KerbalKon Announcements

[Rowsdower]

This is the official thread to discuss HarvesteR's latest blog post:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/content/239--KerbalKon-Announce

Please keep all talk related to the KerbalKon announcements relegated to this thread.

Thanks.

Edited December 16, 2013 by Rowsdower
Criminal overuse of the word "related."

[czokletmuss]

I would like to say that it's good to hear official statement - finally.

I also think that by improving communication with the community Squad can only gain more support from us. Most of the emotions were borned because we were misinformed and without any official information we had to speculate and guess. So to take something positive from all this mess I suggest even bigger transparency to clear the air and kill all the speculations once and for all

Edited December 16, 2013 by czokletmuss

[Mr. Man]

I will remain positive about resource mining redesigns. It'll give me more incentives to revisit other planets.

[panfish5]

Finally some clarification to hopefully calm down everybody about resources and multiplayer.

[tntristan12]

Squad is, of course, free to pursue resources however it wants to. I myself would not like to see resources get watered down to the point where it essentially becomes a standalone feature attached to the periphery of an otherwise complete spacefaring experience. I hope HarvesteR and Squad has ways in mind in which to tightly integrate resource mining in whatever form they see fit with other features that are either planned currently or are made possible by the inclusion of resource mining. If that's the case then I'd be happy with whatever form in which Squad wants to implement it.

[Jodo42]

I'm honestly waiting for someone to create a resources mod and show Squad that making them "fun" is do-able. If the old system was crappy, like they say it was, then I'm glad it's gone. But please Squad, don't give up entirely on resources.

In any case, I'm looking forward to contracts, reputation, and money. And as for Multiplayer...

I'm looking forward to space pirate battles.

[maxpower]

That's not saying we won't ever add more things to do on the end-game level... However, you may notice it's even been mentioned several times here that the key thing is that people feel that once you land on another planet, there isn't much else to do. That does not imply the solution to that is to get out the shovels and start mining. Especially if you were supposed to remember to pack the shovels in the first place and didn't realize it until after touchdown.

My point is, that old plan we had for resources is most certainly not the right solution. It doesn't fit organically with the rest of the game, it requires you to remember to attach a bunch of single-purpose parts to a vessel (forgetting any of which would render a mission a complete failure), and really, that's just not how we want the game to play out.

That logic is a head scratcher though. Landing on other planets requires you to remember a bunch of single purpose parts to a vessel as well (parachute, landing gear, landing engine, enough fuel) and forgetting any of them will render your mission a complete failure. Transmission of science data is impossible if you forget an antenna. Your ship will not function if you forget a power source. I mean every single flight in the game requires several components, and if any are forgot the whole mission will be a failure. Nice try, but that excuse doesn't work at all.

Now my thing with resources is that they are a very large part of human space exploration. If we ever do go to Mars or anywhere else, living off the land will be vital and commercial mining is likely not that far away. Since KSP is suppose to be a space program simulator, it would seem almost criminal to leave such an important part of human exploration out. The attempted system wasn't good? Ok, that happens in game development. Sometimes features don't turn out right... but simply walking away from an important feature after one failed attempt, especially when there is clear demand for it? Doesn't seem right to me.

Also, I'm not quite sure why there seems to be a shift towards simplification when it comes to KSP and new feautes, but its going to alienate a large part of the community. KSP at its core, is one of the more difficult and complex games out there. It requires a basic understanding of physics, orbital mechanics, and rocketry in order to do anything beyond blowing things up. So it makes little sense to me that new features are being watered down and aimed at those that probably can't even get into orbit to begin with. If you are able to get into space, and go to other planets, I'm sure something like resource gathering is far from beyond your grasp. If you want to appeal to new players, don't water down or scrap end game content that new/bad players will never see, instead focus on things like better tutorials.... you know, things that new players might actually get to use.

[Sokar408]

That logic is a head scratcher though. Landing on other planets requires you to remember a bunch of single purpose parts to a vessel as well (parachute, landing gear, landing engine, enough fuel) and forgetting any of them will render your mission a complete failure. Transmission of science data is impossible if you forget an antenna. Your ship will not function if you forget a power source. I mean every single flight in the game requires several components, and if any are forgot the whole mission will be a failure. Nice try, but that excuse doesn't work at all.

