Ask Me Anything with Chris Adderley

Attention Kerbonauts!

ICYMI, a few weeks ago we sat down with Senior Mechanical Concept Designer Chris Adderley for an Ask Me Anything. Thank you all for your questions and for tuning in! A reminder that we are in Early Access and plans can change.

Check it out here on YouTube. Chris answered more of your questions below, read the full questions and answers here!

[h5]Alexoff[/h5]
What percentage of the parts in KSP2 were created by you personally?

Depends on how you measure it. Effective zero because I don't do the asset work, by one definition. In terms of maybe inception/conception, in the EA release I'd say I had a hand in about 10%.

What will be the largest part in KSP2?

The largest part I have in my list right now is in the 80m+ size category. It's a lot harder to measure colony parts versus vehicle parts though...

Do you participate in the creation of parts for the colonies?

I participate in the concepting and design phase, yes. It's where I'm focusing a lot of my 'thinking time' these days. Colony parts are both similar and different from vehicles - in what they look like, how they assemble, etc. As we get to those milestones, we refine our designs from player feedback.

How difficult is it to add a new part to KSP2? Is there a big difference? Is it harder than creating a new part for KSP1 as a modder?

Most things in KSP2 end up being more complex than in KSP1. As an example at the basic level, the PBR shading model that we use requires more texture maps than KSP1. That is mitigated by having access to internal tooling and a faster iteration look (click Play in Unity rather than load the game).

[h5]Stephensan[/h5]
Are there any more concepts for more air-breathing engines like the J-90 (smaller or larger)?

There's been team interest in larger air-breather engines, but as always, that's not so simple. Adding an air-breather of say, 2.5m size requires us to also look at the supporting parts in that size, like intakes and cockpits, so the player can have a good experience when using those engines. That balloons the required significantly. I would want to push out the different technologies rather than footprints first. Nuclear jets, propellers - all unlock interesting new player stores!

Is there gear that'll be angled from the fuselage not straight up and down, and finally more tires/wheels in the concept stage (or even remotely thought of)?

We definitely have people on the team who want that!

[h5]LunarMetis[/h5]
How will the sizes of different stars be scaled with respect to Kerbol? Will they be scaled at 1/3 of their real-life analogs like Kerbol and the Sun?

Specific scaling of the actual meshes is less important than defining their specific insolation numbers for input into solar panel math, but yes, they'll be Kerbol-relative.

How do you plan to implement proper motion of other star systems, and how do you expect that to add to the challenges of interstellar travel?

Hah, interstellar travel is going to be hard enough already. Proper motion is something we need to balance carefully there.

[h5]Pthigviri[/h5]
I'm sure you've been deep in colony part design. What are your thoughts on greenhouse and simple life support with snacks, for example? How do you see conveying that colonies are both real places where Kerbals live and 'working machines' like the way vessels are?

Honestly, I don't like basic life support (by basic I mean something like having Kerbals on a ship consume a resource). I've played all (I think all?) of the KSP1 mods for it, and I haven't found something that's interesting and holds my interest beyond frustration for more than a few hours - just not my cup of warm beverage.
More seriously though, systems like this need to have a bunch of considerations. They need really carefully crafted player stories that support different player archetypes, not just advanced players. They should also work on a carrot rather than a stick-based approach. KSP has a lot of sticks right now. Finally, they need scalable solutions that are plannable and toolable. That's a big thing where LS gets expensive in dev hours. We have some things in the works around colonies that ape some of the 'results' of life support, which I hope will get at the idea of colonies being a little more Kerbal-involved than just plunking Kerbals in a command part.

[h5]PDCWolf[/h5]
Has the concept of heating changed at any point based on feedback?

The short version is no, the long version is yes. A lot of interesting discussions sat around things that are further down the roadmap, and they provided us with a couple of additional things to consider. Interestingly, the player stories we have were well aligned with the comments that I read, but the way the player stories were addressed were not unanimously approved. That’s fine – part of the EA conversation – and in particular with a lot of discussion being on items later in the roadmap, this makes me confident in the iterative model.
We’ll get the basics of the system focusing on reentry stories out to everyone. We’ll evaluate how that works with the playerbase. As we move towards the next milestones, we can use the information encoded in the thread, which I’ve collected internally, to make sure we’re making choices (engineering or design-wise) in conjunction with the feedback from reentry to get good solutions. One thing that jumped out for me was that there’s a lot of talk about macro vs micro solutions. I’ll be the first to admit that the current solution is a macro solution. So future design work will probably focus on whether there’s more microscale interaction to look at.

If I know the peak or average specific heat flux a vessel is going to go through on its final orbit/landing spot, what spots me from just adding enough negative heat flux parts to counteract it?

Nothing. That’s what you should be doing. Of course, it’s not really that simple. If this is atmospheric heat from going fast, adding a big radiator is likely to just increase the amount of next flux, because it has a large surface area. Most heat mitigation tools need something else too – a radiator might need electricity, which means you need to supply that, which will enforce additional constraints.

Considering its possible uses on the automated logistics network, long missions, and just straight up anything that only requires time to pass, how do you balance not timewarping versus letting things happen in ultra-fast time?

