Squadcast Summary (Updated 2014-12-13 - the 0.90 features video edition!)

[Caelib]

The only thing that concerns me with this info is the changes to probes and SAS -- if I'm understanding them correctly, they may become totally useless?

[Waterlimon]

... I'm thinking size restraints would be more ideal, but a lot more difficult to code. ...

I would just make it so that you are not allowed to build parts that clip the walls of the building space (or are outside). So while you could build a relatively big craft, it wouldnt be very comfortable when you have 1 m of space between the rocket and the buildings walls.

That would be intuitive as well (no invisible barriers). Best would be if the camera could be outside the building without ugly visual artifacts (to get rid of the uncomfortable-yet-possible zone which doesnt improve gameplay experience much).

[Dreamixpl]

How many, do you suppose, bought KSP on Steam, tried it once, flew straight up, had no clue why they didn't make it to space or how to improve their design? How many of those people just gave up with a bad impression of the game?

This is so true. If career is for experienced players, they already know all things (speed for orbit, etc.). If its not, there should be good tutorial, with explaining dv, speeds, inclanations, and it definietly shouldn't be: go up until Ap on map view is high, and burn towards marker on that sphere on bottom...

[Overfloater]

Mission control - Lowest level mission control means no manoeuvre nodes available.

Tracking Station - lowest level means no orbit indicator.

This will be interesting... （ ）

...before you launch your first thing, you already have enough money to unlock orbit lines...

...the most vital upgrades (orbit lines, nodes etc) are the first upgrade available and are pretty cheap...

Oh... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Sasquatch_Punter]

@Thomas988: Im not crazy about the VAB limits, but the launchpad already limits mass. I'm thinking size restraints would be more ideal, but a lot more difficult to code.

If I remember correctly, the barn model was already much smaller than the current VAB, which I assume means they're planning on a size limit to start off.

It's helpful to think of the VAB as a representation of not only rocket construction, but rocket design. With that in mind, the artificial part limit seems less like an arbitrary roadblock, and more like a way to simulate early engineering hurdles that discouraged convoluted ship designs. Think: did early space ships have tons of RCS thrusters, gadgets, solar panels, storage modules, boosters, etc.? No, because the engineers of the time were more interested in keeping everything manageable and streamlined for their specific needs. Using a general part limit allows players a degree of freedom while still somewhat holding them to the constraints of early rocket design.

And, of course, the launchpad already has a mass limit, so a part limit for the VAB makes a lot of sense from a "cohesive design" standpoint.

Edited December 6, 2014 by Sasquatch_Punter

[Rune]

I have jumped the last few pages, but I really think I have to comment something. See, I happen to really like the new way kerbal experience is implemented. A lot. All those restrictions are awesomely thought out! So let me explain why I think that.

Basically, people are freaking out at the thought of playing without SAS and orbital lines, maneuver nodes, and the like. But we already play without decouplers. Why would you want to see a maneuver node when you can't get over 1000m without your SRB fizzling out?

See, all these changes further define the progression throughout the career mode. If you want all the bells and whistles right away, sure, go ahead and jump into sandbox. All pilots and engineers will be level 5, everything is free and unlocked. But if you want to play a career mode where you start from scratch and work your way to the heavens... well, you have to start humble, right? So let's see how that would work out with the changes as they have outlined right now, with apractical example:

