That’s true. Still, creating the maneuver node is tricky to get right. I just find it very fiddly.
I’ve seen that one too. What seemed to help was to have separate stages for the decoupling and engine ignition.
That’s pretty great! Maybe this will be the future of autogenerated missions. The “Radiant AI” quests from The Elder Scrolls/Fallout series are terrible. ChatGPT actually generates interesting variations.
Decided to roll with the AI generated mission idea.
So… Time to launch 5 satellites!
Launching my satellites into orbit (the 3 equatorial ones first). I love the new UI! Apoapsis and periapsis available at a glance, without the map? dV in the current stage over on the right? HELL YEAH!
ETA: I had to revert to VAB to add more struts. Onwards!
I kinda wish the navball was still in the centre, though.
I’m also not quite sold on the parts manager as a replacement of the old pop-up right click parts menus. That’s probably just a matter of learning the new system though.
All in all I’d say it looks like a really solid base on which to build a worthy sequel to the best computer game ever made.
I’ve had that issue as well. I has me wondering, what is the difference between a decoupler and a stack separator?
A decoupler remains attached to the lower stage. A stack separator separates from both sides.
Generally speaking, if you’re throwing away the separated stage, you’ll use a decoupler. If you want to be using the separated stage, you’ll use a stack separator. For example, in my Apollo clone I have a stack separator between the command module engine and the lander module below it, because once I’m in space I’m separating the two objects and them docking them nose to nose for maneuvers up until it’s time to actually land. If I used a decoupler instead, I’d have the decoupler ring welded to the top of the lander’s docking port, which makes it less useful for docking.
Sooooo… I started having all these weird issues, where the entire rocket would pop to underground and every piece would separate from every other piece, leaving me with a few dozen ‘subassemblies’.
I finally gave up, but I have the KSP itch now. I got a relatively light modlist and hopped back into that for now.
I’m not worried though, KSP 1 had a rough launch too. The game will get patches, and already has mods… a few weeks or months from now I’ll be back. I’m excited to build planes in the new aero system.
I’ve played a bit more. After my complicated Munar mission suffered from repeated mission-ending bugs, I decided to go simple. I built a very basic but huge vessel with ridiculous deltaV. 5-seat capsule, 3 of the largest cylindrical hydrogen tanks, and the new bigass nuclear rocket engine. Strapped a couple of the Clydesdale solid boosters to the side to lob it out of the atmosphere, and got into orbit with 15km/s deltaV remaining. Took a spin out to Jool, rendevousing with Tylo, Val, and Laythe before deciding to pop out to Eeloo, and finally returning to Kerbin with just 150m/s to spare after lining up a re-entry at 8km/s. Val has a really cool new surface. It’s tidally locked to Jool, and the inner face of the moon is much smoother than the outer face. I’m presuming the in-game explanation is some combination of Jool protecting the inner face from larger impacts, and perhaps also radiation from Jool melting/eroding features in the ice.
The trip was not without bugs. I discovered that the sun shines through the edge of planets, which I’m pretty sure is not intended. Also, my Eeloo orbit had a continually dropping periapsis if I came out of time warp. The lack of projected orbit lines in other spheres of influence makes it really, really difficult to set up efficient rendevous, and led to repeated massive wasted burns. Also, orbital parameters sometimes seem to change slightly when crossing spheres of influence.
All in all, I’d say do not buy this game yet if you are expecting any sort of consistent gameplay experience. It is very buggy and borderline unplayable.
That said, the lead dev has announced the first update expected “in the next couple weeks” with a long list of bugs already squashed, said list including only things they’ve already fixed with no indication of what they expect to get done by the time the release the update. They probably don’t want to raise expectations by saying they hope to have bug X fixed only to discover next week that fixing bug X will required a total overhaul of the physics engine or whatever.
KSP2 science update just dropped.
Played it a bit and it seems pretty solid. At least compared to the last time I played, probably 6+ months ago. Easily completed a few Mun/Minmus missions without incident.
There are a few weird UI glitches–for some reason, timewarping gets into a weird state where the pause-1x-2x-4x-etc. sequence gets out of whack, but if I manually set it to 1x and pause/unpause it works again. Not a huge deal.
A few other things aren’t exactly bugs, but should be fixed. For instance, you can have it tell you the round-trip delta-V for a Mun landing and return. But it’s a massive overestimate since it doesn’t count for aerobraking (that takes off at least 3600 m/s). It’s still convenient since just having the numbers available means I don’t have to consult outside sources, but it would be good to improve that part.
I’m currently working my way up the science tree–about halfway through Tier 2 (out of 4). The missions are pretty fun, and there’s the semblance of a plot among the main sequence.
I am playing in sandbox mode and have been for about a month, working on the orbital construction of a Jool 5 mothership which will haul a bunch of landers around. Before and after the update , rocket wobble is a whole lot less , but I’d say I have to reboot about every 1/2 hr. Mostly UI issues , can’t select parts on ships for docking schnanigans, random total slow downs after the inevitable pop up about solar panels not working because it is dark, every orbit ( who would have known? ) ships will still suddenly fly off at a high velocity for no known reason, action groups are effed and decouplers are most likely going to blow everything up randomly.
Still it looks pretty and the main mods are updated so we have actual numbers to use and a usable maneuver mode system. That said K2D2 doesn’t do docking port alignment now, which was a very helpful tool. Hopefully it will be back.
