Discord AMA 2 - Design Director Shana Markham Answers

[Lyneira]

30 minutes ago, Sylvi Fisthaug said:

I find it so incredibly impossible that they have not thought about procedural tanks when they have fairings and tubes. I think it might have to be something with the amount of propellant and how to code it. Lots of geometry and volume calculation.

I don't think the volume calculation is very difficult for procedural tanks that are cylinders of the standard diameters, but where you can vary the length. It could be that the game's architecture doesn't currently support parts with dynamically calculated resource capacity. We have procedural wings that can be adjusted in thickness (which affects mass but not lift or drag), but they can't hold fuel, whereas KSP1 had some larger wings that could hold fuel, but KSP1 wings were not procedural.

But I'm more inclined to think this is a deliberate choice to stick with predefined tanks and tank sizes that you click together like lego bricks.

One perhaps underappreciated benefit for keeping them predefined sizes is that you can size them such that the wet mass comes out to a nice round number like 9 tons instead of 8.836 tons. Since fuel tanks tend to make up most of the weight of a launch vehicle, this makes it easier to do basic head-math (or actual math, if you use a calculator on your desk) and estimations for the amount of thrust you need, as you're building the craft.

Edited April 24, 2023 by Lyneira

[TechDragon]

27 minutes ago, Lyneira said:

50 minutes ago, Sylvi Fisthaug said:

I find it so incredibly impossible that they have not thought about procedural tanks when they have fairings and tubes. I think it might have to be something with the amount of propellant and how to code it. Lots of geometry and volume calculation.

I don't think the volume calculation is very difficult for procedural tanks that are cylinders of the standard diameters, but where you can vary the length. It could be that the game's architecture doesn't currently support parts with dynamically calculated resource capacity. We have procedural wings that can be adjusted in thickness (which affects mass but not lift or drag), but they can't hold fuel, whereas KSP1 had some larger wings that could hold fuel, but KSP1 wings were not procedural.

But I'm more inclined to think this is a deliberate choice to stick with predefined tanks and tank sizes that you click together like lego bricks.

As a developer who's looked at the code for at least 2 KSP1 procedural fuel tank mods... yeah its not that hard to do the "how much stuff fits in here" math. Not even that hard to write some extra code to round nicely to more neat numbers like 9.5ton instead of 9.4598ton and have that affect the visual design components of the tank, like how rounded the tank end caps are since that affects the volume and can tidy the numbers up inside an otherwise cylindrical volume of choice...

Not having the "procedural parts" system ready to interact with the "resource" system would make sense. Based on the milestone approach they are outlining, "procedural parts without resources" would naturally be an earlier milestone than "procedural parts with resources"... but this is simultaneously at odds with obvious gameplay roadmap planning, if you recognize the propellant tanks are something that should also be procedural, then it makes "procedural parts with resources" would have a high priority and be something that was likely to be done before EA release so as not to confuse people later on when suddenly all the tanks can get done away with and you can switch to procedural tanks instead... 

Some of this crystal ball gazing is so puzzling... like wobbly rockets... did they not look at the best solutions from KSP1? the code is up on GitHub for multiple mods that have licenses that wont preclude them just taking the fix without anything more than some text in a readme file somewhere. If they are planning procedural fuel tanks then wobbly rocket issues may soon be reduced, so why bother focusing on them yet, so silence makes sense if the future roadmap has fixes... but at the same time, its still really confusing to release to EA with some massive stuff like "procedural propellant tanks" not bedded down at least to an EA level, as this will probably have significant positive performance impacts... or perhaps they wanted the worst case performance of non-procedural tanks in the first few EA releases to help find other bugs in the physics engine? 

I'm not sure what else I can put it down to other than "deliberate choice" with a caveat of "at least for now" to have the tank segments and corresponding wobbly rocket instead of procedural ones...

We really need some sort of "public issue tracker" even of the most high level vague kind... in order to end the constant speculation and little arguments about what they may or may not care about...

