Similar games to KSA/KSP/you name it. :)

[Skorj]

As far as the game engine: if the game is properly moddable, the engine doesn't matter to almost any mod.  There's no reason adding parts or skins or changing the tech tree should require coding.  And if it does, you shouldn't have to know the details of the game engine.  At the point "game engine knowledge" really matters, you're beyond the point where the game is moddable and you're just writing game code directly.  KSP has a lot of this of course, but it was mod-friendly rather than moddable.

Or, put a different way, to anyone who says there can't be a huge mod community around an indie game with a custom game engine, I need reply only "Factorio".

The kittens are still placeholders as far as we know, but even if it ends up being kittens due to inertia and lack of a better idea, IMO cartoon kittens (with serious expressions) and cartoon Kerbals appeal to the same audience.  The actual critter doesn't matter IMO, just that it is emotionally expressive.  You need your astronaut to look around in wonder when landing on a new planet, to move from fear to relief when your sad rocket finally makes it to orbit on the Nth try.  Juno proved just how important that part is. 

I don't think it's an age thing: people don't seem to play AS kerbals, it's not an RPG, but rather as the director of the space agency sending them off to their doom.  It's the difference between a physics sim game like KSP where the focus of the game is the rockets and the Kerbals are along for the  ride, and a "space sim" game like Elite Dangerous, where you play the pilot, not the ship.

Anyway, KSA would be the spiritual successor to KSP, not a sequel.  That's fine IMO, though I'd be delighted if they get the license to change that.

[Lisias]

23 hours ago, Skorj said:

As far as the game engine: if the game is properly moddable, the engine doesn't matter to almost any mod.  There's no reason adding parts or skins or changing the tech tree should require coding.  And if it does, you shouldn't have to know the details of the game engine.

What means that you would be only allowed to do what the developers allows you to do - as it was made on Carrier Command 2.

Better than nothing, but yet... Limiting. What is not necessarily a bad thing for the game (perhaps it would made it better) but, still, is limiting.

Unless they do a really, really good work on exposing a very decent programming API - but this can cost them as much as the game engine itself...

 

23 hours ago, Skorj said:

And if it does, you shouldn't have to know the details of the game engine.

 On a second thought... Since this Scene established that it's acceptable to use Harmony to patch the game and replace code, as well to rely on Reverse Engineering to be able to do such, you can bet that RW will have people trying to do the same on KSA to overcome such "artificial" limitations.

The custom engine will make the entry cost pretty steeper, no doubt - but if money enough is involved (what probably will happen if KSA ends up being a success), the learning curve will probably be steep but people will eventually manage to score it. And this Scene also proved that users tend to blame the messenger and the game for problems with mods, this may be more of a problem to RW than it was for KSP...

Anyway... I may had digress here.

 

23 hours ago, Skorj said:

Or, put a different way, to anyone who says there can't be a huge mod community around an indie game with a custom game engine, I need reply only "Factorio".

How many mods from Factorio we would be able to use on KSA? Unless you can show at least one, yes, it will be a learning curve.

Right now Factorio have about 25K concurrent users, and it orbited this value for some time. SteamDB says the owners estimations to be between 3.17 to 7.56M . This game is huge.

If they aim to have the same level of engagement Factorio did by doing the same it did, they need to sell approximately the same number of copies, right?

For comparison, KSP2 had 25K concurrent users on day 1, but it plummeted very fast (obviously). It's said that they sold 80K copies of KSP2.

Interesting enough, Factorio had about 11K concurrent players on day 1 in 2017, and kept this way until 2020 when they reached about impressive 35K and stabilized on 20K, and last year by some reason they scored a staggering 118K and appears to be stabilized at 25K concurrent users now.

So... Yeah, you may have a point here. They don't need to start big to be big eventually.

BUT... Keep in mind, there was a learning cure - Factorio have a huge amount of mods today, NINE years after being launched (Feb 2016).

Ask Wube Software to launch Factorio 2 on a new custom engine, incompatible with the predecessor, to see what they will repond...

KSP came first and paved the way. KSA is coming last, with users having a lot of luggage to carry on. It will be a uphill battle to convince users that they won't need such luggage - exactly where KSP2 failed to accomplish, by the way.

 

23 hours ago, Skorj said:

The kittens are still placeholders as far as we know

If you are right, this opened some interesting doors for the future.

 

23 hours ago, Skorj said:

but even if it ends up being kittens due to inertia and lack of a better idea, IMO cartoon kittens (with serious expressions) and cartoon Kerbals appeal to the same audience.

Definitively not. They may share some audience, but assuming that people that enjoyed playing Kerbals would automatically enjoy Kittens is a serious mistake - it would be like assuming that kids that enjoyed GI Joe ("Falcon" in Brazil - I was one of these kids!) would automatically jump on the He-Man toys some years later.

People just don't behave this way.

There would be no Marketing otherwise.

Edited January 30 by Lisias
Entertaining grammars made slightely less entertaining...