Add a colonization system

[sirgoodman]

Hey guys, my idea here is to add parts to construct actual planet bases, with a life support system. I know you can get both of these things in mods, (In fact I'm running a mod that gives me planetary base parts) but I think they should add a life support system and base parts to make them stock. One because it would add so much more to the game, two because I know for some people mods can slow their game down, and I think something like this should be in the game anyway. Plus as I found out with an earlier idea, that the game developers try to keep the game realistic (Which I totally understand) and this would not really be detracting from the realism of the game, in fact a life support system would make it more realistic (if people new to the game found having to add a life support system to their ships to hard for them the game developers could make the life support system an option when a person is creating a new game) Any comments?      

[Noud]

i agree some form of life support should be stock.. but i think it more for balancing reasons. the life support mod i used are great but the only thing is that they can become extremely messy in combination with other mods. 

if there was 1 stock life support system it would make it a lot more manageable in my opinion.

But i think squats focus should be more on a complete career overhaul as the core game is great but the career mode is seriously lacking 

[Red Iron Crown]

I've always thought of colonization as a good overarching goal for a KSP playthrough. I liked the Civilian Population mod's approach to having extrakerrestrial populations increase, that plus some economic incentives to do missions between colonies could add some deeper game play. 

[sirgoodman]

I know that would add so much more content to the game, and more objectives and goals.

[RatchetinSpace]

Life support is a tricky issue that comes up a lot. Personally I would love purpose-made base parts but I don't think life-support fits the structure of KSP. Life support means you have to constantly maintain stations and bases which would get tedious if you wanted to leave it alone and go off and do an Eeloo mission. When you finally finished you'd return to your Duna base to find all your kerbals dead, not a fun way to play. 

As I said though, I'm all for base parts.

[tater]

Life support is required, and is a great addition. It's a very fun way to play, you actually have to think about what you are doing. Anyone can send a mk1 pod on a multi-year voyage. Snooze.

[322997am]

I really don't want the devs to waste their time with things like this when there is an amazing mod called K&K kolonization system, which does colony stuff very well

[klgraham1013]

13 hours ago, RatchetinSpace said:

Life support is a tricky issue that comes up a lot. Personally I would love purpose-made base parts but I don't think life-support fits the structure of KSP. Life support means you have to constantly maintain stations and bases which would get tedious if you wanted to leave it alone and go off and do an Eeloo mission. When you finally finished you'd return to your Duna base to find all your kerbals dead, not a fun way to play. 

As I said though, I'm all for base parts.

Actually, a moment like this was one of my most memorable while playing KSP.  It's one I look back on as a positive for the game.  Even if it wasn't a positive for that particular mission.

[Alshain]

Life Support just isn't a good fit for KSP as long as it's single player and has timewarp.  Its just tedious micro management.

As for colonization, I've been trying to figure out MKS with EL lately, but it's so overcomplicated, ReadPanda (the only current tutorial vid I could find) had to explain it with powerpoint.  It's so overwhelming I just can't even figure out where to start.  A stock system would have to be a lot more intuitive.

Edited June 25, 2017 by Alshain

[pandaman]

I would certainly be in favour of a stock Life Support system (toggleable of course), and proper colonisation/surface base type parts too.  Each on its own would add extra depth and gameplay options, even more so when used together.

[Mecripp]

I think first they need better looking rocket part and base making parts but would also like to see a LS stock as long as its not no kiddy LS

[qzgy]

I'd like to be able to do colonization. but, LS.... maybe not so much. Having it as an option would be good

[tater]

8 hours ago, Alshain said:

Life Support just isn't a good fit for KSP as long as it's single player and has timewarp.  Its just tedious micro management.

Any even slightly realistic space game MUST have timeworn (ditto any naval game on earth). Multiplayer games cede any realism to magic instancing in such situations, and are a bad fit for any game than needs timewarp. 

Life support is required for colonization to be meaningful, frankly, and it is needed in KSP precisely because time needs to matter. It's not any more tedious than bringing enough propellant, and the same solutions that allow some missions WRT propellant (ISRU), can also address some LS and colonization issues, should the latter become a thing. Personally, I think colonization is more like KSP 2.

