Flight Signals go through planets and moons (CommNet/Antennas not affected by occlusion)

[Spork Witch]

Reported Version: v0.2.0 (latest) | Mods: none | Can replicate without mods? Yes 
OS: Windows 10 | CPU: Ryzen 9 3950x | GPU: Asus ROG Strix RTX3080 | RAM: 128

Current Behaviour

• Antennas are not occluded by objects between them and another antenna or the KSC, and maintain connection
• Origin for KSC signal is centre of Kerbin, not the KSC

Expected Behaviour

• Antennas with an object between it and the other antenna or KSC should not be able to communicate with that antenna or KSC, respectively
• Origin for KSC signal should be the large satellite dish at the KSC

Reproduction

• Have a craft landed on the far side of the Mun from Kerbin and no other antennas anywhere.
• The craft should not be able to communicate with the KSC, but a probe still has control and science can still be transmitted, because occlusion isn't calculated
• Place a craft on the pad at the KSC with its antenna range set to 599Km.
• This craft should still have control and be able to transmit science, but it cannot, as KSC signal is at centre of Kerbin

Summary

Occlusion is not functioning properly, nor is the origin of KSC signal correct, resulting both in craft being able to communicate when they shouldn't and not being able to communicate when they should.

Edited January 5 by Spork Witch
Formatting and structure

[Spork Witch]

Additionally, having this feature directly promotes the core mission goal of KSP: teaching about orbital mechanics and space exploration.  By needing to set up proper constellations of commsats, it leads people to find out and learn about resonant orbits, and how they can be used to get the satellites into the proper positions easily.  Without occlusion, there's nothing to nudge players in this direction and so they may never learn about a very interesting and useful type of orbit and its characteristics.

Obviously we keep the "require commnet" toggle for those that really don't want it, but I believe that most will keep it on, especially as they get more hours in the game.

I am aware that this is known and intentional at this time, I'm raising it in this format so that players can vote on it and give a better idea of how much the community wants this feature.

I am NOT asking for a change in development priority, only a clear assurance from the team that we will have proper, full commnet, with occlusion, by the time we reach 1.0

Edited January 5 by Spork Witch

[Vortygont]

I think that mission where you must launch satellite to KEO will make sense if commnet will be a real thing

[Spork Witch]

48 minutes ago, Vortygont said:

I think that mission where you must launch satellite to KEO will make sense if commnet will be a real thing

Good point!  Doesn't just have to be that one, either.  Setting up initial communications infrastructure makes a lot of sense for main missions to new planets.  Practical missions that provide teaching/learning opportunities.

[Chevronie]

According to Nertea on the Intercept Games discord:

Quote

- All antennas are relays by default, they can bounce signal back (we didn't like this distinction)

- Line of sight is not a thing, there is only distance as a concern

- Connectivity between vessels is a simple matter of ensuring that they both have antennas that have ranges that qre equal or greater to the distance between them. So if 2 satellites are 100 km apart, they both most have antennas of rating 100 km or higher to connect

The whole lack of occlusion from celestial bodies is likely intentional. Don't know why, it trivializes probe missions significantly.

A reason why I can see this being a thing is that there isn't much detailed information on orbits that you can see without mods, so things like resonant orbits for setting up and efficient relay network is much more difficult for an unmodded installation.

It's things like this which bugs me about KSP2. It seems to trade the advanced player's experience for casual player's experience, rather than expanding the experience for casual players while keeping the advanced players experience somewhat similar. A lot of tools and features that in my opinion diversify and enhance the game for people who know what it's about (like commnet occlusion) are missing to the KSP1 veteran's expense. With this, the only real difference between probes and kerbals is the antenna (and I often still put an antenna on vessels with kerbals).

[Spork Witch]

1 hour ago, Chevronie said:

According to Nertea on the Intercept Games discord:

The whole lack of occlusion from celestial bodies is likely intentional. Don't know why, it trivializes probe missions significantly.

A reason why I can see this being a thing is that there isn't much detailed information on orbits that you can see without mods, so things like resonant orbits for setting up and efficient relay network is much more difficult for an unmodded installation.

It's things like this which bugs me about KSP2. It seems to trade the advanced player's experience for casual player's experience, rather than expanding the experience for casual players while keeping the advanced players experience somewhat similar. A lot of tools and features that in my opinion diversify and enhance the game for people who know what it's about (like commnet occlusion) are missing to the KSP1 veteran's expense. With this, the only real difference between probes and kerbals is the antenna (and I often still put an antenna on vessels with kerbals).

We didn't have those tools in KSP1 either, without mods.  There are extant calculators for resonant orbits already, so parity with KSP1 is a reasonable ask.  As explained, main purpose of this is getting them from "we might talk about it again later" to "we WILL fix this by 1.0."

