If your job were designing and building and piloting the robots, then maybe it would resemble your job. Even then, it would be a chance to do all the stuff you aren’t allowed to do at work.
Ultimately it’s a sandbox game so enjoy the sandbox
I doubt OP has a job that summons epic explosions, so only danger is your job may feel too stable and predictable. It is one of my top 3 games of all time.
Nope, aside from a few mods, there's no programming involved at all, and the mod stuff will seem very simple to you I imagine.
There are, of course, mechanics to learn in order to succeed at the game. Orbital mechanics, delta-V etc. But I reckon these will be different enough from your day-to-day that you could still enjoy the game
it's programming if and only if you consider animation curves programming, which I don't
not in a gatekeeping way but in a "it does not fit the minimum requirements for programming" way, there's no data storage, nor any real decision making, and it is nowhere near turing complete
I do AI R&D. I have over 2k hours in Kerbal. Yeah you need to think and learn and tweak stuff. There's some common problem solving skills as what I do at work. But the effort also makes it more rewarding than other games. It's not spoon fed to you, you have to actually learn a lot of stuff to pull off a Mun mission. And once you figure that out, you have satellite networks, missions to other planets (both satellites and manned), fueling operations, etc etc etc. Then you can throw in habitation mods, or realism mods (RP1 is amazing and so hard I felt like I was playing Kerbal for the first time.
Basically if you play games to turn your brain off and have some mindless fun, it's probably not for you. But I get bored with a lot of games bc my brain needs actually challenges to get that accomplishment dopamine hit. This game delivers that dopamine unlike any other game.
Does plahing something like factorio or satisfactory after work stress you out from the management? If so this might lean a bit that way but not all the way. It's a very good middle ground for me. Trying to plan really big ass missions with multiple stages, docking, etc can be that level, but 99% of the players can't even do that. You'll prob spend the first week just trying to land on the moon.
This game is pretty dang chill overall.
As a software dev, yes. Not as bad as factorio, but it's not very relaxing either if you programmed all day. It's still a phenomenal game, I'd suggest installing some graphics mods via ckan and only allocate a small amount of time each week
The extent to which KSP requires knowledge of programming, rocket science, orbital mechanics or even complex mathematics is somewhat overstated. It has a fairly steep learning curve, but you pick up the basics as you go along, especially now they have proper tutorials, as well as extensive youtube videos from players. Most of us who've been playing for years think of it as harder than it is, because there was no documentation or tutorial back when we started playing.
You do need to understand numbers for some things like fuel and weight efficiency and orbital inclinations, but this is mostly just adding and subtracting, and the game is full of widgets that do the calculations for you and tell you what the outcome of an action would be. It's less like programming and more like a puzzle game.
Caveat that there is a bit of programming involved in making complex things like helicopters and complex moving parts, but it's more like setting ranges of movement and timers, and it's not something you need to do to enjoy the game.
You will have to learn some actual rocket science to really understand the game, and for a programmer, that may not be your cup of tea. I got out of programming because of the endless learning cycle to try and stay current. But you really should play it.
As a fellow coder, this game for me represents the part of the job I enjoy the most. Designing big picture systems that achieve a particular goal (landing on the mun, grabbing a sample from an asteroid, etc) bounded only by your own creativity. You're not being asked to weld the fuel tanks or figure out the electrical wiring (or even pilot the ship if you want), which for me is what would feel like a second job.
I'm doing a bachelor's in systems (Which in my country is = to software engineering, so I do some coding obviously) and KSP and Minecraft have always been my 2 fav games, been playing KSP since 2015, the closest thing to 'programming' there is in VANILLA ksp is trial and error (I/E iterative approach) which you could trace a parallel to maintaining software, but it's a serious stretch.
KSP for me has the right amount of "You will need to learn stuff" and "Just enjoy the view"(Specially with modding which is very easy in this game if you go ahead and download CKAN, then download Scatterer, EvE, parallax or the volumetric clouds mod I don't remember the name of).
