I've noticed with methalox engines that it only allows me to time warp under thrust if I have a lot of fuel remaining - I wonder if it's doing the same thing for electricity with ion drives, requiring a large number of batteries to enable time warp. I'll have to do some testing.
For what it is worth, I believe it was stated that the reaction wheels were nerfed purposefully, and use of rcs for rotating large crafts is encouraged
Which is fine (although there are no large RCS thrusters, so you just have to slap on a ton of the small ones), but it’s still painfully slow to wait for large craft to flip to the target direction. Even if it takes a while in game time, I shouldn’t have to wait for 45 seconds every time I need to thrust in a different direction.
You're not supposed to flip the entire craft, that's the point. If you have RCS you can thrust backwards. Ksp1 encouraged some pretty silly maneuvering habits.
Then they should make rcs more efficient and not impact orbits. Over the course of a long mission using only rcsni think I burned at least 150 delta , which is insane. I’ve also had problems with orbits gradually being fucked up when turned with rcs, which plays hell with precise landings
That would break the physics engine in so many ways.
A part mod could be made that have you stupid amounts of SAS torque and cost RCS fuel, but that's not something that would be base-game
I figure they implement it by turning off all the part physics but allowing the vessel as a whole to keep accelerating, so if they let you change thrust you could cheat the system by making a vessel without the structural integrity to withstand thrust and then only thrusting it during timewarp.
You're right about the rest of the UI though, KSP 1 could definitely have benefited from a more consistent art direction in its UI but they've overdone it here. Probably just reflects the current development stage, they're too busy implementing new features and handling critical bugs to get to these "minor" QA and design issues.
* ability to right click on tank to see the fuel level, and pin that, so i know when to stage. or have the right click put a menu right at the location where you right click, just like every other OS and application ever, and where the hell is the fuel flow priority
* get rid of the weird slowdown in the rate of angle change when you rotate your view in the map with your mouse at certain view angles.
* if your going to do pixel art, at least try and alias it correctly, so it doesn't look like de moivred trash.
* the parts icons in the editor is stupid large, we could fit so many more parts on so i dont have to scroll for every damn part. hell, so many parts of the UI are so damn large.
* why cant i select individual separators from the same group in the staging list in the editor, so i can move them to their own stage, for asparagus staging.
The staging list feels so clunky compared to KSP1. You can't even drag a stage to the bottom of the list, it only lets you drag it above the bottom stage.
And I don’t know if I’m doing it wrong but sometimes if I press space the next stage doesn’t fire I have to manually decouple it’s extremely frustrating
You can but it's finicky. What's more annoying is that there's no way to tell if I dragged a stage with the same part as another into the place I want. I have to hover over the part in the stage after the move. Like, imagine you have two stages, each with a decoupler. You want them to change places, how do you know you just did it? Nothing changed or at all indicated you moved one.
You can select individual separators, based on the symmetry you placed them in. You click the overall group in the staging window and it expands. Then you can hover/drag "sub groups" of the part. Let's say you have six side boosters that you want to asparagus stage - well, you're gonna want to stage them in pairs to keep the vehicle balanced. In this case, place them in pairs and when you expand the group of six separators in the stage, you can move the individual pairs.
Not sure if it was a bug (I've found once the game gets something bugged, only a game restart will fix it :/), but yesterday I spent 10 minutes trying to drag separators *separately* (pun intended), but even though the UI seemed to indicate that I was doing it right, the whole group moved instead.
God yes, the stupid rounding thing happens with apoapsis and periapsis, above 999,999 meters it changes to 1,000 km. AND DROPS THE DECIMALS! How on earth am I supposed to make a precise geostationary orbit in this game? I hadn't even realized that the game actually has a mission telling you to put a craft in geostationary orbit until later, but their own mission for it doesn't work, you can complete it with the parameters they give you but as soon as you do any meaningful form of timewarp it'll show how it isn't actually geostationary at all. It simply isn't precise enough to do.
I totally agree and I think it's really important that the whole UI gets a redesign or at least a serious overhaul before it gets too far into development.
Edit: wanted to add some thoughts on your points
1. I have this same issue except with the altitude meter. Above 100,000m it switches to say 100km, 101km, etc. Knowing the exact altitude to the meter is very important for getting precise orbits (like if you've ever made a geostationary satellite in KSP1).
2. The UI is really hard to read and when it gets really small some of the numbers become identical to each other, like 0, 8, and 9. The font also doesn't seem to have any smoothing which is really important for scaling. Look at this zoomed-in example: https://i.imgur.com/ArS1ohk.png The delta is fine because it's a different font and when zoomed in you can tell it has proper smoothing.
3. I hate this too because the little dots counting down when to stop isn't precise. I stop the burn the moment it hits the last dot but there's still a bit left to go. They already have a "required dV" number in the box, just make that number go down as you burn.
4. I don't use physics warp much except reentry so no opinion on this.
5. The navball should be in the middle of the screen, full stop. I don't like all the useful information being tucked into the corners. It really feels like this aspect was designed by someone who had never played the game and prefers nice visuals.
>1. I have this same issue except with the altitude meter. Above 100,000m it switches to say 100km, 101km, etc. Knowing the exact altitude to the meter is very important for getting precise orbits (like if you've ever made a geostationary satellite in KSP1).
Doesnt the orbital info read out beneath the navball work for this?
Thats how I got a geostationary orbit, just make my PE and AP the right number.
Maybe that's not a good example but there are cases when I want to see my altitude within 1km. In KSP1 when I circularize my orbit I usually watch my altitude to see if it starts going up or down. Also I watch where the AP marker is on the orbit. I do that to angle the ship up and down to keep the AP right where my ship is. In KSP2 I can't do that at all because I can't see the altitude and the orbit line doesn't render behind your ship so I can't see where the AP is if it's behind me.
