Kerbal Space Program 2: Episode 4 - Celestial Architecting

[FaceRiver]

5 hours ago, The Aziz said:

Wasn't that one of the most known complains about the first game? Planets being boring with nothing to do and nothing to see? I wouldn't want the planets in ksp2 to play the same, because there wasn't much play in the first place. Land, plant a flag, grab science, get out. The remakes encourage exploration, make you want to travel beyond the next hill to see what's there.

But about that last bit, of all things that surround you, nothing have changed in the last decade? Why is it off-putting to see progress, improvement? Even radical, but for the better? Several years ago I was very sceptic about the direction of some kinds of technology. I see now how stupid I was. Yes it was new, yes it was different, but I had no real reason to dislike it, and yet I did. Now I know to treat new things with open mind. If Minmus is no longer icy, because there's a good explanation behind it, I don't see why not. Not like it was going to affect my gameplay, and yet, with it being more scientifically accurate, some people may learn from it. I remember old video from the devs, I think one of the first, they said if the game teaches something, and encourage someone to seek for more knowledge, it's job very well done. And it's great.

If this is a common complaint its not mind, I always been able to find new things to do for each planet, thats not the same for everyone and the Kerbol planets didnt need some texture revamps. Dont get me wrong I don't reject the all changes being made I really like the new terrains of the KSP 2's planets just Minmus put me off because its drastically different from the original. I love the new experiences they're gonna offer, having Dres being a resources rich planetary body was exactly what I was hoping for and I'm glad Dres is finally getting some much needed attention. I would have preferred that the visuals of the Kerbol system remain untouched and just had the intersellar planets offer new surfaces.  Like I said my complains are inane and as long as they play the same as in the challenges they offer it doesn't matter what they look like.

6 hours ago, The Aziz said:

I remember old video from the devs, I think one of the first, they said if the game teaches something, and encourage someone to seek for more knowledge, it's job very well done. And it's great.

KSP 1 did teach us a lot about rocket science, I didn't realize how much I know it until I tried explaining it to someone else and they didn't know what are to me the very basic fundamentals. I'm glad the devs are putting a lot work in tutorials that are simple explanations. Thats something the original devs struggled to do mostly because they tried doing that far to late in the game's lifetime. I commend KSP 2 for introducing those tutorials at the very beginning and having more focus on planets is a great step up from the first game.

[Klapaucius]

This was a great video.  Thanks for the amazing content.

I probably should not do this, but I have to give vent to a pet peeve.  There seems to be a new trend in documentary that we cannot hold a static shot on an interview subject for more than 2 seconds.  What Tom Vinita says is really interesting. I want to focus  on his words or on the actual game footage. I don't want to see Tom at a distance, then slightly closer, then from the side then back to a full shot.

Likewise, why does Paige Ketchum keep jumping from a midshot to a closeup?  It is distracting.  Just let her talk for goodness' sake. 

This video is not by any means unique in this manner. I've seen if everywhere from Youtubers to even PBS, but it is trend that just needs to go. 

 

Signed: KSP-loving old coot (who used to work in documentary television and has done a bit of editing in his time).

Edited November 15, 2021 by Klapaucius

[SciMan]

You know, if they're making it so much more worth exploring on planets, hopefully they do something about making rovers actually viable. The whole problem with rovers is that they are either so slow that you lose your mind driving them from one place to the next, or they're fast enough to get to places quickly but have a high likelyhood of doing what I might as well call "catching an edge" like in downhill skiing, which ends up in a usually short tumble thru the air and very certainly a large and destructive crash.

As far as I know, there is no way in KSP 1 to make suspension geometry for a rover such that it will never flip at high speeds. Toe in, toe out, positive or negative camber, positive or negative caster, even making the center of gravity of the rover be as low as possible, none of it makes a bit of difference. As an auto mechanic who knows just how nice it is to have a vehicle that has a proper suspension alignment, and a player of racing games (where your suspension angles can make the difference between 1st and last place), this frustrates me IMMENSELY, because the tools that I KNOW SHOULD WORK end up making ZERO difference to the final results.
What I'm reduced to is using the smallest, slowest wheels, and building a roll-cage of girders (even over the solar panels, tho I know what that does) and hope that it survives the tumbles and is able to get itself back on its feet.

