3/24 Discord AMA - Nate Simpson - SUBMIT QUESTIONS HERE

[Sky Kerman]

When will reentry be added, and can kerbals die for gee forces?

[HebaruSan]

Hi Nate! If/when non-Windows platforms are added, it would be important for tools like CKAN to be able to get the version of the game programmatically. In KSP1 this information was provided by the buildID.txt file, which contained the build ID which software could map to the version, or the readme.txt file, which had a line at the start of the changelog specifying the version.

Currently for KSP2, neither of these files nor anything similar exists, so we can only get the version from the properties of the KSP2_x64.exe file, which is a Windows-specific solution. Any chance of adding something resembling the buildID.txt file before/with the release of non-Windows platforms?

(Just wanted to try to get this into your field of view before it becomes an emergency. Cheers!)

Edited March 18, 2023 by HebaruSan

[Dantheollie]

1 hour ago, Snips said:

Is it planned to make other procedural parts, like fueltanks or structures?

I second this! Are there any plans for more procedural parts, or the addition of "cosmetic" parts to KSP2?

The variety of things you can build has already increased exponentially with ONLY the addition of procedural wings! It would be great to have more tools

[theJesuit]

Is there a view of how the Tech Tree will look yet?

Are 1.875m parts in the pipeline?

Is life support looking likely?

 

[Emanuel01]

3 hours ago, Filip Hudak said:

Hello. I have 12 questions:

1. In what stage of development are features on the roadmap like colonies or interstellar travel? Are they almost finished and just waiting to be implemented after the core of the game gets improved or do they still need a lot of work?

2. When we'll see other exotic fuel types like metallic hydrogen? Will they be added alongside some big update like colonies or will they be added before?

3. I have been wondering what are the large geodomes on top of some colony towers. Are they greenhouses or some 'colony parks' to improve the mood of kerbal colonists and increase their productivity?

4. What can you fit into the triangle-shaped cargo containers shown in trailers many times? Only colony parts or also some resources?

5. Will stuff you can build in KSC be also limited by resources? Will there be parts that don't require any resources to build? If not, what happens if you run out of all resources, you can't build anything, you don't have any colonies to produce the required materials and you are stuck?

6. What are the most difficult new challenges that await us after new features will be added?

7. How will the resource gathering on colonies work? How can you prevent players from building only a small colony with slow mining capabilities and time-warping until the colony provides enough materials?

8. What are some example resources you can gather or make except fuels in a colony?

9. Do you have a rough estimate of when specific features on the roadmap will be implemented? weeks, months, years, centuries

10. What is your guess on how the system requirements will look after the game will be fully optimized?

11. How do you set up delivery root? Is it just a few clicks or you must fly the spacecraft the whole way and then you can automate it?

12. What will prevent players from using low delta-v rockets to escape kerbol SOI and get to another star system in millennias?

Those are really interesting questions, kudos to you for elaborating them. 

To synthesize questions 7 and 12 → How will time matter in the game? What will be the tools to prevent players from grinding resources using time warp?
(that made KSP1 ISRU very boring to me, I felt discouraged to build more complex ISRU facilities since I could just build a simple one and time warp until required.

[Arrowstar]

Hey Nate!

There's a small but hardworking subset of the KSP modding community that develops external tools to help users perform spacecraft and launch vehicle mission design.  While I might have one of the longest running mods out there in this regard (KSPTOT), I'm definitely not the only one.  One of the big issues I've run into with developing with KSP 1 in mind that the developers never provided any insight into how they model forces and torques on the vehicles.

Given this, what are your thoughts on:

• Providing a KSP 2 "theory manual" that contains information regarding the math models you all have developed and implemented in KSP 2?
  • Especially important here are force model definitions and atmospheric model definitions.
• Providing API documentation that includes units, relevant reference frame definitions, and data type/dimensions where appropriate?

Let me give you an example as to why I would love to see this in KSP 2.  Right now I'm trying to reverse engineer how KSP 1 computes lift forces on a rocket so that I can write a plugin to generate lift coefficient databases for a given vehicle.  This is extremely painful in KSP 1, because A) there's no documentation and B) there's no definitions for anything.  I'm basically having to rely on what other modders have figured out before me, but some of it is out of date, etc.  Providing the KSP community with those two bulleted items would go a long way to helping us out!

Thanks for all the fun so far, looking forward to what KSP 2 has to bring in the future!

Edited March 18, 2023 by Arrowstar

[VlonaldKerman]

Hi Nate, two questions:

1) Are there any plans for more in-depth Kerbal customization (skin color, eye size/googliness, hair styles, facial features, etc.)?

2) With the current maneuver node system, it can sometimes be difficult to do things like a perfect circularization, or other burns that require precision while also being somewhat long, time-wise, because the burn starts at the point at which the maneuver node was created. There are now situations where certain things are more difficult when the maneuver maker doesn't treat the burn as an instantaneous impulse. Especially on interstellar scales, I can see the current system being somewhat unwieldy- what sort of maneuver creation/tuning features are currently planned? Are there any specific things you can share about aiding player navigation?

Thanks! Great work on patch one (except for the colliders around the parking garage which are a crime)!