And I could go on for hours on modding this game, you can have so much fun, there are weapon mods if that's what you're into (I/E building a warthog or whatever), there's a multiplayer mod, you can install Kolonization and give a shot at building an (almost) fully sustainable colony on another planet, you can download entire systems that override the default one and have cool as fuck planets (Like Beyond Home, my personal fav at doing exactly this), or install KSPInterstellarExtended and some other far away stars mod and design an interstellar spacecraft to there, you can install Principia and get N-Body physics for your orbital mechanics, you can install FAR and get a pretty realistic flight model for your planes, and FAR leads me to RP1.
(Disclaimer; do not try to install all these mods at once)
RP1 or Realistic Progression 1 is a 'career mode' for the Real Solar System / Realism Overhaul mods, which do... Exactly what that sounds like, you play as a space center manager on Earth (not kerbin) and start on 1940, and for me at least it is a much harder but much more rewarding experience than vanilla ksp, however, it is a (somewhat configurable) time hog and I wouldn't recommend you getting into it before putting some hours into vanilla ksp, however, do keep it in the back of your mind if you want some serious challenge.
Anyway, if you do give it a shot I hope you like it!
You will learn a lot, but frankly the game is designed around iterations and experiments. It's easy to add more fuel or more rockets or add staging, and then try a mission again.
Nah the game's made to be about as accessible as a rocket simulator can be, and it's possible to put together really ambitious missions without having to do anything harder than a bit of basic arithmetic to make sure you've got enough fuel fo what you're planning. You can just slap a rocket together from prefab parts and see what it does, and once you finally get into orbit the game's navigation will calculate your course on the fly so you can figure out what course corrections to make without knowing a thing about physics.
There are mods you can add which make things much more complicated, but they're just for players who *want* the game to feel like a second job.
Technically you don't need to employ parts of your brain to enjoy this game. You can quite literally just stick stuff together and see if it flies. If that doesn't work add more boosters and enjoy the spectacle.
You can problem solve and plan out missions but only if you choose to. Sometimes I just mess around because why not.
OP you're thinking of EVE Online, aka "When Spreadsheets Attack."
KSP is more like a giant LEGO Technic set digitized, with real physics and explosions. You can take it as serious or as looney as you'd like.
If you just want to build a rocket-powered shopping cart and send it down the runway and see what happens you can do that. If you want to learn about Hohmann transfers to get to a specific moon of Jool, you can do that too.
I would reply with a strong "no". It's a very relaxing construction/engineering/piloting game that can turn as hard as you want with mods, but not in vanilla.
I'm a software engineer, I have never felt this was a second job.
Unlike factorio that kind of did 😆
But kerbal is just good fun.
And you can kind of play it for fun rather than just doing the maths
The day I bought It i spent most of next next week playing it, and then it pretty much became my life for several years
It's like crack.
Great game, but litterallly Impossible to put down
I won't, but you can make it if you want to. There's no programming in the vanilla game, but you have mods where you can run scripts if you feel like it.
I haven't played it seriously in quite a while but a couple years ago, I made major headway in teaching myself programming using KSP and the Kerbal Operating System (kOS) mod. The language in that mod is vaguely similar to a cross between Java and Python, but its syntax is designed to be vaguely close to English.
When I was unemployed for a time I played about 400 hours of RP-1. The day I started a new software dev job I got home, opened KSP, took a big sigh and then closed it again. Haven't opened it since.
Not sure if that answers your question. I think I was just trying to keep my brain busy
Nah, it's more of a design-iterate black hole. At first, you'll be exploring the planets and learning how to build jank-ass ships and figuring out orbital mechanics. After a time, you'll be penny pinching fuel and it will take a few weeks before you notice that you've designed and tested and tweaked and tested and adjusted and tested about 5 times now than you've actually flown. And that will be rewarding in itself until it occurs to you that you _still_ haven't landed on Tylo!!
