Realism in KSP

[Renegrade]

I'm actually going to put one together after work tonight, was musing with ferram4 earlier that this needs to be done. I'll get together with NathanKell and have him add it to the RSS OP once it's playable. Shouldn't take too long (E: well, not too long to make, I have to finish up work, go to the gym, hang out with my kid, you get the idea. )

Well, I'll be checking for it. I definitely want to try it out and see how it plays.

I'd scribble up one myself, but I've only just begun playing with RSS config files and scaling gravity and such and still have a lot of research to do..

(By the way, I'm a big fan of thrust correction too.. I don't know why it isn't stock yet, considering how simple it would be to implement)

[Guest]

However, why should KSP necessarily have the same balance as the real world?

It shouldn't, and I don't think anyone seriously expects the stock game to be realistically sized or to have engines with real-world TWRs, or tanks to have realistic masses, etc... OTOH, scaling up the planets by a little bit solves issues with better aerodynamics, something that many people want.

[Sky_walker]

Yes, NASA bods laughed so hard at KSP that they sat down with Squad, and said that your game is so stupid that we will work with you to design an expansion pack.

I'm sure that's how it went down.

You sure they were actually NASA employees in a first place?

Decisions like that are usually made by the PR guys. Someone from an SLS/NASA Public Relations team most likely got an idea of promoting it through KSP next to the SLS color books, someone from management gave the green light and that's how they ended up approaching SQUAD

No offense meant by that post, but you seem to suggest that NASA selected KSP based on... scientific merit? Sorry to disappoint you then, but decisions like that are made on a completely different level than people who can do basic orbital maths sit. It's all PR guys. They found a popular game with rockets, they need public support for their SLS program (which receives tons of criticism) - so they approached the most popular game with rockets. If Nintendo would release Mario Rocket Racing instead of another Mario Kart Racing - I'm pretty sure you'd see Mario mission to the asteroid and Princess Peach riding SLS instead of Kerbals riding SLS.

And yes, I'm sure some NASA employees play KSP just like some ESA employees play KSP, these are enormous organizations hiring thousands of people after all, and modern day engineers do play games (despite of what some people might think), never the less Franklin's post makes a perfect summary how KSP looks like from an engineer point of view. Most of these people play KSP purely with mods improving on a glaring issues. Or did play it until they bounced off the wall of oddities SQUAD made in the game that's advertised to feature flight simulation.

Edited August 28, 2014 by Sky_walker

[technicalfool]

No offense meant by that post, but you seem to suggest that NASA selected KSP based on... scientific merit? Sorry to disappoint you then, but decisions like that are made on a completely different level than people who can do basic orbital maths sit. It's all PR guys.

I think it's pretty obvious that there were and are massive PR benefits to NASA. However, it's funny how they went for the one, single, reasonably popular game out there that doesn't try to portray space travel as being like naval battles with a Z axis.

Notice how there is no ARM pack for Eve Online? Or the X series? Of course there's not perfect, 100% realism. You'd have to be blind not to spot the issues with aerodynamics, and as far as I'm concerned, the popular "realism enhancing" mods do not much more than make the stalls a bit more interesting and giving aero-grade aluminium the approximate consistency of wet tissue paper.

To say that "people who actually have experience with and/or work in fields associated with space exploration laugh at KSP" though, I think is rather a stretch.

[ferram4]

You'd have to be blind not to spot the issues with aerodynamics, and as far as I'm concerned, the popular "realism enhancing" mods do not much more than make the stalls a bit more interesting and giving aero-grade aluminium the approximate consistency of wet tissue paper.

Since this is pretty much a thinly-veiled jab at FAR, I'll just ask straight out: what should they be doing, and have you seen what happens to planes and rockets that go sideways at Mach 1 at sea level? The closest example I can think of was the (still going relatively slow) Proton rocket crash about a year ago where the 3rd stage and payload just straight sheared off (along with the external fuel tanks on the first stage) as it headed towards the ground sideways.

