What are your suggestions for KSP2 development?

[PDCWolf]

2 hours ago, The Aziz said:

We're here to give feedback on what's already planned

If only they'd tell us what's planned. It's like, after 14 months, people have caught enough of a hint that KSP2 is not going for a better KSP1, but a KSP1 redux focused on telling a story, with some popular features thrown in because they need differentiation and a hook. However, since they actively refuse to tell us what the KSP2 is about, we can only guess from contextual clues we have to force out of them by making exceedingly spiraling questions on AMAs and livestreams or on discord.

Don't you think that is why people give feedback that's all over the place and that they certainly have no use for and thus ignore?

 

[Fizzlebop Smith]

1 hour ago, kdaviper said:

One does not need to complete missions in order to unlock tech, they merely serve as a potential pathway for new players and yet offers some challenges.  I do think there is a lot of room for improvement however. For example, I think it is an astute point that there is no mission that requires docking when it is a core mechanic and opens up so many mission profiles.

As far as the tech tree is concerned I don't think that is bad that decisions must be made between parts. However I do feel that planes are sort of jimmied into the tree and their tech cost does not necessarily reflect their usefulness. Perhaps they could be integrated into other nodes and the node cost or science rewards could be adjusted slightly to compensate.

 

 

I do not feel this is entirely accurate with the current state of the game. What's worse It does not feel there is any plan to address this until the very end.

It's not deciding between parts you WANT to play with.

Until you get outside kerbin SOI it's joke to collect science. Especially with what's available.

The missions offer the only substantial science.

Experiments & Biomes have shrank. With less gains.

It went from play any way you want to this is the right / only way to play.

A 1000 people could pick up KSP, Especially some mission content & play the game 1000 different ways.

That could have been the case with KSP2 from the beginning, but clearly you are not playing as intended if you wanna branch out and unlock the stuff to make stations & relays before leaving Kerbins SOI.

 

And yes.. contracts were largely mod additions.  One of the reasons it maintained relevance for 15 years and still has decent in game player counts

 

You advance to the next tier and scoop up anything left bc the gains are so much higher.

I do not know how to fully articulate the massive dissonance I feel with this vision that was supposed to blend the best of science and career...

 

Which honestly career was science+

No need to merge them when one incorporated the other. Make some toggles to turn of what you don't want like the rest of the custom difficultit's.

The added utility of advanced tweakables is far less advanced. Just seems like the tried to mitigate the inherent difficulty with ALL aspects of KSP1.

[calabus2]

The first few comments by CMs in this post should tell you how seriously they take your opinions. Jokes....that's thier first response after repeated topics begging for the increased communication we have been promised, by the same CMs, for over a year. I just don't understand how anyone in a CM position can be this done deaf and keep thier job. 

Edited April 16 by calabus2

[Flush Foot]

On 4/11/2024 at 3:28 PM, Nerdy_Mike said:

No lip service. I'll check back in here later I know myself and the team would love to hear from everyone. 

@calabus2… first message from IG wasn’t jokes… only 2nd thru 4th or 5th

[Dakota]

47 minutes ago, calabus2 said:

that's thier first response after repeated topics begging for the increased communication

We've posted many responses in that thread sharing our intentions to meet the community's expectations. We're actively working on it.

[calabus2]

8 minutes ago, Dakota said:

We've posted many responses in that thread sharing our intentions to meet the community's expectations. We're actively working on it.

Then summarize them here please. 

25 minutes ago, Flush Foot said:

@calabus2… first message from IG wasn’t jokes… only 2nd thru 4th or 5th

You are correct. I forgot that Mike actually takes his job seriously. Doesn't mean anything will change, but at least he isn't as tone deaf as the others. 

[Icegrx]

I’ve stated this before in a more long winded detailed version, but I’ll sum it up here. 
 

the developers have their own vision for KSP2, and it will be hard pressed to change that vision. This I can accept. We can provide topics of focus, we can present issues that we would like to see get more attention, but we aren’t going to change the main trajectory… 

with that being said. 
 

