Big resources discussion:

[Pthigrivi]

A few weeks ago I went back through all the old interviews and dev videos and rediscovered a few mentions from Nate about 2 versions of the MH engine, one that relied mostly on water for high thrust in atmo and another that was vacuum optimized and doped with cesium and it made me think the resources paradigm might end up being more complex than a lot of us had been theorizing. There's also a little evidence from the deep resource scanner and other hints that this will extend somewhat into prospecting and harvesting basic resources. So now a bit less than a year from release what do folks expect the final resource compliment to be? What about intermediate resources for building new rockets and colony modules? What do you expect for life support?

[Rutabaga22]

I think that a complex resource system would be cool, but I don't want to have to worry about so many new fuel and tank types that it loads up the Vab.  

[t_v]

I personally think that the devs thought of the actual materials used for these engines and then abstracted them. For example, instead of having Polonium, Uranium, Cesium, there would just be a "general radioactive substance" but for common materials like water, they would have them. This is absolutely complete speculation, but here's a tentative list of the most basic materials that can be found:

Methane

Oxygen (O2)

Hydrogen (H2)

Heavy Hydrogen (I don't know if it should be split into 2H and 3H)

Water

Metal (metals placeholder)

Uranium (radioactive placeholder)

Xenon (Noble Gas placeholder)

Antimatter (if it can be found)

Rare Metal (Not sure how split up metals will be, do we need separate things for strong Titanium or perhaps Silicon and gold for circuits? So I just added one magic metal)

Organic Matter (waste matter + seeds?)

Electric Charge (energy placeholder)

 

Intermediates: some of the items in the basic resources need to be processed before use (e.g. metals) and some can be made with tech (e.g. water) but there are some that are not in the basic materials list. This is all still completely speculative. Oh, and a lot of these processes are energy-intensive. 

Snacks (Organics + Water?)

Oxidizer (Just O2, Ammonium Perchlorate or other stuff seems a bit specific)

Fission pellets (for Orion drive, Uranium + Metal)

Fusion pellets (Heavy Hydrogen + Metal, Heavy Hydrogen is the fuel for non-pulse fusion drives)

Metallic Hydrogen (Hydrogen)

-there's definitely a lot more here

final products: just thinking about which parts would need what.

Anything with electric or magnetic components would need rare metals, stuff like the MH drive could use Uranium as fuel alongside the MH (to not add a new fuel type), while most parts only need Metal and very late-game pods would also need Rare Metals. There's a lot of parts in the game and this list, long as it is, is far from complete. I think this game will end up having a complex system even with the simplifications above. 

 

 

 

[Pthigrivi]

Exactly, the total list of needed elements and the different phases in which they might be found would be un-fun to manage, so these kinds of things have to be grouped. I think in some of our early speculations we boiled things into pretty broad categories for initial extraction. Something like:

- Metals

- Volatiles

- Uranium

- He3

I’ve written in the past about the gameplay reasons you want at least 4, but it could be 6 or even 10, and some of these could even be split up in terms of harvesting from gas and liquid extractors to regolith and deep mining processors. Volatiles for instance could be broken up into a few basic sources, and you could also differentiate between carbonates and gaseous or frozen CO2. There might also be reasons to emulate nitrogen and or phosphorus, but I tend to be inclined to abstract or ignore these.  I quite agree with @Rutabaga22 that at the least you’re going to need tank switching so that you don’t have a zillion different container’s, but Id also personally argue that MKS for instance creates just too much minutiae to manage and redundant resources to convert and haul around. You’d be smart to boil things down to their real uses, erring on fewer rather than more. 
 

