Anything Positive About KSP2

[Scarecrow71]

Ever since the news dropped, things here in the forum have been rather depressing.  Negative, questioning what is happening, attacks on other forum members.  Things have taken a turn for the worse, and it makes me sad.

We were hungry for KSP2, and in spite of its problems, we played it.  Fired it up, dealt with bugs, went on missions.  Some people are still playing it, and are still creating oddities.  @ShadowZone released a video recently where he flung the four OG Kerbals into the farthest recesses of space. spacetime development might be dead, some people are still playing and getting enjoyment.

With that said, I'd like to try something new here.  I'd like to have a thread where people talk about things in the game that made them feel happy or good about it.  Was it some mission you flew?  Or perhaps a discoverable you, um, discovered?  Something the game has that you didn't realize before that made you think " all righty then!"?

I will start.  I've got more than 1000 hours in KSP1, but I had never flown to Jool before.  I've been to all the other planets, and landed on all of them.  Notice I said landed; I still have not gotten back off Eve.  But in KSP2, thanks to For Science!, I flew to and landed on Pol, Bop, and Tylo.  I was able to return from both Pol and Bop, while leaving a rover on Tylo.  Landing that rover on Tylo was the single biggest achievement in my KSP playing time.

I'd like to ask that anyone who responds here to please only talk about things in KSP2 that you either never did in KSP1, or that made you feel good about the game.  Nothing negative!  We have a ton of those threads already; I do not want this thread to get locked because it dives into what is wrong or that TT is evil.  Positivity only!

[Fizzlebop Smith]

This is somewhat counter to the vein of your request, but I feel the MOST positive effect of this whole event is related to the revitalization of KSP1 mod scene.

The activity across old threads is increasing as people come here seeking help for mods. Mods for KSP1 that were inactive for years are getting updates. It really has been one aspect that I've seen as a saving grace.

As for aspect related to KSP2 that I enjoyed. Breathing life into the forum was truly amazing. The music was pretty awesome... the scope. I also appreciate what they 'tried to do.

[Scarecrow71]

13 minutes ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

This is somewhat counter to the vein of your request, but I feel the MOST positive effect of this whole event is related to the revitalization of KSP1 mod scene.

The activity across old threads is increasing as people come here seeking help for mods. Mods for KSP1 that were inactive for years are getting updates. It really has been one aspect that I've seen as a saving grace.

As for aspect related to KSP2 that I enjoyed. Breathing life into the forum was truly amazing. The music was pretty awesome... the scope. I also appreciate what they 'tried to do.

No, that doesn't go counter to what I was asking.  This is EXACTLY the kind of positive impact that KSP2 has had that I'd like to highlight.  A lot of people went back to KSP1, and they wanted it to be like what KSP2 was supposed to be.  It revitalized mods and the KSP1 section of the forums.

Great call out!

[Lisias]

The best thing I can say from KSP2 is also the worst.

The launch. Boy, they got a huge amount of interest, the Steam Charts skyrocketed. Had the launch be successful, they would had eclipsed the prequel easily. 

They proved there was a demand for the game.

[Aviator01]

On my Minimus mission in exploration mode, before they patched out the feature bug of the sun’s light blocking out the stars during the day, I flew Jebediah Kerman halfway across the planet with his jetpack to collect more science. Jeb reached orbital altitude and the view of Minimus stretching out below me in the complete darkness of space was beautiful. 

[MarcAbaddon]

I think the music is really well done - not just the score itself, but how it changes depending on your situation. If there's a feature I wish would be backported to KSP 1 it's that. 

Other than that I think there are things it does well, but those are features already in KSP 1. 

[James Kerman]

Thread temporarily locked for moderator review.

[Vanamonde]

Some stuff removed. There are plenty of places to post negativity. Please stay on-topic with positive contents for this thread. 

Some comments removed. 

Thread re-opened. 

[Polaris0352]

Though there are still bugs, I will say the music, the sound design, the visuals, they definitely make for some awe inspiring  experiences. I have KSP1 HEAVILY modded and it just doesn't have quite the same feel as KSP2. Sure, I have more parts to play with in the original, but oddly, I find myself wondering what more they had in store after landing at the Mun arch and just scratching the surface on that storyline. 

[Superfluous J]

One word: Dres.

More words: I absolutely love the equatorial mountain range around Dres. Finally a world where you can't just show up, land on the equator somewhere relatively flat, then go home again. And it looks AWESOME.

[K^2]

I really liked the visual updates and procedural placement tech. Yes, I know there are mods for most of it for KSP1, but having that in stock was great. It needed a ton of shader optimization, but I have no doubt that would come eventually. That, and the loading times were the biggest wins for KSP2.

There were also a few things that were good ideas poorly implemented, but maybe would get there with some fixes? I would put the new VAB in that category, as well as the way the data was structured to handle craft and part collections in a very data-driven way. Anyone who dug around the save files will tell you. There were UI problems and the way data was translated to game state and back was a disaster (broken symmetry modes, things not attaching or not detaching randomly...), so it felt worse, but I can tell why Intercept went in that direction and where they were going with it. If it were fixed, it'd be amazing both for the stock game and for modding. In a similar vein, the teleporting KSC was an indicator that the colony tech was in progress, and while it's completely useless without a colony builder, it's sort of technically there, so from a narrow "technically a feature" perspective it's in the game. Custom space centers have been hacked into KSP1, but KSP2 was treating these as a place-anywhere sort of object from the start, which would make building new space centers or colonies on other worlds or even in orbit a lot more straight forward.