Like for instance, I've noticed while trying to launch a big nuclear tug in one piece, that the game has a bad habit of making rockets more unstable at slower FPS... easy test is to make a big tree of XL tanks with 9+ Vector engines on the end of each tanks, and get to 100+ engines... and once you get the FPS down real low, you'll start to notice rockets with very little "logical" reason to not be physically stable... all tanks have the same physical force aimed in the same direction, in a parallel direction... yet slow FPS makes the physics simulation... deeply unhappy... it turns out you can summon the Kraken by slowing the game down long enough you give it a chance to escape and attack your vehicle between video frames... do they care about physics instability? do i bother making a save game, just to show "the game breaks when you put lots into the scene" or is this just pointless work on my end because they aren't interested in fixing the physics engine at low FPS... which is not completely irrelevant since if you have a momentary lag spike for whatever reason, you don't want spontaneous disassembly due to a couple of seconds of lag... and I get that they have priorities, but its really easy to feel like they don't care when we throw reports over the wall and only find out if they were listening when we get a cute little rocket next to the bullet point in a future release explanation post. 

[Wheehaw Kerman]

19 hours ago, LoSBoL said:

No, not terrible people, just people. 

Nietzsche was right when he wrote “fight not with the terminally online, lest ye become terminally online, and gaze not too long into the internet, for whilst you gaze into the internet the internet gazes also into you”.

[Sylvi Fisthaug]

11 hours ago, Lyneira said:

But I'm more inclined to think this is a deliberate choice to stick with predefined tanks and tank sizes that you click together like lego bricks.

Hmm yes, adds accessibility to the VAB, very good point.

On 4/23/2023 at 6:44 PM, LoSBoL said:

Every word will be weighted and even then there is no guarantee the pitchforks stay in the backpockets. 

Where can I find pitchforks that fit in my backpocket? Asking for a friend.

[PDCWolf]

12 hours ago, Sylvi Fisthaug said:

Me too. 

But it might be hard to code/make? Fairings are simple, just make segmented tube, make it not collide.

Tubes are simpler, they are just... tubes. With sliders in the abysmal parts manager to change the length. 

But tubes don't carry propellants. I find it so incredibly impossible that they have not thought about procedural tanks when they have fairings and tubes. I think it might have to be something with the amount of propellant and how to code it. Lots of geometry and volume calculation. 

It is simpler than wings and fairings, much simpler than radiators.

A procedural tank is either a cylinder or a section of a cone, both super simple formulas to calculate volume for, and even going as far as to add a dry mass tax that varies by diameter (smaller parts = more metal than juice) is still high school math.

46 minutes ago, Sylvi Fisthaug said:

Hmm yes, adds accessibility to the VAB, very good point.

Fallacy, though they've shown designing UIs to be intuitive is not their strenght.

Edited April 24, 2023 by PDCWolf

[jost]

On 4/23/2023 at 6:59 PM, Alexoff said:

Yeah, these are the main villains of the gaming industry! Gaming communities! How many problems they create! Why don't they just keep silent and happily accept everything that developers and publishers give them?!

Last time I checked customers were not forced with a gun on their head to buy anything. If a game suck: Don't buy it, don't play it. 

[Alexoff]

10 minutes ago, jost said:

Last time I checked customers were not forced with a gun on their head to buy anything. If a game suck: Don't buy it, don't play it. 

If you turn the phrase, then the developers may not pay attention to someone's discontent. And fans of the game can ignore the criticism.

[Superfluous J]

On 4/23/2023 at 12:59 PM, Alexoff said:

Yeah, these are the main villains of the gaming industry! Gaming communities! How many problems they create! Why don't they just keep silent and happily accept everything that developers and publishers give them?!

You mean let the content producers deliver products and the consumers buy said products if they're worth the money but otherwise they don't actually have a say?

Then yes, that's actually pretty accurate to what should happen.