Id like to see updates broken into smaller, more manageable chunks. Do we need the entire Colonies update all at once? I believe it would be much healthier and palatable to the community to release these largely ambitious updates into parts. Smaller more frequent updates. Gives us more of a chance to see how the development is going, gives us more chance to provide feedback on bugs and changes we would like to see. 

[Nerdy_Mike]

Just wanted to jump in real quick and say thank you to those who have provided feedback from here and all other social platforms. I'm working with Dakota on prioritizing this feedback and seeing what we can come up with. 

[Presto200]

Just now, Nerdy_Mike said:

Just wanted to jump in real quick and say thank you to those who have provided feedback from here and all other social platforms. I'm working with Dakota on prioritizing this feedback and seeing what we can come up with. 

Just to clarify do you mean feedback about the game or feedback about communication between development and the community? Just a little hard to tell based on the last couple posts before yours vs. the majority of the thread

[Nerdy_Mike]

14 minutes ago, Presto200 said:

Just to clarify do you mean feedback about the game or feedback about communication between development and the community? Just a little hard to tell based on the last couple posts before yours vs. the majority of the thread

Ah, I am looking at a bit of both, but my main focus is on communication between development and community. Dakota and I both have our ideas, but this year I am working on being a better listener and I want the feedback from all players. 

[Scarecrow71]

36 minutes ago, Nerdy_Mike said:

Ah, I am looking at a bit of both, but my main focus is on communication between development and community. Dakota and I both have our ideas, but this year I am working on being a better listener and I want the feedback from all players. 

So, I've got a few questions as it relates to communication and development.

1. Can you share with us where you are at with updating your internal calendar as it relates to when we can expect the next KERB?  I know you just got back and all, but we are jonesing for info here.
2. As far as the KERB goes, are there any plans to be more verbose in the status of the bugs being worked on?  For example, "Researching" doesn't tell us what you are doing with a bug, especially when some bugs have been around and in this status for months.  What is being researched, and what about it is so complicated?  Same thing for "Need Additional Information".  What info do you need?  Something from the community?  The original reporter?  Who and what?
3. It has now been 3 months since the last patch, and there has been zero talk about the next one.  Nor has there been any talk about colonies other than to show the same station orbiting Jool a few times.  Can you give us any information on where the team is at with the next patch, or with colonies, or when 0.3 might drop?  And why the complete silence on all of this?  It is early access, but we put our faith in you guys and we haven't had that faith rewarded much (if at all).
4. Can we talk about procedural parts again?  We have been told that procedural tanks are too complex, but Juno has them.  And ill have to look again to make sure, but I think HarvesteR's latest project Kit Hack has them.  What is so complex about them as it relates to KSP2?
5. Finally, we need to discuss maneuver nodes and dV calculation.  Has the development team shared anything with you that you can share with us as to how these are being worked on, and what potential solutions we may see?  Both of these are critical to the game.

[Presto200]

I wonder if the next patch will do a slight rework on the science system, maybe some numbers of science rewards, some of the texts for experiments being done, but also the system of science gathering in general. I made this post a while ago and I think there's a decent amount of people who agree. Obviously all we can do is speculate but it's been a while since the last patch so maybe this will be in the patch:

 

[allanp11]

My suggestions? As posted in the UI/UX mega thread....

