KSP2 AMA Series - Chris "Nertea" Adderley - Answers/Transcript

[Dakota]

Heya everyone! Below is the transcript to the AMA we did with Chris Adderley on 8/17 live on KSPTV.

You can find the VOD here. 

If you catch an error with the transcript, feel free to @ me in a response!

Thanks everyone,

Dakota

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Can you introduce yourself and your position in the studio and maybe talk a little bit about what you work on? (skyzip4k)

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Yeah, so my position in the studio is a Senior Mechanical Concept Designer, which is a really interesting title and it basically means that what I do is make sure that our tech and our systems that we're designing are accurate and have the appropriate level of realism for what we want to target.
That's what I was hired for, but I've been branching out a lot in the last year or so into a lot more systems design and everything surrounding our parts basically.

Were you modding before KSP? What made you want to mod (games) and how did you know a game you wanted to mod? (James M.)

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I started modding a really long time ago back in high school. I started modding Star Trek Armada, which is a really old Star Trek RTS.
If you've played that, you'll know what it was like. So I just did a bit of modding there. I dabbled in a couple of other games, most specifically Battle for Middle Earth, I'm a pretty big Lord of the Rings nerd. Then I discovered Kerbal and it was really fun and I thought "I could make this cooler" and that's when I started to mod it.

What is one thing that was different from your expectations and your change from modder to developer? Are there things that we're challenging as a modder that now make more sense from your perspective as a developer? (moeggz)

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I think overall, as a modder, you have a framework to build on and that's really useful and it's something that I think that I took for granted a lot of the time. So I KSP1 as a modding framework is really a good modding framework. And when I look at my time making mods, there was lots of like, lots of griping about what I could and what I couldn't do. And now that I'm kind of more in the back end of things, I understand a lot more of the design decisions and the thought that went into things. I do kind of miss the freedom of being able to do whatever I want in a modding context. But yeah, this is better.

As a fan-favorite modder turned developer, what's one particularly memorable or satisfying moment you've experienced while working on KSP2 that you'd like to share? (Heretic391)

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So this is a cool thing that happened in a team playtest a couple of weeks ago. We'll do these playtests where the studio goes together and we'll fly rockets and we usually have a goal or some sort of new feature that we're trying to test. And we were launching rockets and we were looking at our, basically our new system, which shows like, you know, your trajectory is your burning. And somebody had created a trajectory that looked really weird to everybody. But this was actually a correct trajectory. And from a rocketry perspective, it started to kind of show some of the trades that go into like what trajectory your rocket will use as during launch. So I love it when we create a new system which actually gets into the why of real rocketry. And that makes me really excited, as you can tell from my happy face here *makes happy face*

Hey Chris, big fan of your mods in ksp1 and i honestly consider them essential. What have you learned from your days as a ksp 1 modder has helped you in your role in ksp2? (6ar6oyle)

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I think I learned a lot of what not to do, honestly. Being able to kind of like operate in a vacuum and build mods gave me a lot of room to test out theories, test out ideas. And I was able to come into the team and say, when we have a concept, I could say, I tried that, it was not well received by the audience. Or like, I tried that, I feel like it's too complicated. Or I tried this, there's a lot of kind of like experimentation that I was able to do that I was able to bring straight into the team.

from being a mod developer to a dev on ksp2 what has been your favorite moment? (the_tunnel)

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 I think one of my favorite moments was coming into the project and looking at our internal wikis and stuff and seeing some of my stuff as references.
 I felt like I really made it at that point and that, you know, it's also very embarrassing, but you know....

What mistakes did you learn from making your mods in ksp1 that helped you on issues for ksp2? (Spicat)

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Yeah, so this is kind of a good extension of that other question, and I've got a good example here and it's about nuclear rockets.

So, you know, nuclear rockets are basically, they take the concept of let's just, let's make a very, very hot object, let's run propellant over it and it expands and creates thrust. I spent a lot of time modding KSP1 and trying to make really realistic feeling nuclear rocket simulations.

None of those were well received. The idea that you need to wait for a reactor to heat up before you can use it and then it has to cool down and you have to deal with the heat, it kind of sounds cool, but it played very poorly.

So that's one of my larger mistakes that I made in my mods that I'm able to kind of like take a look at here with the help of the rest of the design team and everything.

Which milestone update are you most excited to work on? (tycothepug)

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Zero doubt in saying colonies! We're obviously, as we go through early access, we're gonna go through a lot of milestones and I think the colonies is most like transformative in terms of how people are gonna play KSP2.

Is it fun working on KSP2 intercept games? (noobyeeter69)

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Well, I mean, it's a job, so every day, has its ups and its downs, having fun right now, so you know, some days are frustrating, some days are awesome. Some days I get to see really cool art that people are working on, some days I get to see a new system that's come online and those are really satisfying things.

What’s your favorite mod of ksp2 so far? (Spicat)

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So I haven't dived into the modding scene a lot in KSP2, but I've been seeing some really good work that's come out of like improving trajectory planning and flight planning, and I can't think of the name of the mod off the top of my head but those kind of mods are really cool, and I like to see what people are doing in that space with a new tool, so we've given them.

How closely does KSP2's team follow developments in the aerospace industry? Does it help you guys come up with ideas for parts or other features to add in KSP2?  (novaraptortv)

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Well, we've got a lot of people who like space here, and there's a lot of space stuff on the walls in this room, so I think we're representing that pretty well.
 Everybody's really in the loop about the cool stuff that's coming, and we've got an internal Slack channel where we'll post space news and stuff and share it out to the rest of the team, which we're pretty aware of what's going on in the industry 'cause we kind of have to be. And every time there's a new cool development that comes out, maybe there's like a new hypothetical engine type or something, somebody on the team will DM me, and they'll be like, "Chris, when is this going in the game?" And then I have to say like, we'll think about it.

what is your favorite part that you can talk about that's been made? Also, what's your favorite type of cheese? (afterglow79, Discord)

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So, this is kind of like maybe the most exciting part, but it's the big spherical hydrogen tank. And I like kind of the big cool aesthetic of that tank. It's really cool. But what I'd like even more is all of the cool stuff the community has built with it that I could have never possibly imagined. And that is really fun. And that's kind of one of the cool things. It's like, yeah, we make parts, but we make parts that all of the community can leave for it mand make cool things with. And that's exciting to me.

 And I think like Smoked Gouda is like, that's where it's at.

What are things that you can’t make too realistic for gameplay reasons? (Spicat)

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Every single thing in the game, possibly? This is a fun question 'cause like, one of the things that make this job cool is like trade spaces, right? It's like we're always trading realism versus gameplay. And we're always trying to put that line in a good place. That hits the requirements of like everybody.
 who's playing the game. And a lot of different people play the game in a lot of different ways. So, trying to figure out systems that are appropriately deep that they represent the real challenges, and you get some realism going, but also that they're actually usable is a really hard problem and I like hard problems.

