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

[jimmymcgoochie]

Ner-TAY-ah?

[Infinite Aerospace]

On 8/19/2023 at 6:10 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.

 

 

Thing is, the questions seem rather cherry picked. I'm not at all surprised anything in any detail about science was avoided, this was all really basic as to what science is going to be. When it's going to be coming around? Why would you just totally ignore that sorta question and instead ask how Nertea is pronounced? 

[PicoSpace]

4 hours ago, Infinite Aerospace said:

Thing is, the questions seem rather cherry picked. I'm not at all surprised anything in any detail about science was avoided, this was all really basic as to what science is going to be. When it's going to be coming around? Why would you just totally ignore that sorta question and instead ask how Nertea is pronounced? 

Given most of my questions didn't get answered, I concur. I'm really trying to be positive about this game (YouTube and all that Jazz) but the play issues and lack of any updates and slow roll out make that hard (without sounding like a corporate mouthpeice and I wouldn't do that to my audience). 

[PDCWolf]

4 hours ago, Infinite Aerospace said:

Thing is, the questions seem rather cherry picked. I'm not at all surprised anything in any detail about science was avoided, this was all really basic as to what science is going to be. When it's going to be coming around? Why would you just totally ignore that sorta question and instead ask how Nertea is pronounced? 

You can blame both sides for that, them for picking the softest, most useless questions, and the community (mostly discord but I saw some here) for asking them, or rather wasting questions and diluting real ones, in the first place.

[Pthigrivi]

On 8/18/2023 at 1:00 PM, Dakota said:

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

...

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.

First off thanks so much to Chris for taking time to do this and Dakota for transcribing. Super helpful. I completely agree that science had a decent core idea but the execution was much too finicky and opaque. Im sure we'll hear more about the system as we get closer to that milestone but I'd love to hear more about how you're all approaching progression scaling and balance. It's a hard problem because KSP is so open ended, and there's something kind of magical about being able to go anywhere and do anything. At the same time different players will chose to play at much different paces, some preferring to jump out and go as far as they can and others preferring to systematically mine-out locally. It makes scaling rewards really difficult because if each biome has the same value and the same set of applicable experiments you end up with very repetitious, grindy gameplay just hopping from one non-descript place to the next and doing all the same things over and over.  So I hope some thought has gone into diversifying the experience, capping and gating things so players don't end up too bogged down in that trap. I do like the idea that some experiments might only work under specific conditions and the idea that some might take more time than others. Im also very interested in how this will evolve with colonies, science labs, and maybe research outposts down the road.

Edited August 25, 2023 by Pthigrivi

[Vanamonde]

A number of off-topic posts have been moved here.

[Nertea]

Answers to some questions we had to skip over during the AMA but I still wanted to get to:

Alexoff

What percentage of the parts in KSP2 was created by you personally?

Depends how you measure it. Effectively zero because I don’t do the asset work, by one definition. In terms of maybe inception/concepting, in the EA release I’d say I had a hand in about 10%?

What is the largest part will be in KSP2?

The largest part I have in my list right now is in the 80m+ size category. It’s a lot harder to measure these colony parts versus vehicle parts though…

Do you participate in the creation of parts for the colonies?

I participate in the concepting and design phase yes. It’s where I’m focusing a lot of my ‘thinking time’ these days. Colony parts are both similar and different from vehicles – in what they look like, how they assemble, etc. As we get to those milestones we refine our designs from player feedback.

How difficult is it to add a new part to KSP2? Is there a big difference? Is it harder than creating a new part for KSP1 for a modder?

Most things in KSP2 end up being more complex than KSP1. As an example at a basic level the PBR shading model that we use requires more texture maps than KSP1. That is mitigated by having access to internal tooling and a faster iteration loop (click Play in Unity rather than load the game).

 

Stephensan

is there any more concepts for more air-breathing engines like the J-90 smaller or larger

There’s been team interest in larger air breather engines, but as always that’s not so simple – adding an air breather of say, 2.5m size requires us to also look at the supporting parts in that size, like intakes and cockpits, so the player can have a good experience when using those engines. That balloons the required work significantly.

I would want to push out the different technologies rather than footprints first. Nuclear jets, propellers, all unlock interesting new player stories!

is there gear that is going to be angled from the fuselage not straight up and down and finally more tires/wheels in the concept stage, or even remotely thought of...

We definitely have people who want that on the team .

 

LunarMetis

 How will the sizes of different stars be scaled with respect to Kerbol? Will they be scaled at 1/3 their real-life analogs like Kerbol and the Sun?

Specific scaling of the actual meshes is less important than defining their specific insolation numbers for input into solar panel math but yeah they’ll be Kerbol-relative.

 How do you plan to implement proper motion of other star systems, and how do you expect that to add to the challenges of interstellar travel?

Hah, interstellar travel is going to be hard enough already. Proper motion is something we need to balance carefully there.

 

Pthigviri

Hi, Chris! Im sure you've been deep in colony part design. What are your thoughts on greenhouses and simple life support with snacks for example? How do you see conveying that colonies are both real places where kerbals live and 'working machines' much the way vessels are?

Honestly I don’t like basic life support (by basic I mean something like having Kerbals on a ship consume a resource). I’ve played all* of the KSP1 mods for it, and I haven’t found something that is interesting and holds my interest beyond frustration for more than a few hours – just not my cup of warm beverage.

More seriously though, systems like this need to have a bunch of considerations:

-          They need really carefully crafted player stories. Those stories need to support lots of different player archetypes – not just advanced players.

-          They often should work on a carrot rather than stick-based approach. KSP has a lot of sticks right now.

-          They need scalable solutions that are plannable and toolable. That’s a big thing and that’s where LS gets expensive in dev-hours

We have some things in the works around Colonies that ape some of the ‘results’ of life support, which I hope will get at the idea of colonies being a little more kerbal-involved than just plunking Kerbals in a command part.

* I think all? It has been a while, maybe some new ones have cropped up.

 

PDCWolf

Has the concept of heating changed at any point based on the feedback posted to its thread?

I read every post in the thread, which was nontrivial because it was a long and uh, vibrant thread. The short version is no, the long version is yes but…

A lot of the interesting discussions sat around things that are further down the roadmap, and they provided us with a couple additional things to consider. Interestingly, the player stories we have were well aligned with the comments that I read, but the way the player stories were addressed were not unanimously approved. That’s fine – part of the EA conversation– and in particular with a lot of discussion being on items later in the roadmap, this makes me confident in the iterative model.

