Do you feel KSP is ready for 1.0?

[KarmaLarma]

Don't get me wrong- I LOVE this game. It has pretty much taken up all of my spare time over the past 2 years.

However, it's not ready for release as a proper game. .90's career is unnecessarily... grindy. The only way I could upgrade by facilities was by installing the Evil Kerbanomics mod and taking out a couple of loans. My suggestion for fixing this is, instead of upgrading the ENTIRE facility, is to upgrade aspect of the facility. For example, you could increase the max science level of the R&D- but only on the structural bit of the tree. (I.E. Better workshops and heavy lift equipment). By doing this, you can focus on the bits of the KSC that you are good at.

I'd also like toggleable Remotetech, TAC, Deadly Reentry, etc.

Clouds would be nice, too.

And maybe better water.

But, in all seriousness, KSP- as a game- is not ready. As a sandbox astrophysics simulator... stick FAR into the mix, and you'll be good. But .90's career is hard, and not in a fun way.

Get the modders on contract. Let them at the game, and they'll have it done in 5 minutes. Surely, SQUAD, you've gotten enough money from your game profits to warrant this investment. Romfarer was a modder once, after all.

[Aerolfos]

Since Windows is the primary platform for KSP it is doubtful that most QA is done on Linux...

Nor is it likely they are testing 64bit KSP, and for 32bit the amount of RAM that the game can use is determined by the fact that it is 32bit, not by how much RAM the PC has, as long as it has at least 4GB.

On the other hand it should be tested to see if it runs acceptably on minimum specs.

And they have clearly stated that there is a big lack in Mac QA, they had to scrap the whole patcher simply because of the QA team not having time/resources/not feeling like.

Give you what, I will download 1.0 the moment it comes out, and try it on my Mac laptop, and on my good PC. If there are issues, you will have no end of it.

[White Owl]

It has been going through them for a couple months now, actually! Which is why we were never fully sure on why people were so concerned.

Never fully sure on why people were so concerned?

People are so concerned because you have been extremely bad at communicating! You skip a sensible beta testing phase, contrary to your own stated plans, with no explanation. When people wonder why, you remain silent. We read that the release version won't have all the features and polish you want it to have. We read that you are unable to move the deadline, completely contrary to the way Squad has always worked in the past. We read that you want our ideas about what to prioritize, and what to leave out. Any updates to the whole story are scattered willy-nilly across multiple venues; unorganized and sloppy. You show us Squad developers directly contradicting each other in public over whether you can manage your own schedule. And now you're telling us everything is fine, all the features are good, there was never a problem... which might be kind of reassuring if it didn't contradict all the previous messages again! You can't even keep your own story straight.

After all this, you wonder why your loyal customers and fans are concerned? You couldn't have done much better at manufacturing a crisis in confidence if you'd actually planned it!

What happened to the Squad of a couple years ago? You guys knew how to talk to your fans then. You did it often and well. I want that Squad back.

Edited March 21, 2015 by White Owl
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[basic.syntax]

I personally don't see the contradiction. Yes, we absolutely set our own deadlines, no, we cannot move it willy-nilly as it would be going back on all of our planning and meetings.

I think Squad's release planning train started up about a month ago: external business partners have been told when to expect 1.0. We have no idea how many folks need to know, or the different lead-times they require, in order to have their part of the 1.0 puzzle ready all at the same time.

Players who's purchase of KSP is relatively small by comparison, are going to have to wait additional months for a few things getting cut, instead of waiting for the entire thing for some unknown amount of additional months.

Pushing the date out now might cause a feeling of relief in the forums, but it would probably cost Squad whatever down-payments they've made to external partners to get stuff ready in time for 1.0, more payments to hold that work in storage, reprint anything that had a date printed on it - another kind of mess. So far, this message is consistent: Squad's not stopping work on KSP after 1.0, and 1.0 is going to happen.

