One Year of KSP2

[herbal space program]

11 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

Thankfully I stick to maneuver marker, not prograde, even if the maneuver in question has been pulled 100% prograde.

Regardless, point is, now we have a tool that shows the trajectory during the burn from start to end and it can be set up accordingly to needs. The guesswork over a blank sheet is gone.

You just don't seem to get it, but whatever! I guess some of us just like to spend our time telling other people how they should feel about the game rather than playing it themselves.

[Mitokandria]

17 hours ago, herbal space program said:

[...] allow me to specify an arbitrary TWR  when placing the node. [...]

I never personally get that indepth with my burns, but this would actually be very nice. I recall KSP1 had a feature I didn't use much to set max throttle for a maneuver.

[mattihase]

IIRC maneuvers adapted to your thrust limiter, that might have been it?

Haven't checked that out in 2, it might still work. Obviously not ideal for many-engined crafts.

[magnemoe]

On 3/1/2024 at 6:37 PM, herbal space program said:

The point is that there is no way to eject from a circular orbit with maximum efficiency if you are pointed directly prograde when you start your burn and remain in that attitude the whole way through, unless you have infinite thrust. For maximum efficiency, you should be pointed directly prograde at the midpoint of your burn, but some amount inward of prograde at the outset, and somewhat outside of prograde at the end. Why else would people be setting up all these sequential periapsis kicks when they're using a low TWR transfer stage?

I assumed it was to get more out of the Oberth effect your engine is more effective then going faster so doing multiple burns around Pe is better than burning for 10 minutes. 
Worked for me in the above post about sending 300 ton to Duna, I saved over 500 m/s splitting the burn in two. 
 

[calabus2]

I love how the majority of conversations here are now arguing about game breaking bugs in a "One Year Celebratory" post by Nate. 

[herbal space program]

6 hours ago, Mitokandria said:

I never personally get that indepth with my burns, but this would actually be very nice. I recall KSP1 had a feature I didn't use much to set max throttle for a maneuver.

The only real reasons to get so in depth are if you're trying to reach some distant destination for as little dV as possible, or have to lob some truly ginormous thing into deep space with as little additional mass as possible. I did a whole lot of the former in KSP1, so I spent a great deal of time twiddling nodes to get the best efficiency and comparing notes with others on the forum who were far better astrogators than I.  The new game OTOH looks like there's going to be a whole lot of the latter to get through the career tech tree, enough said about that. In any case, for my own purposes I'm implementing a workaround, which is to put a way-overpowered craft with no payload other than an OKTO into a 100km equatorial parking orbit as a test maneuver planner. It starts with a TWR of 3 and goes rapidly up from there, being able to do a 2500 m/s burn in around 44 seconds. Placing a node in KSP2 with that craft is essentially the same as placing one in KSP1, so I can use that craft to plan maneuvers for other, much pokier craft on the same parking orbit. Once I figure out where to center my PE kicks with that ship, I can plan maneuvers with the real missions for maximum efficiency.

Edited March 2 by herbal space program

[mattihase]

14 hours ago, calabus2 said:

I love how the majority of conversations here are now arguing about game breaking bugs in a "One Year Celebratory" post by Nate. 

that's an unfortunate inevitability of KSP.  I remember even back with all the tenth anniversary stuff for KSP1 the conversation was still peppered with complaints about wheel physics.

13 hours ago, herbal space program said:

Placing a node in KSP2 with that craft is essentially the same as placing one in KSP1, so I can use that craft to plan maneuvers for other, much pokier craft on the same parking orbit. Once I figure out where to center my PE kicks with that ship, I can plan maneuvers with the real missions for maximum efficiency.

This is pretty resourceful.

Kinda reminds me of pre-space-centre-warp-bar pad warping. Like, hopefully something to do it properly comes along but I'm glad that someone's figured out a way to do it with what's there already.

[kdaviper]

15 hours ago, calabus2 said:

I love how the majority of conversations here are now arguing about game breaking bugs in a "One Year Celebratory" post by Nate. 

What's are you even talking about? 

[herbal space program]

7 hours ago, mattihase said:

Kinda reminds me of pre-space-centre-warp-bar pad warping. Like, hopefully something to do it properly comes along but I'm glad that someone's figured out a way to do it with what's there already.

