Kerbal Space Program

[EG]

Some older idiocy:

Sure, it's pointless, but it generates enough electricity to keep those engines going (without the attractive solar panels).

Going nowhere very fast, in fact, other than back towards the planet . . . gravity, and all that.

 

[Konjad]

I wish I could build stuff like this, unfortunately I fear my computer would explode if it had to render it

 

[Hellraiser]

Rendering it is the easy bit, simulating physics for it using the piece of shit old PhysX version unity uses, now that would make your PC explode.

 

[EG]

I wish I could build stuff like this, unfortunately I fear my computer would explode if it had to render it

Might be suprised how far you can go, depending on your hardware: with just am 15-4670k acting as both processor and graphics, I'm able to get around 1100 parts comfortably, though at 1500 it becomes a hilarious lag fest of single-digit FPS (particularly in the editor).

 

[Hellraiser]

Judging by the last dev notes it appears the contract system is nearly done and ready to go into experimental builds. So 0.24 could be released in about two weeks.

 

[Ulminati]

Here's hoping. I've been holding off from further KSP until the mission system is in so I won't burn out. Now if only they'd also release the resource mining system they talked about almost a year ago

 

[Hellraiser]

So apparently the contract system is definitely in experimentals now. Also it's apparently the biggest code crunching job done by the devs for KSP so far. And as with the science! system were getting a mostly done framework rather than a final version of the system. Won't be surprised if it needs rebalancing after the players get their hands on it.

If all goes well, we will be restarting career mode by friday next week.

 

[Ulminati]

My body is ready!

 

[Burning Bridges]

I like the changes to the Ion engines, they have become practical engines now. For small payloads this is becoming my new favorite engine.

At first I was tempted to put them into clusters to get more thrust.

Super space penis (9 engines, 40 tanks, theoretical deltaV 18 km/s)


But there is not much advantage for this kind of huge Ion driven thing (some bros have constructed similar spacecraft on previous pages)

Even a super space penis like the one above has very little advantages over a much simpler design with 1 or 2 engines (below), which weighs only a fraction.

Because the weight of the engines is so much greater than the fuel, the speed is merely a result of the number of Xenon tanks, not of the engines. If you add more engines you gain very little, neither in thrust to weight nor in deltaV.

 

[dbx]

Though they really need to allow time acceleration with them on, otherwise few people are going to toy with them. Having to wait hours to achieve required delta-v to do anything it's not exactly what I'd call fun.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I dunno, before the changes it was really bad, but now I think the acceleration is quite ok. The key is to have a really light spacecraft (where every part counts). The weight of the smallest pod is only 0,04.

Of course if you add manned pods, rocket fuel containers and other stuff which weighs tons, thrust to weight drops to almost zero, and the acceleration you get is minimal.

Ion propulsion is only interesting for small, unmanned probes, as it should be.

For my solar probe I add 4 xenon containers, 2 Xenon engines, 10 solar panels, 2 batteries, and some structural elements, and ended up with:
total weight: 1.2 t
total weight (dry): 0.925 t
TWR: 3.3
deltaV: 10700 m/s
Total burn time is in the range of 30minutes or so, but with 10km/s dV you won't need to burn through the whole fuel in one go.

With the only comparable rocket engine ( the LV-1 ) and the same TWR I end up twice as heavy and with half the deltaV.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I find KSP not that much fun anymore, because I find nothing to go to. The campaign doesn't interest me at all, and I have already made missions to most places, except Tylo and Eeloo.

Have you heard anything new about improvements to the solar system? A year ago they promised another gas giant, clouds, and an overhaul of the planets.
The only rather well done body is the Mun, but that has not changed much for 2 years.
Compared to the huge excitement of the real planets, I find neither the Jool system (Jupiter) nor Eve (Venus) well done.
Duna is ok but pretty dull compared to Mars. Dres and Tylo are ok. Eeloo would be ok as a Moon of Jupiter, but does not hold anywhere near the excitement of real (ex)Kuiper belt bodes like Pluto or Triton.

I hope in the future they start of over with a whole new solar system, add huge gas cloud layers to Jupiter and Venus, a thin but earth-resembling athmosphere to Mars (sand storms, cloudlets, traces of water and frost), and get rid of really embarassing shit like Laythe or Minmus.

 

[Konjad]

Yeah, I also don't get why would they make up fictional solar system, when they could just make our own (not just barely similar). Not all planets would have to be landable, ie. nobody ever succeeded to land on Jupiter, so it would make sense to be impossible to do in the game. Instead we have copy-pasted same type of planet with no uniqueness.

 

[Drax]

Until they revamp the vanilla system, there's a couple mods that add new planets, moons and asteroids.
And there's a complete overhaul that tries to simulate the Solar System.
Too lazy to look up links, google.

 

[Ashery]

Looks like 0.24 is delayed.