We’ll get the basics of the system focusing on reentry stories out to everyone. We’ll evaluate how that works with the playerbase. As we move towards the next milestones, we can use the information encoded in the thread, which I’ve collected internally, to make sure we’re making choices (engineering or design-wise) in conjunction with the feedback from reentry to get good solutions. One thing that jumped out for me was that there’s a lot of talk about macro vs micro solutions. I’ll be the first to admit that the current solution is a macro solution. So future design work will probably focus on whether there’s more microscale interaction to look at.

If I know the peak or average specific heat flux a vessel is gonna go through on its final orbit/landing spot, what stops me from just adding enough negative heat flux parts to counteract it?

Nothing. That’s what you should be doing. Of course, it’s not really that simple. If this is atmospheric heat from going fast, adding a big radiator is likely to just increase the amount of next flux, because it has a large surface area. Most heat mitigation tools need something else too – a radiator might need electricity, which means you need to supply that, which will enforce additional constraints.

Considering its possible uses on the automated logistics network, long missions, and just straight up anything that only requires time to pass, how do you balance not timewarping versus just letting things happen in ultra-fast time?

These are the best questions because they’re the hard ones. Often we trend towards supporting a player path that doesn’t reward excessive timewarping, but doesn’t exclude it either. A good case study is resource extraction and deposit concentrations. There’s definitely fun in seeking out and finding the best deposit for mining. Obviously though timewarp makes that kinda moot in timing. You could just start mining a hypothetically low-grade deposit and warp for 50 days. That tells us that time and rate -based mechanics need to have more to work well. A specific example here is that a newly accessible resource should be constrained differently – challenging location, resource transport limitations, etc.

 We try to move the real player decisions to things that are interesting with and without time as a mechanic. Mostly hypothetical examples, but here’s a few ways of thinking of these things on top of my head:

• Put a locational constraint on something. If you need to do something in orbit over a specific part of a planet, make it take longer than the average orbital cycle. This might encourage a player to put a satellite in GEO orbit over that place. If you do the work to put it in GEO, you get the benefit of being able to timewarp.
• Use binaries instead of gradients. Does ore concentration really benefit from a really detailed gradient from 0.0001% to 100%, or can you look at it as a yes/no? Trade that, see if you’re damaging player stories with that simplification.
• Use supporting systems. Sure, you could mine that deposit at high timewarp. But the deposit is on a planet with a day length of 200 days, and you need power, and the area has no fissionables. How are you going to power it? If you solve this problem, it is satisfying and you get a cookie. You did the work, enjoy your timewarpable extraction!

These are really big problems we look at for all of the more complex systems because hey, an interstellar transfer could be 100 years. Players will timewarp that and that’s… the whole length of a KSP1 campaign. Fun with and without timewarping like this is essential.

 

Socraticat

What are your favorite tips and tools for new modders?

My biggest tip is to do what you want to do and not focus on what others want. Lots of the most creative KSP1 mods didn’t hitch themselves to any one concept of the game, and that’s what made KSP1 modding so successful. You want RO? You’ve got RO. You want to launch kerbals in a cardboard box rocket? That’s there too. You want life support? Oh hey there’s about 5 different concepts out there to pick from.

Also don’t try to form a team day 1  . Get some experience, release some stuff, and the team will come to you!

Tools - Blender is an amazing piece of free software, and there are a ton of good coding tools out there for the software-minded as well. It has never been a better time to be an independent purveyor of these kind of things, you don’t need to suffer through e.g. gmax or the trial version of Milkshape3D anymore.

Royalswissarmyknife

Is there any consideration of 1.875 meter parts

Building out a whole family of 1.875m parts that includes the core stuff (engines and tanks) plus the necessary ancillaries is a lot of work and not something the team is committing to right now.

Strawberry

While we do know it wont be added in the short term, the team has previously been wishy washy if radiation/life support will make it into the game. Are these topics something that the team has decided wont be in the game until maybe after 1.0, something the team has a firm answer on what they want to do with but does not wish to disclose it (though if you do wish to disclose please do), or something that the team is geniunely undecided on
See answer to Pthigviri about LS stuff.

Radiation is a bit more interesting to me because I have a fair bit of history in mods with it, and I’ve eagerly assimilated the early concept work the team has done for KSP2.  There are two tradespaces in terms of vessel design, point sources and ambient radiation that we at least nominally want to think about including.

Ambient radiation is basically a time trade. How long can you spend in a radioactive environment? You can throw things like radiation shielding, storm shelters, etc but ultimately it all comes down to time to Bad Things. It’s harder to help a player to plan. You have to give them tools to determine how much radiation there is around somewhere and how to figure out how long they can spend there, etc. 

Point radiation is nuclear engines and reactors. This is harder to implement but is definitely relevant in terms of craft design, because it is a big part of why fictional interstellar ships look the way they do. Interestingly it is easier to model and communicate to the player because you know lots of the variables at vessel build time. One of the messy things here though is that as soon as you throw in radiation, you railroad players into building ships with nuclear engines in a very specific way. We have to craft a solution that hits a nice middle ground. See this comment.

I’m candidly going to say that we don’t have the ideal solution in the bag right now – but that’s what EA is all about. I’m sure I’ll write some kinda discourse on radiation eventually for a dev blog and everyone can weigh in on why I’m wrong :P.

 

Pokaia

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

I wouldn’t want to port anything specific without a good justification, but I really want to bring in more planning tools. The only ones I built were around heat and power management, but yeah. Something like that.

One of the cool things about this job is that I get to start again, so to speak, with the support of people who have been in the industry for a while. So if I want to bring in nuclear reactors, I can take my concepts from Near Future Electrical, talk to some Real Designers ™ and get their opinions on what works and what didn’t work, and make something cleaner for KSP2.

 

Filip Hudak

What are next parts that are comming into the game?
Science parts! But also those gridfins we teased a while ago should appear.

 

stoup

Are there any kinds of parts you're going to be adding to KSP2, that as far as you know, weren't even really available as mods in KSP1? Some unexpected bits and bobs, maybe
The entire colony loop is more or less stuff that was never really available in KSP1 mods from a system perspective. Modding KSP1 was really wide though – hard for me to say.

