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Essential Gameplay Mods


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4 hours ago, shdwlrd said:

You also have to account for the players who don't want to, or can't program. You also have to understand that there are players that are lazy. They don't want to spend time before they do a mission to code all the maneuvers they will need to complete their mission. They will either do the whole mission by hand, or will find something the does all the maneuvering for them.

Yes, there is a good learning potential with something like KOS. But a good portion of the players can't/won't use something like that. 

Can there be something in between KOS and MechJeb that can be done, well yes. But when you have programmed all the modules you would need to execute your mission, you've basically recreated MechJeb by hand, without the GUI.

I've always thought it would be a great way to have Kerbal themselves a bigger part of the game.

Say, give each Kerbal with a portrait a visual code block that fires off on a condition. Higher stars more blocks to use, different skills training add functions related to those skills. Bigger command pods more portraits more possibilities.

Player can use as little of the system as much as they want. You could start simple and have say one Kerbal watch staging and fire them off add another with pilot skills watching when to kick in the gravity turn and changing SAS mode. Add a third watching atmosphere and firing faring and deploying solar panels. Commander Kerbels could even instruct other Kerbal to what they should be doing at a particular time so they become the full program fill that they can share with others Kerbals of the same skill.

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9 hours ago, betaking said:

I'm against a full-on mechjeb implementation as a stock feature.

Why don't you want an autopilot in stock KSP?

9 hours ago, betaking said:

Again I'm not saying implement a stock KOS where you have to type programs by hand but a visual programming language like "Scratch", where you can drag and drop blocks

I've played Autonauts. It turned very tedious after programming the 30th robot.

How would you remove the tediousness of programming your maneuvers, going back, correcting the error, and doing it again. It would lose the fun factor very quickly. 

I personally would rather do a mission all by hand than sit there and program everything that would need to be done in a mission. In all reality, I probably won't really get too deep into KSP2 until there is a full featured autopilot available either by the devs or the modding community.

@mattinoz that would make KSP like Autonauts, boring and tedious. 

Edited by shdwlrd
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How hasn't stage recovery been mentioned yet?

This would definitely tie in well with the stock experience. Esspecially with the new "sub-assembly" feature. You could return and possibly reuse old sets of stages held in a collection (or sell them off).

Edited by mcwaffles2003
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17 hours ago, shdwlrd said:

@mattinoz that would make KSP like Autonauts, boring and tedious.

I think the tedious and boring might come from that being a dull game concept that has been made too cute for it's own good.   KSP has an interesting game that would like to expand and that expansion would be aided by some automation at times. MechJeb does too much for the player out of the box to be stock, kOS does to little but still a fun kind of too little.

It's a fun balancing act if they choose to do something for stock.

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14 hours ago, mattinoz said:

KSP has an interesting game that would like to expand and that expansion would be aided by some automation at times. MechJeb does too much for the player out of the box to be stock, kOS does to little but still a fun kind of too little.

It's a fun balancing act if they choose to do something for stock.

I did say if they find a good medium between the two, it might be worth adding. 

If they do add anything, the automation will have to be effective in it's stock form, even if it's limited in scope. Then you can add on to it.

Edited by shdwlrd
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On 5/31/2020 at 3:34 AM, shdwlrd said:

Why don't you want an autopilot in stock KSP?

I've played Autonauts. It turned very tedious after programming the 30th robot.

How would you remove the tediousness of programming your maneuvers, going back, correcting the error, and doing it again. It would lose the fun factor very quickly. 

I personally would rather do a mission all by hand than sit there and program everything that would need to be done in a mission. In all reality, I probably won't really get too deep into KSP2 until there is a full featured autopilot available either by the devs or the modding community.

@mattinoz that would make KSP like Autonauts, boring and tedious. 

the key then is having tutorials and explainations (not to mention libraries/premade-functions one could call) that explain what exactly you're looking for and trying to do.

you shouldn't get a "put this into LKO"-button, that's too simple and too easy.

as far as the tediousness of repetitive tests, I think that a stock solution would be frustrating for some, but it would be less frustrating than KOS, simply because there'd be better integration, (and a visual language would indicate what suffixes are actually valid without having to mine the github wiki docs.).

After all trial and error is already a KOS tradition, and as long as there's an easy "screw this we'll do it live" button/key, it shouldn't be that big of a deal.

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25 minutes ago, betaking said:

After all trial and error is already a KOS KSP tradition

I corrected it for you. ;)

I still stand by my statement. 

