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 January 14 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 January 15 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 January 15 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 ignore feeding them".  And then, as soon as they get hit with 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.

Edited January 15 by Scarecrow71

[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!

[Fizzlebop Smith]

Herbal and Mr. Kerbin have summed up much of my disappointment with the current KSP2.

The bugs that are present are manageable or handled with mods (last I played). 

Aside from major lag due large part count / concurrent missions I would have kept playing if it were an actual game.

KSP2 stripped *everything* I enjoyed about the first game. I was a proponent of making some of career option toggleable but got *slammed* any time I would suggest funds / old school procedural  mission style.

If there were some way to generate missions for science gains.. i would still be playing.

I miss comnet, probe control, occlusion, scanning stuff, sentinel networks.. I miss a game there being a game with no wrong way to play

 

[Pthigrivi]

7 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

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.

Definitely. Really the missions should tree-out so you've got multiple options that let you skip to the chase if you're feeling confident or impatient. 

 

54 minutes ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

KSP2 stripped *everything* I enjoyed about the first game. I was a proponent of making some of career option toggleable but got *slammed* any time I would suggest funds / old school procedural  mission style.

Yeaah I happened to be on the no-money side of that argument but I think good cases were made for each. My main argument was that it was redundant with a robust resource system, but then we never got that resource system so its just missing.  Maybe as one last hurrah I'll do a resource flow proposal. I've wasted time on sillier things. 

[NexusHelium]

This thread might prove to be quite useful for modding work. Keep it up guys! I know this isn't directed towards modding but I imagine the team will appreciate any feedback for the game, explicit or not  

[Poppa Wheelie]

Multiplayer:  I want a different kind of multiplayer.  I want to  have a friend sit in the command pod seat next to mine in IVA - a second (or even a third) kerbonaut on the same mission.  Maybe this capability provides a way to connect up a second keyboard, mouse, HOTAS, and a second view on a second monitor.  Or maybe it's done by two (or more) different computers accessing the game running on one of them as a server.

Landing Trajectory:  I like that the landing trajectory tools available now show the red arc of the trajectory, and then show a mark where the vehicle will impact the planetary body.  What I want next is a dotted line from this impact point, westward along the planetary body surface, to another mark at the geographic location that will be the actual impact point once the spacecraft actually reaches the surface.

[Lisias]

18 hours ago, cocoscacao said:

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

PS, that LS draft was really, really good. 

How was the time sync being planned? I remember an old discussion in which I came up with some (ludicrous?) suggestions, and never touched this subject again.

[PDCWolf]

The biggest problem KSP2 has, is the people who already had played KSP1. As far as the sequel got the challenges were still the same, so the spark wasn't there. The loop was the same: Get an orbital mechanics related challenge (get to orbit, get to a difficult orbit, get to another body, put a satellite here, get a dude from there) and build a rocket for it. That's it, that's the stone KSP1 never got over. Even science was more of the exact same loop, just like in KSP1 they could not figure out a way to expand that past adding "but without this part" to that previous loop.

Colonies... I don't see how they would've worked at all once the main challenges were learned. What did they add to the game loop? It's again an orbital mechanics challenge you design a rocket for, and then even the game was gonna take the reins by automatizing a logistics layer so you didn't even have a reason to repeat the flight. It was shown they were skipping over any sort of administration past the initial resources required to expand it until it became self sustainable.

Interstellar... you don't need another paragraph to realize how that's still the same old and tired core loop.

What would've made that loop interesting?

1. Life support: Provide a complex and deep life support system that presents the player with a variety of modules so they can assemble different mission profiles. Quick trip to the mun? You don't need any sort of onboard resource generation, just pack food and water and throw it out the window as you consume. Interplanetary trip? You might want to use CO2 scrubbers, oxygen generators, algae pods for food and oxygen, and many other solutions... or you might still want to go with a huge compartment of stuff you consume and throw out. Interstellar? The best idea might be to create a closed loop, but you still have the option of playing with a cost system (which is why "money" is important as a mechanic!) where a super high tech self-sustaining ship might be too expensive, or you just need the money for something else so you scrap by with not-as-efficient equipment.

Depth=Options=Uniqueness. It'll still be a lego build-a-rocket game, you just now have a second set of lego pieces to consider rather than just fuel + engine + pod.