I also think that if they DID hold KSP back to finish off the entire list of already announced features, anticipation for a super amazing release would probably exceed what they can deliver and cause the forum reaction: "we waited until August... for this?" I'd like to get 1.0 out and over with, so I can reset my anticipation and expectations, for v1.1.

I agree that different Squad folks posting in their own words in different places, has lead to some consternation. But, the alternative could be worse: ONE designated spokesperson. Posting a day or more after any question comes up. Because The Committee has to weigh each word. So, nobody else saying anything, except in carefully edited Devnote Tuesday articles. ("but... that's not what I want, they just need to phone or instant message each other to get on the same page." Well, they thought they WERE saying reasonable things, and sometimes over-reactions happen inside companies, and the result is public info blackout.)

... We're evaluating our current plan to make sure everything can get done in time, and is brought to the proper quality that it should be at in order for it to be 1.0. If that means holding back some of the minor additions to the 1.0 plan, then we are okay with it.

I interpret Max as saying that "everything" that is not going to get cut, should be fine, because they have been doing internal QA on internal development builds all this time, and have scheduled their longest ever Experimentals testing phase.

We were warned that "stuff can happen," in the January Beyond Beta announcement: "As always, we ask you to please keep in mind that the items above are not a commitment on our part. Plans can and do change as development progresses, and this update is no different."

[Tw1]

D

However, it's not ready for release as a proper game. .90's career is unnecessarily... grindy.

But, in all seriousness, KSP- as a game- is not ready. As a sandbox astrophysics simulator... stick FAR into the mix, and you'll be good. But .90's career is hard, and not in a fun way.

This is also why I don't think it's ready. Career is based on grinding and unlocking, motivating you with points rather than an experience.

If you think about it game lets you experience four different roles:

Director of the Space program

Designer of Spacecraft

Pilot/navigator of spacecraft

Explorer of planets.

While the design and flying parts of the game are very well fleshed out, but the surface exploration mechanics are very shallow. The game uses a system where the rewarding part of science runs out before long, and doesn't give you much reason to develop stations and bases, apart from pay.

But, post realce, people will be less tolerant of major changes once the game is 'complete', and there will be a lot less chance it will develop from grind-your-way-through-the-solar-system into something that rewards you for establishing and maintaining a sophisticated space operation.

[BradicusPrime]

I believe there is room and reason for several point releases before 1.0.

First and foremost, there has been a lot of major overhaul and rebuild work being done since 0.90. There's all kinds of talk about experimentals, but I think we all know by now there's a lot of kinks that only get found in the open beta process, as well as balancing and abuse testing. With all this work being done behind the curtain, there should definitely be some open stress testing before you go declaring it's a complete game.

Additionally, there are several items I feel would be missing from a 1.0 release, that really should be a part of the base game.

1) Additional planets. The modding community has come up with ways to procedurally generate whole new systems, it should not be a huge hurdle to add new planetary systems to the base game in time for 1.0 release. At the very least, for a space faring civilization, the population of Kerbin seems fairly..... sparse.

2) Mission scheduling and flight planning pre-launch(setting maneuver nodes before even leaving the VAB, let alone the launch pad, saving mission profiles for multiple missions(think Apollo series, or standard resupply profiles)). I understand this game has always been very seat-of-the-pants, but I feel this is a bit of much needed structure, and would give an easy ingame function for calculating DV costs for mission profiles before you run out of fuel halfway there, and properly plan for transfer windows, as well as discover opportunities for flybys well ahead of time and include a little extra in the fuel budget for such maneuvers.

3) An expansion of repairable parts, and inclusion of random part failures. The beta game has had enough bugs that I've dealt with several Apollo 13 style mission events, but I would hope the 1.0 release is stable enough that these game bugs now need to be simulated as mission bugs. I'm not saying every mission should see a catastrophic failure, but parts will fail over time, and there are always manufacturing defects. I see this as an essential and realistic difficulty function that can be scaled or turned off via the already ingame difficulty options.

