Hey, good to see another PAXite. I’ve been coming up for close to a decade now. Not sure if you’ve gone to previous ones, but while they’re always extremely crowded, the security stuff is new and extremely annoying.
Haven’t made it to the KSP2 booth yet, but I plan on doing that today. Been keeping an eye out for Scott Manley as I’d heard he’d be up here, but haven’t seen him yet.
I’ve been to most of the PAXes since about 2010 or so. I usually just cruise in and out to see what’s up. Luckily I have friends with expo badges so usually I just grab a badge for a couple of hours. Security was annoying this year but I skipped the line by going in the side(exhibitor) door near the elevators so it wasn’t a huge deal.
I’m definitely looking forward to this one. I enjoyed KSP but I was pretty bad at it.
Couldn’t take pictures in the demo room, and they didn’t have a playable demo, but they did have a video showing gameplay not in the trailer. Current graphics is substantially beyond KSP1, though nowhere close to the CG trailer. The UI has a lot more stuff, which seems counter to their goal of onboarding people easily, but maybe it shows up progressively. In any case, they’re still iterating on it.
The assembly building has a new feature–blueprint mode. This gives you an orthogonal side view of the rocket to make it easier to place things accurately. They also made it so you can build subassemblies separately and then attach them later, which is nice (it had been annoying to build some complex repeated element, only to discover partway through that you need to make a change in the middle and then have to rebuild the whole thing).
It appears that the Orion drive is for fast in-system travel and the fusion drive is for interstellar travel. Interstellar ships are big enough that you pretty much have to do orbital assembly of the ship. I get the impression that you may need to mine fuel from Jool as well. They are tweaking the time warp to better handle interstellar travel. Not sure if this means extreme million-X scales or something else.
Speaking of off-Kerbin assembly, one of the features of planetary colonies and orbital stations is the ability to build and launch rockets from them. Presumably there will be some resource mining involved as well.
That’s all I remember for now. They repeated that easier onboarding without sacrificing realism is a goal. I didn’t get the impression that they were introducing any “magic”, and said they had been consulting with aerospace scientists and engineers for ideas.
You know, I’ve been really thrilled with the recent enhancements to KSP. Lots of “quality of life” improvements, also more things to explore in the Kerbol system.
It’s more than halfway to what’s promised for KSP2, if you ask me. (OK, base building* is still not that great a thing in KSP, so hopefully that will finally be addressed.)
*Imagine being able to build a base from local resources, in a manner similar to current base building games, but shorn of too much complexity because, after all, this is a spaceflight game. That could prove awesome…
As an aerospace engineer who has used KSP to teach kids about spaceflight, I’ve got a few ideas of my own…looking forward to seeing how they implement in-game tutorials to help get people to space. Without having to resort so often to Scott Manley.
Just chipping in that there is a smartphone app game called Simplerockets which is essentially a scaled-down variant of Kerbal. In particular, it is two-dimensional (at least in its first instalment - there is a version 2 where this was supposedy changed to 3D, but I haven’t played it yet). If you find the entry into Kerbal too hard, then get Simplerockets, which teaches you the same basic ideas on a more simplified level and makes for a great stepstone towards Kerbal.
Kerbal fans rejoice. Kerbal Space Program 2 has announced an early access release date of Feb 24, 2023.
They released a video below showing some of the improvements and it looks really good. I am looking forward to playing it.
I got KSP in early access and it was well wortwhile. KSP benefited a lot from early access. The devs seem committed to the game (passionate about it) so I expect this early access will also be good and the game will get regular updates and they will listen to the players when making changes. Of course, you never know, that is just a guess.
I hop there’s still MechJeb for Ver 2. I loved KSP but my interest was in designing and building the rockets, space stations, interplanetary spacecraft, and landers, but not flying them. MechJeb (essentially a highly advanced autopilot) saved the game for me.
In one of their earlier videos one of the devs said when he first played KSP he could not get to the Mun. He could not figure it out and only managed by watching some video tutorials. He said in KSP 2 he made it to the Mun in 30 minutes. Supposedly they have solid tutorials now and the UI is all-around better and more intuitive. Of course, it is still all physics based and they claim it is still not easy but it is more approachable.
That said, if you don’t want to be bothered flying I am willing to bet a strong modding community will form around this (as it did for KSP) and someone will make a new MechJeb eventually (probably, maybe, hopefully).
Getting to the Mun isn’t that hard… assuming you don’t want to come back that is.
I remember trying to get to the Mun and back with a limited number of parts. I knew the amount of fuel I has was cutting it close but I just didn’t have enough. I ended up stuck in a very eccentric orbit around Kerbin. Of course that let me build a rescue mission which was fun itself.
I remember the first time I landed on the Mun and managed to get safely back to Kerbin. One of the most satisfying moments I have ever had in gaming (there were a LOT of failures along the way…the devs call it, fail forward).
That’s what I like about Kerbal: when you achieve something, YOU achieved it, and it is far more satisfying than most videogames. When you first get to the Mun, YOU made it happen. You built the machine that took you there. You planned it. It is an exceptionally rewarding experience.
Same thing happened to me, except my orbit was VERY eccentric and happened to intersect with the Mun itself. RIP Jeb.
I recently picked up the first one on deep discount and took a quick peek at it. I couldn’t read anything, all the text was so tiny. It was really frustrating, to the point I almost uninstalled. Then I went to settings and lo and behold, you can make the text as big as you want! That made me so happy.
I only spent about 10 minutes poking around but couldn’t really figure out anything I was supposed to do. I’m looking for a new game, and this seems like it could potentially draw me in. Any tips for a first timer?
Oh, nice, I found the tutorials. Now I have something to sink my teeth into. Let’s see if it hooks me.
I look forward to your thoughts on it as you play.
As mentioned, it is not easy at all but can be very rewarding. It is certainly not everyone’s cup of tea though.
Bumping this thread since the KSP2 Beta releases latter this week.
Early impressions from Scott Manley are here (I have not watched the whole thing yet):
I am looking forward to taking it for a spin later this week.
Does KSP II have MechJeb or an equivalent? KSP for me is all about the engineering, I prefer to leave the flying to the computers for this game!
EDITED TO ADD I see I already asked this question a while back smack