Designing vehicles for space RPG

[Da'ud Vyd]

I'd like to use KSP as a guide to designing somewhat realistic spaceplanes and spacecraft for a tabletop role playing game. However, the characters in the game are human and they explore our solar system. Is it possible to use KSP to design vehicles for human beings? Is it possible to change the solar system to match our own? Any other limitations or mods I should consider?

[Snark]

Hello, and welcome to the forums! 

1 hour ago, Da'ud Vyd said:

I'd like to use KSP as a guide to designing somewhat realistic spaceplanes and spacecraft for a tabletop role playing game. However, the characters in the game are human and they explore our solar system. Is it possible to use KSP to design vehicles for human beings? Is it possible to change the solar system to match our own? Any other limitations or mods I should consider?

Moving to Add-on Discussions, since you're asking mainly about mods.

2 hours ago, Da'ud Vyd said:

Is it possible to use KSP to design vehicles for human beings?

Who's to say they're not?  If you're doing a tabletop game, you're using, what, renders of the outside of spacecraft?  Unless you toggle IVA view, it's not particularly obvious from looking at the outside of the craft that they're designed for kerbals instead of humans, at least to my eyeballs.

Can you elaborate on your use case?

Trying to replace kerbals with humans in-game would be... kinda hard, I think.  Certainly I've never seen anyone doing that (please, nobody link to those super creepy-looking kerbals that were given a "human" reskin, I still have nightmares about that).  Doesn't mean it's necessarily impossible or that such a mod doesn't exist somewhere, just that it's not something that's commonly done, as far as I know.

That said:  there are part mods out there designed to mimic various historical spacecraft, if that's what you're looking for.

 

2 hours ago, Da'ud Vyd said:

Is it possible to change the solar system to match our own?

Absolutely, this is a popular thing to do.  The mod you want is "Real Solar System", frequently referred to as RSS.

 

[Da'ud Vyd]

Snark, thank you for these details. Here are the questions I'm trying to solve with Kerbal: 

1. What would near future spacepanes or spacecrafts look like?

2. What would be their performance specs, advantages, and disadvantages?

3. What would be their volume and mass?

4. What would a deck plan look like? How much room do the engines take? The fuel? 

Are Kerbal rocket engines scaled down from their real world equivelents to match the size of Kerbals and the distance between planets in the stock solar system?

Is it possible to change component specs (e.g. thrust, fuel efficiency) without much trouble?

My current plan is to create a (somewhat) working prototype in Kerbal and then use 3d software to create my final version with some style and texture differences. It didn't look like Kerbal mods permitted commercial use.