KSP2 EA Grand Discussion Thread.

[chefsbrian]

4 minutes ago, Periple said:

There’s no way they would have let him go if they were happy with what he was doing.

If you want a defense of him that's also negative of the KSP2 project, another perfectly valid reason for letting him go is that he wouldn't agree to doing the impossible. Its not uncommon in any industry for someone to demand something that's infeasible, and to replace people until they have a crew that is willing to try. Whether that infeasibility was a hard truth, or lack of talent/ambition is impossible to say until all the chips are on the table, and we know very little about anything that matters right now.

Dude could be perfectly competent and left an impossible project at the end of the day. Could be the reverse.

[Pthigrivi]

4 hours ago, chefsbrian said:

Folks are upset with the state of things, and they want to talk with other people who are upset with the state of things. Others are ok with the state of things, and they want to talk to people who are ok with the state of things.

Thats not it though. I don't think almost anyone is okay with the state of things. Everyone knows the game is a hot mess. Certainly the Devs know its a hot mess. Folks like you and even most of the 'haters' are justifyably upset about the state of things and I don't disagree with them. This is not a matter of differing opinions. I see a lot of posters making completely reasonable and understandably angry posts and thats completely okay and exactly what this board is for.

[Snip]

Edited August 29, 2023 by James Kerman
Redacted by a moderator

[RocketRockington]

6 minutes ago, chefsbrian said:

If you want a defense of him that's also negative of the KSP2 project, another perfectly valid reason for letting him go is that he wouldn't agree to doing the impossible. Its not uncommon in any industry for someone to demand something that's infeasible, and to replace people until they have a crew that is willing to try. Whether that infeasibility was a hard truth, or lack of talent/ambition is impossible to say until all the chips are on the table, and we know very little about anything that matters right now.

Dude could be perfectly competent and left an impossible project at the end of the day. Could be the reverse.

I saw that.  Guy certainly seems to have some tales he'd like to tell.  You can't really know what's going on internally with a project - but I'd say it's a bad sign thay the entire engineering team  of Star Theory was the only department that, in whole and the lead, did not come with at all to IG.  Almost as if they knew something.  And then the engineering team that was hired on after had serious retention problems.  Maybe it was a sequence of bad engineering managers and disloyal/disgruntled software engineers, but if a pair of dice keep rolling.snake eyes, maybe it's right to wonder if they're rigged.

[chefsbrian]

7 minutes ago, RocketRockington said:

I saw that.  Guy certainly seems to have some tales he'd like to tell.  You can't really know what's going on internally with a project - but I'd say it's a bad sign thay the entire engineering team  of Star Theory was the only department that, in whole and the lead, did not come with at all to IG.  Almost as if they knew something.  And then the engineering team that was hired on after had serious retention problems.  Maybe it was a sequence of bad engineering managers and disloyal/disgruntled software engineers, but if a pair of dice keep rolling.snake eyes, maybe it's right to wonder if they're rigged.

Eh, a more realistic take is that the engineering team of any game studio is actually in fairly high demand - Not to demean any of the skillsets involved in development, but the kinds of people who can do the kinds of engine and core work a KSP style project relies on are able to demand a much higher salary than the usual tool and engine devs. So when you buy out the studio and start poaching people, you gotta give them a hell of a deal to convince them to stay and deal with the repurposed bovine waste. I'd put down $20 that they were offered 'industry standard' based on some low CoL area the parent company operates in, and didn't take it. The replacement crew, in a similar salary band, are only likely to take that salary band as a stepping stone - accept mediocre pay, stick around for a year for the resume, and use that to springboard into something nicer in the industry. Classic recipe for project level churn and talent bleed.

These sorta business failures are from a lovely mix of situational ignorance, and bureaucratic incompetence - The HR person doesn't know why these devs want so much money, the execs want the budget balanced and timelines to be hit, the hiring managers just have resumes to fill, and the team leads have a hell of a time making a pitch to the business on why they should seemingly overpay for talent. Its not that anyone specific individual is incompetent, they're just siloed and focused on a smaller part of the picture.

Edited August 29, 2023 by chefsbrian
said "Anyones incompetent" rather than "Any individual", woulda been contradictory otherwise

[RocketRockington]

1 minute ago, chefsbrian said:

I'd put down $20 that they were offered 'industry standard' based on some low CoL area the parent company operates in, and didn't take it

PD is based in Seattle, very close to Star Theory's now defunct studio.  T2 itself is HQd in NYC.   Of courses I don't know if the engineers were lowballed, but afaik T2 does not pay below market.

[moeggz]

I feel it is relevant to point out that the latest disagreements on this thread happened when someone disagreed with me that KSP2 is less playable with less features than KSP1, an opinion I don’t think many will disagree with.

The debate then went,

”no it’s not fair to compare it as it is now to KSP1”

which, why? As a consumer it absolutely is. Doesn’t matter how much work went into the 2024 Honda civic, if it’s worse in many ways than the 2023 you can’t fault the customer for sticking with the old model.

”you must compare the games at their same point in development.”

ok, KSP1 wins here easily as it was finished in the timeframe ksp2 had before launch.

