KSP 2: About Those Wobbly Rockets...

one of the biggest issues that I and many others experience when playing Kerbal Space Program 2 is wobbly Rockets wobbly Rockets were a big problem in Kerbal Space Program one as well but it never felt as bad as it does in case P2 and auto struck in ksp-1 basically fixed all of the issues anyway it's possible to build realistic looking rockets in ksp-1 with a realistic number of struts ksp2 has been a nightmare since launch and it hasn't really got that much better Rockets wobble around like noodles and you need an ungodly amount of struts to keep things stable like a ridiculous amount for a vertical stack I should not need to have any struts to keep it from wobbling Starship didn't wobble and that thing is tall it has draggy Parts in all the wrong places at the top and obviously its flight concluded with its tumbling over and over on itself and then its flight determination system detonated and yet it still didn't wobble but you guys know all of this either because you play Kerbal Space Program 2 and know this first hand or you've watched basically any of my ksb2 videos and apparently complained about this ad nauseam the reason I've chosen to make this video about wobbly Rockets specifically is because Nate Simpson posted a Dev diary on the 16th of June which included a word on wobbly Rockets specifically he outlined what the team hoped to do about rocket wobble in summary in most applications where inline parts are connected serially little to no flexing should occur particularly when neighboring inline Parts have the same core size however for radially attached boosters all cantilevered sub-assemblies with a single point radial connection some flexibility is expected in certain cases manually applied struts will be necessary it is important that Wings don't require struts to maintain rigidity either when docking two vessels in orbit strong and stable connections are desired to prevent wobbling or folding when the resulting vehicle is moved considering the impact of joint physics on CPU performance the increasing part counts as the game progresses necessitate finding solutions that can handle this reality the goal is to move away from Band-Aid Solutions like Auto strut which involve hidden settings automatically adding additional joints to increase rigidity instead a predictable and transparent solution accessible to all users is desired however if it becomes evident during Early Access that some form of Auto strut is still needed for ambitious vehicle Creations the requirement will be Revisited now all of this is something that I and presumably you guys agree with however Nate made one final plate and that is that I'm going to quote verbatim now wobbly Rockets are sometimes fun and funny a big part of what originally got many of us hooked on the original Kabul space program was the silliness and emergent problem solving that came from playing World of Goo with rocket Parts broadly we see this as part of the Kerbal DNA and want to preserve it in some form whether that means limiting wobbliness to certain types or sizes of parts or relegating certain behaviors to player settings is the subject of ongoing internal discussion end quote this to me is off Target wobbly Rockets were fun and entertaining for the first 10 minutes of playing the game for the first time I get that Kerbal Space Program is a light-hearted game with the derpiness of the kerbals and all that but I wouldn't describe it as having an inherent silliness to preserve wobbly Rockets have no place in ksb at all when the rocket is designed well in my opinion if I build a replica of say the SLS I would not expect any wobble to occur there wobble should be a punishment for building stupid designs that shouldn't work in the first place removing wobble was one of the things I was most excited for in Kerbal Space Program 2 and so it's disappointing to see that the problem is not only still present but it's worse than what it was in ksp1 and this seems to be to an extent intentional wobbly rockets in ksp-1 was essentially a bug that just sort of got accepted the thing is though at its core I'm just going to come out and say it I hate the word Kerbal and I say that not as a noun but as an adjective when you describe something as Kerbal you tend to think of it as an incompetently designed and ridiculous death trap Contraption which I really don't like there seems to be a wide held view that the kerbals are incompetent Engineers capable only of producing flawed designs held together by makeshift repairs however I have to hard disagree looking at all of the intricately crafted components like the LVN engine the crew pods The Landing legs the ion engine the kerbals unmistakably possess remarkable technical prowess with technology that even humans haven't managed yet look at the Rapier engine for an example there's no design that kerbals might not prioritize safety precautions and yes they do seem to enjoy a good explosion or two but they are still highly competent and capable Engineers liquid fuel engines in double space program have zero percent failure rate and they can be ignited infinite number of times in any atmosphere or vacuum and their throttle can be rapidly and precisely adjusted no human rocket engine can come close to this the Kerbal Space Center itself in the first and second game shows that the curbles possess the ability to construct buildings on par with real life structures and it aligns perfectly with their character to do so additionally many other components such as engines bury striking resemblance to our human designed Rockets it's just not justified to earnestly liken kerbals to Orcs or expect them to construct shoddy structures held together with duct tape I am firmly convinced that the undue fixation on disasters and the perception of kerbals as inept Engineers solely focus on explosions has a detrimental effect on the game Kerbal Space Room deserves more than being reduced to a mere disaster simulator where Rockets disintegrate and Crews meet their Doom serving as the primary source of entertainment and the anticipated outcome the achievements of play players who painstakingly design Exquisite well-engineered and dependable crafts should not be undervalued the notion that venturing into space is an impossible challenge must be done away with indeed kerbals are capable engineers and it falls upon the players to maximize the potential of their technological advancements this to me is Kerbal Space Program the challenge of Designing a highly complicated craft designing an intricate Mission plan and then launching said Mission and bringing your crew along for the ride before eventually returning them to curbin safely that's what the game is all about and what makes it fun and what keeps becoming back again and again and what motivated me to play it so much that I sort of accidentally became famous for playing the game so much the kerbals are incompetent mindset adversely impacts other aspects of the game as well the existence of bugs within the physics system is not intentional and it should not ever be defended as some players surprisingly seem to reaching orbit landing on celestial bodies or establish publishing permanent bases should not be perceived as formidable challenges exclusive to the hardcore players now let me clarify that I don't oppose having fun in any way I for one have done loads of stupid stuff like flying a Reliant Robin space shuttle and I have no objections towards the KSP trailers that often depict kerbals disregarding safety protocols and engaging in Reckless activities one of the captivating aspects of Kerbal Space Program lies in the freedom to take substantial risks challenge the established norms and freely experiment often resulting in remarkable accomplishments and captivating narratives or disasters this concept does not conflict in the slightest with the availability of meticulously designed technologically advanced spacecraft components or well-constructed buildings for assembling the Creations the perpetuation and prevailing belief that kerbils are inept undermines the overall potential and impact of the game and wobbly Rockets yes I'm getting back to the subject of the video are the result of this wide-held belief I I don't know it's not just me ksp1 developer artyon zooev created a developer blog post all the way back in 2013 basically saying what I just did that the curb was a competent and that ascribing the phrase Kerbal as a negative adjective synonymous for sloppy engineering and poorly designed vessels is not something that we should really be striving towards that was his basis for Designing the Kerbal Space Center's buildings he chose to model them on real life NASA structures rather than going for something more slap Dash and cartoony because that would be more Kerbal and in ksp2 we again have very real buildings but I'm not sure if the current developers held the same philosophy as the designer of the buildings in case P1 or took thought into the technical prowess it would take to design such a Space Center in the first place and indeed the advanced rocket components that the curb was possess I would love it if we moved away from thinking of kerbals as incompetent because all the evidence we have points towards them being supremely intelligent if perhaps a little bit more on the safety third end of the spectrum and that to my friends is why I don't think wobbly Rockets should be in the game and why we shouldn't think of them as being inherent to the Kerber Space Program DNA

