If KSP2 was reworked, what would you change?

[Pthigrivi]

I'll say off the bat Im not all that optimistic it'll actually happen, but if there was a miraculous resurrection what would you like to see? What would you do differently?

High on my list:

1) Focus on KSP2 as an actual game - Granted I think most of the way the original devs conceptualized KSP2 was about right and could have been great if they'd had the chance to follow through on it, but what felt especially missing by the time KSP2 got canned was the game part of the game. KSP1 has always been a fun simulator, but its a bit like if you were given a big kit of parts in Tears of the Kingdom and there were no puzzles to solve with them. You sort of had that in KSP1, go and land on other planets and click on a bunch of experiments for science, but that part of it--the game part--was pretty shallow. This is why I thought it was a bit weird when PD presented the roadmap that interstellar came before resources and that science wasn't intimately related with resources. It seems to me that collecting resources and using those resources to build bases and rockets on other planets IS the game. It could have been 80% of what made KSP2 fun. Science should be about unlocking technologies to find and extract resources, which then lets you build more, fly further, gather more, and so on. KSP honestly doesn't have to look like much of anything if that part of it is actually fun. 

2) Think about progression and balance - Even in its nascent form science had some odd structural problems. The basic principle of earning science points and spending them on the tech tree is actually fine, its just that it the process needs to be well structured and curated. We went from some relatively easy and sensible get-yourself-to-orbit type missions straight to a goal of a precision landing on the Mun, something I wasn't able to do for months when I first started. There really should have been a number of intermediate steps to do things like put satellites in orbit, optionally land probes, at the very least land on Minmus first. I think giving the missions more structure than KSP1's procedural system was a good move but it needed to actually do the work of carefully loading on new incremental challenges so new players didn't hit a brick wall. 

3) Maps! -  Honestly is there some technical challenge that's insurmountable here? Why were we looking at Kerbnet through keyhole with a multi-second refresh rate in KSP1? SCANsat just did so much more. I'll never understand why this wasn't prioritized. Don't tell people where the POI are, give them the tools to put satellites in polar orbits and then map them along with biomes, altitude, slope, and resources. You shouldn't need a 2d map window. This stuff should just be overlayed so you can see where you're landing. 

4) Trajectories and better flight info - This was always a big limit for players and it's absence spawned some of the most ubiquitous mods. Its especially important when trying to teach players precision landing. You should really see a line both in flight and map mode showing where you're land factoring drag. 

5) Life support - Im a bit of an evangelist on this one. I know people are skeptical mainly because none of the KSP1 mods got it exactly right. I do think there was a sensible and non-punishing way to integrate this that could feed seamlessly into a solid exploration/ resource gathering/ building game. 

6) Maybe no multiplayer? - This is one of those things that I know is controversial and probably doesn't help sell the game to execs but I honestly don't think multiplayer actually makes sense for KSP. Yes, the problem is time-warp. Of course there are technically ways to get multiplayer to work with time-warp but none of them result in players actually interacting with other players vessels in space in real time--nor would you want to. If you're trying to dock with something you don't want someone else moving it around. If you want to kamikaze someone they can just revert or time-warp away at the last minute. Its not actually doing anything thats very fun. The only thing that does sound fun is buggy racing or maybe dogfighting but you don't need to leave Kerbin for that. There's nothing about the core experience of rocketry, Dv management, and navigating orbital mechanics that dovetails well that kind of real-time interaction. The closest thing I can think of is just to let players all inhabit their own time at their own pace and work collaboratively building stations and bases. That would be quite cool, but I don't think that kind of group bonsai project experience would draw enough players to make the complication worth it. 

Edited 15 hours ago by Pthigrivi

[cocoscacao]

2 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Maybe no multiplayer?

Multiplayer is fine in its simplest form. Time syncing they were planning was... Uhm... Impossible? Convoluted?

PS, that LS draft was really, really good. 