Is it true you derive sustenance and nutrients from reading white papers and looking at whitebox models?  (Kavaeric)

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I mean, I think I mostly derive sustenance and nutrients from drinking a stupid amount of coffee. Yeah, it's maybe not the best for me.

But yeah, I do like making white box models, that's lots of fun. They're what I joined the team for, and I do read a lot of abstracts and white papers.
Read a few less papers all the way through than I used to these days, but you know, abstract conclusion, go through it. Look at the figures.

What is your favorite mod you made for KSP1? Bonus question: What is your favorite mod for KSP1 you didn’t make? (Tycothepug)

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This is like picking your favorite child.

So that's hard, but I think like there's two that I would call out from my own stuff that I like. One is the far future technologies mod. 'Cause I think I did, you know, I think I did a good job with that one. I think there was a lot of like integration of hypothetical and future technologies that came together in it like artistically and gameplay good way, but I also like near future solar, which just adds a ton of solar panels to the game and I like solar panels.
 So aesthetically, that one's up there.

As for favorite KSP1 mod that I didn't make, well, there's a lot of good mods out there. So it's hard to pick one.
I'm going to say that some of the visual mods like Scatter are definitely like really up there and bringing the quality of the game's visuals up.
And I will give a shout out to Blue Dog Design Bureau, which is a just like stupidly well researched take on like all of American rocketry.
And there's great models, there's great research that's gone into it. It's a great achievement.

 

What are your hopes for the future of KSP2? (Heretic391)

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Right, I got two primary goals here:

One is to, you know, this is very aspirational, but I want to convert all KSP1 players to KSP2 players. And modders too. That would be ideal.

And the second one is that I want my mum to be able to achieve orbit in KSP2, which she's tried in KSP1 and has not succeeded.
So, you know, that will, it's a core goal here. It's my approachability goal.

 

What other games are you guys playing at the moment? (Burntout)

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Well, I just finished Tears of the Kingdom, playing it with my kids, lots of fun, great game.
I am currently starting through my backlog of accumulated games, which is large.
I'm playing Warhammer 3 Total War right now, which is a good Total War game, which I do enjoy.
And yeah, I think next after that will be Baldur's Gate 3 because everybody's talking about it and I should probably play it.

 

What is the biggest challenge in creating a complex heat system like we will see in a future soon in KSP2? (_gonb_)

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There's, can I go with two challenges?
 - Sure, it's your AMA.
 
Yeah, I don't think I could rank these. Like those two challenges, scalability and planability.
So, scalability is making sure that we've got a system which works on all of the scales that KSP2 is gonna be involved in. So, it's got to work on like small ships, big ships, small time scales, big time scales. That's hard. So, it's hard from a design perspective, it's hard from an engineering perspective. And the approachability aspect of it is also like, it's hard to communicate what their one dynamics is doing to a player and making that approachable. That's gonna be a challenge as well.

 

What do you like about the new heat system? Also, blink 3 times quickly if you're being held against your will and forced to answer softball questions in a positive manner. (RocketmanKSP)

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*blinks a bunch more than 3  times*
(laughing)
 I'll leave it up to you guys to decide how like 30 blinks links into that.

I like [the heat system] because I think it hits our player stories and it thinks, I think it scales. It's linked back to the previous question as well. Like we're trying to make something that scales as it is approachable.  And I think we hit those goals. And that's how I define success.

 

In the first AMA, Nate mentioned different reentry colors, what will those looks like? (Spicat)

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Oh, so this is really fun. And this is one of the things I like about my job. Somebody can say, "Hey Chris, what should reentry look like "color-wise?" Then I get to do a deep dive on plasma emission colors. And that takes up all my morning and that's lots of fun.

I'm gonna not get super too technical here so that we can answer lots of questions. But it's interesting because how reentry looks is defined by at least three different processes.

You've got like plasma emission, you've got like long way thermal emission, which creates like kind of a heaty glow. And then you've also got kind of like air compression. So, when we're talking about color, each of those processes gives you a different color spectrum. And those are affected differently depending on the atmosphere composition.

So, we've got a specific color of reentry that Earth has that we can generally use in KSP2 or Kerbin. But then we get to do fun things like define the atmospheric gases that should exist, like at Duna, at Eve and stuff like that and pull the colors out of those. Like, you know, what does a carbon dioxide atmosphere look like in terms of emission? What does hydrogen look like in terms of emission? So, we're trying to get some sort of like realism to coolness balance, which is what we all are always trying to strive for here. So yeah, I think you'll see like Earth-like and then you'll see variations that are different, different blues, different purples, different reds. It'll be cool, but not cool because it's heat. I can't wait to see all of the colors.

 

With the heat limit of most parts reduced over KSP1, how do you plan to make KSP2 spaceplanes capable of surviving re-entry? Are conformal heatshields in the plans? (hakko__)

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Yeah, so I mean, we reduced the numbers, and we also were looking at like what the absolute magnitudes of the fluxes that are coming into the system are.
 So, you shouldn't think that we're going to have lower heat tolerance numbers combined with the same flux numbers for KSP1.

My tuning goal is that reentry for carbon and the usual things inside the core of a Kerbal system feels generally the same as KSP1. So, you'll be able to do your kind of different approaches to landing space planes. I'm pretty terrible at landing space planes. I'm gonna have to get offload some testing to somebody who can.

But yeah, in terms of conformal heat shields, I'm gonna say not initially. We definitely have parts that have heat towels on the bottom and we wanna eventually be able to use that kind of representation to tell a player, okay, hey, this is better at receiving heat. But that's gonna be something we're gonna look at after the initial release of the thermal system.

What are the biggest differences you can highlight between Science in ksp1 and Science in ksp2? (Spicat)

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I think one thing we're really trying to get at here is approachability. The KSP1 science system had a good core to work with, but it had a lot of esoteric behaviors that if you didn't know the game really, really well, you couldn't really use or you could exploit a ton. Like the difference that we usually look at is your average player sitting on the KSC launch pad might be able to collect 10 science. But somebody who knows the ins and outs of that system can collect 100 science. So we want to kind of like make that, make players be able to understand how they're collecting science and scale that, right? Like everybody have the same path, or not the same path, but everybody have a similar path of learning and growing and understanding the system.

