404james

I am ashamed to say that I recognized exactly none of these.

I made a thread about a related, but distinct, Idea, before I saw this one. the thread is located at http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/77047-Another-take-on-development-of-parts. I was a bit wordy in my thread, but the basic idea is, instead of having parts level up passively, give the player control over how much to optimize each part, at a cost for each individual part, then make it cheaper as they gain experience/tech/whatever.

I've been thinking. there have on numerous occasions been suggestions to have some species of system by which a part, as it is used, gains 'experience' of some description, such that later ships that use that part will have it more efficient, or more powerful, or some such. this is a good proposal, and I would be quite happy were it to be implemented. But it does introduce some issues. Take, for instance, the sharing of craft files. If someone with full experience on an engine, which might make it more efficient, builds a spacecraft for a mission requiring a certain amount of delta-V, and shares the craft file with his buddy, who has less experience on that part, who launches the same mission with that craft, the shared version may not be able to complete the mission. This has negative implications for challenges, among other things. There may be a solution, though. when a real space program builds, for example, a rocket engine, they build (or contract a company to build) it with very specific parameters, one at a time, varying their parameters, and their budget, to be tailored to the mission. I think this could be done in KSP. When you build a part, such as an engine, there would be a bar on the tweakables menu, for budget. Increasing the budget would make engines more efficient, reduce dry weight of fuel tanks, and so forth, but would increase the cost to build and launch that part, on a case by case basis. So, if I make a rocket engine, and I need it to be very efficient, I can put a lot of money into building it, and get an appropriately powerful engine, but if, the next time around, I'm on a tighter budget, but don't need it to be as powerful, I can spend less on construction, saving money and getting something less powerful. There could also be bonuses associated with it that change costs. for instance, if I just unlocked a part, it could cost a good deal to improve the performance, but I would still have the same range of capability. Then, as I unlock technologies related to the part, or gain experience using it, or even just buy a lot of them, the price to optimize it would start to decrease. This way, if person A builds a vehicle with a highly optimized part, which he has invested a lot in, then shares the craft file with his buddy, person B, who has invested less in that part, person B will still get the same vehicle as person A, with the same performance, but it will cost him more to launch it.

I do like the idea, as I certainly agree that achievements with new capabilities should grant some scientific benefit. One other way it could be done is to have each tech node have tasks that can be performed in lieu of some of the science cost. For instance, if you successfully make an atmospheric flight of a certain duration, and land safely, that could mean less science needed to unlock better aircraft parts.

Maybe not magnetism then. perhaps it could just be some sort of gravioli generator. Odds are it would be quite heavy, expensive, and power consuming, not to mention the late placement on the tech tree, but the uses are, as has been mentioned, endless.

I agree. perhaps, the more kerbals you abandon, the less likely skilled applicants are to sign up for astronaut candidacy. alternatively, (or in addition,) the crews family could sue you, or you could lose reputation of some kind..

I agree with this, as a low priority thing. perhaps a "Mission Archives" building that would track the logs for each mission, and an "Air and Space Museum" that would have exhibits of all the craft you recover. Edit: this just occurred to me: if there's ever an option to reuse the parts recovered from a craft, perhaps there could be an option, on recovery, to either reclaim the parts, which would add them back into your stock, or to sell it to the museum, which would give you a lump sum of cash, based on what sort of things the craft did. (a ship that went to the moon would be worth more than a suborbital craft.)

I don't see why it wouldn't be possible, and it would certainly be useful.

I don't see what you're trying to say. I wasn't sure if they had weight in the capsule. they probably should, but I digress.

This could be even better with the coming tweakable parts, so you could specifically tune your ballast.

I tend to play in a somewhat realistic way, and I would like to be able to test my designs for manned vehicles without having to risk losing a crew. as such, I would like to suggest the addition of parts that are identical in weight and shape to each of the manned capsule. It would function identically to an unmanned probe, but with traits to approximate the manned ones. Alternatively, after unlocking the appropriate technology, you could choose, in the crew menu, to fill the seat of a manned capsule with a computer rather than a crewman. there might also be an option to fill the seat with balast, to simulate the weight of the rest of the crew.

So, right now, when you select a craft on the tracking station, you have an option to switch to it, to terminate it, (removing it entierly,) or, if it's on kerbin, to recover it. The first and last of these make sense, but it seems strange that I can completely obliterate all of a craft's parts without a trace. Instead, I think that it would make sense for it to be replaced with a "decommission" button, which would represent the KSP giving up entirely on maintaining a mission. The craft would turn into debris, and any kerbals inside would be considered KIA. When currency is implemented, this would also stop the costs of upkeep for the mission.

You could simulate other levels of gravity in a building. Just hang the rocket from a crane on the ceiling, pulling upwards at a calculated rate. Not in the least bit accurate, and terribly unsafe to have rockets firing uncontrolled indoors, but since when have we cared about either of those? it is a bit of an oddly specific thing to have built from the start, so perhaps it could wait until we can build buildings for ourselves.

I like this Idea. One more advanced variant might be to allow for the player to construct their own facilities, in a hexagon grid. You could have hexes for assembly buildings, segments of runway, launchpads, vessel storage hangars (so you could launch multiple vessels rapidly without assembling each one after launching the previous,) Tracks for mobile launchpads (connecting VABs to launchpads,) Taxiways(connecting SPHs to runways,) R&D buildings, parts factories, comms stations (if remotetech style comms ever gets implemented,) training buildings, etc. All the road-style things (Runways, taxiways, tracks, etc.) would have different segments for straightaways, bends, forks, etc. I'm starting to realize that this would have been better served by it's own thread, but whatever, it's still on topic.

I, personally, think it would be an interesting touch, but not, strictly speaking, necessary. it would certainly be cool to have some wandering beasts, but I think more diverse flora would be a more important addition, not to mention easier.