Picked up game after the For Science Launch, Here are my first thoughts and feedback

[Antiglow]

Hello KSP2 Dev Team,

Congratulations on the exciting launch of FOR SCIENCE!

After returning the game the first time and waiting until this update. I have picked up the game again now that it is more playable. I have thus far enjoyed playing until orbiting Minims -- following the missions mostly. So far so good! The game is graphically beautiful and while I've had some issues and bugs nothing has been a major game crashing / blocking  issue.

SCIENCE:

• I like the reorganization of the tech tree. It is well thought out.
• Progression and pacing is fair so far.
• Science animations are great and I like the longer time experiments

 

• There does not seem to be many "science devices".
  • Rather than a smaller version of the science junior I would have liked something else to use.
• Science text is missing the charisma that the first game had. 
• it was hard to tell in the UI that science data was transmitting

Science is too much of a "press a button and get points game" currently. While it is nice to see that there is science to do in an area. I do not like the "do all science" button. There needs to be intention to do the science in the area and the player needs to see the device they're using. It would be nice if there was a driving factor other than magical science points for doing experiments, something more grounded like doing certain types of experiments gets you more missions with a particular agency or helps you with colony buildings once those come out. Like you can't build in an area until you do a surface, weather etc.. survey. But most of all, Science needs to build on itself and return useful results the player can actually use in the future. SCANsat (a mod for the first game) results for example could be used to find things and identify landing areas. 

Science should also be an education tool. obviously a game like this can be educational so why not do a bit of what the first game did and give some realistic data and explanations from the experiments (even if you are trying to get a pressure reading in a vacuum let the player do it).

 

Returned samples menu.

It would be nice to have a lab building or something where I can see all my returned samples, who got them, where they came from, what was discovered, and from what mission.

 

One thing I will say is I liked from the last game is the building upgrades feature. Especially how it limited the number of parts you could use on a rocket until you upgraded the VAB. It taught the player to be efficient. I could see that being something that would be good to add to exploration mode for progression pacing (and engine limitations). It seems kind of odd that I can build a huge rocket from the start with no limit to size.

 

GAME ISSUES:

• Stars don't move with planet rotation. The sky stays still under time warp. 
• Flags:
  • No way to add custom flag image without a mod.
  • Flags are not persistent
  • Flags cannot be found in tracking station
  • Flags often use default logo rather than selected logo
• Still can't get the stack separator to actually separate. 
• Mission list awareness of already completed activates
  • The mission list should be aware of if you have already landed on the moon and returned for example.
• Cannot create maneuver plan when game is paused
• Can't create maneuver to orbit a body before ship is inside gravity influence
• Cannot target mission point of interest
• Can't rotate smoothly. rotation stops on point
  • camera rotation was a large issue for me. it kept on stopping at a point or spun very quickly around. The camera orbit needs to be free form and not blocked by N/S poles for ships at least. 
• Maneuver nodes
  • Cannot jump to next/previous orbit
  • Needs more fine controls
    • allow me to change start time without having to click and drag the center of the node at the very least
  • Too many popups often block clicking on node (like the KSC center)
  • Often cannot click on center of node
  • Needs transfer window planner
• Can't read text when renaming vehicles in the tracking station
• Heat animation looks low-quality / resolution
  • honestly it looks a bit like plastic right now.
• Enter / exit gravity well animation can be too large / in the way
• Parachutes clip into each other

 

For science was a large step in the right direction. Keep it up!

Edited January 1 by Antiglow

[Meecrob]

14 minutes ago, Antiglow said:

• Can't create maneuver to orbit a body before ship is inside gravity influence
  •  

I agree with everything you brought up, especially this one! How can you possibly have a space sim that prohibits you from doing mid-course corrections? This re-inforces my idea that the people leading this game might be KSP enthusiasts, but definitely not experts. You guys set up all the discoverable signals in polar latitudes, but you expect me to just toss a craft at the body, then waste my dv matching planes INSIDE the sphere of influence? I get I can use normal/anti-normal on my injection burn, but this is finger-painting accuracy. Don't make this "Space" Ace Combat, please!

[Pthigrivi]

Great list. I've got a number of these in my notes as well. 

[Jackalope]

I agree. It would be nice having more science parts to do science with, similar to SCANsat. It would be really cool if optics got involved, for checking out anomalies, monuments, ateroids, etc.

Admittedly there would be a rebalancing of how science points get distributed, but it would encourage players to try something different.

[cocoscacao]

12 hours ago, Antiglow said:

Can't create maneuver to orbit a body before ship is inside gravity influence

@Antiglow, @Meecrob Just to let you know that you can in fact do this, but it's super clunky and needs to be reverted to the original implementation. On the main trajectory path, there are icons for SOI entry/exit. Create MN between them.

[Mukip]

I'm on the fence about getting this now that there's more structure to the game. But I'm leaning towards the science mode not being enough to satisfy me yet. I want a reason to make more efficient and reusable designs (obviously, saving money was the reason in KSP1 career mode) but I gather there isn't an incentive to do that yet. Is the game designer an ardent communist or something?