I  think a good portion of the fun of the game for me is improvising when things go wrong or don't quite work like they should. I often don't see it that way going in, but after I've managed to get out of some kind of unexpected trouble or solved some gameplay problem like this for myself, I usually feel a lot of satisfaction.

[Jaypeg]

On 3/3/2024 at 4:05 AM, mattihase said:

IIRC maneuvers adapted to your thrust limiter, that might have been it?

Haven't checked that out in 2, it might still work. Obviously not ideal for many-engined crafts.

yes, and it updates the visualisation based off of it.

[PDCWolf]

On 3/3/2024 at 9:21 AM, mattihase said:

for KSP1 the conversation was still peppered with complaints about wheel physics.

And it's been 10 years and gamedevs still fail to understand that independent wheel modules with arbitrary grip values and magic springs for suspensions don't work and will always end up skating.

[gluckez]

2 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

And it's been 10 years and gamedevs still fail to understand that independent wheel modules with arbitrary grip values and magic springs for suspensions don't work and will always end up skating.

That is just not true. Unity's wheel colliders and joints are notoriously difficult and annoying to work with, sure, but if you're able to configure them properly they work perfectly. They will not "always end up skating.". It's probably just that the rover mechanics aren't the biggest priority of the dev team at this moment.

[CameronLeroux]

Sorry for being a whole lot late to the party but I am proud that it has been a year since early access was opened despite the rocky apollo 13-like start.

[PDCWolf]

On 3/4/2024 at 1:14 PM, gluckez said:

That is just not true. Unity's wheel colliders and joints are notoriously difficult and annoying to work with, sure, but if you're able to configure them properly they work perfectly. They will not "always end up skating.". It's probably just that the rover mechanics aren't the biggest priority of the dev team at this moment.

oh no, I'm not contradicting the state of Unity's wheel and joint system, please, I wouldn't even try to pass those as decent anywhere. I will however disagree that you can get them working "perfectly", no Unity game that I've tried has ever achieved it, there's always skating, or bad suspension simulations. In fact, in KSP1 if you go through the trouble of making a proper suspension system (like a rocker bogie), wheels instantly work better, because once again, a "magic spring" per wheel linked directly to the chassis is the worst way to make a suspension, specially when you expect the player to actually understand what esoteric values they're manipulating when they move "spring strength" and "damper strength" values.

[gluckez]

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

no Unity game that I've tried has ever achieved it

that you've tried. I've built small racing games in Unity before that did work fine. but the thing there is that the suspension and friction settings were configured specifically for a vehicle of which I knew the weight, and speed. It's a whole different thing to make it so it works perfectly in environments with different gravity, for vehicles that could vary in weight, on a terrain with different friction. tweaking the values is a simple as going on the runway and trying it out, you don't need to be an expert on it, it couldn't be any more straightforward. you also expect the player to know what type of engine to use for what stage, and that just requires some experience.

[PDCWolf]

8 hours ago, gluckez said:

that you've tried. I've built small racing games in Unity before that did work fine. but the thing there is that the suspension and friction settings were configured specifically for a vehicle of which I knew the weight, and speed. It's a whole different thing to make it so it works perfectly in environments with different gravity, for vehicles that could vary in weight, on a terrain with different friction. tweaking the values is a simple as going on the runway and trying it out, you don't need to be an expert on it, it couldn't be any more straightforward. you also expect the player to know what type of engine to use for what stage, and that just requires some experience.

I'm pretty sure most people don't know what a "damper" is when referring to suspensions, much less what "damper strength" does, which is why we repeatedly see complaints of flipping, skating and such, and almost never complains of porpoising due to bad damper settings, or bottoming due to bad spring settings.

As for your unity experiments, if you need to tweak the whole wheel and suspension settings in Unity, and still get a result that only works for a specific weight and speed then you didn't create a "racing sim", but rather hacked together a believable simile of a single vehicle in a single situation, and that is a completely different thing to creating a proper simulation of tyre grip, suspension and all the elements that go into driving, which would work anywhere. This is exactly why proper racing sims go through so much trouble to get suspension elements right and you won't find a professional, or even just widely approved racing sim that's made in Unity, and the projects that get at least decent driving use middleware like VPP.

This is not even considering how it's impossible for me to try your unity experiments but that somehow is brought in as evidence.

[Pat20999]

Anything new?

[gluckez]

12 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

that is a completely different thing to creating a proper simulation of tyre grip, suspension and all the elements that go into driving

that is exactly what I said...

