The game isn’t out yet. First early access release goes on sale on the 24th. Based on Scott Manley’s video, it looks to me like you get the full autopilot options that existed in the final versions of the first game. You can select any of your navball markers (prograde, retrograde, normal, anti-normal, radial in, radial out, and the maneuver marker) and the autopilot will keep you aimed at that point. Throttle will be manual.
Scott’s video was pretty rudimentary, unless you’re concerned about flying under bridges at KSC, which is kind of his tradition in first look KSP videos. My Youtube feeds showing some videos by other prominent KSP creators, but I haven’t watched any of them yet. But based on what I’ve seen, it looks like this first release is pretty bare-bones. No science, no career mode, and still lots of missing features.
The FAQ on the game website says they expect modders to be active from day 1, and MechJeb was one of the most downloaded mods of all time. I would expect someone will be releasing a similar autopilot mod in short order.
It’s not released yet. “At this point” it doesn’t run at all, and so can’t be compared to anything. The pre-early release version played by a bunch of guys at the event a couple weeks ago seems to have been something of a resource hog, yes, and the system requirements are a bit high: min i5-6400 w/ RTX2060/5600XT, recommended i5-11500 w/ RTX 3080/6800XT.
I’ve had a chance to watch a few more videos from various participants of the ESA event, and here’s my take:
This truly is early access. There are significant parts of the core content that aren’t in yet - science, career mode, base building, interstellar travel, multiplayer. The current state of the game has less stuff in it than the original. No robotics parts, for example. Also, it’s pretty buggy, although that event was a couple weeks ago on a then-brand-new build, and the devs said that the intervening time would be about bug-hunting not adding any new content so hopefully the early access release is a little more stable. But again, true early access. Don’t buy this expecting a polished game.
Performance didn’t look great. Large rockets some of the guys built lagged the game significantly and they were playing on bleeding edge rigs. While there’s probably lots and lots of room for optimization, we should expect the initial early access builds to be pretty bad in this regard.
I’ll probably buy on day 1, because who am I kidding I’m going to get this game sooner or later so why not sooner? It’s not something like Subnautica: Below Zero which I did my best to ignore till the full release so that I could discover the story all at once. By contrast with KSP half the fun is watching the game grow and mature. I discovered the first game just after they added science, but before career mode existed, and I actually kind of regret not getting to play those really early builds where there weren’t even any maneuver nodes etc.
My now-5-year-old rig is only a bit over minimum specs, so we’ll see how it’ll run. If it runs poorly, well, I’ll have to start squirreling away some money for an upgrade that’s due anyways. The current machine is an i5-8600 (8th gen) cpu with a RTX1080, will report on how it copes so people can compare. Supposedly the listed minimum specs are supposed to be adequate to run 1080p on low settings, but my monitor is an ultra-wide 1440, so it may be a struggle. Fortunately I have a pretty high tolerance for low frame rates.
I was on the fence with getting it or not, but this sales pitch basically won me over. I agree, watching the game evolve was half the fun in KSP1, and this game is starting much further along.
I remember when KSP1 didn’t have a science or career mode either…
And the modding seen is gonna be a wonder to behold.
Manley said (I think…I have watched a few videos on this) that he thinks KSP-I is probably still better to play. While KSP-II has new graphics and whatnot it is lacking many features (obviously…it is early-access and they tell you as much).
That said, I got in on KSP-I in early access and it went really well.
Played around with the tutorial before I needed to start working this morning; I think it’s great for a new player! Breaks the concepts down into very bite-sized chunks. A little frustrating for an experienced KSP player, as it keeps pausing to tell you what you already know, but I wanted to see how it introduced it to new players.
Performance-wise, zero issues thus far, looking and running fine, but I’m sure the tutorial isn’t the best gauge for that. Looking forward to the end of the workday so I can mess around some more!
I bound Toggle Map View to “*” on my keyboard and it works in that I can indeed get to map view but pressing * again doesn’t toggle back to normal view that allows me to fly the ship. What gives?
Anyone else have issues with rebinding the keys? I bound my arrow keys to throttle and some alphabetic keys to translation but my arrow keys translate the camera.
Played just a little bit. Skipped all tutorials and built a simple two-stage orbital rocket. Rocket worked fine, but as predicted 3440x1440 is a slideshow with a GTX1080. Actually okay framerate if I panned the camera so Kerbin wasn’t in view, but down at 10fps when looking at the pretty trees, even with low graphics selected. I dropped to 1080p, loaded up a stock rover, and drove off into the woods and was sitting around 30fps, so I think we’ll just have to run at the lower resolution. Will have to fiddle around with what options I can bump up and what I can’t.
So I’d say the minimum specs are probably pretty accurate for what hardware will result in acceptable gameplay. Here ends the PSA on hardware requirements.
Played just a bit as well. Game was tricky to cajole into 2560:1080 mode, but once there it worked well. FPS is in the teens on Kerbin, higher in space. Considering how most of my KSP hours involved playing on a potato laptop back in college, this feels pretty good.
