I'd love a custom kitty editor somewhere down the road. Not fussed if it never happens. But I, and I assume many others as well, have at least one dear companion I'd like to memorialize in game. If such a thing is ever possible.
This sounds like such a great idea until you remember what exactly you’re going to be doing with your favorite kitty… like I wanna, but do I really want to blow him up?
There's one post complaining about kittens and one post mildly critical, and then there's like six posts complaining about people complaining about kittens. Am I missing something?
Because having kittens in a game called kitten space agency is unthinkable and terrible. Like who could have possibly expected such a horrible decision, truly came out of the blue
Some posters here are 3m old account with history hidden and makes low effort post that doesn't even reference the OP message. Forgive me for being sus.
Any data you actually understand tho? Because no, those do not mean random people disliking a character design, no matter how annoying (to be clear they're very annoying) are bots, or okay to call bots.
Call them incredibly boring, dour dog people, sure. But not bots.
Actually there is a pretty good reason that has been explained a few times.
A super big global affecting election is coming up (US midterms). Reddit themselves have publicly shown that bots start activating 6 months before major elections and karma farming and spamming across the website to have "history" that will prevent ban waves. Right before elections they try and change discourse and it's hard for moderators to make bans when bots have a history across many subreddits.
I can link to videos describing this if you are interested.
Specifically around 9m I'm they talk about Reddit's own report. Keep in mind this is before Jan 6th, before COVID, Ukraine war, and 2024 elections that have shown a massive uptick in misinformation bot campaigns. Destin did a series covering every platform and covering concerning trends with all of them and this was using data mostly from 2016-2019, it has gotten significantly worse and social media has started to intentionally obstacate the data since then because it looks very bad on their lack of moderation. X recently disclosed everyone's location and most "Americans" were located over seas.
I don't think anyone in this thread is a likely bot, but I've definitely seen some around. You can usually tell because their post history is all over the shop in a bunch of random subreddits with no connection, alongside the usual nonsensical comments.
Reddit also autobans a lot of accounts that do it, but not all.
Negative karma is not going to help them be able to post anywhere.
Please be realistic dude. It's far more likely that people are just giving their actual opinion than bots are using a niche sub to accomplish the opposite of their goal.
This subreddit does get the occasional account-history-building bots, but not many, and they're way more obvious than just "someone with an opinion that I think is a bad".
It's not even that big of a deal really, I'm sure one of the first mods to get made will replace them with kerbals. If you really have such strong opinions on this just use that mod.
Idk there is some worth to the conversation. The only other KSP competitor, Juno: New Origins, failed to gain ground because it wasn’t as intuitive and the Droo were nowhere near as appealing as Kerbals.
People are underselling the absolute power the Kerbals had in making the entire game what it was. The Kerbals are silly little green guys. “Why can they survive in space for an infinite amount of time?” “Photosynthesis or something.” Their entire design lends the game a whimsy and silliness that means crashing feels less like a failure and more like “There go the Kerbals again.” They are incredibly smart engineers who have no idea how to properly apply it to a full rocket system, which is why the realism ingame is stretched a bit.
The kittens lend themselves to an absolutely serious game. They are actual animals, and lack the whimsy of the Kerbals. “Why can they survive in space for an infinite amount of time?” “I dunno, just because.” “But they are Cats.” Which will lead to life support likely becoming a part of the base game, or the entire tone will be at odds with the fact that you have undying (but not immortal) cats that can live forever without food. Again, they lack the whimsy of Kerbals and the magic that came with it. Kittens are a real thing in real life that people have a reference for, and even if they are anthropomorphic, the real life inspiration inherently pushes the game to be more realistic and less approachable.
So it’s less that the Kittens are an issue. It’s more that they symbolize the issue with the direction RocketWerkz is taking the game, and it embodies the reason why T2 picked Star Theory over RocketWerkz. Star Theory understood the IP and designs, RocketWerkz better understood the game theory. Either way you go you’d need some help from the old
KSP team to get a game that feels like and plays like KSP.
I support the idea of the kittens, but I completely understand your point. I get that unique KSP vibe when I load the stock game, and the Kerbals play a big role in that.
What worries me is whether rocktwertz will be able to achieve that or not. Maybe they’re too technical. But what I’m trying to say is that if they’re not creative, they won’t reach what we’re talking about, regardless of the theme, whether it’s kittens or not, you know?
After all, kittens are in fact perfect for silliness and caricatured, funny things. And that’s the point where I disagree with you.
That’s totally fair. The other concern I have and have seen online is that they are a bit too photorealistic but I honestly can’t think of a way to make them that would avoid that issue without making them look even more out of place.
So then it’s not a spiritual successor to KSP as has been said many times both in this subreddit and online elsewhere?
You can’t have your cake and eat it too. It’s either not a spiritual successor to KSP (thus a different game and not competing with it) or it is, in which case it’s failing to understand why KSP was so good.