 

Kalessin1

Are all parts from Your mods to KSP1 will be implemented in KSP2?  Especially large solar panels, station parts & MK4 spaceplane?

Hah, no not at all. I like to re-use concepts, but this is a great opportunity to start afresh and to fix some stupid things I did in development of those in my mods.

Gotta somehow get more Thunderbirds in the game though.
 

Cocoscacao

Will we get all size variants for all parts? Example, hydrogen tank with the smallest radius, only has long option. Why "semi procedural" parts weren't considered, where you can select a tank and set its lenght/radius to some of the predsfined available values?

You definitely have me to blame for no smaller hydrogen tanks – just don’t think they’re useful with the low density.

Why wobblyness still exists? What are design choices and reasons to keep it, if there is a way to remove it? If there is indeed a way to remove it... 

I have a post on my thoughts about this as a player. Generally though – it’s not where we want it to be and we’re trying to figure out how to get it there. That’s extremely non-trivial, there are various posts in the forum that do a good job of explaining some of the whys.

 

SAP KSP

How advanced will the Kerbal's technology be, will there be very advanced parts such as anti-particle devices?
We’ll definitely get way up there in the tech tree. I do want to keep those under wraps for now tho.

 

Infinite Aerospace

Are you able to tell us 'something' about science and career modes, there's been an alarming lack of any real information regarding the two.

Well! Science mode is cool. It is designed to be a progression-based mode that takes the aspects of KSP1’s Science mode that we like and build upon them to create a solid progression experience that has higher level of agency and approachability. You can expect the return of the experiment loop, with changes, and the inclusion of a very different mission paradigm from Career.

One of the fiddlier aspects of the last few months has been taking our full set of concepts from KSP2 1.0 and figuring out how they break down into the early access structure.

Delving deeper, what can we expect from science mode, is it the same ‘click and reward’ setup as KSP1 or are you going for a ‘science over time’ sorta approach more akin to Kerbalism?

The system as designed is independent from things like Kerbalism, but you could say there’s some concepts that aren’t dissimilar in there. It has been a while since I have played with that mod tough. We definitely want to get to more player agency in science. Instead of it effectively being mandatory to hide 4 tiny science experiments on every craft you send anywhere, we want you to make a more informed decision about what you take with you, and make the actions you take a bit more specific too.

 I should write a little dev blog on this.

What sort of part numbers are we looking at, is there going to be the same sorta number of experiments as KSP1, or significantly more? What does that entail, are the experiments something more dynamic this time, looking at things like NASA’s GRACE mission for example?

I should definitely write a little dev blog on this. Similar number, more impactful.

In terms of career mode, is there a more dynamic contract system in place rather than the rather ‘rinse and repeat’ system of KSP1? There’s still going to be funding, reputation?

I believe we are on record about not using the same framework there. Funding and reputation weren’t our favorite systems and didn’t have the gameplay impact we wanted. 

As a side question, stations and bases. Are these going to have something of a real use this time around, given that stations were limited to more or less just fuel depots in KSP1. I'm thinking more along the lines of long term research projects, with big pay-off for significant durations of time. Is there some sort of requirement to resupply the stations, perhaps required crew rotation, stuff like that?

The progression we want to deliver for bases and stations mirrors IRL conceptions about how these things should work. You will start out with outposts that have limited utility – let’s call that KSP1-like. Fuel depots, maybe comms relays, etc. As you progress through the tech tree, you’ll get access to stuff that provides them with greater utility. That’s shipyards and docks, fuel factories, launch pads, etc. Eventually you’ll get the biggest parts, which are mostly focused on giving you the full capabilities of the KSC at a colony.

A core piece of the utility in my mind comes with resource gathering (which is a ways off in the roadmap,) when the specific positioning and configuration of a colony becomes really important. Placing a colony with good access to progression-related resources and having easy access to heat management/power sources will allow you to build specific functions and cool vibes into each colony.

Crew rotations and resupply are not currently something we would want to enforce. I hope that when we get resources and delivery routes fully operational though, that this is something modders will hit really hard because the framework of stuff like delivery routes will be there.

 

TheAziz

Pineapple on pizza or not?

I don’t like it, but recently I was made aware that liking baked potato pizza was weird so I can’t really judge.

 

Superfluous J

Having done both, what do you think are the main differences between adding a part (or set of parts) to the game as a modder, vs as a paid member of the team?

Accountability and justification are big. It’s easy enough to incept a new part as a generalist modder. I just say that I want it and make the time to model/integrate/QA it myself.

In a professional context, that involves the use of studio resources and we have to balance that versus other work we want the staff that would be executing that work to do. A new part needs a concept, it needs artist time, it needs designer time, and it needs QA time. We have to really be sure we want a part before we do it.

 

Pat2099

Will the salt water nuclear engine make a return?

I’d like instead introduce the artisanal nuclear fresh water engine, using only the purest Vall-ian glacial meltwater and hand-centrifuged Pol-ian uranium. But yes.

 

TwoCalories

You've made several mods for KSP1 in the past. Will parts from any of those mods, like Restock, Far Future Tech, Near Future Tech, and Stockalike Station Parts make a comeback in KSP2?

Never exactly, though there’s similar roles. I have a 3.75m command pod in Near Future Spacecraft that is pretty similar in role and profile to one in KSP2, for example.

What was the transition like going from being a modder (or, more honestly, a pillar of the modding community) to working on the development team?

It was really weird to come into the project and find pictures of my work as references in the team wiki.

But it has been great. We have a really solid team working to replicate what amounts to 10 years of hard KSP1 development work. Ways to go though.

 

Justspace103

Is the same approach to design & diameter consistency going to be applied to KSP2, similar to what you did with ReStock?

This is already ongoing – we sneak in consistency work where we can depending on the team’s bandwidth. We’ve sorted at least a dozen parts since EA release. The part-ists are probably sick of my hOw’S tHe SiDe CoUnT questions.

 

Mushylog

Hello Chris Adderley. How detailed will the reentry VFX be, on the vessel's parts? Will we be able to see the heat propagate relative to what part of the ship is hitting atmosphere the most? (As in, will there be a glow on the entire vessel that spreads as atmosphere becomes more dense, in a reentry? Or will the heating visuals display in every single parts of the vessel individually?)

