A New Chapter

[Nate Simpson]

We had a lot riding on the For Science! update that we released two weeks ago — it’s been a long first year of Early Access, filled with the arduous and mostly unglamorous pursuit of bugs, stability improvements, and performance gains. This update, the first of our major Roadmap Updates, had to achieve some big new goals for KSP2: it had to round out the core game loop with re-entry heating and buoyancy; it had to introduce a whole new progression system via the R&D Center and Mission Control; it had to introduce Science collection, Science parts, and dozens of new points of interest; and of course it needed to continue to deliver quality of life improvements (banishing wobbly rockets) and performance improvements. Also: there are boat docks now! In a nutshell, the addition of Exploration Mode transformed KSP2 from a sandbox experience into a proper long-form game.

Working on something with so many moving parts, there’s always a little trepidation when we release a new build to the public - especially when there are so many new systems in play. We do our best to test every possible scenario, but there’s always a chance that something terrifying will rear its head once we’ve got thousands of people playing the game. It was with this fear lurking in the backs of our heads that we sat together in our own mission control room and waited for confirmation that For Science! had been released into the world.

We nervously watched the first review videos appear on YouTube, and were relieved to discover that veteran players like Carnasa and Matt Lowne were excited about what they found in the new update. We cycled between the livestreams of Everyday Astronaut, EJ_SA, and Giantwaffle, discovering to our delight that all three were not only having fun, but were having trouble putting the game down! By the time we did our own livestream that evening, it was clear that we’d succeeded in creating a more stable and realistic universe, and that we’d given players some compelling goals to pursue within that universe. Our stream ran over an hour longer than planned because we, too, had a bit of trouble putting it down. That’s a story we’re hearing a lot - you sit down to play this game for an hour, and before you know it the sun’s coming up. 

Over the last couple of weeks, a clear picture has emerged - there are still some bugs, as well as some big opportunities to improve the player experience - but for the most part, those rough edges have not gotten in the way of some very ambitious exploratory missions. I’ll talk more about those bugs in a bit, but first I’d like to highlight some of this update’s biggest wins:

• The music. Yes, you all love Howard Mostrom. We’re going to need a bigger inbox for all his fan mail.
• The tutorials and first-time user experience have paved the way for a new group of first-time Kerbal players, and we’re not only seeing lots of you get to space, we’re also seeing a lot more players doing interplanetary missions. In many ways, the original justification for KSP2’s existence was to find a way to welcome more new players to Kerbal, and we’re very excited to see that this work has begun to bear fruit. We knew that bringing rocket science to the masses wasn’t going to be easy, and there’s still a lot more work to do in this area... but we’re making progress!
• Folks are enjoying the missions! We’re excited to continue adding new missions to the game via upcoming updates, and we’d love to hear your suggestions for compelling new exploration goals.
• In general, we’re beginning to see the flourishing of player creativity that we knew would take place once the most critical performance and usability issues had been ironed out. It’s been a pleasure to visit r/kerbalspaceprogram and our #bestof Discord channel and just bask in the awesomeness. People are making magnificent things, and it feels so nice to see all that imagination unleashed. Look at this stuff!

Courtesy of Aravir

Courtesy of Flypig07UA

Courtesy of Dr. Seno

Courtesy of BioticKeen

Of course, one key benefit to our game being in Early Access is that we get detailed bug reports and feedback from a wide variety of players, and boy, did we get a big helping after releasing this update. Check out the spike we saw on our K.E.R.B. bug submissions at the end of December:

There are some annoying bugs and usability issues in the mix - some are new, some have been around for a while but have risen in prominence now that other more consequential problems have been addressed. Areas of frustration include font scale and legibility, the maneuver node interface, thermal system tuning (including the propensity of some parts to explode even when they’re shielded and the insufficiency of fairings to protect their contents), as well as a few weird one-off stability issues (most of which can be corrected by reloading or restarting). We are triaging and trying to reproduce issues related to things like parachutes failing to deploy, trajectories vanishing from the map view, and Delta-V accuracy (which given the dependency of maneuver plans on accurate Delta-V projection, can result in being blocked from planning a maneuver). We’ve also noted some user experience gaps, most notably the game’s failure to properly communicate to new players that "Revert to VAB" is different from "Return to VAB" -  an oversight that has led some newcomers to lose their progress after completing a mission. 