One thing that should be added that is entirely within scope to make KSP do what it is supposed to in career mode (allow the player to run a space program) is to have kerbals actually be able to do things without the player having to personally do literally everything. In such a case, the logistics of resupply become missions you don;t have to fly. If one has a mishap, then it should not just reduce the funds by the lost craft cost, it should require some R&D time for return to flight (which would remove that failure mode, or reduce it). Regardless, the flights are autonomous, and failures (if any) are management problems to solve---fly immediately, and have a chance of another failure, or do something else. You get the idea, it can all be solved by good game design.

[mattinoz]

18 hours ago, 322997am said:

I really don't want the devs to waste their time with things like this when there is an amazing mod called K&K kolonization system, which does colony stuff very well

K&K kolonization?

Google can't find it, brings up MKS which is USI which in my mind should be considered basically stock anyway.

[322997am]

4 hours ago, mattinoz said:

K&K kolonization?

Google can't find it, brings up MKS which is USI which in my mind should be considered basically stock anyway.

Sorry I meant usi, cause I had the mod installed and I thought it was a separate mod. Ok then

[Eskell]

7 hours ago, mattinoz said:

K&K kolonization?

Google can't find it, brings up MKS which is USI which in my mind should be considered basically stock anyway.

Kerbal Planetary Base Systems has K&K as manufacturer for its parts.

[Kerbal101]

On 25.6.2017 at 6:18 AM, RatchetinSpace said:

....When you finally finished you'd return to your Duna base to find all your kerbals dead, not a fun way to play.  ....

Lack of snacks(tm) (by default in USI-LS) usually causes Kerbals to decide laying off their job for indefinite time and joining the local tourist horde (until well-fed )

So, miscalculate burn trajectory, have antenna go out of range = interplanetary tourism forever \m/

[Alshain]

12 hours ago, tater said:

Life support is required for colonization to be meaningful, frankly, and it is needed in KSP precisely because time needs to matter. It's not any more tedious than bringing enough propellant, and the same solutions that allow some missions WRT propellant (ISRU), can also address some LS and colonization issues, should the latter become a thing. Personally, I think colonization is more like KSP 2.

Space stations don't need propellant.  So that isn't tedious at all.  Unless they implement N-body it will remain that way.  Constant life support resupply missions are tedious.  The only way to curb that would be multiple payers working on the same station.  So without multiplayer, LS is tedious and a lot more tedious than bringing enough propellant (which is none at all).

If LS is required for a meaningful colonization then I say no to colonization.  However, I think it can be made meaningful with just off-world manufacturing as the end goal, so even that isn't true.

Edited June 26, 2017 by Alshain

[tater]

4 minutes ago, Alshain said:

Space stations don't need propellant.  So that isn't tedious at all. Unless they implement N-body it will remain that way. Constant life support resupply missions are tedious.  The only way to curb that would be multiple payers working on the same station.  So without multiplayer, LS is tedious and a lot more tedious than bringing enough propellant (which is none at all).

If LS is required for a meaningful colonization then I say no to colonization.

Cannot break up the quote because the new forum is kinda meh.

MP is not required in the least. Kernels need to be able to do things by themselves or the entire notion of "managing a space program" is nonsense. You manage employees, you don't serially do every bit of work they do for them, or you'd not have employees. Resupply missions should be the sort of thing where the player designs the craft and mission profile, sets a timeline, and the program simply does it. 

Worry about warping is silly, and only applies to the sort of people who might launch a probe to Jool, then warp to completion, leaving the crews floating around doing nothing for years---something that is the antithesis of any "career" mode that is by definition a kind of role playing---the same for anyone who leaves a kerbal in a mk1 pod for more than a few days for any reason.

 

[Alshain]

21 minutes ago, tater said:

Worry about warping is silly, and only applies to the sort of people who might launch a probe to Jool, then warp to completion, leaving the crews floating around doing nothing for years---something that is the antithesis of any "career" mode that is by definition a kind of role playing---the same for anyone who leaves a kerbal in a mk1 pod for more than a few days for any reason.

In your play style maybe, but I'm not going to Jool in real time and I seriously think you are in the minority there.  Most people timewarp to jool.

Edited June 26, 2017 by Alshain

[tater]

19 minutes ago, Alshain said:

In your play style maybe, but I'm not going to Jool in real time and I seriously think you are in the minority there.  Most people timewarp to jool.

I don't warp more than a few weeks at a time, or maybe a few months at most. With LS, and the utter lack of a real space program for KSP, I have to do resupply missions myself. So I don't play KSP in real time, but my warps are timed to my remaining LS on stations, bases, etc.