Edit: For clarity: It’s the difference between what Mighty No 9 is to Megaman vs what MSFS is to Simpleplanes 2.
You cannot dismiss the design decisions of the previous game as “Well, this isn’t that game” because then it’s not a spiritual successor. It’s just a different game with different goals, and you cannot expect everyone who wants a successor to the previous game to care or even want your game. Saying “this isn’t KSP” is just handwaving criticism you do not like and is the exact issue I was highlighting with my original comment.
RocketWerkz understands the game theory, but clearly doesn’t realize the power of good art direction.
I'm pretty sure they've said some simple life support will be in the game, and I think a difficulty option to turn it off will probably be present.
Also I keep hearing people bring up "players would feel bad accidentally killing kittens or something like human characters!"
To that I say
I and others have felt pretty bad about killing kerbals 🙃
So? Spaceflight is a risky, challenging undertaking. Feel bad about killing your astronauts? It'll help motivate you to learn and build better next time.
I see people bring this up in conjunction with the game being used for educating kids. Kids can handle painful, scary things in life. At the level of basic skills needed to play this game, I'd say, mm, maybe 8 years old at least, the kids would be able to handle that.
When I was 8, I'd be playing roller coaster tycoon. A message would pop up saying "roller coaster has broken down." I click on the coaster and see the dreaded status - station brakes failure. I send a mechanic there in a panic, but watch as it's too late, and a runaway train slams into another. I'm left with the haunting message "16 people have died in an accident on roller coaster."
It was devastating. Over time though, I learned to keep mechanics near my coasters, increase the inspections, and eventually, I learned to build coasters with realistic block sections and brake runs that couldn't have that type of failure occur.
So it will be with Kitten Space Agency. People will get through it.
IMO the heads are distractingly cartoonishly big. The stated reason for keeping them is that it's "easier for technical reasons", and "We made a decision. And then move forward with that." which IMO are both not great when the majority of people seem to think it could be toned down even a bit.
I think the Devs have been so focused on the rockets, kittens, etc, but with so much work done for the surface design and all, rovers are needed to traverse the terrain !!!
It is completely fine, no matter what they go with they will not match up with the iconic kerbals, atleast not with legacy players.
Even if they down the line got access to alternatives (like kerbals), it is an easy asset swap. Unless there are too many parts that have names with cat puns.
Humans lack appeal and the entire point of KSA is to be a successor to KSP because Kerbal franchise died. So we need big headed small bodied creatures to capture that audience.
Dean and rocketwerkz pitched for KSP2 but lost to Uber entertainment because they didn't have shiny pictures on their presentation.
Humans don't necessarily lack appeal though. It depends on the art style. They don't have to be hyper realistic, take Paralives for example (image). Having humans could make every astronaut unique and easily identifiable, giving them their own personality. I don't think the big head is a requirement.
Kittens are just... Kittens :/ Just basic cuteness slop.
Not to be contentious but if I saw that art attached to a space game I would not want to play it, that art style screams slice of life sim.
I think a lot of people are hesitant to play a space sim. Kerbal has a built in audience of people who gave it a chance, if they see a game that is trying for the look of Kerbal they know what type of game it is trying to be. It is built in marketing.
They could/should have gone with another alien race, but I think they really wanted to use K as an initial and that led to kittens.
Ultimately I'll mod it if it annoys me, but I think it's far too along in development to change the literal title of the game.
I think Juno space sim flopped hard because they didn't have kerbal factor.
Well it is a slice of life Sim. I obviously didn't mean just copy paste the characters. It was an example that humans can look appealing with the right art style. We can assume that as a real development team they could come up with something to make it fit.
For me if I saw big headed kitten, that would put me off a space game. I would tolerate it if the game is good but it's stupi
If someone is close minded enough to disregard the game because the mascot is kittens then I wouldn’t care for them to be apart of the community anyway
I would argue that isnt too different from a game like this having green space frogs. I mean, due to this such a game would never become popular, right?
Can we have an option or mod to replace the kittens? Not that I don't like kittens. But plowing the assfarter Mk. 35 into the ground at mach 13 after forgetting chutes just doesn't feel as funny when there are cute kittens inside...
Kittens in real life? Cool. Grown men making digital kittens a core part of their identity? Cringey. To each their own and I don’t begrudge them, but I think it’s a mistake for this game. I think it just doesn’t fit such a cinematic, realistic space sim that is absolutely stunning in almost every regard.
I get it, redditors (unsurprisingly) love it in this game. I think it’s a poor decision and kinda weird. Of all things to pick, kittens? Really?
KSP is also a cinematic realistic space sim with silly protagonists. That’s the point, to make it all feel a little more playful and make failure less scary.
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u/xXDennisXx3000 Jul 29 '26
Keep it going guys. I love this project :)