Say I start in a crappy space center without SAS, tech, map view, or the ability to build big ships. I go into the VAB and... yeah, only about four parts available. So who cares I can't plan a trip to Eeloo because I don't have patched conics or maneuver nodes? I shouldn't be able to. I mean, I don't even have decouplers, and we all know SRB explosive staging is an exploit. And with the new part count restrictions I can't build absurd SSTOs with a gazillion tiny tanks (that I couldn't afford anyway, or land afterwards without legs). So what do I do for the first missions? I do a few suborbital mission hitting a couple biomes. I make sure I do contracts at the same time. I build funds and science, unlock new tech... and upgrade my buildings too of course! Through the missions I also trained a couple pilots and a scientist or two. Great! Now I have to unlock a decent tracking station, because the next mission is orbital! No problem, though I might have to do one more contract with a plane or something to get funds because I was wasteful. Do I have SAS to handle the ascent? Sure, my pilots know their stuff by now, they might even be good enough to hold prograde for low-thrust long maneuvers if I know how to design good enough to need them (say, I'm flying by Minmus on the first orbital flight, because I am that awesome and know how to do it without patched conics). Then I do this great mission, and get ahead of the curve! I can go straight back down and perhaps unlock a few more tech trees. Since I'm a great navigator, I hold on on buying maneuver nodes, because I want the NERVAs ASAP and going really far out. Perhaps I spend the extra funds I save there into advanced probes so I can get high-level SAS on unmanned flights earlier than I should instead, it's entirely up to me and my playstyle.

Does that palythrough not sound incredibly awesome? It sure does to me! And you could always opt out by setting a different difficulty and/or playing sandbox. If that's not something that improves the game, I don't know what is.

Rune. So thanks, SQUAD!

[LABHOUSE]

Thank you so much for writing this! I'm way too lazy to watch Squadcast err... my audio is broken. Yeah.

This update is going to be so awesome. I just love the idea of a nerdy scientist attempting to hold the craft's attitude because Jeb is on vacation

Building upgrades sound great, although "no orbit lines" is scaring me.

If audio is broken just used closed captioning...

[WuphonsReach]

My comments:

-VAB limitation should be physical extents or mass, not part count. Thats just artificial.

-Exceeding limits should be allowed but it should damage the launchpad/runway over time. Hard limits are lame and not realistic.

-KXP should affect speed/accuracy, not ability.

-Building upgrades should make information more accurate not reveal it. (predict vessel path further, more precise orbit data...)

Those are all very good suggestions:

- Limiting by total mass makes far more sense then by part count. (My guess is that this is just their first stab at the idea.) Hopefully they'll refine the concept. Limiting by mass makes a lot of sense, because you need increasingly large / expensive equipment when you move from trying to lift 10t to 100t to 1000t.

- Upgrades should definitely control accuracy of information instead of artificial limitations like not displaying asc/desc nodes or Ap/Pe locations / values. Hopefully they find time to refine that in the release after 0.90.

- I also think that when you unlock a fuel type in the tech tree, that you should initially have difficulties getting it 100% pure. Maybe it starts at 80-90% pure (with equivalent loss of performance) and you slowly refine it over time using science points / funds / tech tree advances. So if it starts at 80%, the first step would be to reduce the impurities by 1/2, the next step would reduce the impurities by 1/2 again, etc. So the iteration values would look like:

80% pure, 90% pure, 95% pure, 97.5% pure, 98.75%, 99.38%...

- The same could be done for engines. When you first unlock the engine, it only performs at 80% of theoretical. Then you work on improving it through a few iterations until you have an engine that is 98.75% compared to theoretical performance.

You could even start to play with the costs of the improvements. Going from 80% to 90% might be fairly inexpensive and only take a Kerbin day to do. Going from 98.75% to 99.38% might take a Kerbin year and $500k of funds and 500 science points. Just make it so that each additional refinement step takes 30% longer and costs 30% more funds / science points.

[Damien_The_Unbeliever]

I'm also surprised about so many people who have strong opinions about how broken new feature X is despite the fact that they're only working from a description and haven't actually tried feature X yet.

As to the arguments that a part count is "artificially" limited (as if that means anything in a game) it's perfectly feasible to conceive of buildings that have limited inventory available on-hand. Sure, you might want to bolt 5000 parts together - and we may even have all 5000 of those parts sitting around - but we've only got enough nuts and bolts available at the moment to connect 200 of them together.