[Pthigrivi]

2 hours ago, Mukip said:

I'm on the fence about getting this now that there's more structure to the game. But I'm leaning towards the science mode not being enough to satisfy me yet. I want a reason to make more efficient and reusable designs (obviously, saving money was the reason in KSP1 career mode) but I gather there isn't an incentive to do that yet. Is the game designer an ardent communist or something?

That will likely come in some form when resources are added in a future update. I've found though that at this stage of the game I don't personally need the cost factor (honestly in KSP1 the cost factor quickly disappears when you have a million bazillion dollars.) I just make vessels that have a reasonable dV padding and go for it. I do agree resource costs will add a lot to part choice + tech tree strategy down the line though. 

[Superfluous J]

I wouldn't mind more science parts, but I LOVE that the ones we have (well, the 2 I've unlocked) take a bit of thought to place.

I'd rather place 2 bulky science doodads than 6 tiny ones whose main concern when placing is how easy they'll be to click in flight.

[Antiglow]

On 1/1/2024 at 4:58 AM, Jackalope said:

I agree. It would be nice having more science parts to do science with, similar to SCANsat. It would be really cool if optics got involved, for checking out anomalies, monuments, ateroids, etc.

Admittedly there would be a rebalancing of how science points get distributed, but it would encourage players to try something different.

Honestly, I would be up for them moving to only awarding science points for missions and making science tools be interesting/useful tools to help play the game like SCANsat. I like the idea of optical science tools for unlocking / starting asteroid missions. 

On 1/1/2024 at 5:22 AM, cocoscacao said:

@Antiglow, @Meecrob Just to let you know that you can in fact do this, but it's super clunky and needs to be reverted to the original implementation. On the main trajectory path, there are icons for SOI entry/exit. Create MN between them.

Thanks, I agree that it needs to be reverted to the original. Currently it is too confusing. 

 

My main issue remains the camera controls. I constantly find myself running up against the bounds/poles of the camera orbits and sometimes spinning wildly around because I am too close to the polls. Why don't we just have a free orbit and a key to reorient to N/S like most other games? Also the camera in the VAB is way way too restrictive making it too hard to build complex craft. 

Edited January 10 by Antiglow

[Pthigrivi]

2 hours ago, Antiglow said:

Honestly, I would be up for them moving to only awarding science points for missions and making science tools be interesting/useful tools to help play the game like SCANsat. I like the idea of optical science tools for unlocking / starting asteroid missions. 

This is an interesting idea. I mean I still like that experiments also produce science because it gives players an ability to freelance and not just doggedly pursue the missions. It helps round-out the tech tree unlock process. The missions currently are on a crazy learning curve where you orbit the Mun and then are asked to do a precision landing like a minute later rather than teaching players about inclination and letting them practice on Minmus first. But say you fixed that with a bunch of intermediary missions: they're still proscriptive. It's still the game telling you what to do instead of giving you some tools and some goals and letting you figure it out, which is to me what creative gaming is all about. What I like about this idea is emphasizing the value of non-mission, experiment-based science outside the tech tree, that its actually doing the work of uncovering real, actionable information. The value of missions exhausts on a fully linear basis--you do the mission and get the science and its gone. Experiments are a bit different in that you've unlocked this part and it expands a whole range of uses that persist throughout your playthrough, ideally even through interstellar exploration and potentially through completing the tech tree completely. It creates a zone for creative exploitation where you can cleverly string together a series of actions that result in a bigger payout than if you just followed the spelled out instructions. It encourages excursion and free exploration. And if those experiments are also doing SCANsat like things and providing extra information you have even more incentive to deviate from the proscribed path and do things on your own terms. Learn from BG3, folks. Let players play. 

Just for comparison: Factorio has exactly one mission: launch a rocket. And when you do the game is like great, that doesn't actually matter, it was the spagetti we met along the way. The entire game is just a set of rules that you can creatively exploit to your hearts desire. I really appreciate that KSP's main story has some structure to get players going but especially as we delve into colonies and resources I'd like to see the devs really give themselves over to this process of open-ended play, where you have tools and constraints and resources and you can kind of go to town. 

Edited January 11 by Pthigrivi

[Jackalope]

Adding in experimental science for points would be way cool, maybe integrate a missions menu into the r&d page? Sounds like an opportunity to add in some more learning material, like atmospheric temp/density, plate tectonics, etc.

[hatterson]

On 1/1/2024 at 5:22 AM, cocoscacao said:

@Antiglow, @Meecrob Just to let you know that you can in fact do this, but it's super clunky and needs to be reverted to the original implementation. On the main trajectory path, there are icons for SOI entry/exit. Create MN between them.

One thing I noticed with this was that it looked like the maneuver directions (pro/retrograde, radial in/out, and normal/anti-normal) showed up on the visual nav ball based on the SoI you'd be in when the node took place, but the calculations for the node seem based off some sort of weird combo.

I only noticed this with Eeloo, so it may be limited to that, but I didn't test it a ton.

For example here's a 3600m/s "retrograde" burn that I put in from outside Eeloo's SoI:

 

It's definitely not retrograde to Eeloo and it's not even retrograde to my Kerbol orbit, so I'm not sure what it's retrograde to.