I’ll also take this moment to offer a new protip that I learned today after complaining to Chris Adderley about my spaceplane wings being destroyed on re-entry: while the heavier wings are more heat-resistant, the volume of every wing (and especially the wing’s thickness) affects its thermal mass. A thicker wing will be more resistant to destruction via heat! I’ll be trying out the "fat wings" approach tonight after work. Procedural wings sure are cool. 

Anyway, back to bugs. If you’re one of the people who have come up against a truly blocking or fun-destroying issue, please do take the time to share that information with us via the bug report subforum. We’re seeing much less of this after the For Science! update, but it’s still something we want to investigate aggressively when it’s encountered. 

We’re already hard at work on the v0.2.1.0 incremental update to address as many of these issues as we can, and we’ll update you here as soon as we know the exact timing and contents of that update. In the meantime, thank you for continuing to share your bug reports and feedback - your detailed reporting continues to play a huge role in helping us to improve the game.

Another exciting new development: modders have started to produce some extremely cool augmentations for KSP2, including Orbital Survey, an alarm clock mod, and there’s even some planet modding underway! Our team is especially happy to see that the extensible tech tree file format created with future moddability in mind has paved the way for things like the new Tech Tree Manager mod. 

The Orbital Survey mod

The 2.5x Kerbolar System mod

The next major Roadmap Update, which will bring colonies to the game, is now also in progress. In the meantime, the current plan is to sneak a few additional missions into the next incremental update, just to keep things fresh. Now that there are interesting things to do in the game, we’re very excited about all the ways that we can continue adding new layers to that experience in the coming year while knocking out the bugs that remain. 2024 is going to be a very exciting year for KSP2, both for the players and for us developers!

Nate

[Datau03]

Happy new year! Super looking forward to colonies and other future updates!

[The Space Peacock]

hope the team enjoyed the holiday break, super excited to see what 2024 has in store for KSP2!

[YuriDragon]

Keep it up team!

a

and we would spend new 370h in the game again ) and launch at 0 fps ) thanks for your work i hope game would be awsomew when it all worked out )

[debdeb]

thanks for the devlog! i always enjoy reading these.

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Cudos to the team on the update!  I do enjoy the game side feeling like a game.  It does truly feel performant, and the work since April is noticeable.  Thank you! 

I would like to see some tweaks in the Science! gameplay.  It currently feels notional.  My personal hope is for the player to see results of science and build knowledge of the Kerbolar (and later) systems and biomes in a way that leverages the educational promise of KSP. 

We have two (quite long) discussions going on the forums.  Maybe take a gander? 

Edited January 5 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[meckryl]

I'd barely played at all before "For Science", and now I can't stop. A huge, huge thank you to the development team for all of your hard work <3

Also, I'm really flattered to have my mod mentioned by the almighty Nate Simpson. I want to give a huge, huge shoutout to all of the developers of SpaceWarp. Not only have they produced an incredibly useful tool, but they've also been around on discord constantly helping people with all sorts of modding stuff.

[Stephensan]

thinking the best way get rid of this lack of wanting play ksp 2 0.2.0 due to burn out is to install some mods.

[Sir Eskomaz]

yippee

[The Aziz]

 

Hopefully you'll also take a closer look not only at bugs and more of existing content, but also QoL, because that's currently lacking, a lot. And I don't mean only text (although the TWR values are ant sized and unreadable without a magnifying glass). There's a lot of guessworking (or resorting to external tools) in mid-game where the game doesn't clearly and explicitly say what's needed to do a task, and then the task is hard to do thanks to the cluttered or unclear interface or problematic or lacking user experience in general. You have already made few small steps in good direction but it really needs to be sorted out before the next milestone. Otherwise, colony construction will be VERY hard, and I'm sure you don't want that.