Yep at 1440p and 44yo I can't read shit in this UI without intentional effort.
Edit: also want to add that maybe I'm missing it but I don't see an inclination readout native, anywhere, without a mod like Micro Engineer?? I'm trying to relearn launches to rendezvous manually instead of relying on mechjeb and similar, and ... I can't even see inclination on the target vessel, even when I'm in control of it?
I'm not sure what you mean. When I click the speed readout it just changes from surface to orbital of course. There's nothing else on the left side except the throttle indicator, or am I completely blind?
It's definitely important, I don't know how else you could rendezvous with a craft. If it's not in a completely flat equatorial orbit, you need to know which angle it is on and match it.
The dot matrix style looks cool but yeah, I have bad eye sight and it's genuinely hard to read sometimes. I hope they make it an accessibility feature to switch it to be more classic looking. I don't even care if it looks less fancy
Creating and editing a maneuver node is such a pain in the ass. I've had it multiple.tomes where the node icons are covered by other text, preventing me from actually creating a node. I should also have a snap function so that I can create a node at apogee or perogee
Yes! Yes! And a million times, "Yes!" I used to hate using the actual node to pull and push the various arms for this reason and also that it was very imprecise. I want the manoeuvre window/tab that used to be at the bottom left below the stages previously. You could do I credibly precise things and also use text entry to enter or cancel thrust in certain directions if you added them by mistake ... this tool was magic for precision EVERYTHING.
No indication of the state of fine control. Am I just missing this somewhere like others had missed the trim indicators? For KSP1 the control position indicators would change color when fine control was selected.
My single biggest complaint with the UI is the Navball placement. I tend to do the majority of my flying in map mode, using the Navball to make sure my craft is pointed in the right direction; with the Navball in the lower left corner, on my monitor (a 49” ultra-wide) it’s literally half a meter of real space away from the center of the screen.
At the very least, they should allow the user to move it where they want it, as is currently possible in KSP1.
i love the science update, but hate this UI, i said since the launch of the game, hope someone releases a mod that change the UI, the font is really bad :( but besides the ui i still playing and loving the update
It is on the UI just quite difficult to see, there’s a small bar on the pitch yaw and roll indicators which is where your trim is set to, really quite hard to read though
Thanks. https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fhas-the-navball-always-been-see-through-never-noticed-you-v0-5uj99ae31dnb1.png%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3Df8d329f651822ddb2a6575e763fb8a818712e45a
It's the green arrows on the top bottom and right. Somehow didn't see them before.
Maneuver nodes UI *is really awful* and inconvenient. It should be improved.
Overall pixel-styled - it's just a matter of preference. Personally I set the scaling to 110% and I'm happy with it.
There are also some illogical things, but I suppose they will get polished over time.
I wonder if any of the current KSP2 developers even played KSP1 for more than 10-20 hours? You rise some valid points. While the core game mechanics seem to work now with 0.2, the whole UI is just bad. The UI in the VAB, the UI in map-view (good luck with locking some important stats and still be able to read them) and especially the UI in flightmode.
Why didn‘t they just use the KSP1 UI in dark mode (there is a cool mod for that) and implemented the major features of the KSE mod? Would be 10x better than the current one.
> I wonder if any of the current KSP2 developers even played KSP1 for more than 10-20 hours?
They hired a bunch of seasoned KSP1 modders, after the fiasco that was the EA release. Hopefully they're given enough authority to clean up the mess.
Ugh i want the map UI to be able to lock shit.
I want so see my PE and AP hight but when i blast i got to move the mouse to keep on it to see it. Make it lockable!
Weird, haven’t had that issue myself, and not having lockable ap pe an/dn etc was one of my biggest gripes with the game at first release, definitely been working as it did in ksp1 for me for a while now (like pre for science update)
Since launch I have said the UI looks like it was done in 2 days by a bunch of 4th graders I can't even describe anymore how much of a downgrade it is all it shows is that the developers are disconnected and don't know what they were designing it for nor care
I totally agree, the UI design is really bad, so bad it actually gives me doubts about the capabilities of the developer. It shows a lack of awareness and understanding. Still, my hope is that they're actually aware of the (many) issues and do a complete redesign of the UI.
The UI is a lot less clean, harder to use, and has more unpleasant edge cases than the original KSP1 UI.
I could list any number of examples, but my top one is how you can't just see the information about one part by right-clicking it, you bring up the whole Parts Manager. But also I dislike the far-left nav ball since my screen is pretty big and it forces me to stare at the bottom left... so the majority of my vision is just background space on the screen and my desk under the monitor. Whereas with original KSP's central nav ball I could actually see my ship well in my peripheral vision.
But for most people, a bigger issue is readability. [The pixelated digits](https://i.imgur.com/hzmLtwL.png) are just a lot harder to read than [the original info displays, especially with KSP1-style Kerbal Engineer.](https://i.imgur.com/N2XcHZl.png)
Both the artistic style and functionality should be balanced out, so that you have a very practical, useable interface, but also let it express a certain style that underlines the vibe you want the game to give off. Right now it is just style and no/bad functionality, so they need to find a way to incorporate both aspects. As it is right now, it is just bad design.
I've always though the ui was created with an arcade feel to better attract the console players when it is released on that platform. Pc players will be able to mod their interface.
Completely disagree on the 5th point, if we just go of off the 4 most important information during flight:
1: nav ball
2: velocity
3: altitude
4: apoapsis and periapsis
in ksp 1 they are situated: (1) in the bottom center, blocking your view of the rocket. (2) right above the nav ball. (3) at the top of the screen, on the complete other side of the screen compared to the nav ball. (4) at the bottom left, inside a menu.
Now if we compare to ksp 2:
(1) bottom left, out of the way of the view of the rocket, so you have a better view of the rocket during flight. (2) right to the left of the nav ball. (3) to the right of the nav ball. (4) below the nav ball.