Some of it also comes down to the number of machine assets you ultimately need to make self sufficiency possible. The possibilities are: 

Atmospheric processors: (Xenon, O2, CO2, H2, Hyrocarbons)

Liquid harvesting: (H2O, Hyrocarbons, Volatiles)

Regolith Processors: (He3, H2O, O2, CO3, Metals, Volatiles) 

Deep mining drills: (Metals, Uranium, CO3, Hydrocarbons) 

Which could be boiled down to basic concentrations of the following:

- Xenon (atmo)

- O2 (atmo)

- CO2 (atmo)

- H2 (atmo) 

- H2O (liquid)

- Volatiles (H2O, O2, H2, CO2 in solids)

- Fertilizer (Nitrogen and phosphorus abstraction in solids)

- Carbonates (CO2 + O2 + Metals in solids)

- Hydrocarbons (CH4, Or CH4 + C02 w/ O2)

- Metals

- He3

These could be harvested directly or processed into:

- H2O2 (monoprop)

- CH4 (from Hydrocarbons or CO2 + H2)

- Rare Metals (extracted from metals for electronics, advanced engines)

- Snacks (from H2O + CO2 + Fertilizer or Compost)

- Polymers (from hydrocarbons)

- Deuterium (H2 post processing)

- MH (H2 post processing)

- Antimatter (H2 post processing)

 

 

 

Edited June 14, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[intelliCom]

1 hour ago, Pthigrivi said:

Some of it also comes down to the number of machine assets you ultimately need to make self sufficiency possible. The possibilities are: 

Atmospheric processors: (Xenon, O2, CO2, H2, Hyrocarbons)

...

- Antimatter (H2 post processing)

I feel like if there's going to be so many, they need some categorisation. Perhaps by two primary uses (construction and fuel), then divided by tiers (sorted by a combination of difficulty to attain and how technologically advanced the particular material is).

Please feel free to reply with your own suggestions on what I should add to these lists, and also if you feel that a particular material should be moved to a different tier or outright removed.

Construction (of both rockets and colonies):

Spoiler

T1: 
- Iron
- Copper
- Concrete
T2: 
- Carbon Dioxide
- Steel
- Aluminium
- Gold
- Plastic
T3: 
- Titanium
- Polymers
T4: 
- Beryllium
T5: 
- [none]

Fuel (for both rockets and energy):

Spoiler

T1:
- Oxygen
- Ethanol
- Kerosene
T2:
- Hydrogen
- Methane
- Hydrazine
T3: 
- Xenon
- Plutonium
- Uranium
T4:
- Helium-3
- Deuterium
T5:
- Antimatter 

 

Edited June 14, 2022 by intelliCom

[The Aziz]

I believe they said there's gonna be 5 or 6 fuel types total (it's somewhere in the repository, too lazy to look for it). That already gives us few types of refineries/extractors. So I expect at most 3 materials for construction - metal for most parts, something more.. delicate for dynamic parts, like extendable antennas, solar panels, radiators etc and perhaps something synthetic. As for life support, if it's there, simple snacks or snacks+water. Plus obviously energy.

It shouldn't be overly complex with a dozen of different elements because, again, it's not the main point of the game, and repeating the same process 10 times on the planet surface to build a sounding rocket takes away from the main goal which is flying rockets. Make it fun, while making it simple, but only simple enough to make sense.

[Maria Sirona]

9 hours ago, t_v said:

Heavy Hydrogen (I don't know if it should be split into 2H

What? You mean metallic hydrogen?

5 hours ago, intelliCom said:

T1:
- Oxygen
- Ethanol
- Kerosene
T2:
- Hydrogen
- Methane
- Hydrazine
T3: 
- Xenon
- Plutonium
- Uranium
T4:
- Helium-3
- Deuterium
T5:

Noooooo, i don't want a big list of fuels i need, i just want a couple so the game stays simple enough :{

Isn't it complex enough already?

[intelliCom]

1 hour ago, Maria Sirona said:

Noooooo, i don't want a big list of fuels i need, i just want a couple so the game stays simple enough :{

Isn't it complex enough already?

