Missions & Tutorials Feedback Megathread

[Dakota]

Hello friends!

Awhile back, I prompted the community on UI/UX feedback and top 10 requests. Responses to those have been INCREDIBLY helpful internally, so thank you.

I have some new questions for you all. Our Missions & Tutorials team is curious about:

1. What topics or concepts you'd like to see be covered (via tutorials) or challenged to the player (via missions) that are currently missing?
2. Do you feel like you can accomplish all of the current missions in their current format?
3. Are there any major areas or breaks in your understanding of how the game works that could be addressed through missions and tutorials?

We're hoping to work more towards bridging the gap for new players and smoothing out the learning experience that players go through while following the main mission line. We especially want to remove any big spikes in difficulty that may cause frustration.

Also, feel free to use this space for general feedback on Missions & Tutorials unrelated to the questions above if you have 'em!

Appreciate ya!

[MechBFP]

The two missions to land large masses on Minmus and Duna are both large difficulty spikes. That is fine if there was a difficulty rating or something to indicate to the player of that, as having optional challenges is a good thing. 
 

The mission to land and return 10 Kerbals from Eve is probably the most difficult mission possible in the Kerbolar system, expect possibly some grand tour missions. Same comment as before regarding letting the player know the difficulty.

Landing near the SPOILER on Duna is also a large spike because of the lack of a trajectory estimate, resulting in either lots of trial and error, using a spaceplane, or dropping straight down and guesstimating the distance required to take into account the planet rotation while falling. 

[Emanuel01]

I’d enjoy if aerobrake and gravity assists were covered by missions/tutorials. I think these advanced maneuvers play an important role on the emergent gameplay features that show up once you really start to learn the game and it would be nice if they are made more digestible to the average player.

Example mission: establish and orbit around Jool while spending less than 200 dV after entering its sphere of influence (advanced tip: Tylo is smiling at you)

[Robin Patenall]

Perhaps for Eve there should be a couple of missions before the "Land and return 10 Kerbals" one. I'm thinking of  "Land a probe on Eve and send back data" and "Retrieve surface samples from Eve" which would at least provide a few stepping stones in the difficulty levels.

[The Aziz]

1. About tutorials - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIr6CGCaUvE ShadowZone did a good video about it. There are of course some missing elements, like inclination changes, polar orbits and what they're for (essential for discoverable hunting), rendezvous, docking (once it's fixed), interplanetary transfers, launch windows, powered landings... pretty much everything the games asks the players to do. Right now it only tells how to build and stage a simple rocket, get into equatorial orbit and approach the Mun orbit. And how to do science I guess.

1.2 Rovers. The only thing there is is about putting wheels on a vessel, something that can be completed in 15 seconds. Don't know what that mission even is for. There's no push to build rovers, to make them seem useful. Same goes for "activate a jet engine on Laythe". So I can pack a tiny methane tank, attach an engine to it, slap it on a lander probe and send it there. Boom, 3000 science points for free and I learned NOTHING about the ability to fly planes on Laythe. The objectives are very vague. I have only made one rover, for Laythe, because aiming exactly at the discoverable was impossible (Trajectories implementation when?). So I drove there.
Both Minmus and Jool discovery missions had introductory missions - in form of putting probes in orbit. That could be useful for all other missions, not only main but secondary as well. Maybe, let the players find where the signals are coming from, instead of  giving straight away the exact location? Also, the science rewards are not exactly in line with difficulty. Moho landing-and-return mission gives less than simple Eeloo flyby "enter Eeloo SOI". Which one's harder?

2. No. Through all my years of playing I have never returned from Moho without using ISRU. Nor did I return from Eve at all, let alone with a 10-Kerbal sized vehicle. And the game asks me to do that now. For new players, and many of the old, these missions will sit incomplete for a long time, if not forever. The takeoff from Eve to low orbit only requires 8k d/v, and that must be done with a vehicle brought in one piece from Kerbin and safely landed. Can't refuel on site, so all that mass has to go there from home.