Unless people actually are GIVING you free games. In which case again yes you should be grateful.

Edited April 25, 2023 by Superfluous J

[PDCWolf]

2 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

You mean let the content producers deliver products and the consumers buy said products if they're worth the money but otherwise they don't actually have a say?

Then yes, that's actually pretty accurate to what should happen.

Unless people actually are GIVING you free games. In which case again yes you should be grateful.

No.

That paradigm stopped being valid when most games became ongoing live services, or Early Access titles. The figure of "final consumer" no longer applies, as much as greedheads, corporate bootlickers and blackpill defeatists want it to be that way.

In EA you're giving away your money for the promise of a finished product, the participation in its development cycle, and input as part of a community of early consumers. As a company, the benefits are enormous:

1. You turn the QA/Tester job into a purchasable position. Instead of paying huge teams, people throw money at you to try your game.
2. You get instant, copious consumer feedback inside the development cycle, right where you're meant to have it and implement it.
3. Allows future development to be self-funded.
4. Gives you multiple chances at frontpaging or simply gaining relevance: Every "major" update will hit the news, every major fix as well, instead of "release and forget". Huge marketing gains.
5. At every single instance of 4, you get to re-gauge interest and pivot or double down.
6. You still get to launch your game and outdo all milestones reached during EA.

Ultimately, all feedback, whether it's the most courteous post or a wall of insults helps. That's why there's professionals handling the gathering of feedback and not random forumgoers (independently of them being "yes men" or "haters").

If anything, the most damaging thing for gaming is just accepting whatever the industry puts in your plate. That's why we are where we are now: live services, microtransactions, outright scams, borderline false advertising, massive delays, feature cancellations, rug pulls, anti-consumer practices plaguing every single title, tone-deaf PR, and so on. Patient, civilized, yes men gamers have been rewarded with exactly the kind of stuff they tolerated.

[RocketRockington]

It's like everyone's forgotten hype is a thing.  Where developers and the publisher push a false narrative about the quality of the product, and where some customers build up their expectations of said product, and then buy it sometimes regardless of negative reviews.  And the write positive reviews not based on the current quality of the product, but in their hopes for the future state of it.  Eg: the 'hype train' which is fueled by people's hopes, and can get manipulated.

[Superfluous J]

41 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

In EA you're giving away your money for the promise of a finished product

I disagree wholeheartedly with this definition. In EA you are buying the product as-is, with the HOPE that you'll get the finished product for a cheaper initial investment. If you don't want to gamble you should not spend your money. If you spend your money, you should be happy with the game the moment you bought it.

As to the first 2 benefits:

1. You turn the QA/Tester job into a purchasable position. Instead of paying huge teams, people throw money at you to try your game.
   You also get a LOT of noise in your signal. There's a reason professional QA teams get paid. They make GOOD bug reports.
    
2. You get instant, copious consumer feedback inside the development cycle, right where you're meant to have it and implement it.
   You get a LOT of noise in your signal here as well. 30 people - each suggesting the same thing you already decided you'll never do - is not any better than one person suggesting it. It's 30 times worse, in fact.

3 and 4, I agree with. 5 and 6 could go either way IMO.

47 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

If anything, the most damaging thing for gaming is just accepting whatever the industry puts in your plate. That's why we are where we are now: live services, microtransactions, outright scams, borderline false advertising, massive delays, feature cancellations, rug pulls, anti-consumer practices plaguing every single title, tone-deaf PR, and so on. Patient, civilized, yes men gamers have been rewarded with exactly the kind of stuff they tolerated.

It's amazing then that even though all these exist, I'm still finding tons of great games. This is because I make sure I'm informed and don't buy a game (including KSP2) until I think the cost is worth it.

I'm not saying "accept whatever they put on your plate."

I'm saying "if what they're producing isn't what you want don't waste your money OR your time on it."

[Scarecrow71]

12 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

If you spend your money, you should be happy with the game the moment you bought it.

