Thinking about buying, few questions..

[lyko]

Hi all,

I played the Demo for a few hours and I really like the concept of the game. What I'm concerned about is the long time motivation. What plans are in place (patches, features etc.) to keep it interesting? Sure, it will take a while to land on all planets, but isn't it always the same? Build a rocket, fly to the planet and land.

Will there be any "shared universe" where multiple players play in the same universe? Will we be able to research new parts?Will there be challanges against others (e.g. who will get to plant XY the fastest? Are there any in-game rewards I can get? These are just a few random questions. I'm sure you guys can tell me a lot more about coming features and long term motivation?

Thanks,

[SkyHook]

Your concerns are valid, and let me say that you picked the right time to play! The next update to the game will be here soon, and it will add science, research and development, and other features to the game! These will give you a reasons to go the various celestial bodies, and collect information about them for the purposes of developing your space program's technology. Currently, no motivations exists for such exploration to other bodies, but trust me, it will be a while before you get so bored that you feel like quitting. To summarize, there is no reason to go anywhere in this game at the present moment, but a little imagination should be able to tide you over until the new update comes As a one year player of the game, I strongly urge you to buy the game, and look forward to your contributions to the community!

Edited September 16, 2013 by SkyHook

[KvickFlygarn87]

I would disagree in that there is no reason to go anywhere. First of all, there's the learning side of it; how do I do this? And that?

And then, you can visit anomalies.

[lammatt]

demo is 0.18, right?

is so, u will find the full version very different.

u'll find the SAS working way better and Mun looks a lot cooler.

[FITorion]

1. it's 40% off for the next 11 hours on Steam.

There will never be multiplayer. The only ways to get a multiplayer feel is to come here to the forums and participate in challenges, share your successes and failures, use some mods such as the chat mod to have in game chat, or trade save files. Basically any sort of multiplayer is going to be player made.

As for goals and what not... that's not what Sand Box Mode is for. It is what Career Mode is for. The last couple updates have been laying the ground work for Career Mode to come into existence. The next update will be the first update with Career Mode enabled. It will have a tech tree you can use science points to unlock parts and improve parts on. Science points can be obtained from crewed or probe launches with science parts. Eventually missions will be added to give you direction.

Looking even further into the future resource mining is a planned future feature. But This game will probably never have the linear story structure that most games have. When you finish off the tech tree... you haven't "won" There is no game over... there is no end. You can do as much as your imagination lets you do.

[Pbhead]

Kerbal Space Program is one of those few games where the cost of the electricity of playing is greater than the cost of the game.

Currently it is sandbox only, which, is fine really. you dont need to 'beat' sim city, right? same here, but they will be adding things that skyhook said above.

As far as challenges against others, there is a whole subforum here dedicated to people challenging eachother on various tasks. (I am currently king of the jet engines only speed challenge, woot woot)

Reddit also has a weekly challenge thing, and there are various, youtube things, what was it, challenging youtubers? by hocgaming?

Theres also tons of mods and stuff as well, one in particular sort of ad-hocs in a career mode by giving you missions, and mission rewards, and stuff... and of course part mods, and physics mods, and there is a semi-multiplayer-mod thing somewheres.

Always something to do... and if you run out of ideas, just check on these forums, or Danny2462's, or scottmanly's videos, they will give you ideas.

[lammatt]

well...

- i believe SQUAD said a no to multiplayer long ago already.

- mods/plugin is what makes the game so much fun. if you are missing them, you are missing 90% of the game.

- $14.9 is a very good price for a game with so much depth. think about this... BF4 is ~$50 and is going to be just another FPS 99% similar to (insert any FPS game), while KSP is so unique (well of cos orbiter is something similar to KSP, but can you name another one?)

- it's still in alpha and they have so many good stuff going to be added.... (i got it when it was 0.12 and it was $9.9 and now, it's $23, i am expecting the price will just go up as the game is gaining popularity)

yes, you should get the game before the sale ends. ( tho' we've been seeing steam sale for KSP pretty often)

[lammatt]

Hi all,

I played the Demo for a few hours and I really like the concept of the game. What I'm concerned about is the long time motivation. What plans are in place (patches, features etc.) to keep it interesting? Sure, it will take a while to land on all planets, but isn't it always the same? Build a rocket, fly to the planet and land.