[juanml82]

Incorrect. There were many, many more studies done regarding larger launch vehicles with much higher payloads than SLS or Long March. http://www.astronautix.com/fam/heaylift.htm

You don't bother to read :/

Sea Dragon was to be able to carry 550 tonnes to the orbit. Obviously never was build and even if it'd be build - it'd most likely happen in a very modified form (eg. using multiple smaller engines instead of a single large one) but this type of a rocket he designed has some solid grounds in a real studies..

Sea Dragon and other proposals were, well, that. Proposals. There is a long way between the drawing board and a functioning rocket. Nothing that ever left the drawing board ever lifted more than 120 tons.

Which leads us to the problem of payload to mass ratios. If those were realistic, gameplay would suffer, since we'd need huge rockets to send small landers outside of Kerbin.

Besides the point. Go, watch some videos with astronauts and stuff. Plenty have changed since 20 century.

Psychological problems are one of the main issues a Mars mission has to tackle.

Cancer? You exactly mimic the trope I was talking about. "If we don't model cancer---and who wants to play "cancer"---then there is no point in even abstracting radiation." Again, all or nothing. No one here, no one, is asking for 100% realism. How about the next attack on the notion that the game could be more realistic (outcomes matching expectations we all have from living within the universe, the way it works) can be that any time compression is unrealistic? That would nip everything in the bud, lol.

All life support can be abstracted. Eye on the ball. The goal is not to add tons of unnecessary detail, but to account for the fact that longer trips need larger (more mass to move) habitation areas. Stations that are long duration need resupply. That's the sum total we are going for here. Why do you need X hitchhiker modules per Y astronauts? Life support, shielding, exercise, etc. Done. The simple mechanism is some sort of number of kerb-days supplies per pod of a different size. A new pod might be a "Long term habitation module" that has a crap ton of stuff in it (abstracted). Radiation can mostly be assumed as part of habitation designs, anyway. Not 100% realism, but a nod to reality.

Can be a difficulty toggle, anyway.

How do you model radiation without discussing cancer? Assuming the Hitchhiker module has radiation shielding (it couldn't possible have enough for a Jool encounter, but let's assume it does), what happens if you put a kerbal in a Jool mission without it?

[Red Iron Crown]

Sea Dragon and other proposals were, well, that. Proposals. There is a long way between the drawing board and a functioning rocket. Nothing that ever left the drawing board ever lifted more than 120 tons.

You are confusing "realism" with "historical accuracy". By that line of reasoning there can be no such thing as a realistic manned interplanetary mission, or a realistic planetary SSTO, because we haven't done it yet in real life. There is nothing unrealistic about very large payload rockets, even if they're not historically accurate.

[tater]

Whatever happens to them that happens to them without life support, I suppose. No one is suggesting that they model internal organs for kerbals. LS can be in units of LS per astronaut, per day (each astronaut uses 1 per day and different habitation modules contain X units each). Let people know that near certain bodies (with a list, and danger distances), they will lose Y units of expendable LS for normal habitation modules, and if a special "shielded" habitation module were built to some other standard (heavy mass) that holds the entire crew, then it immunizes the entire craft from this damage. Otherwise it subtracts LS units pro rata. Other modules (like I have seen in the LS mod) can add excess storage for LS supplies.

This gives the sense of cumulative exposure (though the medicine for humans is not as cut and dried as people used to think regarding radiation exposure, actually), and whatever happens only happens if they hit the threshold. I suppose if you really want to track your guys through their careers, they could be given some cumulative abuse allotment, at which point they are retired, or if their stupidity is low enough, they quit in disgust .

Done.

Not overly complicated.

Edited August 28, 2014 by tater

[Guest]

Which leads us to the problem of payload to mass ratios. If those were realistic, gameplay would suffer, since we'd need huge rockets to send small landers outside of Kerbin.

Not really. RSS has realistic payload fractions and you can send some amazing craft to other places in the solar system. Check out the recent forum/Reddit challenge and the last entry by the COM forum team. Besides, I don't think stock KSP is going that way, or really should.

Psychological problems are one of the main issues a Mars mission has to tackle.