And I wholeheartedly disagree with this statement.  Just because I bought something doesn't mean I am obligated to be unequivocally happy with it.  If I spend money, I am hoping it is good and that I will be happy with it.  In the case of EA games, the more likely outcome is that I will be middling about the initial product with the hope that it will get better.  And in some cases, whether it's games, cheeseburgers, or pencils, I buy something and am not happy with the product I received.  Heck, lemon laws exist solely to protect consumers who purchased something that is not right or broken when they received it.

[caipi]

3 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

As to the first 2 benefits:

1. You turn the QA/Tester job into a purchasable position. Instead of paying huge teams, people throw money at you to try your game.
   You also get a LOT of noise in your signal. There's a reason professional QA teams get paid. They make GOOD bug reports.
    
2. You get instant, copious consumer feedback inside the development cycle, right where you're meant to have it and implement it.
   You get a LOT of noise in your signal here as well. 30 people - each suggesting the same thing you already decided you'll never do - is not any better than one person suggesting it. It's 30 times worse, in fact.

Well, it seems that PD seems to support PDCWolf on these two points:

Quote

Why Early Access?

More than anything else, we cannot wait for players to build, fly, crash, and fly again!

The core pillar of KSP2 is building and flying cool rockets. While we have additional features planned like colonies, interstellar travel, and multiplayer, we first want to hear back from players about the core fundamental experience.

We believe that going through early access for KSP2 will ultimately allow us to build a better game through a supportive dialogue with our community.

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?

Your feedback will be crucial in helping to make KSP 2 the best it can be, and we want to hear about everything that is important to you. Are the tutorials effective and are there enough of them? Have the user interface changes made a meaningful impact? Is the localization accurate?

Most importantly, we want players to play for thousands of hours. What will keep you playing? During Early Access there will be a form on the KSP website to submit detailed feedback. It can also be accessed from the game’s launcher and the Steam page.

You can follow the development progress through our various social channels: the KSP subreddit, the official KSP forums, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and Facebook.

Source: https://store.privatedivision.com/game/kerbal-space-program-2

They are actively asking for feedback on the current state of development.

As for QA teams: It is much cheaper to have 100 times the people play the game and discover bugs and have a few paid QA team employees sift through these reports - especially if they have a proper interface to collect, categorize, and further investigate the bugs. You need fewer people to accomplish the same thing. Admittedly, the focus of the work shifts a little bit and it requires more report management. But discovering, reproducing, and analysing the bug in the first place is no small deed either. Plus you get to have your product tested on different environments rather than just your standard issue QA-tester PC. I think you're underestimating what a huge variety impact that has.

Edited April 25, 2023 by caipi

[Superfluous J]

3 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

And I wholeheartedly disagree with this statement.  Just because I bought something doesn't mean I am obligated to be unequivocally happy with it.  If I spend money, I am hoping it is good and that I will be happy with it.  In the case of EA games, the more likely outcome is that I will be middling about the initial product with the hope that it will get better.  And in some cases, whether it's games, cheeseburgers, or pencils, I buy something and am not happy with the product I received.  Heck, lemon laws exist solely to protect consumers who purchased something that is not right or broken when they received it.

I misspoke, and apologize.

If you spend money on something, you should be COMFORTABLE with the idea that what you just bought might be all you ever get. Maybe you are comfortable with it because you like the developer. Maybe it's because you accept the risk. Maybe it's because the game actually is good enough now.

But NO ONE should buy an EA product thinking "Sweet I'm guaranteed to get a great game in the near future even though this version barely even starts."

9 minutes ago, caipi said:

They are actively asking for feedback on the current state of development.

Or they're restating an EA marketing point.

Which is the opposite of the marketing point they were stating a year ago when they were going to release v1.0 without first going through EA.