We've completed the initial features we had lined up, had them QA tested, and even got a few experimental builds up for initial testing and feedback.

We worked through most bugs. But the overall feedback we got from the exp group was that the update as a whole left them wanting, which was, well, not what we would have liked to hear... but such is the way of things sometimes. This is why we test before doing public releases: Not just to catch bugs and technical issues, but also to get subjective feedback on what we have, and act on it when necessary. This was one case where acting on it was necessary.

The general consensus was that the Contracts system seems to be working quite well, functionally. But at the moment, the system is just that: Functional. We've built a solid framework, but to make this interesting and release-worthy, we have to populate it with interesting content. We also realized Contracts serve no purpose if there isn't a need for the rewards they offer. That means we still have a few features that need to be added.

Essentially, we're moving the core essentials of Budgets, which were originally planned for 0.25, up to 0.24. This includes, among other things, the requirement to spend your program's Funds to launch vessels and purchase parts in R&D.

Naturally, this means we still have some work ahead of us before we can call this update done. I just want to make it clear that we're not as close to release as people normally start to speculate when we announce having reaching experimentals.

This is why we don't announce release dates in the first place, but we are very much aware that despite that, you guys will guess, pretty accurately sometimes, so we felt it was important to share this news. We don’t want the speculation to lead to overly optimistic expectations about the release date.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Until they revamp the vanilla system, there's a couple mods that add new planets, moons and asteroids.
And there's a complete overhaul that tries to simulate the Solar System.
Too lazy to look up links, google.

I know. There's lots of shit, and has always been. That's fine, but only an option for those who have lots of time at hand. I know the deal with KSP mods: you see something is not right in the game, locate mods for that. Perhaps you get them to work and maybe even some more until there is an incompatibility. Then it's superseded and broken when you quit playing for a month or two, and Squad has releases the next update. Then you wait until the creator releases a fix; finally he abandons the mod. Someone else comes up with a better one. Rinse and repeat.

I don't have the patience anymore especially with a game that takes 5 minutes until you see the main menu. A game where it was never the question if it will crash, but when.
Might still give it a try if KSP was a more elegant piece of software, but it's so grossly inefficient that you better don't change a thing. Lest you don't want to spent most time waiting for the load screen in between the "Ooops" messages.

 

[Hellraiser]

It was a bit silly of them to try to add missions without any sort of reward mechanic. Developers gonna develop.

Oh well, I can wait a few more weeks. Not like adding cash rewards and a "cost per launch" mechanic should take long. Although vessel/part recovery for re-usability might.

 

[Drax]

Until they revamp the vanilla system, there's a couple mods that add new planets, moons and asteroids.
And there's a complete overhaul that tries to simulate the Solar System.
Too lazy to look up links, google.

I know. There's lots of shit, and has always been. That's fine, but only an option for those who have lots of time at hand. I know the deal with KSP mods: you see something is not right in the game, locate mods for that. Perhaps you get them to work and maybe even some more until there is an incompatibility. Then it's superseded and broken when you quit playing for a month or two, and Squad has releases the next update. Then you wait until the creator releases a fix; finally he abandons the mod. Someone else comes up with a better one. Rinse and repeat.

Yes, well, that's the nature of modding.

I don't have the patience anymore especially with a game that takes 5 minutes until you see the main menu. A game where it was never the question if it will crash, but when.
Might still give it a try if KSP was a more elegant piece of software, but it's so grossly inefficient that you better don't change a thing. Lest you don't want to spent most time waiting for the load screen in between the "Ooops" messages.

There's a mod for that too!

 

[Hellraiser]

Latest unofficial news is that apparently they hired one or two guys to remake and add new spaceplane part models. Unofficial only in the sense that there is no announcement yet but the community manager confirmed it during a stream yesterday (or on friday kwa time).

About fucking time. Although we probably won't see those until 0.25 the earliest. I wonder if they'll add an electric propeller and if they'll redo the aerodynamics a bit. At the very least planes should look less akward and we should get proper crew compartment, size 2 and size 3 cockpits and other stuff.

Also there may be a hardcore mode or general difficulty level setting added in 0.24. If they add that I may indeed do another soon to be abandoned LP (blame that in advance on work, women and my laziness).

I'm quite pleased with these recent developments. Now if they only polish up the planets, add more biomes, procedural craters and maybe a few other things like weather (wind, dust storms, alien lightning on Eve, cyclonic storms on Laythe) or environmental hazards (sand traps, lava flow, collidable scatter) I would be quite content.

 

[Burning Bridges]

What I want to see goes beyond mere polishing. Until now they have implemented only two classes of objects: The athmosphereless rock type Moon, and Earth type planets. Eve has been put in the second category which is a letdown.
I hope they don't think that's not the end of it. The really interesting types are missing: venturing into the gas layers of Jupiter, surviving the compressed athmosphere of Venus, or drilling into Moons with subsurface oceans.
Tylo, by the way, is an example where they thought ahead. A large object with considerable gravity, but without anything to slow you down, was something most people had not thought of before.