How do you model radiation without discussing cancer? Assuming the Hitchhiker module has radiation shielding (it couldn't possible have enough for a Jool encounter, but let's assume it does), what happens if you put a kerbal in a Jool mission without it?

This is turning into a slippery slope realism argument. I don't think even Orbiter models radiation (except maybe in a mod?). In KSP it could be tracked and maybe Kerbals would require rehab or be "retired" from spaceflight if they accumulate too much. Life support could be "friendlified" by making shortages cost money and reputation rather than death, that sort of thing. You could argue for total realism but then you're entering the realm of "how much is too much" and "do we ever expect this game to reach 1.0". Certainly there are design decisions to be made, and any argument for realism features should be held up to that light. However, there are certain things that a majority of people want to see and some glaring issues in the systems that already exist within the game that should be fixed.

[Hodo]

You forgot one:

5. Lobby the devs to hold KSP to a higher standard, to make KSP better.

This could be said about ANY game that is sold to the mindless masses in gamerland.

No game released to date has been 100% perfect for 100% of the people out there.

I accept KSP for what it is, would I like a more realistic environment, sure I would. But am I expecting everyone to bow to my wants and make the devs do it, no. I am not that self absorbed.

Do I think the game is far from done, yes, and I think it could end up adding more realistic options at a later date sure. The community has proven already the expandability of KSP.

[Rowsdower]

You sure they were actually NASA employees in a first place?

Decisions like that are usually made by the PR guys. Someone from an SLS/NASA Public Relations team most likely got an idea of promoting it through KSP next to the SLS color books, someone from management gave the green light and that's how they ended up approaching SQUAD

No matter how you slice it, if NASA comes to you and says they'd like to work with you, you take it. It's an extremely rare opportunity for a game like ours to work with a big time governmental space agency *and* be able to create relevant new content for the game at the same time.

If Nintendo would release Mario Rocket Racing instead of another Mario Kart Racing - I'm pretty sure you'd see Mario mission to the asteroid and Princess Peach riding SLS instead of Kerbals riding SLS.

While I'd love to see that Mario game happen, KSP may have just inspired NASA in a way that other games had not.

And yes, I'm sure some NASA employees play KSP just like some ESA employees play KSP, these are enormous organizations hiring thousands of people after all, and modern day engineers do play games (despite of what some people might think), never the less Franklin's post makes a perfect summary how KSP looks like from an engineer point of view. Most of these people play KSP purely with mods improving on a glaring issues..

Yes, employees at NASA and others all across the spectrum of aerospace play KSP. Whether they play as stock as you can get or modded so much that their computers explode, what matters is that they play and enjoy themselves. That's all we can really hope of anyone.

But yeah, now *I'm* getting off topic. I'll send a warning to myself on this. Carry on, everyone.

[tater]

I did some work with NASA outreach back at the Uni a long time ago. We did edu projects with kids. I'd use this as an edu tool with certain basic fixes done (by mods or improving the stock game). It's not a lot to ask that the 1st order physics not be too far from reality in a game whose PR says as much. That's pretty much the extent of the "total realism" that anyone here is asking for. It's being presented as if any of us wanting a little more realism are actually asking for something akin to an even more realistic version of "Orbiter," when in fact we're only asking for things to be first order approximations of what people who know slightly more than nothing about rockets might expect---like having to put nosecones on rockets to make them aerodynamic, vs launching something that looks like randomly put together legos. BTW, for "crazy" builds there is a simple expedient Squad could do---add the ability to achieve (or start with depending on settings) an orbital or munar VAB/ launch facility.

What a tech tree goal… set up a munar base or station of certain parameters, and POOF! A stock VAB gets added to it.

[Bothersome]

Everybody would like to have a KSP that simulates/playes more closer to real physics, even Squad. But the crux of the matter is that they started on and maintaining a 32bit program. IF you just simply make the planets real sized as in known physics about planets, then you all of the sudden are going to need large textures and elevation maps. Those maps and land layouts might be procedural generated, but they still take up active memory the more detailed they become. And you will need to make them more detailed because in real scale, those polygons can get pretty large and then it doesn't look well done there. So Squad ran into memory problems early on and decided to reduce the scale of planets to have much less memory requirements. Why does Squad not add every nice part that they can dream up? Memory issues again. They need to also allow some extra overhead for people that want to add mod packages too.