Now my thing with resources is that they are a very large part of human space exploration. If we ever do go to Mars or anywhere else, living off the land will be vital and commercial mining is likely not that far away. Since KSP is suppose to be a space program simulator, it would seem almost criminal to leave such an important part of human exploration out. The attempted system wasn't good? Ok, that happens in game development. Sometimes features don't turn out right... but simply walking away from an important feature after one failed attempt, especially when there is clear demand for it? Doesn't seem right to me.

Also, I'm not quite sure why there seems to be a shift towards simplification when it comes to KSP and new feautes, but its going to alienate a large part of the community. KSP at its core, is one of the more difficult and complex games out there. It requires a basic understanding of physics, orbital mechanics, and rocketry in order to do anything beyond blowing things up. So it makes little sense to me that new features are being watered down and aimed at those that probably can't even get into orbit to begin with. If you are able to get into space, and go to other planets, I'm sure something like resource gathering is far from beyond your grasp. If you want to appeal to new players, don't water down or scrap end game content that new/bad players will never see, instead focus on things like better tutorials.... you know, things that new players might actually get to use.

While I did not agree with a lot of what was said since this whole resource thing flared up, this is actually how I feel. I realize it'll carry no weight, but without being able to gather resources and have bases that, while maybe time consuming to construct, could become self sufficient, we are pretty much limited to short, or even more tedious in the form of having to launch every drop of fuel from the space center. However I'd make the same argument about what RemoteTech does, so I'm probably biased by passionate opinion on the subject

[Stargate525]

Dear Squad,

Firstly, thank you for the prompt response! This has cleared a lot of misconceptions and storming... stuff... that we as a community brewed over the weekend.

But I do have some questions regarding your statement that I would love to see some clarification on. In your blog, you said that resource mining has been shelved. What does this mean? How is this different from 'on the back burner,' 'in the wings,' or other such positional statements made about various aspects of the game at different times? Is it cancelled, and is it cancelled completely? You've been very careful, I've noticed, to consistently refer to it as 'the old resource-mining.' Before we make assumptions, does this mean that there is some sort of resources mechanic, of SOME type, still planned? If this is the case, even if you're not ready or willing to reveal details, I believe it would assuage the hurt and disappointment amongst some in the community tremendously if you were able to tell us that we have something in the same general vein awaiting us.

The way you've spoken (er, typed) seems to suggest you see career mode and end-game as separate items. How do you see these two things interacting? Will we be able to continue our space program from career mode indefinitely, or do you have in mind more of a system such as early sandbox-style games that when you finish the laid out career, you are left with what is essentially the original sandbox mode?

Finally, I'd like to very gently ask what we can imply from this:

One last thing we wanted to discuss was what it means to be an Early Access game. While we share a lot in common with MMO-style development processes, it is different in that the MMO is essentially complete from the start and receives new updates to extend content for players who have done everything. The Early Access game is still incomplete and must devote development time to adding features that might not seem important to experienced players, but make it easier to be picked up by new players, or make the overall game experience more complete, even if it doesn’t make it more lengthy.

There was very heated debate over the weekend on just what you guys 'must' do. It's got very little to do with the game proper, and I know you have every right to ignore this request, but can we get a statement on what you see your responsibility is to the community, what sort of community/developer interaction we should expect going forward, and how the community can best direct our efforts into helping you make KSP the best game it can be?

I'm looking forward to seeing what you've got planned for us in the future, especially tomorrow.

Keep up the good work,

SG

[JordanL]

While I did not agree with a lot of what was said since this whole resource thing flared up, this is actually how I feel. I realize it'll carry no weight, but without being able to gather resources and have bases that, while maybe time consuming to construct, could become self sufficient, we are pretty much limited to short, or even more tedious in the form of having to launch every drop of fuel from the space center. However I'd make the same argument about what RemoteTech does, so I'm probably biased by passionate opinion on the subject

Let me summarize even further:

Without a resource system of some kind (mining or other), the VAB is the game. Looks like this game will absolutely require community mod packs even after it is finished.

[Stargate525]

Let me summarize even further:

Without a resource system of some kind (mining or other), the VAB is the game.

