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

[Corw]

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.

You first few missions will be suborbital. By the time you can go orbital you'll have the lines. What is the problem with that?

[Superfluous J]

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...

Actually they shouldn't need to add it. The current VAB sets a size limit on your rockets, though it's a pretty generous one. I've hit the upper limit but never the side limits.

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.

There is a fundamental difference between the natural limit on the size of your craft based on the size of the building it's in, and some semirandom "You can only use 50 parts" limit based on a number they put in a field. Your arguement would work with everything in the game. There's no actual ground on Mun, so you're not really landing there. Of course not. It's a video game. But if you got close to the ground and the game said "Sorry, you can't land because your ship has 56 parts on it. Come back when you've unlocked the bigger Mun Landing package" then that would be an artificial constraint.

[VR_Dev]

Eliminating SAS might be the end of KSP mechs

[SkyRex94]

Now, slowly but steady i'm getting really hyped for beta.

And I like all the features announced until now.

I see no problem in Nodes and Orbit paths requiring investments, since (if you not play career the 'lets do just to missions to finish tree' way) they can be unlocked easily and you don't need them for the first Science and Contracts. And after all career it's meant to have some kind of progression.

It's like finally implementing a part of my own suggestions from some time ago about implementing features and abilities in the tech tree and not just parts, although this now gets implemented using upgradable buildings. Now abilities like EVA, Calculating conic patches, launching heavy craft, which all require advanced technology involved, also actually require a progression in Career. Great.

And the restriction with part count is great IMO, i might be on a lonely spot here, but for me it makes sense, even with the immersion: The Launch-Facilities already limit your weight (and thus, also size) which makes sense. And size is not logic to be restricted through a building, since just building a bigger building solves the problem, and i see the upgrades of the buildings as getting more 'advanced' buildings with new technology involved. Seeing it that way the part count is the way to limit the 'complexity' of your crafts. More parts can be seen as a more complex ship design, which is therefor harder to construct. I see an upgraded VAB as a new VAB with more advanced construction machines inside(be it 'precise' ones, or big-heavy ones like for lifting a shuttle to the side of a tank), which allow the engineers to actually build my crazy complex designs, which they could't in a barn.

TL;DR: I find Part count as a limit makes more sense than size IMO and like it.

The idea of KXP is also a cool new addition of gameplay depth in career. But the pilot skill has yet to show it's usefulness: For me it's not clear yet, why i wouldn't want to attach a state-of-the-art probe core to my ship and spare one pilot and thus one crew member, while keeping all the abilities. Engineer sounds good. Scientist is not so much revealed yet, so to be seen.

Editor extension and switching VAB-SPH: Great. Period.

Mk3: Great look so far, a little Space Shuttle-ish. (Although the concept of a Space Shuttle is not so great, it was not really more efficient than normal rockets, due to rebuilding a tank and maintaining the orbiter. You have to go the SSTO Skylon way or the Space X reusability way to really gain a lot) Still to see the Cargo bays, to see what can be fitted inside. Also discouvered the OPT big Space plane parts mod (also 2.5m bay size) two weeks ago, which really looks awesome!!! To see if you might be able to senseful combine both Parts.

Fine Print: Cool. More things to do, but that actually leads to my final thought:

It looks like the Science System remains the same, although a lot of biomes will be added. I found out IMO limiting the scinece gain in difficulty just makes unlocking needed tech a grind. But (normal mode) in late game you're literally swimming in Science with nothing more to spent it on. And more contracts will also bring you more Science.

Problem is: I think i would want most of the Parts unlocked (not all but most) by exploring Kerbins SOI(Kerbin,Minmus,Mun), but after that there is still so much to gain...

(I'm holding the Jool-5 Challenge Science Record and got over 25k points from Jool SOI alone,enough to unlock all tech, and thats without biomes!) I want to go there and do stuff but i'm missing the ingame immersion to have something gained with getting all that science.

So currently i'm thinking about changing my beta career difficulty to something like: Science 80-110%, penalties:1000% , Money: 10-20%. Making Money the main limiting factor and the main immersive motivation for my Space company. So i won't experience any grind, but have fun doing all cool contracts while actually gaining something out of them because i really need those money, especially if playing no reverts and needing to spent money on testflights of prototypes (especially if they fail...) I think that could overall be more fun then the current hard-mode settings.

Does anybody has played in a similar configuration? And might share experience and opinion?

Hmm... should just became my short comment in this thread... somehow got a little bit longer...

[Wanderfound]

The announcements in this Squadcast all sounded good to me. There's still some tweaking and colouring to be done, but I'm liking where it's going.

[Wanderfound]

I'm wondering if Courage and Stupidity will have any influnce on the KXP system.

Also: an unmentioned feature of the part-count limit is that it should discourage the spamming of massless parts. I don't see that as a bad thing.

Edited December 6, 2014 by Wanderfound

[Ippo]

Bah. Sometimes I feel like Squad just doesn't understand this game.

[RobotsAndSpaceships]

That's silly. If part of the design plan for Career Mode is to give players a sense of progression, implementing a tech tree is the first logical step before balancing.

Thats not what he was saying, he was meant that Squad can't hold themselves on one well thought out design plan, and when they do they constantly deviate from it.

[Bloody_looser]

News on the SAS thing is quite disturbing. Vessels with unskilled pilot or low-tier unmanned module will be just spinning out of control or what?

[SkyRex94]

News on the SAS thing is quite disturbing. Vessels with unskilled pilot or low-tier unmanned module will be just spinning out of control or what?

