How do we think Communications will be handled?

[Luriss]

1 hour ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

Well said.  I don’t identify as a gamer, or hang around in gaming circles, so I don’t know whether this notion of “punitiveness” is widespread or just a KSP forums thing, but I find it really, really strange.  Life is punitive as hell in this sense, risk taking has consequences, and failure can be catastrophic as hell.  

Especially in space exploration.  The history of space exploration is one epic saga of engineers and scientists and pilots deploying all their skills and ingenuity to overcome technical challenges and risks, and the consequences of failure were fatalities.  Astronauts die when the engineers and scientists and technicians make mistakes.  And that is a big part of what makes the whole endeavour of spaceflight thrilling and fascinating and worthwhile.  People do strap their tender pink anatomies onto huge tanks of toxic and explosive chemicals and launch themselves clean outside our biosphere.  It is sheer heroism in the literal, classical sense.  Homer would have been hugely inspired by the Apollo program.

And the need for life support is fundamental to the whole enterprise.  Which is why I find it baffling that people are so opposed to it on the grounds of this notion of punitiveness, in a game that’s about iterative experimentation in spaceflight.  Build an unstable rocket?  Not enough fuel?  Didn’t pack enough snacks?  Forgot parachutes?  
 

The crew dies.  Back to the VAB, brothers!  

(It sounds even better in Latin: “redeamus ad vehiculi fabricam, fratres!”)

As an extension of this I've also noticed a very strong fear on these forums of new, complex features alienating new players, to the point that some argue certain features (such as life support) should be simplified just in case it confuses newcomers.

Considering KSP is a game about rocket science, I think people get a bit too hung up on that sort of thing.

[Pthigrivi]

3 hours ago, Luriss said:

As an extension of this I've also noticed a very strong fear on these forums of new, complex features alienating new players, to the point that some argue certain features (such as life support) should be simplified just in case it confuses newcomers.

Considering KSP is a game about rocket science, I think people get a bit too hung up on that sort of thing.

Generally being an advocate for simplicity I would say it's not just pulling things out to dumb things down, it's taking complex ideas and refining them into the simplest set of game elements that still communicate the core idea. So, for rockets we're not having players design the engines or mess with fuel flow/turbine configurations or worry about fuel ratios; there are just a set of simple engines that output thrust at different TWR and ISP and all of your tanks assume a steady fuel/oxidizer ratio. The same would be for Life support. You can keep a lot of the actual equipment under the hood and assume that O2 and water are being recycled and just focus on food as a single stand-in consumable resource made by greenhouses or hydroponics bays.

For communications I might personally simplify things by making all dishes relay capable, always transmit at the same range, and ideally give a better graphic representation of that range. I've been playing a long time and I don't have a strong intuitive sense of how the power ratings translate to range, and it sucks to send a satellite all the way to Jool just to have it run out of signal. The key idea is that dishes can only transmit a certain distance, and you need LOS to stay in contact. Thats enough to set up some pretty cool flight and mission planning puzzles and there's no need to make that harder to understand. I might also simply have dishes draw power at a steady rate both to maintain control and to transmit, because when you're in the VAB designing a probe you don't necessarily know how much the data it will collect will be worth, which means you don't know how big your batteries need to be to complete a transmission. It doesn't really make sense that you couldn't send the data in parts and pieces anyway, so just simplify the system to assume steady power draw. That way players know everything they need to while designing the probe: how big the dish needs to be to reach home from their target, how much power the probe core and the dish will draw, how big their solar array needs to be to keep those going*, and how much battery storage they might need to get them through a night-side maneuver. 

*This might also be helped by tying the engineers report to a mission planner. If your mission is set for Jool a warning could come up letting you know you need a bigger dish or that your PV array will only operate at 5%. At that point a player might realize "hey, maybe RTGs would be better here." They'd have the chance to rebalance their design before wasting all the time it took to launch and send the probe half-way across the Kerbolar system. The challenge and complexity is still there. What you've reduced is unnecessarily wasting players time and causing frustration. 