• Yeah, like many have said the font is very hard to read in places, especially numbers.
• The VAB stage info doesn't have much information. In KSP 1 you could see start weight, end weight, isp (useful if you are mixing different engines), burn time, delta V, thrust and TWR. You could also select which of these is visible. I would like that back for KSP2.
• I don't know if this is a physics thing or a user experience thing, so it might not belong here, but I think it can be remedied with some extra UI controls. The user experience of rover wheels is terrible for moving anything other than tiny rovers. The rovemax TR-L2 wheels are pretty big, bigger than a kerbal, and look like they are suited to moving heavy, 20+ ton loads up and over hills and valleys at a slow but steady pace. Right now, they are geared to do 58m/s, which is 130mph! That's fun for a small buggy, but when I want to move and dock heavy assemblies on the hilly ground, I don't need to do that at 130mph. I would really like to have 2 new sliders for the rover wheels. One is gear ratio to allow me to decrease top speed but increase torque, and the other slider is power, so I can increase the overall power at the expense of increased electricity consumption. Right now, 4 of the the TR-L2 wheels just rolled my 20 ton lander to the middle of a shallow depression and did nothing after that. This definitely needs fixing for colony's. At the highest power setting and biggest gear ratio for torque, the rovemax TR-L2 wheels should be able to move a heavy lander up a very steep slope, steep enough to tip the whole thing over backwards if you're not careful.
• The maneuver plan is very hard to adjust correctly. I would really like a separate fine adjust tool similar to what KSP1 had.
• I would also like to plan more than 1 maneuver plans ahead, and to see the deltaV cost of each maneuver plan.
• Being able to set the maneuver plan on the line that appears inside the SOI of the body you get an encounter with would also be great. I want to see if I have enough deltaV and thrust to slow down enough to get into an orbit, instead of just hoping I don't whizz by.
• Sometimes maneuver plans can come upon you very quickly before you have had time to adjust it. I would like the ability to set and adjust the maneuver node while the game is paused, or maybe even better to have a few time warp options below 1x speed, so we could have 0.5x, 0.25x and 0.125x warp settings. This would give us more time to adjust the node but also seeing things happen in slow motion might help us understand why the blasted large landing legs are exploding when landing at 2m/s!
• The new closet approach windows are better than in KSP1, so thank you for that. However, the closest approach keeps disappearing despite adjusting to get it closer. It will do this even though I'm not getting an encounter yet. Then when I get it to reappear the window is gone and I have to reopen it again, which usually means closing the maneuver plan I'm working on, only to re-open the closest approach window, then I have to hope that it stays open when I reopen the maneuver plan.
• The maneuver plan I'm working on closes when right clicking the PE to keep the PE displayed.
• It can be hard/impossible to select the right thing when zoomed out in map view. In Kerbin's SOI I might have an orbiting satellite or 2, the mun, munmus, Kerbin itself, and a closed maneuver node I would like to reopen. When zoomed out in the map view they are all on top of each other. I would like to be able to click and then choose which one of those things to select if there are multiple items there. I would also like the ability to show/hide map view elements, unless that's already there and I have yet to find it!
• When attempting to EVA I often get the error message saying something like EVA is blocked due to obstacle. I think whatever the EVA check box thing is, it's too large, and it would be nice to be able to see that hit box while building. Have it be toggleable on and off of course, it could be an option that appears when you right click the command pod/seat to show EVA check box, and have anything that clips into it be shown in red.
• in the VAB, the way symmetry works can be confusing. If I place two radial fuel tanks then I go to strut between the tanks and the main body, sometimes it will put two struts on one tank. the symmetry of the one side tank I click on is respected over the symmetry of the whole ship. It would be nice to have different symmetry modes to select between part symmetry or whole vessel symmetry, or select which part build symmetry is applied to. Also, bring back remove from symmetry option. 
• When moving up/down ladders, sometimes I have to place the small three rung ladders in weird places/angles to get a claimable path back to the command module door. However, when attempting to climb these ladders, when pressing F to go to the next ladder the kerbal hops back to the previous one. In these cases it would be nice to be able to right click any ladder and have a "grab" option on the selected ladder. If the ladder is within range they will hop to that ladder.
• Which of the open/closing circles that appear on a body's SOI is the entrance and exit can be confusing. Maybe this could be improved. For now, for anyone else who is struggling to remember which one is which I use this. As I ENTER the room (SOI) the door (circle) OPENS. As I EXIT the room I CLOSE the door behind me.

to the above I would also like to add...