As I have said formerly, this is a fundamental flaw of KSP. To the extent colonization is a thing, the game needs logistics added, which requires kerbals to have some agency. In sandbox I would, because I'd just build the thing, and fly it. I still have LS turned on, however, and even before I started playing around with LS mods, I bulked up ships so that when I did, my new craft looked nearly identical to my old ones.

This would also make for interesting gameplay, IMO, assuming things like kerbal intelligence and skill were part of the equation, since you could have inefficiency and failure as a function of those factors, which could present the player with novel problems to solve---and the very point of a career mode is limitations, and novel problems. Alternately this can be abstracted (there are mods that do this), but given the impossibility of ever losing career mode for anyone with 2 clues to rub together, having some recurring costs moves that mode in the right direction.

[Alshain]

@taterOk, well barring an entire overhaul of KSP as we know it then, Life support won't work and any colonization effort would have to be for off world manufacturing.

[tater]

Colonization requires kerbals reproducing there, else it's just a base. This would require a wholesale change, anyway. We'd need the ability to in effect build things like KSC in situ, if you cannot do that, I don't consider it a colony.

[Greenfire32]

On 6/25/2017 at 6:34 AM, 322997am said:

I really don't want the devs to waste their time with things like this when there is an amazing mod called K&K kolonization system, which does colony stuff very well

I get your point here, but if this were to be the case, then almost nothing would ever get added for no other reason than: there's a mod for it.

On 6/24/2017 at 10:18 PM, RatchetinSpace said:

Life support is a tricky issue that comes up a lot. Personally I would love purpose-made base parts but I don't think life-support fits the structure of KSP. Life support means you have to constantly maintain stations and bases which would get tedious if you wanted to leave it alone and go off and do an Eeloo mission. When you finally finished you'd return to your Duna base to find all your kerbals dead, not a fun way to play. 

As I said though, I'm all for base parts.

 

I've posted this before and while it was more in regards to answering the "how to make planets more worth while" topic in this thread, I feel like it could also apply to colonization:

"The easiest and quickest way to make planets have more impact is to give the player the ability and the need to build offworld bases.
You could tie this directly into the tech tree too. KSP is a game based in reality. That doesn't mean it can't become a science-fiction, futuristic game. As long as it keeps itself grounded in what could be plausible, I see no reason why we have to stay restricted to current and real technologies.

Scenario:
1. Near future propulsion systems can't run on any fuel source found on Kerbin, go check out Minmus and see if there's anything there.
2. High orbit ScanSat. Picked up anomaly.
3. Low orbit ScanSat. Anomaly confirmed.
4. Rover analysis complete. Unknown element discovered.
5. Offworld science base studies element.
6. Offworld mining begins

7. Offworld refining begins.
8. 1,000 discovered "ore" collected and refined. Tech tree now allows for prototype technologies/fuels/materials.

9. Advance tech tree by doing more science. Unlock new parts that use the discovered element as a currency of sorts (need X amount of ore to "purchase" a super heat-resistance wing for example).

10. Rinse and repeat for various planetary bodies.

My dream KSP game is somewhat of a mix between what we have now and Civ V playstyle where you can create different "units" to do the mundane stuff for you. Just imagine starting a KSP game as it is now and doing all these things yourself, and then unlocking the ability to tell other "Kerbal Krews" to continue doing the mining or the refining or the science on a particular planetary base so that you (the player) can remain at the forefront of discovery and keep building rockets that use cleaner fuels, hotter fuels, more efficient fuels, stronger structural bodies, heat resistant bodies (bye bye heat sheilds) etc etc. And it doesn't have to be just technological gains either. You could have funding play a part as well: Company A will give you a science boost if you establish a radio communication relay in orbit/on the surface. Company B will give you 20 prospective astronaughts that you don't have to hire (and pay for) if you build a base on planet whatever.

The bottom line is that as long as planets remain barren wastelands, the only reason to ever go there is merely just to say that you've been there. If we put the keys to better tech on those planets in the form of mine-able resources and monies we wouldn't normally have access to, we give players a reason to go there."

Edited June 26, 2017 by Greenfire32
quoted wrong person, formatting, general user error (I'm an idiot)

[sirgoodman]

Even if they don't add an LS an assortment of base parts would give the game so much more.