[BanzaiHeil]

Congrats on a successful update, good to see the future of KSP2 is looking up.

Are there any plans to address the console player community on the KSP1 v1.12 content update that was promised 836 days ago? That update might help with the wait for the KSP2 Early Access period to complete. Or if the update has been officially canceled, being candid with the customers could help secure customer good will, a step leading toward being able to trust enough to make a future KSP2 purchase if that someday comes to console, (hopefully with some assurances that support for that game won't be a repeat of the near nonexistent support KSP1 console edition received.)

[Mushylog]

Well done, KSP2!!

That game is beautiful, I am astonished every time I look at it. Will continue to report bugs and provide feedback!

[MARL_Mk1]

Happy to hear. I put some effort on sending feedback both on bugs and suggestions here in the forums and a bit over the launcher's survey.

[dandoesstuff]

awesome

[Falki]

Thank you for the mod mention, means a lot! 

Got to say, this is a great update, I'm also having trouble putting it down. Story that comes with the Missions is very engaging. I feel now that there's a bright future ahead for KSP2!

[Nicrose]

I am very impressed with the For Science! update and can confidently say my interest in the game has been revived! Please don't abuse that though...

[Bej Kerman]

19 minutes ago, BanzaiHeil said:

Are there any plans to address the console player community on the KSP1 v1.12 content update that was promised 836 days ago?

The new developer team has nearly nothing to do with KSP 1 and its ports.

[Dzsaffar]

For planet packs / mods, will there be an option to toggle the mod on or off on a per save basis? Or will we need different instances of the game if we want to play both the original and let's say 2.5x sized planet packs?

[jacksawild]

The best compliment I can give to the team, or to any game really, is that it actually feels like Kerbal. You could've made a soulless rocket sim and stuck a KSP badge on it, but this is an actual sequel to a great game. Well done. I'm excited for where this is going.

[regex]

1 hour ago, Nate Simpson said:

an alarm clock mod,

When are you guys putting an alarm clock app into KSP2? Hopefully not after 1.0 like KSP1 did, that's a pretty crucial feature. I've been hoping to do a completely modless playthrough in KSP2, something I never really did in KSP1 because so much of my playtime was pre-1.0.

Anyway, have a happy new year and keep up the great work! Your start on exploration mode and the current science gameplay is excellent, a much better experience than I expected given the talk of how similar to KSP1 it was going to be.

[Little 908]

I really hope KSP2 manages to fulfill its goals it set back in 2019-2020, and I look forward to seeing it happen. Continue the great work and make sure the player base is happy. Hope this is a great year for you all.

[pennomi]

The Orbital Survey mod looks pretty similar to what I want in science parts. I like the idea of mapping out the surface of each planet and exposing discoverables that way. Something like this in vanilla would give me a reason to put a satellite in a long lasting orbit.

Another thing I want to do with science parts in the future - I want to discover new bodies (dwarf planets, exoplanets, asteroids, comets) by putting a space telescope into orbit and performing a very long-running experiment. (Or maybe you unlock them by accumulating a certain amount of space telescope uptime, which also incentivizes putting more in orbit at once).

Both of these would be “infrastructure” challenges more than they are “capability” challenges, which is interesting to me.

[PDCWolf]

Glad to see y'all are already back. I feel this upnate plays down on a couple of the issues raised by the community (namely UI, specially failing to see a direct address of the feedback thread yet), and completely turns away from any feedback on science itself as a feature, independent of optics.

Kinda sad to see we're stuck with a barebones remix and streamlining of a mainline feature yet again on what's supposed to be a bigger and better sequel.

[Ghosty141]

Regarding the new player experience, I would like to add that there needs to be more support around interplanetary missions. Explaining efficient transfers and an ingame tool to determine when to go are definitely needed. I've seen too many people do 12k dV Duna missions and being frustrated that even that is barely enough.

[the_tunnel]

Well I have ran into a issue that the game becomes Unplayable and the only fix was to completely delete the save.