Well, we're certifiably going to get our standard LF + LOX, Xenon, and MonoProp. Metallic Hydrogen fuel is also required, nuclear fuel is necessary for the "orion-type" engines, fusion fuel for the "Daedalus-type" engines, and potentially antimatter for the torch drives. I think we have all bases covered, except for three standard rocket fuels, and two standard nuclear fuels. I don't think it's that complex if you understand how the fuels work. Maybe organising them differently might help?

[Maria Sirona]

Oof i forgot all the project Orion stuff nd that. I feel so dumb

[t_v]

1 hour ago, Maria Sirona said:

10 hours ago, t_v said:

Heavy Hydrogen (I don't know if it should be split into 2H

What? You mean metallic hydrogen?

No, although now that I think of it, you could probably collect that too, in the cores of gas giants. Heavy hydrogen goes by the names of Deuterium and Tritium, they are essentially Hydrogen with extra neutrons attached, and they are great for fusion reactions, which is why a lot of far future engines need deuterium and tritium to produce thrust. 

[Pthigrivi]

11 hours ago, intelliCom said:

I feel like if there's going to be so many, they need some categorisation.

I agree. A lot of this could get boiled down and streamlined. For instance CO2 could be in the atmosphere but you don’t necessarily need to bottle it and transport it. You just need an atmospheric processor that can convert it into fuel. I also think metals could come in at most two categories for building things: Metals and Rare metals. The question is when you do a planetary scan how many different basic sources are there, and whats the chain of storable resources that gets you to end products? 

Let's think about the harvesting equipment. The output values could be based on real chemistry, but what the player would see is extractable concentrations. It be nice if there were atmosphere scoops + liquid intakes as well as regolith and mining drills. We know from a show and tell that there are several fuel factories: at the least Methalox, Monoprop, Xenon, He3, and Metalic Hydrogen. Id also like to see factories for rocket part + module materials. Like Aziz says 3 would probably do it: Metals, Rare Metals, and maybe Plastics? 

One clever way to handle life support would be to make water and O2 part of the build-cost for habitable modules and just consider those closed-loop recyclable so long as you had power. Then you could just focus on Snacks as a single depletable resource.  

[shdwlrd]

28 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Like Aziz says 3 would probably do it: Metals, Rare Metals, and maybe Plastics? 

Don't forget about concrete. Part construction and colony construction will share some of the same materials, metals in particular.

[Pthigrivi]

3 hours ago, shdwlrd said:

Don't forget about concrete. Part construction and colony construction will share some of the same materials, metals in particular.

In the early renders it looks like concrete will mainly be for footings, and you could construe that as local aggregate plus cement, which is mostly calcium, aluminum, and silicon. The first two are metals and silicon is a metalloid, so I think the build cost for this could still just be called "Metals". I guess we'll see but I feel like this could all be kept as simple as it can be. 

Okay so let me hazard a guess:

Ground resources: 
- Volatile Ores
- Metalic Ores
- He3 Ores
- Uranium Ores

Construction resources:
- Metals
- Rare Metals
- Plastics
- H2O
- O2

Fuel products:
- O2
- CH4
- H2
- Xenon
- Uranium
- He3
- MH
- Antimatter
- Monoprop

LS resources:
- Fertilizer (harvestable or as compost/byproduct)
- Snacks

Intermediate/byproducts:
- Xenon (from nuclear reactors)
- Cesium (from nuclear reactors)
- Fertilizer (Various efficiency re-capture of snacks maxing at 100% w/ mass + energy costs)

Maybe/ please?
- Nuclear salt water (H20 + Uranium)
- Deuterium (By post-processing H2)


 

Edited June 14, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[Kerb24]

All I want is for Kerosene, Liquid Hydrogen, and Liquid Methane to be seperate resources and not just have the vague Liquid Fuel.