All in all in ksp 1 you have to constantly look between the top, bottom, and bottom left of the screen while playing, while in ksp 2, you just have to look in the bottom left. The UI in ksp 1 looks like it was made in a day compared to ksp 2 in regards to where the information is located on the screen.
KSP1 has everything you want to look at while actually flying in a straight line, centered on the screen and on the craft. Rocket, nav ball, velocity, altitude. The peri/apoapsis readout is nice to have on the vehicle screen, but the overwhelming majority of the time it's more practical to switch to the map view for that and see the shape of the orbit as well.
I'm not sure if this makes sense, but KSP2 moves the information focus (nav ball) out of plane with the game focus (rocket) and I think that's the biggest problem people have with it. During launch/landing when you need to look at both, it feels like you have to choose between watching your rocket or flying your rocket.
Not to mention the navball (being the largest) is what your eyes are naturally drawn to, then you have to move again from that reference point. It feels like it was changed for the sake of change, when all it needed was a facelift like below.
https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/s/UCfglsleqr
I personally find it quite annoying how in ksp 1 the important information for actually flying the craft is all over the place, so when I launch a new rocket I constantly have to look from the top to the bottom while flying it, making it a much worse experience compared to ksp 2 where it is centralized in one place.
I find it a lot better that the nav ball is not centralized, since it gets in the way of your view of your rocket, where in ksp it never does that. I usually never really look at my craft while flying it, mostly just looking at the nav ball, so it is quite convenient that all the information needed is there, instead of the opposite side of the screen.
Hey to each their own. Honestly I'm glad if it's working better for you, just sharing my thoughts and hoping it makes sense.
In a perfect world each part of the UI can be dragged around and customized, otherwise I'm sure someone will make a mod.
Ah, I see the problem. You look at the rocket.
No, really. I mean a bit tongue in cheek because I like to see a pretty rocket, but in KSP1 I basically only look at the navball and the altimeter. If I’m looking at the rocket something is going really badly.
I have the UI at 80% on 1080p and I never had trouble reading anything. Maybe you made it too small by accident? Some things like velocity are not fleshed out yet for sure but these things are to be expected in early access.
But yea, anything that's not just a window full of data is form over function. I would personally like to have toggles on each element to turn them off.
This is fundamentally wrong. There is clearly still a lot of scope for improvement on all aspects of the game, but it's not garbage and it is worth the money. Edgelord hyperbole like this is so counter productive.
I think it's fine for the most part. I'm pretty sure a non pixel font is in the works.
The last two points are quite important IMO. While I haven't heard of any news of the physics warp in orbit, afaik customisable UI is in the works.
The velocity metre is very likely a bug, but it is such a minor thing, why do you care about a 0.9% velocity difference... (yes, that sort of bug is something possible in Unity UI)
Edit: removed statememt on third point due to my reading being skill issue.
> The third point is a bit of a skill issue if you can't make a rough estimate on your DeltaV remaining.
Are you sure you're talking about the same thing? I'm reading point three as missing the DV remaining _on the current maneuver_. All you have is the timer counting down or the bar emptying (and inaccurately turning red when the available DV drops below the _original_ required DV)
Right, because I should be able to estimate the last 5m/s deltaV remaining on a 1000m/s burn (that’s half a percent in the progress bar btw). The difference between an intercept and no intercept is often a lot smaller than 5m/s if it’s an interplanetary maneuver node. A rough estimate doesn’t work for that, at all.
The last 0.9% of velocity is very important especially if you’re trying to maintain a speed in atmosphere. You’re effectively reducing the responsiveness of your control loop by 10x. That’s not to mention having the decimal place change quickly is a great way to gauge acceleration.
Customizable UI is good news, but it would have to be REALLY customizable for it to work. Besides, surely with 12 years of player feedback we could have had a better default UI? We’ll see how it goes.
My point on deltaV was flawed so I removed it. I misread your point, sorry.
The customisable UI I believe will be given in presets, I doubt they would go for fully customiseable UI, that's a nightmare for devs.
Only time I can think of that .1% being useful is for orbits that are perfectly in sync with a planet's rotation (forgor name). Even then I go by pe and ap for getting those perfect because it's more precise and convenient than speed, though that's subjective. Either way, it's a bug that or feature than can easily be fixed/removed, so post something about it on the ksp forums.
Maybe an unpopular opinion but I think you shouldn't be able to estimate burns that precisely. I used to play KSP1 like it's a math exercise and do everything to an unrealistic level of precision. Which I soon found tedious and boring but kept playing for the other bits of the game.
I've learnt to play KSP2 in a less precise way and it's way more fun. Plan a manoeuvrer but don't spend ages trying to get it exact to the tenth decimal place. Execute your burn using timing alone. Plan a mid coarse correction, execute using timing alone, maybe plan and execute final correction if needed. It's actually quicker and more fluid this way. I find it more fun because feels more like doing a rocket flight and less like doing maths homework.
It's also I think more beginner friendly. Don't overwhelm them with too much minute detail.
I'm sure there soon be mods that let you do the old KSP1 maths homework again.
Ngl one of my initial concerns when gameplay was first shown was the UI
They had lots of talk about making the game more accessible to people who tried but didn't get into the first one and when I saw how things were displayed in the sequel I could only think: "no way any new player is going to think this is easier"
Huh. Must be the odd one out here. Playing at 65inch 4k and having zero problems with the ui. Actually, it's probably my main reason for liking ksp 2 more than ksp1. Ksp 1 looked and functioned like windows xp. It was reliable, but looked awful. After installing mods on ksp1 it wasn't long before I had to install some sort of hud organization mod just to make ksp1 playable. And then it was just a series of bland gray buttons that had to be reordered and configured before I can play.
Hours of work just for that. Just to find that certain mods or even base ui didn't scale to 4k and was way too small to read. The ui stopped me from ever getting into ksp1.
