If you could redesign/improve the Kerbol System, what would you do?

[322997am]

Give eve oxygen.

give mountains

[ROXunreal]

A ring system, if hard to implement physically then at least only a visual one. Dres would be the owner of the ring, seeing as how it's otherwise pretty uninteresting.

[boxley]

I think the idea is that laythe is heated internally, more reasonably I think id implement some kind of active volcanism on laythe.

this is all a lot of weather and stuf I don't know if weather and clouds and wind will ever be implemented :T

[SpacedCowboy]

A 2nd moon for Duna, "Mike"

[mikegarrison]

Scale everything up to real solar system size. Once you have played with RSS a little, Kerbin just seems so small.

This would, of course, mean almost all the parts and a lot of the game mechanics would need to be redone too.

Fixing the water on Kerbin would be nice, too. Lakes and rivers should not always be at sea level. And there should be some dry depressions below sea level.

Basically, Kerbin needs a lot of work. Right now you can land anywhere and it's basically the same unless you happen to land on a cliff. Even landing in the water isn't much different, except that it can be more dangerous because your rocket may explode when it unrealistically falls over on its side and slaps against the water.

Edited October 19, 2015 by mikegarrison

[Just Jim]

At first I thought nothing... but then I thought about New Horizons and how different Pluto turned out to be from previous theories... and it made me think, if I was to change anything, it might be to update Eeloo into something a little more complex and interesting, like Pluto turned out to be.

[cantab]

Well I haven't played in the stock system for a while, I've been playing New Horizons planet pack instead. But my thoughts:

The overall layout is good. Clear similarities to our own solar system but enough differences to not feel like a slavish copy. A good range of challenges for players to take on. Not too hard for novices.

The system scale warrants a look. I'm not in favour of full scale because launches to orbit and many other common tasks take a lot longer, but maybe something like twice or three times the current size. There are some oddities because of the small Kerbin, in particular the ease of an unrealistic ascent profile.

All the planets should be much more detailed and interesting on the surface. I admit that's a challenge to develop, the surfaces of KSP's planets dwarf almost all other games with a reputation for large worlds.

As for specifics I'd change, and considering only gross features:

The Mun could have a better highland/maria contrast. It's a bit bland compared to the real Moon.

Duna would be really cool if it had an axial tilt and its icecaps expanded and contracted with the season.

Dres wants some friends to make a decent asteroid belt. A Vesta analogue with the huge crater-mountain, and maybe a third object.

Jool should have a real outer moon. It's SOI is *huge* and even Pol is pretty close in comparison. I'm thinking something five times further from Jool than Pol, in an awkwardly inclined and eccentric orbit.

Gas Planet 2 should have a layout like the Uranus system, tipped up on its side, to create new challenges and not be just another Jool. The actual moons themselves could take various inspirations.

The Plutoid could have a thin atmosphere. I'm thinking something like that of Mars - enough that you can't ignore it, but not enough to feasibly land with chutes alone. Said Plutoid might not be Eeloo, since it's slated to be relocated to orbit GP2.

[Robotengineer]

I would increase the size of the solar system and radius of the planets so that the planets aren't denser than any material known to man. Then I would make planet terrain deformable by implementing some sort of voxel like terrain system, using cubes or a sort of icosahedron subdivision terrain system. Along with the deformable terrain would come caves, volcanoes, geysers, and other geological phenomena. Perhaps add some flora and fauna on Kerbin and Laythe.

[Streetwind]

KScale2 is my go-to stock system improvement right now. Makes stuff a little bigger, but not too big.

Once we get 64bit and all the RAM in the world, I'll also add Outer Planets (with has KScale2 support), which I've always wanted to use but never really have the memory for.

[Monsterlunch]

I would only add a few more planets. E. g. Gas Planet II aka Keptun/Kuranus with a "Titan"-style moon and a moon which is somewhat resembling to Oberon with its big canyons so we can do this:

Javascript is disabled. View full album

[https://vimeo.com/108650530]

New planets aside, adding detail to the existing bodies is key. Whilst i could spend hours watching scenic shots from The Martian, i get tired of looking at Duna's red desert after a few minutes. Therefore, I would add weather, geological structures and more dangerous terrain to the existing bodies.

Maybe.

One day.

In KSP 2.0 .....