[shdwlrd]

3 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

In the early renders it looks like concrete will mainly be for footings, and you could construe that as local aggregate plus cement, which is mostly calcium, aluminum, and silicon. The first two are metals and silicon is a metalloid, so I think the build cost for this could still just be called "Metals". I guess we'll see but I feel like this could all be kept as simple as it can be. 

A rock is a rock. Most people don't care about the chemical breakdown of a rock. The difference is the perception between a rock and metal.

When you say metal, everyone thinks of a pure element or an alloy with certain properties. Usually shiny, malleable, melts with high heat, and visibly corrodes in the presence of oxygen. When someone thinks of a rock, they think of chunks of material found throughout the surface of the planet. Usually hard and brittle, without a natural shine. (Onxy does shine, but it's the only one without polishing.) It doesn't visibly corrode in the presence of oxygen.

So concrete and metal need to be separate. Not because of any elemental makeup, because of the different perception of what each material is.

[Pthigrivi]

3 hours ago, shdwlrd said:

A rock is a rock. Most people don't care about the chemical breakdown of a rock. The difference is the perception between a rock and metal.

I guess what I mean is you could loosely assume for a stable structure you’re digging  down to whatever bedrock is, grinding up the excavated material into aggregate, then re-pouring it into pier footings with a cementitious binder. Of the whole mass of the structure the non-metalic mass fraction of that binder is pretty low, and probably ignorable in the same way the mass fraction of Si chip components can be abstracted away. 
 

In reality of course the first substantial lunar and martian colonies will probably need to be built underground or with hugely massive regolith-based superstructures to ward off radiation, but Im guessing KSP2’s colony mechanics aren’t going to require deformable terrain in that way. Whether it ends up being economical or not metallic shielding will probably be the aesthetic.  

Edited June 15, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[The Aziz]

Do we really need additional material, used exclusively for foundations of colony structures, in a game where it's not that important because you should focus on building vehicles? It works in games like Surviving Mars but then the whole goal of the game is building colonies.

[jimmymcgoochie]

I don’t see the need to add fancy ores, just put the resources themselves in the ground and have drills to dig them up as for ore in KSP now. This area/biome has lots of water in its surface, be that liquid water, ice, hydrate minerals etc., that’s all you need to know. Having complicated production chains would detract from the “building and flying spaceships” thing that has repeatedly been stated to be the core of KSP2.

Might as well throw in my own two cents/pennies/whatever’s worth:

• Liquid fuel (kerosene fits best, but it could be liquid methane);
• Oxidiser (liquid oxygen, or hydrogen peroxide if LF is methane- Kerbalism certainly thinks so);
• Monopropellant (hydrazine);
• Xenon;
• Solid fuel (probably metal-based);
• Metallic hydrogen;
• Fusion fuel (for fusion rockets- helium-3, deuterium, tritium, some combination thereof);
• Fission fuel (mostly for reactors- uranium, plutonium, thorium…);
• Fission pellets (for pulsed fission drives such as Orion)
• Fusion pellets (for reactors and pulsed fusion propulsion such as Daedalus);
• Antimatter?
• Colony supplies (some combination of food, water and oxygen to keep colonists happy and working hard);
• Waste products (from Kerbals…);
• Metal (very generic, used to make both ships and base/colony structures).

Even that list seems like a lot considering stock KSP only has the first five. Adding in different ores that have to be mined and processed to then begin producing even more materials would become a logistical nightmare; I thoroughly enjoy games like Dyson Sphere Program which feature that sort of production chain system, but it wouldn’t fit nearly so well in KSP2.

Keeping resources simple also means that ISRU and production chains can be simple too- ore can be turned into liquid fuel, oxidiser, monopropellant and ore plus metal makes solid fuel; metal plus fission fuel makes fission pellets; fission pellets plus fusion fuel makes fusion pellets. Xenon can be found in some atmospheres, antimatter could be found in low orbit above certain planets e.g. Jool or generated using a dedicated colony reactor that eats a ton of power to do so, while colony supplies could be generated from a combination of ore, waste and power to eventually create a closed-loop system instead of sending them from Kerbin.