I will leave this one completely to allow future dev communication to represent it. It’s really cool and I think the path to get to what we think is our final solution would be a fun thing to tell people about.

 

Heretic391

What steps is the development team taking to make KSP2 accessible and appealing to new players who may not have played the previous game or are new to the genre?

Obviously, the tutorialization we worked into EA will continue as we add new systems. Eventually though we want to enable players to do more with the same skill level. There’s some really big difficulty jumps in the game, and while we are more confident in the ‘get into orbit’ jump, we still need tools and strategies to tackle the next one, which I’d peg as going to another planet. After that, go to another solar system.

I saw a really cool concept from the UX team about this last week which made me squeal in happiness. I hope we get to it.

 

VlonaldKerman

Can you give some more detail on the supply route system? Can you automate the construction of supply vessels, or does a vessel have to be built to assign an automated route to it? In other words, when the route is finished, does the vessel have to be intact?

That system is a ways off and while I think our concepts are pretty solid, they have to survive another round of detailed design, and the EA feedback we get through that time period. So let’s save that for a dev diary later.

Intactness is an interesting thing that the system does need to consider. On the one hand, we obviously want you to not crash your ship to create a delivery route. However, we also don’t want to disallow multi-stage approaches to routes. You should be able to create a delivery route with a two-stage rocket. It won’t be as resource effective as a single stage one, but particularly for routes that launch from high G or atmospheric planets, we need to have a design that eventually supports this. It is possible that this could be delivered in phases for effective development – consider a V1 of routes that focuses on single-stage-to-place deliveries and a V2 that is more comprehensive.  

Also, will metal to build basic rockets and methalox fuel be limited in the early game, or will there be infinite fuel on Kerbin? If so, how is this balanced against the ability to send an arbitrary number of refueling ships to a colony, as opposed to what I think you probably want to encourage, which is ISRU?

If you want to create an interstellar empire based on shipping methalox light years from Kerbin, I don’t want to discourage that. That’s kinda cool and would be a big investment in player time and resources, so we would reward that by not constraining it. You’re also probably not going interstellar on methalox… so you are going to be incentivized to not do that in a particular way.

 

Psycho_zs

In KSP1 some realism enhancements can be achieved with a relatively simple MM patch,  because those mechanics are already in the game,  but not used in stock (i.e. engine spool up time, throttle depth limits). Are there any realism mechanics that you wanted to put into KSP2,  but couldn't because of the gameplay balance? Any of those that you or somebody else sneaked in for config tinkerers to find? What are the limits of stock realism options and will there be something extra under the hood, in a space between stock and full blown mods?

Yeah some of those do exist in the game. Part of that comes in the engine module that supports most of the ‘fancy’ stuff from KSP1 like spool up. As for new things, yeah I’m pretty sure there are some things we’ve asked for but not ended up using. I can’t really think of them off the top of my head.

 

NovaRaptorTV

What's your favorite part of the game to work on?

I really enjoy the small part of my job that’s artistic – making sketches, concept models and stuff to pass over to the team is quite fun. I also like to make the project plan go brr, ticking off things on milestones makes me happy.

 

M4D_Mat7

Will there be hydrolox fuel type given how we already have hydrogen as a fuel type for nuclear engines?

If we get the NERV-US in that will be a need for Hydrolox there.

 

jaypegiscool

Are there going to be more design challenges implemented with more fuel tanks and such? E.g. will there be fuel tanks that don't have a centered COM?

Fuel tanks are a basic component of ships that we don’t want to have players need to manage too much. There are some interesting trades about that for far future fuel types though. As we get there we’ll examine if they’re interesting to support or whether to leave it to the modding community.

 

norminaluser

Are there plans for adding nostalgia/legacy parts? aka, adding some revamps of the KSP1 parts? I mean, some old users would be delighted with these.

I’d argue that anytime we have a part that comes from KSP1 it is already a revamp, so I’d be interested to understand what that actually means to you.

 

barrackar

In the upcoming Science update - does conducting experiments give you science points? Will there be a tech tree?

There will certainly be a tech tree, and science points!

For colonies, do we know if/how lifesupport will work? Simple colony expansion or more complicated management of individual resource routes? Will users be surveyed for whether or not we want lifesupport?

See answer about life support from Pthigviri.

For interstellar, will there be astronomy aspects required to detect/map the other system(s)?

Fun things for the future! I can’t be more specific at this time.

 

poodmund

Why Quenya and not Sindarin, Telerin or Noldorin? Do you have something against Elves that went to Middle Earth? By the Ninth, I must know the answer.

The real answer is that the corpus of Quenya is a lot more complete than say, Sindarin, so when I went to try to learn it, that’s where I went.

 

piotr.__

What real life concept / scientific work gave you the most headache? Is there something you are really proud of, that your creations will introduce to players?

Heat and radiation are the hardest concepts to map to gameplay, so I’ll say those.

Every time we get a system that is showing a new scientific or engineering reality I get excited. Example - with 0.1.3’s new extensible engines, we’re showing the community that doesn’t follow aerospace precisely than extending engines exist and are useful in some ways.

 

bygermanknight#0 (554725693590732801)

Are we going to get some engines like the Orbital Maneuvering System from the Space Shuttle because the current (and only) monopropellant engine is not very liked among the community.

The Puff is pretty OMS-like. I’d turn that around and say that something more conventional in terms of attachment modality is probably more useful than something that tries to ape the OMS a lot.

 

M4D_Mat7

When will we see more interiors for the command parts?

We want to fully define the IVA system and experience before we commit to more interiors so we limit possible rework.

Will the team add RCS to the space shuttle front cockpit section eventually?

This is not planned.

 

suppise

How do you go about balancing new engines with twr/isp/cost/size/etc?

Check out the Engine Archetypes dev blog for the framework – but the overall concepts we use are related to…

·       Spreadsheeting versus comparables,

·       Looking sneakily at how mods have done things  when possible,

·       PLAYTESTING

Follow up question, with the full 1.0 tech tree, aside from cost/resources, will there be a reason to still use the basic methalox atmo/vac engines we have now, over newer engines/fuel types?

