Hats off to 0.1.5 for achieving something positive

[Kerbart]

While nay-sayers (and I'll admit I've not been super positive about KSP2 lately) will point to mitigating factors* the 0.1.5 patch is the first where active players on Steam exceed that of the previous release. (I have no illusions that the Steam numbers represent real playercount but they do provide an insight in development over time).

https://steamcharts.com/app/954850#3m

* the 0.2 hype, and timing of the release picking up some extra of the regular weekend peak

[Superfluous J]

I have exactly one minute of playing time on Steam. It will likely remain as such forever.

The posts and topics in the forum are enough of a sign for me to know we've hit some form of milestone.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

12 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

I have exactly one minute of playing time on Steam. It will likely remain as such forever.

The posts and topics in the forum are enough of a sign for me to know we've hit some form of milestone.

I'm interested in your thoughts. 

I know you avoided a lot of the frustration by waiting - and while you have followed some of those posts and are not completely isolated from the issues - you are someone who is coming to the game after a lot has been ironed out. 

So, with your relatively fresh eyes on the game... 

What do you think? 

[Superfluous J]

9 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

So, with your relatively fresh eyes on the game... 

What do you think? 

It's pretty rough. I've sent 3 ships outside of LKO so far:

1. Orbit Mun and return - went fine, other than UI issues that are a combination of my not being used to the UI, my not wanting PAIGE to blabber at me to tell me stuff, and things I think are actual issues either with bugs or bad choices on their parts. Nonexhaustive list:
   • The VAB controls flummox me. I would love a Dev Insights video dedicated to why someone thought this was better than KSP1's VAB controls.
   • I have no idea why I need a workspace in the VAB. Seems to just be an extra unnecessary layer to saving a ship.
   • There seems no way to get TWR info in the VAB.
   • You can't interact with or get numerical information from a ship trajectory in Mun's SOI while the ship is in Kerbin's SOI (See below for an interesting twist on this)
2. Land on Minmus, land on Mun, return (aka Weekly Challenge #3)
   • I landed on Minmus, got Val out, jetpacked her to some nearby rocks, and when it was time to go back to the ship IT WAS GONE. Luckily KSP1 taught me to quicksave before and after every major event so I was able to do that.
   • When in orbit of Minmus, you CAN get numerical information from a ship trajectory in Mun's SOI. Why can I do this but not when my ship is in Kerbin's SOI?
   • After launching to orbit from the Mun's surface, I had no orbit line. Turns out my ship was still "landed" and I had to edit the save file to make it in orbit.
   • Doing that didn't fix the problem entirely, but it allowed me to try to get home. I didn't have the fuel, so reloaded with Val on Mun's surface and sent up a rescue craft.
3. Rescue Val from Mun.
   • Once I got my rescue craft into Mun orbit, whenever I left it and came back it was on a crash trajectory, at the Ap, and needed maybe 50-100m/s of thrust to get back into orbit.
   • When I took off with Val in the rescue craft, the SAS UI still had "landed" icons. This fixed itself eventually I'm not sure how or why.

These things plus random UI/UX issues (Maneuver nodes are annoying to work with. I seem to need to hit spacebar twice to stage), and my own issues regarding not keeping interested without a game-given goal (I need me that Science Mode stat) are making me want to sit out for a bit and see how the game cooks until the next update. Though someone posted an interesting challenge that I may try out.

[Periple]

It took me a while to get used to the new VAB controls but at this point one of the reasons I can’t enjoy KSP1 is that construction feels so much clunkier. Give it some time, muscle memory will be fighting you for a while.

You can see the TWR in the engineer’s report but only for the launch stage. This will be addressed in 0.2.0.

With you about the other bugs and QoL issues, they are indeed annoying. I’m particularly missing fine tuning controls for maneuver nodes and per-stage TWR. I also think the encounter/RV markers are a lot harder to read than in KSP1, and the in-flight PAM is a mess.

[The Aziz]

23 minutes ago, Periple said:

You can see the TWR in the engineer’s report but only for the launch stage

Only for the first stage on your current build*. You just aren't able to view the stats for upper stages. The result is of course the same but I needed that technical correctness.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

13 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

Only for the first stage on your current build*. You just aren't able to view the stats for upper stages. The result is of course the same but I needed that technical correctness.