4) Life support systems: Once again looking to the modding community, there are already several proof of concept designs that can also play into resource harvesting. Jets and rockets run on the same fuel we do. In conjunction with repairable parts, getting an alert during mission planning for your Duna mission that your Minmus crew has suffered catastrophic life support failure and you need to immediately drop planning and focus on saving that crew would be awesome. Again, essential and realistic difficulty function that can be scaled or turned off.

5) Weather systems to go with the new aerodynamics and whatnot. Weather conditions should at the very least be simulated. Launch weather conditions are a very real concern, and scrubbing a scheduled mission due to weather risks and missing a transfer window should absolutely be a part of the game that encourages better planning. Effects on engine performance and visual effects like water droplets on wind screens or total whiteout blizzards should be easy enough to implement, and the random effects they can have on flight performance enough to force delays. You don't actually have to have wind, you just need to simulate the effects based on roving regions. Deciding to fly during a hurricane? Have fun flying with random forces acting on your plane. Again, essential and realistic difficulty function that can be scaled or turned off.

Some of these may be harder to implement than others, but I believe they should all be relatively easily achievable before 1.0 hits, and absolutely essential to base game function, as well as building future DLCs and opportunities for the modding community. Frankly, I would consider a 1.0 release without these items as feature incomplete.

[Armchair Rocket Scientist]

1. More planets = more memory. At the moment, hitting the memory limit is a HUGE problem for KSP, and will most likely be until after the 1.0 release. Adding more planets is a great way to ensure that people can't run more than a few mods without the game crashing. Also, this is on the What Not To Suggest list.

2. The problem with setting manuever nodes like that is that if your orbit isn't what you predicted at launch, the node will be useless.

3. Also on the WNTS list. Also, the idea of random failures is hated by so much of the player base that I honestly suspect that this is an elaborate trolling attempt.

4. Still on the WNTS list.

5. This is a reasonable idea, but quite honestly this is something players will only want to deal with in "hardcore mode." And it's essentially "random failures." Maybe some time after 1.0, but right now there are already a LOT of new features that need to be implemented before 1.0. I agree with you that there should be another couple of beta releases, but for a different reason: adding a couple features at a time will make testing and bugfixing much easier.

[Mr. Scruffy]

1. Dont agree on the more planets part - that can wait. Rather flesh out what´s there, like in the ´more densely populated kerbin´ part.

2. I dont think that is practical. Nor fun.

3. Better not to have random failures, but more reasons for failures - which you can chose to counter or not. Like, say, mini-meteorites in space. Some sort of shielding will protect you (for extra weight), but you can forfeit it, and hope you are lucky, and the unlikely wont happen.

4. + 5. Tie into 3.

What i´d like to see before 1.0 which might require some testing and balancing is time to play a role in many more ways than it currently does. Wont get into detail here, as not to derail the thread.

[Bill Phil]

Well.... What you consider feature complete isn't what Squad considers it to be. Not to mention these features are on the WNTS list, and discussed to infinity...

New planets will be difficult to add.

In fact, much of this is pretty difficult to add. The easiest would be clouds, but that's not complete weather.

[r4pt0r]

while not for the reasons you say, many others happen to agree. With all the content they are adding to the next update, there should be at least 1 more to fully balance and bugcheck all the things they are adding.

Here is a list a buddy gave me recently on what he thinks should be added before 1.0. I dont agree with all these myself, but some are good.

Unity 5

N-body

Basic bug fixes

Allowing loops in part trees

Allow seats to start manned

Clouds

Cities/some indication of life beyond KSC

Anomaly refresh & biome mapping

Something to do on planets

4km load limit extension

Lagrange points

Life support

Tiers beyond current top tier

Parts that match tiers

Improved light physics

Better audio organization and presentation

Procedural parts

Multiple textures for parts

Load on demand

Multicore

Gpu utilization

Custom kerbals

Multiplayer

ResourceS(more than just "ore")

Quite a few of those I think are required before 1.0. A lot of those would add that "finished game" polish.