These are the best questions because they’re the hard ones. Often we trend towards supporting a player path that doesn’t reward excessive timewarping, but doesn’t exclude it either. A good case study is resource extraction and deposit concentrations. There’s definitely fun in seeking out and finding the best deposit for mining. Obviously though timewarp makes that kinda moot in timing. You could just start mining a hypothetically low-grade deposit and warp for 50 days. That tells us that time and rate -based mechanics need to have more to work well. A specific example here is that a newly accessible resource should be constrained differently – challenging location, resource transport limitations, etc.

We try to move the real player decisions to things that are interesting with and without time as a mechanic. Mostly hypothetical examples, but here’s a few ways of thinking of these things on top of my head:

Put a locational constraint on something. If you need to do something in orbit over a specific part of a planet, make it take longer than the average orbital cycle. This might encourage a player to put a satellite in GEO orbit over that place. If you do the work to put it in GEO, you get the benefit of being able to timewarp.
Use binaries instead of gradients. Does ore concentration really benefit from a really detailed gradient from 0.0001% to 100%, or can you look at it as a yes/no? Trade that, see if you’re damaging player stories with that simplification.
Use supporting systems. Sure, you could mine that deposit at high timewarp. But the deposit is on a planet with a day length of 200 days, and you need power, and the area has no fissionables. How are you going to power it? If you solve this problem, it is satisfying and you get a cookie. You did the work, enjoy your timewarpable extraction!

These are really big problems we look at for all of the more complex systems because hey, an interstellar transfer could be 100 years. Players will timewarp that and that’s… the whole length of a KSP1 campaign. Fun with and without timewarping like this is essential.

[h5]Socraticat[/h5]
What are your favorite tips and tools for new modders?

My biggest tip is to do what you want to do and not focus on what others want. Lots of the most creative KSP1 mods didn’t hitch themselves to any one concept of the game, and that’s what made KSP1 modding so successful. You want RO? You’ve got RO. You want to launch kerbals in a cardboard box rocket? That’s there too. You want life support? Oh hey there’s about 5 different concepts out there to pick from. Also don't try to form a team day 1. Get some experience, release some stuff, and the team will come to you!
Regarding tools, Blender is an amazing piece of free software, and there are a ton of good coding tools out there for the software-minded as well. It has never been a better time to be an independent purveyor of these kind of things, you don’t need to suffer through e.g. gmax or the trial version of Milkshape3D anymore.

[h5]Royalswissarmyknife[/h5]
Is there any consideration of 1.875m parts?

Building out a whole family of 1.875m parts that includes the core stuff (engines and tanks) plus the necessary ancillaries is a lot of work and not something the team is committing to right now.

[h5]Strawberry[/h5]
While we do know it won't be added in the short term, the team has previously been wishy-washy if radiation/life support will make it into the game. Are these topics something that the team has decided won't be in the game until maybe after 1.0, or something the team has a firm answer on what they want to do with but does not wish to disclose it (though if you do wish to disclose please do), or something that the team is genuinely undecided on?

See answer to Pthigviri about LS!
Radiation is a bit more interesting to me because I have a fair bit of history in mods with it, and I’ve eagerly assimilated the early concept work the team has done for KSP2. There are two tradespaces in terms of vessel design, point sources, and ambient radiation that we at least nominally want to think about including.
Ambient radiation is basically a time trade. How long can you spend in a radioactive environment? You can throw things like radiation shielding, storm shelters, etc but ultimately it all comes down to time to Bad Things. It’s harder to help a player to plan. You have to give them tools to determine how much radiation there is around somewhere and how to figure out how long they can spend there, etc.
Point radiation is nuclear engines and reactors. This is harder to implement but is definitely relevant in terms of craft design, because it is a big part of why fictional interstellar ships look the way they do. Interestingly it is easier to model and communicate to the player because you know lots of the variables at vessel build time. One of the messy things here though is that as soon as you throw in radiation, you railroad players into building ships with nuclear engines in a very specific way. We have to craft a solution that hits a nice middle ground. See this comment.
I’m candidly going to say that we don’t have the ideal solution in the bag right now – but that’s what EA is all about. I’m sure I’ll write some discourse on radiation eventually for a dev blog and everyone can weigh in on why I’m wrong :P.

[h5]Pokaia[/h5]
Are there features you modded into KSP1 that you are bringing into KSP2? What is your favorite?

I wouldn’t want to port anything specific without a good justification, but I really want to bring in more planning tools. The only ones I built were around heat and power management, but yeah. Something like that. One of the cool things about this job is that I get to start again, so to speak, with the support of people who have been in the industry for a while. So if I want to bring in nuclear reactors, I can take my concepts from Near Future Electrical, talk to some Real Designers™ and get their opinions on what works and what didn’t work, and make something cleaner for KSP2.

[h5]stoup[/h5]
Are there any types of parts being added to KSP2 that as far as you know, weren't really available as mods in KSP1? Some unexpected bits and bobs, maybe?

The entire colony loop is more or less stuff that was never really available in KSP1 mods from a system perspective. Modding KSP1 was really wide though – hard for me to say.

[h5]Kalessin1[/h5]
Will all parts from your mods be implemented in KSP2, especially large solar panels, station parts, and MK4 spaceplane?

Hah, no not at all. I like to re-use concepts, but this is a great opportunity to start afresh and to fix some stupid things I did in development of those in my mods. Gotta somehow get more Thunderbirds in the game, though.

[h5]Cocoscacao[/h5]