Resources accessible to a colony will drive this. Say you’re mining a frozen ice ball of a planet with water ice – that’ll be something that would drive you to hydrogen engines. However, maybe you’ve got a colony on a world with trace atmosphere of CO2 – that might make methalox attractive.

 

mgb125

I routinely exceed 150 parts for spacecraft in KSP 1, would the team consider a higher baseline for the “typical” vehicle? Do you have stats on how many parts players use for their EA KSP 2 craft?

We are building our analytics pipeline to give us that data. We have lots of legacy data from KSP1 to help us in the meantime.

 

sylvifisthaug

So someone in the KSP2_general channel have pointed out that the "brass line" vacuum engines in KSP2 have some resemblance to your previous modded content as Nertea.

How is the process like with implementing these similar designs into KSP2? Do you do it entirely by yourself, texturing and all? Do you do 3D models, coding, or maybe nothing? You just manage the team to do it?

I do very little of those things. Effectively I…

1.       Try to incept the concept and discuss its utility with the rest of the team,

2.       Make sure we can support it with the engineering that has been done,

a.       There’s a whole side thread about when we need to ask for new gameplay functions.

3.       Make concept models,

4.       Hand it off to the art team,

5.       Coordinate other things we might need for the model – VFX, SFX, animations,

6.       Come back once we’ve got all that sorted and do the final integration into the game, and some tuning later on.

If you as a team manager delegate others to recreate your parts, how does it feel to let others rummage with your own engines?

To be clear, we’re not really recreating parts – when things are similar, there’s often just convergent evolution. But our art team is equal to the task!

 

[MARL_Mk1]

"You’re also probably not going interstellar on methalox"

Nertea you should know us better.

Interstellar on decouplers only is just a matter of time.

 

Edited September 8, 2023 by MARL_Mk1

[Pthigrivi]

@Nertea My god that was one of my favorite dev posts ever so thank you so much for taking the time. 

[AxaQuilPre]

Very nice post thanks a lot.

[Alexoff]

Wow, for the first time my questions were noticed and answered!

[Poodmund]

2 hours ago, Nertea said:

Why Quenya and not Sindarin, Telerin or Noldorin? Do you have something against Elves that went to Middle Earth? By the Ninth, I must know the answer.

The real answer is that the corpus of Quenya is a lot more complete than say, Sindarin, so when I went to try to learn it, that’s where I went.

Ah, so it was the allure of a fuller vocabulary that drew you to Quenya, rather than any Middle Earth bias! I should have known – after all, even John Ronald Reuel knew that when you're picking an Elvish language, it's quality over Quendi-tity!

...

I'll get my cloak.

[Nertea]

On 8/18/2023 at 10:16 AM, 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 hear ya, and the R7 is almost the worst-case scenario for this. It doesn't fit in the .625, 1.25, 2.5, 3.75, 5 pattern well at all. It has weird cones. It is... honestly best left to procedurals. 

One thing I do want to highlight is the poor user transparency of part variants. This has to be better than the PAW stuff in KSP1 if we do it. I was always shocked at how many people when using mods/even stock just... didn't know it was there as an option. That's not very discoverable or useful. 

On 8/18/2023 at 2:14 PM, 1straycat said:

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.

It's something that I found theoretically fun, but then when I actually tried to play a campaign more than a single mission, I found infuriating. Same thing with the short-lived 'use a kerbal to transfer a nuclear fuel container' feature. 

On 8/19/2023 at 10:10 AM, 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.

I wanted to make sure the text question dump was in before responding to this,  but asking viable questions for AMAs does require some crafting. In an hour I can't answer a ton of questions that are say, 5 minute answers, but I can answer a lot of 60 second questions, so those are the ones I'm going to pick. I'll leave the ones that were more complicated to a text answer where I can think on the response and actually give you detail. In addition, questions had a LOT of duplicates, and we tended to trim ones that were very similar and pick the one that seemed most productive to answer. We've also got the discord/forum volume differences here, and honestly the forum ones do trend to be a lot more detailed. So, text answers. Finally well, loaded questions... would you pick those to answer?  

On 8/21/2023 at 4:07 PM, PicoSpace 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." 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. 

I checked the answers to make sure but I just wanted to make it super clear. Stuff exists. A repeated set of challenges we have are (1) making sure things fit logically into our EA roadmap (we need XYZ before releasing ABC), (2) orchestrating things so features that are built up over a few updates work at all stages of the roadmap and (3) reacting to feedback and taking redesign actions based on that. We are quite happy with the end state design of Colonies, but that doesn't mean that there is no design work to do. 

On 8/22/2023 at 9:41 AM, shdwlrd said:

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

Sadly, yes. 

3 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

@Nertea My god that was one of my favorite dev posts ever so thank you so much for taking the time. 

Cheers, I like writing about work.

On 8/23/2023 at 6:09 AM, PicoSpace said:

Given most of my questions didn't get answered, I concur. I'm really trying to be positive about this game 

I think we may have compressed some of your questions as they may have been similar to others. Did you find what you were looking for in the expanded answers?

[Strawberry]

4 hours ago, Nertea said:

Strawberry

While we do know it wont be added in the short term, the team has previously been wishy washy if radiation/life support will make it into the game. Are these topics something that the team has decided wont be in the game until maybe after 1.0, something the team has a firm answer on what they want to do with but does not wish to disclose it (though if you do wish to disclose please do), or something that the team is geniunely undecided on
See answer to Pthigviri about LS stuff.

Radiation is a bit more interesting to me because I have a fair bit of history in mods with it, and I’ve eagerly assimilated the early concept work the team has done for KSP2.  There are two tradespaces in terms of vessel design, point sources and ambient radiation that we at least nominally want to think about including.

Ambient radiation is basically a time trade. How long can you spend in a radioactive environment? You can throw things like radiation shielding, storm shelters, etc but ultimately it all comes down to time to Bad Things. It’s harder to help a player to plan. You have to give them tools to determine how much radiation there is around somewhere and how to figure out how long they can spend there, etc. 

Point radiation is nuclear engines and reactors. This is harder to implement but is definitely relevant in terms of craft design, because it is a big part of why fictional interstellar ships look the way they do. Interestingly it is easier to model and communicate to the player because you know lots of the variables at vessel build time. One of the messy things here though is that as soon as you throw in radiation, you railroad players into building ships with nuclear engines in a very specific way. We have to craft a solution that hits a nice middle ground. See this comment.