Don't forget the SPH. But yeah, I kind of agree. The building is the game, the rest is just performance metric.

[JordanL]

Don't forget the SPH. But yeah, I kind of agree. The building is the game, the rest is just performance metric.

Even career mode, as they've described and displayed it, is all about jumping through hoops so that your VAB/SPH can do more. That's it.

I still love the hell out of this game, but without mods I don't think this is something I would play often or for very long. Looks like Kethane + Real Fuels will just be "stock" for my game experience. No point in playing 0.23 or any other update until at least those two are updated.

[tntristan12]

I have to agree. I hope this "end-game content" Harv promises is at least a passable substitute.

[Spatzimaus]

I'm very, very disappointed about the resource thing, but hopefully it'll provide the impetus for some modder to expand the Kethane system into a robust multi-resource system. The thing is, I completely disagree with HarvesteR about the reason for shelving it; even if it wasn't "fun" to do the mining in its own right, it added a capability that the core game simply doesn't have: the ability to refuel a vessel on-site, and THAT led to fun things. Right now, all fuel has to be launched from Kerbin, which makes it impractical to do anything fun at places like Jool. Kethane mining isn't "fun" by itself, but it allows us to do all sorts of things that wouldn't be possible otherwise, and that's a big part of this game. That's why I was really hoping to see the official system described back in 0.18 implemented. Not only would it have provided this capability without mods, it would have required code enabling refining/mining for non-active vessels, which is something that has all kinds of other uses. (I know the ScanSat mod has this capability right now, though, so it might not be long before Kethane can do it as well.)

It's unfortunate that this seems to just be reinforcing the trend that all of the good new features are being developed by modders first.

[JordanL]

Also, what's more fun:

Launching and transfering perhaps a dozen tug/refueler ships to Jool, or sending a second "mining" setup to handle all of it?

Juggling all the transfer burns to handle Kerbin -> Jool fueling is a pain.

[Sarda]

News about Resource Mining is never anything but disappointing. I have no idea how 1 man can do it so right (Kethane) and a entire company of people can get it so wrong. If it wasn't for Kethane, I would have nothing to do in the game. Career mode is utterly worthless to me, I couldn't careless for Multiplayer, give me things to do on planets beyond science, I don't care about getting imaginary currency solely to make the VAB/SPH catalog bigger. Lets see space bases have a purpose, lets have real resource mining, lets get the ability to build in space itself. Spend development time on that you'd make a hell of a lot more people happy.

[Mr. Man]

Before this thread was created, there was a much larger discussion about the current state of resource development and the original poster had mentioned something about increased logistics complexity. In a game like KSP where the game centers around being a technical sandbox, aspects like complicated logistics is a must, hence why it's a good idea to continue developing a way for resource to be integrated into the game at one point.

[czokletmuss]

Well, at least we can hope that after seeing how important this is to the players, Squad will put more effort into the resources, however they are going to be implemented in the end.

[regex]

I have no idea how 1 man can do it so right (Kethane) and a entire company of people can get it so wrong.

Majiir is undoubtedly one of the best modders out there but Kethane in its current iteration is anything but done "so right"; it basically amounts to an exercise in timewarping in pretty much all of its activities. There is very little active gameplay involved and all of the parts are scaled for industrial operations, leaving very little for tiny science probes and such (given his current posts he has some stuff in the works, though, so we'll see how it evolves). SQUAD's dropped proposal amounted to essentially the same thing, only with far more resources and bad complexity. It would have ended up being a grindy piece of frustrating crap.

[LethalDose]

News about Resource Mining is never anything but disappointing. I have no idea how 1 man can do it so right (Kethane) and a entire company of people can get it so wrong. If it wasn't for Kethane, I would have nothing to do in the game. Career mode is utterly worthless to me, I couldn't careless for Multiplayer, give me things to do on planets beyond science, I don't care about getting imaginary currency solely to make the VAB/SPH catalog bigger. Lets see space bases have a purpose, lets have real resource mining, lets get the ability to build in space itself. Spend development time on that you'd make a hell of a lot more people happy.

< sarcasm >

How can one man do it right and the whole company do it wrong?

Clearly you're mistaken, good sir!

