Future Pacing of Roadmap Updates.

[ChubbyCat]

Considering that the science update will be released 10 months after the initial release of early access, maintaining that same pace for all major roadmap updates would mean that the game will not be compete for about 3.5 more years.  I expect that the developers are aiming to complete the game in a much shorter period than this, meaning I expect/hope that the remaining roadmap updates will be released at a more frequent pace (maybe ~every 5 months?) than the time it took for the science update to release. Hopefully lots of the foundational work that was not initially complete has now been done, meaning an increase in the pacing of future updates could be more reasonable?  What are your thoughts on this subject? I hope this topic is discussed in one of the yet to be released interviews from space creator. 

Edited October 23, 2023 by ChubbyCat

[Kerbart]

It can go either way. December (or whenever 0.2 will actually be released) is a long time away and aside from lofty stories from a source known to be consistently overhyping the product and downplaying issues we have yet nothing to go by. Does the announcement now mean that the work is nearly finished and just a matter of rounding up details, while the rest of the team already started on Colonies? Or dir they just kick of the work after the summer break and hope to finish it by December? IG claims the former, but IG says many things.

As others pointed out, For Science! seems to be a major overhaul in many ways, not in the least adding an exploration mode that will be there for the remainder of the roadmap. Colonies is mainly parts with some extra functionality, as will interstellar be just "more of the same." So development for those can be relatively faster.

We also don't know how much resources are currently tasked to fixing bug (one can only assume a few heads max) and how many there will be in the future. Given that it takes about two months just to roll out a patch that addresses only a handful of bugs, a roadmap frequency of 5-6 months seems overly optimistic. Probably one a year.

[Wheehaw Kerman]

I’d agree.  I’m expecting the pace to pick up as the EA issues get fixed, For Science! drops, and more resources get focused on the remaining roadmap updates.  To the extent that some of the underpinnings of the subsequent updates are included in the earlier ones, they later roadmap updates might start dropping faster as there’s less work to be done.

I’m kind of curious to see what the mystery update at the end of the roadmap is going to be…

[Superfluous J]

One data point is not a pattern. You cannot extrapolate ANYTHING from one number.

I'd go so far as to say when the road map has only 1 item left on it, we MIGHT have enough data to make a wild stab guess at when the final one could be added, and even that I'd be willing to accept being wrong by double or more.

[Strawberry]

I think interstellar will have the shortest gap as thats one of the easiest to implement, colonies and exploration will probably be equally tied as they both involve implementing new and complex game systems. That being said, I cant really put a timeframe on these things because 1. I dont have a full understanding of the codes scope and 2. I dont know the productivity of the team.

[Periple]

Colonies and resources are hard! No way to know when they’ll drop a we don’t know what the team is working on RN. From Nate’s presentation I would speculate that 0.2.0 is in QA and has been for a while which would mean that artists, designers, and some of the developers have already shifted to colonies, with some engineers staying on to fix bugs flushed out by QA.

I do hope it’s something like this because announcing 0.2.0 before it’s ready to go would be catastrophic!

[dr.phees]

The science implementation, compared to interstellar, colonies etc. is the easy one. I completely expect the other milestones to take much longer.

[Brofessional]

I'm hoping the pace of content updates increases as the game's foundation becomes more stable, but even being optimistic I expect it will be at least 6 months between milestones.

I think it's worth noting that we've already seen some of the work done on other milestones, and not every employee is focused solely on the next milestone. Artists can be working on a totally different feature than programmers at any given time, for example.

[mcwaffles2003]

My original guesses were:
 

Spoiler

My guesses:_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Phase 1: I think a fair amount of time will be spent in here, really hope we can find a lot of the bugs together to get the base framework rock solid and I think this is a community capable of making useful bug reports. Really depends on how polished the devs give us the EA in. (2-6 months)

Science: Depending how much they change science I doubt this will be a long time. As I expect it will mostly be just condition checks and balancing. (2 weeks - 1 month)

Colonies: This will probably take a while as there's a lot of mechanics being introduced  and I think there's plenty of room here for breaking the game. (2-4 months)

Interstellar: I think this will be relatively short as its adding parts and planets for which mechanics will be ironed out largely in phase 1 . (1 month)

Exploration: Probably a long wait, not because of the added system, but because I expect the resource gathering mechanics will require a lot of balancing and fixing. (2-3 months)

Multiplayer: Lord knows (2-8 months)

Im going to stick with my original ratios for similar reasoning and scale up... I really don't think each major update will come with as many bugs as phase 1 did as I don't think they will introduce as many bug prone systems. Also, when FOR SCIENCE! comes out I think the player base will increase, possibly speeding up bug discovery and fix speed
 

Phase 1: 10 months

Science: 2 months

Colonies: 6 months

Interstellar: 2 months

Exploration: 5 months

Multiplayer: 1yr

[HebaruSan]

On 10/23/2023 at 3:29 PM, ChubbyCat said:

the game will not be compete for about 3.5 more years.

Is there a prize for guessing correctly, like guessing the number of gumballs in a jar at a county fair? It will happen when it happens, and none of us really has any idea (as the previous post so aptly demonstrates). My gut says 5 years till the last roadmap piece is released, but if that's right or wrong... so what?