[Maria Sirona]

10 minutes ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

I don’t see the need to add fancy ores, just put the resources themselves in the ground and have drills to dig them up as for ore in KSP now. This area/biome has lots of water in its surface, be that liquid water, ice, hydrate minerals etc., that’s all you need to know. Having complicated production chains would detract from the “building and flying spaceships” thing that has repeatedly been stated to be the core of KSP2.

Might as well throw in my own two cents/pennies/whatever’s worth:

• Liquid fuel (kerosene fits best, but it could be liquid methane);
• Oxidiser (liquid oxygen, or hydrogen peroxide if LF is methane- Kerbalism certainly thinks so);
• Monopropellant (hydrazine);
• Xenon;
• Solid fuel (probably metal-based);
• Metallic hydrogen;
• Fusion fuel (for fusion rockets- helium-3, deuterium, tritium, some combination thereof);
• Fission fuel (mostly for reactors- uranium, plutonium, thorium…);
• Fission pellets (for pulsed fission drives such as Orion)
• Fusion pellets (for reactors and pulsed fusion propulsion such as Daedalus);
• Antimatter?
• Colony supplies (some combination of food, water and oxygen to keep colonists happy and working hard);
• Waste products (from Kerbals…);
• Metal (very generic, used to make both ships and base/colony structures).

Even that list seems like a lot considering stock KSP only has the first five. Adding in different ores that have to be mined and processed to then begin producing even more materials would become a logistical nightmare; I thoroughly enjoy games like Dyson Sphere Program which feature that sort of production chain system, but it wouldn’t fit nearly so well in KSP2.

Keeping resources simple also means that ISRU and production chains can be simple too- ore can be turned into liquid fuel, oxidiser, monopropellant and ore plus metal makes solid fuel; metal plus fission fuel makes fission pellets; fission pellets plus fusion fuel makes fusion pellets. Xenon can be found in some atmospheres, antimatter could be found in low orbit above certain planets e.g. Jool or generated using a dedicated colony reactor that eats a ton of power to do so, while colony supplies could be generated from a combination of ore, waste and power to eventually create a closed-loop system instead of sending them from Kerbin.

Seconded, this

[t_v]

8 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

I guess what I mean is you could loosely assume for a stable structure you’re digging  down to whatever bedrock is, grinding up the excavated material into aggregate, then re-pouring it into pier footings with a cementitious binder. Of the whole mass of the structure the non-metalic mass fraction of that binder is pretty low, and probably ignorable in the same way the mass fraction of Si chip components can be abstracted away. 
 

In reality of course the first substantial lunar and martian colonies will probably need to be built underground or with hugely massive regolith-based superstructures to ward off radiation, but Im guessing KSP2’s colony mechanics aren’t going to require deformable terrain in that way. Whether it ends up being economical or not metallic shielding will probably be the aesthetic.  

3 hours ago, The Aziz said:

Do we really need additional material, used exclusively for foundations of colony structures, in a game where it's not that important because you should focus on building vehicles? It works in games like Surviving Mars but then the whole goal of the game is building colonies.

Just to loop into the discussion, there is an already defined resource that is being overlooked. Metal, in its unprocessed form, is regolith! I mean, that isn’t exactly true, but if you dug into a coal or iron vein with an industrial drill, you would get a lot of rock encompassing the metal, so it is a good approximation for regolith. You could even name the raw resource regolith and have it so when you melt it down, you get metal. A good recipe for Concrete would then be metal (processed) + metal (ore). 

[Pthigrivi]

On 6/15/2022 at 7:00 AM, jimmymcgoochie said:

I don’t see the need to add fancy ores, just put the resources themselves in the ground and have drills to dig them up as for ore in KSP now. This area/biome has lots of water in its surface, be that liquid water, ice, hydrate minerals etc., that’s all you need to know. Having complicated production chains would detract from the “building and flying spaceships” thing that has repeatedly been stated to be the core of KSP2.