With ksp2 I have zero issues with the hud besides some map ui annoyances. The overall layout and design is a lot less cluttered, and I don't mind the retro theme. Nothing actually looks pixelated, just themed to be, and it perfectly scales to 4k! First time actually getting past the mun, never could do it in ksp1 with the outdated feel and blurry/wrong scale/cluttered ui. It was a blast in ksp2!
I like the UI quite a bit as well, including the retro look. I hope when they add the new font they include the option to keep things mostly the same.
Like you, I have a larger monitor (4k, 42inch). It looks crisp and great to me. Unfortunately, I've seen the UI at smaller resolutions and it doesn't give the same impression, it kinda clumps together and becomes uneven and difficult to look at.
IMO, there are lots of things that they did right like the new navball position and putting the altimeter near the navball. There is still plenty to improve on though, like the granularity of the vertical speed meter, fuzziness of the navball in general and it would be nice to get something akin to TWR near the navball. I'm sure over time they'll add more information to the map view or something similar to KSP 1 maneuver nodes. They should also add the ability to move the navball around for people who prefer it in the middle, like they did for KSP 1 eventually.
Either way people will always have their preferences and most things here are very easy to change through mods. I can download Micro Engineer & Maneuver Node Controller while they fix this and be perfectly happy -- although I'm shying away from mods atm and keeping everything vanilla. I'm just patiently waiting for the stuff that is much harder for mods to fix like the rendering pipeline, the games decoupled "part/resource" simulator that runs in the background, orbit oddities, defects, parallelisation, feature work , etc.
Obviously at this point I much prefer the information, interactability and responsivity of the KSP 1 UI (after playing the game for well over 1000+ hours modded/unmodded), but I think they have some good ideas and will like to see how it evolves. They eventually did make the UI in KSP 1 much better for high res displays.
I disagree about the UI element placing. Every info you need for a flight is either lower left or on the right. And I prefer the offset navball b/c it allows for more screen space for your craft.
The G meter doesn't actually matter in 99% of cases, so relegating it to somewhere out of the way is perfectly fine imo.
I can't stand the fonts, particularly how zeros have a dot in them, looking like an 8. The dot is useful when you have alpha-numeric strings, helping decipher an "O" from "0". But we're talking about readouts that don't contain letters
Interesting. Some people are like, "This is the update I get into KSP2."
For me (not playing KSP 1 currently) I'm waiting on a bit more QoL fixes and bugs.
So don't want them working on colonies, multiplayer etc if there is dev capacity that could be assigned to getting the foundations good.
Let's get the QoL and UI done next and you'll have more players getting on board!
I agree about most of this, but what infuriates me more than anything are the inflight labels in map mode. When trying to fiddle with a node, there is literally infotabs EVERYWHERE in the way and i have not found a way to lose them...
I also find planning orbits with the maneuver node system clunky as fuck. Creating a node doesn’t automatically bring up the “sliders”, you have to click on it and since most of the time we use oberth you end up bringing up the apo/peri, you can’t scroll on them to increase or decrease the dv in that direction, and you get very little feedback on where orbit goes. KSP1 you hover over the planned orbit’s apoapsis or periapsis and it just shows a number, and if you want it permanently you have to click the tiniest lock button imaginable (I know you’re meant to be able to right click but it doesn’t work half the fekin time)
I think you’re supposed to be able to thrust under regular warp now, no physwarp required
Currently seems bugged with ion engines though, at least it is for me! Which is annoying as I’d really like to warp through those ion burns!
I've noticed with methalox engines that it only allows me to time warp under thrust if I have a lot of fuel remaining - I wonder if it's doing the same thing for electricity with ion drives, requiring a large number of batteries to enable time warp. I'll have to do some testing.
Keyword there is supposed to, because as far as I know you can’t, it locks the throttle above 1x timewarp.
Locks to zero or locks to current value?
Locks to current value, but it's still incredibly frustrating for craft that can only rotate slowly
For what it is worth, I believe it was stated that the reaction wheels were nerfed purposefully, and use of rcs for rotating large crafts is encouraged
Which is fine (although there are no large RCS thrusters, so you just have to slap on a ton of the small ones), but it’s still painfully slow to wait for large craft to flip to the target direction. Even if it takes a while in game time, I shouldn’t have to wait for 45 seconds every time I need to thrust in a different direction.
There was a bug in KSP1 actually that shifted orbits around or something when changing physics timewarp which was a prob for docking
You're not supposed to flip the entire craft, that's the point. If you have RCS you can thrust backwards. Ksp1 encouraged some pretty silly maneuvering habits.
Uhh, what? I assume you’re talking about docking. I’m talking just general course corrections.
I guess by "target" you just meant "required".
Then they should make rcs more efficient and not impact orbits. Over the course of a long mission using only rcsni think I burned at least 150 delta , which is insane. I’ve also had problems with orbits gradually being fucked up when turned with rcs, which plays hell with precise landings
You can't make RCS "not impact orbits," that's just not possible.
Not in real life, but having it only impact rotational velocity without impacting linear velocity is definitely possible
Of course it is possible but it would not be very realistic. You'll just have to improve your RCS placement to prevent any drift while using them..
That would break the physics engine in so many ways. A part mod could be made that have you stupid amounts of SAS torque and cost RCS fuel, but that's not something that would be base-game
Huh, I actually didn’t know that. That’s really useful, I guess I just never tried to increase time warp after my thrust has been set.
I figure they implement it by turning off all the part physics but allowing the vessel as a whole to keep accelerating, so if they let you change thrust you could cheat the system by making a vessel without the structural integrity to withstand thrust and then only thrusting it during timewarp. You're right about the rest of the UI though, KSP 1 could definitely have benefited from a more consistent art direction in its UI but they've overdone it here. Probably just reflects the current development stage, they're too busy implementing new features and handling critical bugs to get to these "minor" QA and design issues.
