Little Q&A with SQUAD

[macegee]

Recently I had a pleasure of doing Q&A session with SQUAD, which was then translated into Russian for a community blog I post in KSP articles. Here's the link. I decided to share the original text with all of the English speakers here.

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L0ckAndL0ad: We’re very happy to see a Russian member, Bac9, being added to your team. Is he going to join Nova and ClairaLyrae with general part design, or maybe would they team up with C7 to work on aerodynamic parts?

Artyom Zuev: http://i.imgur.com/OmZKSLA.jpg

L0ckAndL0ad: What are your guidelines for adding new parts to the game? There are still some purely cosmetic parts, such as a comm dish and an antenna. Will you continue to add non-functional parts without waiting for their systems to be implemented?

Artyom Zuev: We try to keep all parts functional and impactful in the game, but sometimes aesthetics need to be taken in mind. People expect there to be radio antenna on space ships, even if the game itself provides those control and communication functionalities without the part.

I think it's an essential part of how satellites and spaceships look, so having it makes sense even without any functionality. Part of the fun of the sandbox game is an element of roleplay, some stuff you are building isn't necessarily practical or functional, but it's fun to build and fly it anyway

Some people have stargates, orbital hotels and observation towers in their saves, even though there is no FTL, space tourists or Mun monsters in sight currently.

L0ckAndL0ad: We’ve seen a major part redesign in 0.18 update. Do you plan on revamping them again in a future?

Artyom Zuev: About rocket parts, the remplacement of them in 0.18 wasn't as much about style as it was about quality. Quality was lacking, and current new parts are up to a reasonable, well-looking standard, so there is no reason to change them in sight.

It's not like 0.18 changes were made because someone disliked the tint or yellow stripes only!

As about some other stuff, I'm not sure. Spaceplanes are planned to be revamped at some point in the future. Some parts like certain internals should be improved too. But again, it's not about style, but about bringing the quality to the level when it's reasonable to ask money for these models.

L0ckAndL0ad: Before 0.20, KSP had some memory limits which prevented you from adding new “heavy†content, such as planets and moons. With the new on-demand asset loading system this problem should be solved, if I understand correctly. We don’t have an in-game observatory yet to be able to find new celestial bodies, but can we expect this to happen with an early career mode implementations?

Felipe (Harvester) Falanghe: That's something that needs to be always clear... we never do or not do something because of a technical limitation... our decisions are for gameplay/development progression reasons. If we wanted to add more planets right now, we'd work through any tech issues we find along the way

Blunt answer, don't expect it in 'early' career implementations there's still a long way to go before we add more content like that.

L0ckAndL0ad: With the career mode on the horizon, you must be actively discussing what is it going to be like. There’s an amazing old game called Buzz Aldrin’s Race Into Space, I’m sure most of the devs know it (otherwise they must drop everything and go play, it is THAT awesome). Do you plan on following same footsteps, at least at some degree?

Mike Geelan: BARiS is one of Harvester's chief inspirations for the game.

Felipe (Harvester) Falanghe: It definitely was, it's the closest thing to what we have planned. Except we want something with a more organic flow to it. BARiS was very rigid in that because it was based on a board game, so it had to have a rigid turn-based system to it. For KSP, we want to have a lot of the same mechanics though, but with less constraints on them. Think of it as a high speed crash between SimCity, RollerCoaster Tycoon and BARiS.

L0ckAndL0ad: We know that you were thinking about making Kerbal Knowledge Base to be based on Milestones. The more advanced steps toward the objective you make, the more information you’ll get. Will you get penalized in any way for skipping earlier steps? Like, going straight for a manned landing or rovers, instead of doing flybys and satellites/probes first.

Felipe (Harvester) Falanghe: You'd get everything that you didn't get up to that new point.

L0ckAndL0ad: Will any scientific instruments come into play for this? Not as an option for the looks, but as a hardware requirement.

Felipe (Harvester) Falanghe: We've considered that. What we don't want is to force players to grind through something... we don't want to make any time-dependent mechanics unless they're very meaningful, because really, you can just timewarp

L0ckAndL0ad: Right now space travel is pretty safe, unless you’re bad pilot, bad engineer, or both. Do you plan on making it more dangerous before the 1.0 release? How much is it a priority?

Felipe (Harvester) Falanghe: We do want to add more fail-able things to parts, but we're doing it very carefully. The last thing we want is to add a random or seemingly-random element of failure to the game.