2. Resource systems need to matter. If having a Kerbal on board means I don't need electricity, or signal, then what's the point of electricity generators and kerbnet? Exactly, none. Kerbnet connections should be required for, for example, a craft to be seen in the tracking station, or be visible to other craft. Disconnected from Kerbnet? completely invisible to other ships. Good luck finding it for a rendezvous. You're welcome, I just gave everyone a reason to consider Kerbnet on their builds and make that whole side of the game useful. And since you now want connectivity, you need an electricity loop even in your unrealistic 1kerbalcan ship that you plan to somehow dock to something.

3. Kerbals can't be immortal and the parts need to reflect the needed care for them. KSP1 had the right idea with removing "Reputation" when a Kerbal died, yet, nothing happened to the other Kerbals, to the funding, to the will of third parties to ride in our space programs, and so on. They should be able to die of everything a human is able to die on board a spaceship, from bad design, to hunger and radiation exposure.

4. Parts need to be tunable to the challenge: A habitat for a deeply irradiated but tropical moon of Jool should not be the exact same you send to a highly toxic and hot yet mostly radiation free Eve, and this should also be reflected on the costs.

5. Dehomogenize engine choice. If a Skipper is as useful pushing the rocket off the pad as it is in space so long as you keep some very loose weight constraints, then there's no point in choosing similar ones. The DLCs added some much needed engine choices to 1 but everything was still too homogenous and close to each other. Performances and efficiencies should be varied enough.

6. Tanks need to work better. Multiple tanks stacked should act as one. I should be able to load whatever I want to any tank (since the last guys also seemed hellbent on not providing procedural tanks) with the costs for adapting them reflected in how much the mission costs.

 

And I could probably go all day with many ideas, but the point is, KSP2 can't be KSP1 plus, that would only be enjoyable for the people that never played one... which 2 failed to attract in any sort of useful number anyways. So KSP2 needs to be bigger and better, more challenging, deeper. The market is already filled with engineering games that are too afraid to challenge the player and have any sort of consequence for them, meanwhile the ones that keep getting eternally recommended through the years are the ones where failures hurt and challenges are bigger. Our current KSP2 is a lukewarm disappointment and if it wasn't because of a very passionate community, it would've been already forgotten as another meh memory.

[Lisias]

9 minutes ago, Poppa Wheelie said:

Multiplayer:  I want a different kind of multiplayer.  I want to  have a friend sit in the command pod seat next to mine in IVA - a second (or even a third) kerbonaut on the same mission.  Maybe this capability provides a way to connect up a second keyboard, mouse, HOTAS, and a second view on a second monitor.  Or maybe it's done by two (or more) different computers accessing the game running on one of them as a server.

You know, this is probably one of the best ideas for the game.

I had played Carrier Command 2 in the past, and that sessions can be incredibly entertaining...

[Scarecrow71]

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

1. Life support: Provide a complex and deep life support system that presents the player with a variety of modules so they can assemble different mission profiles. Quick trip to the mun? You don't need any sort of onboard resource generation, just pack food and water and throw it out the window as you consume. Interplanetary trip? You might want to use CO2 scrubbers, oxygen generators, algae pods for food and oxygen, and many other solutions... or you might still want to go with a huge compartment of stuff you consume and throw out. Interstellar? The best idea might be to create a closed loop, but you still have the option of playing with a cost system (which is why "money" is important as a mechanic!) where a super high tech self-sustaining ship might be too expensive, or you just need the money for something else so you scrap by with not-as-efficient equipment.

I cannot stress enough how this would wreck the game as a core mechanic.  New players are going to be turned off by the complexity of having to learn this and deal with it while also trying to learn orbital mechanics and engineering and math.  It exists as a mod in KSP1, and that is all fine and dandy because then the people who want it can have it.  But as a core gameplay mechanic that can't be turned off?  A section of the community would never agree to wanting this, and some of those people - myself included - would never pick the game up again.  Our community is small enough as it is; we don't need reasons to scare people away.

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

2. Resource systems need to matter. If having a Kerbal on board means I don't need electricity, or signal, then what's the point of electricity generators and kerbnet? Exactly, none. Kerbnet connections should be required for, for example, a craft to be seen in the tracking station, or be visible to other craft. Disconnected from Kerbnet? completely invisible to other ships. Good luck finding it for a rendezvous. You're welcome, I just gave everyone a reason to consider Kerbnet on their builds and make that whole side of the game useful. And since you now want connectivity, you need an electricity loop even in your unrealistic 1kerbalcan ship that you plan to somehow dock to something.

