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Kerbal Space Program 2 - Pre-Release Notes


Intercept Games

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  • KSP2 Alumni

Overview
Kerbal Space Program 2 encompasses many new features, most of which will continue to improve over the course of Early Access. Here’s what’s new:

KSC.jpg

The Training Center
The all-new training center provides players with sequential lessons that teach the basics of spaceflight, starting with core concepts and then moving into simulated flights that give you an opportunity to try out what you’ve learned. There are currently four main lessons, ranging from basic rocketry to interplanetary maneuvering. You can access any tutorial even during normal flight – simply open the ESC menu and select Training Center, and your current flight will be paused and then automatically resumed when the tutorial has ended. 

New tutorials will be added to the training center as the game grows during Early Access. Your input on the effectiveness of these learning tools is extremely valuable, so please feel free to submit your feedback via the launcher feedback tools.

Training center.jpg

Vehicle Construction and Workspaces
When you save your work in the VAB, you don’t just save one craft file anymore. Instead, you save a workspace that may comprise several subassemblies. Since KSP2 allows players to work on multiple assemblies simultaneously, you may want to think of a workspace save as a snapshot of everything that’s being worked on for a given engineering project. There are a few new concepts that come along with this change:

  • You now have a Vehicle Name and a separate Workspace Filename. Your vehicle name is what you’ll see in the Tracking Station when your vehicle is in flight - for example, “Kerpollo 11”. Your Workspace Filename, on the other hand, should change every time you want to create a unique save of your construction progress — so ”Kerpollo 11A,“ ”Kerpollo 11B,“ etc. would make good workspace filenames.
  • You control which subassembly in a workspace will go to the launchpad when you select the Launch button. The Launch Assembly tool, which lives on the VAB toolbar at the bottom of the screen, can be used to designate which subassembly in the workspace is your flight-ready vehicle.
  • The Part Anchor tool at the bottom of the screen controls which part within a subassembly is its root part – eg. the part of the subassembly that will be its main point of manipulation/attachment. To change which part of a subassembly is its Anchor, select this tool and then click on the part of the vehicle you wish to set as the root part.

In contrast to the separate Vehicle Assembly Building and Spaceplane Hangar of the original KSP, KSP2 has only a single VAB within which all vehicles are created. To switch between vertical (rockets) and horizonal (planes and rovers) construction modes, toggle the workspace orientation button at the lower left corner of the screen.
VAB rover.jpg

You’ll find a few other new capabilities in the VAB, as well:

  • By selecting the View Cube at lower left, you can enter and exit Plan View, which gives you an orthogonal perspective of your vehicle from one of six directions. This is handy for lining up edges and making sure that angles are just right.
  • Clicking and dragging the middle mouse button allows you to track the VAB camera along the vehicle’s long axis. To focus the camera on a particular part, middle-click that part. Use the scroll wheel to zoom.
  • To change the color of all or part of your vehicle, select the color picker on the VAB toolbar. This tool allows you to assign both a primary color and an accent color to your vehicle. If you only want to change the color of a single part, select the Part button at the top of the dialog. You can control the visibility of both primary and accent colors via the transparency slider to the right of the color swatch. If you want to see only a primary color on your part, select the accent color and drag the transparency slider all the way down. If you want to see no paint on the part at all, select the primary color and drag the transparency slider all the way down. Shiny!
  • There are three new types of procedural wings: Wings, Stabilizers, and All-Moving Control Surfaces. After placing one of these parts on your vehicle, you can modify its shape and attributes by selecting the wrench icon that appears above the part on mouseover. For Wings and Stabilizers, this editor also allows you to toggle the presence of integrated control surfaces, as well as the shape and placement of those control surfaces. Here’s a handy tip: you can create compound wings with interesting silhouettes by attaching multiple wings end-to-end!
  • Interstage shrouds, which bridge the gap between an upper-stage engine and the decoupler placed beneath it, are now also procedural, allowing them to flare or taper to match the core sizes of the parts they’re connecting.
  • If you want to attach multiple engines to the bottom of a stage, first add an engine plate beneath the stage above. You can attach any number of engines to an engine plate - just select a symmetry mode and place the engines in whatever configuration you like. Engine plates will automatically deploy interstage shrouds, just like any other engine. You can modify the vertical distance of the floating node (the connection point to which something placed beneath the engines will attach) by right-clicking on the engine plate and adjusting the Floating Node slider in the Part Action Manager.
  • There is a Favorites category at the top of the part picker. To add a part to your Favorites tab, select the star button on that part’s entry.

Known Issues (currently being addressed)

  • Some parts from the original KSP aren't available - a few parts won't carry over — for example, the increased flexibility of the new engine plate system has reduced the need for bespoke compound parts like the Twin Boar and Mammoth engines. Also, the old patchwork wing parts have been supplanted by procedural wings. Other parts (for example A.I.R.B.R.A.K.E.s) are still in development and will be added in future updates. And of course Science collection, future propulsion, and colony parts will be added alongside their respective feature updates.
  • There are still a few gremlins in our serialization code, and very rarely (especially when building high-complexity vehicles) your vehicle may collapse into an unrecoverable pile of parts on the floor of the VAB. For now, it’s a good idea to save frequently.
  • Trip planner – the trip planner occasionally displays inaccurate delta-v numbers for some destinations. All delta-v numbers in the VAB use vacuum specific impulse numbers, which affects their accuracy. This will be addressed in a future update. Delta-v numbers shown in the staging stack during flight dynamically reflect the current flight state.
  • The center of lift indicator does not yet update dynamically when you adjust a wing in the editor - to see the effects of a wing modification, you must first exit the editor to update the center of lift.

