For Science! - My Thoughts (And Yours Too!)

[speceballs]

i'm not sure the dev team worked out  aerobraking yet

[mindsensation]

Anyone know how to see which science you've completed in which biomes/moons/etc.? I'm going through tier 2 at the moment, and it's quickly becoming tricky to find new places to do science in the Kerbin system.

[mindsensation]

On a side note - one thing I miss from KSP 1 is the need to send multiple Kerbals places. I'd need to include a Pilot, Engineer, and a Scientist. Now, I have no need to send multiple Kerbals and as a result, my crafts are smaller.

[Urus28]

1 hour ago, kdaviper said:

I would suspect the issue is your ram/lack thereof 

VRAM actually, I have 32 Gb of RAM on the motherboard =)

[Chilkoot]

Just now, Urus28 said:

VRAM actually, I have 32 Gb of RAM on the motherboard =)

For what it's worth, actual crashes should be really uncommon.  Any chance your old vid card is heating up due to poor circulation or something?  Assuming your NVidia drivers are up-to-date?  Is it just the KSP executable crashing out, or the whole OS?

[cubinator]

I played the update a bit last night and found it quite a bit less painful than the initial versions. I had fun launching a few missions in Exploration mode and getting the first part of a two-launch Mun landing mission underway. The layout of the science tree is interesting and I'm curious to see how it'll play out compared to the original. 

There are still some things that bug me. To name a few:

• Click+drag to move up and down the rocket in the VAB is still worse than scrolling. I need the convenience of the scroll wheel for traveling up and down the length of the rocket to check on different parts, not for changing the scale of zoom (which I'll do less frequently).
• The parts manager is too tall and big for what I want to use it for. The old "click on a part" method from KSP1 was more intuitive as to which parts you're managing at a time, and more convenient to move windows around.
• Overall, I think the interface is not very efficient at conveying information - there's often a lot of style to elements but I find myself having to study the UI to learn where things are, which is problematic when there is a lot of information I need to keep track of moment-to-moment in flight. Maybe I'll learn how to read it better over time. I'm a big fan of Kerbal Engineer where I can choose a subset of information screens depending on what I'm doing and arrange them in my own preferred configuration.

A few buggy things, like the camera switching directions occasionally, the skybox flipping over when I surpass 20 km altitude, or my spacecraft mysteriously speeding up slightly in the upper atmosphere.

And a few things that I find weird or convoluted. For instance, the first Mun mission 'contract' requires that the spacecraft orbit higher than 60 km. I like to send my spacecraft to 20 km, so I did that instead. I performed two Mun orbit rendezvous sandwiching a full landing mission, flag and boots and all, and when that was done I raised the periapsis to 60 km to fulfill the silly requirement. Of course, the next milestones were to land and plant a flag in the same geome I'd just been to, but weren't considered complete. Performing a "first exploration" of the Mun should be more open to interpretation, it could be a flyby, landing, or totally intentional ballistic impact.

Edited December 21, 2023 by cubinator

[rmaine]

KSP 2 now seems at least playable for me. The exploration mode gives some sort of goals. The fans on my GPU still make more noise than I'm completely comfortable with, but at least they aren't going full blast all the time; that had kept me from even trying much of anything earlier.

Crashed my first few launches before figuring out that drogue chutes seem more necessary on even the first flights than they were in KSP 1. I kept wondering why my chute wasn't working. Turned out it had been destroyed, but I never noticed any message saying so. Interestingly, unless I'm confused about something (certainly possible), the smallest stock vehicle isn't flyable because of that. While looking around at the chutes, I also noticed that the drogue chute description looks to be just copied from the main chute one. In particular, it cites the same 247 m/s max opening speed, which is obviously bogus.

Like some posters above, I find the science collection UI to be mystifying. It is neither self-obvious nor explained anywhere. And I can't find a summary of what I've collected. Am I getting more science from the same experiment because I'm in a different biome of something? Several places it says that experiments are available, but it isn't obvious to me how to actually do them. EVA experiments for example; maybe I don't yet have the tech to do those, but the UI seems to be implying that I could.