[BlackholeKS]

3 hours ago, Chevronie said:

According to Nertea on the Intercept Games discord:

The whole lack of occlusion from celestial bodies is likely intentional. Don't know why, it trivializes probe missions significantly.

A reason why I can see this being a thing is that there isn't much detailed information on orbits that you can see without mods, so things like resonant orbits for setting up and efficient relay network is much more difficult for an unmodded installation.

It's things like this which bugs me about KSP2. It seems to trade the advanced player's experience for casual player's experience, rather than expanding the experience for casual players while keeping the advanced players experience somewhat similar. A lot of tools and features that in my opinion diversify and enhance the game for people who know what it's about (like commnet occlusion) are missing to the KSP1 veteran's expense. With this, the only real difference between probes and kerbals is the antenna (and I often still put an antenna on vessels with kerbals).

Bad choice from the devs is this is going to carry through to release. This removes a major feature of the gameplay. I spent hours in KSP 1 setting up my comnet coverage, and it was one of the primary reasons to launch relay probes. A real technical challenge to get the signal to craft on the ground, and a cool bit of realism.

This change trivializes that. I highly encourage people to upvote this issue and campaign for CommNet to be properly included in the sequel. There is a reason it was a good addition to the first game!

I know there will probably be mods that add it, but I don't play with mods and shouldn't have to for what should be a core feature.

I am also not sure I like the relay/antenna distinction being removed. There was a mechanical purpose to the parts that existed; the big relay antennas needed to be packed in fairings, whereas the receiver antennas unfolded. This meant that there was extra challenge to launching a relay satellite. Now we have all the same parts, but the gameplay challenge implicit in the design has been removed.

I very much doubt that long-time KSP fans want there to be less technical challenge in building space infrastructure. Building space infrastructure is the entire premise of the game.

[PicoSpace]

5 hours ago, Chevronie said:

trade the advanced player's experience for casual player's experience, rather than expanding the experience for casual players

While I can understand WHY they are doing this, I think ultimately its a disservice to the whole point of the game and the simplications they keep making over and over to "gameify" KSP2 looses its appeal over KSP1 + mods because its the challenge that keeps players coming back, otherwise just turn on infinite fuel & no collisions and go "weeeeeeeeee" all the way to space and back.

Edited January 6 by PicoSpace

[BlackholeKS]

I don't mind more structured objectives and quests, I'm really liking the improved progression so far. But also I think that the complexity of CommNet relays required already scales with skill and mission complexity, so I really doubt that this would be much of a hindrance. If anything it'd add opportunities for several new interesting missions.

I'm hoping that nixing CommNet isn't a final decision, and that they'll listen to community feedback. Getting this report upvoted is probably a good start. I imagine that most players (like myself previously) were just assuming that the absence of proper comms was an alpha thing, I feel there would be a lot of upset folks if it was confirmed that they won't return.

[Spork Witch]

Dakota has confirmed that he intends to bring up commnet feedback at a meeting scheduled for next week:
https://discord.com/channels/1039959585949237268/1039965578754007060/1192992084345507901
https://discord.com/channels/1039959585949237268/1039965578754007060/1192993788952580147

Quote

Quote

Spicat: 

https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/222587-signals-go-through-planets-and-moons-commnetantennas-not-affected-by-occlusion/ The next big topic of discussion will probably be this People want to hear if it's planned or not

CM Dakota: 

I have a meeting next week where I plan to specifically bring up commnet related feedback

Let's keep the upvotes coming to make it very clear the community wants this and the game needs it for 1.0.

[Hectobozzel]

I didn't play all that much ksp 1 (only 48 hours), and I never got to the point of building commnets, but I think it would be really cool to have object occlusion and the differentiation between relay and antenna types you mentioned. It would be a shame if the devs didn't add those features in ksp 2 because I'm really enjoying it after the For Science! update(I've already played 122 hours!).

[NipperySlipples]

Not having any form of occlusion makes the whole of the system boil down to just put an antenna on it and forget it. It feels pointless to me.  Now it's just "going to the mun you use this antenna" going to Duna you use this antenna. Set and forget. Distance isn't enough to make it a worthwhile mechanic in my opinion.

[Navoan]

In KSP1 I sent a probe to the Mun, only to loose signal. It was a what moment for me. But that triggered me to set up a comms network and I enioyed that! It was fun, it made the mission possible. 

 

Add a tutorial about good orbits for relay satalites etc and its gg. 

 

Plus a toggle so people can opt out/in, I get newer players may not want to/care about this, but it is a step too far away from realism imo. 

[BlackholeKS]

A lot of people from reddit have been saying that they thought the same as me; that the lack of full CommNet was an EA thing and that it'd be in a subsequent patch. I think most people are assuming that, and so I think that the importance of this feature is greater than you might thinking looking solely at responses, because people seem fairly unimpressed when told that this might be the final planned system.