KSP is supposed to be about experimentation, and learning through trial and error

So if something goes wrong on your mission, we want you to be able to know what it was that went wrong, and give you ways to work through the problem. There’s plenty that can go wrong already, without having to roll dice to blow things up.

L0ckAndL0ad: Capt'n Skunky mentioned a comeback of the good old KSPTV dev streams and the creation of the KSP Podcasts. Any comments on that?

Miguel Pina: We are currently looking at a relaunch of KSPTV that will involve both the community and developers through streaming and Devcasts. You will see this sooner than later!

***

Again, thanks SQUAD for your time and effort! See ya in space!

[cypher_00]

Thanks!

I hope KSPTV comes back soon!

[Devo]

Artyom Zuev:

...

As about some other stuff, I'm not sure. Spaceplanes are planned to be revamped at some point in the future. Some parts like certain internals should be improved too. But again, it's not about style, but about bringing the quality to the level when it's reasonable to ask money for these models.

Can we get someone to clarify this statement ? So the content is more likely to be things like models the developers have made and are selling as seperate pieces?

I thought Bac9 also just joined squad? that reads like he's been working on it well before 0.18

[Maxmaps]

Language barrier getting in the way I'm afraid. Artyom meant that all models should be of the quality you'd expect from a product you payed for, looking as professional as possible.

[Devo]

Language barrier getting in the way I'm afraid. Artyom meant that all models should be of the quality you'd expect from a product you payed for, looking as professional as possible.

Ahh, no problemo I figured it might have been a translation thing, thanks for clearing that up.

[EleSigma]

Ah I love Q&A's especially when they reveal some information about the career mode that I've been waiting for.

[Fel]

L0ckAndL0ad: Right now space travel is pretty safe, unless you’re bad pilot, bad engineer, or both. Do you plan on making it more dangerous before the 1.0 release? How much is it a priority?

Felipe (Harvester) Falanghe: We do want to add more fail-able things to parts, but we're doing it very carefully. The last thing we want is to add a random or seemingly-random element of failure to the game.

KSP is supposed to be about experimentation, and learning through trial and error

So if something goes wrong on your mission, we want you to be able to know what it was that went wrong, and give you ways to work through the problem. There’s plenty that can go wrong already, without having to roll dice to blow things up.

The problem here is that there actually isn't much that can go wrong in a "Tried and True" Kerbal Rocket (physics issues aside); yet even now we have "Tried and True" rockets with exploding engines due to Human Oversight.

Perhaps something more akin to "Okay, I can use these Junkyard tanks; they have a 5% chance of leaking... or I can use the heavier and more expensive fabricated tanks. Or with part recovery (Okay, I can deconstruct and refabricate the launcher... or just give it a new coat of paint)

The dice can be avoided if we want to spend the money / add the weight... but we can also choose to take the gambit.

[SuperFastJellyfish]

The problem here is that there actually isn't much that can go wrong in a "Tried and True" Kerbal Rocket (physics issues aside); yet even now we have "Tried and True" rockets with exploding engines due to Human Oversight.

Perhaps something more akin to "Okay, I can use these Junkyard tanks; they have a 5% chance of leaking... or I can use the heavier and more expensive fabricated tanks. Or with part recovery (Okay, I can deconstruct and refabricate the launcher... or just give it a new coat of paint)

The dice can be avoided if we want to spend the money / add the weight... but we can also choose to take the gambit.

This is a fantastic idea.

[Moon Goddess]

Think of it as a high speed crash between SimCity, RollerCoaster Tycoon and BARiS.

This gives me tingly happy feelings.

[Kilmeister]

Yes, Fel's idea sounds great.

[air805ronin]

Perhaps something more akin to "Okay, I can use these Junkyard tanks; they have a 5% chance of leaking... or I can use the heavier and more expensive fabricated tanks. Or with part recovery (Okay, I can deconstruct and refabricate the launcher... or just give it a new coat of paint)

The dice can be avoided if we want to spend the money / add the weight... but we can also choose to take the gambit.

Sounds like you're pitching for Kerbals to start utilizing government contracting in their space programs...

[Specialist290]

I like Fel's idea. You can choose to pay more for guaranteed safety, or try to "wing it" with a small chance of failure, but above all, you're making a choice, which I feel to be important in these types of games.

I would also like to see part damage actually affect how parts perform (such as fuel tanks that were damaged by your Sepratron exhaust leaking at a slow but steady rate) in the near future, while we're on the subject.