[Nerfclasher]

What is the status on killing the kracken to quote shadow zone the kraken is alive and well and how long do you think it will take to fix wobbly rockets

[Kalessin1]

Are You planing to create dedicated update program for PD download website or each next updates we need to download the WHOLE game again?

[fuguzawaz]

Will my save game that I currently have now be able to survive major updates such as the science, colony or multiplayer updates? I imagine you would try to make the saves work with newer patches, but I need to know if I can go ahead and start working on my multiplayer world, or if I should expect to lose my progress by then. Are there any particular updates that you foresee might jeopardize the integrity of older saves? Thanks for the read, and I am happy to support you guys along the development process! (nice improvements on patch 1 btw, significantly more stable on the FPS, now I can watch the Kraken at work in all its glory!)

[HebaruSan]

7 minutes ago, Nerfclasher said:

What is the status on killing the kracken to quote shadow zone the kraken is alive and well and how long do you think it will take to fix wobbly rockets

The "kraken" was a problem with interplanetary journeys going awry because of floating point precision problems (solved by way of the "floating origin"), not wobbly rockets.

• https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Version_history#v0.17
• https://www.kerbalspaceprogram.com/ksp/api/class_krakensbane.html

If you use it to mean any and all bugs, then that kraken will never be slain.

[Guest]

Hello Nate. I recall the Squad devs at the time, NathanKell I believe, "smoothing" the physics impact on orbits when rotating a vessel so that the actual impact was minimal. Has any thought been given to looking into this and/or researching the old code to see what was done, and how to implement the same in KSP2? Simply rotating a vessel in KSP2 has a noticeable impact on orbital parameters and this was something that was experienced throughout much of KSP1's early access (and IIRC, even past the 1.0 release).

Edited March 18, 2023 by regex

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Hi!

•  Mortoc's Dev Diary 18 was very interesting.  Any chance we can get a second installment where he goes into more detail about the CBT system and what it's like to port the existing work over to that? 
  • Also, "...new earth-shaking architectures are possible" - does this mean we can get the towering mountains near KSC in KSP back?  They were fun to fly around!"
  • We'd love to see some updates on the HDRP portion as well!

 

• Dev Diary 10 and Developer Insights # 2 showcased the promise of unique explosions and interesting destruction graphics for our glorious failures... but the UI choice of the very large and opaque Flight Report immediately pops up and blocks the screen.  It doesn't let us watch our ships explode and scatter.  Any chance we can tame that thing?  Tone it down or leave it off until the player presses ESC or something?  Unique explosions based on the parts we've added and the physics involved is very Kerbal.  The Immediate Flight Report Pop-Up is not.

 

• Version 0.1.0.0 looked very different from the ESA event videos I've seen - however version 0.1.1.0 (the patch) has many elements in common with the videos we saw, notably the Maneuver Nodes and some bugs like the endlessly scrolling notification (yellow barred text) bug.  Was the EA release version a different branch from what we saw in the ESA videos (and is the current version mostly similar to what the ESA attendees got to play)?  If so - can you lift the veil on what's going on behind the scenes and why the EA Release looked so different from the ESA?

 

• Will HOTAS support for spaceplane flight be introduced during any part of the EA? 

 

Edited March 18, 2023 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[Moons]

General:

• how far the steam-release compared to the internal release (is there already a lot more completed (beyond assets) in the internal version?)
• Is there any estimate on when the different roadmap targets will be reached realistically and roughly
• how much time is planned roughly for V1.0 (this is important to people because its hows how much time will be invested in this game and what to expect) - for Example 6 Months/1+ Year/2+ Years etc.
  • to me thats important i saw for example an EA that was pretty rough - so it was clear that dev time planned was short it would be a flop - said game then stated that 1.0 is planned in 3-6 months wh ich to me as a consumer made clear what was planned and realistic and that that game would never become much different etc.

Mechanics:

will the game mechanics be adjusted to feel more like KSP1 - or will the game stay or try to be more different than KSP1? (a lot of things seem to be different when playing this game and doing the first launch - especially how a rocket behaves)

 

Vehicle Assembly Building:

• could you offer multiple lighting versions of the Vehicle Assembly Building - the current one simply doesnt seem to put enough focus at the rocket and isnt pleasing too the eye (too dark)
• will the UI of the Vehicle Assembly Building also be adjustable - seems way too big at the moment
• would it be possible to add a basic suggested function - this would be great for new players aswell (for example if you click on a fuel tank only engines with a compatible size and fuel type will be shown (maybe with an easy way to turn that function off))

 

 

UI:

• Are there plans to give some sort of legacy UI
• Are there plans to make the UI more modular for users to adjust it and change it with mods - especially a way to scale the UI?
• Are there plans to reduce the UIs use of screen space?