Edited December 20, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[GoldForest]

3 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Generally being an advocate for simplicity I would say it's not just pulling things out to dumb things down, it's taking complex ideas and refining them into the simplest set of game elements that still communicate the core idea. So, for rockets we're not having players design the engines or mess with fuel flow/turbine configurations or worry about fuel ratios; there are just a set of simple engines that output thrust at different TWR and ISP and all of your tanks assume a steady fuel/oxidizer ratio. The same would be for Life support. You can keep a lot of the actual equipment under the hood and assume that O2 and water are being recycled and just focus on food as a single stand consumable resource made by greenhouses or hydroponics bays.

For communications I might personally simplify things by making all dishes relay capable, always transmit at the same range, and ideally give a better graphic representation of that range. I've been playing a long time and I don't have a strong intuitive sense of how the power ratings translate to range, and it sucks to send a satellite all the way to Jool just to have it run out of signal. The key idea is that dishes can only transmit a certain distance, and you need LOS to stay in contact. Thats enough to set up some pretty cool flight and mission planning puzzles and there's no need to make that harder to understand. I might also simply have dishes draw power at a steady rate both to maintain control and to transmit, because when you're in the VAB designing a probe you don't necessarily know how much the data it will collect will be worth, which means you don't know how big your batteries need to be to complete a transmission. It doesn't really make sense that you couldn't send the data in parts and pieces anyway, so just simplify the system to assume steady power draw. That way players know everything they need to while designing the probe: how big the dish needs to be to reach home from their target, how much power the probe core and the dish will draw, how big their solar array needs to be to keep those going*, and how much battery storage they might need to get them through a night-side maneuver. 

*This might also be helped by tying the engineers report to a mission planner. If your mission is set for Jool a warning could come up letting you know you need a bigger dish or that your PV array will only operate at 5%. At that point a player might realize "hey, maybe RTGs would be better here." They'd have the chance to rebalance their design before wasting all the time it took to launch and send the probe half-way across the Kerbolar system. The challenge and complexity is still there. What you've reduced is unnecessarily wasting players time and causing frustration. 

Firstly, I see what you did there. 

Secondly, LOS isn't really a problem. All you would need is 5 probes at all 5 LaGrange points and you're golden.  Or put 3 comm sats into a polar orbit around Kerbol.

Thirdly, dishes drawing power at a steady rate is actually a good optional difficulty slider option. IRL dishes do require some power to receive data. 

[Pthigrivi]

17 minutes ago, GoldForest said:

Firstly, I see what you did there. 

Secondly, LOS isn't really a problem. All you would need is 5 probes at all 5 LaGrange points and you're golden.  Or put 3 comm sats into a polar orbit around Kerbol.

Thirdly, dishes drawing power at a steady rate is actually a good optional difficulty slider option. IRL dishes do require some power to receive data. 

Yeah but for new players understanding why you would want to set up a satellite network might not be obvious, and its a cool exercise! As to the power thing my thinking is you really want to size your power system to your max output, and if its PV or RTGs that's going to be constant anyway so why not just pick a lowish number and keep it there assuming it can feed data over time? This seems simpler to understand on any difficulty. It takes the guesswork out of tying batteries to data when you don't know how much data there will be until you get there. The only problem with this is you would never want to use fuel cells for probes because they'd gobble up your tanks in days.

Edited December 20, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[Drakenred65]

15 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

The devs said they want you to feel the size of a light year, and it's not like it matters if some backwater Betelgeuse colony doesn't immediately get a technology you unlocked at Alpha Centauri and will primarily use there anyway.

Well that depends. In ksp 1 we get to drag around a science lab bay because SIENCE. In KSP 2 do we get to drag around (or build Via Colony’s) the KPL KSFC and CK  and so on?