 

Edited January 30 by The Aziz

[skmcconnell361]

Speaking for myself, I found the tutorial in KSP 2 very helpful. I had given up on KSP 1 because I just could not get the rocket into orbit. Back then finding stuff on YouTube was very hit or miss mostly miss for me. But after watching the KSP 2 tutorials, I was able to get the orbit set up and even got a prob in orbit around the Mun. So yes I would like to see the other orbital maneuvers explained on the same level so this non-rocket scientist can understand it.

[dsplaisted]

Something I'd like to see would be for the mission briefs / debriefs to not assume you're doing a crew first playstyle. it's breaks immersion when you landed a probe on the Mun, and the discoverable mission brief says it might have been an installation artist that snuck on board.  And also, all the main discoverable missions (even Tylo!) have a kerbal next to the discoverable above the "Thanks Science!" button.

There defiantly should be a docking tutorial. when i got the game when it released i was disappointed i had to go outside the game to learn how to dock (in ksp1 i cheated).

[pschlik]

The tutorials and missions really lack enough (any) discussion of rendezvous and docking. While it's reasonable to do Mun and Minmus missions with direct returns, by the time someone is doing a Duna mission they really should be thinking of doing something Apollo-style with a separate 'mothership' and lander. It's just so much easier when you don't waste energy bringing an entire return trip's worth of fuel to the surface, but is so involved I wouldn't expect a new user to A: figure out how to build following the Apollo style, and B: actually execute docking, without some guidance.

I'd expect some tutorials for docking and rendezvous, ideally covering elements of both in-orbit rendezvous (I'm at 80 km, the space station is at 100 km and at a totally different orbital phase + inclination, what now?), launch-to-rendezvous (I'm on the surface of the Mun at some high latitude and my transfer vessel is in a similarly inclined orbit, how do I launch to meet up with it?), and the whole docking process with RCS translation controls. From there, it would be important to also have missions that explicitly require docking to encourage everyone to get practice in. Ideally, there would even be some missions to practice good Apollo-style missions (even something as open-ended as 'Split any vessel in two in orbit of a CB, land one part of the vessel on that CB, then rejoin the two', though I can imagine that's more than the current mission system can handle).

This is such an important set of skills to have for any interplanetary mission, and I'd say my inability to pull off a good Apollo-style mission is why I personally 'never left Kerbin-Mun-Minmus in KSP1' (I did learn eventually, but not from material presented inside KSP1 itself!) With the future of interstellar vessels and cargo deliveries, I can only imagine docking becoming an even more important skill, so we really should teach it as early as possible.

[steveman0]

6 hours ago, Emanuel01 said:

I’d enjoy if aerobrake and gravity assists were covered by missions/tutorials. I think these advanced maneuvers play an important role on the emergent gameplay features that show up once you really start to learn the game and it would be nice if they are made more digestible to the average player.

These were the first two I came here to post.  For additional context, my first trip to Duna did not use aerobraking to capture as I simply didn't have a good idea what altitude to aim for to make this capture.  Too high and it does no good, too low and you are burnt to a crisp.  The tutorial providing guiding rules for this would have been a big confidence booster to try this rather than overbuilding for enough dV to capture without aerobraking.

Similarly, gravity assists are a hugely beneficial technique that can greatly simplify other aspects of mission planning as you can use much simpler rockets even for deep space - or just get yourself out of a bind if you spent more than your budget elsewhere.

Another major challenge for me was and still is precision landings.  I hope that we will eventually be able to set the waypoints as targets eventually to be able to get access to the target icons on the navball.  Having the relative velocity vector would make it immensely helpful to land on target.  Seeing as the process for this is similar to the retrograde burn on final approach in rendezvous for docking, one tutorial at the end of a set to cover of this can be applied to precision landings would be great.  Teaching the player how to use the retrograde burn to "push" the velocity vector to align with the target is a critical skill and would be great to have for all of the required precision landings.

[Pat20999]

Pls add a EVA and camera control’s tutorial.

