make KSP less time consuming and improve the pacing of the game?

[sedativechunk]

Okay, so I'm a working man, turning 25 next month. I have a pretty busy life which involves working full time, finishing college, and doing everything else in life. I love KSP, but when it comes down to it, this game is getting too time consuming for my life anymore.

This game involves too many activities which sometimes require me to be attentive to the game for long periods of time, testing and waiting for things to slowly happen. The bottom line... I personally feel SQUAD needs to do a few things to increase the overall pacing of this game. Does anyone else agree or have any ideas on how to improve this?

I don't know... I am going to one of the outer planets right now and it's taken me nearly four days to assemble my interstellar ship and try to fly there. So many aspects of this game are getting boring/time consuming. I just want to go to the planets and visit the moons. I like the building rockets part but parts of this game are getting a bit time consuming for me.

[RainDreamer]

The problem is, the most time consuming part of the game is in designing a space craft that works.

Aside from downloading other's people craft, you can't do much about it. Streamlining the editor and stuff may help, but ultimately it is the player that build the craft and decide how much time can be spent on it.

[astropapi1]

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depends on which way you see it), KSP is the only game of its kind.

There's games like World Of Tanks or War Thunder where you play in matches, and their max times can be easily set. A regular random WoT match doesn't usually go over 20 minutes, for example.

In other kinds of games like action, adventure, horror, or pretty much every genre in which the player is just following a path, the developers can easily put save points in which you can just save and come back later.

Even in strategy or city building games you can play however you want. There's always an option to save, and the devs have a lot of legroom with them. They can restrict saving until a certain objective has been completed, for example.

In KSP, though, it's a different matter. There's a lot of tools implemented already that help with this. Timewarp being the main one, but being able to save the game at any moment as long as you're not moving inside an atmosphere or incredibly low... I guess that also helps.

You'll just have to find a playstyle that matches your needs. If you can't afford the time to build interplanetary ships, going there in a single -massive- launch is way faster and easier in most cases. Don't build stations, send bases in one piece. Use rockets instead of SSTOs, make efficent use of the timewarp features (know the warp limit heights)... There's a lot of little things you can do to cut the time needed for things in the game.

If you still can't do special stuff like that on a regular basis, try to leave it for the weekends or when you have a couple of hours of free time. In the meantime, you can just load the game and build stupid things to fly around the center. As you know, in KSP the sky SPACE is the limit!.

[KerBlam]

Here ya go.

The challenge of ship design, R&D and doing things properly is the best thing about this game. You say you love KSP but you want to change pretty much the entire core dynamic of it, the very thing that makes it stand apart from other games. There is no way around it. designing and creating a purpose built ship that suits your needs for whatever it is you plan on doing when you arrive takes time. Unless you want to borrow someone elses craft designs and take it from there, or hyperedit yourself into the orbit of whatever planet you'd like to look at. There's no rules, and nobody has a gun to your head. If you find it boring and too time consuming, do something else.

[astropapi1]

Here ya go.

Now there's gatorade everywhere, damn you.

I agree with your point, though. KSP is time-consuming by nature, since most of the time will be spent designing a ship that actually works. You just need to find a playstyle that works for you.

Edited February 1, 2015 by vexx32
No no no no. You no censor evade. No.

[SaturnV]

Are you looking for something like "1/10 Kerbin - 15 secs to orbit"?

[worir4]

Are you looking for something like "1/10 Kerbin - 15 secs to orbit"?

There's a mod for that...

[Anthlon]

Keep as it is, Love that this game took so long, there is lot to explore, lot to try, sometimes discover new thing happening in your construction, learn to implement something etc... thats what i love on KSP, build something, then use it facing my own pilot and control disabbilites while on mission. No point of that, same as KerBlam told..

[Pthigrivi]

Im a long time player and I actually agree with the spirit of the OP. I know this is a big thing Squad is working on right now, making things more intuitive and getting players from non-working rockets to working rockets faster. The new Jump-to feature will help too, as will making aerodynamics more forgiving. Still I think there's a good deal of grind that can be worked out. Part of this is just improving the state of funds payouts, which is a pretty easy adjustment to my mind. I also think the activity of science has a lot of room for improvement. I personally would rather experiments become more involved, requiring a few steps rather than just clicking, but then pay out even more for successful execution. This will make for missions with higher stakes, more fun, and less repetition required, which I think is the real drag.

I know the board really self-selects for people who already are willing to put a lot of time into the game, and have a bit of a sense that things were hard for them and they earned the hard things they've accomplished. I do think though this game is already pretty hard and has a steep learning curve, and making things just a bit more forgiving would be a good move. All it would mean is requiring players to haul less fuel into orbit.

Edited February 1, 2015 by Pthigrivi

[klgraham1013]

I have complaints with KSP. This in not one of them.

Maybe it's not the game for you?

[Pthigrivi]

You would like to see the grind sucked out though, right?

Another thing that it seems they're adding which will be a huge help is providing the player with more data. The more the game can become about deductive problem solving and less about trial and error the better.

[KerBlam]

Deductive problem solving = Trial and error.... Isn't it?

I see where you're coming from with the career grind, but that's definitely not what the OP was implying. More data in the stock game will definitely be welcome. I play heavily modded so Engineer, FAR and Mechjeb provide plenty of data. It's easy to forget that's not there in stock, but I don't think that's what the OP is suggesting either.