My first mission is an Apollo style Mun landing. I was able to put my ship into orbit last time I played, but due to not understanding the customized air control sirfaces yet, it’s quite an inclined one. So next time I’ll play I will need to fix that up and then do my Munar injection burn.
I concurred that an Apollo-style Mun landing sounded like a good first enterprise. After a couple false starts related to lack of struts and an untimely staging incident, I got into my lunar transfer orbit and prepared for the operation moving the lander module from its interstage position to docking to the nose of the command module. So, I EVA’d Doodely Kerman from the command pod to hop into the lander can, at which point my command pod popped out of existence, taking Valentina and Bobski with it. The parachutes continued flying in formation with the rest of the craft despite no longer being connected to anything. Aaaand I forgot to quicksave, so I’m calling it a night.
Lots and lots of bugs. Not unexpected, of course. A couple near show-stoppers on my Mun mission. In Munar orbit around 8-10km elevation you get an endless sequence of AUTO: GROUND/AUTO:ORBIT messages in a big yellow column down the middle of the screen. I think this is an automatic switching of navball mode between ground and orbit that’s somehow getting confused, but completely blocks your view of your rocket. Fortunately it doesn’t show up while in the map screen. Another bug popped up after I landed. I had a two-stage lander (Apollo style, remember?) and the ascent stage was configured to simultaneously pop a decoupler and light the ascent engines, leaving the descent stage on the surface. But, doing this resulted in my vessel having no orbital track in the map screen, meaning I couldn’t tell where I was going and I couldn’t create maneuvers. This made rendevous with the command module more difficult than I was willing to deal with, so I used the descent stage to get off the surface before igniting the ascent stage. But now that I think of it, I wonder if I couldn’t have just put the lander module into a nice stable orbit and then maneuvered the command module to it rather than vice versa. Ah well, another time. My Apollo accuracy wasn’t perfect anyways, as I used the single-seat lander rather than the two-seat, since the two-seater doesn’t fit inside a 3.5m fairing. Otherwise pretty good, though. Three stage main rocket, using the third stage to circularize and then do the translunar insertion burn. Put the third stage onto a collision course with the Mun. Way more delta-V than required on several bits, though, so a lot of room for optimization. I’m can’t see where projected delta-V is broken down by stage in the VAB, though, which makes building something like that rather tricky.
The heroic Valentina, Bobski, and Doodely made it back to Kerbin safely. Eventually. Ignoring a great many quicksave reloads.
All in all, I’d say at the moment KSP 1 is a significantly superior game, aside from graphics quality. Although, there are lots of really pretty graphics upgrade mods available. Oddly, though, where the last few times I’ve fired up KSP 1 I get a real same old same old, done it all feel, KSP 2 feels new even though almost all of the currently available parts are direct copies of the old KSP 1 vanilla parts.
There’s something very wrong about propellant flow. I made a fairly basic 3-stage rocket, but found the second stage pulled propellant from the third. This is obviously bad. The stack decoupler clearly had cross-feed disabled, but it ignored that.
Another one seemed to have to do with discarded parts somehow still being attached to the original. I performed a staging event around the Mun, but the view started drifting further and further away from the spacecraft, as if there were still parts from the debris changing the center point. Somehow this partially self-resolved, with some fins popping back into view and spinning around weirdly before going away–but there was still something busted with it. I managed to land anyhow, but the camera was permanently tweaked, and when I reloaded it somehow got worse, with the craft and camera stuck underground.
Nevertheless, I did manage to get to the Mun and back with a simpler vehicle. I appreciate the improved graphics and sound, and my 3080 runs it reasonably well. Hopefully they get through the most egregious game-breaking bugs quickly.
I can do most stuff without MechJeb, but I’m really missing the porkchop plotter. Getting to the outer planets is a real trick without it.
I refined my Apollo clone which now pretty closely maps onto the actual Apollo mission profile - 3 stage main rocket, 3rd stage circularizes Kerbin orbit and performs trans-Munar injection burn and is then set on a collision course. Two-stage lander module tucked in between the 3rd stage and the command module, flips around and docks with the nose of the command module after 3rd stage is ditched.
Only problem is that after reaching Munar orbit with the command/lander modules, undocking the lander results in a message the vehicle is destroyed. Except that it still shows up in the tracking centre, only now the docking ports have no undock option so the lander is permanently stuck to the command module.
Oh, and somehow Bill is in the lander module from the first mission that was abandoned prior to Valentina & co returning to Kerbin. Bill was not part of that mission, so clearly the Kerbals have devised some sort of teleportation technology, which makes you wonder why they’re bothering with chemical rockets.
I expect the focus of development for the next bit will indeed be squashing the various game-breaking bugs that have been discovered. Part of the point of early access releases is that you can skimp on in-house playtesting because the broader community will do that for you for free.
The Kerbol system is pretty flat, and most orbits are not very eccentric, so aside from Eeloo you can usually make due by timing your departure for when Kerbin is roughly a quarter revolution ahead or behind the target planet (depending on wether it’s an inner or outer planet).