• Landing legs could do with being better. The Large landing legs seem to just want to explode even when landing at 2m/s. 
• Also, when landing on anything other than perfectly flat and level terrain, the craft seems to want to tip over or even bounce onto it's side. Can the landing legs be made to compensate for non-level terrain to keep the craft pointing directly upwards, instead of at a 90 degree angle to the ground.
• It would also be great if the landing legs could be made to raise/lower the craft at will after it has landed. Imagine if you want to retrieve a detached buggy. You have a docking port on the buggies top side, and a docking port on the crafts underside. Drive the buggy underneath then lower the craft onto the buggy to dock. this would also help with getting ladders low enough to the ground, while also allowing for a large enough safety gap under the engine for landing.
• Separators/decouplers are too explody! I built a cool, apollo type lander in KSP 1, where you have a descent stage, then to lift off you activate the ascent rocket at the same time as decoupling from the descent stage. But I can't get this to work in KSP2, it just blows up, especially when you need to use a more powerful ascent rocket like a vector engine.

I know they are working on one of these things already, the maneuver node fine adjuster, but wanted to include it anyway just to make this a more complete list of what this player would like to see for the game so far.

Edited April 20 by allanp11

[Bej Kerman]

On 4/11/2024 at 7:03 PM, Meecrob said:

Also, I have a video coming up on my channel where I have a reply to Nate's recent interview.

I'm sure you have a lot to say

On 4/13/2024 at 4:24 PM, PDCWolf said:

However, since they actively refuse to tell us what the KSP2 is about

I'd wager a guess it's like KSP 1, but with colonies and interstellar travel

[leos101]

On 4/20/2024 at 11:26 AM, allanp11 said:

My suggestions? As posted in the UI/UX mega thread....