Edited December 21, 2022 by [email protected]

[Skorj]

Hasn't it been clear from the earliest stuff we heard about KSP2 that the goal is to make the game accessible to more people without dumbing it down?  I don't understand how one could take that to mean "we're going to make the base game harder".  No, I don't expect comms delays, realistic life support, realistic re-entry heat, liquid fuel engines with limited starts, or any other sort of realism that would make the base game harder, because that's the opposite of their stated goal.  (I could see a very simple snacks-based LS, that's about it.)  Heck, I'll be pleasantly surprised if comms is even in the game at launch, and if so I'd expect it to be off by default.

In one of the early interviews Nate mentioned that only 5% of players ever landed on the Mun.  That's just the second boss!  KSP is already much harder than Dark Souls, statistically speaking.  Does anyone really see any commercial prospect in raising the difficulty?  Mods or DLC, on the other hand, can do all of this for the sort of hardcore KSP fanatics that typically post on these forums (so many of us with over 1000 hours gameplay, it's unreal).  I'd love me some realism DLC, especially RSS with scaled stock parts, but I just don't see it in the base game.

 

[Bej Kerman]

4 hours ago, [email protected] said:

19 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

The devs said they want you to feel the size of a light year, and it's not like it matters if some backwater Betelgeuse colony doesn't immediately get a technology you unlocked at Alpha Centauri and will primarily use there anyway.

Well that depends. In ksp 1 we get to drag around a science lab bay because SIENCE. In KSP 2 do we get to drag around (or build Via Colony’s) the KPL KSFC and CK  and so on?

I'm not sure what your point is

2 hours ago, Skorj said:

Heck, I'll be pleasantly surprised if comms is even in the game at launch, and if so I'd expect it to be off by default.

Comms should only be needed for sending science. In other words, useless in sandbox. In real life, NASA does not have someone sitting at a desk 24/7, waiting for maneuvers and hoping that the probe stays linked during every maneuver. That doesn't happen - the probe's computer manages all of this. Curiosity wasn't landed by someone, it landed itself. Someone said it before, but it should be fair to say that in KSP you're not flying the probe live, you're just acting out whatever the KSC programmed it to do, so by that logic a link to the KSC would only be necessary for science collection.

[Drakenred65]

2 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

I'm not sure what your point is

My point is that there idea is Basically when you go outside the kerbal system, you may be basically taking the R&D department with you. Your basically by default doing R&D on the way out, by the time your half way there you have already sent them a year or more worth of info on how your ship and everything in it from life support to the Hot Kako vender works works, and they already started sending back new and or improved blueprints for your machines to build. In

kSP 1 terms, Between kerbals back home wringing out every last drop of science that you skipped or missed or did not run through the sience labs while your out there, ( seriously who actually did all the science in all 145 of the biomes? ) and all the time it’s going to take you to collect all the science that’s out there, because you’d still going to be spending time in space doing just that, and then flying to the next biom, even if it’s junior kerbals stuck in the science lab playing Starfield FOR SCIENCE er grinding away on SCIENCE! To make more SIENCE! while your flying around moons. 

 

and think about how long it’s probably going to take to to set up things and explore and suck up all the SCIENCE! that’s out there in new solar systems waiting for you to show up and use the science tools….

Edited December 21, 2022 by [email protected]

[MK2-DroneCore]

On 12/20/2022 at 4:20 PM, Master39 said:

You can program and make completely autonomous missions even without signal delay.

Well, Too Much Realistic thing really reduce the Gameplay Experience. Hmm......

It's better to make "SigalDelay" a optional feature

[Vl3d]

6 minutes ago, MK2-DroneCore said:

It's better to make "SigalDelay" a optional feature

No to signal delay, explained here:

 

[MK2-DroneCore]

23 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

No to signal delay, explained here:

 

Oh, I understand it. It's normal to have a slower data-transmision-speed when the communication is weak. It's a good feature. And I really love the idea of Programable probes.

By the way, I also saw the discussion about Science System Above. I have a few words about the oringinal R&D system."I took a photo of Mars's Surface  ,  and engineers saw my picture, immediately develop a advance rocket-engine" It seems ok, but the logic behind it is really confusing.

