KSP 2 isn’t hard enough

[Suppise]

Any challenge beyond the base “fly to Planet X, return to kerbin” is self inflicted, and with almost 400 hours of play time, this is becoming more and more apparent as I play. This game has so much potential and I would hate to see it missed.
 

Ksp 2 is missing a lot of more minor features that were present in ksp 1, that really add a lot of enjoyment to the game through interesting design challenges. Most notable ones from the top of my head:

-kerbal levels

-kerbal roles

-probe core levels

-kerbal G force limits

-part pressure limits

-reentry plasma blackout

-comment occlusion 

 

While fairly minor additions, and potentially only difficulty options, these add a lot of interesting challenges when it comes to designing a craft, and flying mission profiles.

These features are minor additions compared to science or reentry, but they a huge amount of gameplay through making the player design their way around these challenges, and they elevate the game beyond just flying from A to B.

 

Kerbal levels: incentives the player to bring more kerbals with them, and to rescue those that are stranded. Brings a sense of physical loss on top of the present emotional loss when a kerbal lithobrakes too hard. Currently bringing more than one kerbal is at your disadvantage, and rescuing one brings you no gain, using probe cores makes no logical sense. If I lose a kerbal, the ksc has an infinite stock of free ones at my disposal. If jeb is my only 5 star kerbal and he gets stranded, it is my highest priority to go rescue him; I want to bring more kerbals with me to level them up, so if one is lost, it doesn’t cripple my agency. Both cases encourage me to design unique landers, that I otherwise would not build. Higher level kerbals increase the stakes of a mission, lower level kerbals increase the difficulty; completing both missions have a higher sense of accomplishment than the current game. This is something independent of science mode, and could even work well in sandbox mode.

Kerbal roles: Gives more personality to a given kerbal, creates more incentive to bring more kerbals with you. Pilots have manoeuvre node access, scientists can run experiments multiple times, engineers increase part efficiency. I am reminded of the time I few a mission with no sas because I wanted to bring a scientist, so I could do experiments multiple times; was one of the hardest missions I flew, and some of the most fun I’ve had in the game, something that is lost. This would require a bit of a rework of the current science system though unfortunately, but I think it would be well worth it.

Probe core levels: greater sense of advancement through the tech tree. Currently a probe unlocked at tier 4 is no better than one unlocked in tier 1, defeats the purpose of even having any other probes. Flying low tech probes makes you appreciate the high tech ones.

Kerbal G force limits: Adds a fun layer to flying crafts and even aggressive reentries. The G force indicator and even Kerbal animations are already in place, they just need to have some actual gameplay function now. 

Part pressure limits: Makes jool and deep ocean expeditions dangerous, could have higher science payouts as a trade off, potential for specialised parts, similar to the u-dunk-it science part.

Reentry plasma blackout: Added layer of realism to probes, extra satisfaction when control is regained. Teaches the player to build stable reentry crafts, and also teaches them about a real life phenomenon.

Commnet occlusion: intuitive way that probes function, visual indication of how far a relay can reach. Intricate commnet constellations are lost since a single high power relay is basically all the comms set up you’ll ever need for the whole save.

 

Ksp has always been about designing solutions to challenges presented by the laws of physics. I worry that these are being simplified in an attempt to make on-boarding easier.
It would be disappointing to not see these features added before 1.0

Edited January 19 by Suppise

[MoonstreamInSpace]

A few other missing features to add on to this thread:

Craft folders: this was one of my favorite feature additions to KSP1, and made it much easier to keep track of huge sprawling save files. (also, if it is implemented, please implement it so that it works with the filesystem like how KSP1 did)

Alarm clock: This made not overshooting maneuver nodes that much less easy, and both the softer slowdown at the end compared to just clicking the "warp to node" button and the ability to set the delay before the node made trying to not miss maneuvers 30 years in the future that much easier.

Forced Physwarp (alt+timewarp): makes landings a lot easier, as you don't have to stop warping every few seconds to reset orientation and adjust throttle

Maneuver node planner (the thing from the room to maneuver update): First and more obviously, it lets people fine-tune your maneuvers much more carefully, making it easy to find that last 0.1 m/s change that brings them to a close encounter, and also text input made it easy to reset an unintentional direction change by setting it back to 0. It also gave the ability to edit the maneuver while it isn't on-screen, which lets people focus on looking at where they are going to go, instead of having to awkwardly adjust the camera so they can see where the maneuver started.

Pinnable part menus: The ability to have the guis for multiple parts available so you can fine-tune values such as friction on landing gear, or thrust on multiple VTOL engines, is very useful.

Selecting parts in the VAB when setting action groups (left-click on a part, its actions are now highlighted in the AG menu)

Action groups for parts being grouped by symmetry: Much easier than setting 8 multimode engine keys seperately

Global rotation/translation, especially having parts snap to a "global grid" when moving and rotating.

Renaming vessels in-flight

Fuel tank locking

Fuel tank priority

Edited January 9 by MoonstreamInSpace