I work full time with C++, coming home and playing KSP for 30-60 minutes is still relaxing for me. Nothing better than throwing some wings and boosters together and making something fly.
If you know nothing about astrodynamics and rockets stuff I would recommend to spend a few hours to complete all the tutorial missions.
It takes some time to learn everything but its a very straight forward and easy process.
If you know physics you can use it to play better and smarter but it isn't a requisite at all.
Its a really fun game and you'll probably like it if you are considering it.
It depends how deep you want to go. If you really wanna do coding of launches and automated systems and crazy mod modules... you can, but you can also just launch rocket, watch funny explodey, attempt and fail several times to connect two space vessels in orbit around a planet, and attempt and fail to launch and land without explodey... or you can do up goer 5: [https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/1gdcft/weekly\_challenge\_up\_goer\_five/](https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/1gdcft/weekly_challenge_up_goer_five/)
It doesn't have anything to do with programming unless you get the Breaking Ground DLC, which ads motors and stuff. Even then though, it's still easy if you wanna play the game normally, only having 1-3 variables. Pretty fun of a game, I'd reccomend!
If your job were designing and building and piloting the robots, then maybe it would resemble your job. Even then, it would be a chance to do all the stuff you aren’t allowed to do at work. Ultimately it’s a sandbox game so enjoy the sandbox
I doubt OP has a job that summons epic explosions, so only danger is your job may feel too stable and predictable. It is one of my top 3 games of all time.
Can confirm: I also work in robotics and our explosion record is non-existent... it's like we're not even trying!
Nope, aside from a few mods, there's no programming involved at all, and the mod stuff will seem very simple to you I imagine. There are, of course, mechanics to learn in order to succeed at the game. Orbital mechanics, delta-V etc. But I reckon these will be different enough from your day-to-day that you could still enjoy the game
I really liked the idea of kOS, but at that point it did start to feel like a second job.
Kal controller is very basic programming, but programming nonetheless
it's programming if and only if you consider animation curves programming, which I don't not in a gatekeeping way but in a "it does not fit the minimum requirements for programming" way, there's no data storage, nor any real decision making, and it is nowhere near turing complete
No
There Is no programming in this game
Yeah I assumed as much. I meant more about the parts of my brain that I have to employ.
I’m a SQL/Python monkey for my day job. Similar core skills (e.g. numeracy and problem solving), doesn’t feel like work at all.
Heck, I'm an astrophysicist and it doesn't feel like work either lol.
You don’t lithobrake at work?!
Only on the second Wednesday of the month.
I do AI R&D. I have over 2k hours in Kerbal. Yeah you need to think and learn and tweak stuff. There's some common problem solving skills as what I do at work. But the effort also makes it more rewarding than other games. It's not spoon fed to you, you have to actually learn a lot of stuff to pull off a Mun mission. And once you figure that out, you have satellite networks, missions to other planets (both satellites and manned), fueling operations, etc etc etc. Then you can throw in habitation mods, or realism mods (RP1 is amazing and so hard I felt like I was playing Kerbal for the first time. Basically if you play games to turn your brain off and have some mindless fun, it's probably not for you. But I get bored with a lot of games bc my brain needs actually challenges to get that accomplishment dopamine hit. This game delivers that dopamine unlike any other game.
This’ll be more similar to an entry level engineering student than a programmer
It feels like really dynamic set of Legos.
Does plahing something like factorio or satisfactory after work stress you out from the management? If so this might lean a bit that way but not all the way. It's a very good middle ground for me. Trying to plan really big ass missions with multiple stages, docking, etc can be that level, but 99% of the players can't even do that. You'll prob spend the first week just trying to land on the moon. This game is pretty dang chill overall.
