Various Missions (Mun, Duna, etc [see tags]) w/ thoughts and feedback

[nivvydaskrl]

Mission 1: Manned Mun Landing and Return

Pretty standard Mun mission profile that ran with a few hiccups. Stage 1 stayed tenaciously attached until I did a quick time warp. A phantom spin in my translunar injection stage caused me to be a bit short for my landing stage (ran out of fuel about 100 meters off the surface), so I wound up balancing on the engine bell of the return stage for the landing.

The craft:

Spoiler

I wound up providing a lot of feedback to the development team via the feedback form in the game launcher (hint: if you start KSP 1 in Steam while running KSP 2, it give you the launcher and you can provide feedback mid-game that way) during the rocket construction, map planning, and flight. There's a lot that needs work, but I was able to get the mission done on the second try.

Here's the flight report after landing back on Kerbin:
 

Spoiler

Here's the feedback I provided for others' reference, in no particular format or order:

Quote

 

* Having the camera automatically focus on a separate ship in the assembly when picked up is obnoxious when the "ship" is a single part or small subassembly you intend to attach to a different vessel. 
  - My KSP1 workflow involves a lot of dragging parts I'm going to need out of the part picker and leaving them hovering around my vessel so I can just grab them without navigating menus. Then I position the camera to grab and place those parts/assemblies onto my main craft. Having the camera jump to what I'm picking up derails that flow and leaves me frustrated.
  - This could be alleviated by allowing me to use the middle-click feature to jump the camera to another vessel's part. However, you can't currently do that.

* Struts are also frustrating:
  - When connecting to an engine housing, the strut you're holding will connect to the surface while the others will phase through and connect to the engine inside the housing, or to a part above or below the strut.
  - A strut left to the side is difficult to attach to the ship; solo struts floating in the VAB will not attach to a different ship, so they must be deleted. And, of course, they take the camera's focus when you select them.

The launch stage of my rocket was firmly attached to my vessel after staging (decoupler and next stage engine were in the same stage). This persisted until entering and leaving time warp, at which point the launch stage was violently ejected backwards with no damage to the rest of my craft.

Maneuver planning while focused on another body does not show the trajectory within that body's SOI.
    

Can't put numbers into the site name field of a flag.

Flag planting animation was strange at 2x time warp; the Kerbal's motions were at 200% speed, but the flagpole moved at 100%, lagging behind the Kerbal. 

Afterwards, the Kerbal was locked into position and would not accept any movement commands, until eventually a jump went through. Jetpacking up to the hatch of his command pod led to another issue, where he would not grab or board the pod, he just stood on it.

Two launch clamps on the same side of the craft kick it to the side on launch.

I miss being able to see the amount of fuel in individual tanks in flight.

I'm unable to create or modify maneuver nodes while paused. This may be an intentional design decision, but if so, I'd suggest rethinking it. Planning without panic would be an amazing upgrade.

 
So far, so good. Looking forward to seeing how things progress over the next days and weeks! I'm diving right back in to keep playing now. <3

Edited February 24, 2023 by nivvydaskrl
Clarified mission number and that it was a mun mission

[nivvydaskrl]

Mission 2: Unmanned Duna Lander w/ Orbiter

I was able to do an unmanned Duna lander with included orbiter, which resulted in a few more feedback messages to the dev team.

Image of the landed probe:
 

Spoiler

Feedback to dev team:

Quote

Communotron DTS-M1 prohibits a constructed fairing from intersecting its deployed volume, even when the antenna is not deployed.

Manuever nodes are not working for a sub-craft decoupled from a main craft (orbiter probe decoupled from lander, for example) [see #1 in attached figure; 4000+ retrograde dV and no deviation of trajectory line]. Delta-V display is also 0 for that craft [see #2 in figure] despite active engines and plenty of fuel mass [see #3 in figure].

 

Spoiler

 Map screen showing orbiter and lander:

 

Spoiler

I'm getting used to some of the weirdness and changes.

Edited February 24, 2023 by nivvydaskrl

[nivvydaskrl]

Mission 3: First Aircraft Flight

This one was particularly buggy, unfortunately.

After fiddling around a bit to figure out how to get onto the runway, I launched the default spaceplane and was greeted with being immediately in a 90 degree rotated camera mode (as if in orbit):

Spoiler

I then noticed that the atmosphere and ocean were visually missing:

Spoiler

Spoiler

I then confirmed that the ocean was actually missing by crashing into the seabed. I'm not sure if the atmosphere gave drag or not, but the jet engine did function:

Spoiler

Reverting to launch after the crash gave me a normal camera and restored both the atmosphere and the ocean and I was able to fly around like normal.

I have no real complaints, but it was quite strange and surreal!

 

Update (Mission 3.5: turning the default plane into a U-2)

This worked pretty much flawlessly and as expected. Extending and thinning out the wings gave a lot more lift at high altitude and made it easier to maintain an altitude of 10km without any other changes to the craft. Aerodynamics seems to act much like the first game -- perhaps even more realistic -- without any strangeness discovered at this time.

The U2 kinda sucks to control without an elevator, though:
 

Spoiler

 

Edited February 24, 2023 by nivvydaskrl

[obney kerman]

1 hour ago, nivvydaskrl said:

 

Manuever nodes are not working for a sub-craft decoupled from a main craft (orbiter probe decoupled from lander, for example) [see #1 in attached figure; 4000+ retrograde dV and no deviation of trajectory line]. Delta-V display is also 0 for that craft [see #2 in figure] despite active engines and plenty of fuel mass [see #3 in figure].

I think these are the same issue: the maneuver node isn't changing because the game is assuming your ship has no delta-V, and you can't change your trajectory anyway. As for why, I'm not really sure. Is it because your engine and decoupler are in the same stage? Unless that decoupler doesn't just detach the engine, in which case I've got nothing.

[nivvydaskrl]

Nope, I was able to put that probe into a circular orbit as it was. No additional engine activations or other reconfiguration of the craft. It was fired up, fueled up, and ready to go, but the stage viewer and maneuver node system just didn't believe it.

[nivvydaskrl]

I successfully landed a Kerbal on Eeloo, planted a flag, and got him back to Kerbin. I'll try to remember to write up a mission report tomorrow or Sunday. :3

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

On 2/24/2023 at 1:12 PM, nivvydaskrl said:

if you start KSP 1 in Steam while running KSP 2, it give you the launcher and you can provide feedback mid-game that way

Thank you for this!