chaos_forge

As far as probe-sized engines are concerned, I would much prefer an electric propeller, as that would allow us to finally make probes that can fly on any planet with an atmosphere

In friday's squadcast, Maxmaps revealed that the "deep-space refueling" method that was mentioned in the Beta plan would be somehow tied to asteroids. What are the community's thoughts on this? I for one think it's a good idea, but I hope they also give us a way to refuel on the ground.

I just wanted to let everyone know that the devs have at least partially heard our pleas: The "R&D facility is closed" messages are gone from sandbox! evidence: http://youtu.be/o5XSkds5Glw?t=14m40s

If we're going to be talking about possible improvements to science, I suggest looking at some of the solutions that have been proposed in the past:

I don't think radiation levels would change appreciably after an asteroid impact: the energy released by an asteroid impact is all kinetic energy, radiation doesn't come into it. So unless the Earth is colliding with a Ceres-sized lump of Uranium (how would that even form in the first place though?), the radiation levels on the Earth's surface would remain more or less the same. As for what caused the temperature rise, that is the kinetic energy of Ceres. A massive object moving at orbital speeds has a truly ENORMOUS amount of energy. So, when all that kinetic energy is transfered to Earth, it has to go somewhere. The somewhere is goes to is a massive increase in the Earth's temperature. The chances of a object the size of Ceres impacting the Earth are practically zero. The only situation I can think of in which it *might* happen would be if a rouge gas giant comes in from outside the solar system and messes up the orbits of all the planets/asteroids/etc. As for whether the specific numbers were accurate, I don't know.

I don't think changing the the ISP mechanic would be nearly as catastrophic as you make it out to be. First of all, the code that governs ISP behavior can't be that complicated, as 1) the behavior isn't that complicated (it's a single variable equation), and 2) the plugins that fix the behavior aren't that complicated. In regards to re-balancing, changing the aerodynamic model would require a rebalance anyways, so if the change the aero model, they may as well include correct ISP behavior. Finally, I see absolutely no reason why changing the ISP behavior would break saves. If they can change the thrust of the Ion engine without breaking saves, they can change the ISP behavior without breaking saves. In fact, I've installed mods that have a plugin that corrects the ISP behavior, and didn't even notice it until 2 weeks later! TL;DR: Yes, the pros of correct ISP behavior are small, but so are the cons. EDIT: wow I got triple-ninja'd XD

Aerodynamics: Personally, I think the devs should shoot for a aerodynamics system like NEAR. FAR is a bit too complex for my tastes, but NEAR occupies a perfect middle ground. ISP: This is a no-brainer. In fact I vaguely remember a dev (C7 maybe?) saying that the current ISP behavior is broken and they simply haven't gotten around to fixing it yet. Universe Scale This should remain as it is: a mod for those who wish to increase their difficulty Re-entry Danger I've played with DR before, and it really doesn't affect your game that much. And if we want to be realistic, Kerbin reentry at 2km/s should be MUCH less deadly than Earth reentry at 9km/s. I'd be fine with it being included in stock. Life Support My main problem with life support is that it usually adds 5-10 resources just for life support, which can get annoying fast. I would, however, support an implementation similar to that of the Snacks! mod, for example. In general, I think making realism options something you choose at the beginning of the game would split the player base too much. I'm more in favor of finding a middle ground between the casual and hardcore players, such as NEAR for aerodynamics and Snacks! for life support.

This. Before the devs add more star systems, we need planets to be more interesting. That said, there are ways to include other star systems without needing to add warp drives. First of all, if you have Kerbol be part of a binary star system, you can have the other star be relatively close, say 10 or 20 Jool orbits away from Kerbol. Certainly not close, but not far enough to require a warp drive. Second, you can have STL interstellar drives that don't make interplanetary travel too easy. For example: consider we have an Orion drive that adds 10km/s delta-v per pulse. If we instead have it randomly add between 8 and 12 km/s to our velocity, then if we use it to get to a planet, we'd still have around 1 km/s to kill with conventional engines. However, when going to another star, this would be a small price to pay. Combined with the fact that an Orion drive would probably be heavy, unwieldy, and expensive, this is enough to make an interstellar STL drive not be OP.

Fair, but once every Kerbin year is definitely a lot more managable than once every 100 years.

Holy necroposting, Batman! Anyways, the whole thing about launch windows to other star systems is why I'm a fan of implementing binary star systems: since the relative location a star to its partner doesn't change, you don't have to wait 100 years for a launch window, just launch whenever. That said, I'd be fine with KSP 1.0 having only one star system and the whole issue being postponed to an expansion.