[herbal space program]

3 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

1) Focus on KSP2 as an actual game - 

Agree with this for the most part. There are so many elements of potential game progression around the interplay between missions, resources, and increasing remote capabilities that were never explored. Like maybe in the early game, other bodies are all blurry, and you don't get better views/maps of them until you do stuff like build space telescopes or run flyby missions with different sensors. I think planetary biomes should be revealed somewhere in that progression as well, as should deposits of maybe a half dozen different resources. And then later in the game, exploiting those resources effectively should be essential to building colonies and your ultimate interstellar craft. And of course I think that idea should be blended with some rich network of discoverable sites, all of which are cool to look at but only some of which yield clues to the progression towards some bottleneck technology for interstellar. I feel like they had a lot of the elements for that in place between KSP1 and KSP2, but it never all got meshed together in a way that turned it into a satisfying game narrative.

 

3 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

2) Think about progression and balance -

Yeah, there were many things about the tech tree and facility upgrade system that were super stupid, like how long you have to wait to get a frickin' ladder. There has to be a better way than making that into a bottleneck! And to address your other point, I think there needs to be some kind of self-paced aspect to it, so that at various spots you can choose between less rewarding, intermediate missions  that will help you gain needed skills and just cutting to the chase of a harder one that will advance you in some more substantive way. And yeah, some of the marquee missions in KSP2 were way too hard for beginners. That bullseye Tylo landing at the end still makes me shudder from how many times I had to F9, and that wasn't the only crazy hard thing in there. And I mean for me, that was all fun enough, but for a truly new player, it had to be alienating.

 

3 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

3) Maps! - 

Myeh.  I agree having the ability to have the map window as an inset in the flight window would be great, but overlays...not so sure.

 

3 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

4) Trajectories and better flight info - This was always a big limit for players and it's absence spawned some of the most ubiquitous mods. Its especially important when trying to teach players precision landing. You should really see a line both in flight and map mode showing where you're land factoring drag. 

Myeeeh. How are you going to actually learn a precision landing if you have so many crutches?  And calculating trajectory factoring drag is a tall order, and also not that useful due to the massive influence of attitude.

 

3 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

5) Life support - Im a bit of an evangelist on this one. I know people are skeptical mainly because none of the KSP1 mods got it exactly right. I do think there was a sensible and non-punishing way to integrate this that could feed seamlessly into a solid exploration/ resource gathering/ building game. 

 I mean, I agree it's a bit of an elephant in the room, but it has to be handled intelligently or it could really mess up gameplay.

 

3 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

6) Maybe no multiplayer? -

Yeah, I agree that real-time interaction between players does not seem like a good fit for this type of game. You would have to design a whole new system and interface for something that has very few natural reasons to occur. I could however see multiplayer as a non-interactive competition, where you race to meet certain milestones, identify resources, and exploit them. Oops! we went to the Mohole and our opponent's flag was already there! That sort of thing doesn't seem so hard to implement.

Edited 12 hours ago by herbal space program

[Scarecrow71]

I've got a few things I would like to see.  Some of these @Pthigrivi touched on above.

1.  Strip out multiplayer.  It just really unnecessarily complicates the entire development of the game as all systems have to be created with this in mind.  I know that MP is wanted by a lot of people in the community, and maybe at some point one of the nods from KSP1 could get a treatment here.  But to actually get the game created within reasonable expectations and dates?  I don't think MP is possible.

2.  Overhaul Science mode.  We can all agree that what was implemented was a dumbed-down version of what KSP1 has.  Which didn't go over very well.  What i would like to see is a tech tree based in accomplishment, not clicking a button and getting a non-zero point total to spend.  For example, if you want to go suborbital, first you have to do X flights in the atmosphere.  OK, now you want to go to the Mun?  First you gotta do X orbital flights.  And you can apply the same thing to newer pieces of tech.  You want wings that reduce drag better than what you have?  Maybe fly a weather balloon and take wond speed readings, or put specific wings through wind tunnel exercises.  These are examples, but you can extrapolate.