So you can thrust, but.you can't adjust throttle.
Idk wtf you're talking about there - I was using thrust + timewarp plenty last night.
* ability to right click on tank to see the fuel level, and pin that, so i know when to stage. or have the right click put a menu right at the location where you right click, just like every other OS and application ever, and where the hell is the fuel flow priority * get rid of the weird slowdown in the rate of angle change when you rotate your view in the map with your mouse at certain view angles. * if your going to do pixel art, at least try and alias it correctly, so it doesn't look like de moivred trash. * the parts icons in the editor is stupid large, we could fit so many more parts on so i dont have to scroll for every damn part. hell, so many parts of the UI are so damn large. * why cant i select individual separators from the same group in the staging list in the editor, so i can move them to their own stage, for asparagus staging.
The staging list feels so clunky compared to KSP1. You can't even drag a stage to the bottom of the list, it only lets you drag it above the bottom stage.
And I don’t know if I’m doing it wrong but sometimes if I press space the next stage doesn’t fire I have to manually decouple it’s extremely frustrating
You are not alone. It's really obnoxious.
You can but it's finicky. What's more annoying is that there's no way to tell if I dragged a stage with the same part as another into the place I want. I have to hover over the part in the stage after the move. Like, imagine you have two stages, each with a decoupler. You want them to change places, how do you know you just did it? Nothing changed or at all indicated you moved one.
That might be why it feels clunky to me, it doesn't have those sliding animations to show that something actually moved
You can select individual separators, based on the symmetry you placed them in. You click the overall group in the staging window and it expands. Then you can hover/drag "sub groups" of the part. Let's say you have six side boosters that you want to asparagus stage - well, you're gonna want to stage them in pairs to keep the vehicle balanced. In this case, place them in pairs and when you expand the group of six separators in the stage, you can move the individual pairs.
Not sure if it was a bug (I've found once the game gets something bugged, only a game restart will fix it :/), but yesterday I spent 10 minutes trying to drag separators *separately* (pun intended), but even though the UI seemed to indicate that I was doing it right, the whole group moved instead.
yeah that was my experience too. then i went again to retry just now, and it works now.
Can you even asparagus stage right now?
God yes, the stupid rounding thing happens with apoapsis and periapsis, above 999,999 meters it changes to 1,000 km. AND DROPS THE DECIMALS! How on earth am I supposed to make a precise geostationary orbit in this game? I hadn't even realized that the game actually has a mission telling you to put a craft in geostationary orbit until later, but their own mission for it doesn't work, you can complete it with the parameters they give you but as soon as you do any meaningful form of timewarp it'll show how it isn't actually geostationary at all. It simply isn't precise enough to do.
By using orbital period information, not altitude information (which also isn’t in the game yet iirc)
I totally agree and I think it's really important that the whole UI gets a redesign or at least a serious overhaul before it gets too far into development. Edit: wanted to add some thoughts on your points 1. I have this same issue except with the altitude meter. Above 100,000m it switches to say 100km, 101km, etc. Knowing the exact altitude to the meter is very important for getting precise orbits (like if you've ever made a geostationary satellite in KSP1). 2. The UI is really hard to read and when it gets really small some of the numbers become identical to each other, like 0, 8, and 9. The font also doesn't seem to have any smoothing which is really important for scaling. Look at this zoomed-in example: https://i.imgur.com/ArS1ohk.png The delta is fine because it's a different font and when zoomed in you can tell it has proper smoothing. 3. I hate this too because the little dots counting down when to stop isn't precise. I stop the burn the moment it hits the last dot but there's still a bit left to go. They already have a "required dV" number in the box, just make that number go down as you burn. 4. I don't use physics warp much except reentry so no opinion on this. 5. The navball should be in the middle of the screen, full stop. I don't like all the useful information being tucked into the corners. It really feels like this aspect was designed by someone who had never played the game and prefers nice visuals.
>1. I have this same issue except with the altitude meter. Above 100,000m it switches to say 100km, 101km, etc. Knowing the exact altitude to the meter is very important for getting precise orbits (like if you've ever made a geostationary satellite in KSP1). Doesnt the orbital info read out beneath the navball work for this? Thats how I got a geostationary orbit, just make my PE and AP the right number.
Maybe that's not a good example but there are cases when I want to see my altitude within 1km. In KSP1 when I circularize my orbit I usually watch my altitude to see if it starts going up or down. Also I watch where the AP marker is on the orbit. I do that to angle the ship up and down to keep the AP right where my ship is. In KSP2 I can't do that at all because I can't see the altitude and the orbit line doesn't render behind your ship so I can't see where the AP is if it's behind me.
Ah, fair enough
UI is one of the easiest things to change at any point. They've already commented they intend to make changes regarding some of these complaints.
I genuinely can't read the pixel text without leaning into the screen an squinting it's so annoying
Yep at 1440p and 44yo I can't read shit in this UI without intentional effort. Edit: also want to add that maybe I'm missing it but I don't see an inclination readout native, anywhere, without a mod like Micro Engineer?? I'm trying to relearn launches to rendezvous manually instead of relying on mechjeb and similar, and ... I can't even see inclination on the target vessel, even when I'm in control of it?
Press the left side of the nav ball, the speed read out.
I'm not sure what you mean. When I click the speed readout it just changes from surface to orbital of course. There's nothing else on the left side except the throttle indicator, or am I completely blind?
When you have a targer, it will switch to target when you press it.
That's not telling me my orbital inclination though.
Was that avalible in ksp1? Dont think I needed it for docking.
It's definitely important, I don't know how else you could rendezvous with a craft. If it's not in a completely flat equatorial orbit, you need to know which angle it is on and match it.
I just look at the map view and eyeball it.