I also got the confusing advice referring to Jool in my briefings for the first mun mission.

[Superfluous J]

8 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

I generally deploy parachutes at ~600 m/s during descent, and I've never had an issue with them not opening.  I think what @Superfluous J had going on there was a bug.  I wonder if there is any chance he can reproduce this?

Parachutes in general are a mystery to me. I didn't trust it to open the next re-entry so I clicked "deploy" manually, set to "safe" and 1000m above the ground. It opened immediately and burned up on re-entry. Of course I survived again due to the superflex heat shield that acts as a soft water landing bouy.

So next re-entry, I "armed" the parachute instead of "deploy"ing it. Same thing. Including a safe landing in the water.

Next time I'll try just staging it and seeing what happens.

 

---- Next post, unrelated to the above yet tacked on anyway by the forum software ----

 

One thing I noticed, there are far less biomes at least on Mun. All I've seen so far is Highlands and Mare. I assume there's a "poles" as well but for all I know that's it.

Edited December 21, 2023 by Superfluous J

[stephensmat]

Parachutes failed for me exactly once last night, and it was when I was at more than 10g's during re-entry. I quick-load, come in at a shallower angle, and a slower speed. No problems.

[regex]

I don't stage parachutes until the capsule slows down below 300m/s. In fact, I think my rule was 250m/s (or thereabouts) and that has been a constant since the KSP1 RealChute days through KSP1 vanilla flight recode and now into KSP2. I have had no problems with this.

Edited December 21, 2023 by regex

[Superfluous J]

3 minutes ago, regex said:

I don't stage parachutes until the capsule slows down below 300m/s. In fact, I think my rule was 250m/s (or thereabouts) and that has been a constant since the KSP1 RealChute days through KSP1 vanilla flight recode and now into KSP2. I have had no problems with this.

That's the original problem. I did that the first time and they didn't stage, which gave me precious few seconds to - with a new ui - figure out what was possible and then try it.

I guess I'll just go back to that and if it happens again hit quicksave, and submit a bug report with the save file with the ship on route to imminent destruction

[TickleMyMary]

My thoughts are that they didn't test this nearly enough... You can't even warp without getting yeeted out of whatever orbit you were in.

 

 

Edited December 21, 2023 by TickleMyMary
Picture & Video Link

[RayneCloud]

I honestly think we can expect to see the road map finished by the end of next year. I really do. At the very least I'd be willing to give them 6 months for colonies and 6 months for interstellar. 

[Wheehaw Kerman]

45 minutes ago, RayneCloud said:

I honestly think we can expect to see the road map finished by the end of next year. I really do. At the very least I'd be willing to give them 6 months for colonies and 6 months for interstellar. 

I certainly hope so, and if development starts snowballing as the common foundations of the game get built, intervals between roadmap items could decrease.  This is all purely conjectural as I don’t work in the industry, and I think closer to eighteen months is more likely, but if Colonies drops by this spring, I could see Multiplayer by Christmas 2024.

[KincaidFrankMF]

4 hours ago, rmaine said:

Crashed my first few launches before figuring out that drogue chutes seem more necessary on even the first flights than they were in KSP 1. I kept wondering why my chute wasn't working. Turned out it had been destroyed, but I never noticed any message saying so.

I think the main problem there is that the Science Jr now weighs an entire ton! I thought it was a bug when my second flight plunged to Kerbin so fast the chute tore off, then noticed how much the upper stage now weighed...

The miniaturised Science Jr Jr, on the other hand, only weighs 0.05t - that's some miniaturisation! I suspect the 1t thing is a mistake and it's supposed to still be 0.2t. But yeah, once you add a Science Jr & a heat shield, a single parachute won't do it anymore, you need drogues.

[asmi]

12 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

I generally deploy parachutes at ~600 m/s during descent, and I've never had an issue with them not opening.

Well you should have had. What kind of fabric would endure a super-sonic shockwave upon deployment? Just to remind you - a speed of sound is about 300 m/s on Earth at altitude of 10 km.