Edited December 6, 2014 by Damien_The_Unbeliever

[Parkaboy]

Secondly, what exactly is happening with the internal building scenes? Are they the same scene? Are the VAB and SPH going to have the same internal look? If so, I'm against that. I love the distinct looks between the SPH and VAB, and while toggling between the two buildings' building mode is amazing, merging the scenes together does not seem good in my world. Then again, I may be reading this wrong and sounding like a complete madman.

Yes, you're understanding it wrong. Max is using the term "scene" in the game programming sense. The game can very well call a scene, which is a portion of the game world with unique rules and parameters, and then switch the visual aspect of that scene entirely depending on whether you've clicked on the VAB or the SPH. Mostly it just means they'll be using the same code.

[Robotengineer]

To anybody who is still confused about the SPH/VAB being the same scene, what it means is that only the meshes and visual aspects will change between editors. The underlying code is the same in both. IIRC, all of the non-editor, non-flight, space center scenes are just UI overlays on the space center, so I'm assuming that thats how they will do the differences between SPH/VAB.

[razark]

...but we've only got enough nuts and bolts available at the moment to connect 200 of them together.

So I put in an order for some more nuts and bolts and wait a couple of days, and now I've got all the parts I need to put whatever I want together.

[Damien_The_Unbeliever]

So I put in an order for some more nuts and bolts and wait a couple of days, and now I've got all the parts I need to put whatever I want together.

Yep. That would be great - if it took time to build rockets and so larger rockets took longer to produce. (And I know there's a construction time mod), but if we're constrained to what can be built right now, do you agree that a part limit isn't an entirely artificial construct (which is what I was arguing against)?

[Nemrav]

To those who want size restraints instead of part count, for once i'l give in, it wouldn't actually be hard to code... In unity (not unreal, home, cry etc. engines) all they would have to do is add some colliders(around 5 per VAB level), set them to trigger and add 2 lines (excluding variable definitions) that goes something like this:

"for (triggercolliders in scene){

if(mytriggercollider.collided == true){outsidelimits = true;}}"

or skip the for loop and just have an if statement for every single collider.....

I'm now counting the posts before the time bomb goes off

[razark]

...do you agree that a part limit isn't an entirely artificial construct?

No, I do not agree at all. Any limits are going to be artificial limits. The size limit is just as artificial. There's no actual walls keeping us from building bigger, just as there's no actual part shortage keeping us from adding more parts. It's just a game mechanic to limit players and force them to start with smaller ships.

In the gameworld, however, the size restriction makes more sense than part count restrictions.

Besides, if construction takes no time, then the contractor building the parts takes no time, and shipping them takes no time, so we've got an infinite supply ready at any time.

[HafCoJoe]

Reworked fuel transferring! Kerbal XP! New buildings! No orbit indicators at the start (This could mean PLENTY of awesome new challenges)! An initial part count limiter (Again more possibilities for new challenges)! VAB and SPH swapping at the touch of a button! BETA THE EVER!

I have a few things I'd like cleared up though

- IVA view for the Mk3 cockpit is coming in this update, right?

- Any news on biomes for all planets for 0.90 that was talked about earlier?

- Are the new part organization/grouping reworks coming in 0.90?

- What happened to

this picture

? I'd love to have that in a mod

- Any news on the IVA for the Mk2 cockpit or the other cockpits? Or is the ETA still "in the future"?

Don't get me wrong, I'm super hyped for this update. I'm just not sure what information is out about these four points + the last which I'm curious about.

- Avera9eJoe

Edited December 6, 2014 by Avera9eJoe

[BudgetHedgehog]

- IVA view for the Mk3 cockpit is coming in this update, right?

- Any news on biomes for all planets for 0.90 that was talked about earlier?

- Are the new part organization/grouping reworks coming in 0.90?

- What happened to

this picture

? I'd love to have that in a mod

- Any news on the IVA for the Mk2 cockpit or the other cockpits? Or is the ETA still "in the future"?

1, probably not, will come later. IVAs are a pain and not entirely necessary for you to use the part.