3.  Overhaul Missions.  As pointed out above, going from "Launch a rocket" to "Land at this exact spot on the Mun" in a couple flights was just way too fast.  And landing on Tylo immediately after Duna?  A lot of people never even leave Kerbin's SOI, so this is just a major stretch.  Slow things down a bit.  Get people to explore.  Don't force flights to the Jool system right away.  In fact, there aren't any missions to the inner planets (or is there one to Eve?).  Or Dres.  We have a while system to explore.  Let's go explore it.

I have to disagree with adding Life Support.  I think it just overly complicates the game,  especially for new players.  I can honestly say that if this was in KSP1 I probably would have never played more than a flight or two.  Imagine a player new to the game wondering why their Kerbals all die all the time, and then realizing they need to deal with that on top of everything else.

[Mr. Kerbin]

22 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

I have to disagree with adding Life Support.  I think it just overly complicates the game,  especially for new players.  I can honestly say that if this was in KSP1 I probably would have never played more than a flight or two.  Imagine a player new to the game wondering why their Kerbals all die all the time, and then realizing they need to deal with that on top of everything else.

It wouldn’t be as hardcore- more like this, as @Pthigrivi detailed in the LS thread.

Quote

Having access to air and water each Kerbal can go about 10 days before they start to get hungry, and after that they'll become progressively more and more grumpy over 20 days until they become miserable and lose all bonuses to science collection. They can still fly, still collect samples, but they'll be worth half as much as a happy, fed kerbal would collect. This in a way makes LS the Kerbal analog to Comnet for probe missions--an extra layer of difficulty that helps get the most out of your trip. Players respond strongly to incentives and I think this gives plenty of impetus for exploring the system without heavy handed punishments. 
 

 

Edited 11 hours ago by Mr. Kerbin

[Scarecrow71]

@Mr. Kerbin

That is simply punishing players for no reason, though.  New players will build a rocket, see the fuel, and go "Hey, I can iInore feeding them".  And then, as soon as they get git eith a penalty to science collection- even if warned about it ahead of time - they will get angry and quit.

I am still a firm believer that if it can be toggled on/off, then add it.  But please don't force its use on us.  That will simply turn off a large portion of the community from the game.

[Superfluous J]

5 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

2.  Overhaul Science mode.  We can all agree that what was implemented was a dumbed-down version of what KSP1 has.  Which didn't go over very well.  What i would like to see is a tech tree based in accomplishment, not clicking a button and getting a non-zero point total to spend.  For example, if you want to go suborbital, first you have to do X flights in the atmosphere.  OK, now you want to go to the Mun?  First you gotta do X orbital flights.  And you can apply the same thing to newer pieces of tech.  You want wings that reduce drag better than what you have?  Maybe fly a weather balloon and take wond speed readings, or put specific wings through wind tunnel exercises.  These are examples, but you can extrapolate.

I will never support "do this action multiple times or we won't allow you to go to Mun."

If I can land on Mun on my very first rocket, go me. Don't lock down the ability behind doing any number of orbital flights, even if that number is 1.

Everybody complains that science points are arbitrary but so is XP in pretty much every single game ever made. Lara Croft learns how to craft better shoes by shooting dudes with arrows. In Factorio you learn how to build a rocket by shoving gears and circuit boards (and a dozen or so other semi-random items) into "science" bottles and disintegrating them.

Is it realistic? Of course not, but what it does do - in every good instance of it at least - is create a gameplay loop that rewards the player for doing the thing that the game is about. Tomb Raider, it's killing dudes with arrows (and raiding tombs sometimes though not all that often these days). In Factorio, it's setting up factories to make stuff. In KSP, it's building rockets that go places.

Is science perfect? Of course not, but the problem isn't that the points don't make sense. If anything, it's that  there are far too many of them available and also that once you unlock the tech tree they're not useful anymore.

[Scarecrow71]

6 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

I will never support "do this action multiple times or we won't allow you to go to Mun"

Yeah, I worded it badly.  I should have clarified that if you wanted better parts to make it easier then you need to do X.  But if you can pull it off early, go for it.  My bad!