A poll on predictions

[moeggz]

It’s not working without text here so here is text

[Turbo Ben]

My prediction is 0.2.2 - Science with with a couple of bug fixes, but still many bugs remaining. I think we'll get 0.1.5 in November and 0.2.0 for Christmas period to help drive sales. It will be full of bugs and there will be a couple of rushed out fixes before the anniversary.

[Periple]

I voted "Colonies or further." It's impossible to tell just how far they are with the implementation of the roadmap systems, but they have said that most of the team is on that with only a few on bugfixing/maintaining the 0.1 branch, so I choose to be optimistic!

So while it's not a slam dunk, I think there is a good chance of getting to colonies within the next six months, and it's even possible we'll get resources. I would be surprised if we get to interstellar, and amazed (and delighted!) if we get multiplayer.

From where I'm standing it looks like it'll stay in EA for another year or two. If it's more than that then either something really is horribly wrong, or it's an intentional publishing decision.

[moeggz]

I voted reentry heat. I think there’s a good chance for some science to be implemented, but I don’t think they’ll have finished it and bug patched it completely in 6 months. But I’m confident we will have at least visual heat effects in 6 months.
 

Also, this mirroring of polls is very interesting and a good example of selection bias (granted, comparing a 1,500+ response to ~30 isn’t perfect.) I don’t know who’s right here, we’re all just  guessing, but this is a much more narrow bell curve centered on science while the Reddit one is wider and while the bell curve was first on reentry it has moved to center on bug fixes.

So if the devs finish science within 6 months they will meet expectations here, and greatly surpass them on Reddit. That should do a lot to sway public sentiment positively. And it can now be pointed out concretely that they have surpassed expectations if they get science in 6 months.

[Royalswissarmyknife]

I think science and Reentry effects will be seen considering they probably have some work done on them.

anything past that I think is being a bit too optimistic.

guessing colonies will take a while.

[regex]

I don't think we're getting any further than the science update, although I do think we'll have that. Colonies will be waiting for the CBT terrain system to be implemented. I give it another year and a half before we get a 1.0 release.

[Superpluto126]

I think we'll have science, and be a couple of bug fixes away from colonies...!!!

[Periple]

1 hour ago, regex said:

I don't think we're getting any further than the science update, although I do think we'll have that. Colonies will be waiting for the CBT terrain system to be implemented. I give it another year and a half before we get a 1.0 release.

I don’t think colonies are necessarily linked to CBT. They’re pretty straightforward from that point of view, just place a bunch of models and treat them much like a craft, minus some physics. The stuff that needs work is independent of all that — game mechanics, how they fit into progression, and so on. 

[Kerbart]

2 hours ago, regex said:

I don't think we're getting any further than the science update, although I do think we'll have that. Colonies will be waiting for the CBT terrain system to be implemented. I give it another year and a half before we get a 1.0 release.

That's actually a pessimistic but not unrealistic take. Why pessimistic? Because it suggests that the roadmap features will be, pretty much like in KSP1, glorified mods and not radical game play structures that require a radical architectural overhaul or complex integration. One can argue that the required plumbing for that is already there, but that requires foresight and planning that appears to be very inconsistent with what we've seen so far. Which means KSP2 will be pretty much KSP1 but then prettier and not really a better game.

[Pthigrivi]

Before the game was released I guessed 4-6 months between each update, but given how rough the game was at EA release Im not surprised its taken quite a while just to get to real stability. Im cautiously optimistic we'll see the science release late this year or early next. They also did say they're planning to phase in heat starting with Science so I don't expect to see re-entry effects before then. 

[regex]

2 hours ago, Kerbart said:

Because it suggests that the roadmap features will be, pretty much like in KSP1, glorified mods and not radical game play structures that require a radical architectural overhaul or complex integration.

You think it'll take more time? Less time? Why do you think I'm being pessimistic?

See, I don't think this game will have gameplay nearly as bad as KSP1 (the core loop is the same, obviously), maybe similar but also much more open-ended, and far less like the tacked-on, poorly thought-through, "glorified mod" stuff we got in KSP1. I actually believe Intercept will deliver better gameplay than KSP1. My timeframe guesstimate is just me being realistic; I ain't holding my breath over here.

[Kerbart]

5 hours ago, regex said:

You think it'll take more time? Less time? Why do you think I'm being pessimistic? (...)

Like everyone else, I'm disappointed at the time factor. But at this point it has become such a joke that it doesn't bother me. I stopped playing KSP2 because the time between updates is just too long, and when one gets there it gets there, and I'll check it out. But I'm no longer desperately waiting for updates, because the game isn't worth playing right now.. At this point, to paraphrase Terry Pratchet, I have the same eagerness as someone probing a rotten molar with their tongue, to find out how bad they can get. That's why I am betting on Science being proudly presented at the 1 year anniversary. I don't think it's that much of a stretch. It's going to be a race to get 1.4 out in August but effectively it's really September. Next update, at the current pace, will then be late November or early December and that puts 1.6 right in February. And I don't think it's a leap of imagination to expect the Science update with 1.6

No, I am pessimistic about the character of the game; I'm afraid I can't share your optimism (but I do share your hope!) regarding that. We all have high expectations in this respect, expectations set by what we've been told by IG so far.  And therein lies the rub, because it seems that IG is really, really good at painting a certain picture of the product, in such a slick corporate CYA way that they can truly say afterwards "we never said that, that's just you interpreting the videos." Actual delivery falls miles short of our expectations, but not of their promises, because they pretty much promised nothing.