 

What would you say has taken the most time in the upcoming science update? (Tycothepug)

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I think one of our big challenges that we have right now is balancing feature work versus bug work. Obviously, the game has bugs and we are delivering lots of minor updates that are squashing the hardest bugs, but that takes time from development out of science features effectively. So when I think about what's taken the most time, it's really like, how do we get that good cadence going? How do we accurately balance between making progress on science,
 but also hitting core bugs that the community wants to see squashed?

 

was there a particularly difficult science instrument to design and implement? Why or why not? (no2tm)

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There's,  I think there weren't really any that were difficult to design and implement, but why we have our challenges is more around how we tune them.
So it's a lot of like how, what science experiment gives what returns in terms of science, what are its requirements in terms of, does it need to be in a specific case, does it need specific resources, does it need specific time? Getting that tuning right is probably the hardest bit about all of this.

 

Will modding support come in small waves, like how heating will be expended with every milestone update, or will it be a (mostly) one time update? (Abelinoss)

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I think small waves is gonna be the answer here. Just like everything else we wanna use early access as a vehicle to like get community feedback on features and like, you know, release an iteration of something just like heat and say, here's our baseline. What do we think? Do we need to re-engineer that for the next update? So as we get to modding support, that's also what I wanna see. I wanna see us release some stuff in a particular structure and then take feedback on that from the community with the next iteration of that.

 - Just to expand on that one, what needs to be done before modding support will come at the follow for the same user?

A lot of internal work, I'll say that.

 

Will Kerbin recieve visual updates to its biomes to give it a more "alive" feeling? (M4D_Mat7)

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I would love to see that. And our VFX and SFX team has a lot of cool concepts that we can use to really make biomes interesting on a visual level, a sound level and all of those kinds of good levels.

Are there  plans for resources/guides to help modders mod within the planned game dynamics vs. “modders gonna mod” and mod without any clear direction/instructions from dev team on the best way to make stable coherent  mods? (picospace)

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I definitely wanna see that happen. A lot of that is something that we need to figure out how we're gonna release to the community. So I kind of think that what we wanna start with is style guides and being able to give out people who make parts and maybe make user interfaces information  on how to blend those kinds of things with the community and then go from there.

What are your favorite tips and tools for new modders? (Socraticat)

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 Think about what you wanna build.
 Don't think about what the community wants you to build.
 A lot of the challenges that you might run into are I wanna make something for, you know, to fulfill a community need, which is great.
 But I think I've always got the best results by really, really pulling it down and saying, like, what am I interested in doing? What am I interested in learning?
 And I think like figure out what you want to do. Do you wanna make models? Do you wanna write code? Do you wanna like fiddle with UIs?
 Pick a specialty and do it.

If I wanted to get started with modding, what route would you suggest I go down? (James M.)

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I think it's basically the end of that question, right? Pick what you wanna do, pick how you wanna do it. You wanna make some parts.
Let's look at what you would need to do to make a part. You probably need to learn how to model. You probably need to learn how to texture and figure out, do some tests, figure out if those are things you actually like doing and do what you like doing versus what you need to do.

Are there any features you modded into KSP 1 that you are bringing into KSP2? What is your favorite? (Pokaia)

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I'm never going to bring any specific feature that I modded into KSP1 into KSP2. One of the benefits of like working with a core design team here is that we can all work together to get ideas and to build systems that are actually, well, don't run into the pitfalls that I ran into and that's what I was modding. So although we might build a heat system which has some elements of what I might have built for KSP1, we're never really gonna port anything.

KSP is a very physics-intensive project.  KSP is also a game that needs to be both performant AND fun to play. When these areas are in conflict, how do you decide where to draw the line? (funphaze)

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That's a hard one too, because then it's all about scalability and I feel like I've said that word a lot. We have to scale every system in the game, right? Like we scale it with the size of a vessel, we scale it with the size of a save and we scale it with like very minor things like time warp. And a lot of that is kind of player capability, right? A player starts off with a little tiny rocket that can barely go to orbit. And eventually our goal is to get them to have a gigantic colony ship that goes to another solar system. And obviously within that spectrum, there's performance problems. There's performance that we need to evaluate in terms of every system we add on. If we add up, we think, "Oh, there's some cool new physics-driven system "we wanna add in here." Our first thought really has to be like,  "Can we do this in a performant manner?" And that's when we bring in the engineering team  and we say, "Hey, we're thinking of doing this, is this gonna be horrifying?" And based on how many eyebrows get raised in that meeting, we may scale back our designs. But drawing the exact line is definitely more of an art than a science.

What is your favorite part in the game (If you have one)? (datau03)

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Yeah, I mean, we've got that big spherical hydrogen tank. And then I'll put the SWERV on there too, because it's a kind of cool, pipey engine. And I like cool, pipey engines. There are other parts that are more my favorite part in the game that are coming that I'm excited to reveal when we get there.

What's your favourite step of developing a new part? What's your least favourite step? (kavaeric)

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I've really gotten to trying to define the silhouette part because we have a lot of hearts in the game, shocker, we're gonna have more parts in the game. And we usually have to try to make it so a player knows that they're using a part and what that part's role is. So when we're putting in a new engine, we wanna look at its silhouettes versus all the other engines and see, hey, does this look unique enough to build this part? And that is a really interesting step because we have to consider a lot of different things there and to create a lot of information and building out that little, you know, that silhouette. And then getting it through the design team and through the art teams to make sure it makes sense. It's an interesting challenge.

How has your work in [KSP1 modding] translated to the design strategy in KSP2? (Kavaeric)

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I think it's like a lot of the same, right? Like what player stories are we hitting with features? And I think one of the differences is that I have a team. I have a team to back up those things. And although we carry over a lot of the way I think about systems, it's nice to have people who can look at those systems and say, "Chris, this makes sense. "Chris, this is too much." And things like that. Always nice to have someone to pull us back, right? And working as a team is great.

How do you determine how much detail and fidelity goes into a particular part? Rocket engines, in particular, are very complex things laden with tubes and other components. Where does the simplification start while remaining true to the aesthetic of a rocket engine? The same goes for fuel tanks, science parts, and the like. (no2tm)

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So let's focus on rocket engines, 'cause those are the best. It's a challenge to do this. So I mentioned talking about the silhouette, right? So we'll start off by building the appropriate silhouette of a part and making sure that it fits the guidelines. Then we can work on the details of the part. When I'm building an engine, I want to make it a little bit teachable. So I will research, for example, engine cycles. So the way propellant flows into an engine, and I'll pick a cycle for the engine that will make sense based on its role. And then I will build out the approximate plumbing of the engine. And they're never really real, but they're often reality inspired. And the goal here is so that if you're really interested in engines and you look at an engine in KSP2, you might go and Google it. And you might learn more about, say, engine cycles and engine piping. We try not to put our detail below a certain size. so we don't want to have really tiny pipes because they're kind of a waste of time, the kind of alias out at long ranges. So we want to get a balance there. And we're hitting that balance with our engines. They too tend to be more detailed than other parts because, hey, they're kind of our hero parts. Obviously, I like engines, guys. They're driving the game.
 You can't get off the ground without them. Yeah, so making those parts is interesting in that way.

