A bunch of new stuff

[Xd the great]

So, on a sleepless night, I thought about some new stuff to add into the game.

 

1. Sleep rota. Kerbals take turn sleeping. During sleep, kerbals close their eyes and look like they are sleeping. If called for eva, the will do stuff, but will look sleepy. Yet, you can still control your ship.

 

2. Angry kerbals. Kerbals without snacks and no connection to the ksc will have a higher risk to be angry. Smashing buttons and shouting. Does not affect control of the ship. This risk is based on a new trait. Other kerbals will be either horrified, angry or smiling, depending on the traits of the bystanders.

 

3. Impact crators. Impacting anywhere will create new crators. This can be irreversible. Anyother reason to not crash your ships.

 

4. Paint flecking. Paint will fleck off and become debris. Ship will look crappy without paint. Kerbals on eva can repaint ship.

 

5. Semi-autonomous robots. Looks like kerbals. Requires science to unlock. Does not need food and other stuff, and can do evas to repair ships, collect surface aamples.

 

Feel free to discuss. Or add details.

[Chel]

This is incredibly unrealistic for the developers to add to the game (except the crater part).

[Xd the great]

21 minutes ago, The_Cat_In_Space said:

This is incredibly unrealistic for the developers to add to the game (except the crater part).

The robots should be simpler. Sleepy kerbals should just require a new face.

[DoctorDavinci]

1 hour ago, Xd the great said:

The robots should be simpler. Sleepy kerbals should just require a new face.

Yes, I agree with @The_Cat_In_Space to a degree that this is unrealistic given the scope of the game ... however some of the things you mention here have already been accomplished through mods

Edited July 17, 2018 by DoctorDavinci

[Xd the great]

2 hours ago, DoctorDavinci said:

Yes, I agree with @The_Cat_In_Space to a degree that this is unrealistic given the scope of the game ... however some of the things you mention here have already been accomplished through mods

Which mods?

[Gargamel]

6 hours ago, Xd the great said:

1. Sleep rota. Kerbals take turn sleeping. During sleep, kerbals close their eyes and look like they are sleeping. If called for eva, the will do stuff, but will look sleepy. Yet, you can still control your ship.

Having played other games that have manual crew rotation forced on you, I can say it's not fun at all to play.  It's a horrible game mechanic, especially when you are time warping.  Every so many hours you have to drop out of warp, adjust your crew, then go back into warp.   It's a complete immersion killer.  A lot of games that have forced crew rotation, the player has to set crews to rotate on a schedule and they do it for you, and which ever watch/crew is active at the time is the crew you are using.   In KSP, and other games that are crewed but do not force a manual rotation on you, it is assumed that the crew follow a standard shift rotation, but when you call on them to do something, they are active immediately.   

If your suggestion is merely a cosmetic one, I'll have to rank it slightly higher than "meh".  If they added a sleeping kerbal to the expressions, then that's neat, but I won't lose sleep (pun sorta intended) over not having it. 

6 hours ago, Xd the great said:

2. Angry kerbals. Kerbals without snacks and no connection to the ksc will have a higher risk to be angry. Smashing buttons and shouting. Does not affect control of the ship. This risk is based on a new trait. Other kerbals will be either horrified, angry or smiling, depending on the traits of the bystanders. 

You are describing one outcome of Life support.  There are a bunch of LS mods out there already.  A whole LS system would have to be introduced to incorporate this. 

6 hours ago, Xd the great said:

4. Paint flecking. Paint will fleck off and become debris. Ship will look crappy without paint. Kerbals on eva can repaint ship.

No.... just.... no.... I don't see any benefit at all to this, only downsides. 

 

6 hours ago, Xd the great said:

5. Semi-autonomous robots. Looks like kerbals. Requires science to unlock. Does not need food and other stuff, and can do evas to repair ships, collect surface aamples.

We have probe cores and rovers.    Robots are very bad at repairing damage.   Replacing parts yes, but mending and fixing with what you have, no.   Bad.  How many spare tires or solar panels does your ship carry again?    But without a life support system, kerbals are exactly what you describe. 

[Lisias]

2 hours ago, Gargamel said:

Having played other games that have manual crew rotation forced on you, I can say it's not fun at all to play.  It's a horrible game mechanic, especially when you are time warping.  Every so many hours you have to drop out of warp, adjust your crew, then go back into warp.   It's a complete immersion killer.  A lot of games that have forced crew rotation, the player has to set crews to rotate on a schedule and they do it for you, and which ever watch/crew is active at the time is the crew you are using.   In KSP, and other games that are crewed but do not force a manual rotation on you, it is assumed that the crew follow a standard shift rotation, but when you call on them to do something, they are active immediately.

I see your point, and sort if agree with it. I disagree on the point in which is always a immersion killer.

I like the idea of crew rotation to allow me to plan strategically: there're mods that make parts fail as they are used, so we need to add redundancy on our vessels, and this would do the same for the crew. Of course I can do it without the mod, but so my planning errors would not be detected and punished - it would be like playing KSP with the all cheats on: you can do it, but what would be challenge on it?

