The Comprehensive Colony Communications Archive

[steveman0]

If it makes sense for the long term, sure why not allow conversions. I wouldn't ask for any more than is absoluately necessary of the interim solution. The goal should be to release colonies in a state that is fun new content that players can experiment and feedback on knowing there will be changes for the future final version refined by the resources update. If this will include conversion options then including those now gives the chance to benefit from the feedback on this as a gameplay option.

[Scarecrow71]

3 hours ago, Flush Foot said:

Unless there is a way to convert back and forth (with EC, of course) in a way that eventually produces a net-gain of products, I would not want to be locked into fuel-based conversions  before we get true resources.

There shouldn't be a net gain when doing conversions.  Regardless of start and end products, the best you should be able to hope for is a 1:1 conversion rate.  And even in KSP1 this didn't happen.  With the Convert-O-Tron 125 you lost a boatload of ore in the conversion process.

[Flush Foot]

7 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

There shouldn't be a net gain when doing conversions.  Regardless of start and end products, the best you should be able to hope for is a 1:1 conversion rate.  And even in KSP1 this didn't happen.  With the Convert-O-Tron 125 you lost a boatload of ore in the conversion process.

I also don't want net-gains, but if Colonies does not ship with any form of resource-inputs [even simple KSP 1 'ore' + ISRU] then I do not want to be limited to 'onboard fuel-levels' in order to generate LH2 for the nuclear engines

[Scarecrow71]

20 minutes ago, Flush Foot said:

I do not want to be limited to 'onboard fuel-levels'

How exactly is this different than needing to bring ore somewhere?  You are limited by the resources you have at your disposal to do a conversion, so I'm not sure I understand why you think being limited to on-board fuel levels would be a bad thing.

[herbal space program]

5 hours ago, steveman0 said:

I don't see these as being incompatible. Just because we don't have resources yet doesn't mean a colony fuel factory can't produce fuel from EC alone when built in the correct location. They could implement the full requirements for colony construction, power generation, thermal management, and the installation of end fuel production facilities with the caveat that you can only produce the fuel(s) available to your local body with the precursor resource assumed available in an unlimited quantity if only at a limited rate.

That sounds like a sensible compromise between fully implemented resource extraction and OP colony bases that can magically make anything out of nothing besides EC, but in my book that would still involve resources on some level, i.e. some base resource has to be present on the body you're occupying to enable production of specific things. Even better in my book would be if the game requires you to set up your colony within some distance of said resource, e.g. near water deposits in some permanently shadowed Munar crater, which doesn't seem like it would require a whole lot of new stuff to implement, but I guess we'll see.

Edited April 15 by herbal space program

[Flush Foot]

18 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

How exactly is this different than needing to bring ore somewhere?  You are limited by the resources you have at your disposal to do a conversion, so I'm not sure I understand why you think being limited to on-board fuel levels would be a bad thing.

My concern is "if there ARE no ores / inputs we can use on colonies to make fuel (like for newly launched ships or just refueling existing ones), then I do not want the only way to generate fuel to be a 'transmutation' of fuel that is already at the colony, meaning all fuel still must come from the KSC".

I would prefer 'basic ore-resource' to be in-game during Colonies-only, but expecting that is NOT the case, I would prefer it if we could

10 minutes ago, herbal space program said:

produce fuel from EC alone

, pending v0.5 and true resources

[steveman0]

8 hours ago, herbal space program said:

but in my book that would still involve resources on some level, i.e. some base resource has to be present on the body you're occupying to enable production of specific things. Even better in my book would be if the game requires you to set up your colony within some distance of said resource, e.g. near water deposits in some permanently shadowed Munar crater, which doesn't seem like it would require a whole lot of new stuff to implement, but I guess we'll see.

Colony placement was something called out before so it's a good theory. Even a basic true/false would suffice in my view: Mun and Minmus can only produce oxidizer, Duna can produce oxidizer and methalox, Eve can produce these and hydrogen as a simple subset of examples.

If the thermal management aspects of design are compelling enough on their own, this might be a far more interesting aspect than the fuel you get out from the effort. I'll likely enjoy building several in various places just for the fun of it and I expect they are counting on that too to keep it interesting until full resources are added later.

[Presto200]

Can whoever has that spreadsheet of time since previous updates add it to this thread? I think it was @Spicat?

Edited April 16 by Presto200

[Spicat]

On 4/16/2024 at 5:57 PM, Presto200 said:

Can whoever has that spreadsheet of time since previous updates add it to this thread? I think it was @Spicat?

This?

[Presto200]

3 hours ago, Spicat said:

This?

Yes thank you, this is the longest period since an update!

[Scarecrow71]

4 hours ago, Spicat said:

This?