Resources have to matter.  You touched on electricity/power, but I was honestly hoping the game would go further into "You need to unlock this technology so you can mine this resource so you can create this part/fuel/whatever".  Kind of like Civilization III (as an example, and which I'm spending far too much time with lately), where you have to unlock The Wheel so the map can show you where the Horses are, at which point you need to have them not only in your controlled territory, but then have a road to them so you can use them.  This is something KSP2 was sorely lacking (although I recognize there were a host of other things that needed to be fixed/dealt with before they got this far).

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

3. Kerbals can't be immortal and the parts need to reflect the needed care for them. KSP1 had the right idea with removing "Reputation" when a Kerbal died, yet, nothing happened to the other Kerbals, to the funding, to the will of third parties to ride in our space programs, and so on. They should be able to die of everything a human is able to die on board a spaceship, from bad design, to hunger and radiation exposure.

Again, this is too hardcore for new players.  "You mean I can't do a Jool 5 because all of the Kerbals on board are going to die of old age and we have no way of replacing them mid-mission?"  Think about that for a few seconds.  If your Kerbals die mid-flight due to your own piloting error, that's one thing.  Randomized non-gamer errors such as radiation or old age?  That's punishing players for not out-smarting the game.

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

5. Dehomogenize engine choice. If a Skipper is as useful pushing the rocket off the pad as it is in space so long as you keep some very loose weight constraints, then there's no point in choosing similar ones. The DLCs added some much needed engine choices to 1 but everything was still too homogenous and close to each other. Performances and efficiencies should be varied enough.

I'll take this a step further and say the game should remove parts that are no longer needed or outdated.  There is no point in showing the Ant when the Spider is better, especially if you are always going to choose the Spider over the Ant.  Now, I can see an argument for not doing that because some players are going to use all the parts no matter what they have unlocked.  But if we could at least have the option to hide the outdated ones based on tech unlocks?  That would be keen.

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

6. Tanks need to work better. Multiple tanks stacked should act as one. I should be able to load whatever I want to any tank (since the last guys also seemed hellbent on not providing procedural tanks) with the costs for adapting them reflected in how much the mission costs.

I'll take this one step further.  If I have 2 tanks stacked on top of each other, say a pair of T400s, I think the fuel should drain from the top tank FIRST before any fuel is drained from the bottom tank.  On planets you have gravity that acts to pull the fuel down from the top, but in space you'd have pumps to push the fuel from the top of the stack to the bottom where the engine(s) reside(s).  And when transferring fuel, I should just be able to select the stack and drain it all at once, not have 1000 open part windows to transfer the fuel.  Or just have 1 window so I can select the tank to go into and the tank(s) to come out from.

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

Colonies... I don't see how they would've worked at all once the main challenges were learned. What did they add to the game loop? It's again an orbital mechanics challenge you design a rocket for, and then even the game was gonna take the reins by automatizing a logistics layer so you didn't even have a reason to repeat the flight. It was shown they were skipping over any sort of administration past the initial resources required to expand it until it became self sustainable.

At a minimum Colonies could have been used as extra-Kerbinular launch sites.  Windows would be way different if you were going from Duna to Dres (for example), but the fuel requirements would also be far less than coming from Kerbin.  And opening the ability to launch from places outside of Kerbin itself - which you can do with mods in KSP1 - would have been pretty neat.  "Ok, so on Kerbin I need 3600 m/s to get to orbit, but here on Laythe I only need 3200".  Again, as an example of launch requirements.  You could then also use the colony as a refueling site, reducing the amount of fuel and weight you need to get to your final destination.  Are you thinking of doing a Jool 5?  Would be keen if you could stop along the way and refuel.  Or pick up tourists/extra crew.  Or perhaps you damaged your command module along the way and need to repair it?

[PDCWolf]

13 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

I cannot stress enough how this would wreck the game as a core mechanic.  New players are going to be turned off by the complexity of having to learn this and deal with it while also trying to learn orbital mechanics and engineering and math.

15 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Again, this is too hardcore for new players.

That's what tech trees, resources and budgets are for, to limit how much stuff you throw at a new player the first time they interact with the game. You're blaming features that would provide depth and challenge for the new player experience when in reality you need to fix the hilariously bad design of KSP1 AND 2's new player experience.

