What are some topics you'd hope to see get fleshed out in future Dev Diaries/Show and Tells and why?

[mcwaffles2003]

Pretty simple, title says it all. Just curious, at this stage of development and info reveal, what aspects of the game do forum members hope to see information fleshed out for?

For me, the main things I'm hoping to see get fleshed out would be:

• Multiplayer -We have yet to see anything here except being told it will exist and is so fun nate hasn't laughed that hard before.
• Procedural wings - We found out they exist and were able to gather some info about them from the few seconds clip they were featured in, but they seem like an interesting topic with many variables.
• Resource harvesting and utilizing infrastructure - We've all see the harvesting vehicles driving Martian-esque terrain, the crane attached to the colony with what looks like transportation crates below, the Xenon plants where some will be manufactured... Just would like to know what the plan is on how it will all fit together.
• Mission planning - What do the interfaces look like that we will be interacting with and how will mission planning work/be presented to us.
• Planet discovery - Nate agreed in a post a while back that planets would have to be discovered in some form along the way to reveal aspects about them. I'd just like to know more about the mechanics around this mechanism.

Edited May 21, 2022 by mcwaffles2003

[Rutabaga22]

Multiplayer 1000% but also I want more on colonies

 

[WelshSteW]

 

The new career mode they've come up with (adventure mode I think?).

 

How will it work? Will it be contract / milestone driven? Will it be story driven?...

 

[KSPLuster]

The IVA views of some of the parts would be interesting

[joratto]

I think at one point Nate said the three pillars of this game were interstellar, colony building, and multiplayer. We’ve heard a decent-ish amount about interstellar, very little about colony building, and basically nothing about multiplayer.

[SciMan]

I just want an overview of the wide variety of new parts, and maybe a very short (under 30s, heck maybe even under 15s) rundown of what exactly the "special" parts do (by category to make things easier, and to maybe keep some details hidden).

The idea is to be able to show off a lot of nice part models all at once, but not reveal too much all at once so that the player still has some things to discover when the first launch the game (but the look of some parts should probably give away what they do, that's just good design, and it happens IRL too).

So for instance they'd show off the new fuel tanks (including possibly new textures on "old" fuel tanks from KSP 1 that make them look better), and maybe go into detail on if and when you can choose what fuels go in them, then they'd move on to structural parts, electrical parts, etc.

So yes, we'd finally get a good look at the orbital vessel habitation parts that were so sorely lacking in the most recent video (an interstellar ship that doesn't have a payload (aka obviously lacks a habitation section) is IMO not very interesting), but we'd notably NOT get any details on what the part-specific advantages and disadvantages are or are not, if there even are any (for instance there better be a good reason for a centrifuge part to exist if it is in the game, like "crew's happiness decreases the longer they spend in zero-g or microgravity habitats").

I would like to see it broken up into the following categories, with a category simply dropped if it doesn't contain any parts:

• Habitation (for spacecraft, not for colony modules)
• Colonization (subcategories: habitation (both orbital and surface), power generation (including reactors of hopefully at least a few kinds), life support (if needed), ISRU conversion plants (with no description of what each one does, maybe we'll be able to piece it together by what they look like), resource storage (because that's probably going to need to be a thing), "landing pad, runway, and road segments" (all as one category, but separated from each other visually so you can actually tell that they're distinct pieces you can put together however you want), and there's probably more that I'm not thinking of, perhaps Lighting or Signage (street lights and road signs (like landing pad designators, "taxi to landing pad 7 and commence VTOL takeoff" kind of thing) like, unless those are just integrated into the landing pad runway and road segments)?
• Engines (no info given on what engines use which fuel, unless you want to lump them into subcategories like that)
• Fuel tanks (with info on when you can switch fuel tanks between propellants, is it only in the VAB or is it "any time that the tank is empty and you EVA a Kerbal over to it (like some KSP 1 mods let you do)"?)
• Structural parts (girders and I-beams and all the rest of it, from the cubic octagonal strut thru hollow structural diameter adapters thru structural straight-sided tubes, all the way up to massive interstellar mothership spinal trusses)
• Cargo parts (all those resources you're going to need to mine to build ships off world have to get moved around in something, what kinda containers are we looking at, and when can you change them over from one cargo to another, and can you automate that process using the Routine Supply Mission automation stuff?, all questions I want answered (at least indirectly))
• Power Generation (please give us more than just an RTG and a bunch of solar panels and some fuel cells, or at least give us procedural static solar panels, because we're gonna be building bigger ships that have MUCH bigger power requirements, and even if you're using ion engines as main propulsion you still need a lot of electricity so that means probably a reactor of some kind for anything that is going out further than Duna's orbit).
• Power STORAGE (Maybe we will, maybe we won't need bigger batteries to go with these bigger power generation methods, but it's not a bad idea to have them available, and speaking of that the colonies will probably need a "battery" part too, one for orbital and one for surface use (unless you just take the orbital one and give it some pilings to sit on for surface use, that's fine))
• Attitude control (well we're gonna be building much bigger ships, surely that means we get much bigger RCS clusters right? Maybe even big RCS clusters that run on some of those new and interesting fuels that have been mentioned? Not sure about bigger reaction wheels, that technology gets heavy real fast with increasing scale IRL because flywheels are heavy by design, and can only be rotated at a given maximum speed before they just can't hold themselves together against centripetal forces, and furthermore reaction wheels IRL are best used for something like HOLDING an attitude, not changing it)
• Command parts, crewed or not, of all shapes and sizes (avionics are one of the few things that usually takes up a fixed amount of space on a craft, the rest of the space inside the bigger probe cores could be taken up by some combination of reaction wheels, batteries, and maybe fuel tanks for RCS thruster fuel, or even integrated RCS thrusters of its own) and the amount of volume that those avionics take up is reduced with increases in electronics technology up to a point where the electronics become less tolerant of radiation than is permissible (which has I think already happened IRL), unless you let the mass creep up by encasing such smaller electronics inside a lead-lined radiation vault.
• Non-colony ISRU parts (hey sometimes you're just setting up a fuel plant for the return leg of a single mission, and don't need a whole colony for that purpose, but unlike KSP 1 I think they should NOT benefit or suffer from the presence or absence of a skilled engineer, because that's not how that works IRL)
• Probably other categories like parachutes and ladders and other "accessory" type parts, but most of those already exist in one form or another in KSP 1 but maybe we need more of certain kinds of parts (like parachutes, no sense using a rocket engine when you can use the atmosphere surrounding you to land safely)

