Better Than Starting Manned (Flower's WIP KSP mod )

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Sarudak
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Re: Better Than Starting Manned (Flower's WIP KSP mod )

Post by Sarudak »

Remotetech looks really awesome. Also economy would be great. I'd love having to setup com satelites and weather satelittes etc. Do you think there's any chance you'll integrate more powerful tech like nuclear engines? I really want nuclear engines. Mostly because of my love for all things nuclear. I know they would probably be kinda OP but maybe at the end of the tech tree and somewhat expensive. :D
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Re: Better Than Starting Manned (Flower's WIP KSP mod )

Post by FlowerChild »

Yeah, all the stock parts will be integrated eventually, just likely much later than in vanilla.

The higher I go in the tech tree, the more complicated things become. Like, you'll notice with last night's release, coding was involved to get a progression on EVAs. Soon, I know I'm going to have to start rearranging tech nodes and such in order to get the effect I want, which will introduce additional complications. Also, I'm just dealing with an increased number of nodes and parts to balance with each tech level.
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Sarudak
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Re: Better Than Starting Manned (Flower's WIP KSP mod )

Post by Sarudak »

I don't think there are any nuclear engines currently in stock parts. Which makes me sad as Kerbals seem like they would be much likely to be accepting of nuclear power given they have no problem using parts picked up off the side of the road. ;D
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Re: Better Than Starting Manned (Flower's WIP KSP mod )

Post by FlowerChild »

Sarudak wrote:I don't think there are any nuclear engines currently in stock parts. Which makes me sad as Kerbals seem like they would be much likely to be accepting of nuclear power given they have no problem using parts picked up off the side of the road. ;D
Yeah, there are.

Also, don't bug me with "Kerbals behave this way" garbage man. If you followed the history behind why I developed this thing, part of it was to counter Squad's designing around thematic elements instead of gameplay like in choosing manned missions to go first because it was "more Kerbal".

Kerbals are fictional thematic game elements. Thus, they exist to serve the game design, not the other way around.
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Re: Better Than Starting Manned (Flower's WIP KSP mod )

Post by Sarudak »

FlowerChild wrote: Yeah, there are.
Ok I feel like an idiot. You're totally right that there is one I just didn't see it. Although I was imagine and engine type more like this.
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Re: Better Than Starting Manned (Flower's WIP KSP mod )

Post by FlowerChild »

Sarudak wrote: Ok I feel like an idiot. You're totally right that there is one I just didn't see it. Although I was imagine and engine type more like this.
Yup, don't care man. Not sure why part pestering has suddenly become a thing here. I suspect you know me better than to think I'd respond well to "I want nuclear engines because I like nuclear!".
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Sarudak
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Re: Better Than Starting Manned (Flower's WIP KSP mod )

Post by Sarudak »

Righto. Not sure what I was thinking. My brains been a bit on the fritz today. No more suggestions/requests from me, promise.
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Re: Better Than Starting Manned (Flower's WIP KSP mod )

Post by FlowerChild »

Sarudak wrote:Righto. Not sure what I was thinking. My brains been a bit on the fritz today. No more suggestions/requests from me, promise.
No worries man. Your enthusiasm is infectious, it just happens to be going in a direction counter to my design methodology at the present moment :)

As I've described in previous posts, right now I'm focused on throttling player power to create a meaningful gameplay progression out of what's already in the game, so definitely not looking at expanding upon the player's abilities as that only exasperates the current problem.
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Re: Better Than Starting Manned (Flower's WIP KSP mod )

Post by Stormweaver »

omg fc ad warp drivs n forc felds.

I'm mid-playthrough atm, so haven't really gotten to the new tech levels yet. The gravioli detector is doing it's job well (damn you badlands), and I'm trying to figure out if I should be going for that docking port as early as possible so I could go back and recover any failed launches at a later date.