Edited January 31 by Pat20999

[krbvax]

This is more of a confirmation request than anything else, but: Will there be additional missions inserted between existing ones as new game features are added? I was particularly surprised when the next mission after Minmus was immediately "go to Duna", since in KSP1 I spent a good deal of time jumping around Kerbin/Mun/Minmus (collecting science, building orbital stations, mining ice cream - which I grant is still waiting on the KSP2 resource system - and so on) before actually leaving Kerbin's SOI. I did see in the Discord tracker that there are plans for new types of missions, but I just wanted to note that the jump from "land on Minmus" to "land on Duna" feels somewhat excessive.

I was also a bit miffed when the mission brief for Duna explicitly told me to launch at a relative phase angle of 45 degrees - that's something I admit I hadn't consciously figured out before (I worked out that correlation to a rough degree in KSP1 through trial and error, but never actually measured it to any precision), and I would have preferred that sort of explicit answer to be deferred to a tutorial, leaving the mission brief as pure flavor text.

[Oak7603]

I think tutorials should be for the real basics. I think missions should be story led as well as used to teach the mid level strategies. In terms of 'advanced' missions / tutorials I'm not sure about. I have never used a gravity assist in all of KSP1 or 2 and although I'm not an advanced player, I have visited all planets and landed on most. Maybe this could have been done easier or sooner had I known how to use gravity assists but you don't need them.

I liked the tutorials and I dont think they need expanding on, for me, learning through missions would be a better way to go. Add some missions that require docking, polar orbits, space planes, rovers etc. For me, I would like to see more rover based missions specifically.

I would agree with previous posters that the missions need to be tighter or the completing text more generic. I completed the 4 wheel mission by sticking for wheels on the side of the rocket. I completed the Laythe flying mission by firing the engine just in it's SOI, I didn't even touch the atmosphere at all, yet the completed text talked of flying in the atmosphere.

 

[Emanuel01]

10 hours ago, steveman0 said:

These were the first two I came here to post.  For additional context, my first trip to Duna did not use aerobraking to capture as I simply didn't have a good idea what altitude to aim for to make this capture.  Too high and it does no good, too low and you are burnt to a crisp.  The tutorial providing guiding rules for this would have been a big confidence booster to try this rather than overbuilding for enough dV to capture without aerobraking.

I'd also say this could be a potential area of improvement in the UI department. Currently, everything related to atmospheres are basically trial and error (landing, aerobraking, burning). The ideal solution for me would be to add something like the Trajectories mod in KSP1 and teach its fundamentals with tutorials and missions. Currently the game doesn't communicate adequately this gameplays features to the player, nor does it teaches them in tutorials (I almost feel like I'm cheating or exploiting the game while doing gravity captures in the Jool system)

This (Trajectories)  is one of those things that fits in the "How was this not incorporated in the stock game already?!" category, together with:

• Docking port Alignment Indicator
• Transfer window planer
• Alarm clock
• Precision Maneuver UI 
• SCANsat 

 

[Pat20999]

4 hours ago, krbvax said:

This is more of a confirmation request than anything else, but: Will there be additional missions inserted between existing ones as new game features are added? I was particularly surprised when the next mission after Minmus was immediately "go to Duna", since in KSP1 I spent a good deal of time jumping around Kerbin/Mun/Minmus (collecting science, building orbital stations, mining ice cream - which I grant is still waiting on the KSP2 resource system - and so on) before actually leaving Kerbin's SOI. I did see in the Discord tracker that there are plans for new types of missions, but I just wanted to note that the jump from "land on Minmus" to "land on Duna" feels somewhat excessive.

I was also a bit miffed when the mission brief for Duna explicitly told me to launch at a relative phase angle of 45 degrees - that's something I admit I hadn't consciously figured out before (I worked out that correlation to a rough degree in KSP1 through trial and error, but never actually measured it to any precision), and I would have preferred that sort of explicit answer to be deferred to a tutorial, leaving the mission brief as pure flavor text.

An example of what you can do is establish a base or space station or both.

[Fizzlebop Smith]

I saw this thread an want to add a suggestion for game play.

 

Please bring back random mission generation. Have a second Tab in mission control to procedurally generated mission based on body / SOI.