Channel: Matt Lowne

Views: 148,386

Keywords: ksp, kerbal space program, kerbal, space, program, jebediah, kerman, matt, lowne, matt lowne, nerd, british, funny, epic, commentary, abridged, amazing, gameplay, ksp2, ksp 2 gameplay, kerbal space program 2, wobbly rockets, wobble, ksp2 glitch, patch, bug report, update

Id: IpK_jGTJG3k

Length: 9min 12sec (552 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 01 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/DeNoodle]

There is a reason the Kerbal Joint Reinforcement mod was so popular in KSP1, even after auto-struts.

[u/Phadd-F]

He is 100% right! I was hoping that KSP2 would make for more stable and steady rockets than KSP1 but we got the opposite of that. It's not normal you should strut 2 tankers that have the same diameter stacked upon eachother.

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It's frustrating to see the devs think wobbly rockets are fun. Have they ever played seriously? At least what they could do is set a check somewhere in settings if we want stable or wobbly rockets. I don't want to play the game with wobbly rockets and thus keep it at KSP1 for the moment.

[u/redpandaeater]

The physics was the main thing I wanted to be iterated on in the sequel. The game should run much more smoothly with all the lessons they learned from the first so it could have been built in a more optimized way that can even deal with some more fundamentally difficult issues to solve like floating point calculations causing drift. It was apparent immediately that they did not deal with any of that and didn't seem like they spent any time to rebuild the physics engine. I was left thinking it was basically just a reskin of the same game instead of as a true sequel, and I also am not sure that opinion will ever change. It's sad because I was looking forward to the sequel for years but I've yet to buy it and don't have any plans to. If they do add back in auto-strutting that's still just making the game more like the original instead of actually iterating on making something that exceeds it.

I just honestly don't think they can fix KSP2's issues because it needed a complete physics overhaul.

[u/Fireheart318s_Reddit]

I think rockets should only be wobbly when you’ve done something completely wrong, such as attaching two 3.75m parts with a single .625m fuel tank, or attaching a giant radial SRB with the smallest decoupler in an attempt to save weight, and that such issues should be able to be fixed by simply adding a strut or two in the right place or swapping out a part with a different part that’s better-suited for the job.

Kerbal-ness definitely has a place in the game as a sort of “well that wasn’t supposed to happen” kind of thing, as the structural equivalent of forgetting a parachute, or putting the wings of a plane too far forward and making a backflipping deathtrap, but it should be easily overcome by simply building the rocket in a sane and reasonable way.

Tall rockets shouldn’t flop around, but flopping should definitely be a thing when you do something completely wrong.

[u/Space_Gemini_24]

It's rare that I agree 100% with a youtuber take, but this is the case here.

Stupidity should occur only when you're being stupid about physics and design, not because of game code excluding absurdly large contraptions ofc.

devs folding on the "it's the kerbal way" would be really bad for the game cause it affects the pros doing massive builds and noobs that are learning with flawed physics.

[u/Dat_Innocent_Guy]

I totally agree with his sentiment. I'd love to hear opposing views though.

[u/FogeltheVogel]

Wobbly rockets were natural for your first few rockets. The ones that were janky as hell and relied on prayers and good feelings to get to orbit.

For those, some sillyness is great.

For a properly designed craft, it is absolutely not.

[u/ditfloss]

I wish there more games in this genre. hearing the KSP “2” devs talk about things like this just makes them sound (to me at least) that they’re too incompetent to figure out how to fix the problem, so they’re embracing it. I love KSP 1, but I think I’m ready for a more mature game that leaves the “XD so kerbal” shit behind.

[u/Lawls91]

I can't believe that the PR guy said that "Nah this isn't a bug, it's a feature, so Kerbal! See how fun it is guys??" about a bug that makes the game almost non-playable. This game has been a joke since it dropped, I was so excited for it and now it just seems like a catastrophic mess that has had, at best, incremental improvements to it 4 months on.