Not to mention that most "chill" engineering games are forgotten in irrelevancy. What people remember is Factorio and Satisfactory, not Shapez. What people remember is From the Depths, not Robocraft. They remember Rust, not Icarus. Crossout, not Scrap Mechanics... and so on. You get the point, specially for a sequel, you need to provide stuff on top, otherwise, what's KSP2s evolution?

16 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

 Randomized non-gamer errors such as radiation or old age?  That's punishing players for not out-smarting the game.

Radiation is not random... It can be accounted for and even humans have been planning to build ships that protect from it for decades now. And I don't remember mentioning age at all since we don't know the lifespan of Kerbals so I don't know where you take the old age bit from.

20 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

At a minimum Colonies could have been used as extra-Kerbinular launch sites.  Windows would be way different if you were going from Duna to Dres (for example), but the fuel requirements would also be far less than coming from Kerbin.  And opening the ability to launch from places outside of Kerbin itself - which you can do with mods in KSP1 - would have been pretty neat.  "Ok, so on Kerbin I need 3600 m/s to get to orbit, but here on Laythe I only need 3200".  Again, as an example of launch requirements.  You could then also use the colony as a refueling site, reducing the amount of fuel and weight you need to get to your final destination.  Are you thinking of doing a Jool 5?  Would be keen if you could stop along the way and refuel.  Or pick up tourists/extra crew.  Or perhaps you damaged your command module along the way and need to repair it?

Everything here can be done with an orbital station. Specially since orbital construction was going to be in game there'd be even less of a reason to go down to a body only to then come back up... and minus construction, you can already do that on KSP1 with mining and conversion to maintain orbital stations fueled for staged interplanetary flights. Really, I still fail to see what colonies would've added to the game in the way they were planned. The only exception would be that if I can construct in orbit, at worst I'd build a small colony on the body below to lift materials there.

Damaged parts... I don't remember what their plans for those were.

 

[Scarecrow71]

4 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

That's what tech trees, resources and budgets are for, to limit how much stuff you throw at a new player the first time they interact with the game. You're blaming features that would provide depth and challenge for the new player experience when in reality you need to fix the hilariously bad design of KSP1 AND 2's new player experience.

Not to mention that most "chill" engineering games are forgotten in irrelevancy. What people remember is Factorio and Satisfactory, not Shapez. What people remember is From the Depths, not Robocraft. They remember Rust, not Icarus. Crossout, not Scrap Mechanics... and so on. You get the point, specially for a sequel, you need to provide stuff on top, otherwise, what's KSP2s evolution?

Life Support isn't an issue of adding stuff on top to make it a new game.  It's nothing more than a mechanic for seriously hardcore players that will punish new players (and players like me who don't want that functionality).  I don't know what's so difficult about making it an option.  Like, if it has to be added, why can't we have a setting where we can turn it off if we want to?

5 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

Everything here can be done with an orbital station. Specially since orbital construction was going to be in game there'd be even less of a reason to go down to a body only to then come back up... and minus construction, you can already do that on KSP1 with mining and conversion to maintain orbital stations fueled for staged interplanetary flights. Really, I still fail to see what colonies would've added to the game in the way they were planned. The only exception would be that if I can construct in orbit, at worst I'd build a small colony on the body below to lift materials there.

Yes, Colonies can be looked at exactly the same as stations.  Just on the ground.  Ok, so we will only add the things you want, like Life Support and Radiation, but not anything you don't want, like Colonies.  The rest of the user/player base be damned.  Got it.

[PDCWolf]

4 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Life Support isn't an issue of adding stuff on top to make it a new game.  It's nothing more than a mechanic for seriously hardcore players that will punish new players (and players like me who don't want that functionality).  I don't know what's so difficult about making it an option.  Like, if it has to be added, why can't we have a setting where we can turn it off if we want to?

Yes, Colonies can be looked at exactly the same as stations.  Just on the ground.  Ok, so we will only add the things you want, like Life Support and Radiation, but not anything you don't want, like Colonies.  The rest of the user/player base be damned.  Got it.

The thread is about what -we- personally want. I described the game I want... I'm not directing your game but merely responding to what you quoted so go ahead and make your suggestions.

Edited January 15 by PDCWolf

[Fizzlebop Smith]

2 hours ago, Poppa Wheelie said:

 

Landing Trajectory:  I like that the landing trajectory tools available now show the red arc of the trajectory, and then show a mark where the vehicle will impact the planetary body.  What I want next is a dotted line from this impact point, westward along the planetary body surface, to another mark at the geographic location that will be the actual impact point once the spacecraft actually reaches the surface.