”no silly, you have to compare them from the exact time in launching in ea”

ok, in 6 months ksp1 made major feature progress and KSP2 has stalled.

”no no no that’s not how it works software development is measured by effort not time”

Which I guess means work smarter not harder, but this is where I lost the desire to keep this particular discussion going.

When a commenter continually moves the goalposts and disregards your valid points is when you get people like @PDCWolf commenting a lot about “the same old topics” because someone is, to us, straight up ignoring what we are saying because it’s inconvenient and moving the goal posts. 

[Snip]

Edited August 29, 2023 by James Kerman
Redacted by a moderator

[RocketRockington]

17 minutes ago, moeggz said:

no no no that’s not how it works software development is measured by effort not time”

Silly me, I thought software development was measured in results(quality, stability, performance , improvement over prior art) vs costs (time, money). 

And yeah, KSP1 wins by a landslide, no matter how much the KSP2 white knights want to throw KSP1 under a bus to try to make the KSP1 vs KSP2 comparison at all relevant.  I find it hilarious how often the people who deride the 'haters' tend to also be quite willing to insult a game that has 95% positive reviews.  

Its not even like some aesthetic hipster thing where they hate the popular thing that everyone likes because everyone likes it, and like thr band noones heard of.

It's instead more the hate the band that wrote the songs, and manages to sound amazing despite playing on beat up used instruments, and love the cover band thats assembled out of professional muscians playing in a full studio with an orchestra backing them... but sounds like they just learned to play music at worst, and a soulless knockoff at best.

Edited August 29, 2023 by RocketRockington

[chefsbrian]

[Snip]

I think you guys both need to look at the fact that these little statements and sideways jabs at eachother are poisoning the well and making it worse for everyone - Believe me, I'm not laying any sort of sole blame at either of yours feet, but that theoretical new users walking into the forum has a 50/50 chance of seeing one side just being passive aggressive to the other first, and thats the sort of thing that immediately starts a negative slant in peoples minds - and first impressions are hard to change. I'm pretty sure the only reason I didn't do the same is I recognize both of you from pre-release talks where the conversation was much more cordial, so I know neither of you are just folks that need to touch grass. There's genuine intent and good will behind these, but from incredibly different sides of the spectrum of opinions. I don't wanna pick on either of you with this, y'all just happened to be the first obvious opposite end voices in here

S'not an easy problem to solve now though, nor do I have some dumb plan to try and fix things. Simply disengaging is still silencing a voice, and doesn't help with the problem. And folks don't really easily put aside resentment, and there's nothing really to 'unify' around as a narrative, whether it be failure or hope as I mentioned earlier. Devs gotta do something that triggers a community shift, the current status quo is engrained too hard.

2 hours ago, moeggz said:

When a commenter continually moves the goalposts and disregards your valid points is when you get people like @PDCWolf commenting a lot about “the same old topics” because someone is, to us, straight up ignoring what we are saying because it’s inconvenient and moving the goal posts. 

I haven't read the specific argument so I'll refrain from commenting on it, but for the general idea - often enough someones moving goalposts can be mistaken for a person who's just really bad at expressing themselves. As with PDC here just prior, sometimes folks need to stop and ask for clarifications rather than jumping at things - its easy to turn a confusing moment into a confrontational gotcha that turns into a defensive crawl that resembles goalposts. Once a conversation has a hint of potential malice in it, its easy to start attributing the suspected behavior to all behaviors.

We're all Space Rocket nerds at the end of the day, not debate club masters, folks are gonna speak off the cuff and make mistakes.

Edited August 29, 2023 by James Kerman
Redacted by a moderator

[moeggz]

20 minutes ago, chefsbrian said:

We're all Space Rocket nerds at the end of the day, not debate club masters, folks are gonna speak off the cuff and make mistakes.

Absolutely! And I appreciate your even temperedness and desire to mend rifts. I agree @PDCWolfand @Pthigrivi are both genuine and both want the same thing, a good KSP2. I’ve had productive conversations with both of them, and I hope they’d say the same of me.
 

And absolutely, we’re all human. I’m typing out most of my responses with one hand while my infant sleeps, id rather not be held to every thing I’ve ever said and I want to extend the same kindness to others. 
 

My point that you quoted me on was just that this is why the debates are so circular. What some see as intentionally antagonistic behavior I don’t, some keep repeating their comments because similar questions keep getting asked. The fact that the response is negative about KSP2 is a reflection of their genuinely held opinions about KSP2, and not from a desire to derail every thread or spread misery, at least how I see it.

 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, chefsbrian said:

If you want a defense of him that's also negative of the KSP2 project, another perfectly valid reason for letting him go is that he wouldn't agree to doing the impossible. Its not uncommon in any industry for someone to demand something that's infeasible, and to replace people until they have a crew that is willing to try. Whether that infeasibility was a hard truth, or lack of talent/ambition is impossible to say until all the chips are on the table, and we know very little about anything that matters right now.

Dude could be perfectly competent and left an impossible project at the end of the day. Could be the reverse.

I think his 2020 developer insights blog is pretty damning. He wrote a check he couldn’t cash. 

