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What would early bases be like?


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5 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Good question, I assume it will look more like KSP1 bases except they are build ratter than landed. 
Like in KSP1 I assume one important part for new bases is to create fuel for landers bringing in new parts. 

 

I thought in the early stages we'd still be landing the first few/several modules until we had something self-sustaining. Although it be nice if we still had the BAE relatively early so we could arrange and attach landed modules without wheelie-cranes (fun as that was in KSP1).

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6 hours ago, pandaman said:

I would imagine almost certainly landed components initially, some larger ones inflatable and/or 'self assembly'.  Possibly able to be covered in regolith as a finishing stage, or as an early upgrade.

Yeah I'm really hoping we get some regolith domes / sub-surface tunnels, like we had in Antarctica (previous bases).

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On 11/12/2021 at 7:04 AM, Pthigrivi said:

I thought in the early stages we'd still be landing the first few/several modules until we had something self-sustaining. Although it be nice if we still had the BAE relatively early so we could arrange and attach landed modules without wheelie-cranes (fun as that was in KSP1).

Concept art of completed bases aside, I have not read much about real-life base construction methods (which presumably KSP2 ones would be based on).

The Soviet DLB lunar base had multiple modules, which were partially inflatable (to allow them to be landed as a cube), but I have not been able to find how the modules were supposed to be placed and assembled. Even the most advanced of the Apollo derived lunar base studies consisted of only one module or separately landed ones adjacent to each other, while most post-Apollo bases, even ones with multiple modules, did not progress beyond some mass and dimension figures and some shapes on a power point slide, although some of the latter did feature crane-rovers for use in moving around materials (I can't remember whether there were renders of cranes assembling actual modules however). The current Artemis proposal is just one module.

With base building being a bigger focus, do you think it would be possible to see some sort of crane-type parts added? The BAE would be a little lame to use just for a simple add-on module. Using the BAE to do "real" construction work (i.e., the Munar equivalent of building an apartment complex) is understandable, but relying on it for what is basically just setting up a fold-out RV on the Mun would be a little disappointing and feel like over kill, especially when modular space stations of presumably the same scale can be assembled manually anyways.

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Thinking about one of those mods that allow you to make use of emptied out asteroids, I'm hoping submunar/subminman/etc. installations become a thing. We're being told that KSP2 is going to be lighter on our machines, but I wouldn't mind more minimalistic choices. Massive, towering ceramic-spun offworld facilities are cool, but what about the Hobbits? 

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On 11/12/2021 at 4:04 PM, Pthigrivi said:

I thought in the early stages we'd still be landing the first few/several modules until we had something self-sustaining. Although it be nice if we still had the BAE relatively early so we could arrange and attach landed modules without wheelie-cranes (fun as that was in KSP1).

Yes, I wonder if stuff like my Munar mobile base would work in KSP 2, its basically an decent size lander / base who could jump suborbital to any place on the Mun, but if it was to o far you needed to mine and refine fuel to get into orbit afterwards. Took this even longer with my Tylo explorer who was not an base just an lander who could do surface science make fuel and get back into orbit on Tylo. 

Now I say KSP1 resources are too simplistic, even if something like that would work with ice in the other solar system but it would require an nuclear reactor. 

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14 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Concept art of completed bases aside, I have not read much about real-life base construction methods (which presumably KSP2 ones would be based on).

The Soviet DLB lunar base had multiple modules, which were partially inflatable (to allow them to be landed as a cube), but I have not been able to find how the modules were supposed to be placed and assembled. Even the most advanced of the Apollo derived lunar base studies consisted of only one module or separately landed ones adjacent to each other, while most post-Apollo bases, even ones with multiple modules, did not progress beyond some mass and dimension figures and some shapes on a power point slide, although some of the latter did feature crane-rovers for use in moving around materials (I can't remember whether there were renders of cranes assembling actual modules however). The current Artemis proposal is just one module.

With base building being a bigger focus, do you think it would be possible to see some sort of crane-type parts added? The BAE would be a little lame to use just for a simple add-on module. Using the BAE to do "real" construction work (i.e., the Munar equivalent of building an apartment complex) is understandable, but relying on it for what is basically just setting up a fold-out RV on the Mun would be a little disappointing and feel like over kill, especially when modular space stations of presumably the same scale can be assembled manually anyways.

Cranes would be obviously useful, They are in KSP 1 after all as in the recover part from the surface of the Mun or part of the reason for mobile Mun base :)
They are also extremely useful building stuff RL. 
But I kind of suspect KSP 2 simply uses the building interface here. In KSP 1 its no point reloading and re-fueling an plane on the runway.  You recover it add an new payload and crew and re-launch it. 

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It would be nice to have a "halfway point" between "you have to build your own crane to move around modules on the surface" and "The BAE does everything for you" regarding early-game base modules that you have to land (individually or as a group, depending on the size of the lander you use and the specifics of which planet or moon you're landing on).

So having ONE PART that performs all the common functions of a "crane", that you can then mount to a vehicle that you design yourself, would be the kind of thing that I'm looking for.
A similar "nice to have" thing would be a Remote Manipulator System arm that is just one part as far as the game is concerned, yet has all the functionality of the Shuttle or ISS Canadarm/Canadarm2 robot arm.

The reason I want this to be all one part isn't even because I'm conscious of increasing part count causing increasing lag (tho that is something I'm well aware of).
The reason I want them to be all one part is because that gives them the potential to make the interface for controlling such a robot arm or crane to be much more intuitive than "you just gotta mess with the angles of the various servos until you find a combination that gets whatever you grabbed where you want to go", which is EXTREMELY clunky and if I had to use such a system I'd just never use robot arms or cranes at all (which is exactly the case with how I play KSP 1). And no, in KSP 1 even if you have unlimited numbers of KAL controllers you can't build up the kind of math system I'm thinking of, because you can't make a KAL controller take the input of another KAL controller for one, and you can't do inverse-kinematics with any number of KAL controllers either, which is what you'd need to make a robot arm or crane work in the wide variety of situations a player will almost certainly ask them to work in if they are easy enough to use.

EDIT: Alternatively, you could just abstract the whole problem away, and have the modules coded so that they automatically connect to each other if they're "close enough together" despite being separate craft (by nature of not being docked to each other). Similar to how MKS does it (but obviously with more lax limitations).

 

Actually, MKS is a good starting point for the whole "early game colonization" system, but the one core issue that needs to be fixed is obviously that they need to have documentation that is simple enough that nearly anyone can read and understand it, yet it also needs to still carry enough information that it covers every little nuance of the entire system.
I do like the idea of MKS, and the implementation of it into KSP is good, but the documentation is the part where it falls short.
Somehow every time I played with MKS I got the feeling that I was playing an ARG just to figure out how the things worked, because it seems like the critical information you need to get things working in even a basic sense is spread over 50 different posts, and you need to get all of them into a single document to be able to get a good mental picture of how the blasted things are supposed to work.
Alternatively, sometimes all the info is "there" in one place, but because of a recent update (to either KSP or MKS specifically), parts of it are slightly wrong and/or entire game mechanics are not documented in it.

Edited by SciMan
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7 hours ago, SciMan said:

one part

Agreed. This is what I meant, not constructing an entire crane.

Remote manipulator arm would be good too! Especially if orbital colonies/outposts might be a thing as well, although I don't know whether those qualify as colonies or just huge space stations.

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