KSP2 EA Grand Discussion Thread.

[PDCWolf]

1 hour ago, The Aziz said:

This tells me you don't have the game. Cuz you're describing KSP1 very well, I'll give you that.

Which is exactly why later on I wrote "there's little hint so far that any more care has been put in KSP2s planets other than disjointed discoverables/easter eggs." I was talking about KSP1 indeed on that paragraph.

Edited November 8, 2023 by PDCWolf

[Vl3d]

I feel in love with KSP 1 the moment I realized that, beyond what was in the game, the potential of what it could be is limitless - a persistent universe where players can build, explore and show off their creativity.

I long for the day when I'll visit a new planet and I'll discover the huge busy colonies built by other players and I'll see the craft they actually designed in their own unique style flying and roaming around.

I'm very happy to see how the vision and potential of KSP is slowly becoming reality. Some day we will meet each other - out there!

The dream is alive!

[Bej Kerman]

5 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

huge busy colonies

I estimate that "busy" is going to be a couple players an hour at most. Don't forget to temper expectations or we'll have a repeat of the disappointment people had when the game ended up not being the pre-rendered trailer.

[Periple]

34 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

I long for the day when I'll visit a new planet and I'll discover the huge busy colonies built by other players and I'll see the craft they actually designed in their own unique style flying and roaming around.

I think it's pretty unlikely that KSP2's multiplayer will be anything like that. Most likely you'll only be able to do stuff like have a fun session with a friend doing a collaborative Mun mission, or a space race where the first one to the Mun wins (real time, not game time). You might also be able to invite a couple of friends to drop in on your game.  But I don't think they have the team to make something that would allow servers with persistent worlds that would really give you that experience.

48 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

I'm very happy to see how the vision and potential of KSP is slowly becoming reality. Some day we will meet each other - out there!

Please remember that the game they're making is their vision, not your vision, and it is really likely that they're actually different visions aren't meant to meet!

[The Aziz]

9 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Which is exactly why later on I wrote "there's little hint so far that any more care has been put in KSP2s planets other than disjointed discoverables/easter eggs." I was talking about KSP1 indeed on that paragraph.

So, for starters, Moho2's terrain is much less forgiving, it's full of craters as you would expect from a planet this close to the star (but I'll admit, it looks much more boring from orbit than it does from near the surface). On Gilly you can find yourself in a nice flat spot surrounded by gigantic vertical walls from 3 sides (a technical challenge for colonies, perhaps?). I don't know much about Eve, she never attracted me despite her high gravity, but the purple sphere looks a lot nicer from orbit than it used to. Kerbin got a upscale in resolution in terrain detail, there's much less flat ground. Mun is now a lot more like Moon, has hills and valleys and flatlands, not just procedural craters everywhere. Minmus flats are not exactly flat anymore, I mean they are on planetary scale but there are bumps and cracks and whatnot. And it's SHINY. Duna... Has blue sunsets, I guess, but I have yet to spot an interesting place to land, hard to find it from orbit. Then again, our Mars doesn't look very interesting on macro level either aside from few landmarks. At least the polar caps on Duna look like they may have some glaciers? Ike has a bunch of huge dead volcanoes, probably formed while it was still evolving, and considering the distance to parent body, it's not surprising, it was probably close to being ripped apart by tidal forces. Ike is lucky to be there in one piece. Dres is no longer boring, oh no. It has a ring, it has an equatorial ridge, the old canyon is now actually few canyons and unlike KSP1, now they're REALLY deep. Eeloo it's still white and frosty, but the cracks in the surface, just like on Dres, are very deep. And big. Don't know what's at the bottom though. Haven't been to Jool aside from one jump into the atmosphere so can't tell much about the moons but reportedly they're also quite nice even now.

so yeah, the system was completely rebuilt to actually look, not just be there. With further improvements to terrain generation system, I fully expect something even better in the future. 

[Vl3d]

47 minutes ago, Periple said:

Please remember that the game they're making is their vision, not your vision, and it is really likely that they're actually different visions aren't meant to meet!

Nate's vision is my vision also.