• Yeah, like many have said the font is very hard to read in places, especially numbers.
• The VAB stage info doesn't have much information. In KSP 1 you could see start weight, end weight, isp (useful if you are mixing different engines), burn time, delta V, thrust and TWR. You could also select which of these is visible. I would like that back for KSP2.
• I don't know if this is a physics thing or a user experience thing, so it might not belong here, but I think it can be remedied with some extra UI controls. The user experience of rover wheels is terrible for moving anything other than tiny rovers. The rovemax TR-L2 wheels are pretty big, bigger than a kerbal, and look like they are suited to moving heavy, 20+ ton loads up and over hills and valleys at a slow but steady pace. Right now, they are geared to do 58m/s, which is 130mph! That's fun for a small buggy, but when I want to move and dock heavy assemblies on the hilly ground, I don't need to do that at 130mph. I would really like to have 2 new sliders for the rover wheels. One is gear ratio to allow me to decrease top speed but increase torque, and the other slider is power, so I can increase the overall power at the expense of increased electricity consumption. Right now, 4 of the the TR-L2 wheels just rolled my 20 ton lander to the middle of a shallow depression and did nothing after that. This definitely needs fixing for colony's. At the highest power setting and biggest gear ratio for torque, the rovemax TR-L2 wheels should be able to move a heavy lander up a very steep slope, steep enough to tip the whole thing over backwards if you're not careful.
• The maneuver plan is very hard to adjust correctly. I would really like a separate fine adjust tool similar to what KSP1 had.
• I would also like to plan more than 1 maneuver plans ahead, and to see the deltaV cost of each maneuver plan.
• Being able to set the maneuver plan on the line that appears inside the SOI of the body you get an encounter with would also be great. I want to see if I have enough deltaV and thrust to slow down enough to get into an orbit, instead of just hoping I don't whizz by.
• Sometimes maneuver plans can come upon you very quickly before you have had time to adjust it. I would like the ability to set and adjust the maneuver node while the game is paused, or maybe even better to have a few time warp options below 1x speed, so we could have 0.5x, 0.25x and 0.125x warp settings. This would give us more time to adjust the node but also seeing things happen in slow motion might help us understand why the blasted large landing legs are exploding when landing at 2m/s!
• The new closet approach windows are better than in KSP1, so thank you for that. However, the closest approach keeps disappearing despite adjusting to get it closer. It will do this even though I'm not getting an encounter yet. Then when I get it to reappear the window is gone and I have to reopen it again, which usually means closing the maneuver plan I'm working on, only to re-open the closest approach window, then I have to hope that it stays open when I reopen the maneuver plan.
• The maneuver plan I'm working on closes when right clicking the PE to keep the PE displayed.
• It can be hard/impossible to select the right thing when zoomed out in map view. In Kerbin's SOI I might have an orbiting satellite or 2, the mun, munmus, Kerbin itself, and a closed maneuver node I would like to reopen. When zoomed out in the map view they are all on top of each other. I would like to be able to click and then choose which one of those things to select if there are multiple items there. I would also like the ability to show/hide map view elements, unless that's already there and I have yet to find it!
• When attempting to EVA I often get the error message saying something like EVA is blocked due to obstacle. I think whatever the EVA check box thing is, it's too large, and it would be nice to be able to see that hit box while building. Have it be toggleable on and off of course, it could be an option that appears when you right click the command pod/seat to show EVA check box, and have anything that clips into it be shown in red.
• in the VAB, the way symmetry works can be confusing. If I place two radial fuel tanks then I go to strut between the tanks and the main body, sometimes it will put two struts on one tank. the symmetry of the one side tank I click on is respected over the symmetry of the whole ship. It would be nice to have different symmetry modes to select between part symmetry or whole vessel symmetry, or select which part build symmetry is applied to. Also, bring back remove from symmetry option. 
• When moving up/down ladders, sometimes I have to place the small three rung ladders in weird places/angles to get a claimable path back to the command module door. However, when attempting to climb these ladders, when pressing F to go to the next ladder the kerbal hops back to the previous one. In these cases it would be nice to be able to right click any ladder and have a "grab" option on the selected ladder. If the ladder is within range they will hop to that ladder.
• Which of the open/closing circles that appear on a body's SOI is the entrance and exit can be confusing. Maybe this could be improved. For now, for anyone else who is struggling to remember which one is which I use this. As I ENTER the room (SOI) the door (circle) OPENS. As I EXIT the room I CLOSE the door behind me.

to the above I would also like to add...

• Landing legs could do with being better. The Large landing legs seem to just want to explode even when landing at 2m/s. 
• Also, when landing on anything other than perfectly flat and level terrain, the craft seems to want to tip over or even bounce onto it's side. Can the landing legs be made to compensate for non-level terrain to keep the craft pointing directly upwards, instead of at a 90 degree angle to the ground.
• It would also be great if the landing legs could be made to raise/lower the craft at will after it has landed. Imagine if you want to retrieve a detached buggy. You have a docking port on the buggies top side, and a docking port on the crafts underside. Drive the buggy underneath then lower the craft onto the buggy to dock. this would also help with getting ladders low enough to the ground, while also allowing for a large enough safety gap under the engine for landing.
• Separators/decouplers are too explody! I built a cool, apollo type lander in KSP 1, where you have a descent stage, then to lift off you activate the ascent rocket at the same time as decoupling from the descent stage. But I can't get this to work in KSP2, it just blows up, especially when you need to use a more powerful ascent rocket like a vector engine.

I know they are working on one of these things already, the maneuver node fine adjuster, but wanted to include it anyway just to make this a more complete list of what this player would like to see for the game so far.

Hi! The issues you've highlighted, like the hard-to-read font, lack of information in the VAB stage info, difficulty adjusting maneuver nodes, exploding landing legs, and confusing symmetry options in the VAB, are valid concerns. I hope the developers take note of these points and work on addressing them. A user-friendly interface is crucial for an enjoyable gameplay experience, and your suggestions could go a long way in enhancing the overall usability of KSP2. Let's hope the team incorporates some of these changes in future updates.