No life support in KSP2

[DerkyJerkyWreaksHavoc]

10 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

What I and Pandaman said.

I already got that cleared out with him.

[Dantheollie]

4 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Supply runs should not be magic. 

[snip]

The only real victim is probes, which almost nobody uses outside of roleplay on account of  Kerballed flight having no barriers like life support or proper comms.

 

I agree with your points, but I still think it is too early to make any concrete assumptions. I doubt that the automated supply runs wouldn't require resources though, because in career mode that would open the door to gameplay exploits.

Oh, and in KSP1 probes definitely had a use. If you play in the highest difficulties, (because Kerbal respawns are off and you can't revert) they are absolutely necessary for gameplay 

[HenryBlatbugIII]

10 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

Is there a transcript of the AMA? I can't help but feel there was a specific answer here only half of us are bothered finding, and that "no life support" is a ridiculous oversimplification of what was actually said. Because, to be frank, that's hardly a good or precise answer for an AMA.

Here's a recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1Oc0y60B1g

The life support question is at 46:48, and the answer really is "We made a determination that, at least in the short term, the addition of life support won't enhance gameplay all that much for most players.  Obviously a lot of people have a lot of fun with life support mods in KSP1, once again we're hoping that once moddability is easier, that segment of the player base can be served in that way.".

Edit: There's also a transcript here, but many of the answers in the transcript are summarized rather than verbatim.

Edited April 5, 2023 by HenryBlatbugIII

[Ferio]

On 3/26/2023 at 12:07 PM, alphaprior said:

Unfortunatelly Nate stated in AMA there will be no life support as they don't think it improves the game.
Which I disagree. It would make the game more realistic and little more difficult. Anyone who tried life support mods in KSP1 knows that.
Kerbals need oxygen, food and water, it's another factor you have to take into account when you design ships and missions. 
You have to load extra weight proponent to mission length. And of course psychological effect on Kerbals for long mission, boredom, sadness, madness...
Surely this would make the game very complicate for developers on top of all they have already.

I expect mods would cover life support like USI in KSP1 but it would be great if there was life support in game. Maybe a DLC?

Who agrees?

They should add the option to the game, but in options you are able to turn if on or off. Maybe add a menu too, where you can select what you want to play with. I want Oxygen , but no hunger for example.

Edited April 5, 2023 by Ferio

[RocketRockington]

16 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Easier to manage sure, but why not

1. Let me build the colony manually too, even if just partly or optionally, specially for nearby settlements like the Mun or Minmus where launching to is cheap, plus it provides proper practice for precision landings.
2. Designing the colonies IN the VAB is one thing, building FROM a landed "VAB" makes zero sense. You deliver the building and maybe a couple parts and just assemble anything from that? That's exactly the opposite of how it's planned to work in real life (if you ignore all the magic 3d printer/self-assembly-robots talk). It also means you need to mind your landing place, to make future landings not impossible.
3. Supply runs should not be magic. At least task me with designing the ships and having a supply of fuel available for them. Maybe even design the routes to balance speed vs fuel vs life support of people on board lmao.

My guess is that when colonies comes out, you'll be disappointed.  Every indication I've seen is that the colony system they're aiming for is one that requires little hands on management...and also therefore has little gameplay besides tacking new facilities on.  They're indicating that colonies can't 'fail' because there's nothing to cause them to decline.  All you can fail at is not having enough resources on hand to expand them. 

Maybe this should be in a separate topic, but I'm willing to bet that the colony 'gameplay' is going to be extremely flimsy, and not the sort of colony sim some people hope for. 

My expectation is it'll be more like setting up fire-and-forget mining or science bases like you would in a game of Galciv 3 (albeit with a 3d editor) than a place you constantly interact with like Surviving Mars.  

On the one hand, this does mean that it won't take focus from the rocket game at all.  On the other, it's unlikely to have complex and interesting challenges, especially with automated delivery routes.

[Starhawk]

Time is an interesting thing in KSP.  It seems to me that different players can think about time very differently.

In KSP1 when I wanted to do a mission to Jool or Eeloo I didn't worry about the time passing as I was time warping to get to the transfer window and then warping years between course corrections on the way there.  That's the game to me.  Others seem to feel compelled to fill that time with other launches and activities closer to home.  For me, that just delays progress on the mission that is my focus.  So I don't do that.