[hatterson]

To me it makes a lot of sense as a difficulty setting. Have beginner difficulty not care about occlusion so that a new player sending a probe to Duna or whatever doesn't suddenly lose control "for no reason" (obviously there's a reason, but it can be hard to visually communicate occlusion, especially if someone doesn't know what they're looking for). But have it be enabled for those who want it.

I'd say that some of the antenna combinations from KSP 1 (relay vs transmit, range combinations, etc.) could also be difficulty settings, but also might be better left to mods.

[Jeq]

Bring relay system back.

If antenna system was why ksp 1 started lagging so bad at times then i understand it being made more simple.

If someone knows, can you combine antennas still to have more range?

[BlackholeKS]

I never had major issues with the KSP1 CommNet causing lag. It was always due to part count.

Honestly the KSP 1 calculation system for CommNet seemed pretty robust. Obviously I doubt they're as-is compatible in any sense but if the devs just ported over the exact system from KSP 1 and then maybe iterated on it a bit I would not be unhappy with that at all. Pretty sure that the CommNet geometry calculations were a layer over the top of the game and could potentially be implemented as a self-contained module irrespective of whatever new engine features have been added.

[pip12345]

Posting to show my support for reimplementing occlusion and antenna types.

Did a full probes only career in ksp 1 just for the challenge of building commnets for the bodies I wanted to explore.

Doing a probe mission felt different from a manned one just for the extra challenge and preparation it required.

[Radian]

I would like to have fully working occlusion. Setting up the satellite network was fun in original KSP.

[Skarlinger]

Make Commnet Great Again!

[Ma7hew]

What an immense disappointment.. I had so much fun in KSP 1 when I set up this lab on Duna and had to wait for my orbital relay to hover its location to send science…

[Poodmund]

Considering this is the recognised topic on this, I'll cross-post my thoughts from elsewhere:

I think CommNet provides a challenge for controlling un-Kerballed craft in different challenge steps and occlusion plays a part, differently, at each of these steps.

• Progression Step 1: Low Kerbin comms - Setting up a low-to-medium altitude relay constellation to allow for communication around Kerbin - Occlusion feature impact: Large (Kerbin being in the way of the KSC has a massive impact)
• Progression Step 2: Munar/Minmus comms - Setting up a moon based constellation to allow for probe communication on the far side of the moon - Occlusion feature impact: Medium (you are usually already captured in orbit but would often lose comms signal on the far, dark side of the moon)
• Progression Step 3: Interplanetary comms - Setting up comms networks to communicate at large distances - Occlusion feature impact: VERY low (typically, the arc angle at interplanetary comms distances is incredibly minute and occlusion by other planets is easy to mitigate)

I know Intercept want players to accelerate to Progression Step 3 as quickly as possible in comparison to typical KSP1 gameplay but I feel that a lot of people spend a significant amount of game time in the first 2 steps, where occlusion plays a big factor.

Therefore, I would say that for CommNet to be a successful implementation of gameplay feature, it should really include the core mechanic of occlusion. Without occlusion, I honestly didn't think CommNet was working in KSP2 before I learned that occlusion wasn't implemented.

Quote

Nertea: Lots of the depth people would want requires a set of supporting visual and planning tools that are a fair bit of work to design and build... I think I could say with some confidence that increasing CommNet complexity has to come with more visual and planning tools.

Although I see this being a long way off, time wise, this is absolutely the right perspective on this issue.

 

[Sluggo]

If this turns out to be a final decision, I'm done with the series. I understand that kids and education are a huge part of their mission, but if they're going to "gameify" everything at the expense of actual simulation, it will be doing a disservice to everyone who fell in love with this game *because* of how scientifically accurate it is.

[TROPtastic]

CommNet occlusion and line of sight needs to be implemented to provide more meaningful gameplay in the early to mid-game. Some visualization, tutorial, and mission work will be needed to properly explain the concepts to new players, but keeping the mechanic out will boost the argument of people who say that KSP1 + graphics & gameplay mods is a better purchase than KSP2. This would be a shame since the team is passionate about making KSP2 a worthy successor to the original.

[WhereAreTheBathrooms]

Replying in case this is the thread they're looking at for feedback on this intended decision (as stated in K.E.R.B. 12/01/2024). I agree with most here that signal occlusion is a really important feature. At the risk of sounding reductionist, there do seem to have been a few decisions made to dumb down KSP. It's fine, but this ought to be a setting, because I know a lot of folks who play this game, myself included, who really enjoy the little realism challenges that come with features such as signal occlusion and CommNet in general. These are features which add to the game, not detract from it. They add a very real depth to the game and increase its replayability by a significant margin. Geostationary satellites are pointless now, despite there being a mission to put one in orbit. It was a disappointment when I found this out, because the game is a little shallower for it.

Edited January 16 by WhereAreTheBathrooms
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