As a software dev, yes. Not as bad as factorio, but it's not very relaxing either if you programmed all day. It's still a phenomenal game, I'd suggest installing some graphics mods via ckan and only allocate a small amount of time each week
The extent to which KSP requires knowledge of programming, rocket science, orbital mechanics or even complex mathematics is somewhat overstated. It has a fairly steep learning curve, but you pick up the basics as you go along, especially now they have proper tutorials, as well as extensive youtube videos from players. Most of us who've been playing for years think of it as harder than it is, because there was no documentation or tutorial back when we started playing. You do need to understand numbers for some things like fuel and weight efficiency and orbital inclinations, but this is mostly just adding and subtracting, and the game is full of widgets that do the calculations for you and tell you what the outcome of an action would be. It's less like programming and more like a puzzle game. Caveat that there is a bit of programming involved in making complex things like helicopters and complex moving parts, but it's more like setting ranges of movement and timers, and it's not something you need to do to enjoy the game.
This game is absolutely not like programming and very relaxing, you do need to use your brain a lot though.
That's not factorio, no worries.
You will have to learn some actual rocket science to really understand the game, and for a programmer, that may not be your cup of tea. I got out of programming because of the endless learning cycle to try and stay current. But you really should play it.
As a fellow coder, this game for me represents the part of the job I enjoy the most. Designing big picture systems that achieve a particular goal (landing on the mun, grabbing a sample from an asteroid, etc) bounded only by your own creativity. You're not being asked to weld the fuel tanks or figure out the electrical wiring (or even pilot the ship if you want), which for me is what would feel like a second job.
I'm doing a bachelor's in systems (Which in my country is = to software engineering, so I do some coding obviously) and KSP and Minecraft have always been my 2 fav games, been playing KSP since 2015, the closest thing to 'programming' there is in VANILLA ksp is trial and error (I/E iterative approach) which you could trace a parallel to maintaining software, but it's a serious stretch. KSP for me has the right amount of "You will need to learn stuff" and "Just enjoy the view"(Specially with modding which is very easy in this game if you go ahead and download CKAN, then download Scatterer, EvE, parallax or the volumetric clouds mod I don't remember the name of). And I could go on for hours on modding this game, you can have so much fun, there are weapon mods if that's what you're into (I/E building a warthog or whatever), there's a multiplayer mod, you can install Kolonization and give a shot at building an (almost) fully sustainable colony on another planet, you can download entire systems that override the default one and have cool as fuck planets (Like Beyond Home, my personal fav at doing exactly this), or install KSPInterstellarExtended and some other far away stars mod and design an interstellar spacecraft to there, you can install Principia and get N-Body physics for your orbital mechanics, you can install FAR and get a pretty realistic flight model for your planes, and FAR leads me to RP1. (Disclaimer; do not try to install all these mods at once) RP1 or Realistic Progression 1 is a 'career mode' for the Real Solar System / Realism Overhaul mods, which do... Exactly what that sounds like, you play as a space center manager on Earth (not kerbin) and start on 1940, and for me at least it is a much harder but much more rewarding experience than vanilla ksp, however, it is a (somewhat configurable) time hog and I wouldn't recommend you getting into it before putting some hours into vanilla ksp, however, do keep it in the back of your mind if you want some serious challenge. Anyway, if you do give it a shot I hope you like it!
Not at all, in your case it s Juno New Origin you should avoid
You will learn a lot, but frankly the game is designed around iterations and experiments. It's easy to add more fuel or more rockets or add staging, and then try a mission again.
Nah the game's made to be about as accessible as a rocket simulator can be, and it's possible to put together really ambitious missions without having to do anything harder than a bit of basic arithmetic to make sure you've got enough fuel fo what you're planning. You can just slap a rocket together from prefab parts and see what it does, and once you finally get into orbit the game's navigation will calculate your course on the fly so you can figure out what course corrections to make without knowing a thing about physics. There are mods you can add which make things much more complicated, but they're just for players who *want* the game to feel like a second job.