The source of the problem comes straight out of the decision to keep 32bit KSP. What I think Squad needs to do, is dump 32bit and make only a 64bit version that can handle the memory requirements. 64bit computers are cheap enough now and anyone still on 32bit needs to get upgraded anyway. The 32bit hold-outs are causing the game quality and capabilities to suffer for all of us and I'd imagine that most of us are already on 64bit hardware by now anyway.

[juanml82]

You are confusing "realism" with "historical accuracy". By that line of reasoning there can be no such thing as a realistic manned interplanetary mission, or a realistic planetary SSTO, because we haven't done it yet in real life. There is nothing unrealistic about very large payload rockets, even if they're not historically accurate.

Well, realistic SSTOs using jet engines (or even ramjets, if they are added to the game) aren't realistic. Manned interplanetary missions might not use slow Hoffman transfers whenever they are finally done. There is a proposal to use Vasimir engines to make it to Mars in 40 days.

But I'm not saying that KSP has to attempt to achieve total realism. I'm saying that, in order to discuss realism, we first need to acknowledge what realism is. And then we say where we think Squad should abandon realism and favor gameplay instead.

Whatever happens to them that happens to them without life support, I suppose. No one is suggesting that they model internal organs for kerbals. LS can be in units of LS per astronaut, per day (each astronaut uses 1 per day and different habitation modules contain X units each). Let people know that near certain bodies (with a list, and danger distances), they will lose Y units of expendable LS for normal habitation modules, and if a special "shielded" habitation module were built to some other standard (heavy mass) that holds the entire crew, then it immunizes the entire craft from this damage. Otherwise it subtracts LS units pro rata. Other modules (like I have seen in the LS mod) can add excess storage for LS supplies.

This gives the sense of cumulative exposure (though the medicine for humans is not as cut and dried as people used to think regarding radiation exposure, actually), and whatever happens only happens if they hit the threshold. I suppose if you really want to track your guys through their careers, they could be given some cumulative abuse allotment, at which point they are retired, or if their stupidity is low enough, they quit in disgust .

Done.

Not overly complicated.

And they die of radiation poisoning or retire due the risk of cancer. Yes, I agree it is a good approximation to radiation even if it forgoes realism. It may still be bad publicity, though.

We should also keep in mind that living space, supplies and radiation aren't the only LS challenges a realistic approach has to take. Microgravity is another. It may or may not be tackled by Squad, of course.

[Red Iron Crown]

Well, realistic SSTOs using jet engines (or even ramjets, if they are added to the game) aren't realistic. Manned interplanetary missions might not use slow Hoffman transfers whenever they are finally done. There is a proposal to use Vasimir engines to make it to Mars in 40 days.

That doesn't address my post at all. Your claim was that a 500+t to orbit rocket is unrealistic because our largest IRL rockets lift far less. I made no mention of jet engines or the type of transfer an interplanetary mission would use, just that using lack of historical example as evidence of lack of realism is not accurate.

But I'm not saying that KSP has to attempt to achieve total realism. I'm saying that, in order to discuss realism, we first need to acknowledge what realism is. And then we say where we think Squad should abandon realism and favor gameplay instead.

I agree with this, total realism is and should be compromised to make the game fun and playable.

We should also keep in mind that living space, supplies and radiation aren't the only LS challenges a realistic approach has to take. Microgravity is another. It may or may not be tackled by Squad, of course.

Microgravity is a tough one, because most solutions to it I've seen involve centrifuges of one sort or another. In KSP as it is now, that would preclude the use of on-rails timewarp and make IP transfers incredibly long. Maybe an animated centrifuge part could be used, or maybe the microgravity issue could be ignored completely as real life astronauts have survived over a year of being in orbit without significant long term effects.