Can you expand on this?  

(Was it a mod that allowed us to see staging info in KSP1 or am I misremembering something?) 

[cocoscacao]

@Periple mostly true. I still think we need some way to move camera vertically, alt click (or any other key combo) to grab and move the whole cfaft, instead of hunting the root node. Plus, I still preferred rotation/sliding to be separated and on its own shortcuts (1, 2, 3) 

Edited October 29, 2023 by cocoscacao

[Periple]

2 minutes ago, cocoscacao said:

I still think we need some way to move camera vertically

Middle mouse button and drag!

[cocoscacao]

@Periple did know that the same thing works in map view? I still wish some other button to be used instead of MMB

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 hour ago, Superfluous J said:

It's pretty rough. I've sent 3 ships outside of LKO so far:

1. Orbit Mun and return - went fine, other than UI issues that are a combination of my not being used to the UI, my not wanting PAIGE to blabber at me to tell me stuff, and things I think are actual issues either with bugs or bad choices on their parts. Nonexhaustive list:
   • The VAB controls flummox me. I would love a Dev Insights video dedicated to why someone thought this was better than KSP1's VAB controls.
   • I have no idea why I need a workspace in the VAB. Seems to just be an extra unnecessary layer to saving a ship.
   • There seems no way to get TWR info in the VAB.
   • You can't interact with or get numerical information from a ship trajectory in Mun's SOI while the ship is in Kerbin's SOI (See below for an interesting twist on this)
2. Land on Minmus, land on Mun, return (aka Weekly Challenge #3)
   • I landed on Minmus, got Val out, jetpacked her to some nearby rocks, and when it was time to go back to the ship IT WAS GONE. Luckily KSP1 taught me to quicksave before and after every major event so I was able to do that.
   • When in orbit of Minmus, you CAN get numerical information from a ship trajectory in Mun's SOI. Why can I do this but not when my ship is in Kerbin's SOI?
   • After launching to orbit from the Mun's surface, I had no orbit line. Turns out my ship was still "landed" and I had to edit the save file to make it in orbit.
   • Doing that didn't fix the problem entirely, but it allowed me to try to get home. I didn't have the fuel, so reloaded with Val on Mun's surface and sent up a rescue craft.
3. Rescue Val from Mun.
   • Once I got my rescue craft into Mun orbit, whenever I left it and came back it was on a crash trajectory, at the Ap, and needed maybe 50-100m/s of thrust to get back into orbit.
   • When I took off with Val in the rescue craft, the SAS UI still had "landed" icons. This fixed itself eventually I'm not sure how or why.

These things plus random UI/UX issues (Maneuver nodes are annoying to work with. I seem to need to hit spacebar twice to stage), and my own issues regarding not keeping interested without a game-given goal (I need me that Science Mode stat) are making me want to sit out for a bit and see how the game cooks until the next update. Though someone posted an interesting challenge that I may try out.

It is interesting for me to read through this.  Some of what I'm seeing are problems that were identified early on.  Especially:

• No orbit line
• Landed state while in orbit
• return to ship to discover it's on a crash trajectory

I haven't been following the update cycle - but I assumed those had been resolved. 

The 'save at every important event' thing just feels very 'KSP' to me and doesn't bug me that much.  It was part of the game cycle for KSP; feels like a smart thing for players to continue to do with 2.  IOW - yeah its a bug, but not one that overly bothers me.

How to effectively use (or perhaps even why to use) 'workspace' is odd to me.  I never figured it out.  The biggest frustration was when I built a thing I called "Standard Landing Can" expecting to use it repeatedly for different missions and only have to build lower stages... did not work.  Every time I would build stages onto the "Standard Landing Can" - even saving the subsequent full craft to a different name, when I next tried to use it for another build, I had to delete stuff that wasn't supposed to be there.  AKA I never figured out how to use the VAB craft files effectively.

 

Thanks for the write-up!

 

[Kerbart]

36 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

It is interesting for me to read through this.  Some of what I'm seeing are problems that were identified early on.  (...)