[GluttonyReaper]

Something to do on planets

This, very much so. It seems kinda pointless adding in new planets when the current ones we have aren't even of consistent quality yet (i.e. procedural craters are still limited to Mun only right now), and most missions literally involve landing, planting a flag, pressing a few buttons for science, then flying off back to Kerbin. It's the main reasons I enjoy SCANsat so much - it's fun to see your science give tangible, interesting results outside of just points and a bit of flavour text. If all the science in the game was that involved, it would add a bit more depth and interest to the missions. Combined with interesting terrain ... if every planet was as varied as Kerbin (or even the Mun) I thin it would definitely be much more rewarding to land on other planets and such, and only then would I feel adding more planets would be a worthwhile use of time.

[klgraham1013]

1) Let's actually make the current planets more interesting first.

2) I've always liked the idea of a mission planner of sorts. A "solar system simulator", in which you could timewarp forward and back and set maneuver nodes, just to get an idea when it would be good to do burns.

3) I've played with random failures in the past. It definitely should not be stock. Part degradation and maintenance I think could have a place in the game. Engines, say drop to 75% max thrust over time if not maintained by an engineer. Nothing ever fully breaks. It would give players something to do on EVA at least.

4) I think some form of life support is a must for the stock game. As with re-entry heat, this is a well known challenge of space travel that should be replicated.

5) Weather could bring more frustration to the player, than any upsides to the game. Think of all the real life scrubbed launches we've seen. I wouldn't mind clouds and perhaps a bit of rain which would both be more for atmosphere...puns...than anything that would actually affect gameplay.

So what's the difference between the challenges of 3 and 4 verse 5? Part degradation and life support are predictable, easy to handle, and provide a nice challenge. Weather is random and 90%* of the time would scrub a launch.

*citation need

Edited March 30, 2015 by klgraham1013
grammar

[Robotengineer]

1. Squad should finish the current planets before adding new ones, the current planets are pretty boring. When every planet reaches the detail level of Kerbin or The Mun, then Squad should consider adding more planets.
   
2. I agree somewhat, however I am unsure as to how such a system would be implemented, and the subject would likely need a thread of its own.
   
3. No random part failures, unless they were a difficulty option. I tried playing with DangIt! a while back, and it was just frustrating rather than being more difficult IMO. I agree with klgraham1013 about having performance decrease overtime as an alternative to random failures though.
   
4. Life support would be good for difficulty, and should be optional if made stock. I would like to see life support more difficult than Snacks!, but less complicated than TAC LS.
   
5. Only if the weather were predictable and not random.
   

IMO, randomness is bad for a game that already has a steep learning curve, and even experienced players don't want their massive bases, etc. getting taken out by bad weather that they knew nothing about.

[BradicusPrime]

1) I can definitely agree that the current planets need more fleshing out. Especially the almost complete lack of civilization on Kerbin.

2) The hardest part is probably the initial node, which then cascades down to all subsequent nodes, but I doubt there's any space agency that does things anywhere near the way the Kerbals do. I am of the fortunate few who can run two monitors and develop live mission profiles and do DV lookups and calculations for transfer windows, but there really needs to be some way to visualize this ingame(without mods). Not everyone is good at math or has the patience to slog through all of that when it could be easily accomplished by a mission planning aspect and a few mouse clicks. I believe inclusion of such a system, even if it's only available after upgrades or research, would greatly increase the accessibility to the game. I have bought probably a dozen copies of the game during Steam sales and given them to friends, and the number one response is the daunting learning curve, having to learn rocket science in order to calculate fuel costs and trajectories. Several gave up altogether after a dozen tries to get to the Mun left them stranded halfway or on the surface.

3) Random part failures can and do happen in real life. The definitely should be part of the game. Again, as I already stated, this can scale with the current ingame difficulty options if you want to live in a utopia. I'm not saying every mission should have catastrophic failures, but there should definitely be the possibility, and an encouragement for planning redundancies for the possibility of disaster recovery.