Flight and Maneuvering
When launching from a launchpad, the first staging input triggers a ten-second countdown that automatically ends with a launch. If you wish to skip the countdown, simply stage again and your vehicle will lift off.


When you turn on the Stability Assist System (also called S.A.S.), your vehicle will by default attempt to maintain its current orientation. When you select one of the orientation buttons to the right of your navball, your vehicle will use S.A.S. to orient in the direction you’ve selected. If you want your vehicle to hold its orientation after that, simply select the “hold orientation” button with the padlock icon. You can also toggle S.A.S. off and back on with the T key if you wish to quickly lock in your current orientation.

There are a few new camera modes, in addition to the auto, orbit, and horizon modes you might remember from the original KSP. Chase mode now follows the vehicle like it’s on a sled, with the camera oriented to the up-direction of whatever command part is controlling the vessel - it’s a great choice for docking maneuvers. The new capture camera allows you to film your vehicle from any angle, and provides handy movement speed controls, dolly and panning controls, and camera roll controls – all of which live on the numpad.

In Map Mode, planetary spheres of influence (SOIs) are now visible - when you pass into or out of an SOI, a ripple effect shows the point of interception. When you create a Maneuver Plan, the projected trajectory depicts the portion of your path that will take place under acceleration - this is shown as a red line. Importantly, the tech that allows us to pre-calculate accelerating trajectories also allows time warp under acceleration, so provided you’re outside an atmosphere you can greatly reduce the amount of time you spend waiting for burns to end.

Orbit station.jpg

Known Issues (currently being addressed)

  • Re-entry heating and thermal systems are offline - you'll have a brief window here at the beginning of Early Access during which you can re-enter any atmosphere without a heat shield. We’re still buttoning down our heat transfer, ablation, and occlusion systems. Vapor cone visual effects are also still in-progress.
  • No collision on trees or rocks - we're optimizing collision for these objects right now, and in the interest of maintaining good framerates we're going to complete that optimization work before letting you crash into these objects. For now, they're holograms. While KSC buildings ARE collideable, they are not yet destructible.
  • Framerate stutters/lag - we're continuing to work down the list of performance optimizations, from highest to lowest impact. As we push processes out of the main thread and continue to improve the efficiency of our physics, resource flow, VFX, and graphics systems, framerates should improve for all players.
  • Some UI elements can be challenging to interact with - we're still cleaning up the systems that give priority to different classes of information in the map view, and there are times when you need to click a few extra times to get a hold of the maneuver planner. Similarly, you may have some challenges associating selected parts with their data in the Part Manager. We’re making several changes to the current UI so you can expect this experience to improve over time. This is a particular area within which we welcome your feedback.

Modding

One final note - we take modding very seriously, and we're looking forward to working alongside our counterparts in the community to improve the moddability of KSP2. As stability and performance improve, we will continue to devote resources to opening up more areas of the game to modders during Early Access. Our first modding priority in the coming months will be to provide greater access to part modders. We'll release more information on modding support once Early Access is underway.
 

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Can't wait to give it a go soon  in a couple of years

I hope the UI is customisable, love the new look, but hoping I can push it to the screen edges

 

Edited by Squeaky
Going to leave KSP2 for a couple of years for some features and optimisation but best of luck :)  
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44 minutes ago, BeastHunter said:

Three years of work and airbrakes don’t work. I like the new VAB but the lack of creatures after so much delays is incredibly disappointing.

There's an easy solution to your problem.  Don't buy the game until it comes out of Early Access.  Then you won't have to be incredibly disappointed about anything except waiting for the launch date.

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Great summary on what to expect.

But, I'd like to point out that Chase mode camera  was in KSP 1, I know because I convinced the devs to add it.

Also, I hope the Mohole still exists since I couldn't find it during my brief testing.

 

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Are the UI elements configurable widgets?  I think having the navball on the lower left is better maybe others would like it in the center where it used to be.

5 minutes ago, illectro said:

But, I'd like to point out that Chase mode camera  was in KSP 1, I know because I convinced the devs to add it.

Thank you for your service

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On 2/17/2023 at 1:32 PM, Intercept Games said:

Framerate stutters/lag - we're continuing to work down the list of performance optimizations, from highest to lowest impact. As we push processes out of the main thread and continue to improve the efficiency of our physics, resource flow, VFX, and graphics systems, framerates should improve for all players.

This bullet point explains a lot of the performance problems all on its own. I'm surprised that such a large complaint of the first game (Lack of computer resource utilization.) Didn't get top billing, but I'm not a programer. Please, use it all! I paid for 16 threads, I want to see them hurt. Use all the ram, everything. I see why the specs are what they are, and I feel bad for the team. I don't honestly think that anyone thought it was a good idea. I know you guys are not making the next crysis. But a deadline is a deadline and here we are. Good luck and fingers crossed for some sanity in the coming months.

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