[jastrone]

most of the show and tells have been about graphics. it would be cool to see how the actual gameplay is. for example how colonies are constructed and how the vab works. maybe also a bit how the career/adventure mode or whatever they call it works. it wouldnt spoil much of the game since it is the first thing you learn wen you start the game anyways.

[stephensmat]

Colonies, and Orbital Construction, more than anything else.

[Vl3d]

I would like to see things about:

multiplayer (implementation and systems),

world building and lore,

features that allow action oriented gameplay (like actually having fun flying our planes and driving our buggies and cliff-diving our kerbals - and knowing that we can actually build trackmania in KSP),

the science and progression system,

the exploration features and details about what the creative team made for the planets (like what we can actually discover and interact with),

how automation is implemented...

Basically everything beyond KSP1 + mods. I want to see The Game That Was Promised, the game most of us imagined KSP1 could be.

 

[shdwlrd]

Aerodynamics -- since I'm a plane lover, how the game approaches lift, drag would be interesting to me. How/if different atmosphere compositions would affect craft design beyond relative pressures. 

The editor UIs -- obviously once it's near release state, a thorough overview of the functions, rules, and types that you would see in the game.

General overview of the parts -- it doesn't need to be super specific, but the sizes, types, and anything notable that they care to share.

Wheels -- how the colliders work, how forgiving they are, how tunable they are. Basically show us that the weirdness and inconsistencies we come to expect with KSP1 wheels won't be a problem in KSP2.

Base to Colony progression -- explain the differences between them. The requirements for them to progress from base to a colony. 

Resource distribution -- how the background distribution works. How complex you can make it.

[SciMan]

Aerodynamics - I just want to be reassured that there's not going to be any more irregularities with how cargo bays and fairings work (like phantom forces, or "cannot deploy while stowed" with an open cargo bay, that kind of thing I want ELIMINATED).

Additionally, I want the indicators we get to be TRUE to the ACTUAL aerodynamics of the craft, including from effects such as structural panels acting as if they are wings (despite them not having a lifting surface part module in their config).
That would make it possible for me to design spaceplanes that use these high tech propulsion systems by making the wings out of procedural radiators, assuming they stand up to the aerodynamic stresses, of course.

EDIT:
Oh and for the love of Jeb PLEASE go over what changes you've made to the rover wheels (as in the code that makes them work), because what we have in KSP 1 simply doesn't meet the standard of "not making things flip out but also being able to climb hills".
Anyone who has tried to use aircraft landing gear in the current version of KSP 1 and forgot to adjust the suspension settings before launch knows EXACTLY what I'm talking about. And it happens with the rover wheels too, just less so.

Edited May 24, 2022 by SciMan
Forgot to complain about the sad state of KSP 1 wheels, both landing gear and rover wheels.

[Bartybum]

I'd really like a topic dedicated to the colony system and the core meat and potatoes behind it, i.e. resource management, expansion, automation, the whole lot. We've had functionally nothing beyond pretty asset renders and I'm starting to get worried that the colony system is one of the big things delaying the game.

Edited June 2, 2022 by Bartybum

[t_v]

2 hours ago, Bartybum said:

I'd really like a topic dedicated to the colony system and the core meat and potatoes behind it, i.e. resource management, expansion, automation, the whole lot. We've had functionally nothing beyond pretty asset renders and I'm starting to get worried that the colony system is one of the big things delaying the game.

It is probably best not to speculate what is causing delays, as the devs could be working on a lot of different things at the moment or, more likely, all of them at once. But if you want some consolation, there is a dev diary that talks mostly about colonies and in it :

 

in it, Shana Markham uses language that sounds like a lot of the systems they are talking about have already been implemented in some form. So colonies were definitely not left for last. But once again, wondering if Topic X is “the reason” for delays is probably not the best way to sus out what is going on. 

[xjames]

I wish they would address whether the game will have mac/linux support. 
Many developers use "PC" to mean windows, macs, etc, and not just windows machines, so its unclear.

 

[zer0Kerbal]

everykerbal can guess what I want to know much more about: modding the game both in adding parts, patches, and with .dll's and maybe LUA.

Edited June 13, 2022 by zer0Kerbal

[Rutabaga22]

On 5/21/2022 at 2:41 PM, joratto said:

basically nothing about multiplayer.

We have heard nothing about multiplayer, other than that there is one.