2, yes, biomes on all planets and moons. I think there's 106 now. I didn't include any info in the OP as I joined the Twitch stream too late.

3, yes, you can see the overhauled UI in the Editor Overhaul section of the OP. Looks pretty good and apparently very easy to get the hang of.

4, won't be in. Maybe released as a 'legacy' part from Squad, but considering the superior work by PorkJet.. don't hold your breath.

5, see 1. The Sam Hall Internals work fine for now though and I'd be surprised if Squad didn't use it in the final release - why reinvent the wheel, after all. All other IVAs exist and if they're redone, that will be in a later polishing update - definitely not this one (that I'm aware of).

[HafCoJoe]

1, probably not, will come later. IVAs are a pain and not entirely necessary for you to use the part.

2, yes, biomes on all planets and moons. I think there's 106 now. I didn't include any info in the OP as I joined the Twitch stream too late.

3, yes, you can see the overhauled UI in the Editor Overhaul section of the OP. Looks pretty good and apparently very easy to get the hang of.

4, won't be in. Maybe released as a 'legacy' part from Squad, but considering the superior work by PorkJet.. don't hold your breath.

5, see 1. The Sam Hall Internals work fine for now though and I'd be surprised if Squad didn't use it in the final release - why reinvent the wheel, after all. All other IVAs exist and if they're redone, that will be in a later polishing update - definitely not this one (that I'm aware of).

Okay Biomes are still in. I don't know if they mentioned anything about that in the stream. I didn't make it . I didn't see the UI post you had in the OP, oops! About the part Hugo made, I know there's no chance of that coming in stock (especially since they removed that size of fuselage entirely), I'm just curious if it will be brought forwards to a mod at all. As to the IVAs for the other parts, I'm not saying they are coming in this update (H*** no that's early! It'd me mentioned by now it it was.). It's just I've heard absolutely no indications of Squad even revisiting them. So U'm wondering if there's any news of that.

Thanks for your clear ups! Have some rep o/

[Nemrav]

Another question, apparently, Harvester worked on a module that got rid of drag on parts in cargo bays...

Any news on that one since the twitter post (which someone linked to me) ?

[BudgetHedgehog]

About the part Hugo made, I know there's no chance of that coming in stock (especially since they removed that size of fuselage entirely), I'm just curious if it will be brought forwards to a mod at all. As to the IVAs for the other parts, I'm not saying they are coming in this update (H*** no that's early! It'd me mentioned by now it it was.). It's just I've heard absolutely no indications of Squad even revisiting them. So U'm wondering if there's any news of that. /

Probably will only be a mod if someone copies it and releases it (if they's allowed to?). Don't hold your breath for another official Squad mod (or Squod), especially considering not many parts for it were made. I haven't heard any news of them revisiting the IVAs, though I agree, it'd be nice if they did. Again though, don't hold your breath. Also, thanks for the rep, you're too kind

Another question, apparently, Harvester worked on a module that got rid of drag on parts in cargo bays...

None that I know of, sorry. That tweet is all the info I believe we know about it.

[The Jedi Master]

No orbit lines? I think that if they can build rockets in the first place, they know what an orbit looks like.

[theend3r]

Some of these things sound very annoying. If it weren't for the editor changes I'd just get the new mk3 parts and stay in 0.25 (which I'll probably do anyways untill all the mods are upgraded). The changes to the editor sound good though.

[The Jedi Master]

Also, I think the crew system adds unnecessary complexity to the game.

[klgraham1013]

I do like the idea of pilots, engineers, and scientists. Really, I'd go further, in that only scientist could collect science, only pilots could pilot, etc.

[Woopert]

No orbit lines? I think that if they can build rockets in the first place, they know what an orbit looks like.

Well, during the Gemini program they were still figuring out how to rendezvous in space. Relative velocities, going faster means slower orbit, etc. But, I agree with you that not having orbit lines is excessive. Humans knew laws of gravitation and velocity formulas hundreds of years before we went to space. So yes, I think you should be able to see orbit lines.