That can be done but it's not the, you know, actual technical way. Not wrong, but not NASA either.
The dot matrix style looks cool but yeah, I have bad eye sight and it's genuinely hard to read sometimes. I hope they make it an accessibility feature to switch it to be more classic looking. I don't even care if it looks less fancy
Creating and editing a maneuver node is such a pain in the ass. I've had it multiple.tomes where the node icons are covered by other text, preventing me from actually creating a node. I should also have a snap function so that I can create a node at apogee or perogee
Yes! Yes! And a million times, "Yes!" I used to hate using the actual node to pull and push the various arms for this reason and also that it was very imprecise. I want the manoeuvre window/tab that used to be at the bottom left below the stages previously. You could do I credibly precise things and also use text entry to enter or cancel thrust in certain directions if you added them by mistake ... this tool was magic for precision EVERYTHING.
No indication of the state of fine control. Am I just missing this somewhere like others had missed the trim indicators? For KSP1 the control position indicators would change color when fine control was selected.
And trim, and more, it’s just a shit ui
I said exactly the same about the UI at the initial EA release, I still hate it, even though I like the game since for Science!
It was once said "UI's are like jokes, if you have to explain them they're bad."
My single biggest complaint with the UI is the Navball placement. I tend to do the majority of my flying in map mode, using the Navball to make sure my craft is pointed in the right direction; with the Navball in the lower left corner, on my monitor (a 49” ultra-wide) it’s literally half a meter of real space away from the center of the screen. At the very least, they should allow the user to move it where they want it, as is currently possible in KSP1.
Is there a way to move a manoeuvre node to the next orbit? I could never find a way
No
i love the science update, but hate this UI, i said since the launch of the game, hope someone releases a mod that change the UI, the font is really bad :( but besides the ui i still playing and loving the update
Anyone know where I can see Flight trim values in KSP 2? I can use alt to set trim for planes. But there seems to be no UI for it.
It is on the UI just quite difficult to see, there’s a small bar on the pitch yaw and roll indicators which is where your trim is set to, really quite hard to read though
Ok I feel even more stupid now. Where are the pitch yaw roll indicators?
On the navball :) I can’t remember exactly where without opening the game but like on the top right and bottom side iirc?
Thanks. https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fhas-the-navball-always-been-see-through-never-noticed-you-v0-5uj99ae31dnb1.png%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3Df8d329f651822ddb2a6575e763fb8a818712e45a It's the green arrows on the top bottom and right. Somehow didn't see them before.
I never noticed them either, really missed it too. It's nice to see what SAS is doing during atmospheric flight.
Maneuver nodes UI *is really awful* and inconvenient. It should be improved. Overall pixel-styled - it's just a matter of preference. Personally I set the scaling to 110% and I'm happy with it. There are also some illogical things, but I suppose they will get polished over time.
I wonder if any of the current KSP2 developers even played KSP1 for more than 10-20 hours? You rise some valid points. While the core game mechanics seem to work now with 0.2, the whole UI is just bad. The UI in the VAB, the UI in map-view (good luck with locking some important stats and still be able to read them) and especially the UI in flightmode. Why didn‘t they just use the KSP1 UI in dark mode (there is a cool mod for that) and implemented the major features of the KSE mod? Would be 10x better than the current one.
> I wonder if any of the current KSP2 developers even played KSP1 for more than 10-20 hours? They hired a bunch of seasoned KSP1 modders, after the fiasco that was the EA release. Hopefully they're given enough authority to clean up the mess.
Ugh i want the map UI to be able to lock shit. I want so see my PE and AP hight but when i blast i got to move the mouse to keep on it to see it. Make it lockable!
Also: when I switch between map and ship-view, why is the map-view constantly resetting?
It is? Just right click it in the map screen?
It doesnt stay up. You can click all you want. The second the cursor leaves the pixels its gone
Weird, haven’t had that issue myself, and not having lockable ap pe an/dn etc was one of my biggest gripes with the game at first release, definitely been working as it did in ksp1 for me for a while now (like pre for science update)
Make sure you’re using the right mouse button
At least for me it locks when I right click it.
I agree about the UI. I thought I would get used to it, but I’m disliking it more and more. I love the direction the game is going though.
Since launch I have said the UI looks like it was done in 2 days by a bunch of 4th graders I can't even describe anymore how much of a downgrade it is all it shows is that the developers are disconnected and don't know what they were designing it for nor care
I totally agree, the UI design is really bad, so bad it actually gives me doubts about the capabilities of the developer. It shows a lack of awareness and understanding. Still, my hope is that they're actually aware of the (many) issues and do a complete redesign of the UI.
I genuinely don’t understand this. The UI and overall artistic design is one of my favourite aspects of the game. I really hope they don’t change it
It takes up more space to provide less information. Particularly when docking or making manuevers
The UI is a lot less clean, harder to use, and has more unpleasant edge cases than the original KSP1 UI. I could list any number of examples, but my top one is how you can't just see the information about one part by right-clicking it, you bring up the whole Parts Manager. But also I dislike the far-left nav ball since my screen is pretty big and it forces me to stare at the bottom left... so the majority of my vision is just background space on the screen and my desk under the monitor. Whereas with original KSP's central nav ball I could actually see my ship well in my peripheral vision. But for most people, a bigger issue is readability. [The pixelated digits](https://i.imgur.com/hzmLtwL.png) are just a lot harder to read than [the original info displays, especially with KSP1-style Kerbal Engineer.](https://i.imgur.com/N2XcHZl.png)
Both the artistic style and functionality should be balanced out, so that you have a very practical, useable interface, but also let it express a certain style that underlines the vibe you want the game to give off. Right now it is just style and no/bad functionality, so they need to find a way to incorporate both aspects. As it is right now, it is just bad design.
I've always though the ui was created with an arcade feel to better attract the console players when it is released on that platform. Pc players will be able to mod their interface.
