Having loads of fun in Wildllands with a group of three friends, but 3 stars is fair if not generous for this game. I think there is at least a 4 star game in there with some additional polish and gameplay tweaks, but as it is now, it is find your own fun and try to ignore the bugs and wonky systems. My friends are willing to try new tactics to keep things fresh and take it seriously when we want to try to do a proper stealth mission. However, without our own direction of making the game interesting encounter to encounter, it can quickly become rote.
The world design is beautiful and can be stunning in some lighting conditions. I love flying around despite the wonky controls. It just looks like a real world environment with an interesting variety of biomes. It would have been ideal for the mission types to be more biome appropriate and unique. The dialog though, holy shit. There needs to be a specific award in the 2017 GOTY to call out just how horrendous the voice acting and script is in this game. Take that hot mess and have the same lines repeat over and over again and you will quickly find yourself changing the language audio to a different language just to spare your sanity.
The only thing that would have made that better is if their two ships actually collided at that speed. They just need to do the in game tutorial and they'll be fine. Already looking forward to next week. They should do a live stream at some point so they can ask chat for help when they want. It would be like them calling those "nasa guys running computer simulations." Vinny is still the pilot, but he could phone a friend live as he had questions.
Take aways from part 2. Love the bump in production value and the addition of Austin is looking to pay dividends. He is asking very smart questions and airing some valid concerns. I am sure you could watch detailed tutorials if you wanted, but someone did mention advice from the comments during this vid so, if we want to keep it in the community here are my tips if the BEAST crew are interested.
1. Short and wide Mun lander craft is key. No need to land a huge craft.
2. Detach half the shit you have on your rocket. Too many lights, RCS overkill, pointless off center reaction wheel, etc. All of those parts create unneeded drag and weight.
3. Always do your gravity turn in the 90 degree direction on Navball. This will make your life much easier for all other orbital maneuvers. This gives you a nice counter clockwise orbit around Kerbin's equator. Mun capture should be a bit easier.
4. Asparagus staging works much better when each extra tank has its own engine. You are still getting a small benefit by shedding the extra weight, but all of those tanks with only one small engine is probably a net loss in delta v.
5. Your upper stages, the ones you burn in space, should have good vacuum ISP (ISP is fuel efficiency) and thrust. The final landing stage can probably use the "Terrier" engine, which has awesome fuel efficiency in vacuum. Again, keep that landing craft light, short, and wide. You want to land a Hersey kiss, not a cigar.
6. Don't have time warp maxed out when re-entering the atmosphere. Once in atmosphere, it goes from time warp to physics warp, which means it is speeding up physics interactions and calculations which can have disastrous outcomes.
7. Liquid fuel only tanks/fuselages are for jet (space planes) engines, not rocket engines. You need the oxidizer too. You guys figured this out, but just a reminder.
8. Austin is correct in assuming landing more straight down on the Mun would be easier. Kill off all your horizontal speed first. That way you are only managing your vertical speed as you approach the surface of the Mun. I also recommend aiming for the near side or "light side" of the Mun. Makes seeing the surface much easier and the near side has areas with relatively smooth features. Dark side/far side is crater central.
9. Set your fuel lines so they aren't clipping through the tanks. You can do this by moving the first anchor point on the outside tanks, closer to the inside tank. When they clip on tanks, they will keep detaching with some reloads or part adjustments. Always double checking fuel lines and staging is a good step regardless.
10. Keep these coming! They are great. I love seeing people learn and experiment in KSP. It has been my GOTY, every year, since the .15 beta.
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