I didn't get cynical over waiting five years and getting a turd delivered. What did make me cynical was the continuous "look what a fantastic game we delivered!" that continued throughout the first months. "We're aware of some minor bugs, and we're not really taking them serious, but we ARE working on grid fins!" The disconnect between what IG says and what comes out of the studio makes me very afraid. The very first thing on the roadmap is science. In KSP1, science monumentally sucks. Is it going to be different in KSP2? From what I understand, no. That is what really is tempering my optimism. We hope for new game play. We expect new game play. From what I'm seeing so far, we won't be getting new game play.

[Periple]

21 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

We hope for new game play. We expect new game play. From what I'm seeing so far, we won't be getting new game play.

I will be disappointed if we won’t get any new gameplay! It ought to be more involved than “fly to biome, click button, fly back (optional), repeat!”

[regex]

36 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

No, I am pessimistic about the character of the game; I'm afraid I can't share your optimism

Honestly, I don't feel really optimistic about the game at all, but I also don't feel pessimistic either. I'm just over here in limbo. Maybe I have a bit more faith in Intercept trying to think outside the box, I don't know, all we have right now is the core KSP gameplay loop and a bunch of bugs. I haven't seen any new gameplay and only some bare hints of how things might work. If they want to play that close to their chest, fine, I don't care, I got other things to do in the meantime. If they ultimately show me that they're unimaginative and can't get outside the KSP1 box then I'll probably just leave these forums for good because the game isn't going to offer me anything and I just don't have it in me to install KSP1 for any reason. And that's fine too.

36 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

In KSP1, science monumentally sucks. Is it going to be different in KSP2? From what I understand, no.

They've already dropped new ideas for how science will (might) work. What I think they mean in terms of "like KSP1" is that we'll have science points and a tech tree, but the fundamental process of gathering science seems to be different so far. If that's not far enough, well, I don't even know.

At the end of the day though I got 70 hours of flying around in the game, which is more than a lot of games I've spent $50 USD on, so if it bombs, whatever. I never bought into the hype, I didn't sit around hanging on every word that was spoken about an unreleased game, I understand that things change between hype and release. I also have tons of other games to play while they try polishing this thing up. I'm going to wait and see. Call that optimism or pessimism or whatever.

Edited August 26, 2023 by regex

[Carraux]

Nate Simpson in May 2022: "We have made the difficult decision to move the release date of KSP 2 [...] We are building a game of tremendous technological complexity, and are taking this additional time to ensure we hit the quality and level of polish it deserves."

So my guess is "canceled".

[cocoscacao]

10 hours ago, regex said:

but the fundamental process of gathering science seems to be different so far. If that's not far enough, well, I don't even know.

Source? I'm fine with gathering points, but it really needs to be more involved than clicking a button to perform operation. 

The only thing I've heard so far is that building rockets that carry sci-probes will be slightly more difficult to make, because probes will be weird looking bulbous shapes or something. 

[Pthigrivi]

2 hours ago, cocoscacao said:

Source? I'm fine with gathering points, but it really needs to be more involved than clicking a button to perform operation. 

The only thing I've heard so far is that building rockets that carry sci-probes will be slightly more difficult to make, because probes will be weird looking bulbous shapes or something. 

The quote from Chris Adderley in the AMA was that different experiments will require different locations, durations, and resources to work, so it does sound like the gathering process will be more dynamic. Im still hoping for scansat type behavior. Thats a solid mechanic. 

[Strawberry]

2 hours ago, cocoscacao said:

Source? I'm fine with gathering points, but it really needs to be more involved than clicking a button to perform operation. 

The only thing I've heard so far is that building rockets that carry sci-probes will be slightly more difficult to make, because probes will be weird looking bulbous shapes or something. 

So far what we know is that parts will be designed around specific mission profiles. For example, while this likely wont be in game (as when we heard of it it was referenced as a part thats just been floated conceptually with the team), we know the team explored a science part that required you to fly through the rings of an astronomical body in order for the part to work. I think this concept gives you a glimpse of what theyre going for.

My personal guess is some parts (im guessing mostly the first few ones we get) will behave the same as ksp2 as in they work everywhere (ie mystery goo), some parts will only work while in specific locations. For example the magnetometer makes a return and that only works in orbit, im guessing most of the other parts we saw alongside it in that lab art will also only work in space/in orbit.
 

Telescopes more ambitous then hubble/jwst technologically is also something that came up in the ama and i wont be suprised if we get a sgl (kgl?)  telescope or something similar, though this probably wont be until we get deb deb. I have a feeling that some parts will just be pains to fly/obtain but a lot of these parts are put on backburner because the systems to make them work arent there. For example nertea in the ama mentioned needing specific materials, i wont be suprised if theres a few science parts whose primary shtick is “needs this specific material or loads of them”, and since we dont have materials in the game, theres really no point in introducing that part.