IMO the thrust weight ratio is where the challenge is at in this game, as in the real world. You can't just cart more fuel into space, because the energy required to get the extra weight of it out of the atmosphere ends up making it redundant. You can add more boosters, but they also will require more fuel. It's a delicate balancing act, and to get a payload up on top of that SHOULD be very difficult. If you make it easy to get stupidly large payloads into orbit, then you might as well forget about the game, because that is half of the game.

[Scoundrel]

Not that it means anything, but I personally like the game structure (minus the grinding ugh!) as it is, and I don't think it needs changing... though warp-to will be a welcome addition to the game. The only time I spend more than 5 minutes getting into the necessary orbit/launch window and performing a transfer is when I mess with spaceplanes. Or gigantic ships. Or race my Formula K around the Kerburgring.*

It seems to me the OP should download hyperedit and just focus on the parts of the game that they like.

*Yes yes I know racing rovers has nothing to do with getting into space, but you can give them an apoapsis for a few seconds if you use the launch pad as a ramp, so I count them as suborbital.

[rkman]

Deductive problem solving = Trial and error.... Isn't it?

Not exactly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deductive_reasoning

"Deductive reasoning, also deductive logic or logical deduction or, informally, "top-down" logic,[1] is the process of reasoning from one or more statements (premises) to reach a logically certain conclusion.[2]"

In deductive reasoning you start with facts (e.g. numbers in KSP) and draw conclusions from that (about how much dV you need etc).

Trial and error starts with nothing, and then you try until you get something that works.

[KerBlam]

He didn't say deductive reasoning, that's different.

Anyway, not interested in playing wiki-word games.

[pandaman]

Seems to me that what the OP needs are some more capable 'stock' ships that can do things like interplanetary without the player needing to spend time designing their own ships if they don't want to. The ships could then also serve as 'tutorial examples' and as a starting point for conversion into more advanced ships.

For me a lot of the fun is in designing missions and the ships to do them, but I can see the appeal in having some basic ready to go 'workhorses' to enable new players to have a go at interplanetary travel.

@OP. I've not tried it myself, but have you considered downloading ready made ships from other players or mods etc? That may be one way of addressing your 'time spent building' issue.

[rkman]

He didn't say deductive reasoning, that's different.

Anyway, not interested in playing wiki-word games.

It's not a game. Deductive reasoning and deductive logic is what makes for deductive problem solving.

Deduction is based on information - information which can be acquired by means of trial and error, but using trial and error to figure out the correct amount and combination of fuel tanks and engines needed to do a specific interplanetary mission, quickly becomes very time consuming. For many people the solution so far is to ask on the forums. That means essential information needed to actually play the game - which is more than just trying to build a rocket that gets you to where you want to go - is missing from the game.

So it would make sense to have information needed for deductive problem solving available in the game. Even with that, the game leaves plenty of room for trial and error.

[dlrk]

So,.....OP wants to remove the designing and building part of the game?

[GusTurbo]

Figuring out a way to speed up loading/scene changes would help a lot. Reverting to VAB repeatedly to make tweaks is always a chore. I'm not sure there's a way to speed up the core game without changing the game drastically.

[KerBlam]

It's not a game. Deductive reasoning and deductive logic is what makes for deductive problem solving.

Deduction is based on information - information which can be acquired by means of trial and error, but using trial and error to figure out the correct amount and combination of fuel tanks and engines needed to do a specific interplanetary mission, quickly becomes very time consuming. For many people the solution so far is to ask on the forums. That means essential information needed to actually play the game - which is more than just trying to build a rocket that gets you to where you want to go - is missing from the game.

So it would make sense to have information needed for deductive problem solving available in the game. Even with that, the game leaves plenty of room for trial and error.

Sure, but deductive *problem solving* could also be trial and error, which is what I said in the first place.

Deduction is not based on theoretical information, it's based on removing information that is not beneficial.

Try something. That didn't work. Try something else.

That method is also 'deductive'... and it's also 'problem solving' albeit not the most efficient method.

In any case, I'm still at a loss as to what OP actually wants. There's a plethora of functional craft files available if he doesn't like spending time designing ships, and there's heaps of mods available if he doesn't like spending time to get from (a) to (.

It's unreasonable to ask the entire game to be changed because he is too busy or bored to spend time playing it. Especially when what he wants changed is the part of the game that some, myself included, enjoy the most.

[THX1138]

There's no need to berate the OP! The clear solution is for him to download other people's craft files and fly them on fun missions. Like this Apollo-style Saturn V craft which you can fly and land on the moon and return to Kerbin. Don't bother with the Career mode and science collecting. Fly missions that other people have posted (complete with craft files) to the forum.

[Pthigrivi]

This game involves too many activities which sometimes require me to be attentive to the game for long periods of time, testing and waiting for things to slowly happen. ... I like the building rockets part but parts of this game are getting a bit time consuming for me.

See this doesn't sound like the OP is sick of spending time in the VAB, it sounds like he's spending too much time sending up redundant launches and waiting for rendezvous etc. Some of this will be solved by the warp-to feature, but the biggest thing, and I've experienced this too early on, is sending up launch after launch trying to get that tight sense of efficiency and failing to reach orbit, wasting too much fuel, hitting hidden diminishing returns etc. For newbies the am-I-missing-something thing will help, but a huge help I think would be really simple, clear information on a rocket's TWR, Delta-V, drag, etc per stage so you could see what's going to work and not work in the VAB without sitting through a 10 minute launch that's doomed to failure.