6 hours ago, shdwlrd said:

I did say if they find a good medium between the two, it might be worth adding. 

If they do add anything, the automation will have to be effective in it's stock form, even if it's limited in scope. Then you can add on to it.

 

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Really it all depends on the nature of the aerodynamic model, there would also probably be extensive tutorials and "stock" programs that would "work" but hopefully be inefficient enough that players would be encouraged to modify them.

As far as Other "Essential" Mods that need to be put into stock KSP2.

  • Firespitter's propeller-disk-mod. (currently breaking ground props can look like they're standing still because of frame-rate synch/etc.
  • Dmagic's Maneuver Node Evolved, makes Maneuver nodes easier to work with when you can get more precise control over the delta-V distribution.
  • Maybe the Remote-Tech Computer? (basically allows you to plan/execute-via-timer a series of maneuvers and burns even when the craft is outside of radio-communication), then again I basically programmed something similar pretty quick and I imagine there would be some stock options).
  • Definitely at least NEAR-style aerodynamics, don't want to force FAR on everyone but there needs to be some kind of aerodynamic model improvement. (NEAR basically lacks the super-sonic/hypersonic-specific physics changes, along with the complicated UI of FAR).
  • Plane Control Switch.
  • Aircraft Autopilot.
  • Navball speed-unit selection (so I can switch to Knots, Miles per Hour, or km/h. (sure this is a mod, though it's also a part of FAR).
  • Dmagic Orbital Science.
  • Research Bodies.
  • Connected Living Space.

CONTROVERSIAL (even more so than a scripting-system).

  • Procedural Lifting Surfaces: etc. I'd have these use an interface entirely different from what B9's mod uses. with various factors fixed so there's some sense of "variety" in wings.
    So basically: Very rudimentary wing geometry(edges, and the shape of the middle) and modeling is fixed to the option selected, weight, lift, and etc. all "scale" with the wing in question.
  • Adjustable Landing Gear: again I'd do things differently than how Kerbal Foundries does it, perhaps with tighter limits or with many of the options hidden away. having landing gear that can be adjusted/tweaked for greater or less ground clearance would be great however. and more importantly be a smarter solution than having 5-7 different "single-wheel retractable landing gear" parts for small but "thick" aircraft

  • Kerbal Attachment System: tethers, cables, ropes, etc.

  •  Fuel Switch or Fuel-Tank Configurator: either this or some kind of "tweakscale with strict limits", frankly I prefer the fuel-switcher, at least if it's done in a limited manner, as that would allow for things like "replacing the monopropellant in the inline 1.25m cockpit with Liquid Fuel" that could really help boost (what should be) early-aircraft development, Though I recognize reasons why that might not be such a good idea for other things (more exotic fuels might need (or should need) to be incompatible with certain fuel-tanks, while other fuel-tanks should be simply inefficient in terms of mass/propellant/delta-V to use. some kind of texture switch/selector should be here as well.. again this makes much more sense to me than 15 different variations of "2.5m tank".

  • 2.5m titan II parts for whatever KSP2's "making history"/"historical spaceflight" expansion entails.
    (turns out the ratio between the 3.05m IRL titan II, and the IRL 2.28m Gemini means the 1.875 gemini would match up perfectly with a 2.5m Titan II, or at least within  a centimeter of it).

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Firespitter, FAR/NuFAR, Connected Living Space, Remote Tech are a hard no. Unless you want unnecessary difficulty in you game. Firespitter can be replaced with the stock animation module.

Research bodies, Plane Control Switch, Procedural Lifting Surfaces, are a maybe.

The rest could be useful.

From the initial images from the devs, looks like fuel switching will be stock. (Unless they want to duplicate all the tanks for the new fuel types they will be adding. Possibly adding hundreds of new parts to the list.)

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59 minutes ago, shdwlrd said:

Firespitter, FAR/NuFAR, Connected Living Space, Remote Tech are a hard no. Unless you want unnecessary difficulty in you game. Firespitter can be replaced with the stock animation module.

Research bodies, Plane Control Switch, Procedural Lifting Surfaces, are a maybe.

The rest could be useful.

From the initial images from the devs, looks like fuel switching will be stock. (Unless they want to duplicate all the tanks for the new fuel types they will be adding. Possibly adding hundreds of new parts to the list.)

nothing unnecessary about having to take into account aerodynamics when building/launching rockets, and besides it makes level flight far nicer because of how it controls.

they already have a "requires a comnet connection to function" in stock, I'm just suggesting adding this: Remote Tech Flight Computer so you can boost stuff even when they're going to be outside of signal range. though having signal delay would complete the difficulty task.