 

I do not mind seeing the same missions every time I play the game or start anew. But it distresses me to no end thinking this may be the sum total of my experience.

Gone are random missions to gather valuable datuz from the poles of Eve? 

Passed through Duna on a trip around Kerbol? Hmmm, Floooyds wants to put a satellite there.

I know KSP1 was very limited and repetitive (without contract mods) with regard to the generated contracts  ..

BUT 

It allowed each and every player to progress at their own pace. You were not PUSHED to endgame science quit so hard.

I like the Push and ease of experience interstellar has become over KSP1.

I think it is a beautiful foundation  that is staring upon the course of glossing over what made KSP1 so special.

KSP1 was truly the first game I ever witnessed that managed to Capture a fully sandbox world by introducing gameplay. 

What made it so amazing was the aimless direction that endless contract brought. You could putter around a system until it went dry (a looking time).

 

Even if you create a whole series of missions that *encourage* individual exploration of each respective body.. it will be a pale shadow of the former if every one of those missions is always the same.

 

(Edit I feel this is relevant bc I know a few people to quit playing once they hit a wall with some missions.. they feel there is nothing left to do. The gather data missions would give them something to do while remedying a few poor unlock choices or learning better control of mechanics)

Edited February 1 by Fizzlebop Smith

[Wheehaw Kerman]

Can’t really speak to the tutorials - haven’t looked at them much.

Paige lacks The Right Stuff - she NEEDS to be more Deke Slayton or Molly Cobb and a lot less Annoyingly Chipper Barista.  The game is about a space program.  It needs more steely-eyed missile kerb vibes - more KSP1 Jeb.

For a mode titled Exploration, we seem to be not doing very much exploring and science gathering.  Right now “Relic Hunting” seems a bit more apt.  I’d love to see a bit more variety in the science instrumentation, more regions to hit, and more missions per CB - the progression seems very rushed.  The Mun deserves more than a few shots.

[cocoscacao]

Docking... from ground all the way up. Have one thing landed on Minmus (easiest environment) and mothership orbiting it. When to launch, how to most efficiently align orbits (when to burn normal, anti normal). The many uses of navball... etc. I guess this will have to wait for future updates, when we can push MN to future orbits.

[Brody.mack]

As a new player to KSP, I used some of the tutorials and liked them.

However, I agree with other responses that they need to address:

1. Rendevous and docking

2. Interplanetary transfers

3. Aerobraking and gravity assists

4. How to utilize RCS (maybe also show how to use it for larger craft too)

5. How to build planes 

I feel that these are major skills to know in the game and coming from a new player, these are things that have been the hardest to learn. It would be really nice if these were shown through the game so people don't have to go to the forums and YouTube to learn how to. These also will be very important when we get interstellar and colonies since these build the foundations for those updates.

[Meecrob]

On 2/2/2024 at 9:59 AM, Wheehaw Kerman said:

Paige lacks The Right Stuff - she NEEDS to be more Deke Slayton or Molly Cobb and a lot less Annoyingly Chipper Barista.

Seriously. It feels like you would get awarded a "participant" ribbon just for hitting the spacebar. Also, the "lore" of a coffee addiction isn't interesting at all. When Apollo 11 landed, and the astronauts were debriefed, Gene Kranz wasn't like "Yeah, its cool you guys completed the mission, but seriously, have you tried this coffee?"

 

Also, what is up with the sightseeing missions on Kerbin requiring a Lander Can? Why would you encourage players to use a part designed for use in a vaccuum on Kerbin?

 

Finally, please stop with the capybaras. They have nothing to do with spaceflight. You guys sound like the stoner hippies from my high school who irrationally loved llamas and emus. Yeah, ok, they are kinda cool, but you can stop shoehorning them in everywhere. We get that you like them, but it comes across as trying too hard to be Maxis.

 

Edited February 5 by Meecrob

[PASSthe40]

Thanks so much for asking for the feedback. I've got a few thoughts:

1. What topics or concepts you'd like to see be covered (via tutorials) or challenged to the player (via missions) that are currently missing?