Imagine what it might be like when flying one's first interstellar mission.  I can't see trying to do local missions while you wait for your interstellar ship to arrive.  It seems to me that it would never happen.  The time scales are so vastly different for interstellar that it seems to me there is no choice but to time warp for longish periods or the mission would never arrive.

It follows, then, that any kind of colony life support would need to be completely hands off once it is set up.  I can't really imagine it being fun for me if when trying to time warp my interstellar ship on my first mission to a new star system,  repeatedly have a pop-up which drops me out of warp saying something along the lines of 'Colony X is almost out of food!' or something like that.

On the other hand, it may well be that there are some who would like to play like that.  Maybe you have to drop out of time warp to tweak the settings on the greenhouse for your colony ship or something along those lines.  Perhaps that appeals to some players.  One thing I know about this game is that there are a lot of different ways people enjoy it.

Happy landings!

[larkvi]

Just another broken promise and huge disappointment to add to the pile that KSP2 is.

If mods are going to be the answer to everything, what possible reason is there to play KSP2 instead of modded KSP1, which exists now? The promise of KSP2 was that it was going to do a lot of the things that flagship mods did natively, allowing us to reduce time debugging mods, but instead it does less than KSP1, does none of that well. Life support is such a fundamental part of spaceflight; it's one thing for it to be a toggleable advanced feature, and another for it not to be there at all.

[pandaman]

24 minutes ago, RocketRockington said:

 

My expectation is it'll be more like setting up fire-and-forget mining or science bases like you would in a game of Galciv 3 (albeit with a 3d editor) than a place you constantly interact with like Surviving Mars.  

On the one hand, this does mean that it won't take focus from the rocket game at all.  On the other, it's unlikely to have complex and interesting challenges, especially with automated delivery routes.

TBH this is what I want from colonies.  I like the idea that they give purpose to landing, exploring and setting up bases on other worlds, but I don’t want to have to micromanage them.

[PDCWolf]

12 hours ago, Dantheollie said:

 

I agree with your points, but I still think it is too early to make any concrete assumptions. I doubt that the automated supply runs wouldn't require resources though, because in career mode that would open the door to gameplay exploits.

Oh, and in KSP1 probes definitely had a use. If you play in the highest difficulties, (because Kerbal respawns are off and you can't revert) they are absolutely necessary for gameplay 

That's why I keep mentioning that I'm only working off the current answers.

Yeah, probes had a use once you artificially close yourself off from most KSP1 shortfalls with sliders and toggles. Even then, only really useful if you don't want to sacrifice Kerbals, which give you almost no penalty for dying unless you happen to be short on cash (and still then you can pull a stranded Kerbal or two for free hires).

55 minutes ago, RocketRockington said:

My guess is that when colonies comes out, you'll be disappointed.  Every indication I've seen is that the colony system they're aiming for is one that requires little hands on management...and also therefore has little gameplay besides tacking new facilities on.  They're indicating that colonies can't 'fail' because there's nothing to cause them to decline.  All you can fail at is not having enough resources on hand to expand them. 

Maybe this should be in a separate topic, but I'm willing to bet that the colony 'gameplay' is going to be extremely flimsy, and not the sort of colony sim some people hope for. 

My expectation is it'll be more like setting up fire-and-forget mining or science bases like you would in a game of Galciv 3 (albeit with a 3d editor) than a place you constantly interact with like Surviving Mars.  

On the one hand, this does mean that it won't take focus from the rocket game at all.  On the other, it's unlikely to have complex and interesting challenges, especially with automated delivery routes.

 

"Hands on management" Is not the correct way to put it. Asking that the actual rocket game we're playing is integrated into colonies past landing a single element is not "hands on" at all. I'm playing a game about designing, launching, piloting and landing rockets, yet all of that seemingly only plays once into the colonies loop, when setting down a new one.

31 minutes ago, Starhawk said:

Time is an interesting thing in KSP.  It seems to me that different players can think about time very differently.

In KSP1 when I wanted to do a mission to Jool or Eeloo I didn't worry about the time passing as I was time warping to get to the transfer window and then warping years between course corrections on the way there.  That's the game to me.  Others seem to feel compelled to fill that time with other launches and activities closer to home.  For me, that just delays progress on the mission that is my focus.  So I don't do that.

You're only allowed to play that way because KSP1, and now KSP2, ignore one of the main challenges of space exploration: Keeping your people alive. The fact you can leave someone stranded for decades without penalty is nothing but a shortfall and creates a way of playing that's totally the opposite of how real life space exploration works.