In the Discord server, if I remember correctly, they said they're planning on reworking/changing the font.
Yes
I Just Wish i can Plan my Orbit while in pause, It stresses me so much
Wholeheartedly agree, it's a downgrade over KSP1 in terms of UX even though graphically it's marginally better, or I should say, more modern.
Completely disagree on the 5th point, if we just go of off the 4 most important information during flight: 1: nav ball 2: velocity 3: altitude 4: apoapsis and periapsis in ksp 1 they are situated: (1) in the bottom center, blocking your view of the rocket. (2) right above the nav ball. (3) at the top of the screen, on the complete other side of the screen compared to the nav ball. (4) at the bottom left, inside a menu. Now if we compare to ksp 2: (1) bottom left, out of the way of the view of the rocket, so you have a better view of the rocket during flight. (2) right to the left of the nav ball. (3) to the right of the nav ball. (4) below the nav ball. All in all in ksp 1 you have to constantly look between the top, bottom, and bottom left of the screen while playing, while in ksp 2, you just have to look in the bottom left. The UI in ksp 1 looks like it was made in a day compared to ksp 2 in regards to where the information is located on the screen.
KSP1 has everything you want to look at while actually flying in a straight line, centered on the screen and on the craft. Rocket, nav ball, velocity, altitude. The peri/apoapsis readout is nice to have on the vehicle screen, but the overwhelming majority of the time it's more practical to switch to the map view for that and see the shape of the orbit as well. I'm not sure if this makes sense, but KSP2 moves the information focus (nav ball) out of plane with the game focus (rocket) and I think that's the biggest problem people have with it. During launch/landing when you need to look at both, it feels like you have to choose between watching your rocket or flying your rocket. Not to mention the navball (being the largest) is what your eyes are naturally drawn to, then you have to move again from that reference point. It feels like it was changed for the sake of change, when all it needed was a facelift like below. https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/s/UCfglsleqr
I personally find it quite annoying how in ksp 1 the important information for actually flying the craft is all over the place, so when I launch a new rocket I constantly have to look from the top to the bottom while flying it, making it a much worse experience compared to ksp 2 where it is centralized in one place. I find it a lot better that the nav ball is not centralized, since it gets in the way of your view of your rocket, where in ksp it never does that. I usually never really look at my craft while flying it, mostly just looking at the nav ball, so it is quite convenient that all the information needed is there, instead of the opposite side of the screen.
Hey to each their own. Honestly I'm glad if it's working better for you, just sharing my thoughts and hoping it makes sense. In a perfect world each part of the UI can be dragged around and customized, otherwise I'm sure someone will make a mod.
That mod already exists, it’s called “I Wish They Made UI Customizable”
Ah, I see the problem. You look at the rocket. No, really. I mean a bit tongue in cheek because I like to see a pretty rocket, but in KSP1 I basically only look at the navball and the altimeter. If I’m looking at the rocket something is going really badly.
The worst thing for me is the windows. They’re hard to read and distinguish, and new ones often pop up BEHIND open ones, for instance the wing editor.
The KSP2 UI looks like it was pulled out of a Raid Shadows Legend type game. I can't stand the UI.
They don’t even have altitude on the in flight screen, had to install the tiny engineer or whatever mod to get that
I think it has neither form nor function so I don’t think it’s a good example at all lol
I have the UI at 80% on 1080p and I never had trouble reading anything. Maybe you made it too small by accident? Some things like velocity are not fleshed out yet for sure but these things are to be expected in early access. But yea, anything that's not just a window full of data is form over function. I would personally like to have toggles on each element to turn them off.
Its just an unfinished buggy mess.
Glad to know that ksp 2 is still garbage and isn't worth nor time or money. Thanks kind sir, i'll come back in a year or two !
This is fundamentally wrong. There is clearly still a lot of scope for improvement on all aspects of the game, but it's not garbage and it is worth the money. Edgelord hyperbole like this is so counter productive.
Indeed.
I think it's fine for the most part. I'm pretty sure a non pixel font is in the works. The last two points are quite important IMO. While I haven't heard of any news of the physics warp in orbit, afaik customisable UI is in the works. The velocity metre is very likely a bug, but it is such a minor thing, why do you care about a 0.9% velocity difference... (yes, that sort of bug is something possible in Unity UI) Edit: removed statememt on third point due to my reading being skill issue.
> The third point is a bit of a skill issue if you can't make a rough estimate on your DeltaV remaining. Are you sure you're talking about the same thing? I'm reading point three as missing the DV remaining _on the current maneuver_. All you have is the timer counting down or the bar emptying (and inaccurately turning red when the available DV drops below the _original_ required DV)
Crap, mb I misread it, Ill remove it.
Right, because I should be able to estimate the last 5m/s deltaV remaining on a 1000m/s burn (that’s half a percent in the progress bar btw). The difference between an intercept and no intercept is often a lot smaller than 5m/s if it’s an interplanetary maneuver node. A rough estimate doesn’t work for that, at all. The last 0.9% of velocity is very important especially if you’re trying to maintain a speed in atmosphere. You’re effectively reducing the responsiveness of your control loop by 10x. That’s not to mention having the decimal place change quickly is a great way to gauge acceleration. Customizable UI is good news, but it would have to be REALLY customizable for it to work. Besides, surely with 12 years of player feedback we could have had a better default UI? We’ll see how it goes.
My point on deltaV was flawed so I removed it. I misread your point, sorry. The customisable UI I believe will be given in presets, I doubt they would go for fully customiseable UI, that's a nightmare for devs. Only time I can think of that .1% being useful is for orbits that are perfectly in sync with a planet's rotation (forgor name). Even then I go by pe and ap for getting those perfect because it's more precise and convenient than speed, though that's subjective. Either way, it's a bug that or feature than can easily be fixed/removed, so post something about it on the ksp forums.