 

So yeah tldr: dont expect any radical changes outside of probably science generation over time, theres still gonna be generic science points. What you can expect is some parts to require you to either do specific mission profiles/work better in them (ie most parts probably wont work everywhere), or some parts require you to design your craft around them structurally (ie weird bulbous part) but probably dont expect a lot of these initially

Edited August 26, 2023 by Strawberry

[regex]

3 hours ago, cocoscacao said:

Source? I'm fine with gathering points, but it really needs to be more involved than clicking a button to perform operation. 

The only thing I've heard so far is that building rockets that carry sci-probes will be slightly more difficult to make, because probes will be weird looking bulbous shapes or something. 

I think, for me, the big change is going to be singular science parts which seem to have a specific function and work once, rather than the whole scientist reset rigamarole and a bunch of samey "right-click, receive reward" parts with really dumb restrictions on what can be transmitted and what can't. Hopefully we have a situation where we're creating a single launch to get a single science part to a specific place for a larger reward, which IMO is much better than the "design the same old Minmus lander which can farm all the biomes" (land, hit hotkey, take sample, plant flag, gather all the experiments, get back in the capsule BS).

Edited August 26, 2023 by regex

[RocketRockington]

I think we'll get retry heating, but not science.  I think if there had been any significant progress on science, the tenor or Nerteas AMA would be different.  And they'd show more - last I heard they'd planned a video interview about the orbital decay bugfix (though now that's delayed too right?) so if they're scraping the bottom of the barrel that deep for anything to do videos about, science must be well behind. 

 I don't really get why it would take this long, since they've also said it's going to be similar to KSP1 science, unless every single engineer has just been doing big fixing, but based on their trajectory and past willingness to share literally everything they could think to share about, that's my take.

[TwoCalories]

I voted Colonies. That's probably a bit optimistic, but I've been a long-time member of the KSP2 Hype Train, and optimism is what the hype train runs on.

[Royalswissarmyknife]

1 minute ago, TwoCalories said:

I voted Colonies. That's probably a bit optimistic, but I've been a long-time member of the KSP2 Hype Train, and optimism is what the hype train runs on.

The higher the optimism the bigger the crash when the hype train derails!

[RocketRockington]

1 hour ago, Royalswissarmyknife said:

The higher the optimism the bigger the crash when the hype train derails!

Pretty sure the hype train already crashed a couple times, we're on the third iteration.

This version has a low seating capacity, not very fast, and takes a lot of effort to get going - but on the other hand, it's fueled by pure stubbornness, so it'll keep going when all else fails.

[chefsbrian]

I was expecting science to be in the "We've seen it and have a tenative release window" by now, as predicted days after the EA release. So I'm not particularly confident making a prediction for another six months, I'd put my chips down on thermals being out in some form by then.

That said, I do think that if science isn't out by the one year anniversary and doesn't have a firm release window being publicly communicated, its going to be bad. There are lots of early access games with long release cycles, but very few with year+ long release cycles for updates. Those games generally thrive and survive on being stable, quality experiences people enjoy playing for a significant period of time. Starsector has had an extremely long development cycle, with 6-12 month update cycles seemingly the norm. The games also stable, feature rich, and playable for dozens of hours on a single save, before diving into the modding community. That's the sort of line that needs to be reached for long lifecycles to be viable. KSP2 lacks in the stability department, and has a content pipeline for most people measured in single hours. S'not to dismiss the people who do find plenty of fun in the current version, just that more casual players lack any mechanical incentive to play beyond a couple launches, and lack the content depth to make more varied launches to stretch that.

Science, assuming its not somehow awful, solves a lot of that. It gives mechanical incentive to engage and fly missions even if the part count isn't widely expanded, and it rations out the part count to stretch that content longer. Single hours of content easily hits the high teens of hours. That helps a great deal, as suddenly you're not done with the game in an afternoon, but in a few days - its a small paper difference but a huge perception difference.

On 8/26/2023 at 10:52 PM, RocketRockington said:

Pretty sure the hype train already crashed a couple times, we're on the third iteration.

This version has a low seating capacity, not very fast, and takes a lot of effort to get going - but on the other hand, it's fueled by pure stubbornness, so it'll keep going when all else fails.

My hype train has been reassigned, its barreling off towards starfield now. Not that Bethesda has a great reputation for super-stable games either, might still end up off the rails

[RocketRockington]

18 minutes ago, chefsbrian said:

My hype train has been reassigned, its barreling off towards starfield now. Not that Bethesda has a great reputation for super-stable games either, might still end up off the rails

Yeah likewise.  I know expectations here have been dramatically lowered, but I wouldn't be satisfied with science unless it's actually as good of a progression mechanic as KSP1 career - or hopefully much better.     It just feels so sad to compare the big hopes people had  and that were encouraged by the Nate and PD marketing  pre-launch, with the table scraps everyone seems to be willing to settle for now (and have so far not been getting).