If you are a bad pilot yourself : YES.

If you are a good pilot yourself : NO.

[Sasquatch_Punter]

Thats not what he was saying, he was meant that Squad can't hold themselves on one well thought out design plan, and when they do they constantly deviate from it.

Okay? I really don't see how the tech tree "deviates" from their design plan. It could definitely use some balancing, though.

[Mitchz95]

THANK YOU SO MUCH for this summary!

[Bloody_looser]

If you are a bad pilot yourself : YES.

If you are a good pilot yourself : NO.

So, in current build "good pilots" don't use SAS?

All SAS functionality I need is vessel being able to keep itself in the direction I put it into.

[metl]

Did they seriously take the barn out? That upsets me. i was totally looking forward to starting in a barn! I absolutely loved the idea. It just made sense, especially when you consider that the US itself used old farms and barn silos as missile hangers. Enough people really griped about it enough that they scrapped it? That is a true loss to both historical references and for the kerbalness of it. Other than that, the rest of the update looks pretty cool.

One question though: Can kerbals have experience in multiple disciplines? Being forced to take two pilots for something like an Apollo-style mission just so both craft won't spin stupidly when trying to dock is going to be really unhandy.

[Tw1]

Eliminating SAS might be the end of KSP mechs

The changes to SAS is one thing I'm slightly worried about. But, of as probes can take over when there is no pilot, then it might be ok, and only be a bother in the early part of the game, pre-unlocking everything.

[VR_Dev]

The changes to SAS is one thing I'm slightly worried about. But, of as probes can take over when there is no pilot, then it might be ok, and only be a bother in the early part of the game, pre-unlocking everything.

I hope not but I haven't seen it posted anywhere. But is fully unlocked sandbox gonna be a thing of the past?

That would probably be the end of the game for me

[RobotsAndSpaceships]

Okay? I really don't see how the tech tree "deviates" from their design plan. It could definitely use some balancing, though.

I'm not talking about the tech tree. Remember the resource system? That got sidelined by the NASA deal.

Edited December 7, 2014 by RobotsAndSpaceships

[Procyon]

what i understood him to say during the cast was sandbox is supposed to have full functionality. top tier everything unlocked ect. the changes to the abilities, training, facilities ect. are for career mode.

[Artophwar]

Also: an unmentioned feature of the part-count limit is that it should discourage the spamming of massless parts. I don't see that as a bad thing.

I also dont see the part limit as a bad thing. The part limit with scale up with your mass limit too so you probably wont even notice it if you dont exploit massless parts.

[Sasquatch_Punter]

I'm not talking about the tech tree. Remember the resource system? That got sidelined by the NASA deal.

That's what the other guy that I quoted was talking about, but I understand that everything is subject to change and design plans are rarely set in stone, as that's generally not how game development works. Especially when you factor in continuous feedback.

They're on their way to implementing features that have been in their game plan for years. Some have been dropped, others are still a ways off, but they're getting there. I don't know what else to say.

[AlexinTokyo]

Regarding the changes to SAS:

I'm fairly sure I read in a reddit post (linked from the forums, I don't do reddit) that the lowest-level pilots and lowest-tier probes will have the same abilities as the current (0.25) implementation of SAS. So any ship with a pilot or any probe core will behave like current ships; you'll only have a problem if there are no Pilot Kerbals on board.

Higher-level pilots or probe cores will get additional abilities to rotate the ship to a specified point and hold it there.

My only concern is that this will constrain you to specific, high-tier, probe cores if you want the new functionality on unmanned ships. There are times I like to use the Stayputnik because it fits the visuals of my ship (or because spheres are great for mounting lost of stuff on), but I won't be able to do that and use the high-level SAS functions, even if I've unlocked enough tech to have them.

It's only a minor restriction though, and definitely not a big deal.

Maybe when they fix the tech tree in a later version, they can make it so you can buy 'software upgrades' which change all probe cores to allow access to the new abilities.

[kujuman]

News on the SAS thing is quite disturbing. Vessels with unskilled pilot or low-tier unmanned module will be just spinning out of control or what?

And this reply is to all similar comments...

Have none of you memory of (not even that) old versions of KSP? It used to be that you had reaction wheels (SAS) and heading hold (ASAS) as separate parts. So if you wanted to have control, you needed to add an ASAS, otherwise it was manual flying (read: spin stabilization). The ASAS was pretty heavy, 800 kg, so you'd typically have it on launchers and maybe landers, but not on the ascent stage, for both dV reasons and size. ASAS functionality was added to the pods in .21 when the SAS was rewritten, so not even that long ago. Ever wonder why the 2.5m ASAS unit doesn't have wheels modeled in it? Because it was just a computer when it was introduced in .18! But .21 made that redundant, so it got torque added.

It took something out of the "game"...we no longer had to balance having extra mass of an ASAS vs manually controlling the vessel, and there were times you'd forgo the ASAS. Easy mode.

In sum, get off my lawn, suck it up, learn to fly manually (like many astronauts did in Mercury and Gemini and I assume early Soviet vehicles), and quit complaining

Edited December 7, 2014 by kujuman

[Wanderfound]

A lot of the new early career limitations (ASAS, manoeuvre nodes etc.) are recreating early-development styles of gameplay.

Very much a good thing, says me.

[RobotsAndSpaceships]

It's still all pointless until Squad finds a way to fix the stopping of rotation during time warp though.

[Daze]

A lot of the new early career limitations (ASAS, manoeuvre nodes etc.) are recreating early-development styles of gameplay.

Very much a good thing, says me.

Exactly

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