On automated missions in KSP2

[Yakuzi]

Since multiplayer will be a thing in KSP2, there's gonna be a framework for flying multiple craft together independently. I was wondering if this framework can be abused to automate missions in singleplayer KSP2. Please hear me out:

I would love to set up automatic resupply, maintenance or crew rotation missions, either by programming them from scratch or flying and logging the actual mission first, which will then be used as a template for the automated mission. Plan a date and time and a number of periodic iterations for that mission afterward, and watch your space program actually come to life! Only leveled up kerbal pilots would be able to execute those mission (depending on mission difficulty mayhaps).
This way, the KSC would actually come to life a bit (you would see automated mission take off and land periodically), involve a bit more thought when it comes to financing and planning (which is a good thing imo), transporting lots of materials to different SOI's will become a lot less grindy, leveling up kerbals will actually become important, it would make life support a whole lot less micromanagerial if it were introduced (or as a mod for that matter), and perhaps most importantly, it would give the player the sense that (s)he is actually managing a space program, not just a space mission.

It would also open up a range of new dynamic missions in case something would go wrong with the automated mission, e.g. out of fuel, repairs, crash landings, accidentally ejected kerbal, etc (optional in game settings, would require quite a bit more coding though).

If we don't get this in stock, I hope we'll be able to make it happen with kRPC or kOS.

Thoughts?

Edited August 26, 2019 by Yakuzi

[GoldForest]

25 minutes ago, Yakuzi said:

Since multiplayer will be a thing in KSP2, there's gonna be a framework for flying multiple craft together independently. I was wondering if this framework can be abused to automate missions in singleplayer KSP2. Please hear me out:

I would love to set up automatic resupply, maintenance or crew rotation missions, either by programming them from scratch or flying and logging the actual mission first, which will then be used as a template for the automated mission. Plan a date and time and a number of periodic iterations for that mission afterward, and watch your space program actually come to life! Only leveled up kerbal pilots would be able to execute those mission (depending on mission difficulty mayhaps).
This way, the KSC would actually come to life a bit (you would see automated mission take off and land periodically), involve a bit more thought when it comes to financing and planning (which is a good thing imo), transporting lots of materials to different SOI's will become a lot less grindy, leveling up kerbals will actually become important, it would make life support a whole lot less micromanagerial if it were introduced (or as a mod for that matter), and perhaps most importantly, it would give the player the sense that (s)he is actually managing a space program, not just a space mission.

It would also open up a range of new dynamic missions in case something would go wrong with the automated mission, e.g. out of fuel, repairs, crash landings, accidentally ejected kerbal, etc (optional in game settings, would require quite a bit more coding though).

If we don't get this in stock, I hope we'll be able to make it happen with kRPC or kOS.

Thoughts?

Multi craft control isn't going to make an appearance in KSP 2, not without the assistance of mods. 

Multiplayer is totally different than multi craft control. A whole new set of code would have to be written. 

Automation is KSP is also somewhat difficult. Even MechJeb which controls a single craft has trouble some times. 

Leave multi craft automation to the mods.

I would much rather have Kerbal Alarm Clock be stock and launch multiple missions then to try an automate all craft at once.

[chaos_forge]

Automated supply missions would be pretty great. Designing a fuel station is fun, and designing resupply ships for it is fun, but flying the same mission over and over is definitely not fun. Honestly, I wouldn't super mind if the ships weren't actually flown and the system was completely abstracted: Maybe you have to fly the actual mission once as a proof of concept, but then after that you can regularly schedule (maybe with some awareness of launch windows if necessary) automatic supply "missions" that are actually just the game automatically deducting X amount of funds from your bank and adding Y amount of supplies to your station.

[linuxgurugamer]

There are at least two mods for KSP which do that, and it probably wouldn't be that difficult to rewrite them for KSP 2.

That being the case, I'd  prefer this being left to mods.