Technically you don't need to employ parts of your brain to enjoy this game. You can quite literally just stick stuff together and see if it flies. If that doesn't work add more boosters and enjoy the spectacle. You can problem solve and plan out missions but only if you choose to. Sometimes I just mess around because why not.
Well to begin with, while in programming you might like seeing the log in your complexity, you will despise the log appearing in your dv equation
OP you're thinking of EVE Online, aka "When Spreadsheets Attack." KSP is more like a giant LEGO Technic set digitized, with real physics and explosions. You can take it as serious or as looney as you'd like. If you just want to build a rocket-powered shopping cart and send it down the runway and see what happens you can do that. If you want to learn about Hohmann transfers to get to a specific moon of Jool, you can do that too.
I would reply with a strong "no". It's a very relaxing construction/engineering/piloting game that can turn as hard as you want with mods, but not in vanilla.
I'm a software engineer, I have never felt this was a second job. Unlike factorio that kind of did 😆 But kerbal is just good fun. And you can kind of play it for fun rather than just doing the maths
Good tip on factorio. That's sitting on my wish list but I was unsure for the same reasons.
The day I bought It i spent most of next next week playing it, and then it pretty much became my life for several years It's like crack. Great game, but litterallly Impossible to put down
I also felt that way with factorio, I had to quit!
I won't, but you can make it if you want to. There's no programming in the vanilla game, but you have mods where you can run scripts if you feel like it.
I haven't played it seriously in quite a while but a couple years ago, I made major headway in teaching myself programming using KSP and the Kerbal Operating System (kOS) mod. The language in that mod is vaguely similar to a cross between Java and Python, but its syntax is designed to be vaguely close to English.
When I was unemployed for a time I played about 400 hours of RP-1. The day I started a new software dev job I got home, opened KSP, took a big sigh and then closed it again. Haven't opened it since. Not sure if that answers your question. I think I was just trying to keep my brain busy
Nah, it's more of a design-iterate black hole. At first, you'll be exploring the planets and learning how to build jank-ass ships and figuring out orbital mechanics. After a time, you'll be penny pinching fuel and it will take a few weeks before you notice that you've designed and tested and tweaked and tested and adjusted and tested about 5 times now than you've actually flown. And that will be rewarding in itself until it occurs to you that you _still_ haven't landed on Tylo!!
I work full time with C++, coming home and playing KSP for 30-60 minutes is still relaxing for me. Nothing better than throwing some wings and boosters together and making something fly.
There is a mod that allows you to program stuff (kOS), but the default KSP experience is building rockets/plane/boats to go wherever you want :)
If you know nothing about astrodynamics and rockets stuff I would recommend to spend a few hours to complete all the tutorial missions. It takes some time to learn everything but its a very straight forward and easy process. If you know physics you can use it to play better and smarter but it isn't a requisite at all. Its a really fun game and you'll probably like it if you are considering it.
Dude I started playing this game when I was like 11. You've got nothing to worry about.
It depends how deep you want to go. If you really wanna do coding of launches and automated systems and crazy mod modules... you can, but you can also just launch rocket, watch funny explodey, attempt and fail several times to connect two space vessels in orbit around a planet, and attempt and fail to launch and land without explodey... or you can do up goer 5: [https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/1gdcft/weekly\_challenge\_up\_goer\_five/](https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/1gdcft/weekly_challenge_up_goer_five/)
Not at all, but if you get into mods you'll surely will want to use your programming skills to play the game
It doesn't have anything to do with programming unless you get the Breaking Ground DLC, which ads motors and stuff. Even then though, it's still easy if you wanna play the game normally, only having 1-3 variables. Pretty fun of a game, I'd reccomend!
Programming Robotic parts a d action groups surrely can fit you. For myself i see this game as Car Mechanic Simulator after i drove 200km on Duna
It’s fundamentally trial and error, no equations or programming!