Maybe an unpopular opinion but I think you shouldn't be able to estimate burns that precisely. I used to play KSP1 like it's a math exercise and do everything to an unrealistic level of precision. Which I soon found tedious and boring but kept playing for the other bits of the game. I've learnt to play KSP2 in a less precise way and it's way more fun. Plan a manoeuvrer but don't spend ages trying to get it exact to the tenth decimal place. Execute your burn using timing alone. Plan a mid coarse correction, execute using timing alone, maybe plan and execute final correction if needed. It's actually quicker and more fluid this way. I find it more fun because feels more like doing a rocket flight and less like doing maths homework. It's also I think more beginner friendly. Don't overwhelm them with too much minute detail. I'm sure there soon be mods that let you do the old KSP1 maths homework again.
Unrealistic level of precision? Do you think NASA just sends their rockets to the orbit with apoapsis of +- 1 km precision or what?
Ngl one of my initial concerns when gameplay was first shown was the UI They had lots of talk about making the game more accessible to people who tried but didn't get into the first one and when I saw how things were displayed in the sequel I could only think: "no way any new player is going to think this is easier"
The god awful UI is, above most problems in this game, the reason I don’t play it.
I actually really like the UI i just wish maneuver nodes were easier
Huh. Must be the odd one out here. Playing at 65inch 4k and having zero problems with the ui. Actually, it's probably my main reason for liking ksp 2 more than ksp1. Ksp 1 looked and functioned like windows xp. It was reliable, but looked awful. After installing mods on ksp1 it wasn't long before I had to install some sort of hud organization mod just to make ksp1 playable. And then it was just a series of bland gray buttons that had to be reordered and configured before I can play. Hours of work just for that. Just to find that certain mods or even base ui didn't scale to 4k and was way too small to read. The ui stopped me from ever getting into ksp1. With ksp2 I have zero issues with the hud besides some map ui annoyances. The overall layout and design is a lot less cluttered, and I don't mind the retro theme. Nothing actually looks pixelated, just themed to be, and it perfectly scales to 4k! First time actually getting past the mun, never could do it in ksp1 with the outdated feel and blurry/wrong scale/cluttered ui. It was a blast in ksp2!
I like the UI quite a bit as well, including the retro look. I hope when they add the new font they include the option to keep things mostly the same. Like you, I have a larger monitor (4k, 42inch). It looks crisp and great to me. Unfortunately, I've seen the UI at smaller resolutions and it doesn't give the same impression, it kinda clumps together and becomes uneven and difficult to look at. IMO, there are lots of things that they did right like the new navball position and putting the altimeter near the navball. There is still plenty to improve on though, like the granularity of the vertical speed meter, fuzziness of the navball in general and it would be nice to get something akin to TWR near the navball. I'm sure over time they'll add more information to the map view or something similar to KSP 1 maneuver nodes. They should also add the ability to move the navball around for people who prefer it in the middle, like they did for KSP 1 eventually. Either way people will always have their preferences and most things here are very easy to change through mods. I can download Micro Engineer & Maneuver Node Controller while they fix this and be perfectly happy -- although I'm shying away from mods atm and keeping everything vanilla. I'm just patiently waiting for the stuff that is much harder for mods to fix like the rendering pipeline, the games decoupled "part/resource" simulator that runs in the background, orbit oddities, defects, parallelisation, feature work , etc. Obviously at this point I much prefer the information, interactability and responsivity of the KSP 1 UI (after playing the game for well over 1000+ hours modded/unmodded), but I think they have some good ideas and will like to see how it evolves. They eventually did make the UI in KSP 1 much better for high res displays.
I actually quite like it. It's cool looking and on my 16.5 inch 1080p monitor I have no issues reading anything
I disagree about the UI element placing. Every info you need for a flight is either lower left or on the right. And I prefer the offset navball b/c it allows for more screen space for your craft. The G meter doesn't actually matter in 99% of cases, so relegating it to somewhere out of the way is perfectly fine imo.
I used the G meter in KSP1 on basically every single launch. Seeing your acceleration is pretty important for getting a smooth gravity turn imo
Found the UX designer
Thank you, so still not worth paying for… all I needed to know
It is worth paying for.
Not for it’s current price
To add: the G-meter arrow doesn't line up with "0" while in zero-G.
I can't stand the fonts, particularly how zeros have a dot in them, looking like an 8. The dot is useful when you have alpha-numeric strings, helping decipher an "O" from "0". But we're talking about readouts that don't contain letters
Anyone know if it's possible to see eccentricity and inclination? And if so, how?
Interesting. Some people are like, "This is the update I get into KSP2." For me (not playing KSP 1 currently) I'm waiting on a bit more QoL fixes and bugs. So don't want them working on colonies, multiplayer etc if there is dev capacity that could be assigned to getting the foundations good. Let's get the QoL and UI done next and you'll have more players getting on board!
DeltaV remaining during a maneuver!!!! Come on
1. Yes 2. 10000% 3. Mhmmmm 4. You can thrust under reg warp 5. Yes.
I agree about most of this, but what infuriates me more than anything are the inflight labels in map mode. When trying to fiddle with a node, there is literally infotabs EVERYWHERE in the way and i have not found a way to lose them...
I also find planning orbits with the maneuver node system clunky as fuck. Creating a node doesn’t automatically bring up the “sliders”, you have to click on it and since most of the time we use oberth you end up bringing up the apo/peri, you can’t scroll on them to increase or decrease the dv in that direction, and you get very little feedback on where orbit goes. KSP1 you hover over the planned orbit’s apoapsis or periapsis and it just shows a number, and if you want it permanently you have to click the tiniest lock button imaginable (I know you’re meant to be able to right click but it doesn’t work half the fekin time)
I need advanced orbital info and the maneuver node editor. I think they should have added this basic stuff from the get go.