For Missions, I would like to see gently guided progression of your agency, with new missions being triggered within that domain area.

Example 1: I've encountered, orbited and landed one minmus and the mun. I choose to target the mission of leaving Kerbin's SOI. This event triggers a mission for sending a survey probe to accomplish initial duna encounter and orbit accomplishments. These trigger missions for landing kerbals on duna, sending probes to Ike, and maybe exploring the next celestial body SOI. Lead us through the progression of our agency's capabilities.

Example 2: I built the fuel station side mission. This should be followed by a docking mission. Followed by a space station build up type mission. Followed by a remote fuel station / space station. Could cover probe, docking, multi-launch modular construction, refueling / resource management, resonant orbit maneuvers, Commnet

Example 3: Build my rover as we have currently, land a rover on the moon, retrieve science with a rover, and I would expect as colonies progresses we'd have more mission types for rovers.

Example 4: Build a space plane, have a space plane leave kerbins atmostphere, mun/minmus, kerbin SOI, etc etc

Example 5: Might be a new concept, but missions which have me building custom subparts in the VAB, using more of the parts available to me in outside the box ways to accomplish tasks. As an example, I've read a lot about people using cargo bays to build custom command modules to accomplish the 10 kerbal eve landing challenge. That sounds really awesome, and it's something I should play with. That said, in my 400 hrs of kerbal space play, I have barely used many of the payload, structure type parts that allow for more open ended construction. I'd love a build up of mission types that have me "re-inventing the wheel" using a subset of parts that when put together make a wheel. I'd really love too if those missions were based on a practical reason for me to do it. 

I definitely feel like missions should guide us through exploring space and the mechanics we hope to use to explore it. We should learn all about Rockets, Rovers, Spaceplanes, Probes and the practical uses and techniques in which we should begin to consider using them for.

 

I am not a big fan of monument hunts or sensational feats, but at the very least, I really just don't think they have a place as early exploration missions. I shouldn't be asked to find the minmus monument before I've plated a flag, collected a surface sample, discovered multiple biomes, returned science, etc. I should not be asked to land 10 kerbals on eve, if I've never collected an atmosphere sample. The progression becomes Janky, while these build up milestones leave a smooth path, tailored to the celestial body, or craft type.

 

2. Do you feel like you can accomplish all of the current missions in their current format?

At this point, I have not had any issues accomplishing the missions I chose to take on. That said I am not a super user and I have not attempted, for example, the eve 10 kerbal landing mission. This is totally where I would love build up missions to that have me landing on eve and exploring it's atmosphere, as well as where I am gaining experience building customer crafts that might be similar to one which would hold 10 kerbals.

3. Are there any major areas or breaks in your understanding of how the game works that could be addressed through missions and tutorials?

I've already written more than I expected so I'll end with echoing some other feedback I've read here. Extending the tutorials to cover docking, interplanetary, aero-breaking and gravity assists, etc. I haven't really done many of the tutorials because they cover kind of early topics for me, but I'd love to become more proficient at some more advanced concepts.

 

Thank you all so much for your work. I probably had 10-20 hrs of KSP2 before For Science. I decided 2 weeks ago to give it a shot and see how things were progressing and I am rolling into ~100 hrs since then. I am loving this and looking forward to the future. Keep the momentum going!

[magnemoe]

16 hours ago, Meecrob said:

Seriously. It feels like you would get awarded a "participant" ribbon just for hitting the spacebar. Also, the "lore" of a coffee addiction isn't interesting at all. When Apollo 11 landed, and the astronauts were debriefed, Gene Kranz wasn't like "Yeah, its cool you guys completed the mission, but seriously, have you tried this coffee?"

Also, what is up with the sightseeing missions on Kerbin requiring a Lander Can? Why would you encourage players to use a part designed for use in a vaccuum on Kerbin?

Finally, please stop with the capybaras. They have nothing to do with spaceflight. You guys sound like the stoner hippies from my high school who irrationally loved llamas and emus. Yeah, ok, they are kinda cool, but you can stop shoehorning them in everywhere. We get that you like them, but it comes across as trying too hard to be Maxis.