I’m candidly going to say that we don’t have the ideal solution in the bag right now – but that’s what EA is all about. I’m sure I’ll write some kinda discourse on radiation eventually for a dev blog and everyone can weigh in on why I’m wrong :P.

I've been very curious about radiation for a while and this is a pretty satisfying answer. If I'm understanding this correctly, its a case of "Radiation is definitely something the team is interested in exploring, but there's a lot of conceptual groundwork and devtime accounting that needs to be explored before we can be confident if we want to implement it or not, so we're gonna do that before we pull the trigger." Which fair enough, very much hope we get it but its not an easy decision to make for yall. Fair warning, the rest of this comment will be quarter analysis, three fourths my personal ideas, and about quadrice the length as the response I got so ignore if you dont care for that stuff. I am going to be spoilering this because it will be one of those posts, apologies. 

Spoiler

The way ambient rotation is phrased is incredibly interesting, Ive generally thought of ambient radiation in terms of "Oh so you have a boring mass tax on your vehicle if you want to explore moho, because mohos too hard to get to or something". For vehicles it just seems like it adds a layer of micromanagement that is boring and makes the game worse. The way you describe it seems to be more focused on the colony side of things. The conceptual work done for radiation seems to be more in terms of forced crew rotation for colonies, which sounds really cool! It makes dealing with ambient radiation far more interesting then just increase the radiation shielding slider (please dont have a radiation slider that seems boring).

If I were a game designer, personally if I were to go with ambient radiation, Id focus it for gas giants and not have them seriously affect inner planets. I'd also not have it seriously effect vessels because thats just kinda boring. While inner planets are inherently resource rich, the fact that theyre inner planets means that they get a lot of heat and it kinda balances out. Gas giants however, are inherently incredibly diverse because they have 3+ moons and each one has to be distinct in resources or else it would be boring. This means that unless carefully designed, colonization can become a game of rushing the systems gas giant and not really exploring the rest of the system. Take for example Jool, we know that currently it has a source of radioactive materials (Pol, probably the best source in kerbol as its very explicit about it being radioactive), a source of metals (tylo), source of volatiles (Vall), a habitable moon (laythe), and a good source of fusion fuel (Jool). Nearly every imaginable resource is present in the jool system in high quantities. I think ambient radiation could be a very interesting way to balance all of this.

Pol is far out enough to Pol's orbit isnt radioactive, but its surface very much is, so youll want to do your crew rotations to its orbit to let your kerbals cool off from radiation before sending them back down. Vall has a subsurface lake you can send kerbals down into to avoid radiation, so you can do crew rotations that way. Tylo unfortunately, has nothing that blocks radiation in high amounts, and this sucks because this is the only source of metals in the Jool system, fortunately Laythe has an atmosphere that does block radiation, so if you want to ditch individualized approaches for your colonies, you can make Laythe into the ultimate vacation destination and send all your irradiated kerbals there for a few days. Each moon naturally has individualized ways to deal with radiation that makes colonizing them more difficult. The fact that Jool outputs buttloads of radiation makes it much more balanced as a whole, because while Jool cumulatively has much to plunder, its also cumulatively a massive pain to live in.

I think for ambient radiation the main counter would be magnetic shielding, ambient radiation is mostly just alpha and beta particles, so magnetic shielding would work here. These magnetic shields would be basically the steam hubs in frostpunk but with a twist. While they reduce radiation in a bubble, immediately outside of radiation they cause it to spike as they're not reducing radiation, they're just moving it. This leads to some interesting building design, especially if you include one massive magnetic shield as a part so you can go full frostpunk (radpunk?). There'd also be magnetic shields for vehicles, but these would be intended primarily for fission drives (fusion drives produce a way higher percent of neutrons so theyre not as good for them).

Point radiation I think is much less controversially good and overall easier to implement. There's three main irl ways Ive seen considered for radiation, 1. Distance, 2. Shadow shields and 3. Magnetic shields. Ive already touched upon 3, but I think with just 1 and 2 you can hit a nice middle ground when it comes to interesting constraints but still allowing players to make things like fission powered landers. Shadow shields are very dense but not as mass efficient, they're a mass tax to save on space for vehicles where that matters. I dont think part clipping is a big issue here as they already take up little space. Trusses are your second option by increasing distance, and they're more mass efficient, but take up lots of space meaning you need more infrastructure to build them. I think the best design would have the most mass efficient ship use both 1 and 2. This means you have to carefully design shadow shields to allow this, you could break down radiation into gamma, alpha/beta and neutron radiation, and have shadow shields, magnetic shields, and distance be most effective for each of them respectively. I think this would be easiest on the design side but hardest for player onboarding. Instead maybe have something to where shadow shields are more efficient the more radiation they are subjected to or something like that? (ie being hit with a rad of 16 will lead them to reduce it to 4, compared to if they got hit with a rad of 4 to where theyd reduce it to 2). This is unrealistic but oh well. Either way I definitely feel like theres a way to make all this work and be interesting with each other.

I do think one thing that is a must is if you have radiation, incorporate it with all the game systems. Probes should work worse while subject to high amounts of radiation, if there's greenhouses add something funky with atomic gardens (maybe have highly irradiated greenhouses be less effective but have them boost the productivity of greenhouses in the rest of the colony), have a science part that requires high amounts of radiation, etc. Anyways to end this off in the most anti climactic fashion, radiation is cool and I think there's a lot of stuff there, hope it sees the light of day.

 

[Superfluous J]

6 hours ago, Nertea said:

Superfluous J

Having done both, what do you think are the main differences between adding a part (or set of parts) to the game as a modder, vs as a paid member of the team?

Accountability and justification are big. It’s easy enough to incept a new part as a generalist modder. I just say that I want it and make the time to model/integrate/QA it myself.

In a professional context, that involves the use of studio resources and we have to balance that versus other work we want the staff that would be executing that work to do. A new part needs a concept, it needs artist time, it needs designer time, and it needs QA time. We have to really be sure we want a part before we do it.

Thank you for answering my question!

[Vl3d]

8 hours ago, Nertea said:

Honestly I don’t like basic life support (by basic I mean something like having Kerbals on a ship consume a resource). I’ve played all* of the KSP1 mods for it, and I haven’t found something that is interesting and holds my interest beyond frustration for more than a few hours – just not my cup of warm beverage.