[Lyneira]

Some good points made. I knew from KSP insiders event footage the game was in a very rough state. So yes, I bought it with the hope that the game would be more than it is now and that I wouldn't be comfortable with the money spent if this was all the game would ever be. But KSP is a one-of-a-kind game in the scopes it brings together. The development of a true sequel that does everything the original did and more, was something I didn't want to pass up. So I also bought it with the intent of supporting this one-of-a-kind game's development to help ensure the future of a fully realized KSP2 comes to pass.

The only reason I took this approach was because of the special place KSP occupies for me. I would definitely be taking the more cautious approach of wait and see and evaluate its worth as-is with any other EA game.

Some EA games have worked out great, but I've also been burned in the past (hello Star Citizen) with promises unrealized. In the end, the EA games that worked out great were the ones I was already happy to play as-is, rather than the ones that I was merely projecting my hopes on. I have gotten some enjoyment out of just designing little missions or recreations, the visuals and the sound design so far. I guess the jury is still out on whether this one will end up in the former or the latter category.

[TechDragon]

7 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

It's amazing then that even though all these exist, I'm still finding tons of great games. This is because I make sure I'm informed and don't buy a game (including KSP2) until I think the cost is worth it.

Not to get too far off topic, but I have to say I partially agree, but I want to express the understandable frustration since its relevant. As much as I continue to try and be informed, I find it harder than ever to be sure of things, and I've drastically slashed my game purchasing... I went from dozens of games, a couple large, few medium sized, and heaps of small games a year... to under a half dozen typically larger games, or established indie games, or games from developers who have earned my trust with consistent releases, per year at most... its harder than it used to be to be sure a game will actually be good. The malicious actors in business development and marketing departments got wise to the fact we as gamers are buying a product we expect to make us feel things, so they start trying to manipulate that aspect of our psychology before we even click the buy button. Things like pre-orders that have in game content effects play on our fear of missing out, sometimes the stuff on the pre order just genuinely looks so damn cool, but now you have to buy ahead of time, and what if its a game on a platform not like steam where there's a generous refund policy... there's lots of manipulative behavior that people trying to separate gamers from their money are now using, to make it hard for people like you and me and anyone else trying to make informed purchasing decisions are now subjected to... And it kind of sucks. /end off topic pseudo-rant.

Back on topic... 

4 hours ago, caipi said:

They are actively asking for feedback on the current state of development.

This is why I'm concerned about things instead of sitting back and going "well I guess I have to wait and see", they asked for feedback, this is why I'm bothering to try and understand and work out what they might be thinking with respect to procedural tanks (and other things), since its relevant to how I voice support for something, what things I'm complaining about because sometimes stuff is obviously going to get better, like I've never mentioned the "do you want to overwrite this vehicle" popup that happens every time I do a final manual save due to the autosave workspace system, its just a minor irritant and I'm sure it will get a little attention and fixed up and made nicer later. 

If they have ZERO desire to have procedural tanks, there are some natural consequences, like that wings will never get fuel in them, since the moment you can make procedural wings with fuel in them, people will be incentivized to use them when they want more control over tanks volume, instead of using multiple smaller tanks. There's knock on effects and its understandable they don't want to comment on future plans, but its frustrating to sit at my keyboard, typing up stuff like this comment, about stuff they may have all but 100% decided something will not happen, or its already put into a bucket marked "maybe that would make a good DLC later, if we get that far, definitely not something were going to do in the basic game" 

4 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

Or they're restating an EA marketing point.

This is sort of the reason behind my desire for an issue tracker, there are people getting very deep into this game already, there's a community fixes mod already because people are finding and fixing bugs for them... which is something that shouldn't be that necessary. If a bug is confirmed enough to fix in a mod, it would be good to have a public record that "we know about this specific thing too", and then later on when they fix it or even before if they are super confident the fix will be in the release they can mention it before hand so someone could remove it from a community fix mod. 

