How about we get something to find/discover/explore out there?

[Kenobi McCormick]

KSP is a great foundation for space exploration, no denying that. Between the breadth of stock content and the inundation of mods that expand upon and even add new features outright, there's no shortage of parts to use, of types of craft to build, bases, et-al. And that's great!

 

 

But it gets old fast when there's nowhere exciting to send any of it.

 

I may just be burned out....I've had the game since V0.17 after all...but lately, KSP has lost my interest because there's just not anything new to discover in the game. I've been everywhere. At some point between V0.17 and V1.4.4, I've landed on every orbital body, I've escaped the system, crashed into the sun, spaghettified, got kraken'd, you name it. I'm out of cool and interesting things to catapult Kerbals towards. And that's what I think the next major update should add in. Give us something cool to go to. Land on Duna twice...once at a snowy pole once off the ice...you've seen it all. There's nothing new to be found landing in a different spot once you've landed in those two spots. Land on Val? You've seen everything there is to see, it's just the same texture tiled over and over and over and over. Anomalies? Yeah they were neat. Were. I explored them in Versions 0.18-0.21 or so, in fact I remember using the old precursor to SCANSat to find them(I forget what it's called). Same logic applies to pretty much every oribtal body, there's only a small handful of POIs on each one and once you've ticked the boxes there's just not any reason to fly past the Mun. I've even tried mod planets, which is amazing in and of itself....but they have the same problem. Once you land on them a couple times, that's it. They, like the vanilla planets, are just the same texture tiled over and over and over, and like the vanilla planets the terrain itself isn't really varied. You can tell just how 'digital' they really are when you drive across them and see how each area is a perfectly flat tile that's tilted to some degree. Sure, landing on mod planets means it's a different texture to the vanilla planets, but once you've seen it a couple times you've pretty much seen the whole thing.

 

I'm sure I'm not alone. There's tons of people who've just got into the game recently, I'm sure, and to them they still discover new things with every launch. But there's a lot of us here who've already been there, done that, got the t-shirt, and I'm sure the vast majority of us would come flocking back in droves if the next update to the game gave us a metric -beep-tonne of new things to explore, even if they're on the planets we already have. Varied terrain, weather patterns, things floating around in the solar system that aren't planets, let the imagination wander and then whatever it wanders to that the game engine supports should go into the game.

 

 

I dearly want to come back to KSP but I can't bring myself to do it. I usually load up the game, doddle around the space center for 20 minutes building a rover, launch it at a random planet, land, see nothing new, get bored, and go back to ATS or Fallout 4. Can I, and everyone else like me, get our wonderment and sense of discovery back? Can we get new places to go, new things to see on the places we've already been?

Edited September 2, 2018 by Kenobi McCormick

[Wjolcz]

My main problem with the whole exploration aspect is the way scientific "discoveries" are made. Except they aren't because all the scientific instruments aren't even what their name suggests. They are just tech currency generators. Instead, they should generate actual data with graphs and stuff like that.

And before any of you guys quotes me and goes full "but how would you unlock the tech tree if science instruments lost their ability to generate science points?": There are dozens of ways to make career work and most of them are way better than what SQUAD had come up with. I've talked about it so much I'm not answering anyone who quotes this post.

Edited September 2, 2018 by Wjolcz

[RealKerbal3x]

Like what @Wjolcz said above, the science experiments aren't even science experiments. How about we have 'science' as actual scientific data, and leave the unlocking of parts to funds?

And @Kenobi McCormick is absolutely right. Personally, I think Minecraft-style random terrain generation, with (improved) terrain unique to each player would really make Kerbal exploration more worthwhile. I would love to land in a crater on the Mun and think 'hey! I'm the first ever person to land here!'. Kind of like the random green monoliths, but for entire planets.

[Cassel]

3 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

Like what @Wjolcz said above, the science experiments aren't even science experiments. How about we have 'science' as actual scientific data, and leave the unlocking of parts to funds?

And @Kenobi McCormick is absolutely right. Personally, I think Minecraft-style random terrain generation, with (improved) terrain unique to each player would really make Kerbal exploration more worthwhile. I would love to land in a crater on the Mun and think 'hey! I'm the first ever person to land here!'. Kind of like the random green monoliths, but for entire planets.

Maybe science should be mini games? Like lockpicking in Skyrim?

[RealKerbal3x]

Just now, Cassel said:

Maybe science should be mini games? Like lockpicking in Skyrim?

It could be. As long as the science was actually scientific, suitably 'Kerbal' and fun, it would definitely work as a minigame.