All in all, pretty good so far. Definitely lacking the warp drives and force fields though.
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Sarudak
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Re: Better Than Starting Manned (Flower's WIP KSP mod )

Post by Sarudak »

Totally. I mean I've only played your mod so I have no idea what future capacities might be in store for me just in the vanilla part set other than a cursory glance at the part list so it doesn't make a lot of sense for me to be making suggestions for future tech anyways.
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Re: Better Than Starting Manned (Flower's WIP KSP mod )

Post by TheAnarchitect »

Sweet. That means I can skip learning programming and go back to learning to write well. The implementation phase is so much shorter in tabletop game design. :)

Man, I wish you and I were geographically concurrent. I really, really want to just spend an evening talking pure game design over beers.
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Re: Better Than Starting Manned (Flower's WIP KSP mod )

Post by FlowerChild »

Stormweaver wrote:All in all, pretty good so far. Definitely lacking the warp drives and force fields though.
No warp drives for you! :)

Balance observations based on the most recent release are definitely welcome though, so thanks for that.

At present I'm considering doing something rather funky with integrating aircraft (that aspect has been an ongoing question mark for me) to make them be a slightly more natural part of the game without detracting from the rocket focus (which is what I think KSP really excels at). If things go right, hopefully I can at least partially resolve what I perceive to be one of the game's identity crisis, and make them feel more like a part of the game rather than just a tagged on thing.
TheAnarchitect wrote:Sweet. That means I can skip learning programming and go back to learning to write well. The implementation phase is so much shorter in tabletop game design. :)
Hehe...damn it. Now I've gone and discouraged you just when I was taking pride in providing some encouragement :)
Man, I wish you and I were geographically concurrent. I really, really want to just spend an evening talking pure game design over beers.
Well, for all we know we could be living next door to each other, and given my paranoia over revealing my physical location to the screaming masses, there's no way of really telling :)
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Re: Better Than Starting Manned (Flower's WIP KSP mod )

Post by Stormweaver »

FlowerChild wrote:At present I'm considering doing something rather funky with integrating aircraft (that aspect has been an ongoing question mark for me) to make them be a slightly more natural part of the game without detracting from the rocket focus (which is what I think KSP really excels at). If things go right, hopefully I can at least partially resolve what I perceive to be one of the game's identity crisis, and make them feel more like a part of the game rather than just a tagged on thing.
After seeing an aerodynamics tutorial (and making a point of skipping the physics abuse vids) I had a little fun with vKSP by re-entering with a handful of different probes and the like, tooled up to be gliders and trying to land them where I wanted them. Fun, but not particularly...useful. But being able to make your own aircraft and seeing them not only fly, but fly because you made them that way, is actually quite rewarding.

And then you find out that by wiggling the controls you can have infinite acceleration >.>
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Re: Better Than Starting Manned (Flower's WIP KSP mod )

Post by Sarudak »

Stormweaver wrote: And then you find out that by wiggling the controls you can have infinite acceleration >.>
It's called flapping and there's nothing wrong with it, birds do it and they are totally real and not made up at all!
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Re: Better Than Starting Manned (Flower's WIP KSP mod )

Post by FlowerChild »

Stormweaver wrote:And then you find out that by wiggling the controls you can have infinite acceleration >.>
Yeah, the aerodynamics in vanilla KSP are a mess in general, and while it causes all kind of problems for rockets (like encouraging totally ridiculous designs and making nosecones a burden rather than a benefit), it REALLY makes a mess of aircraft.

I recommend you look into FAR if you enjoy designing aircraft. It unfortunately tends to make rockets rather overpowered (at least reasonably designed ones...it does succeed in greatly reducing the effectiveness of silly horizontal designs), which is part of why I decided not to make it a required mod for this first balance pass, but my understanding is that it does great things for planes.
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Re: Better Than Starting Manned (Flower's WIP KSP mod )

Post by Sarudak »

I was kinda hoping the vanilla aerodynamic system was just some kind of placeholder...
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Re: Better Than Starting Manned (Flower's WIP KSP mod )

Post by FlowerChild »

Sarudak wrote:I was kinda hoping the vanilla aerodynamic system was just some kind of placeholder...
Yeah, it's supposed to be, but until it gets resolved (and who knows when it will be), FAR is a reasonable substitute.