Edited August 26, 2019 by linuxgurugamer

[pschlik]

As I said on the wishes thread, I don't think I could manage a whole interstellar space organization doing everything manually. Even in KSP 1 I can give myself a hard time; today I plan to handle a huge kerfuffle at Duna, with 5 spacecraft (splintered off of 3 missions) needing attention across the span of one Kerbin day. Oh yeah and I have a Moho flyby squeezed into the middle of all that. Even with Kerbal Alarm Clock (which I really hope is a stock feature in KSP 2) this is a complete nightmare. In fact, the Alarm Clock is mostly just reminding me of how convoluted my situation is about to get; so an alarm clock isn't suddenly the ultimate solution. Still, I wouldn't be able to do this at all without the Alarm Clock; it's a step in the right direction! Meanwhile, in a real space program, there would probably be 4 entire teams of people (Kerbals, in this case) managing this whole situation simultaneously. But in my poor space program I have to do this all manually which means I am most definitely going to miss some science or something. Or maybe my main Duna probe will smash into Duna while I'm doing something else (I've had to leave it on a collision course for now so that it can get a close flyby of Ike).

I fully expect someone to come along and say "But that wouldn't be fun! Flying the missions manually is a huge part of the fun!" and I agree that flying stuff is part of the fun. But flying every single mission is not fun. Manually flying the exact same mission 10 times to deliver hydrogen to my orbital colony? Not fun. Slowing down my main Duna probe's two probe babies into polar orbits instead of doing science with the main probe? Not fun. Sure, some people might use automation so that they (almost) never have to do anything manually, turning KSP into a management game, and that would be pretty boring, but that's not me. And with some good game design, you could always force the player into playing the game the original way until they reach the end game where things are more likely to be tedious. And even once automation is possible, there are ways to make it take effort anyway, but a different kind of effort than "Hotswap to probe, hit Z button and wait for manuever to complete, hotswap back to something else." [eg: Automation requires you to have a high level mission control (either at KSC or on a colony), you have to send pilots to mission control to manage the mission for you (taking them away from other jobs), they have to be high level pilots, you have to have fantastic comms connection to the craft which you want to automate, stuff like that]

With the whole long-term interstellar mission stuff as well as being able to time warp during acceleration, it seems automation, or something akin to it, could very well be on the plan already.

Or when they talk about thrusting during time warp, that might just mean you have to be in control of the thing which is thrusting, not unlike PersistentThrust in KSP 1. That is basically a must have for Interstellar stuff, but it does nothing for automation or multitasking. Whether or not I have persistent thrust wouldn't change that running an interstellar mission would take years where the entire rest of the space program would go dormant. Personally, I do not like launching a mission to somewhere then just time warping to that location. I prefer to send off the mission, then go off and do other things as it floats toward its destination (this is how I ended up with 5 probes to manage all at once). But I do recognize that one way to play KSP is to 'Launch Duna mission. Timewarp to Duna. Do Duna things. Timewarp back to Kerbin.' meanwhile nothing else happened in the space program for those last couple years.

[nikokespprfan]

I personally think that KSP2 will miss not having multitask tools/features and automated recurring missions. It allows you do complex missions, divert attention, and avoid micromanagment. Factorio for example has a system where you can play at every level of complexity, and when things get too big to handle by hand, that's where automation comes in. The result is that people can do amazing things in factorio. Now KSP is not factorio, but these tools could help tremendously.

You could have mission control go from 1 person employed (linear missions) to multiple people employed (negative time warp for X people at a time) to an entire team being employed (automated missions). Kerbal alarm system is necessary.

[Guest]

I would love being able to set up automated resupply. I'd like it if you'd have to fly the mission yourself first, then set it up for each transfer window within certain tolerances. It wouldn't even bother me if the craft didn't actually exist until they actually arrived, so that the flying would be abstracted out; simulating the actual mission would be pretty tricky as no two missions are ever exactly identical.