Rounded up, and not including the current period, thats an average of 49 days between patches.

[RileyHef]

22 hours ago, Spicat said:

Could this provide us a better clue for the release timeline of Colonies / 0.3?

We have confirmation of at least a 0.2.2 release. Let's be optimistic and say that update comes in about 2 weeks (May 2nd, 2024). Using Scarecrow's average of 49 days between releases, we could anticipate the next update around June 20th. If that next update was 0.3 (again, being optimistic), then the timeline of milestones would look like this:

     0.1 to 0.2 - 9 months, 26 days

     0.2 to 0.3 (speculated) - 6 months, 2 days

This timeline would match the hopes shared by Nate that the Colonies update would come quicker than For Science! and leaves quite a bit of breathing room. Even if there was a 0.2.3 update that dropped in June instead of 0.3 these timelines would still allow for an August release to follow (which still would meet the proposed timeline goals).

Of course, this talk feels quite arbitrary given that each update and milestone is unique, but it helps put things in perspective. Do I want to wait until the end of summer for colonies? Not at all. However, the rate of development seems to show that we are indeed in the thick of it for now and the upcoming months.

[Flush Foot]

16 minutes ago, RileyHef said:

hopes shared by Nate that the Colonies update would come quicker than For Science!

I think in at least one of the interviews around the time FS! came out, he even said he hoped/expected it would be significantly quicker than v0.1 to v0.2 (I'll try to find such a clip with timestamp later today)

[RileyHef]

45 minutes ago, Flush Foot said:

I think in at least one of the interviews around the time FS! came out, he even said he hoped/expected it would be significantly quicker than v0.1 to v0.2 (I'll try to find such a clip with timestamp later today)

Correct! Here at around 15:40. "Significantly shorter turnaround time," with, of course, an large asterisk including everything Nate said in the minute prior to the timestamp about not wanting to make concreate guarantees.

In my eyes, a 6 month period between 0.2 and 0.3 would definitely be a significant difference. We will see come June.

[Flush Foot]

2 minutes ago, RileyHef said:

In my eyes, a 6 month period between 0.2 and 0.3 would definitely be a significant difference. We will see come June.

Likewise! 9 months down to 6 months would be significant (33% less time!)  

[stephensmat]

Also, remember that they announced Science Mode a month before it launched. Factor that in however you like.

[steveman0]

16 hours ago, RileyHef said:

Correct! Here at around 15:40. "Significantly shorter turnaround time," with, of course, an large asterisk including everything Nate said in the minute prior to the timestamp about not wanting to make concreate guarantees.

In my eyes, a 6 month period between 0.2 and 0.3 would definitely be a significant difference. We will see come June.

I always like to highlight that the "significantly" here was notably understated compared to all of the caution about the timeline.  I think it's a bit extreme to put too much stock in that considering there were doubts that it could even be faster.  These kinds of interpretations are the kinds of things that set people up for disappointment.  I think a fairer assessment is that it will be marginally faster.

[PDCWolf]

22 hours ago, RileyHef said:

Correct! Here at around 15:40. "Significantly shorter turnaround time," with, of course, an large asterisk including everything Nate said in the minute prior to the timestamp about not wanting to make concreate guarantees.

In my eyes, a 6 month period between 0.2 and 0.3 would definitely be a significant difference. We will see come June.

We're not waiting for 0.3 currently, the next expected patch is a fix pre-colonies. I do believe colonies will arrive faster than science, maybe july/august.

[RileyHef]

53 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

We're not waiting for 0.3 currently, the next expected patch is a fix pre-colonies. I do believe colonies will arrive faster than science, maybe july/august.

Right. This comment was a follow up to my initial timeline speculations below (with an admittedly optimistic 0.2.2 update release in consideration)

On 4/18/2024 at 1:01 PM, RileyHef said:

Could this provide us a better clue for the release timeline of Colonies / 0.3?

We have confirmation of at least a 0.2.2 release. Let's be optimistic and say that update comes in about 2 weeks (May 2nd, 2024). Using Scarecrow's average of 49 days between releases, we could anticipate the next update around June 20th. If that next update was 0.3 (again, being optimistic), then the timeline of milestones would look like this:

     0.1 to 0.2 - 9 months, 26 days

     0.2 to 0.3 (speculated) - 6 months, 2 days

This timeline would match the hopes shared by Nate that the Colonies update would come quicker than For Science! and leaves quite a bit of breathing room. Even if there was a 0.2.3 update that dropped in June instead of 0.3 these timelines would still allow for an August release to follow (which still would meet the proposed timeline goals).