For me it looks like 1.5 is where we expected the EA release to be. Buggy, but playable enough to give feedback and then with monthly patch cycles the game would be in great shape by now.

I'm still worried about Creative Management cavalier attitude (denial?) towards bugs. My fear is still that we'll hear them crow "all bugs are slayed" with 0.2 because the two biggest complaints of the community have been addressed, and the rest will get the "tis the way it is" treatment. As you mentioned, there are a lot of day one bugs that remain ignored until today, a full half year after release, and that makes you wonder how serious the attention to bugs is. The anniversary patch (0.2.1) — yes I'm optimistic [/s] that after the 0.2 release the team will push out a patch in a mere two months — will tell us more in that respect.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

29 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

For me it looks like 1.5 is where we expected the EA release to be.

That is good to hear!

30 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

with 0.2

I wonder if there is some level of problems in presentation because foundational features developed for the full game are not functional with features turned off.  Maybe adding 'For Science!' features eliminates some of that.  Maybe just the fact that they've had so many non-IG eyeballs and hands on the game sending in feedback and bug reports + dev time is solving problems they weren't aware of or had not had time to resolve with the EA date of last February.

Who knows.

I do like hearing positive feedback at this point.  I do like knowing that the feature I have most looked forward to has a timeframe when it will drop.  So - for me (a guy who stopped playing back in... May???) hearing that there is real progress?

Good news.

[Scarecrow71]

2 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

The VAB controls flummox me. I would love a Dev Insights video dedicated to why someone thought this was better than KSP1's VAB controls.

You and me both.  The controls, while not hard to learn, are wonky at best and have some issues (that I put forth in a separate thread).  It wasn't broke with KSP1.

2 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

I have no idea why I need a workspace in the VAB. Seems to just be an extra unnecessary layer to saving a ship.

This was explained at one point, but I'm still not sure of the why either.

2 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

There seems no way to get TWR info in the VAB.

As has been mentioned previously, the Engineer's Report in the VAB shows TWR for lift/launch stage only.  I highly recommend the Micro-Engineer mod as that solves this issue.

2 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

You can't interact with or get numerical information from a ship trajectory in Mun's SOI while the ship is in Kerbin's SOI (See below for an interesting twist on this)

This has been a complaint since launch day (no pun intended).  We have complained non-stop about this, and it seems the complaint has fallen on deaf ears.

2 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

After launching to orbit from the Mun's surface, I had no orbit line. Turns out my ship was still "landed" and I had to edit the save file to make it in orbit.

They claimed this was fixed, but apparently it isn't.  I'd recommend checking the bug reports subforum to see if this bug is still active and, if it is, upvote and post.

2 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

Once I got my rescue craft into Mun orbit, whenever I left it and came back it was on a crash trajectory, at the Ap, and needed maybe 50-100m/s of thrust to get back into orbit.

Ah, orbital decay.  This probably warrants, at a minimum, posting in the orbital decay bug thread.  At worst, it needs to be reported as a new type of orbital decay bug.

[The Aziz]

1 hour ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Can you expand on this?  

(Was it a mod that allowed us to see staging info in KSP1 or am I misremembering something?) 

Not much there to expand. When you build a lander, you can see the twr and other stats for that. Then you build a transfer stage below and you can see the twr and other stats for that only, in engineers report. Etc etc all the way to lifter stage or whatever fires up first. 0.2 should solve this and make it work roughly the same as KSP1 when it was added... In 1.6?

55 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

I'm still worried about Creative Management cavalier attitude (denial?) towards bugs. My fear is still that we'll hear them crow "all bugs are slayed" with 0.2 because the two biggest complaints of the community have been addressed, and the rest will get the "tis the way it is" treatment. As you mentioned, there are a lot of day one bugs that remain ignored until today, a full half year after release

"Denial"... I mean, there's the whole presentation from last week, also an interview from few days ago, when you can probably hear that it wasn't the case but whateva.

As for the bugs being "ignored"

Eeehhhhhh

[The Aziz]

12 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

It wasn't broke with KSP1

Taking hands off the WASDZXC123 to get to the zoom buttons, and two different control schemes for two different buildings, that was broken.

