Nacho84
Posts: 706
Joined: 2/7/2013
From: Brighton, UK
Status: offline
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Hello nats,
Thanks for the feedback, we really appreciate it. Answers below:
quote:
ORIGINAL: nats
Firstly I picked a payload to try to satisfy the first mission condition of getting something into orbit. But I found out that it was too large to be carried on my chosen rocket. So I changed to Sputnik. I picked a larger rocket as well because I found out that the present rocket still didnt lift Sputnik either. But then I found out after researching the rocket for a few years, till it was ready for launch in fact, that it still wasnt suitable for Sputnik despite Sputnik only weighing 86kg and this rocket supposedly lifting 200kg into LEO. So that was frustrating - and got me thinking well maybe Sputnik needs to go higher than LEO? But how do I know whether it does or not? How do I know what payload type and rocket will satisfy my mission condition. There is nothing that tells me that in the game. So I found all that very frustrating. I still have no idea which NASA rocket will enable you to do the Sputnik mission.
If you haven't opened a rocket program yet and click on the question mark button for a certain mission configuration, the game will ask you if you want to be redirected to the "Open Rocket Program" screen and it will only show you those rockets suitable for the current mission configuration, so I'm not sure how did that happen when you played the game. If you manage to reproduce it, then please let us know, as it sounds like a very big major issue.
Also, the fact that your rocket supports 200 Kg into LEO and couldn't lift Sputnik sounds very strange. Do you have a savefile for that? We didn't encounter that problem while doing internal playtesting and it hasn't been reported at the forums either. Again, if you manage to reproduce it so that we can troubleshoot it, that would be great.
quote:
ORIGINAL: nats
It isnt obvious what rockets lift what (the LEO etc abbreviations need to go because I didnt know what two of them were meant to be).
I'm not following you on this one. What do you mean by "what rockets lift what"? A rocket lifts different amounts of payloads to different types of orbit, it doesn't matter what the payload is provided that its mass is equal or lower than the rocket's capacity to the target orbit. For example, if you want to send a 451 Kg probe to Mars, you only need to select a rocket whose TPI payload is equal or greater that 451 Kg.
quote:
ORIGINAL: nats
It isnt obvious what payloads can be used to satisfy mission conditions.
The payloads are fixed for a certain mission configuration, the only thing you can change is the rocket (or "rockets", if the mission features multiple launches). I'm not sure what you mean by "satisfy mission conditions".
quote:
ORIGINAL: nats
It isnt obvious even what satellite missions give you what badges because in the present game it looks like all the badges have already been achieved before you even start the mission (they should be greyed out).
Good point, we'll fix this.
quote:
ORIGINAL: nats
No-where in the misson description does it indicate whether the mission goes into LEO or some other orbit so you cant tell what rocket to use with each mission.
Good point as well. There's a "Payload Masses per Launch" in the mission summary next to the advisor, we'll add the target orbit in there.
quote:
ORIGINAL: nats
And I dont think you should actually need to remember what payload the rocket will carry either. I think this is not a good game feature. When you choose a payload the game should offer you a choice of all the relvatn rockets only. You shouldnt even be able to pick an irrelevant rocket.
That's what it does at the moment. If you already have several rocket programs opened and click on the question mark in the mission configuration screen, it will list all your rockets, but the ones that are not powerful enough for the mission will be highlighted in red and you won't be able to select them. If you believe there's a bug in here, please let us know. But we have been doing lots of internal playtesting and we're quite confident that this feature is working as expected.
quote:
ORIGINAL: nats
MAybe there should be a very simple graphic on all the payloads and rockets that shown very obviously what mission type they are -ie Low Earth Orbit or Lunar Transit mission etc And all these things should be colour keyed - why not have all the low earth mission components coloured blue, and all the next type of missions components coloured green?
Notice that the same payload can be used for different target orbits, so color coding a payload with a mission type is not an option. For example, the Mercury spacecraft can be used for both sub-orbital and Earth orbital (LEO) profiles.
quote:
ORIGINAL: nats
Also the removal of the graphs in the economy screen, the very small text in the economy screen (almost too small for me to read), and the removal of the staff skill bars when you are choosing staff - now you have to wade through a load of percentage fuigures that seem to go down to one or two decimal places - why??? What was wrong with the bars? Why have any decimal places at all in this game? Its non-sensical that degree of precision.
The graphs were removed because the loading times were very high and they didn't play well with the support for multiple screen resolutions. Don't worry, they have been replaced with new code now, so you'll see them again in 0.7.19 
The personnel screens have been redesigned to address the suggestions you raised, you can get a sneak peek on how they will look like here.
quote:
ORIGINAL: nats
One of my mission requirements was to get my astronaut leadership skill 'above of %90' (should really say 'above 90%'), but this is impossible with the lower skill levels - I only got it to 75% before I ran out of time, I dont think it is possible that early in the game.
Well spotted. We'll fix this, yes.
quote:
ORIGINAL: nats
Finally the news screen you get these variable names coming up before the ransom news pieces that look strange.
That's for debugging. We left that on purpose because the random events introduce so many possibilities and we wanted to have as much information as possible in case we saw something funny during playtesting. They will be removed at some point before release, don't worry.
quote:
ORIGINAL: nats
Also I still find the overall navigation within the game very laborious. Again colour coordination of the various buildings and relevant building scrreens would aid immensely in knowing where you are.
Do the icons painted on every building help to some degree? It's an honest question. Personally, I want to keep the space complex as uncluttered as possible, and I think color coding the buildings will break the immersion a little bit.
quote:
ORIGINAL: nats
There were some things that were better - I like the way you can choose, swap and delete mission researchers for all your open missions on one screen - thats good. And obviously the new random events are good to have in. And the separate rockets add some needed extra stuff to think about, if only there was enough information provided to enable you to make a decision about them. Oh, and the white pixel in the intro video has gone! Hurray!
Good to hear that For the next update we'll be introducing further tweaks into the game's database, so the number of decisions you'll need to make will increase.
quote:
ORIGINAL: nats
I know there is a lot still to do I am sure I am just playing the semblence of what the game will look like in a few months. The new feature of separate rockets has to be working up a bit more obviously. Its definitely heading in the right direction.
We're getting there, yes. The mix-and-match feature has been a great challenge for us, not only because we had to rip the code apart in order to fit it (the game was never meant to be played like this), but because conveying all these new game rules into the UI is quite challenging. With feedback like the one you provided it will only get better in future updates (while we continue working on the other features, of course  ).
I encourage you to get back to me with the questions I asked if you have a minute. Reading things like "satisfy mission conditions" makes me realize that there's something we're not communicating all that well with our current UI system, and I'd like to know what that is so that we can fix it.
Cheers,
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