[PDCWolf]

13 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

I disagree wholeheartedly with this definition. In EA you are buying the product as-is, with the HOPE that you'll get the finished product for a cheaper initial investment. If you don't want to gamble you should not spend your money. If you spend your money, you should be happy with the game the moment you bought it.

As to the first 2 benefits:

1. You turn the QA/Tester job into a purchasable position. Instead of paying huge teams, people throw money at you to try your game.
   You also get a LOT of noise in your signal. There's a reason professional QA teams get paid. They make GOOD bug reports.
    
2. You get instant, copious consumer feedback inside the development cycle, right where you're meant to have it and implement it.
   You get a LOT of noise in your signal here as well. 30 people - each suggesting the same thing you already decided you'll never do - is not any better than one person suggesting it. It's 30 times worse, in fact.

3 and 4, I agree with. 5 and 6 could go either way IMO.

With EA I'm not buying "just the game", I'm buying in into the development process, to be part of the body of people that get in early to provide feedback and shape the game. Surely, I may be scammed, my feedback could be completely ignored, and the product may never reach completion, and those are all risks of that investment, and I do not even have to be happy at all with my purchase, in fact, buying something for what it is right now is pretty much against the entire concept of EA. You buy EA titles precisely because you want in, you want to playtest, and to provide feedback. If you're buying EA to stay shut then you're hurting the product, EA, and the industry.

This concept of "silent, patient, happy-go-lucky customer" only benefits one kind of people, and they don't make good games, never have, never will. We here are literally telling the company how to make the most money, because we're exactly the ones throwing money at their product and wanting to stay in.

As for bug reports, I invite you to check the original KSP bugtracker, and then check the KSP2 bugtracker. Oh wait, KSP2 doesn't have a public bugtracker, so we can't track the progress on fixing bugs, if they've even been recognized, or if they've been properly reported. This makes KSP1 bug reporting infinitely better.

If people are suggesting the same thing you decided you'd never do, then you already know what your first DLC should be, or what the sequel should focus on, or what to make a spinoff based about. All feedback is useful, people that get angry at harsh words on a forum aren't useful.

13 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

It's amazing then that even though all these exist, I'm still finding tons of great games. This is because I make sure I'm informed and don't buy a game (including KSP2) until I think the cost is worth it.

I'm not saying "accept whatever they put on your plate."

I'm saying "if what they're producing isn't what you want don't waste your money OR your time on it."

You find those great games (I'm thinking Factorio, Rimworld, Vampire Survivors, DRG, Phasmophobia, SimpleRockets/Juno, Besiege, Don't Starve, Prison Architect, KSP1) and so on only because there have been entire communities dedicated to fight it out in the forums to provide valuable feedback, call out the devs when neccesary, make amazing mods, and stand up against the people telling them to wait in silence.

I challenge you to find me a successful, out-of-EA game  that hasn't had a massive forum controversy/backlash shaping it up at some point.

"if what they're producing isn't what you want don't waste your money OR your time on it" is a defeatist, low energy phrase. Nobody will ever make the game you want, but with EA you have a tool to find out if what you want has a lot of common grounds with the community formed around said game, to steer the final product in that direction. The phrase should really be a bit different:

"If what the game's community wants isn't what you want, don't waste your time or money on it".

Thankfully the KSP forums and even the subreddit clearly show a lot of common ground regarding the state of the game, what they expect from it, the treatment received from T2/PD, and so on, which is why you still see me here.

[Scarecrow71]

This image kind of reminds me of the whole thing with KSP2.

[Alexoff]

18 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

You mean let the content producers deliver products and the consumers buy said products if they're worth the money but otherwise they don't actually have a say?

Then yes, that's actually pretty accurate to what should happen.

Unless people actually are GIVING you free games. In which case again yes you should be grateful.

I honestly did not catch the essence of your comment regarding my sarcasm. I just wrote that the developers first strongly excite the emotions of the players with beautiful promises, and then they begin to take offense at the fact that the players are outraged by the discrepancy between the product and its advertising. There is only one step from love to hate, it is very easy to make it in one direction, but it is difficult to go back.