SQUAD tried. At least one way, maybe even TWO!

The people at SQUAD clearly decided that it wasn't fun. So the way Kethane is implemented must clearly be either:

1. Not fun
   
2. Just a plain wrong
   

Because if there was a right and fun way, it would have to have been the one way (or one of the maybe even two ways) that SQUAD tried it.

< / sarcasm >

Yeah, okay, whatever. I don't see how this is different than the KerbalKon Closing Ceremony statement.

[I_Killed_Jeb]

< sarcasm >

How can one man do it right and the whole company do it wrong?

Clearly you're mistaken, good sir!

SQUAD tried. At least one way, maybe even TWO!

The people at SQUAD clearly decided that it wasn't fun. So the way Kethane is implemented must clearly be either:

1. Not fun
   
2. Just a plain wrong
   

Because if there was a right and fun way, it would have to have been the one way (or one of the maybe even two ways) that SQUAD tried it.

< / sarcasm >

Yeah, okay, whatever. I don't see how this is different than the KerbalKon Closing Ceremony statement.

Your ill-placed sarcasm only works if squad's resource system was kethane. it wasn't. I'm gung-ho on resources and end-game reasons for planetary excursions but what reason has squad given you to believe they aren't working to make the game as fun as possible?

[Themohawkninja]

Majiir is undoubtedly one of the best modders out there but Kethane in its current iteration is anything but done "so right"; it basically amounts to an exercise in timewarping in pretty much all of its activities. There is very little active gameplay involved and all of the parts are scaled for industrial operations, leaving very little for tiny science probes and such (given his current posts he has some stuff in the works, though, so we'll see how it evolves). SQUAD's dropped proposal amounted to essentially the same thing, only with far more resources and bad complexity. It would have ended up being a grindy piece of frustrating crap.

I disagree that it was bad complexity. In fact, the complexity is what I was looking forward to. Kethane is just one resource, but Squad had the idea of adding all sorts of resources, in various areas of the Kerbol system.

It's a lot less grind, as it forces the player to explore more of the system if they want to keep vying for a mining empire.

[allmappedout]

Kethane works as is, because it's one resource. Whilst I don't derive much joy from finding and mining it, it enables you to do more stuff that might require a refueling mission. However, having the resource chart as it was would mean searching for multiple parts of multiple different resources in different areas, combining them, and refining them, just to do what Kethane can currently do in one. Kethane works because it's not overly complex and so it doesn't add too much to the mission length. A full resource tree is a COMPLETE other story.

[Specialist290]

While I don't quite agree with the way regex has phrased his point, I'm going to back him up on it. I was one of those who got into the game after 0.18 was released, which I believe was around the same time resources were first announced as well. After a while, when it became clear that resources weren't coming as soon as the community had at first anticipated, I decided to check out the Kethane mod.

Again, Majiir is a fantastic programmer and mod developer, and at first I was enthralled by the fact that I could run ISRU operations around the solar system, but eventually the whole process of watching a tiny dot slowly trace out a series of tiny lines on a tiny window so that I could find a decent mining site started grating on me,* as it felt like the whole process was too tedious and eating up valuable game time I could have been spending working on other projects. That sense of tedium ultimately prompted me to give up on the mod, although I've flirted with reinstalling it time to time simply to have some way of mining resources.

I'm all for resource extraction and exploitation to be added to the game in some fashion eventually -- and, truth be told, I'm more in favor of it than I am multiplayer, since I don't use multiplayer modes on most games I play anyway -- but I don't believe the Kethane model is necessarily the best model for the developers to copy for the stock game.

* As did the need to "refresh" the map periodically because the deposit sizes seemed oddly small, but that's tangential to the main issue.

[Themohawkninja]

Kethane works as is, because it's one resource. Whilst I don't derive much joy from finding and mining it, it enables you to do more stuff that might require a refueling mission. However, having the resource chart as it was would mean searching for multiple parts of multiple different resources in different areas, combining them, and refining them, just to do what Kethane can currently do in one. Kethane works because it's not overly complex and so it doesn't add too much to the mission length. A full resource tree is a COMPLETE other story.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Kethane only cover liquid fuel? The resource chart that Squad had planned would cover all fuel types, and electric charge.