So there's been quite the uptick of kiddos lately in the form asking some fantastic and in depth questions that absolutely without a doubt couldn’t be answered from a look at a blog post or comments from devs. Lucky for you, I've scoured the depths of the sea to the far reaches of space to bring you the answers you absolutely deserve and understandably get mad at devs when they go unanswered. How dare they put together an amazing game and not answer your question personally even though it's been almost definitely answered before at another time.
RailfanEthan’s rant on the matter inspired me to remake/add to this FAQ
Caveman999’s amazing table of contents for blog posts helped in this endevor. Check it out!
Ok, now that that not-so-subtle rant is over, let's get into this FAQ. It will include repeat entries from my original “Official Unofficial FAQ” as these are still relevant questions. I have updated some the information though, to ya know… keep things accurate. It will not, however, include information from my Newest Trailer Breakdown! (Updated) post.
Q: When release?
A: Beta in "October-ish" on Steam, and later year for mobile release
Q: Cost?
A: Same as simple planes; $13 on steam and $5 on mobile. However, “If you buy it on early access you will get all of the future updates on Steam for free, even if the price increases.”
Q: Can you make it free?
A: (my personal response here) No these are adult developers who run a company. They require money to continue to develop and put great things out while also LIVING.
Q: Will there be cargo bays?
A: Confirmed.
Q: Can we go mining for resources?
A: No current plans.
Q: Will there be a modding API?
A: This will be a post beta feature.
Q: Can we get some of these things in SP?
A: Most likely not;
"We're a tiny dev team and it's hard to devote the time to multiple projects at once. We've tried in the past and it just doesn't work."
Q: Can we port planes from SP?
A: "It's conceivable that a few parts will be able to be ported over from SP to SR2, such as fuselage pieces and wings, but several parts won't be compatible."
Q: Will things have cost now?
A: Yes and no, as there will be both a career and sandbox mode.
Q: Will there be struts?
A: "No plans for struts, but that may change in the future."
Q: How detailed will the solar system be?
A: "Craters yes. Asteroid belt no."
Q: WHERES MY FRIKEN REEE-ENTRY?
A: "on the todo list, but it's not done yet." and “Yes, Philip is actually working on re-entry effects now.”
Q: ship recovery?
A: "Recovery will be a thing for other parts, but not for fairings."
This will be edited additionally as more questions come in
New Questions
Q: What if my computer is a potato? Can I still play?
A: “we will have quality settings so you can turn off features to improve performance”
Q: How many of these fine planets can I expect in the beta?
A: “We don't know how many planets there will be for the initial release yet. Probably four.”
Q: Any different biomes to explore?
A: “we will have different biomes on planets. Currently, Smearth has polar, tundra, boreal, grasslands, and desert biomes.”
Q: Ok, so as mentioned, my computer is an actual potato, what are the bare minimum specs I need?
A: See our wonderful steam page or a handy form post by Caveman999
Q: How much space will this take up on my potato?
A: “The current Windows build is around 600mb.”
Q: So… will I have any fluffy clouds?
A: “We would like to add volumetric clouds at some point. Philip has prototyped some ideas, but making it a reality has proven difficult. It's also fairly destructive to performance.”
Q: I’m a super trustworthy person who wants to be on the beta before steam… can I pretty please?
A: “We will likely do some beta testing before releasing on Steam Early Access here in a few months, but there are no guarantees that if you've beta tested in the past that you will be able to beta test SR2. We won't do any beta testing on mobile for quite a while, since we don't plan to release on that until late this year or early next year.”
Q: For some odd reason I’m ranting about not having more than 8 colors available by default. What do the devs plan to do to satisfy me?
A: “There's no way to add/remove a color through the UI (currently) but you can add/remove them from XML easy enough. I could upload a rocket with 25+ colors that you could start with.”
Q: I wish to make J.J. Abrams style films in your space program. Will there be built in lens flares?
A: “Yes, there will be a lens flare effect.”
Q: Do you actually read the UserVoice?
A: “Yes, every time we're starting an update we check User Voice to see if there's anything that we can reasonably do. Players sometimes have great ideas, so we don't want to miss out on those.”
Q: I want to play this on my potato 360 console. Will I be able to?
A: “No plans for a console version currently, but of course that can change. It's interesting to me that a game like this is far easier to design for and play on a mobile device than on a console. Controls are so limiting on console."
Q: Will I be able to play multiplayer? Will I be able to do LAN games? Can we set up servers?
A: No, No, and... you guessed it... NOPE
Follow-up Q: WHY!?!?! ITS WOULD BE SOOOO EASY! JEEZ YOU DON'T LISTEN TO YOUR COMMUNITY
A: Exhales large sigh
Q: Why is it when I try to click between pages in a user’s comment history, it redirects me to the “users page” instead?
A: Great question, no idea
As mentioned, I couldn’t change between comment history pages, so forgive me, as these questions only go back 28 days. If you have any more, I will try to answer the best I can.
This answered a lot of my questions that would have turned into spam