Imagine if we had to wait for voyager to arrive to a star system without doing any other space mission in the meantime. This is something the current design of KSP2 will crash against, and even KSP1 kinda does already, when there's no penalty for letting contracts go by for years whilst you fly out to Eeloo. Nobody would bother hiring you for anything if you can only be hired once every 10 years.

[Bej Kerman]

15 hours ago, HenryBlatbugIII said:

On 4/4/2023 at 2:37 PM, Bej Kerman said:

Is there a transcript of the AMA? I can't help but feel there was a specific answer here only half of us are bothered finding, and that "no life support" is a ridiculous oversimplification of what was actually said. Because, to be frank, that's hardly a good or precise answer for an AMA.

Here's a recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1Oc0y60B1g

The life support question is at 46:48, and the answer really is "We made a determination that, at least in the short term, the addition of life support won't enhance gameplay all that much for most players.  Obviously a lot of people have a lot of fun with life support mods in KSP1, once again we're hoping that once moddability is easier, that segment of the player base can be served in that way.".

Edit: There's also a transcript here, but many of the answers in the transcript are summarized rather than verbatim.

At least in the short term. so nobody scrolls past without seeing this.

There you go, it's a misleading post.

On 3/26/2023 at 3:07 AM, alphaprior said:

Unfortunatelly Nate stated in AMA there will be no life support as they don't think it improves the game.

@alphaprior, this is worth rectifying.  "there might not be life support in the short term as they do not think it improves the game much". The original quote is bad wording that borders on fabrication.

Edited April 5, 2023 by Vanamonde
Don't get carried away with font sizes, please.

[Starhawk]

50 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

You're only allowed to play that way because KSP1, and now KSP2, ignore one of the main challenges of space exploration: Keeping your people alive.

But this is not the case.  I've played with a couple of LS mods and that only changes the ship design a little bit.  The gameplay is exactly the same for me other than that.  Add some food, water, and air modules and away you go.  I don't strand Kerbals, but I don't feel the need to add 'realism' factors such as launching to the Mun while I'm waiting for that Jool mission to arrive.

53 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

there's no penalty for letting contracts go by for years whilst you fly out to Eeloo. Nobody would bother hiring you for anything if you can only be hired once every 10 years.

This is exactly the sort of realism that completely kills the fun for me.  I have no interest in mimicking the commercial spaceflight industry.  I have no interest in 'wanting to get hired'.

Happy landings!

[LoSBoL]

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

You're only allowed to play that way because KSP1, and now KSP2, ignore one of the main challenges of space exploration: Keeping your people alive. The fact you can leave someone stranded for decades without penalty is nothing but a shortfall and creates a way of playing that's totally the opposite of how real life space exploration works.

I think it's the main reason that we are having an Kerbal Space Program and not a Human Space Program, because it might not be fun to put people in space ships for decades, or getting them killed, or have fun with them using them as ragdolls or crash test dummies. 

#quite a few Kerbals have been harmed during my gameplay, most of the times not on purpose, please don't hate me. 

[mcdjfp]

7 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

At least in the short term. so nobody scrolls past without seeing this.

There you go, it's a misleading post.

@alphaprior, this is worth rectifying.  "there might not be life support in the short term as they do not think it improves the game much". The original quote is bad wording that borders on fabrication.

Right now the game needs to be stable. Considering the state that the game is in right now, I don't think anyone really expects life support or any other advanced features (science, resources, etc.) to be a short term focus

You seem to be accusing people of ignoring the first part of the response. The problem with the AMA response is the second part of that quote. It very strongly gives the impression that they expect that modders will take care of providing life support for the people who want it

"Obviously a lot of people have a lot of fun with life support mods in KSP1, once again we're hoping that once moddability is easier, that segment of the player base can be served in that way."

 

The issue isn't when life support will be added. The issue is how it will be added (stock vs. modded).

[Bej Kerman]

18 minutes ago, mcdjfp said:

You seem to be accusing people of ignoring the first part of the response. The problem with the AMA response is the second part of that quote. It very strongly gives the impression that they expect that modders will take care of providing life support for the people who want it

In the short term. You are making it out like the first part of the response doesn't change everything. It does and leaving it out it is a lie by omission.