Of course, doing it manually would be a pain in the SAS (pun), as much as would be piloting the vessel without SAS (not pun). So, the auto-crew-rotating should be automatically with an option to being disabled.

This kind of logistics would add a new level of immersion on bigger ships, a niche that I'm exploring right now and where such feature would be made this very challenging and entertaining.

But this is where I agree with you: should be enabled only for the vessels the user wants (if any at all) and should have some automation. I don't think this is something that should be in stock, so probably must be something to be added by some LS mod.

[Lisias]

On 7/16/2018 at 9:34 PM, Xd the great said:

1. Sleep rota. Kerbals take turn sleeping. During sleep, kerbals close their eyes and look like they are sleeping. If called for eva, the will do stuff, but will look sleepy. Yet, you can still control your ship.

There's a MOD that adds Health to the game, so a good part of what you want already exists. My suggestion is to add "Restness" as a Kerbal attribute, and make this attribute cause influence on the Kerbal actions - and on Health.

I'm one that wants rest places and hospitals on my vessels, so yah - I with you on it. See my previous post to more ideas.

 

On 7/16/2018 at 9:34 PM, Xd the great said:

2. Angry kerbals. Kerbals without snacks and no connection to the ksc will have a higher risk to be angry. Smashing buttons and shouting. Does not affect control of the ship. This risk is based on a new trait. Other kerbals will be either horrified, angry or smiling, depending on the traits of the bystanders.

This made me remember of a old game that also implement something like this, Apple 2's Project Space Station.

This is an interesting feature, but boy I advance you that it would make the game a lot harder. On the game I mentioned, simetiems the crew simply refuses to work with each other if I don't assemble the crews correctly. You have no choice but to replace crew mates or the job just won't advance.

As the crew rotating, this is not for everyone so probably another mod only implementation. But yes, it would add a new degree of challenge to KSP.

 

On 7/16/2018 at 9:34 PM, Xd the great said:

3. Impact crators. Impacting anywhere will create new crators. This can be irreversible. Anyother reason to not crash your ships.

This is easy to add, Kerbal Konstructs to the rescue. The krater would be just another construction on the ground.

Can be a burden to the FPS however, as it adds meshes and meshes to the scene. My KSC would have a munar look and feel.  

 

On 7/16/2018 at 9:34 PM, Xd the great said:

4. Paint flecking. Paint will fleck off and become debris. Ship will look crappy without paint. Kerbals on eva can repaint ship.

This one I don't get. I don't see how it would add value to the game.

 

On 7/16/2018 at 9:34 PM, Xd the great said:

5. Semi-autonomous robots. Looks like kerbals. Requires science to unlock. Does not need food and other stuff, and can do evas to repair ships, collect surface aamples.

This looks something that would be more fun with kOS and/or kRPC. What do you think? You would need to program the thing to make it useful.

Otherwise, it would be just KSP without Life Support, what it's essentially… the stock game.  

Edited July 18, 2018 by Lisias
yeah. more typos.

[Xd the great]

The robots will look cooler, be able to use rcs to do stuff, and be able to be stored in a specialized cargo bay. 

Plus IVA stuff i guess.

The crators should be automatically added, by making edits to the moon model.

Is there an angry kerbal mod out there by the way? Wanna have kerbals smash stuff.

Edited July 17, 2018 by Xd the great

[Xd the great]

Paint flecking will be good to create kesseler syndrome.

[Gargamel]

20 hours ago, Lisias said:

I see your point, and sort if agree with it. I disagree on the point in which is always a immersion killer.

I like the idea of crew rotation to allow me to plan strategically: there're mods that make parts fail as they are used, so we need to add redundancy on our vessels, and this would do the same for the crew. Of course I can do it without the mod, but so my planning errors would not be detected and punished - it would be like playing KSP with the all cheats on: you can do it, but what would be challenge on it?

Of course, doing it manually would be a pain in the SAS (pun), as much as would be piloting the vessel without SAS (not pun). So, the auto-crew-rotating should be automatically with an option to being disabled.

This kind of logistics would add a new level of immersion on bigger ships, a niche that I'm exploring right now and where such feature would be made this very challenging and entertaining.

But this is where I agree with you: should be enabled only for the vessels the user wants (if any at all) and should have some automation. I don't think this is something that should be in stock, so probably must be something to be added by some LS mod.

It's an immersion killer if it breaks the smooth flow of game play.   

Example, Silent Hunter 3, a WWII u-boat simulation.  You would go out on patrol for long periods of time, sometimes up to 6 months depending on the scenario.  During this time, there could be long stretches of time where you would encounter no other vessels, days to weeks.   But your crew needed rotated every 8 hours I believe to keep them functioning in their roles.   If they started to drop in ability, the chances of missing a contact were increased (ie the look outs were nodding off in the sturm), or torpedoes couldn't fire, or the electric engines couldn't be started.  So instead of being able to time warp merrily across the ocean, you would have to break time warp three times a day to rotate the crew.   One of the most popular mods for SH3 became a no crew rotation mod, as it was assumed as a ship captain, you wouldn't be micro managing shifts, the other officers and NCO's would be doing so.    So when an alarm was called, the crews would be in their stations, ready to go.

