Kerbal X-tended

[BlackAdder128]

Ok, I will preface this by saying this may be a stupid idea, and is almost certainly impractical. Yet I just can't get it out of my head.

I've always enjoyed games like Elite, and a couple years back I briefly had a blast with X3: Terran conflict. It had lots of combat, a halfway-decent space trading econ simulator, and such scriptability. However, as much as I enjoyed space fighting and trading games, there was always a voice in the back of my mind screaming, "But Physics!"

But now I've come to know and love KSP: Physics is here. So I find myself wondering, what would it look like if you added trading, combat, and scriptability to KSP? People have already done some of the work, as there's MechJeb, numberous weapon mods, and mods that add new resources. But what if you could mine a wider variety of salable resources? What if there were competing Kerbal space agencies that placed a few stations in various orbits where you could dock and trade resources, steal them, or simply rapidly dis-assemble your competition? Perhaps you could keep positive relations with one space agency that you used a a fence.

Meanwhile, mercenary combat seems like it could be pretty doable. I could imagine using something like CupCake's dropship with a couple weapons to fend off pirates and do some bounty-hunting.

What if the progression in the game started with a trading ship in orbit instead of a VAB on the ground, and you had to lease the use of a company's VAB until you could buy your own?

I just have to ask, on a scale of merely impractical to utterly nuts, what do other people think of the idea?

[sarbian]

The idea is not a bad one but the required work is... extensive.

StarCitizen multiplayer is out next year and should be close to what you want

[roguelycan]

I have often times thought how cool a open world game like Eve and a physics construction game like KSP would mesh. I dont think current PCs could handle something like that yet but when we get there it will be a cool game.

[BlackAdder128]

The idea is not a bad one but the required work is... extensive.

StarCitizen multiplayer is out next year and should be close to what you want

I agree the amount of work would be quite high. I might have to dig in and do a toy mod to convince myself just to convince myself of the insanity of the idea.

I've got a Star Citizen account. I think the result will have high immersion, but any game that surrenders to "You have a max speed of X m/s (where X <= fighter jet speeds)" doesn't quite satisfy my "But physics!" dream.

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I have often times thought how cool a open world game like Eve and a physics construction game like KSP would mesh. I dont think current PCs could handle something like that yet but when we get there it will be a cool game.

My potentially naive sense is that the PCs probably could handle something like that if you yield a bit on the graphics side and take full advantage of multi-threading. PC's are tapering off in terms of single-threaded performance. If you want more power, it's multi-threading or bust. But I don't see Unity, etc. taking full advantage of that yet.

[sarbian]

I have an SC account too. I agree that the speed limits are hard to swallow but they are a valid choice for the gameplay. Without that any interception of a vessel that had some time to accelerate become impossible.

But I don't see Unity, etc. taking full advantage of that yet.

Unity 5 already does it. The next major KSP version should have it.

[BlackAdder128]

I have an SC account too. I agree that the speed limits are hard to swallow but they are a valid choice for the gameplay. Without that any interception of a vessel that had some time to accelerate become impossible.

I know why they do it, and it's certainly a valid gameplay choice. I agree that a game that doesn't have those things is a big risk (would combat still "work" and be fun?), but that's part of why it's so interesting.

Unity 5 already does it. The next major KSP version should have it.

Supporting thread safety and debugging is definitely a nice step, but I'm skeptical that processor utilization will be high out of the box. I imagine there's still a lot of library and end-developer work left to really get the performance, but I'd be happy to be wrong!