[Franklin]

I did some work with NASA outreach back at the Uni a long time ago. We did edu projects with kids. I'd use this as an edu tool with certain basic fixes done (by mods or improving the stock game). It's not a lot to ask that the 1st order physics not be too far from reality in a game whose PR says as much. That's pretty much the extent of the "total realism" that anyone here is asking for.

Exactly, thank you. I think the title is adding a confirmation bias to this thread that everyone keeps tripping over. Nobody expects an Orbiter 2. Nobody. Just that what's being marketed as a learning tool to actually be something people can learn outside the confines of the game. If nothing in the game accurately mimics its real-world reference points, then what exactly are kids learning beyond how to play KSP?

I also wonder if we took this re-sizing of the planets/system bullet out of the mix how much everyone would agree on a revamp of some stock elements. You're hard-pressed to find anyone in either camp (pro-real or anti-sim) that doesn't want to see a new aero model, so there must be other points we can all agree need consideration. Re-entry danger is probably another easy-to-swallow realism that both camps can agree on.

[tater]

And they die of radiation poisoning or retire due the risk of cancer. Yes, I agree it is a good approximation to radiation even if it forgoes realism. It may still be bad publicity, though.

To borrow from the anti-realism crowd, do kerbals get cancer? Their world is tiny, they might have evolved for higher radiation levels. Honestly, anything related to Kerbal physiology is far easier to handwave away, unless you have some working model of Kerbal medical science (must remember to capitalize or spell checker changes it). It's enough for the stock game for them to say that kernels need 1 unit of life support per day (food/water/air/scrubbing-all inclusive), and that long durations trips might need a special "long duration module" (retexture the hitchhiker or something). The LDM would include whatever it is that kernels need of longer trips that is in addition to consumables (exercise equipment, recreation, a "storm shelter" whatever you want to imagine).

Realistic mods can mess with those to make them specific to nominal human issues if they wish. Radiation is a tangent, frankly, and I don;t care one way or another about it. Having LS alone is great, and the plus of "radiation" is that it adds another novel set of design limitations.

I look at design limitations as a PLUS for gameplay. Take Minecraft. My kids love it, and I have played a bit as well. My daughter uses dead flat worlds and builds stuff (creative). I much prefer survival, and real worlds, adding my home to an extant village someplace with awesome terrain, and using the terrain as a feature for designs. Looks better than if I had no limits, IMO. My actual house is not dissimilar, it's on the side of the mountain here, and sort of berms into the hill (you can step onto my roof)… heck, I have boulders inside my house, they worked around them to make it, and the house is nicer because of that.

Edited August 28, 2014 by tater

[cantab]

The source of the problem comes straight out of the decision to keep 32bit KSP. What I think Squad needs to do, is dump 32bit and make only a 64bit version that can handle the memory requirements. 64bit computers are cheap enough now and anyone still on 32bit needs to get upgraded anyway. The 32bit hold-outs are causing the game quality and capabilities to suffer for all of us and I'd imagine that most of us are already on 64bit hardware by now anyway.

Until fairly recently the problem with 64-bit on Windows was down to Unity and its developers, not Squad. At the moment Squad are in a bit of a tricky position in that long term 64-bit ought to be the focus, but right now 32-bit has fewer bugs and can't be ignored.

But 64-bit computing doesn't make the task of handling a large game area any easier. I'm pretty sure double precision is the most natively supported by x86 and x86_64 alike.

[Geschosskopf]

You forgot one:

5. Lobby the devs to hold KSP to a higher standard, to make KSP better.

1. Who says KSP would be "better" with more "realism"? Besides you and the other realism-mongers, that is? Certainly not me, and I daresay not the devs. KSP as it stands is an immensely popular, award-winning product. That's what "better" means in the game dev world. Turning KSP into "Orbiter Lite", which is all it can ever become because it was never intended to be a simulation, would shoot it in both feet. 1 foot shot by decreasing its accessibility to the masses, the other by never being more than "Orbiter Lite" and thus alienating realism-mongers such as yourself. IOW, going from a large customer base to zero customer base. The masses would be turned off and the realism-mongers would go play orbiter. Bottom line is, you don't mess with what works, as has been shown over and over in the industry. Many, many games have yielded to pressure from folks like you and added stuff that made significant changes to gameplay, with the result that popularity plummeted and so the franchise died.