[EugenPru]

I like the planet generation system in KSP2. I think the planets are diverse and interesting to explore. The graphics are realistic. Although there is still room for improvement

[Vl3d]

35 minutes ago, EugenPru said:

I like the planet generation system in KSP2. I think the planets are diverse and interesting to explore. The graphics are realistic. Although there is still room for improvement

Planets are mostly hand crafted, but some terrain details are procedural. Enjoy!

[Periple]

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

Nate's vision is my vision also.

Then how come you’re on the science thread arguing that 0.2.0 ought to be like Kerbalism when it’s clear it’s not?

[Vl3d]

15 minutes ago, Periple said:

Then how come you’re on the science thread arguing that 0.2.0 ought to be like Kerbalism when it’s clear it’s not?

I said the innovations from mods and user suggestions should be taken into account and in the best case integrated in the systems. Case and point - science experiments have a timer now - I don't know the implementation details, but I assume it's for transmission instead of for the actual doing of the experiment. We shall see.

Look, I trust the devs and I'm gonna eat what they serve and provide feedback. But because of a lack of communication regarding gameplay systems, we have to keep an ongoing dialogue about what "could or should be" instead of what "is our will be" in the game.

It's not talked a lot about here or on Discord, but the actual gameplay system details are very important. It's the small things that matter, the sane defaults, the grind / fun / difficulty balance. This should get way more attention - unfortunately right now we're too busy talking about the bugs.

For example - the issue of life support: ok, consuming time limited resources breaks the warp mechanic, but at least give us radiation management or something. Don't leave us disappointed that a very requested feature will just be missing. Especially after mentioning snacks in the tutorials.

Edited November 8, 2023 by Vl3d

[Periple]

That's all perfectly fine, but how can you do all that and at the same time say that Nate's vision is your vision? It clearly isn't, Nate is making choices you don't like!

There will be no life support, radiation management is a very hazy "maybe some day," science will not be like Kerbalism, there's no indication they have any intention of doing anything with CommNet beyond a reimplementation of KSP1, the multiplayer game will be nothing like the persistent-world MMO with giant busy player-created colonies, and so on and so on. Your vision of the game is just really different from Nate's!

[Vl3d]

3 minutes ago, Periple said:

That's all perfectly fine, but how can you do all that and at the same time say that Nate's vision is your vision? It clearly isn't, Nate is making choices you don't like!

There will be no life support, radiation management is a very hazy "maybe some day," science will not be like Kerbalism, there's no indication they have any intention of doing anything with CommNet beyond a reimplementation of KSP1, the multiplayer game will be nothing like the persistent-world MMO with giant busy player-created colonies, and so on and so on. Your vision of the game is just really different from Nate's!

I accept the decisions of the dev team and I believe in the end goal and vision shown in the cinematic trailers.

The differences you're mentioning are in the actual implementation details - and I'm not a dev so I can't decide anything, I can only give feedback and make some suggestions.

As for the MMO thing - maybe it's not technically and financially possible, but that's still the ultimate KSP experience for me. That can bring all the community together and allows players to actually see - in game - what everyone else builds. Until then we're checking out craft files online or watching videos on YouTube or posting in the "what did you do today" forum.

[Periple]

1 minute ago, Vl3d said:

The differences you're mentioning are in the actual implementation details - and I'm not a dev so I can't decide anything, I can only give feedback and make some suggestions.

No they're not, these are design decisions!

2 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

As for the MMO thing - maybe it's not technically and financially possible, but that's still the ultimate KSP experience for me.

Exactly, it's part of your vision, but it's not part of Nate's vision! They're not the same!

[Vl3d]

I trust Nate and the team to take the game to a good place.

Edited November 8, 2023 by Vl3d

[Periple]

4 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

I trust Nate and the team to take the game to a good place.

I do too, but I do recognize that if it had been me, I would have made a different KSP2 than they are!

[Vl3d]

5 minutes ago, Periple said:

I do too, but I do recognize that if it had been me, I would have made a different KSP2 than they are!

What's your vision for KSP?

