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KSP Loading... Preview: The Δv per Stage Display


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1 hour ago, HvP said:

Agreed. The gameplay mechanics of collecting science in the game seems like it could be greatly improved.

Personally, I'm in favor a system by which scanning worlds with different instruments fills in a science based heat-map of the planet, similar to how the ore scanner reveals ore, but gradually as you physically traverse the planet. At the very least it could provide a helpful catalogue of where you still need to explore and provides a visible goal to encourage people to fully explore each planet. (In the game Civilization, I was the one who raced to get the technology to build caravels so that I could map out the oceans and continents as early as possible.)

I'll leave it to smarter people than myself to devise how that data could be leveraged into the upgrade system.

The trick with this is you want science to be exhaustible, that's why its lumped into biomes. Once you collect data in a given biome a couple of times its essentially mined out. (I'd personally like this even more strict by making science returns 100% on recovery so we weren't encouraging repeat missions to the same place, but that's a nitpick.) I like what you're saying about making a visible goal, though. Perhaps if we had a biome overlay in map mode it could display a heat map showing how much remaining science is available to collect from each?

So lets see, in the last page we've now asked for a flight planner, a science overhaul with biome overlays and volcanoes and a bunch of new planets, no sweat! 

Edited by Pthigrivi
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4 hours ago, tater said:

*another peeve, if we assume ladders are so very difficult, the initial tech tree nodes could at least have stairs, since KSC is covered with them.

You can build stairs (that even work) with the truss you start with.

(the rest of this is not at you directly, and isn't even on topic, but as is common we don't stay on topic long)

As far as mimicking real life goes, the most reasonable mode is sandbox, if there was some kind of money mechanic. And that money mechanic would not be contracts, it'd be Kongress telling you exactly what to do and giving you 80% of the money you needed to do it, and cutting your funding when you didn't succeed.

Except before you landed on Mun. Then you'd have an infinite budget and a massive time constraint to land on Mun.

KSP isn't real life (thank Jool) and contracts (which could use a rethink) are a fine way to gamify a space program's budget, and science is a fine way to gamify technological progression. There are better ways but (to bring this back on topic) if I had to choose between a stock dV display and a new contract system, I'll happily take the dV display thank you very much.

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1 hour ago, Pthigrivi said:

Perhaps if we had a biome overlay in map mode it could display a heat map showing how much remaining science is available to collect from each?

That was basically what I was thinking. Anything to help a player track what science is left to be discovered, and what you already have, would be welcome. I'm assuming this isn't in the game because it would essentially be a biome map and the original developers wanted you to find biomes by trial-and-error instead of following a map to find them. But in my head I'm envisioning that heat map to gradually fill in as you physically fly over the terrain, dispelling the fog. Perhaps revealing a 100 or 1000 square km area as you go, depending on how sophisticated your science equipment is and with increasing detail the closer to the surface you are. This would be entirely parallel to the science points gathered, not a substitute for them.

Edited by HvP
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Another idea (my first or second post was about this, back in the day) is that all science is not the same, and since the reward system is the tech tree (like it or not), a better implementation would be to divide science into types, and have parts (perhaps individual parts or tiny groupings, not so many large groupings) be purchased with funds+specific sciences+precursors+X.

Funds are funds.

Sciences are Kerbal Factors (Medicine/health in space), Rocket Science (aerospace engineering), and Planetary Science (100% of what we have now is this last one).

Crew parts require some Kerbal Factors work (this might require duration flights, etc---a reason for stations), plus Rocket Science (earned through just flying things, certain performance milestones, and contracts like rendezvous, docking, etc). Lander parts, and some science parts might require some planetary science (to learn what you need to do more). Planetary science would tend towards "basic science" rather than the other 2 which are specifically applied, and can be a general indicator of science capability---maybe since that's the most available in game, you can use it to buy some things, but at a huge premium vs doing the specific science.

I'm not about career mimicking what happened on Earth, I'm for career to when looked at from a distance to give the impression of an actual space program progression. I want it to be a story arc in some sense (that makes sense). That's not really a lot to ask, vs what we have, lots of random side-quests.