Honestly, I find vanilla dev is rather slow on this game, and there are some weird labels being applied to the dev process (like with many other indie games).

Like, the current versions are referred to as "Sandbox Complete", yet how that label applies when some of the basic systems like aerodynamics that will likely drastically change ship designs, and stuff like the terrain on various planets are still WIP is beyond me. People's sandbox worlds are messed up with pretty much every release, which to me, that not happening would be the benchmark for applying such a label.

As a result, they seem to be moving on to creating and trying to balance career mode when the underlying systems that balance will be based on haven't been fully defined. It's all a little odd.

As an example of what I mean, they cited manned missions being simpler than probes for new players as one of the reasons why they put them first in the tech tree. However, as far as I know they've also said that they'll be including life support in a future release, so doesn't that mean manned missions will actually be heavier and more complicated than probes (which is how I'm planning on working them into BTSM and you can already see the beginnings of that at tech level 5)? Anyways, I've talked before about how I think KSP is suffering from identity crisis on multiple fronts, and this is part of what I mean. They don't seem to really have a clear picture of where they're going, and when parts of the picture are revealed, they seem to be sometimes operating with conflicting goals.

I guess all this adds up to why I was motivated to do something with this myself, as I'm not particularly confident they're going to sort this all out in a reasonable amount of time, if ever.
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Re: Better Than Starting Manned (Flower's WIP KSP mod )

Post by Sarudak »

That sounds ominously like another enjoyable sandbox game I know of that has a dev team that doesn't seem to know what they're doing...
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Re: Better Than Starting Manned (Flower's WIP KSP mod )

Post by FlowerChild »

Sarudak wrote:That sounds ominously like another enjoyable sandbox game I know of that has a dev team that doesn't seem to know what they're doing...
Well, and like with MC, it's also understandable on a certain level in terms of the experience level of the people involved (not much as far as I can tell).

It's a brilliant basis for a game to be sure, I'm just not certain they can really pull the pieces together into something coherent. As I've said many times in the past, being a designer is a professional skill worthy of a professional salary. At a certain point in development, it becomes increasingly difficult to make do without one.
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Re: Better Than Starting Manned (Flower's WIP KSP mod )

Post by jkievlan »

FlowerChild wrote:There are a number of "realism" mods I would potentially like to make required for BTSM, including stuff like Deadly Reentry, a life support plugin (not sure which yet or if I'll make my own), FAR, and Remote Tech. After that I might look into expanded functionality mods like KAS and Kethane as well.
Can't help wondering...are any of these mods figuring into your testing and balancing in BTSM?
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Re: Better Than Starting Manned (Flower's WIP KSP mod )

Post by Foxy Boxes »

Stormweaver wrote:omg fc ad warp drivs n forc felds.
It's the new Diamond Saws and Steam Power! :P

On a more sensible note: As soon as I can achieve a stable orbit in vanilla (and seeing Icy do it I'm not sure how I've managed to mess it up until now) I'm getting this, no ifs or buts.
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Re: Better Than Starting Manned (Flower's WIP KSP mod )

Post by FlowerChild »

jkievlan wrote: Can't help wondering...are any of these mods figuring into your testing and balancing in BTSM?
Not sure exactly what you mean, but I'm certainly keeping them in mind while designing the progression, in terms of knowing certain things will be resolved down the road (like exploity horizontal designs), so I don't have to worry about them at present, while others (like the incremental space suits and RCS in the last release) aren't things covered by other mods so I need to handle them myself.

I'm not testing BTSM with them at present though no, as I want to get the vanilla balance to a certain level before doing so. At present, we don't even have a complete tech tree integrating all the parts to act as a baseline for further balancing, so that's my current goal.

Also keep in mind that I'm not entirely certain how much time I want to devote to this in the future, so I'm taking things one step at a time.
Foxy Boxes wrote: On a more sensible note: As soon as I can achieve a stable orbit in vanilla (and seeing Icy do it I'm not sure how I've managed to mess it up until now) I'm getting this, no ifs or buts.
Seriously man, just do the vanilla tutorial on the subject. Icy's approach (which I watched) was just very seat of the pants based on little tid-bits of often inaccurate information that he got from his video comments. KSP is a game that really rewards understanding what you're doing and why instead of just following rough rules of thumb like the "thrust horizontal at 40Km" thing he was doing based on what someone else had said.