[robgraham]

Don't post a lot these days, used to back when KSP was in the early days on the old forums, but parts of the AMA have me worried. We were Sold KSP 2 as 'KSP but bigger, with multi system, multi player and colonies'. I mean from a game designer point of view which this AMA is meant to have been with it's not that hard of a design question.

q. What made KSP so popular and beloved from a 'game loop' perspective?

The answer to that is it's core game play loop, make rockets, either set your own goal or use the contract market... succeed or fail, in a fairly realistic simulation of reality. Even the early early builds of KSP that is what MADE KSP, take these few select parts, try and get to obit, blow up laugh, try again.. Set next challenge.. As the game got bigger, challenges got bigger, Add in the ability to add/remove mods to make the game what you want.. you have what makes KSP work. Why does that seem to be.. I don't know lost in the translation of these AMA's? When ever I read the answers to some of the questions in the AMA it honestly seems like rather then simply expand on what made KSP 1 great, they are instead trying to 'reinvent' KSP's "CORE".

And I mean Lets be honest, a lot of the community would likely have been happy if KSP 2 released and we got.. A shift to the newer unity builds (or even unreal) and with that an upgrade to the graphics engine comapred to KSP 1, KSP1's Core UI with maybe some tweaks to make it a little more friendly, Procedural <insert the various type> (wings, fairings, tanks, solar panels, etc) as part of core, MechJeb/some form of automation help especailly as you progress as part of core,  new solar systems and  multiplayer, why? because again the work that Harv and co did on the original game is what people loved. I get that the design team wants to make their own stamp on things, and make onboarding new players easier.. That's fine, you make the NPE better by adding in Tutorials and reworking things to high light systems, to give  better guidence and help, script people through starter missions etc. But again reading the AMA answers I'm left scratching my head at certain things like others because it's like on one hand all these ama's 'we are avid players of the first game who love it and listen to the community' on the other we get answers like this in this AMA

"We use procedual parts for things that are the same".. .... ...

Yet as 'avid players' and 'game designers' we didn't bother to do this with the fuel tanks which are ALL THE SAME and simply explain how to make what you need with that system, despite it being one of the go to mods for the first game, and has been since procedural parts were first introduced.

its Just a one of things that to me make me .. wonder.. Unlike most i'm not in the whole wahha I wanna refund, but tbh given the lack of updates in terms of patches compared to ksp1, the seeming disconnect on answers etc i can understand why a lot of KSP 1 players are 'eh refund and we'll just keep playing KSP 1'.
 

[joratto]

On 4/20/2023 at 7:24 PM, Dakota said:

In the previous AMA it got said that colonies will be built using resources, but the resource gathering update comes after the colonies one, how will that work? (ArturShow, Discord)

Quote

Remember that question about the roadmap? This is one of the outcomes when everything is building on top of each other.. We wanted to make sure exploration is about exploration.

This answer still confuses me. Even the extended answer in the audio. What was the actual answer to the question?

[TomKerbal]

<>

Edited May 19, 2023 by TomKerbal

[TomKerbal]

<>

Edited May 19, 2023 by TomKerbal

[wefightforpeace]

On 4/20/2023 at 2:15 PM, Dakota said:

It's important to note how much the team is focused on staying true to "KSP = game about rockets." Shana mentioned this a few times, but new additions/features/parts will extend functionality and gameplay in that area - not replace it. As Shana said, if a player wants to get to Duna, they shouldn't have to do 30min of colony overhead before getting started, which is why automation will play a factor in the colonies/exploration milestones.

There's plenty of amazing colony management games out there (personally my favorite is Rimworld), but we want to stay true to KSP and focus on building some cool rockets.

Was the vision of the team always that colonies would be a periphery feature or has there been any sort of looking at the daunting roadmap and going - let's limit this feature a bit more than we intended to focus on rockets?