----

One criticism for the update I would add is they should've kept a small solid booster in the default unlock instead of a liquid engine + fuel tanks. It would provide a limiter of sorts without actually having any technical limits. And in general I like solid boosters more because they really reward thrust- and ascent profile optimizations, when by creative use of thrust limiters in VAB + flying a correct trajectory you can take those solid booster really far.

Edited December 21, 2023 by asmi

[Periple]

4 hours ago, RayneCloud said:

I honestly think we can expect to see the road map finished by the end of next year. I really do. At the very least I'd be willing to give them 6 months for colonies and 6 months for interstellar. 

I think colonies should be here sooner than 6 months. Interstellar might not take too long either. Resources and multiplayer seem complicated, I think they might take longer. But only guessing! 

[rmaine]

1 hour ago, KincaidFrankMF said:

I think the main problem there is that the Science Jr now weighs an entire ton! I thought it was a bug when my second flight plunged to Kerbin so fast the chute tore off, then noticed how much the upper stage now weighed...

The miniaturised Science Jr Jr, on the other hand, only weighs 0.05t - that's some miniaturisation! I suspect the 1t thing is a mistake and it's supposed to still be 0.2t. But yeah, once you add a Science Jr & a heat shield, a single parachute won't do it anymore, you need drogues.

Those failures were before I even unlocked the science junior. As I mentioned, they were my very first launches. Also, same thing happened with the stock craft, which didn't have a science junior.

[Superfluous J]

53 minutes ago, asmi said:

One criticism for the update I would add is they should've kept a small solid booster in the default unlock instead of a liquid engine + fuel tanks. It would provide a limiter of sorts without actually having any technical limits.

SRBs being non-throttleable and non-steerable have caused many questions from brand new players who start new games and wonder why their first ship blasts upward crazily and uncontrollably.

For every question, there are dozens of players who just gave up thinking "this game's dumb."

I 100% believe this change was made knowingly and purposefully by the devs.

[Periple]

1 hour ago, Superfluous J said:

I 100% believe this change was made knowingly and purposefully by the devs.

Absolutely! Having an SRB as your first engine was a really bad idea, it started you off wrong when building rockets — it gives you the idea that SRBs are supposed to be used as main engines when they’re almost always boosters!

[Heretic391]

Testing with a Colony ship, there is basically no wobble for me. Previously, throttling to 5% would show immediate flex but now 100% throttle shows no flex. Very impressed.

[Superfluous J]

Speaking of wobble, I gotta come down on the side of they WAY overfixed it.

I used one of those 1-2 adapters, then attached 2 more 1-2 adapters onto it to make a 3-part 1-4 adapter. I then put 2 FL-T800's under each one with a swivel under that. Then I radially attached (with a decoupler) a... don't know the name, the SRB that's bigger than the Hammer ... anyway I radially attached that with a decoupler to each of those 4 fuel tank stacks.

I used no struts.

There was ZERO flexing.

I mean I understand y'all want to build whatever you want but come on.

[TROPtastic]

16 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

Speaking of wobble, I gotta come down on the side of they WAY overfixed it.

Have you tried changing the different options for the Enhanced Joints System? You can choose between "Heaviest" (connect additional joints to the part with the heaviest mass), "Root" (connect to the part that represents the vessel), and "Grandparent" (connect to the part that is 2 parts closer to the root). I suspect the latter two would offer more wobbliness without going back to what it was before.

[Superfluous J]

So I'm flying around KSC contient and I find a pair of launch clamps.

Forget the Mun arches, I want to know who built THOSE.

[stephensmat]

Faced my first Glitch. Landed on Mun, and when I went EVA, the lander started bouncing around completely. I quick-loaded, and had to do the landing again. It took a few more tries. On one of the quick-loads, half the Lander parts were 'ten feet to the left'

I landed safely again, quick saved, and went EVA. The lander toppled instantly again. I quickloaded, and this time it worked fine.

Annoying, but I managed to get to the Mun and back. Crossing things off that mission list is very satisfying.