I'm sure the team reviewed and rejected a lot of theoretical engine design concepts over the lifespan of the project - My question is, what was the most absurd/fantastical one that the team reviewed and rejected? (Profugo Barbatus)

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This is an interesting question because, hey, there's a lot of those out there. I think one thing that the teams looked at a lot, particularly before I joined it, was faster than light travel and like Alcubierre drives and whether we should include those in there. Those are in some way fantastical because, hey, we have no idea how to build one. But a lot of those were put in and it's rejected and we're not really aiming to have faster than light travel in KSP2. My favorite one that I periodically want to bring to the design team and then I check myself about it is the Fizzer nuclear rocket, which is basically like a solid rocket booster that's a constantly detonating nuclear explosion. So it consumes itself physically as it fires and I think that would look really cool in the game, right? Your rocket's burning itself up as it launches but the utility of that is apart. It's probably not gonna be super high. So yeah, pretty fantastical, not gonna have it.

how will orbital construction work with all the super big parts that cant fit in the VAB was the VAB kept  on the smaller side to make this orbital construction feature more important (cooling.1200)

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I think generally we're not really constraining the VAB to make orbital construction more important. It's just the interstellar ships are so damn big that you would need an immense VAB to do it. So our VAB is a for pretty generous size but it's just not gonna get to that kind of scale. So when we get to orbital construction, you'll finally have access to that kind of scale, like hundreds of meters long ships and things like that that are just kind of the other way around, right? Like we design a VAB that looks more or less correct versus say like the actual VAB in Florida and that's not gonna fit into interstellar ship in it.

How do you go about designing parts for theoretical technologies that have no real-world analogs to use for reference? (Seth)

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This is another one of the fun parts of my job is I get to go and I dig into papers. I read white papers and I look at diagrams.
Yeah, so we'll go and look at diagrams and resources and we'll try to figure out again like what the engine should look like in terms of a silhouette.
Is it a long and thin? Is it like kind of really wide with a big nozzle? Does it even need a nozzle? And then we can usually pull from a lot of concept work that people have done. So maybe we're making an engine that needs a magnetic nozzle and the author has not seen fit to grace us with a 3D model to look at. But a lot of other people have researched magnetic nozzles so we can pull in some design elements from those papers and those concepts. And we can actually start to develop a design style that we'll use like everything that has a magnetic nozzle looks more or less like this. And we build out a KSP2 style for all of the pieces
 of the parts that we're doing, which makes it so that if I need to add a fuel pump, I know more or less what our fuel pumps look like. So it's really an integrated approach and taking inspiration not only from the tech but like the engineering reality of around the tech.

What process do you guys follow when designing, creating, and importing a part? What design guidlines do you follow? (isaquest)

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I think that's generally the answer to the previous question. We'll end up with specific guidelines for each types of part. And that's a good one that we've looked at a lot as types of fuel. So we want to be able to say to a player, you're looking at a part which has gold multilayer insulation. It's probably a hydrogen tank. And then adding highlights on engines that use hydrogen of some gold multilayer insulation. So we're getting kind of that correspondence and iteration there. Those kind of style things are the things we look at first. I'm gonna go through this.

How do you decide how parts are made? For example, with the Mammoth II, how did you decide to make one colossal engine, rather than splitting it into four RS-25's? How did you come up with the plumbing?  (failspace)

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Well, for this part, we kind of looked at the history of the part which was really about in KSP1 and was about delivering something that was akin to the Space Launch System which had those four RS-25s as part of it. In KSP2, we are a lot more flexible with how we let you attach engines. Engines can be surface attached. So we figured a player can actually build a pretty good like kind of SLS type rocket assembly without needing a custom part. And we felt the players would appreciate a really cool single gigantic rocket engine. And I will say that for that engine, a punch of the plumbing is directly derived from the F1 and F1B engines, F1 engine of reality and the F1B of concept engine in order to create something that looks realistic and has like some level of the correct cycle, the correct engineering realities behind it.

How will the "rotational" artificial gravity ring part showcased in the teasers and trailers work? Will we have multiple iterations of varying sizes? (M4D_Mat7)

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We're not really looking at specifically simulating different gravity levels in the game right now. It's not really part of our plans, but we do want to have, at least for colonies, different sizes of gravity ring, and not only different sizes, but different roles. A lot of different things you can put into gravity ring and a lot of different interesting gameplay you can build out of that. And that's a lot of different things you can put into gravity ring and a lot of other things you can build out of that. And that's all I'll say about that.

What do you think is the most interesting part in terms of gameplay, so how, when and where  to use it. (rick_huijgen)

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This is a tough one. I think everything is situational. So when and where to use it is, it's the question. This might be slightly controversial, but I really like ion engines. I know a lot of people think they're slow and boring and things, but the first mod that I ever made was about more ion engines. So I like the Dawn, I like it a lot, and it lets you go anywhere with not a lot of gas. And then you can cover your ship with solar panels and it looks cool.

Will we see more than one engine per ‘engine class’ at some point? e.g. multiple Medium Methalox Sustainer engines, gridded and hall effect ion thrusters,… (The Space Peacock)

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The second part of that question about the more ion engines, I would love to see more ion engines in the game. And we did tease one as well in the lead up to early access that we'll get to eventually. In terms of different engines of the same size and archetype, that's not really something we're intending to deliver. That's a pretty good thing for the modding community to work on, but broadly, in my opinion, if you've got an engine that two engines in the same archetype and size category, I'm not really sure what you're gonna use to differentiate those engines. They're gonna be very similar in terms of overall kind of like performance levels. So there's definitely probably valid player stories in doing that, but it's something that I think I'd like to leave for the modding community on it.

 

Is there still the option to add the non-dynamic wings from KSP 1? (bygermanknight)

Quote

We think that our current procedural wing system hits all the use cases for those. If there are more use cases we're not hitting, I would love to hear about them. So throw that in the forums or in Discord. Leave it in the comments below.

 

what size scale can we expect for intersellar ship parts? (mgb125)

Quote

Big.

We're gonna, one of the things that's kind of cool about the interstellar parts is that we talk about like our size categories, right? Which are often based on the bulkhead. So, you know, a size large part is 3.75 meters wide. When we get to the interstellar parts, you know, hey, they're big, they're like, hmm, 10 meters wide, 20 meters wide, that kind of thing. But the length starts to be important too. So you can expect to see really wide and really big parts and new and interesting ways to mix those together on your ships to make a really cool thing.