Now imagine we're on a trip back from Jool (what 2 years?), and you have that science lab chugging away.  If we had to break warp once a day to rotate out the crew, that would be horrible.   

[Xd the great]

Nah, the crew will still be able to do stuff, they just look sleepy. Or it could be controlled by difficulty.

Kerbals snoring? Yes please.

[Lisias]

6 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

It's an immersion killer if it breaks the smooth flow of game play.   

Not with automation. The exact same problem happens with SAS - you just can't keep your vessel on Normal while warping - so that would be the solution? Getting rid of SAS?  

7 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

Example, Silent Hunter 3, a WWII u-boat simulation.  You would go out on patrol for long periods of time, sometimes up to 6 months depending on the scenario.  During this time, there could be long stretches of time where you would encounter no other vessels, days to weeks.   But your crew needed rotated every 8 hours I believe to keep them functioning in their roles.   […] So when an alarm was called, the crews would be in their stations, ready to go.

Automation.  

In the very same way that vessel rotation is killed by timewarp but can be "resurrected" by PersistentRotation, when you timewarp or the ship is on rails, the rotation would be just implied. There're mods that fix the EC issues on time warping - the same mechanics applies.

 

14 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

Now imagine we're on a trip back from Jool (what 2 years?), and you have that science lab chugging away.  If we had to break warp once a day to rotate out the crew, that would be horrible.   

Yes, Exactly my point. The challenge of making Kerbals with different traits working together. Add to that the Kerbalism and the Health mods, and you end up planning a real world mission (obviously, given the limitations of the KSP simulation and the abstractions of the mentioned mods).

Some people use KSP to play Naval Battles instead of flying space ships. Why "Kerbal Resources Management" would not be allowed?

It's ok not to like it.  But it's ok to like it too.

[Gargamel]

1 minute ago, Lisias said:

Not with automation.

But we already have automation in stock.    It is easily assumed that crews are not at their post the entirety of a voyage.  They have scheduled their work and sleep shifts so that when a planned maneuver is coming up, they are all on duty.   Science from a Lab per day is the aggregate of all the science they have produced, on duty or off. 

But we're talking about stock here, so let's keep this and the following comment in their respective cubby holes. 

4 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Yes, Exactly my point. The challenge of making Kerbals with different traits working together. Add to that the Kerbalism and the Health mods, and you end up planning a real world mission (obviously, given the limitations of the KSP simulation and the abstractions of the mentioned mods).

I would love to see a mod that implements an automatic crew rotation.   Where if I wanted a pilot on duty all the time, I would need two of them, each for a 3 hour duty shift (assuming a kerbal is awake for 3 hours and sleep 3 hours out of the 6 hour kerbal day).  This would cover all crew assignments, so you'd have to bring up a complete A & B crew for missions.  If you didn't there would have to be some lag time between when you need a crew member to function at an unscheduled moment (like rotating the ship to orient the panels not near a manuever node), maybe 5 minutes of game time.   Scheduled events would be known so they would be crewed. 

But Manually doing this forced crew rotation is a bad bad idea.    Just for an example, send up a mission to minmus.   Every three hours of game time, drop out of warp, manually switch your A& B crews between compartments, and then start warping again.   You are going to spend a solid hour of real life time just moving crew around for the trip to and from minmus.  Manual crew rotation is just not practical for long duration voyages. 

[Lisias]

3 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

But Manually doing this forced crew rotation is a bad bad idea.    Just for an example, send up a mission to minmus.   Every three hours of game time, drop out of warp, manually switch your A& B crews between compartments, and then start warping again.   You are going to spend a solid hour of real life time just moving crew around for the trip to and from minmus.  Manual crew rotation is just not practical for long duration voyages. 

It would depends on the experience you are willing to get.

Manually rotating the crew would be needed in order to experiment with different traits working together, in a "what if" fashion. More or less what we do on the VAB/SPH - we tweak something, give it a crash try, come back and tweak it again. Repeat until success or mom calls for dinner.  

But I agree on the point that doing that every single time would be painful. Once one manage to get the configuration he wants, the rotating must be automated.  

There're people that enjoys making crafts to the point they barely touch the Career (I bough KSP in December, and only in the past 2 weeks I finally started a career!). Some others enjoy downloading made crafts to be used on their career - they enjoy the execution of the mission, not the planning/construction.

Same thing here. Don't like it, don't install it. But if by any chance there're more masochists like me around , this would be interesting.

 

[Gargamel]

2 minutes ago, Lisias said:

(I bough KSP in December, and only in the past 2 weeks I finally started a career!)

I went 4 years before starting a career game!

[Xd the great]

Wow I was suggesting pure cosmetic effects on sleepy crew, and ended up with a in depth discussion on automated crew rotation.

Thats da spirit.