Yes worse its an capsule made of tinfoil, taken into an mountain. That this is not safe to drop from an plane. Still the 2*400 science was very nice. 
I used an rocket, flew over then burned so I dropped pretty much straight down. Should have added wings to the rover to get closer. 
 

[RicketyJoe]

On 2/2/2024 at 12:34 PM, Brody.mack said:

As a new player to KSP, I used some of the tutorials and liked them.

However, I agree with other responses that they need to address:

1. Rendevous and docking

2. Interplanetary transfers

3. Aerobraking and gravity assists

4. How to utilize RCS (maybe also show how to use it for larger craft too)

5. How to build planes 

I feel that these are major skills to know in the game and coming from a new player, these are things that have been the hardest to learn. It would be really nice if these were shown through the game so people don't have to go to the forums and YouTube to learn how to. These also will be very important when we get interstellar and colonies since these build the foundations for those updates.

Totally agree with this. Would love expanded tutorial (especially for orbital rendezvous.

[Dakitess]

On 2/5/2024 at 11:34 PM, Meecrob said:

Seriously. It feels like you would get awarded a "participant" ribbon just for hitting the spacebar. Also, the "lore" of a coffee addiction isn't interesting at all. When Apollo 11 landed, and the astronauts were debriefed, Gene Kranz wasn't like "Yeah, its cool you guys completed the mission, but seriously, have you tried this coffee?"

 

Also, what is up with the sightseeing missions on Kerbin requiring a Lander Can? Why would you encourage players to use a part designed for use in a vaccuum on Kerbin?

 

Finally, please stop with the capybaras. They have nothing to do with spaceflight. You guys sound like the stoner hippies from my high school who irrationally loved llamas and emus. Yeah, ok, they are kinda cool, but you can stop shoehorning them in everywhere. We get that you like them, but it comes across as trying too hard to be Maxis.

 

This, a thousand time. I really "hate" this kind of forced humor, everywhere, anywhere, all the time. It does not serve any purpose, it's annoying and quite puerile, because of repetition. Yeah haha okay, coffee, haha, I got it, hehe, addiction, so fun, and Kapibaras, haha look at their big nose, lol, it's funny, it's big, and they go to space, or perhaps, or we don't know, but whatever, Kapybaras, and coffee addiction, cause we all love coffee and all are addict to it, and it's fun, just like big Splosions, always, way more fun than actually succeeding a mission, don't get too serious, c'mon, it's a game, crashes are fun, and eclipse as well, haha, Jeb crashed its face on the ground and still live. Lol.

Yeah, sorry for the rant. 

Regarding the topic, I did not watch the tutorial except the Gravity Turn one, which is very good as a very short "basic" which does not teach everything step by step. I think it's the best Tutorial format, a 2 minutes animation that won't go in Gameplay details, so that the community then handle the 20minutes long docking step by step tutorial. It ensures that tutorial actually don't ruin the Die and Retry aspect of the game, the proudness to succeed by ourselves, while in the same time giving just enough information about physics and global advices to not feel abandoned.

It needs to be declined with all the Tutorial topics that we usually looked for in KSP1 : manoeuver nodes, RdV, docking, interplanetary transfrt, aerobraking, Gravity Assist, landing, but also some Craft design tutorial, about RCS placement, CoL/CoM, optimization, and so on.

 

Edited February 7 by Dakitess

[The Aziz]

Rants like this is exactly why it should stay. So people can be irrationally angry about something completely minuscule and irrelevant to gameplay. A gameplay that in itself is incredibly boring for average person (given the target audience for the game, which is quite literally everyone, not just "serious grown-ups"), so there are the funny bits to brighten up the experience.

Hear me @Just Jim? Keep em coming!

[Dakitess]

It's actually really not a big deal if it stays as is, indeed. I don't care too much, I just find it not very good, and it feels way too forced, so it can be better for sure. But it might be the least of the priority, clearly, and we can totally overcome it : it does not mean that it should not be mentioned as something to improve / correct