 

 

How is the colonies stuff going, there's been some recent concern on whether launching rockets will be free in science. If so, will that be an issue for progression? (Pugnuts)

Quote

We are effectively designing our progression system in such a way that that's not an issue. I should clarify that as we're going through our milestones, the science milestone is going to be more similar to the science mode from KSP1. So you didn't really have cash in that mode in KSP1. So we're working within the same constraints in terms of that. In the far future when we have resources and things, we're often taking the approach that like, we want players to feel like they want to, they're able to do a lot of stuff from the KSC and from colonies. So I'm not gonna say launching rockets will be free. There's always going to be a cost associated with a rocket, but the amount of various resources that you might have access to at the KSC at different places is going to control what you can launch when.

 

 

In your previous role as a modder, you did modelling AND scripting, do you still do both of those at intercept? (clayel)

Quote

I do need to get my script cleared by a real engineer, but I occasionally dabble in adjusting numbers of decimal places displayed in part modules and various tiny things like that. But mostly I stick in concept modeling and writing long and complex design documents.

 

 

Do you sometimes have to revise your ideas because of performance constraints? (piotr)

Quote

Yeah, I think it's fair. It's like we'll start out with something ambitious. We might not understand that it is ambitious when we ask for it.
And then when we give them, we get the engineering team to do initial considerations. We realize that we need to scale back our ambitions and take it back into the shop. And yeah, that's just part of the design process.

 

What are you guys working on right now? what is the priority list? (Benozkey)

Quote

We are working on the science milestone and bugs.
So, we're getting towards delivering that and we're constantly delivering new patches. There's a new patch coming soon, which we'll squash a bunch more bugs.
And we're excited to see what kind of effect that has on players. And eventually as we get towards the full science update with the parts that we're gonna release in there.

 

For features that divide the community, we often hear the argument to "just make it an option". For you, when should a feature be an option and when this choice should be made by the devs? (Spicat)

Quote

We have to be really careful with making features options. Even if we make a feature an option, we still incur all of the development costs of that feature.
So we have to balance what player stories that option would be hitting with the exact, the total cost of that feature in terms of developer time, which can be significant. We're also adding a lot of burden to QA then, 'cause they're effectively having to test every version of the game twice. So you'll be testing it with the optional feature on and with the optional feature off, which really we've got a big game and a lot of requires a large QA coverage already. So we have to make that decision. We also, even on the design phase, we're effectively having to consider two different player paths when we do that. So if we're gonna consider making something complex an option, we still need to make sure the game's playable by players in both states.
So although it's something we could consider doing, it's not our first choice.

What have been the biggest or funniest challenges/bugs in the development of Science and Heating? (paradact)

Quote

I think one of our biggest challenges has been coordinating all of our teams to get together and deliver the greatest experience possible.
It's like we've got so many big plans for science and making sure that we've accurately scoped out everything that we wanna deliver and delivering that.
That's always a big challenge in any project. It's a challenge I love to engage with.

 

Will rover wheels be changed in the future to be better? How do you figure that out? (jaypegiscool)

Quote

In the near future, what we really wanna do is nail down a lot of the bugs that are affecting players, experiences with Rovers.
Like there are definitely a number in the bug reports form that we get from the community that we're looking into to try to look at the experience.
Personally, I want tank treads eventually in the game so I can make like really cool tank Rovers.
So I'd like to evolve our wheel systems to the point where we can support something like that.
 

 

what will interstellar travel look like ? just a burn and a time-warp until destination or an animation  (.lord_octave)

Quote

We're aiming for the former.
It'll work just like any other vessel. You'll take your ship, you'll put it into an appropriate departure orbit and then you will plot a course and then fire your engines
for a long time...... and you'll keep firing your engines. Then you'll do what in an interstellar sense is usually called a flip and burn.
So you'll burn half or half the journey to expand your fuel and speed up.
And then when you get to the midpoint, you'll turn around and burn the other way. So it's gonna be an interesting different way of flying your ships than you usually do in the Kerbal system, but it will use generally the same systems.

 

Earlier on, I got the impression that there was going to be the potential for vessels/stations with truly massive part counts (far greater than KSP1, which would choke really hard on larger craft), but, as it stands right now, optimization is not at the point yet where you can go very far with part counts. Assuming I was not misunderstanding, is this still going to be a thing eventually, at least by 1.0?  (GigFiz)

Quote

This is a core goal that we have in our game. It's like we need to scale things. And I think I've set scale a lot of times already today.
And as we go through milestones, we're gonna have specific performance targets that we want players to be able to achieve.
And those are effectively going to increase at every milestone update. We're gonna have a specific target for colonies, a specific target for interstellar, and then a specific target as we go towards 1.0.
So the goal is to deliver more parts per ship, more parts per save, more ships per save, to make it so that you can truly have a curvil interstellar civilization.
I know the community and I and everyone can't wait for that.

 

Could we see the addition of a linear aerospike as a usable part for SSTOs? (NovaRaptorTV)

Quote

I like linear aerospikes. I think we should make it.
But I can't say, I can't confirm that or deny it.

 

will we ever be able to use any fuel type with nuclear engines, instead of just hydrogen?  (Spicat)

Quote

I don't believe this is on the plan right now. We do have plans to release the NERVUS, I think it was, which has two modes, which uses an after-burning mode and a normal hydrogen mode.
Functionally, this isn't in the cards right now. This is one of the areas where I experimented in my mods with and I found that there was not a lot of utility in this. That's probably disputable.
But that's one of the places where we're gonna look at a feature that is implemented by some mods and see whether it's worth implementing and whether we're really gonna get player benefits out of it.
 Fuel types are hard.
 I think if you go and dig around in my dev blog about engine archetypes and things, there's some comments about how challenging it really is to introduce players and on-board players to new fuels and their abilities. And that's something we really need to consider when we make multi-propellant engines.

 

How will Metallic Hydrogen engines play into late game interplanetary travel (german4730)

Quote

Well, they're gonna be powerful. They have a different performance envelope than Methalox engines and they have different resource requirements.
So what we're aiming to do is, at least in a small way, preserve the role of most of our primary engine and fuel types throughout the game.
So hey, even if you, maybe you'll land on a planet where it's most effective to build Methalox rockets, even though you have a fusion drive.
It's kind of where we wanna go with this. So there will be a time and a place for metallic hydrogen to shine and there will be places where it will not work so well.