"It very strongly gives the impression that they expect that modders will take care of providing life support for the people who want it" in the short term.

18 minutes ago, mcdjfp said:

The issue isn't when life support will be added. The issue is how it will be added (stock vs. modded).

The issue with OP's post is that it lies. The post isn't making an issue of when life support will be added, it's making an issue out of the supposed fact that it isn't coming at all (which is obviously not true).

I am accusing people of ignoring the first part of the response because it completely changes the meaning of the second response. OP is making a big permanent issue out of a temporary one.

Edited April 5, 2023 by Bej Kerman

[mcdjfp]

I get no indication at all from the AMA response that life stock life support is currently anywhere is the plans for KSP 2. To me is says the current plan seems to be that once they add the modding tools (moddability is easier), modders will be able to add life support for those players who want it. 

The only positive I see in the response (and this comes from how I interpret the in the short term) is that it does appear to leave the door open to re-evaluating stock life support after 1.0 and they can evaluate the state of the community then.

(A number of useful mods/mod features like Kerbal Alarm Clock did make it into KSP 1 eventually so there is a little hope there)

 

 

[Bej Kerman]

40 minutes ago, mcdjfp said:

I get no indication at all from the AMA response that life stock life support is currently anywhere is the plans for KSP 2.

And it doesn't matter because ultimately you cannot just blow off context like the original post. Regardless of how you interpret it, it is still a completely different meaning than the same sentence without the first bit.

[PDCWolf]

3 hours ago, Starhawk said:

This is exactly the sort of realism that completely kills the fun for me.  I have no interest in mimicking the commercial spaceflight industry.  I have no interest in 'wanting to get hired'.

Happy landings!

3 hours ago, LoSBoL said:

I think it's the main reason that we are having an Kerbal Space Program and not a Human Space Program, because it might not be fun to put people in space ships for decades, or getting them killed, or have fun with them using them as ragdolls or crash test dummies. 

#quite a few Kerbals have been harmed during my gameplay, most of the times not on purpose, please don't hate me. 

Don't take it as an attack on your playstyles, but rather a remark that those play styles are only possible because the game ignores some of the main challenges of spaceflight, and proposes a career mode that actually ignores most of the challenges of running a proper commercial space program. A lot of us were hoping that this wasn't gonna be the case in KSP2, which is where disappointment stems from.

Life support is a vital aspect of sustaining space exploration, not having even an abstraction of it on a game about space exploration and the challenges of spaceflight is a joke.

[mcdjfp]

The first part can be interpreted multiple ways. (1) It could be taken to mean that life support is not currently a high enough priority to work on, or (2) it could be taken to mean that life support is not currently in the plans. (Probably other interpretations as well, but these are the two I see). Since the second part of the response speaks about moddability and this moddability supporting the life support desiring part of the player base, the second interpretation (2) is the only one that makes sense to me.

 

[Bej Kerman]

5 minutes ago, mcdjfp said:

The first part can be interpreted multiple ways. (1) It could be taken to mean that life support is not currently a high enough priority to work on, or (2) it could be taken to mean that life support is not currently in the plans. (Probably other interpretations as well, but these are the two I see). Since the second part of the response speaks about moddability and this moddability supporting the life support desiring part of the player base, the second interpretation (2) is the only one that makes sense to me.

A. Quote me please.

B. Refer to my previous message you didn't quote, the exact same thing applies here. You're not getting the point. "no life support" is completely different from "no life support in the short term" regardless of how you want to interpret it.

[mcdjfp]

1 hour ago, Bej Kerman said:

A. Quote me please.

B. Refer to my previous message you didn't quote, the exact same thing applies here. You're not getting the point. "no life support" is completely different from "no life support in the short term" regardless of how you want to interpret it.

The issue is not no life support versus no life support in the short term. 

The question is, was he speaking about what they are doing currently, or if he was speaking about their current plans for version 1.0 (or perhaps longer including DLCs)

I would love to read the message from the point of view of current activities. That would be great. They would fix the current problems with the game (many), and once stable, life support would, sorry, might be one of the features added later in the road map. Until I read the second part of this AMA response, I had assumed this was the case and that life support was part of one of the later phases (probably colonies). Even if you read the AMA response this way, it does not promise that there would be life support in the future. (No life support in the short term might also be no life support ever)

Unfortunately, the second part of the AMA response appears to indicate a focus on long term plans. Why does he move on to talk about modding, and that future improved moddability being the method to support the players who enjoyed KSP 1 life support mods?  The response implied that they knew that there were people that liked life support, but that in their opinion the average player would be as happy without it ("the addition of life support won't enhance gameplay all that much for most players"). The only way I can read the AMA response is that there are no current plans to include life support in the base game. Note the use of the word current. I do not see it as a permanent decision at this point. Using the phase at present signals to me that there is a chance they could re-evaluate the decision in the future.