I'm absolutely speechless.
Added later: My conclusion can only be that the fundamental issue of lack of differential incentives for using probes and kerbals for exploration is unsolved. If kerbals are immortal in space, why ever send probes? Why ever value kerbals?
Also, I firmly recommend playing KSP1 with Simplex Kerbalism again. The science system is superb and it's a shame for such thoughtful work to be ignored.

Edited September 9, 2023 by Vl3d

[PDCWolf]

6 hours ago, Nertea said:

PDCWolf

Has the concept of heating changed at any point based on the feedback posted to its thread?

I read every post in the thread, which was nontrivial because it was a long and uh, vibrant thread. The short version is no, the long version is yes but…

A lot of the interesting discussions sat around things that are further down the roadmap, and they provided us with a couple additional things to consider. Interestingly, the player stories we have were well aligned with the comments that I read, but the way the player stories were addressed were not unanimously approved. That’s fine – part of the EA conversation– and in particular with a lot of discussion being on items later in the roadmap, this makes me confident in the iterative model.

We’ll get the basics of the system focusing on reentry stories out to everyone. We’ll evaluate how that works with the playerbase. As we move towards the next milestones, we can use the information encoded in the thread, which I’ve collected internally, to make sure we’re making choices (engineering or design-wise) in conjunction with the feedback from reentry to get good solutions. One thing that jumped out for me was that there’s a lot of talk about macro vs micro solutions. I’ll be the first to admit that the current solution is a macro solution. So future design work will probably focus on whether there’s more microscale interaction to look at.

If I know the peak or average specific heat flux a vessel is gonna go through on its final orbit/landing spot, what stops me from just adding enough negative heat flux parts to counteract it?

Nothing. That’s what you should be doing. Of course, it’s not really that simple. If this is atmospheric heat from going fast, adding a big radiator is likely to just increase the amount of next flux, because it has a large surface area. Most heat mitigation tools need something else too – a radiator might need electricity, which means you need to supply that, which will enforce additional constraints.

Considering its possible uses on the automated logistics network, long missions, and just straight up anything that only requires time to pass, how do you balance not timewarping versus just letting things happen in ultra-fast time?

These are the best questions because they’re the hard ones. Often we trend towards supporting a player path that doesn’t reward excessive timewarping, but doesn’t exclude it either. A good case study is resource extraction and deposit concentrations. There’s definitely fun in seeking out and finding the best deposit for mining. Obviously though timewarp makes that kinda moot in timing. You could just start mining a hypothetically low-grade deposit and warp for 50 days. That tells us that time and rate -based mechanics need to have more to work well. A specific example here is that a newly accessible resource should be constrained differently – challenging location, resource transport limitations, etc.

 We try to move the real player decisions to things that are interesting with and without time as a mechanic. Mostly hypothetical examples, but here’s a few ways of thinking of these things on top of my head:

• Put a locational constraint on something. If you need to do something in orbit over a specific part of a planet, make it take longer than the average orbital cycle. This might encourage a player to put a satellite in GEO orbit over that place. If you do the work to put it in GEO, you get the benefit of being able to timewarp.
• Use binaries instead of gradients. Does ore concentration really benefit from a really detailed gradient from 0.0001% to 100%, or can you look at it as a yes/no? Trade that, see if you’re damaging player stories with that simplification.
• Use supporting systems. Sure, you could mine that deposit at high timewarp. But the deposit is on a planet with a day length of 200 days, and you need power, and the area has no fissionables. How are you going to power it? If you solve this problem, it is satisfying and you get a cookie. You did the work, enjoy your timewarpable extraction!

These are really big problems we look at for all of the more complex systems because hey, an interstellar transfer could be 100 years. Players will timewarp that and that’s… the whole length of a KSP1 campaign. Fun with and without timewarping like this is essential.

Thank you for taking the time. That was a lot of writing and I'm happy to get any answer an all, even more when they're actually detailed.

• Has the concept of heating changed at any point based on the feedback posted to its thread?

I'm happy with the general idea of this answer, until the timing of future headliner updates becomes part of the equation for fixing and implementing changes in the model. Timing has been shown to be not of the essence, and I'm doubtful anyone will want to look back at the heating design sheet to make changes when we're X years down the line and colonies arrive. Guess only time will tell, plus the best case scenario is that really no changes are needed.

I'm also not part of the club that approves of sequels simplifying systems, but it seems what's done is done.

• If I know the peak or average specific heat flux a vessel is gonna go through on its final orbit/landing spot, what stops me from just adding enough negative heat flux parts to counteract it?

My problem here is why I've steered away from most LS mods: sure, making a self sustaining loop with perfectly balanced inputs and outputs is satisfying as an engineering challenge, once, but other than that it's just really a complete gameplay loop that simplifies down to "add more parts to not explode". It's a one time engineering challenge that becomes a simple, repetitive mass addition in the long run. Tech trees might extend the challenge a bit, but the end of the road is the same.

This is why the question is worded that way. I didn't want to go the completely aggressive "can I trivialize your entire system to just a mass tax?". A clever, complex heating system would allow me to use excess heat for LS, or do crazy stuff like detachable heatsinks, or time daylight vs night sections of an orbit to not have my Kerbals die by the skin of their teeth, or that kind of proper emergent narrative/engineering stuff. It's probably one of the places where so far KSP1 and 2 (specially from what I gather from the concept of user stories) both do poorly: unless the player does a whole roleplay/self-limitation skit, everyone's experiences are pretty much guaranteed to be the exact same with all subsystems. There's a middle point between a puzzle being so simple there's no place for alternative solutions, and the puzzle being so complex almost nobody solves it.

• Considering its possible uses on the automated logistics network, long missions, and just straight up anything that only requires time to pass, how do you balance not timewarping versus just letting things happen in ultra-fast time?

For the first and third examples, "warp more" is still a solution: Warp more until the satellite has enough passes over the area to complete the task, and warp more until it's daylight again. The only way you're gonna shoot yourself in the foot is by playing simultaneous missions instead of sequential. Again, another department where KSP1 and now 2 fall really short. As for your second example, having all deposits be a consistent "100%" concentration means there's no need to pick a smart landing site, or building around a bad one, unless it happens to be compounded by having many resources on a single body (kinda like how starfield does, where you have to search a good outpost spots with different resources in its territory).