 

13 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

This is not even considering how it's impossible for me to try your unity experiments but that somehow is brought in as evidence.

It's not evidence, it's my experience with Unity. You saying you've never played a good driving sim made in Unity is also not evidence that it's impossible to make one.

[KSRe-dev]

For such a rough start to be turned around this much, deserves a lot more celebration than this. Going from 25% to 75% positive reviews on steam would have to be rare.

It would also help in dealing with people who push negativity constantly and want to bicker over unrelated things and drag every thread off topic.

I was very happy with the way this game turned around, but I guess not many others feel that way.

[KerbolRacer21]

I noticed that you guys were talking about manuever tools. I don't rlly understand how to use them. Any tips for beginners? 

[SomeRandomGuy]

On 3/5/2024 at 10:35 PM, PDCWolf said:

I'm pretty sure most people don't know what a "damper" is when referring to suspensions, much less what "damper strength" does, which is why we repeatedly see complaints of flipping, skating and such, and almost never complains of porpoising due to bad damper settings, or bottoming due to bad spring settings.

As for your unity experiments, if you need to tweak the whole wheel and suspension settings in Unity, and still get a result that only works for a specific weight and speed then you didn't create a "racing sim", but rather hacked together a believable simile of a single vehicle in a single situation, and that is a completely different thing to creating a proper simulation of tyre grip, suspension and all the elements that go into driving, which would work anywhere. This is exactly why proper racing sims go through so much trouble to get suspension elements right and you won't find a professional, or even just widely approved racing sim that's made in Unity, and the projects that get at least decent driving use middleware like VPP.

This is not even considering how it's impossible for me to try your unity experiments but that somehow is brought in as evidence.

https://www.edy.es/dev/2015/06/kerbal-space-program-will-use-vehicle-physics-pro/  KSP used VPP since 2015.

Probably the issue is exactly the one you site.  All those racing sim games use cars with very defined, low centers of gravity, on concrete/racing tarmac, with reasonable masses, in standard gravity.  Rather than randomly shaped rovers in random gravity fields with the wheels in whatever position the player wants to put them with the center of gravity often much higher than a car's.   The options are 'slide' or 'tip over' or 'magic fantasy physics where the rover doesn't tip over despite the way the forces should work'.

[Fizzlebop Smith]

Rovers and Kerbals needs some work...

 

My kerbals should be skidding and bouncing across the lunar surface.. not my rovers.

Sticky Feet bugs the heck out of me.

 

Was the implementation of  VPP in KSP1 the result of community feedback, necessity?

A better articulation are there benefits to trying to build customs wheels without a VPP?

One of thebposts suggests that such variation offered by KSP would preclude VPP.. but everything I've been able to find in the last 30 minutes seems to suggest that being a major reason to use one.

However, if liscencing fees are exchanged google would be more likely to suggest its need. Im curious and dont really know

 

Maybe the developers didn't play woth rovers the way some people don't make planes

[PDCWolf]

On 3/8/2024 at 2:41 AM, SomeRandomGuy said:

https://www.edy.es/dev/2015/06/kerbal-space-program-will-use-vehicle-physics-pro/  KSP used VPP since 2015.

Probably the issue is exactly the one you site.  All those racing sim games use cars with very defined, low centers of gravity, on concrete/racing tarmac, with reasonable masses, in standard gravity.  Rather than randomly shaped rovers in random gravity fields with the wheels in whatever position the player wants to put them with the center of gravity often much higher than a car's.   The options are 'slide' or 'tip over' or 'magic fantasy physics where the rover doesn't tip over despite the way the forces should work'.

Definitely, but making a complete suspension system to fix the grip shouldn't be the players' task, and it's clearly not the design choice for it to be the players' task since there's no tools for it. The real fix would be providing proper suspension/differential parts, and/or more closed down but well tuned chassis to mount your stuff on. Right now a novice player gets a "rover body" and wheels, and no indication of all the problems they're gonna get in if they just use that as it is.

Edited March 9 by PDCWolf

[calabus2]

On 3/3/2024 at 8:24 AM, kdaviper said:

What's are you even talking about? 

i don't think my comment was in any way vague. I'm not sure what you are asking.

[kdaviper]

1 hour ago, calabus2 said:

i don't think my comment was in any way vague. I'm not sure what you are asking.

What game breaking bugs are you referencing?