[Kenobi McCormick]

I'm not really referring to the specifics of science in career. I'm talking more in general terms, in terms that apply equally to career and sandbox. Though I'm also in favor of doing something to the science system that makes it less of a grind, as that's precisely why I don't play it. It's just grinding. Go here, run the same experiments, take htme there, run them again, unlock more parts, repeat ad nauseum.

[kerbiloid]

Probably the stock science will be never be something another than a simple counter, because it would make the game too nerdish for a common player.

Only mod could solve this. Maybe something like Community Science Kit and mods based on it.

And also a Community Adventurer Kit for gem gatherers.
(Though I guess bonus gems of various kinds could be easily added just in stock)

***

Maybe one more option could be some artifacts to be easily made by users and exchanged between them.
Like in Spore: you make a beast, save it in png file. The png file contains a picture of the beast (it's just a png file) and several bytes at its end which encode the organism structure.
Maybe it's possible to make simple artifacts (even in external editor), write their picture with their (extremely simplified) 3d model code in png file (like in Spore) and publish just here on the forum.
When KSP load such file, it generates cones and cylinders according to the script from the png tail, and you see a simple artifact in game.

Then users could make their own islands of treasures and publish/search them.

Edited September 3, 2018 by kerbiloid

[KerikBalm]

On 9/2/2018 at 4:50 AM, Kenobi McCormick said:

Land on Duna twice...once at a snowy pole once off the ice...you've seen it all. There's nothing new to be found landing in a different spot once you've landed in those two spots.

Well, I'm a bit less pessimistic. There's a big difference in challenge between landing on Duna's highest peak, or in its lowlands. I like to pick a spot to set up a surface base in a lowland with a view of Ike, near the mouth of one of the valleys. Duna's got a bit of interesting things to do "for fun" like flying through the valleys, so I'd say high, low, snow, and valley... 4 places to visit.

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Land on Val? You've seen everything there is to see, it's just the same texture tiled over and over and over and over.

Yea, Val is just 1 uniform noise pattern, landing anywhere there is pretty much the same experience (except anomalies)

On other notes: Landing anywhere on minmus is basically the same, you'll see mountains and some flats, and can eva jetpack to whatever feature you didn't land on. Mun... craters everywhere, 2 sort of cool canyons, thats about it. Eve: "water", shores or mountainous terrain. Kerbin is more interesting than most with deserts, mountains, shores, rivers, lakes, highlands, ice and changing ground scatter (grass, trees, cactus, etc). Most other bodies fall into just lumpy terrain with craters... laythe has some interesting bays for a change of view, but functionally its flat poles, lumpy terrain, water, or relatively flat beaches.

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Anomalies? Yeah they were neat. Were. I explored them in Versions 0.18-0.21 or so, in fact I remember using the old precursor to SCANSat to find them(I forget what it's called).

Well, they added 1 (or was it 2) random anomalies to each body now... they're all the same though, a greenish monolith... that unlocks tech in career mode when found. It encourages you to visit random places on each body, but if each place is qualitatively the same as the last, then it doesn't really help (just like the survey contracts).

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I've even tried mod planets, which is amazing in and of itself....but they have the same problem. Once you land on them a couple times, that's it. They, like the vanilla planets, are just the same texture tiled over and over and over, and like the vanilla planets the terrain itself isn't really varied. You can tell just how 'digital' they really are when you drive across them and see how each area is a perfectly flat tile that's tilted to some degree. Sure, landing on mod planets means it's a different texture to the vanilla planets, but once you've seen it a couple times you've pretty much seen the whole thing.

Well, some mod planets are more varied than others.... explore RSS' mars... or my modded version "Rald": Its got oceans, its got rivers, its got an O2 containing atmosphere, its got volcanos, canyons, craters, mountains, color changing from green near the water to red at high altitude (and white at the poles), "grass" terrain scatter at low altitude (and under water), boulders at all altitudes. I find the Mars' heighmap to have nicely varied terrain (I had to add a noise function though to try and get rid of pixelation)... although some areas are really boring... the Tharsis plateau and the "floodplain" near olympus mons... are very very very flat.

Still, its a fun challenge to land a rover at the base of olympus mons (or one of the other 3 major volcanous in the tharsis region) and drive it into the caldera. I also enjoy flying plains around the delta formed by the outflows from vallis marineris.

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Varied terrain, weather patterns, things floating around in the solar system that aren't planets....Can we get new places to go, new things to see on the places we've already been?

They did add asteroids, a certain faction having the "magic boulder" texture. I modded in some dwarf planets (scaled down dres, made it more of a ceres analogue, added, vesta, palas, and hygeia analogues).

More varied terrain would be nice... but looking at the solar system, the most interesting bodies in terms of surface features are Earth, Mars, and Titan.

... maybe pluto... but even other icy worlds like Triton/Europa/enceladus look fairly uniform on the outside...