Basically, the speed is what we need because we have places to be, but we need the ability to gain stability to make that speed achievable!
Just putting RCS and/or a lot of reaction wheels on the craft isn't what I mean. That only helps after you're ALREADY flipped over in the air hurtling towards the ground.
What I'm talking about is making it so the dang thing doesn't flip at the slightest provocation in the first place, and no reducing wheel friction isn't the solution there, because then you can't even climb the slightest bit of a hill.

What this has made me do in KSP 1 is give up entirely on rovers, and instead use a method that KSP DOES simulate well, which is suborbital hops between the various biomes of a planet. That works GREAT!

The only problem is that we have all these nice rover wheels that are essentially only good for moving maybe 1 kilometer in any direction before disaster strikes, and it's usually on the order of 50 kilometers to the next biome unless you're laser-precise with your landings (and good luck doing that on any body with an atmosphere!).

For a similar reason, I've entirely given up on spaceplanes. What good do the wings do you when landing the thing is basically taking a 50/50 if the thing is gonna float half the runway, hit the ground too hard, or you input the tiniest tap on the steering controls and oh wait yep it flipped over and exploded?

[Klapaucius]

25 minutes ago, SciMan said:

As far as I know, there is no way in KSP 1 to make suspension geometry for a rover such that it will never flip at high speeds. Toe in, toe out, positive or negative camber, positive or negative caster, even making the center of gravity of the rover be as low as possible, none of it makes a bit of difference. As an auto mechanic who knows just how nice it is to have a vehicle that has a proper suspension alignment, and a player of racing games (where your suspension angles can make the difference between 1st and last place), this frustrates me IMMENSELY, because the tools that I KNOW SHOULD WORK end up making ZERO difference to the final results.

The problem is not so much the suspension as it is that (at least on a PC keyboard)  turning the wheels is an all or nothing proposition.  Any real car will flip if doing fifty mph with grippy tires if you turn the wheel quickly all the way to lock.  This is also compounded if you forget to disable steering for the rear set of wheels.  My most successful rover uses thrust and landing gear wheels. I can lower the friction control without losing uphill traction.  The downside is fuel, of course.

 

All that said, I think on low-gravity bodies it will always be a challenge.  My other solution is to stick some thrusters to the top of the vehicle to generate downforce.

Here is the example from an older challenge. The rover bit starts around 4 minutes.

Spoiler

 

 

[Pthigrivi]

On 11/15/2021 at 1:57 PM, Klapaucius said:

This was a great video.  Thanks for the amazing content.

I probably should not do this, but I have to give vent to a pet peeve.  There seems to be a new trend in documentary that we cannot hold a static shot on an interview subject for more than 2 seconds.  What Tom Vinita says is really interesting. I want to focus  on his words or on the actual game footage. I don't want to see Tom at a distance, then slightly closer, then from the side then back to a full shot.

Likewise, why does Paige Ketchum keep jumping from a midshot to a closeup?  It is distracting.  Just let her talk for goodness' sake. 

This video is not by any means unique in this manner. I've seen if everywhere from Youtubers to even PBS, but it is trend that just needs to go. 

 

Signed: KSP-loving old coot (who used to work in documentary television and has done a bit of editing in his time).

Im not a film major but my guess is it creates depth. The same technique is used in impressionist and cubist painting, collaging different vantage points and perspectives to give a less literal but more embodied, fulsome sense of the subject. 

[TheSameKerbal77]

On 11/9/2021 at 12:44 PM, Nirgal said:

And I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for you kids and your logical counter arguments

I nearly burst out laughing!

Glad to see this community has humor!

[QPC]

I think landing On Eve needs to be less difficult, oh, I don't want to talk about this (the last time I landed Eve, I blew up the ship countless times, and finally used debug to get past it)! Lower his atmospheric heat, and reduce his gravity, and let the little green man's single-man jetpack into orbit every time he takes off into orbit.

Also, by replacing JooI's forced detonator layer, we can increase Jool's atmosphere and replace the forced detonator layer with a land surface (similar to Jupiter's core, but very hot and stressful). It would be nice to add a little more terrain to the planet.

In addition, add more point aircraft parts, the current version of KSP parts are not enough for me to persecute the little green man (don't look at this sentence, cross it out!) Oh, and it should be the aircraft's components, hoping to add the upper crank engine and the Orion projectile engine.

Furthermore, with more planets and moons, we want to see more, novel planets, and can we add more galaxies? A Kerbol system alone seems a little out of the right. Time accelerates to increase the number of points, I went to Eello once, drove to the maximum also have to wait five minutes ten minutes. Add more real-world rocket parts and make the physics engine more realistic.