 

Are there plans to add light sail interstellar probes? (lunarmetis)

Quote

We don't have these on the immediate roadmap, but in terms of having various esoteric versions of propulsion, we're always looking at how we can deliver the player stories with that. And it kind of goes back to the, what do we want to build versus what do we want to enable the community to build?
One thing with solar sails and laser sails and things like that is that they work completely differently than any other engine that we have in the game. So that means that we can't kind of just drop them in. We need to think about how a player is gonna interact with that system. And like, do I need to build like a solar sailing interface where it shows me what direction the wind is coming from? So I can tack properly back and forth. I mean, it sounds really cool, but that's a lot of effort for one part.

 

Will there be inflatable modules in KSP2? (gordonlemons)

Quote

Yep.

 

Will there be more loading screens? (M4D_Mat7)

Quote

Yep.
 I have reviewed two new loading screens this week.
 They're pretty great, and you'll see them in the game.

 

Could we see space telescopes like Hubble and James Webb make their way to KSP2? Will they have the ability to be repaired on orbit and also collect science the player can use? (NovaRaptorTV)

Quote

I think that we wanna be more ambitious with telescopes than that. There's a lot more exciting things you can do with telescopes than just collect basic science.

 

Are there more plans for environmental effects? Will there be Kerbal footprints/rover tire marks, etc? Will there be dust in the air on duna, etc (jaypegiscool)

Quote

Yeah, this is effectively what our VFX and SFX teams work towards, right?
Is creating that immersive environment when you're on the surface of the planet.
We wanna be careful about performance here. We throw a lot more volumetric particles onto the surface of Duna.
 We're gonna have to be careful about whether we, how we're doing that.
 So that's really the primary consideration that I'm aware of there.
 We wanna make things super immersive, but we're aware that we need to be performant too

 

 

When colonies are implemented, will heat be required for habitation modules in colder environments? (Pleysu)

Quote

Not in the current design. We're mostly focusing on having players understand overheating as a concern rather than under-heating.

Has any consideration been given to procedural fuel tanks? Alternatively, reducing the number of fuel tanks in the list and/or providing more variety in shape by implementing a part switcher? (regex)

Quote

I think this is like one of the two biggest community questions and splits that exist.
 Like there's like to MechJeb or not MechJeb, and then there's like procedural fuel tanks or atomic fuel tanks.
 And I think like what we've come down on in the KSP2 context is to stick with the kind of like LEGO-ability fuel tanks.
The reason for that is trying to make players understand different fuels.
 And that's a hard problem.
 So at least with having specific fuel types locked between specific artistic cues, you can say to players, this is hydrogen, this is methalox, this is metallic hydrogen,
 and so on and so forth.
 So there is a big advantage that we get with not doing fuel switching in that sense. That being said, making sure that the part picker is usable and that you can find what you want effectively is core goals, we have to look at that.
But no, near term, no procedural plans for tanks.

 

Considering that grid fins are confirmed for KSP2, could we also potentially see Telescoping Landing Legs(like on Falcon 9 and New Glenn(I believe)) in KSP2 as parts we can use for reusable boosters? (NovaRaptorTV)

Quote

Definitely want more landing legs in the game. I'm not sure I would specifically target the Falcon 9 types.
 I really like those like rocketpunk ships where you've got like three fins on a rocket and they've got like pods on the end.
 So if you had kind of like potted landing legs, that would be real, that would hit my use case personally.
 But like, we're gonna have larger ships. We wanna be able, players to be able to land their larger ships and land them in different contexts.
 So as we get deeper into the tech tree, deliver bigger and bigger parts, this is something that we absolutely need to look at.

 
Are there any plans to implement parts that would enable underwater exploration, such as ballast tanks and pumps? Great work on the game so far btw! (DibzNr)

Quote

Thank you!

I definitely like to have more scope for parts in terms of water stuff. There's three celestial bodies that a lot of water on them in the Kerbal system and there's going to be more in the other systems.
 And while this is not Kerbal Boat Program, letting players build planes is something we've done, and we have a lot of parts dedicated to players building planes.
 It's definitely logical that as we go forward and we have more oceans to explore, we'd want to deliver some sort of deep water exploration.
 And maybe cool things to find in the bottom of the ocean, like Krackens?
 - That sounds water-full.

 

If you were to add another class of spaceplane parts, what would they be based off of? I can see something like VentureStar or Star Raker, or a something more like a traditional airliner.  (NovaRaptorTV)

Quote

Oh, this is another one of the problems I crunched during KSP1 mods a lot.
It turns out that a lot of the really cool space planes that you see in fiction are really, their cross section is not consistent.
They start off big at the back and then they get narrow with the front.
You can't build a size class off of those. It's really hard.
So we wouldn't see a Ventress Star like. We wouldn't see those kind of things.
If we were to build more space plane size categories, what I'd probably do is I'd take them very far in the lifting body direction.
So you'd think the Mark II cross section but big, to let you make those really big, cool, trying to think about the spaceship....The Valkyrie from Avatar - it's really big, flat lifting body kind of thing, and that's what's hard to build with our current parts set.
So I would want to make that kind of thing easier.

 

How do you pronounce “Nertea”? Ner-tea, ner-te-a, nert-e-a? (jimmymcgoochie)

Quote

The first one. You got it right.

 

Does Nertea come iced, or is it only hot? (corelar)

Quote

Oh, that's a tough question.
I think, I like cold better than hot, so we'll call it iced.
It's much like revenge, it could be only cold.

 

Any unanounced features/parts/systems that we have had no hints of, but are in the works? y/n (gallitagen)

Quote

Yes.

 

What's your favorite type of donut? (gordonlemons)

Quote

I didn't prepare for this.

Such such a problematic question. I like a good like crueller, like a honey crueller. It's light, interesting.

[Guest]

17 minutes ago, Dakota said:

Has any consideration been given to procedural fuel tanks? Alternatively, reducing the number of fuel tanks in the list and/or providing more variety in shape by implementing a part switcher? (regex)

Just want to point out that the answer to this question was made without the additional caveat below it; my "user story" is creating a good looking R-7 rocket (basically a Soyuz, for the uninitiated) from actual fuel tanks (not random, spliced-together parts that add mass) of any desired size. There isn't enough variety of parts to do that. There are several ways to achieve this (additional tanks, part switchers, actual procedural tanks) and I suppose I should have asked directly about my "user story", because I'm not opposed to the LEGO thing, I just want more variety in fuel tanks without the ridiculous clutter we have now.

Edited August 18, 2023 by regex

[Stewcooker]

54 minutes ago, regex said:

Just want to point out that the answer to this question was made without the additional caveat below it; my "user story" is creating a good looking R-7 rocket (basically a Soyuz, for the uninitiated) from actual fuel tanks (not random, spliced-together parts that add mass) of any desired size. There isn't enough variety of parts to do that. There are several ways to achieve this (additional tanks, part switchers, actual procedural tanks) and I suppose I should have asked directly about my "user story", because I'm not opposed to the LEGO thing, I just want more variety in fuel tanks without the ridiculous clutter we have now.