[Bej Kerman]

2 hours ago, Vl3d said:

3 hours ago, Periple said:

Please remember that the game they're making is their vision, not your vision, and it is really likely that they're actually different visions aren't meant to meet!

Nate's vision is my vision also.

"A competitive space-race team-based MMO" certainly does not represent Nate's vision. KSP is not an MMO and it never will be.

Edited November 8, 2023 by Bej Kerman

[Periple]

2 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

What's your vision for KSP?

I would've gone a bit  deeper on the simulation side: FAR-like aerodynamics and a life support system that's ignorable in the Kerbin system but starts to become relevant for interplanetary missions and is crucial for colonization and outer Kerbolar system missions and a core part of interstellar. 

I would also have at least explored the possibility of turning the contract/mission system on its head: instead of the game giving you missions, you could plan them yourself, setting your own objectives. You would then get rewards for meeting these objectives, with bigger payoffs for combining harder objectives, and diminishing payoffs for repeat missions. (You'd still be able to do ad-hoc missions as now, you just wouldn't get the extra payoff for making the plan and sticking to it.)

For the tech tree, I would have used cost/reward as an incentive for outward exploration: higher tiers should cost exponentially more than lower tiers, and you could only get the currency for them by exploring outwards. 

On the parts side, I would've tried to cut down the number of similar parts pretty drastically by making things parameterized or procedural -- for example, have one tank of each diameter and let you pick the length as a variant, and then specify what it contains. Still keep it legos but cut down on the clutter. 

I also have a pretty clear idea of what I'd want to do with the resource system and multiplayer but since we know very little about that at this point, I don't think there's much point to get into that.

[Bej Kerman]

33 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

That can bring all the community together and allows players to actually see - in game - what everyone else builds.

Elite: Dangerous is probably the closest thing you'll get to what you're asking, and it's not like people around stations are going up to each other to compare each others' builds. Most people jump to supercruise to do whatever tasks they have in mind and don't care what others do in game unless it involves their friends or they're being attacked. Real deep discussions on builds and different ships tend to happen on the forums or other social sites and you can probably expect the same from KSP 2. Even if you somehow ended up with the MMO you're asking for, that hypothetical KSP 2 MMO would probably going to be in the same boat as E:D (assuming space centers and colonies would get nearly as busy as ED space stations), people only interacting with each other when they're forced, and people still using the forums anyway when they want to see what other people are building. You might get occasional things like ED's Distant Worlds expeditions, but you don't need an MMO for that to happen and it won't represent most players' experience with multiplayer. 

So regardless of whether your vision matches Nates', you should probably recognise that there's a lot of wishful thinking happening when you envision booting multiplayer up and being greeted immediately with interstellar vessels in the sky and several players flying in formation.

[Vl3d]

This post is really relevant to the discussion. KSP is not just one game.

 

[Bej Kerman]

4 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

This post is really relevant to the discussion. KSP is not just one game.

Of course not, it's just two. Also, I'm pretty sure we were just talking about KSP 2.

[Periple]

5 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

This post is really relevant to the discussion. KSP is not just one game.

We don't know anything at all about their other project though, so anything we come up with about it right now is just pure fantasy!

[Bej Kerman]

1 minute ago, Periple said:

pure fantasy!

An apt description of most of this speculation.

[Vl3d]

15 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Of course not, it's just two. Also, I'm pretty sure we were just talking about KSP 2.

I was referring to the fact that you can play KSP in multiple ways:

A: Interstellar, Near Future Tech

B: Realism (RO / RSS / RP)

C: Warfare (BD Armory)

D: Roleplay (controlling a single character on missions,  with IVA focus)

E: Colony builder (and resource / transport logistics game)

KSP2 is going mostly down the route of interstellar and colonies (hopefully with some first / third person roleplay). Mods can serve the needs of realism or warfare. Multiplayer is an architectural decision, it can be added to all of them.

[Bej Kerman]

2 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

22 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Of course not, it's just two. Also, I'm pretty sure we were just talking about KSP 2.

I was referring to the fact that you can play KSP in multiple ways:

It's a little obtuse to use "several games" as a description of a game, singular, especially when all these systems are meant to tie into each other.