[Guest]

4 hours ago, MK2-DroneCore said:

It's better to make "SigalDelay" a optional feature

I think signal delay goes beyond what it's the realm of a difficulty setting.

It's not more difficult, just fundamentally different.

It's a fundamental shift of the game Point of View.

It's like GTA V having an option to turn it into a side-scroller game in pixel art.

[Drakenred65]

Basicaly my point is kind of if you set up one com relay, of 3, @ 600km, Thoes end up being K1, K2 and K3, each combo  of random Parts turning them into fuel depo science processing lab, warehouse, or orbital VAB.. A polar orbiting trio at 620  ends up being a PRETEND weather oceanic and geo survey satelight, and backup to the ones closer in.

 

A third trio, at 600,000 k, while overkill, ends up being a way to keep most of the 2 moons covered so i can set up Better coverage because I’ve had random blackouts even with them.

setting up a 42 satellight network just to cover everything out to the outer edge? Not counting relays in each planetary system and for each moon? GAAAAAA!
 

Seriously the thought of lugging and placing a string relay of sate lights on our first interstellar rocket  will look more like we stuck on a Saturn V first stage on the side only it’s a Communotron 999-999 deployable antena and dozens of smaller relay antennas, that or they came up with something new.

 

[tstein]

On 12/20/2022 at 3:02 PM, Pthigrivi said:

Generally being an advocate for simplicity I would say it's not just pulling things out to dumb things down, it's taking complex ideas and refining them into the simplest set of game elements that still communicate the core idea. So, for rockets we're not having players design the engines or mess with fuel flow/turbine configurations or worry about fuel ratios; there are just a set of simple engines that output thrust at different TWR and ISP and all of your tanks assume a steady fuel/oxidizer ratio. The same would be for Life support. You can keep a lot of the actual equipment under the hood and assume that O2 and water are being recycled and just focus on food as a single stand-in consumable resource made by greenhouses or hydroponics bays.

 

p my I would give my house for a game where I  can design the  engine itself, combustion champers  pumping, etc ..

[K^2]

4 hours ago, tstein said:

p my I would give my house for a game where I  can design the  engine itself, combustion champers  pumping, etc ..

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1583540/Meco_Rocket_Simulator/

Definitely going to cost less than a house, and there's a thread about it in the community/science section.

[Arugela]

I would love some depth the game. The meko rocket looks like it might be minimal. Why not make parts on top of teh custom ones and then have it, at least, simply add the resulting formula into the games equation for flying. It doesn't need full representation. Although they could leave the option to do so. Adding realism gives people options. Not adding it takes away from those who want to use it. The only ones loosing are the people wanting realism. You can always allow custom games. And mods are not an option. The are horribly done and I will never use them.

[Superluminal Gremlin]

On 12/30/2022 at 6:55 PM, Arugela said:

The are horribly done and I will never use them.

I have never built a mod, and even i do find that slightly mean

Like, the Near Future Suite (and FFT), most all of Nerteas mods are very well designed. Yes, there heat system is complex-ish, but its quite well done.

 

Ive always liked the idea of sliders for some more difficult options. But mods will be needed for ultra-realism, and im all for that.

[tstein]

On 12/20/2022 at 10:25 PM, Skorj said:

Hasn't it been clear from the earliest stuff we heard about KSP2 that the goal is to make the game accessible to more people without dumbing it down?  I don't understand how one could take that to mean "we're going to make the base game harder".  No, I don't expect comms delays, realistic life support, realistic re-entry heat, liquid fuel engines with limited starts, or any other sort of realism that would make the base game harder, because that's the opposite of their stated goal.  (I could see a very simple snacks-based LS, that's about it.)  Heck, I'll be pleasantly surprised if comms is even in the game at launch, and if so I'd expect it to be off by default.