On the bright side my mother ship got a helpful part number reduction. It has a stack of 50t hydrogen balls for fuel each with 2 extra medium docking ports on the sides of each ball which were used by my construction tugs to pull them into place , with large docking ports as the anchor to the main engine truss. Whilst attaching my KPAV ( Kerbal purpose ascent vehicle, it is the main lander module for all the planets, which will go with different lower lander sections for each of the specific planets) the mother ship got all wobbly and excessively jiggly, I hit the time warp up and down , and the ship calmed down, but had managed to shed all the extra medium docking adapters which were left floating around. A quick debris clean up and the KSS Beer Towel Peanuts is down 18 unneeded parts and approx 3 tons mass. Not that that will make a difference in this very ‘more is better’ mission design paradigm.
Taking this somewhat ridiculous concept on a test run to Duna .
Nice! I’m playing the science mode, and just unlocked the big spherical tanks. Looking now to set up a multi-mode mission to Jool, perhaps a land-and-return mission to Lathe, including doing some aquatic science. Still have to figure out the various pieces, but I have a decent-sized tug I can use as a base:
Plenty of capacity to spare, and it launches just fine if I’m careful. I’m hoping for a single-launch mission.
Expectations were low, and not met .
All that mass out front was a bad idea.
Single launch is tough, good luck although I suspect you won’t need luck.
The in orbit assembly gets pretty tedious. I have been playing with the cheat mode and putting my various lander designs that will be hauled out there, into target orbit so I can try out the land and return.
Turns out I need a lot of practice.
Also been trying vernor engine instead of rcs . It does give the assembly tugs a whole lot of extra oommof but needs some part clipping into some fat and stubby stabilizer fins to get fore’n’aft thrusters.
There does seem to be an issue with heat, forward facing (as in facing into the direction of travel) docking ports heat up even if behind a fairing or heat shield .
Did it just end up being uncontrollable? Did it turn shaky, or something else?
I think I’ve finally gotten my Laythe marine science / launcher system working like I want. Check it out:
I use empty hydrogen tanks as buoyancy pods. I tried to keep the rocket fairly short and so use conical tanks and radial-mounted engines. The passenger rides down in the marine science pod, lands, then once she does the science thing, swims out, climbs to the top, and launches away to the carrier ship still in orbit.
This is just a test on Kerbin so it’s still missing a heatshield and perhaps a few other things, but overall I think it should work.
Oh I like that, I have been scratching my head on what to do for the Layth lander base part for the General
Purpose Ascent Vehicle . The lack of land means needing more fuel for corrections whilst descending, and I don’t do space planes , which seems to be a popular choice for Layth lander. The empty hydrogen tanks and floating is a cool idea , consider the idea stolen!
The ship I had was totally unwieldy, couldn’t turn and wobbled every where under acceleration.
I am working on this
It has the core of a large cube with 6 large reaction wheels and everything reasonably centered as the center of mass shows . I should take about 10 or 12 loads to assemble in orbit. It has the ascent vehicle on the front and two construction tugs which double as extra methalox fuel for the lander.
The different lander modules will sit on the front of the H tanks . Not sure about about a Tylo lander though! That might need to be bought out by the refuel mission that will be needed .
This is definitely an example of why adding more doesn’t get you any more delta V.
I teleported it to orbit to test turning ability. It takes about 60 secs for a prograde / retrograde switch in just
Reaction wheel mode and about 35 secs with the vernor RCS and no wobble, 900 tons all in. Should be able to drop tanks and engines when the file
Is used up .
That’s a serious vehicle! I’m surprised it takes so many loads to launch, though; I’d think you could get away with maybe 5-6, or even fewer if you go with a mega vehicle like the one I made with 4 spheres. I guess you’re launching one sphere at a time, plus a few extras? It feels like you could launch two at a time, at least.
I really like the sound design in the game. The music, the ocean sounds, my Kerbal splashing in the water, the clinking sounds as she climbs the ladder–all very satisfying. And I do like how the water launched worked out. Water-launched rockets have been tested before in real life; I wish they had gotten more traction!
I don’t do spaceplanes either–they just seemed too fiddly to me. Rockets all the way! I tried making a smaller version of the launcher, using a rover seat and just a nosecone for protection, but I couldn’t get it working like I wanted. No biggie since my carrier ship has plenty of capacity.
I did install a few convenience mods. I did most of the science path with no mods and just occasional use of an online planetary transfer calculator. Got pretty tricky and fiddly at times. But hand-flying to a specific location is still good fun. Getting within 300 m of a spot on Tylo was a challenge without MechJeb.
I’ve started playing again, after abandoning it pretty early due to the many game-breaking bugs. I haven’t run into anything particularly nasty, though a couple times it’s seemed to stall loading into the tracking centre (or maybe another building, don’t remember exactly) and I’ve ended up restarting the game.
I like having the science progression and the missions, as it gives a nice bit of structure. Bit of a steep curve, though, at least in my game - just unlocking the medium size parts and it’s been nice progressions of orbit>Mun flyby>landing>landing at monument>Minmus flyby>land at monument. And then, jump straight to a Duna monument, without having opportunities for 3.75m parts or even the nuclear propulsion. My first stab at a single-launch Duna mission didn’t make it into orbit, so I guess I’ll have to scrounge a bit of science to unlock nuclear propulsion, and probably set up an LKO refueling station. Possibly even launch the Duna mission in pieces. At least the wobbly rocket situation has been fixed
I agree; while I never had problems coming up with mission possibilities, I like having the game keep track of whether I’ve succeeded and giving me a reward when I have.
Duna shouldn’t be too bad even with medium rockets. Flag-planting missions are the tough ones, at least if you want your Kerbals to live. But IIRC, Duna just needed an autonomous lander. I did have to sprinkle in a few non-progression missions to unlock various paths, but these weren’t too bad either. Eve and Jool make good science destinations. None of my missions have required multiple parts or refueling. I haven’t done any docking at all, in fact.
I was attempting a round-trip with Kerbals on board. A one-way probe mission would indeed be a lot easier. Didn’t even occur to me, to be honest.