A resounding amen.

That really would be remarkable.

Canceling out rotational speed without much experience playing the game was the second most difficult thing to learn (for me) next to rendezvous.

[cocoscacao]

3 hours ago, Lisias said:

How was the time sync being planned?

Unless someone already replied, everyone had their own timeline, until two vessels meet. Then there's a time difference reconciliation. Which is crazy, if you ask me.

[Pthigrivi]

I did end up starting a KSP2 resources thread for fun. I beg forgiveness for the plug but the KSP2 suggestions section is deader than dead (for understandable reasons).

[PDCWolf]

28 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

I did end up starting a KSP2 resources thread for fun. I beg forgiveness for the plug but the KSP2 suggestions section is deader than dead (for understandable reasons).

The whole section is a bit godless atm... what with threads that blatantly make use of decompiling being still alive.

Just to throw another stone into the pond, a stock trajectories mod is impossible in the sort of precision a new player would expect from it. Too many variables, specially once lift and drag are involved, even the mod has a hard time predicting standard re-entry if you dare make an off-center-COM capsule let alone a shuttle or other spacecraft. It'd work fine on airless bodies though, no drag or lift so orientation matters zero.

[Pthigrivi]

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

Just to throw another stone into the pond, a stock trajectories mod is impossible in the sort of precision a new player would expect from it. Too many variables, specially once lift and drag are involved, even the mod has a hard time predicting standard re-entry if you dare make an off-center-COM capsule let alone a shuttle or other spacecraft. It'd work fine on airless bodies though, no drag or lift so orientation matters zero.

On this I disagree. Just based on my KSP1 playstyle Ive done a crazy number of precision aero-reentries at or near KSC with different vessel architectures both stock and mod-aided. Duna and Eve are even worse in stock because the effects seem slight but compound fast for multi-kilometer landing errors that take dozens of reverts to zero out. Obviously I can’t account for all of those variables in realtime any more than I can calculate the changes to an orbital ellipse mid-burn in realtime. The magic of KSP is that the game does most of the math for you so you get an intuitive feel for the result and a reflexive response for when to cut engines very close to right on time for your desired Ap or Pe.  Similar to any burn the game’s trajectory prediction should assume the player’s current AoA though reentry factoring drag, so that as they raise or lower the nose or s-curve they see the resultant landing location shift just as it does during a vacuum burn. This makes the experience of landing in vacuum intuitively analogous, first tweezing out your N-S and deliberately landing long and drawing down your longitudinal velocity to hit your target. All thats different is you’re facing forward and using drag rather than thrust to knock out that vector. That sounds complicated but when you have realtime feedback on your how your attitude affects your trajectory the landing experience gets intuitive fast. You pitch up and the landing marker moves towards you. You pitch down and it moves away. 

Edited January 16 by Pthigrivi

[Lisias]

7 hours ago, cocoscacao said:

Unless someone already replied, everyone had their own timeline, until two vessels meet. Then there's a time difference reconciliation. Which is crazy, if you ask me.

So every vessel has its own "spacetime bubble". What means that it's also a single player problem. What means that once they solve the problem for single-player, multi-player will have it for free.

You know, sometimes it pays to be crazier. They moved the timewarp problem from multiplayer to the mainstream singleplayer, where they would be able to get more exposure and, so, develop the thing with more confidence before going MP where everything is way harsher to work with.

I don't know if I'm less crazy than I look, or if they are as crazy as me - in a way or another, I will not be alone in the asylum!

On a side note, instead of "reconciliate" the spacetime bubbles, I would create a "temporary" container with it's own spacetime and then "translate" the private spacetimes into it, in the same way every object has it's own origin and such origin is translated into the 3D World it will be rendered into.

Something like what's happening on the Serenity Robotics - the root cause of most of the problems is exactly the transformations being applied directly into the PartModule, making it susceptible to float errors being accumulated (and not only due time warp) and ending up drifting away.

Such solution would prevent a lot of problems that a "reconciliation" would create - and perhaps reuse the same tools, but extended to a 4D transformation matrix? Someone "out there" had already worked on something like this?

I suspect you labeling it as "craziness" may be related exactly to the same problems, but on a wider audience now: 4D spacetime.