I think you'll find the game much more enjoyable in the long run if you take the time to really learn and understand the basics which is something I'm trying to emphasize through the tech progression in BTSM. There's a lot of little lessons buried in the BTSM progression, such as "these are tail fins...try them out and see what they do...", "this is RCS...give it a go" which I find are lacking in the vanilla tech tree through making things a tad too easy at start (through stuff like "here's a command pod...it can rotate and hold a course on its own, so you don't ever need to know the other stuff"). Without these lessons you can quickly wind up in situations where you really don't understand why your craft are behaving in certain ways as you try to undertake more and more challenging tasks which just leads to ever increasing levels of confusion and frustration.

I guess my design philosophy here is more "make simple tasks challenging at start in order for you to learn to be a better player so that truly challenging tasks are easier for you to wrap your head around later and provide long-term reward" while vanilla's is more "make simple tasks trivial at start and provide access to everything as quickly as possible to provide immediate gratification to make the barrier to entry virtually non-existent".

Now, I think the vanilla approach is ultimately self-defeating as what you wind up with are a lot of unskilled players that are likely to give up in frustration later as they don't actually know what it is they're doing and why (and I see a lot of posts on the KSP forums that are indicative of precisely that), and don't have the skills in their arsenal to solve these problems for themselves, but whatever.
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Re: Better Than Starting Manned (Flower's WIP KSP mod )

Post by TheAnarchitect »

Saraduk: Here's something I've come to believe about Design over the years, whether it be game design, or graphic design, or building design.

Most "designers" have no fucking clue what they're doing. They have an instinctual talent, but they really have no process, and no clue why what works works. Thus, most designers work primarily by throwing things at a wall and seeing what sticks. They get away with this primarily because the average customer has trouble telling the difference between "good design" and "stuff I like." You have producers who's quality is hit and miss serving consumers who can't tell good work from bad. Honestly, I went through a pretty dark period after I washed out of the architecture profession where I believed that ALL design was really accidental, and anyone who claimed to have a process was either lying or deluded. Thankfully I've seen some pretty extreme exceptions to that rule in the last few years (present company included), but they're still, as far as I can tell, Exceptions.

So don't be surprised when the people who created something awesome don't seem to "get" their own thing. Chances are, their brilliant work is accidental.

On the topic of modding: You're not discouraging me, FC. I'll learn to program if and when I need to. If this isn't the project that kicks me into learning, then something else will.
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Re: Better Than Starting Manned (Flower's WIP KSP mod )

Post by FlowerChild »

Ok, after putting some thought into a rather sticky design issue, I think I will be integrating a mod into the "required mods" list before completing this first pass.

The problem arises at tech level 6, which as I've mentioned I intend to be the Mun Landing tech level. The issue is that there's currently no in game differentiation between a command pod and a landing module.

So, what I'd like to do to resolve this is if possible integrate Deadly Reentry so that there's a clear distinction there and so that returning a Landing Can to Kerbin won't be a feasible option, while using a Landing Can to touchdown on the Mun will be a much more reasonable option due to the reduced weight.

Anyways, just a heads up there. I'm going to experiment with Deadly Reentry this evening to see if it does the things I want it to, or can be massaged to do so, so if anyone else feels inclined to do the same and let me know what they think, I'd be much obliged.

Also: if anyone knows of a mod that allows the transfer of crew through docking ports, as it's supposed to work, instead of needing to go EVA with them, let me know. Obviously, with me disabling RCS thrusters on EVA until later in the tech tree, I'd like players to be able to do this, especially with the whole command/landing module interaction.
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Re: Better Than Starting Manned (Flower's WIP KSP mod )

Post by Wookieguy »

I could only find this for transferring crew between parts. Less than ideal it may be, but it does have that functionality.
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