 

Multiplayer:

• Is there any news on what type of MP is planned and could you make some statement to assure people that MP wont negatively impact SP (features etc. - it seems like lots of things in this from my point of view SP-focused games will be hard to work out in MP so i just hope SP wont be held back by constantly thinking about multiplayer implementation problems)
• would it be possible to add leaderboards ingame (global and for groups/friends etc.) for custom and normal missions for some sort of fun competitive MP to see who does something the fastest, the most efficient etc.? (seems like a fun way to implement some MP without actually hurting SP) (probably also easy to implement)

Game-Price:

• do people from the DEV/Publisher realize that the game price is a big issue as it is now (especially because of the state of the game) and will be in the future because such a high price will potentially put off lots of potential customers and could have negative effects on the size of the community modding etc.?
• would it be a solution to reduce the scope of the initial game and put some of the Roadmap-Targets in DLC to sell the main game way cheaper (everything in the roadmap could just be given to EA-Purchasers that still bought at full price "for free")? OR
• in general are there internal discussions about changing the pricing and the scope of the base game to make development of the base game faster and to get a bigger userbase?

(also please look at games like Forspoken - even AAA Titles cant justify a 70 Dollar pricetag etc. and this can completely crush a franchise for no reason)

 

Development:

• could you maybe change your development and adjust it to what other EA games are doing to speed up development and use the community for better feedback? (many EA game for example do experimental versions for new patches - that way people who want to can test maybe unstable versions - report bugs and the actual patch will be way smoother while also having people more invested in the development and give them new things faster)

Financially:

• is funding somewhat secured by the publisher for lets say beyond 1+ year and could the financial/general (or lack of) success of the EA Release have impact on funding etc.?
• Looking at the game and our real world with lots of countries wanting more engineers - why isnt ther a lot more cooperation with public and private companies? I could even see a game like this running in aerospace-museums etc. to promote the game but also to promote tech-jobs to a younger audience - to me its eems like there should be a lot of potential interrest in this game from education, government in general etc. - or am i a bit naive?
  • even companies like Space X etc. should be interrested in some extra funding for some marketing that benefits the game - for example some Space X parts etc. (i normally dont like marketing but getting new parts funded by companies seems like a great idea)

 

To me its a very important question knowing what im investing in since i have no guarantees with EA - looking at the game now i doubt it will be finished with all the Roadmap targets within the next 1.5+ years so im a bit scared that the long develoment time, change of developers and negative EA release and cutting costs that was in the news could actually in the absolute worst case could lead to this game beeing canceled.

 

 

I know some of these questions are probably hard to answer or not even by the person doing the AMA because its different fields but ill just ask and see.

Edited March 18, 2023 by Moons

[Vl3d]

1. In the future, could KSP2 have a persistent multiplayer universe in which all the community would build and play together?

2. Will KSP2 have an event recording system which will allow us to do a mission, return back in time and then see that mission play out? (enabling parallel missions, multiplayer time warp, space races etc.)

3. Are there going to be (ship and colony) life support mechanics in the stock game?

Edited March 18, 2023 by Vl3d

[Deddly]

Does the CBT system allow for the possibility of things like caves and sea ice?

[Moons]

• Is it planned to add eastereggs etc. and special things to discover on the different planets? (more Discovery etc. could really improve this game in my opinion)

 

 

• Would it be possible to add clouds more similar to this mod to the game? (i seriously think this could be a game-changer for the game since it would enable really spectacular planets and would also be something that could sell the game way better to many casual players)

 

 

6 minutes ago, Deddly said:

Does the CBT system allow for the possibility of things like caves and sea ice?

I think thats a great question - this could add a lot of potential fun gameplay elements for rovers etc. (power management, discovery) - even if it doesnt work with CBT it could be done by hand-modeling a cave etc. which normally is better anyways (more unique).

So i might add to this question - are things like caves to explore etc. planned in general?

Edited March 18, 2023 by Moons

[Majorjim!]

At what point will KSP2 deliver on its promise of better high part count performance than KSP1? 

[ThexLoneWolf]

Hi Nate! Thanks for taking the time to do an AMA. My question is related to colonies. Will colonies be set in pre-planned locations (like how the KSC spawns in the same place on Kerbin every game) or is the hope that players will be able to freely place them anywhere?

[Gurkonier]

Hi Nate, you've said, that the current game has a much bigger scope than the planned release in 2020.

How much does the game differ to the originally planned version? And what are the differences?

Thanks to all of you! You've done an amazing job and the great first patch proves it.

Edited March 18, 2023 by Gurkonier

[gussi111]

1] Can we expect that at some point in the future, as new updates improve performance, computers that are below the minimum requirements will be able to run the game decently?

2] Since a huge number of people can't run the game with their hardware, are you planning on adding the game to cloud gaming programs like GeforceNOW to allow more people to enjoy the game without spending thousands of dollars?

Edited March 18, 2023 by gussi111

[BeastHunter]

Can you please fix the inability to launch when a single part explodes?

[Driscole]

Are there plans to simulate more complex orbital mechanics? At the moment I don’t think there are any legrange points in the game and I think a lot of people would really love their inclusion. 

[Moritz Space]

Will the insane graphics we saw during show and tells be in a future update or were they just too demanding?  Also, how high of a priority is collideable scatter right now?

[Mr.Kerbal]

Hi Nate! I know the optimization of the game is not the best at the moment, but are there any plans to add things like rocks, trees, weather (which would be different depending on the planet) and other things like that?