2. You forgot this part when you quoted me:

If you personally don't like KSP the way it is, you can do something about that yourself, FOR FREE. You've got mods, you've got Orbiter, neither of which cost money. But don't try to impose your own agenda on either Squad or the rest of the community.

Your agenda is your agenda. Go play Orbiter if KSP ain't your thing. Nobody's forcing you to be here.

[NathanKell]

Geschosskopf: nobody's forcing you to get offended, either. As I read it, this thread has thus far been a fairly civil discussion about what various people want to see in KSP.

I suggest everyone keeps it that way, rather than suggesting those who disagree with them about the direction KSP should take should leave.

[Guest]

1. Who says KSP would be "better" with more "realism"? Besides you and the other realism-mongers, that is? Certainly not me, and I daresay not the devs. KSP as it stands is an immensely popular, award-winning product. That's what "better" means in the game dev world. Turning KSP into "Orbiter Lite", which is all it can ever become because it was never intended to be a simulation, would shoot it in both feet. 1 foot shot by decreasing its accessibility to the masses, the other by never being more than "Orbiter Lite" and thus alienating realism-mongers such as yourself. IOW, going from a large customer base to zero customer base. The masses would be turned off and the realism-mongers would go play orbiter. Bottom line is, you don't mess with what works, as has been shown over and over in the industry. Many, many games have yielded to pressure from folks like you and added stuff that made significant changes to gameplay, with the result that popularity plummeted and so the franchise died.

I don't see that happening because I see the popularity of mods like FAR and NEAR, things that people want corrected. In truth, aside from the real-scale solar system (which I don't at all expect in stock and have clarified several times as a personal wish list item), I don't think I've suggested anything that is massively game changing or that people think are necessarily bad things. Some of those features are perfect candidates for difficulty options which can help increase the replayability of the game.

I think you're overstating the extent of any changes that I, or many others who agree with me, have proposed in order to generate hysteria and I don't appreciate that..

Your agenda is your agenda. Go play Orbiter if KSP ain't your thing. Nobody's forcing you to be here.

Sorry, I'm here to stay, KSP is my thing and I want to see it be the best it can be, and I will continue to voice my concern over any perceived failings or issues while it is still in development.

[ferram4]

1. Who says KSP would be "better" with more "realism"? Besides you and the other realism-mongers, that is? Certainly not me, and I daresay not the devs.

Would an aerodynamic model that would make nosecones useful and allow aerodynamic forces to be based on shape rather than mass be better than what we have now? Also, would any such improved aerodynamic model be more realistic than the current mass-based one we have now?

If the answer to both of those is yes (as it likely should be, and it's not hard to manage either), then yes, you yourself think that KSP would be "better" with more "realism." You don't have to advocate for Saturn Vs to get to the Mun to be in favor of more realism; you just have to be in favor of some simply changes to make the KSP universe behave more like our own, which will make it more intuitive for new players. Wide, flat pancake rockets with no nosecones being ideal is not an expected outcome, one which is unrealistic and is not expected by players because it is unrealistic, but that is what we have now.

More realism != more difficulty, and more realism != less fun. Implementing a proper aerodynamic model would result in more intuitive behaviors (easier) and allow for more interesting design options as a result of new mechanics (more fun).

[tater]

A typically fraught, emotional post by someone who appears to be reflexively anti-realism without actually defining what that means ("he said "realism," so I'm a'gin it!").

1. Who says KSP would be "better" with more "realism"? Besides you and the other realism-mongers, that is? Certainly not me, and I daresay not the devs.

Firstly, there is an assumption that "more realistic" somehow equates to less fun, and/or far more difficult to play. If a few numbers were changed to make something more realistic, would you even notice? Would anyone unaware of the change? Except for having played many, many hours, in particular, I'd have to say the answer would be "no." Everyone will likely have to change reentry parameters when they fix what they have now (virtually impossible not to reenter successfully except for failure to leave time compression as far as I can tell, I've had zero failures except one because I could not reenter 2 ships at one time). Anyone starting from scratch would likely assume that reentry mattered if they knew about the Space Shuttle at all, for example.

