Planetary Improvements

[Xordus]

KSP is my favorite game of all time, no doubt about it.  It's a rare game that rewards learning and makes science FUN.  It's done more to advance scientific literacy in those exposed to it than any documentary, movie, or any other type of media; a true masterpiece in that regard.

One area where it falls woefully short is the detail of it's celestial bodies.  Planets and moons are fairly uniform rocks in KSP.  There's no flora/fauna (besides trees...).  There are no "habitats" or distinctive features of any kind within a planet/moon.  The bodies themselves are distinct from one-another but no variation exists between regions besides very broad traits like flat terrain, bumpy terrain, liquid terrain.

I don't want to say the game needs alive ecosystems, that would be a ludicrous task for an entire solar system of massive planets, but I'd love to experience the sort of exploratory exhilaration that exists in a game like Subnautica.  KSP is so much more broad, and therefore necessarily would be infinitely less dense, but Squad could still infuse the planets with a sense of wonder apart from "yay I got here".  

 

TLDR:  My dream for KSP is for an expansion that focuses on fleshing out the planetary bodies, adding regional characteristics that are more focused than what exists now.  Some planets would obviously still be very bland (like our moon) but on every world there should be interesting things to find if you looked hard enough or maybe built some machines to search for (satellites to scan down regions of interest, and then probes to narrow the search, then rovers or manned craft to find the object or whatever the find might be).  Maybe they could tie it to scientific discovery where you're searching for unique features that would advance understanding of the planets and may unlock further research.  I think KSP has the greatest sense of wonder in gaming until you actually get where you're going, then it's a bit underwhelming, giving you little reason to come back (other than arbitrary contracts or personal goals).  KSP could expand infinitely on that sense of exploration that so imbued it when we all first landed on the Mun.

 I'd also like to see costs for sending Kerbals offworld, thereby promoting the use of probes instead of doing everything in person.

The worlds as they stand are bland and fairly featureless, I would pay a lot to see that change.

[qzgy]

2 hours ago, Xordus said:

The worlds as they stand are bland and fairly featureless, I would pay a lot to see that change.

This is a very common complaint. In general, the consensus seems to be that once you get to somewhere, there's not much to actually do. I too would like to see more things to do on a world.

[Geonovast]

I agree, we need more to do.  I'm not overly concerned with how pretty it is... one of the more appealing aspects of the game is that it runs decently ok on older PCs.  Don't need to start requiring higher power GPUs.

But the game could certainly use more planetary interaction, with some emphasis on sandbox mode as well.

BTW: Your TL;DR blurb is longer than the section its supposed to summarize...

[Jack5.exe]

I feel its mostly fine in my opinion, I just want better ground detail

Edited February 18, 2018 by Jack5.exe

[sevenperforce]

45 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

I agree, we need more to do.  I'm not overly concerned with how pretty it is... one of the more appealing aspects of the game is that it runs decently ok on older PCs.  Don't need to start requiring higher power GPUs.

But the game could certainly use more planetary interaction, with some emphasis on sandbox mode as well.

Indeed. Sandbox play is huge in KSP but you end up with little reason to do anything once you arrive. And definitely no reason to colonize.

[qzgy]

2 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

And definitely no reason to colonize.

Other than for the sake of doing it.

[sevenperforce]

8 minutes ago, qzgy said:

Other than for the sake of doing it.

Yet even "doing it" is hard because there is nothing that can definitively be termed colonization. You can land a bunch of ships, and some of them can have kerbals inside, and that's a "colony" if you want it to be, but there's nothing qualitatively different between a one-way mission and colonization.

You can recreate particular real-world plans, but that's about it.

[Xordus]

I like the idea of the Making History expansion, it's a totally different take on Kerbal which adds a lot of new playability.  I just hope that they're not "done" with Kerbal after this expansion (unless it's to make Kerbal 2).  If they're not done I would expect another expansion to focus more on what already exists within the scope of the game.  Interstellar would be ridiculous as there's no scientific basis for it so one of the other huge impact points would be iterating upon the planetary bodies.  There's so much that could be done and also intertwined with the "Making History" Mission Builder. 

 

The Planetary Bodies themselves are the most underwhelming portion of Kerbal and I really hope that before they consider this game "Complete" they expand upon their limited features.

Edited February 22, 2018 by Xordus