I agree that more "stuff to do" on the surface would be nice... but so far I haven't heard any good ideas as to what that would actually be...

[MajorTomtom]

We could imagine a stock colony system where you would have to establish bases and support them in late-game career ? It would be a good idea for a DLC because we would have more parts etc, and new mechanics to actually build bases on the ground (which is immensely difficult in stock today). Maybe something quite simple like a succession of contracts beginning with "launch an outpost" and then each "module" would have to be sent up there, as well as kerbals.

Another idea for science would be to add some experiments and add new overlays for map mode to show the differents fields (temperature, pressure etc). A mission could then be to "map the magnetic field of kerbin" and you would have to send a magnetometer in eccentric polar orbit, and afterwards you could have a 3d visualization of the magnetic field, or you could be tasked to send a probe in jool's atmosphere to establish the pressure/temperature profile, which would then be accessible in game visually. It wouldn't be too difficult to implement I suppose, but it would sure add something to science, because for now you can check the temperature etc on instruments but it's more like "oh great it's 100°C here, well now I must go to another biome and get MORE POINTS" and you forget what you did.

A "simple" addon would also be new planets to represent Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Jool is great, but it would be great to have other gas giants !

They could also easily add some "space anomalies" which would be for example interstellar objects like oumouamoua or even strange spaceships like the one in Rama. It would be fun to discover and explore.

[KerikBalm]

25 minutes ago, MajorTomtom said:

We could imagine a stock colony system where you would have to establish bases and support them in late-game career ? It would be a good idea for a DLC because we would have more parts etc, and new mechanics to actually build bases on the ground (which is immensely difficult in stock today). Maybe something quite simple like a succession of contracts beginning with "launch an outpost" and then each "module" would have to be sent up there, as well as kerbals.

Its not soo difficult, its what I've been doing most recently in KSP... designing modular surface bases, and ways to deliver them. Generally this means designing a custom "dropship" with a standard long mk3 cargobay and mk3 cargoramp, and then have all the modules fit in that. I used to use the KPBS mod, but I now just use stock parts+TAC-LS parts (which have a stock "profile", aka 1.25m, 2.5m, etc diameters)+my own custom modified stock parts (duplicated and retextured an ore drill as a water drill, duplicated and retextured science lab as a food producing greenhouse).

In this case, the challenge is basically just the bulk properties of a body (atmosphere, gravity, size), and finding a suitable place to land.

Occasionally... I'll design a larger hub part that doesn't fit in a mk3 bay, and usually give it its own propulsion so I could in theory move it around the body with the other modules, if I ever have a reason to do so (but just using a biome hopper to collect science is more practical than relocating the entire base).

I've had vague concepts of modular floating bases, or underwater bases... but those are hard. I only recently made a working stock submarine that can launch and recover from the mk3 cargobay of a seaplane.

[kerbiloid]

A Community Anomaly Kit could contain definitions of various effects (visual, gravity, messages, etc) to create and share users' anomaly packs.
 

[MajorTomtom]

5 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

Its not soo difficult, its what I've been doing most recently in KSP... designing modular surface bases, and ways to deliver them. Generally this means designing a custom "dropship" with a standard long mk3 cargobay and mk3 cargoramp, and then have all the modules fit in that. I used to use the KPBS mod, but I now just use stock parts+TAC-LS parts (which have a stock "profile", aka 1.25m, 2.5m, etc diameters)+my own custom modified stock parts (duplicated and retextured an ore drill as a water drill, duplicated and retextured science lab as a food producing greenhouse).

In this case, the challenge is basically just the bulk properties of a body (atmosphere, gravity, size), and finding a suitable place to land.

Occasionally... I'll design a larger hub part that doesn't fit in a mk3 bay, and usually give it its own propulsion so I could in theory move it around the body with the other modules, if I ever have a reason to do so (but just using a biome hopper to collect science is more practical than relocating the entire base).

I've had vague concepts of modular floating bases, or underwater bases... but those are hard. I only recently made a working stock submarine that can launch and recover from the mk3 cargobay of a seaplane.

I agree it is feasible, but it is not particularly adapted either. For example, to link different modules you have to use either clamps or docking ports, the first are ugly and the seconds require precise alignment, which is something hard to achieve "on site"

Moreover, we lack "specific" base parts (tents, hydroponics...) in stock

[KerikBalm]

meh, by keeping all the modules compatible with a common cargobay, they become compatible with each other (all the docking ports are the right height). You can also add a retractable wheel or strut to fiddle around with to get the docking ports to connect if they aren't quite the right height.

[MajorTomtom]

Well it is a struggle you will agree, and you use parts (wheels) that are not supposed to be used like that to achieve your goal. It's smart, but hell it should be simpler so everyone could do it