I would definitely like to see an expanded variety of tanks. But then again, pure procedural tanks in KSP1 can be a bit finnicky to get just right. I think perhaps a decent compromise might be to have like a single methalox tank, but with a length slider or something similar. Maybe cap it to the nearest meter or half meter. 
But maybe that's just putting an organizational coat of paint on the current issue.

[Alexoff]

1 hour ago, Dakota said:

I should clarify that as we're going through our milestones, the science milestone is going to be more similar to the science mode from KSP1. So you didn't really have cash in that mode in KSP1. So we're working within the same constraints in terms of that.

Oh god, that's what I thought...

[Sea_Kerman]

On the topic of part switching, interesting to see that restock, and I think even stock ksp1, has a bunch of options for how engines connect to the tankbutt (boat-tail, full diameter frame, minimal truss) but ksp2 has none of that.

[kicka55]

 

2 hours ago, regex said:

Just want to point out that the answer to this question was made without the additional caveat below it; my "user story" is creating a good looking R-7 rocket (basically a Soyuz, for the uninitiated) from actual fuel tanks (not random, spliced-together parts that add mass) of any desired size. There isn't enough variety of parts to do that. There are several ways to achieve this (additional tanks, part switchers, actual procedural tanks) and I suppose I should have asked directly about my "user story", because I'm not opposed to the LEGO thing, I just want more variety in fuel tanks without the ridiculous clutter we have now.

You can just use procedural fairings if you want to make it look like some soviet rocket. Maybe your suggestion should be to make fairings not only go up and wide, but also side to side. 

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, kicka55 said:

You can just use procedural fairings if you want to make it look like some soviet rocket. Maybe your suggestion should be to make fairings not only go up and wide, but also side to side. 

No I can't. Those add weight and do not include fuel, and I can't attach surface decouplers to them, not to mention the base rings which are really thick and ugly.

Edited August 18, 2023 by regex

[kicka55]

Overall I like the answers. Obviously can't agree on everything 100% but these are minors gripes that don't really matter. What I wonder and what I believe many people get upset about is the development speed. It just feels slow compared to other games (even KSP1) which regularly add new content. What are the biggest bottlenecks in developing KSP2? Is it the number of developers?

7 minutes ago, regex said:

No I can't. Those add weight and do not include fuel, and I can't attach surface decouplers to them, not to mention the base rings which are really thick and ugly.

Making tanks non-cylindrical also adds weight because it's not optimal from a structural standpoint. It's a trade off you have to live with unless you want KSP2 to cheat. Other than that making surface decouplers and less thick bases sounds like fair criticism. 

Edited August 18, 2023 by kicka55

[Guest]

14 minutes ago, kicka55 said:

Making tanks non-cylindrical

Have you ever looked at an R-7? I don't think you know what you're talking about here. Anyway, it's off-topic and your workaround isn't related to my question.

[kicka55]

7 minutes ago, regex said:

Have you ever looked at an R-7? I don't think you know what you're talking about here. Anyway, it's off-topic and your workaround isn't related to my question.

You mean this right? Non-cylindrical. The boosters have a cone shape. Cone = Non-cylindrical. In KSP you had to stack tanks of different sizes and then surround it with a fairing. The added weight would represent the loss in structural efficiency. The  benefit of this design is lower drag and maybe easier separation because of the low center of gravity of the boosters. 

Edited August 18, 2023 by kicka55

[1straycat]

4 hours ago, Dakota said:

None of those were well received. The idea that you need to wait for a reactor to heat up before you can use it and then it has to cool down and you have to deal with the heat, it kind of sounds cool, but it played very poorly.

T_T
I guess I'm one of the three people that really liked that mechanic then, particularly with trimodal/bimodal nukes. Coming back to the game after that was patched out, I tried to recreate that functionality but haven't been able to figure it out.

[jimmymcgoochie]

Turns out I was saying it wrong this entire time! Sorry, Ner-tea.

[Sovetskysoyuz]

16 hours ago, kicka55 said:

In KSP you had to stack tanks of different sizes and then surround it with a fairing. The added weight would represent the loss in structural efficiency. The  benefit of this design is lower drag and maybe easier separation because of the low center of gravity of the boosters. 

No messing around with fairings was necessary; KSP had a specific part for these tanks.

[PDCWolf]

This AMA was extensive, in depth, but still weak, as that depth is on what I gauge are the wrong places: personal stuff, personal wants, personal dreams. Also for the next time, I'll make sure to submit my questions to Kavaeric or Spicat.

There's the loaded question about the heat system, which is a simplification of the one we had yet it still comes loaded as "complex". From the thread on the heat system it became clear to me everyone is ready to answer to praise, but nobody was ready to answer genuine questions or respond to possible criticisms or player concerns.

In the science question pitting KSP1 against KSP2, that the only answer is approachability... yeah, not happy with that answer.

Whilst the answer on the modding questions were good, there's 0 compromise in them, which is a common theme by now, y'all talk about what you want, and not about what will be.

Orbital construction: seems pretty basic, he does mention "hundred meter long ships"... is that in a couple giant parts or many normal parts?

Colonies: "We are designing...". Bad. I prefer to think it's just a missed form of speech than really starting to design colonies now.

Interstellar: Good, a second confirmation that FTL is not in the game.

Heat on cold colonies: yet another missed opportunity for colonies to be anything more than set and forget.

 

 

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Sovetskysoyuz said:

No messing around with fairings was necessary; KSP had a specific part for these tanks.

That part never looked right to me, it doesn't have the correct shape, which is a cone on top of a truncated cone on top of a cylinder. It also only worked for the off-size included in that DLC. I don't want some pre-fab or to construct parts out of some janky assemblage of other parts that never looks quite right, I want more variety in fuel tanks. Unfortunately it looks like I'll have to rely on the modding community for that, which is really disappointing because I was hoping I could play KSP2 without mods.

[VlonaldKerman]

On 8/19/2023 at 1:10 PM, PDCWolf said:

Colonies: "We are designing...". Bad. I prefer to think it's just a missed form of speech than really starting to design colonies now

For what it’s worth, I think I recall them saying that they’ve played with colonies in an internal build, though I could be misremembering. 

Also, unclear if that build was actually secretly a KSP 1 build, as I think these claims were made a year plus ago, and I find it kind of hard to believe.

[PDCWolf]

1 hour ago, VlonaldKerman said:

For what it’s worth, I think I recall them saying that they’ve played with colonies in an internal build, though I could be misremembering. 