Personally, I am concerned that if life support is not included in the 1.0 plans, that the developers will not want to wade into the mess of several competing life support mods, each with its own separate player base.  Especially when they are not convinced at present it would "enhance gameplay." Mods are not an official part of a game, as a result, future features/optimizations may be implemented that clash badly with the mods functions, either on the surface, or more likely behind the scenes in the structure of the game's code.

Edited April 5, 2023 by mcdjfp
Further explanation

[pandaman]

7 minutes ago, mcdjfp said:

 

Personally, I am concerned that if life support is not included in the 1.0 plans, that the developers will not want to wade into the mess of several competing life support mods, each with its own separate player base. 

I don't think whether or not mods do LR will particularly  dissuade them from adding it if they want to.   If mods prove popular then it will show its a popular feature that's worth including in some form.  

Bear in mind, if theyvwant to release on consoles then mods are likely not going to be available.

[Bej Kerman]

25 minutes ago, mcdjfp said:

2 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

A. Quote me please.

B. Refer to my previous message you didn't quote, the exact same thing applies here. You're not getting the point. "no life support" is completely different from "no life support in the short term" regardless of how you want to interpret it.

The issue is not no life support versus no life support in the short term. 

I see this goal post has wheels on it. I bid you farewell.

[Gargamel]

Seriously guys, if you want to post in various sized fonts, go to the games sub forum.    Changing your font sizes for emphasis is the internet version of screaming, and nobody enjoys reading that buffoonery.  Further shenanigans with fonts will be removed without warning.  

[LoSBoL]

12 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Don't take it as an attack on your playstyles, but rather a remark that those play styles are only possible because the game ignores some of the main challenges of spaceflight, and proposes a career mode that actually ignores most of the challenges of running a proper commercial space program.

No offence taken, with so many playstyles it's each to their own. We actually do not defer on opinion that much. To me the reason we are enabled to ignore challenges that are faced in real life space, is because we are shooting up kerbals instead of humans. We wouldn't send humans into a capsule for decades or strand them somewhere. So there is 'fiction' involved either way running a spaceprogram which we can not in real life. 

(if I recalled correctly irl nobody ever died in space) 

 

12 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

A lot of us were hoping that this wasn't gonna be the case in KSP2, which is where disappointment stems from.

Understandable, did I expect it being there? Not really, because of earlier statements in KSP as to why they didn't implement it, that gave me the impression that it would also count for KSP2. 

[PDCWolf]

4 hours ago, LoSBoL said:

No offence taken, with so many playstyles it's each to their own. We actually do not defer on opinion that much. To me the reason we are enabled to ignore challenges that are faced in real life space, is because we are shooting up kerbals instead of humans. We wouldn't send humans into a capsule for decades or strand them somewhere. So there is 'fiction' involved either way running a spaceprogram which we can not in real life. 

(if I recalled correctly irl nobody ever died in space) 

 

Understandable, did I expect it being there? Not really, because of earlier statements in KSP as to why they didn't implement it, that gave me the impression that it would also count for KSP2. 

The Kerbal/Human differences is a double edged sword. You can't use it to explain both similarities and differences without becoming inconsistent, and given there's more things in common with human spaceflight than differences, it kinda should then be the other way: precisely because Kerbals are so similar to humans, that we'd need at least some basic implementation of life support.

1. They build rockets the same way.
2. They manage space programs in almost the same way.
3. Bodies are similar.
4. They approach rocketry and space exploration in the same way.

They're more similar than not, with differences being mostly because of gameplay choices/limitations rather than conceptual.

The crew of Soyuz 11 died in space, almost immediately after undocking from Salyut 1, after a cabin vent valve failed, decompressing their spacecraft, they're so far the only fatalities to happen above the Karman line. Another 16 people have died below the Karman line in flight crewing a spacecraft, and another 11 have died as the results of testing spacecraft or their equipment.

Edited April 6, 2023 by PDCWolf