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So the Squad news threads always tend to turn into everybody asking for his/her favorite feature-to-be-added/bug-to-be-fixed, but this one is wandering even farther afield than usual, folks. Please visit the Suggestions sub for that sort of thing, because this thread is about the new dV display feature. 

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1 hour ago, Vanamonde said:

So the Squad news threads always tend to turn into everybody asking for his/her favorite feature-to-be-added/bug-to-be-fixed, but this one is wandering even farther afield than usual, folks. Please visit the Suggestions sub for that sort of thing, because this thread is about the new dV display feature. 

Is it ironic that there's doubt about having enough energy to change the direction of the thread

Does that make it... dT or dM :P

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8 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

So the Squad news threads always tend to turn into everybody asking for his/her favorite feature-to-be-added/bug-to-be-fixed, but this one is wandering even farther afield than usual, folks. Please visit the Suggestions sub for that sort of thing, because this thread is about the new dV display feature. 

We all spent a certain amount of dv on changing the trajectory of the conversation, and since we don't have a readout yet, we have no idea if we can brake, or if we're stuck being hyperbolic now.

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4 minutes ago, tater said:

We all spent a certain amount of dv on changing the trajectory of the conversation, and since we don't have a readout yet, we have no idea if we can brake, or if we're stuck being hyperbolic now.

You have to switch scenes.  The readout is actually in your kitchen.  Check your oven.  It's there.

 

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I just hope that custom engine modules can be somehow fitted to work sith the DeltaV counter. I still remember that Airplane plus heli rotors had some problems with KER (dunno if that got fixed at some point).

 

Although on the other side of the spectrum, things like orion drives might be too exotic to work with standart deltaV counters

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On 12/10/2018 at 12:36 AM, tater said:

Things get easier, period.

On one hand, I agree. On the other hand, things get easier in reality as well.

To me, the annoying part is not that things get easier but that they get too easy too soon. I totally agree that one Minmus run to unlock all the Tech tree is a horrible imbalance.

One thing that's badly needed is rethinking the fund and science costs for parts, tech and upgrades. I personally think most parts must be much more expensive for the game to pose some challenge.

Having features of ResearchBodies (game starts with only Kerbin, its moons and nearest planets unlocked, need to complete research contracts to unlock more bodies) in stock would also be good.

The patched conics problem is an interesting one. On one hand, lack of patched conics gives a feeling of the "primitiveness" of the current technology. On the other hand, patched conics do simplify the gameplay. One solution may be to make patched conics available only when the ship has a working connection, or high-level pilot + scientist onboard, or a high-level probe. Also, make the patched conics available from the start of the game, but have only a few groundstations (say, KSC plus two stations east from it). And make low-level probes totally unresponsive to controls without a connection. And high-level probes, of course, must be exponentially more expensive than the low-levels ones for this all to make sense. New groundstations may be activated through the strategies systems, btw, which gives a finer control over their number (well, at least the Strategia mod does do weird things through the strategies building, so why not?).

And yay, stock deltaV readings! Is it Christmas?

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2 minutes ago, Pand5461 said:

On one hand, I agree. On the other hand, things get easier in reality as well.

I agree completely. Making a "career" game mode for KSP is seriously non-trivial. I complain about career on here quite a bit, but I am not deluded that it's an easy thing to fix, it's arguably far harder than the base game.

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1 hour ago, tater said:

I agree completely. Making a "career" game mode for KSP is seriously non-trivial. I complain about career on here quite a bit, but I am not deluded that it's an easy thing to fix, it's arguably far harder than the base game.

What's frustrating is that some features are there, yet unused. Take part upgrades, for example. An obvious thing is to give players choice of unlocking a new part vs. upgrading the stats for an old one for a fraction of the cost. Of course, that doesn't make much sense with the current unlock costs ~2.5x buy costs. Unlock must be at least 10x the part cost to become a meaningful game mechanics.

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