(again these would be difficulty options, the maneuver controller would be nice simply because it means you can get a burn with some greater precision.)

Edited by betaking
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52 minutes ago, betaking said:

nothing unnecessary about having to take into account aerodynamics when building/launching rockets, and besides it makes level flight far nicer because of how it controls.

KSP already takes aerodynamics into account. No need to add unnecessary strain on the system.

55 minutes ago, betaking said:

they already have a "requires a comnet connection to function" in stock, I'm just suggesting adding this: Remote Tech Flight Computer so you can boost stuff even when they're going to be outside of signal range. though having signal delay would complete the difficulty task.

The stock comms blackout and needed network is enough, no need to add delays into the equation.

Despite the fact that afore mentioned mods are covered in the stock game play, if you want to make your game more difficult, go for it.

My mentality is to add useful functionality without replacing or duplicating what is happening in stock. (Ignoring part mods of course. :))

The only difficulty based mod I'd like to see is persistence rotation. I would like to actually hold a telescope at a fixed point during time warp.

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3 hours ago, shdwlrd said:

I would like to actually hold a telescope at a fixed point during time warp.

I would really enjoy if they added telescopes into the game. Especially if collection actually took time and was simulated in a similar manner to actual collection (greater apertures give greater resolution and require less time to collect vs longer focal lengths giving greater "zoom" and taking longer to collect). If we could build our own space telescopes (way beyond expectations) I would be beyond ecstatic.

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1 hour ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

I would really enjoy if they added telescopes into the game. Especially if collection actually took time and was simulated in a similar manner to actual collection (greater apertures give greater resolution and require less time to collect vs longer focal lengths giving greater "zoom" and taking longer to collect). If we could build our own space telescopes (way beyond expectations) I would be beyond ecstatic.

Same here, but don't forget the pretty pictures part. I got some good pictures of the planets with the cateye? mod with DOE. Too bad I lost the screen shots many updates ago.

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4 hours ago, shdwlrd said:

Same here, but don't forget the pretty pictures part. I got some good pictures of the planets with the cateye? mod with DOE. Too bad I lost the screen shots many updates ago.

Agreed, you wouldn't even need a high res skybox to save memory, just have a normal res one that indexes to a high res image for telescopes. You could even generate a natural universe by asking for a computer generated one from a national lab probably, getting a time frame, and generating a a 360 degree photo from a point in a galaxy. You could add in some awesome nebulae and star clusters... have multiple overlapping indexes for different wavelengths (radio, ir, vis, uv, x-ray...). Then you could artificially blur the high res indexed image for lower aperture scopes.There's just so much room to add to the game if telescopes were included, and they should be (maybe not at launch) since in-space astrophotography has been a crucial endeavor ever since we have been able to reach space.

All of this could do a lot in teaching people real astronomy and photographic principles like:

  • F-number (and its affect on capture time)
  • Aperture (and its affect on resolution and its affects on capture tim)
  • Focal length (and how it corresponds to "zoom" and capture time)
  • Camera CCD quality (the importance of temperature, pixel density, etc..)
  • Wavelength filters (showing what spectrum typical objects in space give off like nebula: vis,IR; planets: vis; planetary nebulae: all of them...)
  • it just goes on n on

These can translate into real life skills with understanding mundane iphone cameras to hobbyist DSLRs and astrophotographer CCDs all the way to real life astrophysics. I might be a little biased though, since I do some amateur astrophotography myself. :P

Edited by mcwaffles2003
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I would like to see mods like ResearchBodies, ScanSAT, and TST. They don't add much complexity, but they do add to the sense of discovery in the game and give a purpose to a polar satellite and orbiting telescopes. 

I would love implementation of kerbalism science! I can see why other things wouldn't go well though.

The contreversal point I'd like to say is that I think N-body orbital mechanics would be a sound additional to KSP 2. If you think back, putting your fist satellite in orbit was hard but you figured it out and now no that it's not just burning up but also sideways. For long time players, N-body mechanics will add this back to the game without making the game harder for beginners. Infact, it technically makes the deltaV requirements slightly less.

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On 5/30/2020 at 5:19 PM, betaking said:

Again I'm not saying implement a stock KOS where you have to type programs by hand but a visual programming language like "Scratch", where you can drag and drop blocks 

This would actually be fantastic as a learning tool and could be implemented in a way that goes from the stock (action group) system, to an advanced middle ground (conditional groups) to expert (KOS)

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