[RealKerbal3x]

4 hours ago, QPC said:

I think landing On Eve needs to be less difficult, oh, I don't want to talk about this (the last time I landed Eve, I blew up the ship countless times, and finally used debug to get past it)! Lower his atmospheric heat, and reduce his gravity, and let the little green man's single-man jetpack into orbit every time he takes off into orbit.

Eve is intended to be a challenging, end-game destination. It's possible to land there and return, but your flying and craft-building skills need to be at a reasonably high level to succeed. Making the atmosphere thinner and the gravity lower would defeat the purpose of that.

4 hours ago, QPC said:

Also, by replacing JooI's forced detonator layer, we can increase Jool's atmosphere and replace the forced detonator layer with a land surface (similar to Jupiter's core, but very hot and stressful). It would be nice to add a little more terrain to the planet.

This might be interesting, but I think you underestimate the conditions at the core of a gas giant like Jupiter. The pressures and temperatures are so great that they can form diamonds and make hydrogen act like molten metal.

Under those conditions, no current or near-future craft could survive - the Galileo spacecraft sent an entry probe into Jupiter and it didn't make it nearly that far down before being crushed and/or melted.

4 hours ago, QPC said:

Furthermore, with more planets and moons, we want to see more, novel planets, and can we add more galaxies?

We're going to see multiple new star systems, each with interesting planets, but I think an entire galaxy composed of billions of stars might be a bit out of scope. Travelling at relativistic sub-light speeds, you would never be able to explore even a tiny fraction of a galaxy.

[ElJugador]

On 11/13/2021 at 3:00 PM, FaceRiver said:

Titian's oceans are frozen on the surface and are made of up of salt and ammonia. Laythe's oceans are pretty similar to Kerbin weather that's because of greenhouse gases is really up in the air. Eve's oceans could be very well be mercury or anything really. My point being that they don't have to be based in reality.

Just for clarification, this is incorrect. Titan's lakes are made up of methane and are liquid at the surface.

[SSTO Crasher]

On 12/10/2021 at 9:54 PM, ElJugador said:

Eve's oceans could be very well be mercury or anything really

According to Brad Wistance their made of Explodium™

[Clancythecat]

On 10/29/2021 at 9:50 AM, The Doodling Astronaut said:

So it’s interesting that we have seen three planets from the Debdeb system (Charr, Gurdamma, and Glumo)

Makes me wonder if it will be one of the first systems nearby, and I wonder how last names will work here (will it be Jeb Kerman still or Jeb Debdebman)

I also think that the Debdeb system will be the first one outside Kerbol, given how much we know about it.

[Admiral Fluffy]

39 minutes ago, Clancythecat said:

I also think that the Debdeb system will be the first one outside Kerbol, given how much we know about it.

Seems likely

[mmamh2008]

On 10/30/2021 at 4:42 AM, Minmus Taster said:

It was leaked on discord yesterday

So , when is the pre-release ? Does anybody know ?

[AtomicTech]

No, we don't 

[Meb Kat]

On 10/30/2021 at 5:16 PM, Lach_01298 said:

The point is that it is a myth the kerbals believed before they went there. It has a similarity to people thinking the moon was made of cheese, but in the kerbals case they took their myth very seriously.

It adds character to the kerbals more than it does to minmus.

Another common belived myth was that mars was home to a dying civilization, like the moon being made of cheese however, it's just a bunch of bologna... or is it?

[poopslayer78]

On 10/29/2021 at 12:19 PM, Admiral Fluffy said:

Jeb Charman?

Sifu Hotman?

[poopslayer78]

On 11/3/2021 at 12:59 PM, SciMan said:

Additionally, I hope that the stars that the other planetary systems are orbiting are not the same "generic Sun type" aka G type star that Kerbol appears to be.

The last video in Dev Diary #12 shows a red star, so this seems to strongly indicate that there will be a variety of star types in KSP2.

I can't describe how excited I was to see that red star!

[Minmus Taster]

2 hours ago, poopslayer78 said:

The last video in Dev Diary #12 shows a red star, so this seems to strongly indicate that there will be a variety of star types in KSP2.

I can't describe how excited I was to see that red star!

[Minmus Taster]

On 12/17/2021 at 9:24 PM, Clancythecat said:

I also think that the Debdeb system will be the first one outside Kerbol, given how much we know about it.

Considering Debdeb itself looks like a red dwarf so it could be a proxima-centauri stand in.