In one of the early interviews Nate mentioned that only 5% of players ever landed on the Mun.  That's just the second boss!  KSP is already much harder than Dark Souls, statistically speaking.  Does anyone really see any commercial prospect in raising the difficulty?  Mods or DLC, on the other hand, can do all of this for the sort of hardcore KSP fanatics that typically post on these forums (so many of us with over 1000 hours gameplay, it's unreal).  I'd love me some realism DLC, especially RSS with scaled stock parts, but I just don't see it in the base game.

 

KSP is not harder than Dak Souls (not that dark souls is really hard), KSP is OBSCURE! That is different. 

 

The vast majority of players I bet started the game in career mode because the name feels as the "Full game" and when they get there  they have no conics projected in map and without goign to a forum they will NOT discover how to  go to the moon.

 

That is the problem.  Hidding information that logically should be there is the ONE thing  should not be done. That  SINGLE decision in the game  I bet is  the reason for more than half of the people that coudl not figure hwo to do ANYTHING useful in game.

[Drakenred65]

Well yo be honest without going to the forum or Finding  Videoes  From  YouTube’s… or both.

[tstein]

11 hours ago, Drakenred65 said:

Well yo be honest without going to the forum or Finding  Videoes  From  YouTube’s… or both.

Now the surprise..  the vast majority of players of any game, never ever  go to a forum .... and very few have patience to watch a 30 min video (because people making content want to   feed the youtube algorithm).

 

Such thing should be   delivered in hand of the player, at least of the mun so he/she knows where to go and how  to  reach it. It is Not intuitive for 99% of humans how to get to the moon.

[Drakenred65]

Oh I know.  For example pixlriffs has a 1 yo tutorial. It’s bairly gotten 355 k reviews since a year ago, and Minecraft s sold over 4,5000,000 copy’s in the last report I heard about it. And a lot of thoes were people like me who played for years.

 

I suspect that like me a lot of people only got to the mun due to thoes tutorials

Edited January 3, 2023 by Drakenred65

[Vl3d]

I have 2 questions about comms:
1. should direct antennas and relay antennas be merged as a single type of multi-purpose antenna?
2. should we be able to transmit science also through a direct antenna hop or only through a dedicated relay hop? Why should the transmission from a lander not be possible if one orbiting vessel has a small relay antenna with no signal to Kerbin but also a big direct antenna with signal?

[tstein]

9 hours ago, Vl3d said:

I have 2 questions about comms:
1. should direct antennas and relay antennas be merged as a single type of multi-purpose antenna?
2. should we be able to transmit science also through a direct antenna hop or only through a dedicated relay hop? Why should the transmission from a lander not be possible if one orbiting vessel has a small relay antenna with no signal to Kerbin but also a big direct antenna with signal?

My opinion :

1- No..  making the game shallower is not an advantage, simplicity  shoudl  not result in shallower

2- You can transmit with directional if you have direct LOS to  KSC

[GoldForest]

9 hours ago, Vl3d said:

I have 2 questions about comms:
1. should direct antennas and relay antennas be merged as a single type of multi-purpose antenna?
2. should we be able to transmit science also through a direct antenna hop or only through a dedicated relay hop? Why should the transmission from a lander not be possible if one orbiting vessel has a small relay antenna with no signal to Kerbin but also a big direct antenna with signal?

1) Maybe as a late game thing? Possibly even end game. New players should learn the difference between direct and relay antenna imo and kind of be forced to open up a relay system.

2) Rebroadcasting a message happens IRL, so direct antenna on a relay sat should be able to send the signal, yeah. Although, your scenario is kind of unrealistic. If you have a 2 million km range direct antenna, you should have an equally powerful relay antenna. Why would you bring a 2 million Km direct, and only like a 100 km relay antenna? 

[Snafu225]

13 minutes ago, GoldForest said:

1) Maybe as a late game thing? Possibly even end game. New players should learn the difference between direct and relay antenna imo and kind of be forced to open up a relay system.

Wouldn't that be a bit backwards though? I see the appeall but I guess in late game you'd have colonies/outposts in lots of placed or at least the capabilities to send kerballed missions.