Will there be any "shared universe" where multiple players play in the same universe? Will we be able to research new parts?Will there be challanges against others (e.g. who will get to plant XY the fastest? Are there any in-game rewards I can get? These are just a few random questions. I'm sure you guys can tell me a lot more about coming features and long term motivation?

Thanks,

one way to keep yourself interested is trying to learn the physics behind and try to be as fuel efficient as you can instead of spamming rockets to get to where you want.

i.e. while you can build a rocket to get to Mun and return with 1000000 orangetank+skipper, you can instead just use 1 small LF-T400 on a single LV909 on a one man pod lander + an SSTO plane of the same size as the Aeris 4A to do the same thing.

[Merinsan]

I have similar concerns to you. I already bought the game, but long time I am wondering how interesting it will be. I really hope at some point there is some random element added to the game to make it exciting to replay, such as randomly generated solar systems. Multiplayer will never happen. Career mode is coming soon, which will introduce more of a direction/goal in the game play, which will be very good.

Having said all that, the price of the game is so low, you'll get your monies worth well before you get to every planet in the current solar system.

[LeFudge]

One of my favourite things about this game is the development, lots of updates and I'm sure there are many more coming. This game would be similar to Minecraft of Garrys Mod, you sort of have to entertain yourself right now since there is no career mode yet. However learning the mechanics of the game and how to travel between planets and moons efficiently is a big learning experience. One of the mods I've been thinking of downloading is Kethane, which allows you to mine fuel from planets and moons and set up refueling stations and such.

[MaverickSawyer]

Agreed. Kethane is going to be a huge help in visiting other planets in a computer-friendly ship. I've been spending hours tinkering with designs and refinements. There are so many things to do, and the game has come a LONG way in the last year. I started playing before we even had the Mun to go to. I still had hours of fun blowing rockets up while figuring out how to get things working right!

[Aragosnat]

Agreed. Mods updates can keep you busy for a long time. Some of the planets will drive you insane. Just planning on getting there and off.

[lammatt]

if you think you will be run out of things to play with...

you can always try to go to Eve and return.

it take quite some time i am sure (Scott almighty Manley has made a series of youtube about going to Eve, and 6 episodes now he still hasnt get there yet)

[FITorion]

Scott's on ep. 9 and he's there.

[lammatt]

it's 9 already?

o... ya... havent been watching him much lately... (been busy playing FEZ and Trine2.... Humble Bundle FTW)

[Sylon00]

I wouldn't think about it for too much longer. The game is on sale right now on Steam, might as well bite on it while it's cheap.

[John FX]

I used to play games, now I just play one game. I have not regretted buying this game once.

Now I have to get back to fixing my comms network after decoupling a manned pod from my main data uplink. Everything has forgotten how to get data.

[KSK]

Hi all,

I played the Demo for a few hours and I really like the concept of the game. What I'm concerned about is the long time motivation. What plans are in place (patches, features etc.) to keep it interesting? Sure, it will take a while to land on all planets, but isn't it always the same? Build a rocket, fly to the planet and land.

Will there be any "shared universe" where multiple players play in the same universe? Will we be able to research new parts?Will there be challanges against others (e.g. who will get to plant XY the fastest? Are there any in-game rewards I can get? These are just a few random questions. I'm sure you guys can tell me a lot more about coming features and long term motivation?

Thanks,

As folks on this thread have already said, there are no official plans for multiplayer, so anything along those lines is going to be community made. I have no idea about in-game rewards I'm afraid (other than the personal satisfaction of figuring out how to do something) but the next update is going to add science modules and a research tree.

About long term motivation, it might be easier to think of KSP more as a LEGO set than a game. Sure, in the end it all comes down to building rockets, launching them, flying them to other planets/moons and landing. And with time all of that gets relatively routine (or so I'm told ) But - and it's a big but - there are so many ways of doing that and so much else you can do along the way. Some of it will be functional but a lot of it will be 'just because it looks cool'

A couple of personal examples.