4) Life support is a major concern for any manned space flight. As it should be. It's one of the main reasons our own agencies have focused more on unmanned missions in the last few decades. Also, TAC LS is only complicated if you want it to be and get all fancy with the recyclers. Otherwise it's a fairly simple in/out system. I believe a basic form of LS could be easily implemented and rolled in with the current resource collection work.

5) Weather conditions of course would be somewhat predictable, as much as they are in real life, and things like windspeed might scrub a small rocket but a larger rocket could handle it. It's a small realistic risk factor, and a judgement call. Maybe Jeb could handle the flight, but the rookie sure as hell can't. Honestly, what is the likelihood that Kerbin is blessed with constantly perfect weather, never has any accidents, the people don't need to eat drink or breathe, and yet is so sparsely populated.

I think you can see how I believe some of these should come together to add a realism aspect to the game, and I really believe they should be base game. A farming game without droughts or washouts or blights isn't very realistic and quickly becomes too predictable. I would like for a dust storm on Duna to knock out a few solar panels and require maintenance work. The LS, failures, and weather would add reasonable and realistic difficulty and engagement, especially for EVA work, and the mission planning would make certain aspects much easier for beginners. Less time futzing around in the VAB and rough testing on the launch pad only to find out halfway there you're hosed(and actual consequences for leaving your dudes floating in space to die as a reputation hit), more time in missions getting things done. I feel that the learning curve difficulty is mostly arbitrary nonsense and not actual engagement, and these things will fix (most of) that.

[GluttonyReaper]

3) Random part failures can and do happen in real life. The definitely should be part of the game. Again, as I already stated, this can scale with the current ingame difficulty options if you want to live in a utopia. I'm not saying every mission should have catastrophic failures, but there should definitely be the possibility, and an encouragement for planning redundancies for the possibility of disaster recovery.

My issue with this is that it's realism for the sake of realism, that doesn't really add a huge amount, mostly just frustration, to the point where it's craved little enough by the community that it could be considered outside the scope of the stock game, only to really be explored by mods. Most of the time, at least in my experience, is it's either small issues that are easily fixable - in which case, why have them at all? - or massive issues that totally destroy a mission - like a probe that's halfway to Eeloo having a leaking fuel tank, and therefore being unable to do a correction burn and missing the planet entirely - which is just frustrating, because regardless of any reliability system, at the end of the day it's up to chance whether that mission succeeds or not.

[BradicusPrime]

at the end of the day it's up to chance whether that mission succeeds or not.

Yes, but that's really true. What's the point in playing if you're guaranteed to always win? At that point it just becomes masturbatory, and really isn't in the best spirit of the history of space flight.

[GluttonyReaper]

Yes, but that's really true. What's the point in playing if you're guaranteed to always win? At that point it just becomes masturbatory, and really isn't in the best spirit of the history of space flight.

I get that, but I've always viewed the orbital mechanics side of things as being more than enough to ensure you can't win ever time. I suppose I've never really viewed this game as a being anything about the history of spaceflight - rather, just a sandbox where I can fly around and explore without having to worry about all the painful constraints of reality.

[BradicusPrime]

Okay, yeah, that was alpha and most of beta. But we're talking about a finished game with missions and objectives. A finished game that also includes a sandbox mode where you can just ignore things like reality if you so choose, but maybe that's not what's going to bring people in after 1.0, or keep them playing. Frankly I find sandbox to be boring after a couple of years.

[Mr. Scruffy]

Well, as said, for any probability-error (that´s a better term than ´random failure´) there should be devices/techs (some sort in-game investment) or behaviour that lowers said probability to 0.

- There is a probability to get incinerated during re-entry, UNLESS you enter at quite a narrowly defined path OR bring heat-shields at the proper places (or both)

- There is a probability (based on location - higher around Jool, lower in the inner system) to get hit by mini-meteorites, BUT you can shield your vital parts (or just all of them) against it, making your craft a little heavier and a little more costly.

- There is a chance to crashland due to ´random´ terrain UNLESS you choose your landing-spot wisely. Another way to diminish this probability is to bring landing gear.

