis?), but we need a little help.

Having a "slider" for every single feature in the game would be terrible. It forces the player to design the game instead of the developers. Of course, if the player wants to, they can have control over everything, but changing these things might change the experience for the worse, leave the balancing to the developers. Also, when people discuss KSP2 they seem to discuss it in the context of KSP in the sense that they don't image KSP2 as a whole new game but instead as a KSP1 but with new features. When I said probes before manned you imagined just putting the KSP1 probes at the start of the tech tree, in reality, it's just not practical to think with KSP1 as a reference, I would imaging that all of the probes will be significantly rehauled as would be pretty much every other aspect of the game. Another example, you said that you will happily warp forward and freeze the ship which has been confirmed to no longer be possible because there is persistant rotation in KSP2.  Don't think of KSP2 as KSP1 with added things, the devs have the freedom to make any game they want, and I really hope that that game is going to fix the insanely huge amount of problems that KSP1 had, they have a clean slate, an incredible opportunity, and I really, really hope that they don't let it slip out of their hands because of some people who can't think outside of the box. KSP1, although a mess of a game from a technical standpoint, has left a great foundation for the devs to build upon, and it should just stay that, a foundation, not a 1/1 reference, but an excellent foundation.

[asap1]

ok good point

[qwery123]

On 9/8/2021 at 5:01 PM, asap1 said:

sound great although personally I would rather have a slider for reaction wheel effectiveness as I often have trouble making craft controllable 

In KSP1 there is a slider called "Wheel Authority". I think it will be in KSP2 too. Also, i often use SAS (especially directional in that case) if it is difficult to control it manually.

[Admiral Fluffy]

On 9/10/2021 at 2:29 AM, Magzimum said:

map view when fiddling with maneuver nodes

I agree. I use the map view with maneuver nodes, and during long transfers. Also, given that the ship keeps its rotation while in warp, I think you would also be able to use the RW in warp, with which would mitigate that issue entirely.

[AtomicTech]

Gimbal that doesn't have the engines flicking around, maybe slower.

Spoiler

I'd compare this to the early fins that flicked into position but later moved at a reasonable rate.

Spoiler

Also, does anyone know a KSP 1 Mod that I can use for this?

 

[salaminho]

On 9/7/2021 at 11:02 AM, Hweiii said:

RCS and reaction wheel balancing

Reaction wheels in real life gets saturated when they spin too fast and have an external force applied to the craft. RW in ksp 1 are overpowered not because the amount of torque they can apply, but because they don’t get saturated. So you can use RW everywhere you want, some applications would be impossible in real life, like attitude control in aircraft. The slider to nerf RW already exists, it’s called “wheel authority”, a good way to balance RW and RCS, without nerfing RW, would be adding saturation to each of three axes of rotation of RW’s. 

[Zeldagamer809]

On 9/7/2021 at 7:02 AM, Hweiii said:

...Although Kerbals are central part of KSP, they can still be in the picture when piloting probes. Imagine while you're piloting a probe instead of normal kerbal portraits,
there would be a mission control portrait and the Kerbals would react to whatever is happening to the probe,
 they could be screaming as the probe is about to crash,or they could be celebrating a successful landing...

 

I agree. That would be awesome.

[Vl3d]

Probes before manned is something I like very much. And I would also love to have reusable / recoverable stages (I want to fly the booster back to base and also get my deep space probe to orbit).