Landing on the Mun is a fairly early milestone for a lot of KSP players and there a numerous guides out there for building a single rocket that will get you to the Mun and back, Apollo style. What you definitely don't need is to build a space station in Kerbin orbit, another one in Munar orbit, a nuclear powered shuttle to ferry crew between the two, a 5 kerbal lander for transporting crew from the Munar orbit station to the surface and finally, a simple transporter ship to get the crew up to Kerbin orbit. Likewise, you don't need (not yet anyway), communication satellites in orbit around the Mun and Kerbin to make sure the whole system hangs together. You don't need to send out your kerbals on a low orbit Munar reconnaisance flight to scout for interesting landing sites, or to have a cluster of navigation beacons waiting to be dropped in from orbit to mark those landing sites. (Actually that bit was before you could plant flags so its genuinely not required any more )

But you can build all of those if you like for no other reason than 'I think it looks cool to have this complete Munar transport chain in place, so I'm going to build it. And then do the same for Minmus '

And this is small beer compared to some projects on these forums. Entire bases on the Mun, floating cities on Laythe, historical recreations of entire space programmes, flying planes through the skies of Duna... The game really is what you make of it.

Edited September 16, 2013 by KSK

[AceofPengwins]

Well according to steam I've played this game for 159 hours since I bought it during the summer sale, which puts my cost per hour at under 10 cents... I'd say it's worth it. And I have only landed on 5 of the worlds there are to land on so far, got distracted recently by learning how to make space-planes. I'm already planning my expedition to Jool though!

[Sapphire]

Don't buy it! You'll be trapped. Just like the rest of us.

In all seriousness, buy it. Out of the few games I've played, this one comes really close to the amount of time I spent playing Skyrim. It may look really simple from the demo, but when you've got the full game you have so much more, and the modding community is huge and probably has any cool things you're looking for. Some of the greatest mods/ mod creators even become part of the game (see: the devs Claira and Bac9). When you're building a massive interplanetary vessel in orbit, bolting on the landers and refueling the tanks, and preparing to set off for the many moons of Jool, that's when you know that the game you bought was totally worth it.

[Tidus Klein]

Ha I too got lured in to the tantalizing world of SSTO planes with the B9 pack. All missions to the mun, duna, and jool came to a stop as a tried to put a rover on minmus with a plane.

Iyko trust me this game has plenty of " last-ability" I normally get bord of games fairly quickly, beating them with in 24 hours of game play,( and I have played alot) even the great main story of skyrim fell to my prowess within 24 hours. The only games to ever have me play more 300 hours where minecraft(over 1000 hours), skyrim(side quests and addons) and this game.

In other words it is plenty worth buying, and is most likely one of the best deals you can get on a game of this quality.

"STAY GAMING MY FRIENDS"

Edited September 16, 2013 by Tidus Klein

[Monkeh]

Definitely buy it, but only if you have an active imagination. You may get bored if you can't think of something new to attempt, I mean it's a big challenge to get anywhere but it's the getting to places and doing stuff in a creation you designed and built yourself that's the payoff.

For example, my own journey began with trying to get to the Mun.

Then I wanted to drive a rover on the Mun. Got there in the end

Then I wanted to fly a rover on the Mun.

Then I wanted to go to Eve.

A landing on Gas giants Jool's moon, Laythe came next.

Then I wanted to get a beach buggy to Laythe and go buggying on the sand dunes.

Next I decided I wanted to go to each of Jool's moons and back...yeah well, that one's on hold for now as I don't have the skills yet.

Then I wanted to go see all the Easter eggs on the Mun so I got the MapSat plug in and made myself a probe to map the surface and find 'anomolies'.

Next are the missions to each of those.

I got the kethane mining mod to have a look at and the kerbal attachment system and robotics and...and....and.....so much more!

Seriously, the limit is your imagination, if you can think of a target or a mission you'd like to go for and then plan it out and test ships and planes and finally get there and do it, it's an awesome feeling.

Best game I've bought for a good number of years and I recommend it to anyone I can. 3 real life friends and at least 5 of my online friends have got the game because of my constant outpouring of love for it, and no one has complained to me yet.

TL:DR Buy now as sale, play lots, love game, be happy, smile, laugh, good life.

[lyko]

Thanks for all the great information.

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I bought it . Just soon enough to get it on sale. Can't wait to get home to start my adventures!

[musicpenguin]

Buy it now or face the penalty!

[roosterr]

Dont worry AT ALL about getting bored due to a lack of possibilities. And for the planets and moons, it is NOT the same experience landing on them because they all have different gravity, atmosphere (or lack thereof), terrain (or lack thereof, eg. gas giants), easter eggs (aka anomolies), and proximity to other celestial bodies.

That, and it is SO cheap anyway, the worst that can happen is that you are out $23.