See what i did there? I mixed existing stuff with things that might work in the same way, basically, and give players interesting choices (´I am such a pro, i dont need heatshields´, ´this is a cheap de-k´ed mission in LKO - even if at the off chance it goes bad before its completed, that´s not the end of the program - so i wont bring shielding´, ´i really suck at landing - i better bring really sturdy and stable landing gears...´ - to name a few possible ones).

Edited March 30, 2015 by Mr. Scruffy

[Vanamonde]

Two threads about the same subject matter have been merged.

[r4pt0r]

Two threads about the same subject matter have been merged.

Ahh, I was wondering how the thread jumped up to almost 100 pages. Seems quite a few people disagree with the decision.

[Mr. Scruffy]

Thanks for the thread merge - i hadnt noticed the other... so:

This is also why I don't think it's ready. Career is based on grinding and unlocking, motivating you with points rather than an experience.

If you think about it game lets you experience four different roles:

Director of the Space program

Designer of Spacecraft

Pilot/navigator of spacecraft

Explorer of planets.

While the design and flying parts of the game are very well fleshed out, but the surface exploration mechanics are very shallow. The game uses a system where the rewarding part of science runs out before long, and doesn't give you much reason to develop stations and bases, apart from pay.

But, post realce, people will be less tolerant of major changes once the game is 'complete', and there will be a lot less chance it will develop from grind-your-way-through-the-solar-system into something that rewards you for establishing and maintaining a sophisticated space operation.

The more i think about it, the more i am convinced, that there simply is no way around introducing a proper time component to make the career mode really interesting. A space station makes sense, if each scientist there generates some science per period of time (say per day) - likely against his monthly payment in funds and capped in duration by lifesupport and how much science there is to get based on location and instruments...

Without time, i simply cannot come up with a (good - by standards of plausibility and gameplay) reason to have space stations.

Not everything needs to be modeled realistically around time - rocket construction times for example should be carefully considered how long they should be if there should be any at all based on gameplay primarily - but way more things should come (and go) over time than currently is the case, imho.

EDIT: The subtitle for 1.0 (or 0.9x) should be : ´It´s about time!´

Edited March 31, 2015 by Mr. Scruffy

[WuphonsReach]

The more i think about it, the more i am convinced, that there simply is no way around introducing a proper time component to make the career mode really interesting. A space station makes sense, if each scientist there generates some science per period of time (say per day) - likely against his monthly payment in funds and capped in duration by lifesupport and how much science there is to get based on location and instruments...

Without time, i simply cannot come up with a (good - by standards of plausibility and gameplay) reason to have space stations.

That's why things like KAC (Kerbal Alarm Clock), KCT (Kerbal Construction Time), Kerbalnomics and Snacks should be standard in stock.

KCT - Building rockets and space planes takes time, lowered via re-use of recovered parts. Rollout and rollback takes calendar time. Launchpad reconditioning takes time. It makes time a major element of gameplay because you can't launch a dozen rockets in a single day.

Kerbalnomics - Or some sort of payroll / loan setup where you have to pay to keep kerbals on the payroll day after day. Loans for an infusion of cash, which has to be paid off down the road. Both are time-oriented elements. Or even government funding where the government gives you X funds/day based on your reputation level.

Snacks (or TAC-LS) - Kerbals away from KSC should require O2/H2O/Food. Planning a 3500 day mission? You need to pack along enough snacks or life support supplies or recyclers in order to make the journey. Which means you can't just pack Jeb into a mk1 capsule and send him to Jool and back.

KAC - An alarm clock with events so that you can keep track of time and manage it.

[Mr. Scruffy]

Yeah, let´s unfold that dimension! Right now it´s all curled up between orbital periods and launch windows.

So among the stars we shall forever sit

triumphant over death and chance - and thee, oh Time!

Edited April 1, 2015 by Mr. Scruffy

[StealthX117]

So... Have we gotten an official response from Squad yet?