 

[Hellraiser]

Burning Bridges, for Eve or Jool to be properly "simulated" and feel alien (and also challenging) you would need:
- parts with different atmospheric pressure tolerance, explode/fail when there's too much pressure.
- better part temperature/overheating model and ways to cool parts/radiate heat.
- weather, wind in particular but also lightning, fog, clouds.
- radiation.

I think the first one could be done using the tweakables feature in the editor rather than by making a billion variants of everything. Just like you can set a tank to be half-full in the VAB now, you could increase the base pressure-resistance of parts at the cost of both more money and vehicle mass. If proper ocean simulation was also added this would also be useful. Although I think implementing drilling holes in ice of a Europa equivalent could be a problem.

The second one is a no-brainer, the basic mechanics are already there, system just needs some work.

As for the third one, wind is just a random force dependent on atmo pressure and own velocity. Not that hard to do I think. I'm not sure how to implement lightning without it feeling like a random "lol you're fucked bro" mechanic with simplistic counterplay. Lightning rods? How to make using them interesting than slap one on not to fry your ship? Fog is pretty easy to explain, but apparently unity gave them performance issues when they tried implementing it last time. Rain without a complex flooding/liquid system makes no sense from a simulation perspective, only as visual fluff but it would be a nice touch.

Radiation is basically fixed with either more shielding or hardening so it is a bit similar to pressure, but I think that apart from crew modules, probe cores, SAS and science parts most parts don't need to have a rad resistance stat. Just the ones housing lifeforms or electronics. For electronics the issue would be mostly cost rather than mass, adding more incentive to not risk kerbals.

Environments are really lacking at the moment which is why as you noted it seems like there's basically just two of celestial body archetypes now. Proper weather condition would go a long way into making things feel different. Also look at rovers, as long as there's no liquid around it matters little where you drive them. There's the difference in gravity but what about surfaces? Why not tweakable rover wheels with spikes for better grip on ice? Maybe wheels that work better in the dust of Duna. Why not have threads? More enviromental hazards? Hell, think of floating ice bergs on Laythe's poles, streams and puddles of alien liquid on eve. What about risk of equipment freezing if you don't have enough heating?

The thing is though, how hardcore and deep do the devs want to go? That's the only thing I worry about at times, especially considering their reluctance to add re-entry heat or life support management. I *think* that with difficulty modes added we may see some of those more sim features, but I'm not sure how many.

 

[Ulminati]

Looks like 0.24 is delayed.

We've completed the initial features we had lined up, had them QA tested, and even got a few experimental builds up for initial testing and feedback.

We worked through most bugs. But the overall feedback we got from the exp group was that the update as a whole left them wanting, which was, well, not what we would have liked to hear... but such is the way of things sometimes. This is why we test before doing public releases: Not just to catch bugs and technical issues, but also to get subjective feedback on what we have, and act on it when necessary. This was one case where acting on it was necessary.

The general consensus was that the Contracts system seems to be working quite well, functionally. But at the moment, the system is just that: Functional. We've built a solid framework, but to make this interesting and release-worthy, we have to populate it with interesting content. We also realized Contracts serve no purpose if there isn't a need for the rewards they offer. That means we still have a few features that need to be added.

Essentially, we're moving the core essentials of Budgets, which were originally planned for 0.25, up to 0.24. This includes, among other things, the requirement to spend your program's Funds to launch vessels and purchase parts in R&D.

Naturally, this means we still have some work ahead of us before we can call this update done. I just want to make it clear that we're not as close to release as people normally start to speculate when we announce having reaching experimentals.

This is why we don't announce release dates in the first place, but we are very much aware that despite that, you guys will guess, pretty accurately sometimes, so we felt it was important to share this news. We don’t want the speculation to lead to overly optimistic expectations about the release date.

JEEEEEEEEEEEEEEB!!!!

 

[Burning Bridges]

Np, if the build was crap it's better not to release.

 

[Hellraiser]

Pretty much, we've waited for contracts/money for a long time since september or october, releasing it at this state makes no sense if they need just a few more weeks to flesh it out.

 

[Ulminati]

Astronomer's pack makes KSP quite pretty

 

[Konjad]

Does it raise up PC requirements? My HD4000 is already at its peak when I am playing KSP on low-med details

 

[Hellraiser]

Oh man, the atmospheric enhancement mod sure went a long way, the dust storm on Duna looks great.

 

[Data4]

Fuck this game. Fuck it in the ass with a rusty pike.

I bought it over Memorial Day weekend, spent all my waking hours on it making the 3 day weekend go by in a blink, and now I find myself daydreaming over what to build next while I'm at work. This is fucking game crack in the worst way.