1 hour ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

How to effectively use (or perhaps even why to use) 'workspace' is odd to me.  I never figured it out.  The biggest frustration was when I built a thing I called "Standard Landing Can" expecting to use it repeatedly for different missions and only have to build lower stages... did not work.  Every time I would build stages onto the "Standard Landing Can" - even saving the subsequent full craft to a different name, when I next tried to use it for another build, I had to delete stuff that wasn't supposed to be there.  AKA I never figured out how to use the VAB craft files effectively.

I literally just built a Jool nuclear mothership and right next to it constructed a lander I'm going to use. Tested it separately without reloading ships back and forth, all I needed to do was to hit the rocket button to pick it as launch assembly.

You can build your gigantic space station in there, cut it to pieces and send them separately to space, all from within one workspace, just by adding a lifter built on the side.

You can have separate standardized lifters for your payloads - just like rocket companies have their rocket families, SpaceX with two types of Falcon, ULA has the Delta IV variants etc. Just open the workspace with chosen lifter, slap a payload on top, if it doesn't meet the requirements, switch in 2 seconds to other one, launch.

Or you can have different standarized payloads set up in the workspace (manned, unmanned, landers, rovers, soon science spacecraft etc), and build below stages depending on d-v requirements.

It's up to you.

[Periple]

21 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

Taking hands off the WASDZXC123 to get to the zoom buttons, and two different control schemes for two different buildings, that was broken.

Broken is a bit strong but it was illogical and clunky, not a masterpiece of UI design. It does have the benefit of many years of tweaking which made it usable you got the hang of it. (Let’s not get into the mess that is the parts menu, that’s still painful.)

KSP2’s VAB is a much better design, however it does still have many rough edges and lacks refinements. I do find it overall much easier and more efficient even in its current state, although it did take me a while to un-learn KSP1.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

25 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

Or you can have different standarized payloads set up in the workspace (manned, unmanned, landers, rovers, soon science spacecraft etc), and build below stages depending on d-v requirements.

It's up to you.

That is great - and what I'd hoped to accomplish.  I just never quite figured out how it worked during the weeks I played.  Whatever it was I was doing was not in line with the functionality they intended.

I'll check out the system again after "For Science!" drops.

[Kerbart]

38 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

"Denial"... I mean, there's the whole presentation from last week, also an interview from few days ago, when you can probably hear that it wasn't the case but whateva.

As for the bugs being "ignored"

Words, not actions. The intervals between patches seem to increase, and the average age of a bug seems to increase, not decrease. Despite words—something IG management is very good at—when looking at what's being done about it the results are still meager. And saying "mistakes were made" is a gross understatement of how badly the publisher has been in acknowledging that, despite their claims otherwise. the game was barely playable in the early releases.

[LoSBoL]

I for one like the offset and orientation tool in the VAB, the one gripe I have with it is its placement right over the part making the total design less visible because the tool is placed right over it. I'd like to see the tool being offset besides the part so it better shows the results design wise.

[Scarecrow71]

1 hour ago, The Aziz said:

Taking hands off the WASDZXC123 to get to the zoom buttons, and two different control schemes for two different buildings, that was broken.

At least let us re-map the controls if we wish.  That way everyone has the control scheme in the VAB that they prefer.

[HebaruSan]

In case this helps anyone else: My frustration with VAB2 mostly ended after I realized I could middle-click a part to center the camera on it.

[Periple]

13 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

At least let us re-map the controls if we wish.  That way everyone has the control scheme in the VAB that they prefer.

Oh boy yes! I would be surprised if the game ships without it!

[Scarecrow71]

25 minutes ago, HebaruSan said:

In case this helps anyone else: My frustration with VAB2 mostly ended after I realized I could middle-click a part to center the camera on it.

That's where my frustration starts.  You have to hold MMB to scroll up/down in the VAB, and I almost always inadvertently do this while over a part.  So that centers the camera AND the root on that part...which then messes up symmetry.

[Superfluous J]

2 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Ah, orbital decay.  This probably warrants, at a minimum, posting in the orbital decay bug thread.  At worst, it needs to be reported as a new type of orbital decay bug.

This was not orbital decay. This was orbital modification. I'm talking I click the ship in orbit, see it's in orbit, change to it and it's on a crash course with the planet.