Kitten Space Agency is a promising upcoming space simulation game that's pretty much a spiritual successor to Kerbal Space Program and now for Linux too.
The most important part is that they’re building the game from scratch with an engine suitable for the purpose. As mentioned numerous times by Harvester who created KSP: There are so many hacks and workarounds to make Unity work the way they needed it to, and in retrospect Unity was not a suitable choice for a game of that scale. And it is doubtful that any general-purpse engine is.
Rocketwerkz are making their own engine, doing away the Scenes/Actors limitation that are detrimental to how a space game would work. This removes a ton of abstractions resulting in an alpha that runs incredibly smoothly almost independent of part cound. It is worth noting that Rocketwerkz were among the original bidders for developing KSP2, but they lost the bid as they were more focused on having a solid foundation over flashy graphics updates.
As for specific features:
Physics during time warp.
RCS has a realistic (but automatic) thrust curve instead of instant on/off
Physics simulation on multiple vessels at once. There is no “current vessel” or physics distance. Everything is treated the same. It’s just a matter of where the camera is pointed.
Multiplayer has been confirmed as an upcoming feature
I would love base building in KSA, but Dean Hall (CEO of Rocketwerkz) have explicitly stated that he refuses to say anything on the matter, because Colonies means so many things to different people. In my case, Colonies would mean resource extraction, building/designing a fully fledged launch centers, and (semi-automated) interplanetary logistics, a
KSA seems to be modder friendly; to the point that there early releases were for the expressed purpose of getting modder input.
They also seem to still be in the core tech development stage. I suspect the details of what actual gameplay looks like will be flushed out through iterative development with player feedback.
Yeah that is what I liked doing with KSP mods. My last long playthrough was using USI mods and that at least partially gets away from the jank by abstracting the majority of the bases across the solar system to a spreadsheet with no parts used, including interplanetary logistics. Then you just need a few parts where you want to take some actual resources out to use them for something.
I got to the point of having fuel stations around orbit of Kerbin and both of its moons, also had rare mineral mining going to make cash. If I play again the next step is to start mining and refining useful amounts of metals so that my orbital ship assembly doesn’t need to import quite so much mass from the space centre. Start with mining to make the heavy bits first and then over time build more and more of the production chain myself in space so fewer and fewer things need to be launched into space.
Once all that stuff is done, start looking to other planets as well. Although I often ran quite a few simultaneous missions so already got probes heading out to most planets. At least tiny probes if nothing else, as once its small enough it doesn’t really need to be the most efficient launch window. Just burn an extra 2000dV of fuel which is only about 100kg? Sure, this rocket is so cheap it doesn’t really matter.
The most important part is that they’re building the game from scratch with an engine suitable for the purpose. As mentioned numerous times by Harvester who created KSP: There are so many hacks and workarounds to make Unity work the way they needed it to, and in retrospect Unity was not a suitable choice for a game of that scale. And it is doubtful that any general-purpse engine is.
Rocketwerkz are making their own engine, doing away the Scenes/Actors limitation that are detrimental to how a space game would work. This removes a ton of abstractions resulting in an alpha that runs incredibly smoothly almost independent of part cound. It is worth noting that Rocketwerkz were among the original bidders for developing KSP2, but they lost the bid as they were more focused on having a solid foundation over flashy graphics updates.
As for specific features:
I try to update !kittenspaceagency@sh.itjust.works as often as I can, so there are some more specifics in there.
Oh nice, good job on making and updating a community on this, I’ll keep this it mind
Something I liked in KSP was building based on moons, would love it if that is less janky and more useful.
I would love base building in KSA, but Dean Hall (CEO of Rocketwerkz) have explicitly stated that he refuses to say anything on the matter, because Colonies means so many things to different people. In my case, Colonies would mean resource extraction, building/designing a fully fledged launch centers, and (semi-automated) interplanetary logistics, a
KSA seems to be modder friendly; to the point that there early releases were for the expressed purpose of getting modder input.
They also seem to still be in the core tech development stage. I suspect the details of what actual gameplay looks like will be flushed out through iterative development with player feedback.
Yeah that is what I liked doing with KSP mods. My last long playthrough was using USI mods and that at least partially gets away from the jank by abstracting the majority of the bases across the solar system to a spreadsheet with no parts used, including interplanetary logistics. Then you just need a few parts where you want to take some actual resources out to use them for something.
I got to the point of having fuel stations around orbit of Kerbin and both of its moons, also had rare mineral mining going to make cash. If I play again the next step is to start mining and refining useful amounts of metals so that my orbital ship assembly doesn’t need to import quite so much mass from the space centre. Start with mining to make the heavy bits first and then over time build more and more of the production chain myself in space so fewer and fewer things need to be launched into space.
Once all that stuff is done, start looking to other planets as well. Although I often ran quite a few simultaneous missions so already got probes heading out to most planets. At least tiny probes if nothing else, as once its small enough it doesn’t really need to be the most efficient launch window. Just burn an extra 2000dV of fuel which is only about 100kg? Sure, this rocket is so cheap it doesn’t really matter.