Almost all of KSP2’s problems are down to engineering team and process, and he was the one tasked with setting them up. At that time also he was extremely confident that he had what it took to do so.

[PDCWolf]

3 minutes ago, Periple said:

I think his 2020 developer insights blog is pretty damning. He wrote a check he couldn’t cash. 

Almost all of KSP2’s problems are down to engineering team and process, and he was the one tasked with setting them up. At that time also he was extremely confident that he had what it took to do so.

God, it's incredible how not a single word in that blog post aged well.

[moeggz]

I think I agree with @chefsbrianthat we need a paradigm shifting update (ie science) to move the community forward.

What you see as spamming I see as meticulous detail gathering. There were a few posts where I wasn’t inclined to post transcripts or all the details of a link (again, infant and also not wanting to be accused as a liar if I slightly misquoted something) and @PDCWolf put the time and effort into actually laying out all the details. These detailed lists were appreciated not just by me but by other commenters.

I don’t mean to pick on your shared disagreement with each other, I just want to say that it’s very easy (I’ve done it myself plenty) to put people in boxes and I do believe that both of you are genuine and want the best for both KSP, and the community.

@Periple good catch! I tried to find stuff he posted here but he didn’t use his username here much and as that was under intercept games it didn’t come up. Still just all guess work, so I’m not trying to lay blame at any individual’s feet, but the contrast of those very confident statements and what we actually got is a core source of much of the distrust. That was a check they couldn’t cash, but hopefully science is for the sake of the game, and I think it’d lighten the mood here a little bit. 

Also, the phrase “trade resources” with other players is one I had forgotten about. That would imply a space race type multiplayer version that still would involve some cooperation. I’d love for there to be a straightforward “versus” and “coop” mode where multiple players are working together on one space agency but trade implies a third type of distinct but cooperative space agencies.

[RocketRockington]

36 minutes ago, Periple said:

I think his 2020 developer insights blog is pretty damning. He wrote a check he couldn’t cash. 

Almost all of KSP2’s problems are down to engineering team and process, and he was the one tasked with setting them up. At that time also he was extremely confident that he had what it took to do so.

That's true - though in his defense, he was very new to the team when he wrote that and just parroting a company line that had been spouted in earlier statements by Nate, and was being doubled down on all the way in late 2022 by Tom.   He should have known better of course.  But I don't think sole fault rests with him, as he wasn't around for the Uber/Star Theory days, while other upper IG management was.

[Vanamonde]

Thread closed pending moderator review. 

[Vanamonde]

Okay folks, we've looked over the thread and removed a number of overly personal remarks. Disagreement is fine but please don't treat each other like enemies while doing it. And if someone's posts really bother you, save yourself some aggravation and just set that person to ignore. 

[Bej Kerman]

20 hours ago, RocketRockington said:

I think EVA construction was meaningful.  And comets are cool.  Maneuver creator and transfer planner and alarm clock were great additions for people who don't already have those in mod form.

Comets were merely the addition of particles around some objects (shouldn't take years to do) and the other three features should've been in a long time before Squad actually got round to adding them.

Edited August 29, 2023 by Bej Kerman
Typo

[Royalswissarmyknife]

1 hour ago, Bej Kerman said:

WHY WONT IT LET ME TYPE

Edited August 30, 2023 by Royalswissarmyknife

[MechBFP]

Just now, Royalswissarmyknife said:

 

Mobile forums be like that. 

[Royalswissarmyknife]

Just now, MechBFP said:

Mobile forums be like that. 

On Pc so idk why its like that.

1 hour ago, Bej Kerman said:

Comets were merely the addition of particles around some objects (shouldn't take years to do) and the other three features should've been in a long time before Squad actually got round to adding them.

The only reason they added comets was because of the ESA collab and the Rosetta mission.

it would be a bit odd to send Rosetta to an asteroid.

If they never had a collab with ESA then I think we would have never seen them (mainly because they had almost no reason to be added (asteroids already existed)).

also Ksp-2 has been in development since 2017-2018 so its been a while since Intercept got around to adding science. 

[Royalswissarmyknife]

The Discord Dev tracker isn't even big enough to show the full date of the update. 

Has to tomorrow though.

Spoiler

I sure love 0.1.4.0 on the 32nd. 

 

Edited August 30, 2023 by Royalswissarmyknife

[The Aziz]

As far as I'm concerned, there's already 30th pretty much everywhere, so it's today.

Or yesterday for eastern folks, huh

[Vl3d]

So should this new patch be the one that finally makes the game playable?

[The Aziz]

Check the patch notes once it's out and say your view if it is or not.

[Stoup]

3 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

So should this new patch be the one that finally makes the game playable?

As far as expectations go, you're free to set whatever ones you like! I for one am not anticipating much of anything beyond what was listed as fixed in the KERB report, and I therefore expect I'll be at least a little pleasantly surprised as in sure there's plenty they fixed and did not specifically mention there.

[Royalswissarmyknife]

13 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

So should this new patch be the one that finally makes the game playable?

The games already playable.

The question we should be asking is if it makes the game enjoyable.