Also, unclear if that build was actually secretly a KSP 1 build, as I think these claims were made a year plus ago, and I find it kind of hard to believe.

Such claims that they have everything at certain levels of development and ready to go falls apart when you look at 0.1.4 getting a performance destroying bug two weeks before release, or re-entry VFX being on their second iteration, or the fact that heating itself is going to come in little steps... Jesus, imagine how fun integration tests are going to be when you want to add incomplete pieces of many different features on each update...

[PicoSpace]

On 8/19/2023 at 1:10 PM, PDCWolf said:

This AMA was extensive, in depth, but still weak, as that depth is on what I gauge are the wrong places: personal stuff, personal wants, personal dreams. Also for the next time, I'll make sure to submit my questions to Kavaeric or Spicat.

There's the loaded question about the heat system, which is a simplification of the one we had yet it still comes loaded as "complex". From the thread on the heat system it became clear to me everyone is ready to answer to praise, but nobody was ready to answer genuine questions or respond to possible criticisms or player concerns.

In the science question pitting KSP1 against KSP2, that the only answer is approachability... yeah, not happy with that answer.

Whilst the answer on the modding questions were good, there's 0 compromise in them, which is a common theme by now, y'all talk about what you want, and not about what will be.

Orbital construction: seems pretty basic, he does mention "hundred meter long ships"... is that in a couple giant parts or many normal parts?

Colonies: "We are designing...". Bad. I prefer to think it's just a missed form of speech than really starting to design colonies now.

Interstellar: Good, a second confirmation that FTL is not in the game.

Heat on cold colonies: yet another missed opportunity for colonies to be anything more than set and forget.

 

 

I tend to agree with *most* of this as much as its Chris' AMA we are asking him about what is in the game or coming not about what he wishes/ed is in the game but isn't, maybe? I also submitted a lot of questions that went unanswered (I got one) so that was more than a little disheartening for me personally.

From his answers I'm concerned science in KSP2 from the answers is going to be a lot like KSP1, where multiple mod trees try to balance the progression and technology development lines realistically but ultimately you end up having to unlock everything anyways. I was hoping more like Kerbalism Science and having repeatable experiments that generate science over time (and avoid "cash" all together so its just science/materials that gets things done).

Yeah I'm not sure what the interstellar ships are going to look like but 100m is well huge compared to the parts in the VAB. That's a LOT of parts unless there are very giant parts for interstellar ships. So its not clear from his answers if space or off-world construction is going to be nessary (I'm thinking Minmus Construction Yard concept) or just a lot of launches etc.

"Colonies: "We are designing...". Bad. I prefer to think it's just a missed form of speech than really starting to design colonies now." this and Multiplayer have me worried that they have an "idea" of what they want to do and they haven't figure out how to do it yet. Given these are the two of the tent-pole features for getting KSP2 over KSP1 in term of new stuff, its concerning. 

"Heat on cold colonies: yet another missed opportunity for colonies to be anything more than set and forget." Yeah I've mentioned that to him as well before, HUGE missed Opportunity, I can see dozens of player stories or situations where cold is more concerning then heat, espeically for colonies etc.

Edited August 22, 2023 by PicoSpace
Typos

[Dakitess]

I think we've had confirmation multiple times that Interstellar Vessel won't be built in VAB, and launched from the ground. They might want it to be SO huge that it's not reasonably doable, or just as a fun weird edge case challenge that we know the community capable of. Interstellar contraption will be built in orbit IIRC, I don't have to patience to find the quotes. And they will require colonies to bring up the total amount of material or something like this. It's even supposed to be the main incentive, colonies as the main step for interstellar.

I don't have a lot of hope regarding the colonies. I don't see how they will add a real value, even if i'm totally fine to see them as a welcome addition. Just not something very game changing. 

[schlosrat]

4 hours ago, Dakitess said:

I think we've had confirmation multiple times that Interstellar Vessel won't be built in VAB, and launched from the ground. They might want it to be SO huge that it's not reasonably doable, or just as a fun weird edge case challenge that we know the community capable of. Interstellar contraption will be built in orbit IIRC, I don't have to patience to find the quotes. And they will require colonies to bring up the total amount of material or something like this. It's even supposed to be the main incentive, colonies as the main step for interstellar.

I don't have a lot of hope regarding the colonies. I don't see how they will add a real value, even if i'm totally fine to see them as a welcome addition. Just not something very game changing. 

In the game's code, there is the concept of an OAB (Object Assembly Building), which is generic and can be applied to orbital construction, base construction, or as we see it currently in the VAB. We'll eventually see that applied to orbital, bases, and boats, and I very much look forward to seeing how it works out! That will be really exciting and fun. Essentially, they've designed this part of the game's code to work in a number of situations and the part of the game that you're interacting with in the VAB is a deployment of the underlying general capability. So, when we do get orbital, base, and boat construction it will leverage the work they've put in and that we've seen arrive in the VAB. Consider all the patch notes referencing things fixed or improved in the VAB as generally applicable to the development of other instantiations of the OAB and a direct investment in the future delivered capabilities. It would be a mistake to think that they haven't been working on the other types of construction as their work (the parts we've seen) is actually on the underlying OAB and its current instantiation in the VAB.

Also in the game's data, we can see some of the parts that they're planning for interstellar. You can't access them while playing yet, but being able to see them we can tell that (a) there are some very big parts coming, and (b) they're further along with that part of the design than may be otherwise apparent.

Edited August 22, 2023 by schlosrat

[shdwlrd]

On 8/18/2023 at 12:00 PM, Dakota said:

"Chris, when is this going in the game?" And then I have to say like, we'll think about it.

Love the fact you have to use the polite corporate speak of "It's not happening."

[PicoSpace]

1 hour ago, shdwlrd said:

Love the fact you have to use the polite corporate speak of "It's not happening."

More "Ask a Mod for this" I think is the gist...

[joratto]

On 8/19/2023 at 2:02 PM, jimmymcgoochie said:

Turns out I was saying it wrong this entire time! Sorry, Ner-tea.

I'm pretty sure the transcript is actually misleading here. When Chris said "the first one", he was actually referring to the "Nertea" in "How do you pronounce Nertea?". That "Nertea" was pronounced like "ner-tay-uh".

Is that accurate, @Nertea?

Edited August 22, 2023 by joratto
@

[Spicat]

16 minutes ago, joratto said:

I'm pretty sure the transcript is actually misleading here. When Chris said "the first one", he was actually referring to the "Nertea" in "How do you pronounce Nertea?". That "Nertea" was pronounced like "ner-tay-uh".

Is that accurate, @Nertea?

You could just watch the video:

 

[joratto]

1 minute ago, Spicat said:

You could just watch the video:

 

I did!