Lost Interest

[featherwinglove]

I was on the forums from 2013 January to 2013 March, and in that time posted somewhere in the ballpark of 170 posts before suddenly, and at that time inexplicably, losing interest in KSP, despite a still-in-progress let's play fan fiction that had progressed to its 28th chapter. Some time afterwards, the forum blew up and erased my account and everything I ever posted, but I had so lost interest in KSP that I didn't find this out until last week. I started checking it out because I wanted to dig it out of the back of my head why I so suddenly grew bored of KSP. This is why, I think:

1. I was interested in the player community, and I think some part of me picked up a disconnect between Squad and the players of KSP (including a lot of evidence shared by Scott Manley, quite probably the most diehard fan of KSP.)

2. Both developers and forum moderators have reacted very adversely to two features which are probably necessary for KSP: 3 body physics and multiplayer.

Their consternation regarding the latter is quite understandable: KSP servers will only be able to run at real-time, and players would need to plan their missions accordingly (and I think it would be an awesome excitement to rush home from work to see if the programmed orbital insertion maneuver that was to occur an hour before the end of your shift was actually successful.) This real-time limitation would need to be accepted by players and managed by server administrators (i.e. the policy of whether to accelerate from a backed up point or accept the delay from a downtime period.) I'm a very reluctant convert, but I think it needs to be done.

As for the physics, I was already used to Orbiter, which can notify up to eight-ish bodies, non-spherical gravity elements, sunlight pressure and aerodynamic forces up to eighth order Runge-Kutta and Symplectic integration (more than my computer can handle, and Orbiter still runs better than KSP with all that jacked up.) Staff and forum moderator reactions to both n-body physics (including the simplest 3 body integration) or any conics-compatible (and therefore rather inaccurate) implementation of libration points (better known as Lagrange points after the rocket science pioneer who discovered them over a hundred years ago) were astonishingly negative, rude, and final. For two-body compatible libration point implementation, the argument was that they would be tremendously inaccurate, and many of the benefits of using libration space would be lost, and therefore considered not worth implementing. Shortly thereafter, the official resource model starts circulating, and this model so departs from reality that it leaves the realm of science fiction into some equivalent of medieval fantasy that makes Minecraft look realistic. I don't have a problem with that, ...but doesn't it seem rather odd that this should rest beside a refusal to do unrealistic conics-compatible Lagrange points?

Now, I probably sound angrier than I am. These issues hit my subconscious and it took me two weeks of rumination and prayer on why my interest in KSP vanished before I was confident enough that I could list them off as I just have. I'm not offended about KSP, just hopeless and bored.

For those who are interested, Kerbal: Spassi Ishosh yi Aton remains at Chapter 28, with a probe approaching Minmus for an orbital insertion. The next launch planned is the first kerbaled flight with Jebediah Kerman (and I thought for a time that my sudden loss of interest may have been a fear of losing him in a tragic accident, but it doesn't hold water when I've written far sadder stuff, like a dying wife's last words to her husband being "Damn you ... and your featherwings" among many other things.) If you feel led to continue (or simply repost) Kerbal: Spassi Ishosh yi Aton, my persistence file is compatible with 0.19.2 and the original text of all 28 chapters are in *.rtf format. I can zip it up and send it to you if you feel so led.

Farewell,

Terry Wilson

Featherwing Love Project