[Curveball Anders]

I'd like to add some more moons and planets to get even more mission variation (and new difficulties).

But I wouldn't change much, if anything at all, with the existing system.

One have to remember that the current selection of bodies are adjusted from the 'real ones' to allow for a gradual increase in difficulty.

[KerbMav]

Forgoing accessibility for new players:

Move Minmus and Gilly to be moons of Duna, tilt the orbit of Mun, move KSC to a latitude that opens easy transfer windows to Mun's new orbit.

[Richy teh space man]

I'd like to see something done with Tylo, maybe turning it into a Titan analogue with atmosphere and oceans.

[ThatGuyWithALongUsername]

I just want GP2, GP3, a pluto-like dwarf planet with charon, and retextured Vall and Tylo.

Also asteroid generation should be very different.

Basically all of Nova's original plans.

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

More Easter-Eggs and complete the side-Story NovaSilisko was working on (or had in his mind)

I also would tweak Jool's Moons a bit.

- Tylo a bit smaller or at least give it some atmosphere and a more interesting Terrain.

- Not sure about Laythe, but i like to have another planet where you can fly your Spaceplanes.

[Jim Kernan]

I think the only thing I would do is move the planets/moons into positions they should have relative to KSP in-game physics. I'd leave them in their current relative positions but increase or decrease their orbits with respect to one another and the sun. The same for planetary parents and their moons.

[Flyboy8088]

This is fun <...> Duna could be swept with dust storms that would coat your vessel and even blow off unretracted solar panels. <...> hmmm

Even though the winds can reach hundreds of km/h on Mars, the low atmospheric pressure means that the impact of those winds is not much more than a steady breeze on Earth. It would be unrealistic to have Duna winds blowing off unretracted solar panels.

[Wahgineer]

I'd make planets 3.2 times bigger and put planets 6.4 times farther apart.

[Findthepin1]

Even though the winds can reach hundreds of km/h on Mars, the low atmospheric pressure means that the impact of those winds is not much more than a steady breeze on Earth. It would be unrealistic to have Duna winds blowing off unretracted solar panels.

Duna's atmosphere is twenty times thicker than Mars'.

[RuBisCO]

I would make Kerbol a Binary System, introduce another star at 12-25 AU (or AU.K) call it Kerdos, put Jool around it with all its moons. Would need to change the lighting algorithm so that there can be two light sources on a spacecraft of different intensity depending on distance from either star.

[KerbalEssences]

I'd decrease the number of bodies and in return focus on making each extremely unique and add much more detail to them. The perfect KSP for me would be landing on the moon, do my contract work and then just walk arround for a few hours because it is so awesome being there. I'd also love to see some sort of camera function where Kerbals can take ingame pictures of features on bodies which you can not only share with the internet but also use them ingame. Taking pictures is a big part of real life space exploration. I think the most data coming from space is actually some sort of imagine material allthough I have no sources on that one. How about this: Planets show absolutely no features in map mode and the tracking station as long as you haven't taken pictures of them yet. You could either send a suicide mission to a red blob without knowing anything about it or visit it with unmanned probes. The closer you get the smaller the details you can take images of. So you had to map it from a far distance to get the general look of it and go much closer on features you find most interesting. Your landing site would not only be visible via a flag in the tracking station but also by the sheer detail you can see on it. Zooming in you had access to all the pictures you have taken in that locations. Also contracts would only pop up for locations you have high res images of. That would be so cool..

Edited October 19, 2015 by KerbalEssences

[Chiboko]

I'd add a binary planet system with a small moon doing a figure of 8 between them, this moon would be about half the size of minmus, have a tiny SOI but not show up on the map so you need to land a beacon on it before you can reliably find it.

[EdusacconBR]

i would add rings to dres and sandstorms to duna

maybe wind system too, AND CLOUDS

[Sido]

Well, i think i would add a beautiful gaz planet with a lot of pretty cool moons around it.

Wait... that's exactly what i've done

[Stoney3K]

I would make Kerbol a Binary System, introduce another star at 12-25 AU (or AU.K) call it Kerdos, put Jool around it with all its moons. Would need to change the lighting algorithm so that there can be two light sources on a spacecraft of different intensity depending on distance from either star.

That would require n-body orbital physics simulation.