[mcwaffles2003]

53 minutes ago, HebaruSan said:

Is there a prize for guessing correctly, like guessing the number of gumballs in a jar at a county fair? It will happen when it happens, and none of us really has any idea (as the previous post so aptly demonstrates). My gut says 5 years till the last roadmap piece is released, but if that's right or wrong... so what?

I just find it fun to guess

[Wheehaw Kerman]

3 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

I just find it fun to guess

If the platform supports it, we could ask the mods to set up a Betting Pool sub - posts limited to expected timeline to milestone releases updated after each release, most accurate prediction wins, the winner earns undying forum glory.

[Guest]

[Datau03]

A clip of Nate saying something about that ^

So, as Nate also said a lot of work has been going into bugfixing and foundation, which will (hopefully) not be the necessary between future roadmap updates. 

Also, datamining suggests that science was the least done milestone at Early Access release, while all the other features are in a relatively advanced state as they have been working on them a lot before EA release.

My personal prediction for the Colonies update is somewhere around April (maybe even earlier, that'd be great), but aside from Nate saying they expect a significantly shorter period of time between For Science! and colonies than between EA release and For Science! and what I said above, that is mostly speculation.

 

[GGG-GoodGuyGreg]

No offense but Nate is known to underestimate timelines and I don’t why, by now, he didn’t become more self aware, unless it’s intentional.
Long story short, I doubt it will be a “significantly shorter period of time” until the next roadmap updates come after The Science Update. 
I would love to be proven wrong though. 

[stephensmat]

23 minutes ago, Datau03 said:

Also, datamining suggests that science was the least done milestone at Early Access release, while all the other features are in a relatively advanced state as they have been working on them a lot before EA release

 

Gotta be honest, that gives me more hope for a shorter interval than anything we get in an interview.

Cautious optimism.

[kdaviper]

1 hour ago, GGG-GoodGuyGreg said:

No offense but Nate is known to underestimate timelines and I don’t why, by now, he didn’t become more self aware, unless it’s intentional.
Long story short, I doubt it will be a “significantly shorter period of time” until the next roadmap updates come after The Science Update. 
I would love to be proven wrong though. 

Unless for science! Breaks the game really hard I don't see how progress wouldn't be faster

[GGG-GoodGuyGreg]

2 hours ago, kdaviper said:

Unless for science! Breaks the game really hard I don't see how progress wouldn't be faster

Next features like colonies and multiplayer aren’t really just a simple career that’s being added. It will not be easy. 

[kdaviper]

5 hours ago, GGG-GoodGuyGreg said:

Next features like colonies and multiplayer aren’t really just a simple career that’s being added. It will not be easy. 

It seems to me that, while these certainly add complexity and possibility for more bugs, there's nothing novel as far as physics calculations are concerned, where the most game breaking bugs have been so far. I could be wrong, but as long as the update delivers on a more stable platform, colonies should be trivial in comparison to the work they have done up to now. And concerning multiplayer and even interstellar, as long as the framework they have built was truly designed with these features in mind, these really should just need flashing out to provide actual engaging gameplay. We will see shortly how well they have stabilized things and that should give us a good indication of how much work there is left

Edited November 8, 2023 by kdaviper
Typo

[Bej Kerman]

7 hours ago, GGG-GoodGuyGreg said:

Next features like colonies and multiplayer aren’t really just a simple career that’s being added. It will not be easy. 

Per Datau

11 hours ago, Datau03 said:

Also, datamining suggests that science was the least done milestone at Early Access release, while all the other features are in a relatively advanced state as they have been working on them a lot before EA release.

 

[RileyHef]

23 hours ago, Datau03 said:

Also, datamining suggests that science was the least done milestone at Early Access release, while all the other features are in a relatively advanced state as they have been working on them a lot before EA release.

No idea what the source is to back your statement, but according to one reddit post that datamined the game early after EA launch the exact opposite was true:

Technology and science:

So far, tech-tree seam to be more or less feature complete Science collection data structure are done, but look to be celestial body specifics, I've not found anything specific to biome yet, but it's likely a lack for seach from me

Colonies:

Look like a much less developer feature than science so far (Which is normal if you look at the roadmap). There is still a lot of reference to colonies left and right in the code, but it's look like the core feature is not made yet

[dansiegel30]

Nate did say that he would be very disappointed if the next roadmap update took as long as the 0.2 release.  My problem with that statement is that over the last few years, I quite believe he has become quite used to and numb to "disappointment".

[Datau03]

12 hours ago, RileyHef said:

No idea what the source is to back your statement, but according to one reddit post that datamined the game early after EA launch the exact opposite was true:

Hm, I don't remember a lot of science stuff being found in the game files by multiple people, mostly on the KSP2 modding server. Also, in gameplay footage we've seen lot's of stuff from colonies and interstellar while little to none science stuff was shown. 

No source to back this but an early access release wasn't planned for a long time and they've been working on all future features before the early access decision simultaneosly and I'd expect a lot of working having gone especially into colonies and interstellar back then. (Multiplayer is obvious as it must've been worked on all the time so it works with all the other features)