Of course, this talk feels quite arbitrary given that each update and milestone is unique, but it helps put things in perspective. Do I want to wait until the end of summer for colonies? Not at all. However, the rate of development seems to show that we are indeed in the thick of it for now and the upcoming months.

 

[The Aziz]

Pinned? Now that's an honor if I see one

[KspNoobUsernameTaken]

Once the engine implements colonies, modders should be able to accelerate progress a lot. Making new parts and part modules is not a major challenge compared to extending the actual backbone of KSP 2. I think it would be good for Intercept to roll out a mostly-functional colony system with a few basic parts, then let the modders expand the part catalog to satisfy the playerbase.

[steveman0]

I don't think the parts are what are holding them back. As you noted, new parts and modules aren't challenging. The fundamentals of the system including improvements to performance to support them aren't something easily released early. The requirements are quite extensive and why I have always felt the original 6-8 month timeline was a bit optimistic. A lot has to be done if they are aiming for it to be complete to the extent that they can fully shift new development to interstellar.

[RileyHef]

On 4/17/2024 at 2:08 PM, Spicat said:

On 4/18/2024 at 1:01 PM, RileyHef said:

Could this provide us a better clue for the release timeline of Colonies / 0.3?

-snip-

Providing an update on my speculated timeline due to news we learned today (confirmation of 0.2.3 and a still unknown on 0.2.2 release date).

The average time between updates is now 54 days (up from 49 in quoted post).

If 0.2.2 released in 2 weeks we would have it on May 9th, 2024.

Using the current average of all update timeframes, we could anticipate 0.2.3 on or around July 2nd, 2024.

Again, using the average above, the time between 0.2.3 and 0.3.0 would take us to a release date on or around August 25th, 2024.

0.1 to 0.2 was 9 months, 25 days. This speculative colonies release date would put time between 0.2 and 0.3 at 8 months, 6 days.

---

These are rough numbers and approximations only, so I am not making any sound predictions. However, I do believe this is an easy way to put progress into perspective. This timeline still has colonies beating the time it took to reach For Science by roughly a month and a half. Still acceptable, given Nate's previously mentioned hopes. However, there is very little room for additional 3 month gaps between updates and/or a 0.2.4 update if we are to believe his word. I'm skeptical that we get colonies before September 2024, but I would love to be proved wrong.

[Alpha_star]

On 4/26/2024 at 4:20 AM, RileyHef said:

Providing an update on my speculated timeline due to news we learned today (confirmation of 0.2.3 and a still unknown on 0.2.2 release date).

The average time between updates is now 54 days (up from 49 in quoted post).

If 0.2.2 released in 2 weeks we would have it on May 9th, 2024.

Using the current average of all update timeframes, we could anticipate 0.2.3 on or around July 2nd, 2024.

Again, using the average above, the time between 0.2.3 and 0.3.0 would take us to a release date on or around August 25th, 2024.

0.1 to 0.2 was 9 months, 25 days. This speculative colonies release date would put time between 0.2 and 0.3 at 8 months, 6 days.

---

These are rough numbers and approximations only, so I am not making any sound predictions. However, I do believe this is an easy way to put progress into perspective. This timeline still has colonies beating the time it took to reach For Science by roughly a month and a half. Still acceptable, given Nate's previously mentioned hopes. However, there is very little room for additional 3 month gaps between updates and/or a 0.2.4 update if we are to believe his word. I'm skeptical that we get colonies before September 2024, but I would love to be proved wrong.

Well for me I personally don't believe that much in "past track records", and just because it takes this long between this update and the next one doesn't mean it would be the case forever.

I'd think the gap betwwen 0.2.1 and 0.2.2 would be much longer than the one between 0.2.2 and 0.2.3, since the latest update shows something that's not going to be in the game in 0.2.2. My speculation is that 0.2.3 would come about a month after 0.2.2 and will include a plume overhaul, perhaps a few more parts but no big content update. The multi-layer clouds will come in 0.3.0 or after that.

Still, some hope is good.

[KspNoobUsernameTaken]

On 4/26/2024 at 1:12 AM, steveman0 said:

I don't think the parts are what are holding them back. As you noted, new parts and modules aren't challenging. The fundamentals of the system including improvements to performance to support them aren't something easily released early. The requirements are quite extensive and why I have always felt the original 6-8 month timeline was a bit optimistic. A lot has to be done if they are aiming for it to be complete to the extent that they can fully shift new development to interstellar.

That is true; I think that if ground colonies had a toggle between "static" & "vessel",  with static being like Kerbal Konstructs, that would help with performance, and therefore implementation speed. But obviously it's a bit of a lazy approach and would need  "unstatic-ing" before modifying anything.

Even so, a faster, less complete update that people can modify is better than a 11 year wait followed by most people changing everything anyway.