If there weren't so many problems with game state, physics, and CPU performance - basically if what was there was fully playable, I think modders could have run with the skeleton of the KSC tech as a foundation for colony builder, and get that playable. Likewise, shaders could have been written to fix a lot of problems with GPU performance, cloud quality, and visuals that people didn't like. Same goes for UI that some people didn't like. It might be hard to believe how close we were to a foundation that, with mods, could have significantly outperformed modded KSP1. That was the correct direction for the KSP2 and I think Intercept were on the path to it, and it's a shame we didn't get to the payoff.

[Fizzlebop Smith]

I like the procedure wings without full procedural load out like Juno. Felt it was a nice balance & glad the wings were brought up.

[MarcAbaddon]

The loading times are great compared to modded KSP 1, but I wonder if they would really scale. The issue with KSP 1 was that once you added mods and parts it takes a lot longer. Unmodded KSP loads up quite fast for me as well.

[cocoscacao]

I'm surprised no one mentioned rocket painting. It really added style to the crafts. Jool moons also look amazing.

Edited June 11 by cocoscacao

[GobboKirk]

1 hour ago, cocoscacao said:

I'm surprised no one mentioned rocket painting. It really added style to the crafts. Jool moons also look amazing.

Even just giving them a metal look gives them a really realistic look.
Also it gave me the urge to play with Kerbals again, had kinda forgot about KSP a bit until this showed up.

[HebaruSan]

It was nice that axial tilt finally got done.

[K^2]

6 hours ago, MarcAbaddon said:

The loading times are great compared to modded KSP 1, but I wonder if they would really scale. The issue with KSP 1 was that once you added mods and parts it takes a lot longer. Unmodded KSP loads up quite fast for me as well.

Hard to be confident that the loading time wouldn't still grow significantly, but KSP2 loading times for mods would still scale better than for KSP1. KSP1's approach was load and parse absolutely everything at warmup and get it into RAM. KSP2 had a lot of improvements in both how it loaded data and when it loaded it. So with similar mod load, KSP2 would still come out way ahead.

Also, KSP1 with DLCs takes a silly amount of time to load even without mods. Not nearly as bad as with the mods, but it's not a reasonable amount of time for a game loading from a fast SSD by any measure.

[Vl3d]

I love the game and I'm sure it will be a success story in the end.

[AstroEvada]

KSP2's steam DB shows that updates are being made to the depots so it has a heartbeat at least

[BechMeister]

Well... I have been trucking on in the game with the challenges + extra steps I put upon myself. But I must admit that a driving factor for me last year was the encouragement from the forum. As of now its actually not the state of the game that kills lust to play.. its the despair of the community. I think its even worse on the official discord.. I feel the KSP2 general chat only talks about substitute games for KSP2.. and when ever I post something I did in game.. no one seems to care. 

I know that this can come off as very self centered.. or like: 

If it come across as that - it is not my point... my point is, that when ever the game got tough it was the encouragement, suggestions and feedback from the community that got me going.. And none of my other acquaintances care enough about space travel to understand it when I talk about what I am doing in the game. 

So what I am really saying is.. I miss the community. 

I have decided that once Im dont with my current mission report - ill stop playing KSP until further notice.

[Fizzlebop Smith]

@BechMeister

You are absolutely correct. As the state of the forum fell into the current state of ennui my desire to play KSP died. Whether 1 or 2 made no difference.

I would fire one of them up and force quite before the intro scene could appear...

Them as life began tp return to KSP1 modding threads.. I felt my desire begin to stir. It was as if I were in highschool getting ready for prom..

The conversations of people trouble shooting mod conflicts .. or advidly exchanging suggestions between mod developer & community.. I would feel an itch begin.. playing the game seems tp scratch that for now.

Albeit it.. a heavily modded KSP1 install, but I hadn't touched the game in 6 months & I find myself hooked again.

[BechMeister]

1 hour ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

Albeit it.. a heavily modded KSP1 install, but I hadn't touched the game in 6 months & I find myself hooked again.

Believe it or not.. I have as of now 1200h in KSP2 - and I have only just left Kerbin SOI for Duna.. I think Ive made 9 launches to Duna, and 2 that came back - If all goes well from now on, its just 2 more launches and I'm done with the Duna Mastery Challenge.

I feel like I need a break from the game though - so when those two launches are done... I think ill slip back into Eve Online.. and we will see when Eve will let me go again. Just like in Kerbin, the atmosphere is quite hard to escape 

But it makes me kind of "sad" - I never got into KSP1.. I actually think the piecemeal launch of KSP2 was what allowed me to get in.. it was not overwhelming in the same way.. I learned a lot building space infrastructure.. and by the time I was ready to leave Kerbin SOI. I think I was armed to do cool stuff around Duna.

Edited June 11 by BechMeister

[Heretic391]

I know it's not much but the improved visuals was what I was after. I really like how pol and some of the planets look so I landed on all of them

[cubinator]

The music.

[kerbiloid]

No real Kerbals have been harmed throughout the time. It's positive.