Would studying an entire extraterrestrial biosphere not be a pretty good reason? Also, going to Jool in the Kerbal solar system is only 8km/s if you play with FAR, which means that basically, for the price of the ISS you could have a Laythe base. Not to mention that since getting to orbit would be so cheap, we would probably have a lot more space infrastucture, which means getting to space is even cheaper. SSTOs would also be much more viable. I mean, the Blackbird could get up to 980m/s (almost half of orbital velocity) on pure turbojet, no fancy RAM or SABRE technology or anthing. And considering the much lower reentry speeds, heating isn't nearly as much of an issue, which means a much cheaper space shuttle program. Cost to orbit today is $10,000 per kg. Let's say in the Kerbal solar system it's 10x cheaper. Imagine what we could to if you could put a satellite in orbit for the price of buying a house!

That's not quite how geometry works. "size" is an imprecise term. Kerbin is one-tenth the radius of Earth: Earth's radius is 6371km, while Kerbin's is an even 600km. However, surface area depends on radius squared, so Kerbin actually has roughly one hundredth the surface area of Earth. Similarly, volume depends on radius cubed, so depending on how you define size, Kerbin is one tenth, one hundredth, or one thousandth the size of Earth. Here's the specific math: Surface area = 4 * pi * radius^2 Earth radius = ~6000 km Earth surface area = 4 * pi * 6000^2 = ~452,000,000 km^2 Kerbin radius = 600km Kerbin Surface area = 4 * pi * 600^2 = ~4,520,000 km^2

If you're into mods, another option is to install the always useful SelectRoot. Then just make the docking port the root part, and save.

How much doens n-body affect the stability of orbits, though? I don't think many people enjoy station-keeping, and patched conics works pretty well as a first-order approximation.

Hmm, so Duna would most likely end up like Antarctica: a few small research bases, but not much more. The thin atmosphere would make for great telescopes though, and if it's geologically dead like Mars is, it would also be great for laser interferometer gravitational wave detectors . . . What about Laythe, then? Assuming the biosphere has a chemistry compatible with our own, self sufficient bases would be MUCH easier to set up . . .

Perhaps I am too late, but I would urge caution against turing this into an all-or-nothing argument. Realism is a continuous scale, and we all fall on different places along it. I myself have tried RSS and found it unenjoyable, but I happily play with NEAR and DRE, and I think they should be stock.

I wonder which would be easier to terraform: Eve or Duna? For landing and lifting off again, Duna would certainly be of more interest to humans. But with 0.2 atm pressure and temperatrues ranging from -50 to -30°C, Duna at its lowest points would be about as harsh conditions as the summit of mount Everest. And at the top of its 8km high mountains, it would probably be unsurvivable. Eve on the other hand gets even more sun than Kerbin, which would be good for plants and power generation, but at 5atm and 150°C, it seems more like a pressure cooker than a habitable place. The plateaus would be somewhat more livable; the pressure is "only" 2.5atm at 5km, and we know extremophiles that can live at those temperatures. Penal colony maybe?

according to the wiki, kerbin's surface area is about 4 million km^2, and Saudi Arabia is only 2 million km^2. But still, same order of magnitude. I was however considering that the population would have stabilized at some (lower than 7 billion) number. Still, with such a radically smaller planet, wouldn't lebensraum be a much more pressing reason to colonize other planets than it is on Earth? Also, with such a small surface area to govern, Kerbin would probably be governed by a world government. Not sure how that would change things . . .

Ignoring how such a solar system was formed, assume everything else in physics was the same (maybe it's in a universe with a different gravitational constant). Anyways, the forum post about Duna being survivable with only an O2 mask got me to thinking: what if humans lived in the kerbal solar system? How many planets would we have colonized? Duna with its 0.2atm atmospheric pressure, and Eve with its 5atm are both much more survivable than Mars and Venus, with .006atm and 92atm respectively. Not to mention Laythe, which is positively Earthlike. And to top it all off, delta-v costs are much lower than on Earth. However, to offset this, Kerbin has a much smaller surface area, which probably means a much smaller population and industrial base. Would that be enough to keep humans as grounded as they have been on Earth? Feel free to make up stories, theories, what have you.

To answer Steven Mading's question, this is pretty much what I had in mind. Something that would be nice but definitely not neccessary would be for the science and funds counters to still be available. This would not be a limit: if you spend more funds/science than you make, the counters would go into the negatives, but there would be no gameplay repercussions.

I'm a bit undecided about reputation. It might be best to keep it unchanged, seeing as how it serves (or should serve) to provide contracts appropriate to the player's skill level. Also, (at least for now) it's absurdly easy to max out your reputation (reputation mechanic needs a lot more work IMO).

That idea is genius, sir/madam!

This. Also while we're at it, I would like to see a symbol for ships assembled in space that never land, as opposed to the capsule symbol for smaller ships.

I think that 0.625-meter is a perfect size for an electric-powered propeller. I would rather have one of those than a 0.625-meter jet.

Agreed. Even if they do nothing else, I seriously hope the devs change the sandbox science messages.