1 hour ago, Nertea said:

I wanted to make sure the text question dump was in before responding to this,  but asking viable questions for AMAs does require some crafting. In an hour I can't answer a ton of questions that are say, 5 minute answers, but I can answer a lot of 60 second questions, so those are the ones I'm going to pick. I'll leave the ones that were more complicated to a text answer where I can think on the response and actually give you detail. In addition, questions had a LOT of duplicates, and we tended to trim ones that were very similar and pick the one that seemed most productive to answer. We've also got the discord/forum volume differences here, and honestly the forum ones do trend to be a lot more detailed. So, text answers. Finally well, loaded questions... would you pick those to answer?  

I believe there should be a balance between 300 and 60 second answers. Users are clearly in for both. As for loaded questions, you did answer a couple positively loaded ones, though I'll give it to you any day that asking a well thought out neutral question is not an easy task, and answering negatively loaded ones is not fun.

[Periple]

3 hours ago, Vl3d said:

Added later: My conclusion can only be that the fundamental issue of lack of differential incentives for using probes and kerbals for exploration is unsolved. If kerbals are immortal in space, why ever send probes? Why ever value kerbals?

They must be doing something right because for me the incentives are the other way around — since probes are so great, why ever send kerbals?

 

[Pthigrivi]

10 hours ago, Vl3d said:

I'm absolutely speechless.
Added later: My conclusion can only be that the fundamental issue of lack of differential incentives for using probes and kerbals for exploration is unsolved. If kerbals are immortal in space, why ever send probes? Why ever value kerbals?
Also, I firmly recommend playing KSP1 with Simplex Kerbalism again. The science system is superb and it's a shame for such thoughtful work to be ignored.

I think I knew Chris felt this way and I was curious why. I actually agree no mods ever really got LS right which is why Id hoped early on to see a stock solution. I suspect though the deeper answer is actually linked to this: 

 

18 hours ago, Nertea said:

These are the best questions because they’re the hard ones. Often we trend towards supporting a player path that doesn’t reward excessive timewarping, but doesn’t exclude it either. A good case study is resource extraction and deposit concentrations. There’s definitely fun in seeking out and finding the best deposit for mining. Obviously though timewarp makes that kinda moot in timing. You could just start mining a hypothetically low-grade deposit and warp for 50 days. That tells us that time and rate -based mechanics need to have more to work well. A specific example here is that a newly accessible resource should be constrained differently – challenging location, resource transport limitations, etc.

I’ll probably strike up a thread on this topic in the suggestions section in the next week or so rather than digress here on the subject. I think its solvable but I agree its tricky and doesn’t want to be just an all-stick mass penalty. 

[Vl3d]

7 hours ago, Periple said:

They must be doing something right because for me the incentives are the other way around — since probes are so great, why ever send kerbals?

You send kerbals to plant the flag, to build the colony. The problem is that if you consider kerbals immortal or disposable, there's no reason to send probes - you're not worried about having the tech level needed for the probe because you send Jeb; you're not worried about the return mission because Jeb is immortal in orbit. So why would you NOT send a kerbal - they can replace probes every time without some kind of life support. Besides.. LS is the main obstacle to overcome in realistic space flight. How can it just be ignored? The game needs something to play the role of LS, to make manned mission harder so you're incentivized to also use probes.

3 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

no mods ever really got LS right which is why Id hoped early on to see a stock solution

I disagree with how LS is discarded because having a on-vessel time-dependent consumable resource prevents arbitrary warp. LS can just as easily be defined as distance / capability / bonus dependent instead of time-dependent. That's the whole point - it's a system just like thermal is. If you have radiators, your engine does not explode. If you have LS, your kerbals don't go into hibernation. There are ways to streamline it while allowing warp - but the point is that LS should exist as a gameplay mechanic, it's crucial for space travel. Please do not sacrifice LS for heat - add both.

[Pthigrivi]

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

I disagree with how LS is discarded because having a on-vessel time-dependent consumable resource prevents arbitrary warp. LS can just as easily be defined as distance / capability / bonus dependent instead of time-dependent. That's the whole point - it's a system just like thermal is. If you have radiators, your engine does not explode. If you have LS, your kerbals don't go into hibernation. There are ways to streamline it while allowing warp - but the point is that LS should exist as a gameplay mechanic, it's crucial for space travel. Please do not sacrifice LS for heat - add both.

I don’t disagree but reading between the lines in the comment about time-based mechanics I think what Chris is saying is they dont want any feature that explicitly prevents even arbitrary timewarping. Like I said I think this is solvable in spirit of earned bonuses similar to the other examples he mentioned. 

[MechBFP]

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

The game needs something to play the role of LS, to make manned mission harder so you're incentivized to also use probes.

You are already incentivized to use probes, they are much lighter and therefore much easier to get the required dV to do something. 

[Periple]

2 hours ago, Vl3d said:

The game needs something to play the role of LS, to make manned mission harder so you're incentivized to also use probes.

Crewed missions need crew modules which are a lot heavier! I always use probes if I can because they're so much lighter and I can use such smaller rockets!

[PDCWolf]

1 hour ago, MechBFP said:

You are already incentivized to use probes, they are much lighter and therefore much easier to get the required dV to do something. 

20 minutes ago, Periple said:

Crewed missions need crew modules which are a lot heavier! I always use probes if I can because they're so much lighter and I can use such smaller rockets!

Probes require commnet infrastructure, turning one launch into potentially a hundred. Even with a level 3 tracking station, you'd require the biggest antenna to talk back to the DSN, and even then you'd need other comm relays in the way to keep control all the time.

The command pods being all less than 10 tons mean they're negligible as payloads and you always have control no matter what.

[Pthigrivi]

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

The command pods being all less than 10 tons mean they're negligible as payloads and you always have control no matter what.

And while crew and EVA reports got pretty repetitive Id still like if only Kerbals could perform some tasks like collecting surface samples. Maybe probe based sample return could be possible but much later in the tech tree. This is the kind of thing I think makes more sense for non-punishing  LS bonuses, that you could still go do everything without it but happy, fed kerbals collect more valuable samples and are better at mining and prospecting.