KSP as it stands is an immensely popular, award-winning product. That's what "better" means in the game dev world. Turning KSP into "Orbiter Lite", which is all it can ever become because it was never intended to be a simulation, would shoot it in both feet.

Them making the cash register ring is a legitimate concern. It's been pitched as a WIP, and I think people expect things to change in such a state. No one is proposing anything remotely as detailed as Orbiter. The things talked about are: an actual atmosphere (and aerodynamics), reentry with some possible consequence (vs none now), some corrections to math (Isp issue no one would notice much), and possibly some sort of life support (LS units consumed per guy, per day with a stock per CM). That's it. The last is a slightly scaled up Kerbin/solar system also proposed to balance the likely effects of an actual atmosphere---to make the game behave nearly as it does right now for existing players, basically (by definition a change you'd hardly notice, and soon forget).

1 foot shot by decreasing its accessibility to the masses, the other by never being more than "Orbiter Lite" and thus alienating realism-mongers such as yourself. IOW, going from a large customer base to zero customer base. The masses would be turned off and the realism-mongers would go play orbiter. Bottom line is, you don't mess with what works, as has been shown over and over in the industry. Many, many games have yielded to pressure from folks like you and added stuff that made significant changes to gameplay, with the result that popularity plummeted and so the franchise died.

Funny, I can think of many more counter examples. What games lost players because of too much realism? Are there any games that are actually too realistic? The Silent Hunter games are almost universally played modded, because they are dreck without mods (far too unrealistic to be interesting to anyone). Ditto AoE, etc. Il-2 was decently realistic, and virtually all players were for improvements to that, not asking to dumb it down. How about Pirates of the Burning Sea? Loads of hype in development… it was to be a sailing simulator for awesome age of sail battles against other people… they decided to aim for "the masses" and dumbed it down so far no one wanted to play. People claimed "realistic sailing is too hard," and the anti-realism people said that you'd need to control every sail as in RL… which is wrong. We are using computers, we don;t have to do that ourselves, we have a UI that allows us to pick an action, and we don't need to know all the nuts and bolts. Forming an orbit with maneuver nodes, for example. If the math changes a few percent behind the scenes, no one will ever know from the "difficulty" of doing it, it'll just change the best design choices.

Here's the thing, realism in the sense that all the "realism" people are asking for is almost entirely realistic physics outcomes within the regime the game encompasses. That's it. The game need not encompass everything and try to be Orbiter, but what it does try to do, get the physics right. That's it. "Difficulty has exactly zero to do with this math, the difficulty has more to do with the UI than anything else, and they have a good basic UI built.

Your agenda is your agenda. Go play Orbiter if KSP ain't your thing. Nobody's forcing you to be here.

You want whatever it is you want (nearly identical gameplay, but with grossly unrealistic rockets, I guess), so everyone else should not have an opinion. Got it.

(If post reads as harsh, sorry, it's an argument, I don't take them personally (who would, they're just ideas?). Being told to "get lost" if I disagree tends to make me perhaps more pointed than I might otherwise be. I'd imagine we'd all have a fine discussion over a pint, even the most fractious of us)

Edited August 29, 2014 by tater

[r_rolo1]

And to add on the above others said, I might add that it even can be said that the game nowadays is popular because the devs already changed the atmosphere to something a little more realistic. People sometimes forget that this atmospheric model is not the first one that KSP has and that the previous one was even less realistical than the current one ( it is not of my time either, but the lore tells of dark times when the atmosphere ended at 40 km and was even more dense than today ). I wonder how fun it would trying to get to space in those olden days conditions ...

Edited August 29, 2014 by r_rolo1

[tater]

Great point, r_rolo1. I wonder if those vociferously against any changes are in fact against any changes? are they KSP 0.24.2 fundamentalists? Or perhaps 0.23? Or sod they reserve judgement unless a change is proposed by someone in the forum, "just because?"