I think this is a tough call, but it seems like KSP2 will probably have ores that can be transported separately. The fuel plants they've show for He3 and MH and Xenon are just too huge to be trucked around on harvesters, and its probably overly restrictive to need to build your colonies exactly on top of rich deposits. That said I don't think you want a separate ore type for every resource as that would mean a lot of leg work harvesting it from different places gathering them into one place. Whether its hydrates or liquid water or general metallic ores you probably want to group raw resources and have the option refine them into all the various end-products. My feeling is the sweet spot is 4-6 raw resources, as that could create overlap zones where you could collect 2-3 main resources but not all, which I think would drive players to more creative solutions. I had a whole post on why I think you want at least 4 ages ago. Remember too depending on how you develop your tech you may skip over some resources, and depending on where you build some planets may or may not have everything you need. For instance Duna might have plenty of volatile ores for making Methalox and LS, but maybe Uranium is much more common on Ike, encouraging players to build an outpost there and a supply route to the main colony on the surface. 

Here's the problem w/ just two basic ores:

But w/ 4 basic ores players need to do a little planning to get everything they need:

This could get more interesting with zones with rich local energy:

Edited June 16, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[Maria Sirona]

.

Edited June 16, 2022 by Maria Sirona
Please ignore this

[Pthigrivi]

Been thinking about the life support question and more and more I'd love to see a 2 resource system - Snacks and Fertilizer. Snacks could be produced by greenhouses or hydroponics bays using EC and Fertilizer and consumed by Kerbals at a rate of 1/day to make the math easy. Fertilizer could be made from raw harvested materials at a colony OR as a by-product of recycler/composters with different efficiencies. You could have a simple 1t composter that would salvage 50% of consumed snack mass as fertilizer (the rest would be assumed vented), or a 3t waste recycler that would salvage 75%, or a 10t closed cycle nutrient extractor that would operate at 100% efficiency. The latter would be too heavy to be worth bringing on shorter term journeys but would be very useful on remote stations or interstellar colony ships. The considered mass for snacks would just be the nutrients, protein, and carbohydrates. To keep things simple O2 and H2O could be part of the base-cost of habitation modules and would be assumed 100% recycled so long as power remained constant. If power failed or kerbals ran out of food they wouldn't die, just start becoming increasingly grumpy and slowly lose all their science return and resource harvesting bonuses. There could even be a grace period like USI-LS has so you don't have to worry about LS at all early in the game. This would keep the number of consumable resources way down (basically 1) and create some nice trade-off/mass break-even points to optimize as you got deeper into the game. 

Edited July 14, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[JadeOfMaar]

On 7/14/2022 at 1:28 PM, Pthigrivi said:

Been thinking about the life support question and more and more I'd love to see a 2 resource system

About that. I'm making greenhouse parts now and I've been pondering (this "might" warrant its own thread): What if there were at least 2 different qualities of snacks? The defining characteristic that's added to them is that each type of Snack has a different duration time when consumed. You can go longer without eating after eating a high quality snack, however you're (usually) able to carry less of a higher quality snack. It would also allow different types of greenhouses to actually make sense. It wouldn't be all grass or abstract. You could have reason for cattle farms and fish farms and even possibly sell to ghost/handwaved agency for profit.

Example table:

Spoiler

The forum's tables function is rubbish. I honestly can't be arsed to use it.

Having more than 2 qualities is overkill but the extras could always be modded in if you don't really care as much about conqering planets as you do about basically playing The Sims in KSP.

[Pthigrivi]

For the base game Im just hoping that there’s some really simple ground floor mechanic in which a consumable life support resource and habitation space matters. On top of that framework mods could go hog wild.

For mods I love the idea of multiple greenhouse types, aquaculture, maybe a kitchen or food processing module? I wish I knew more about the raw-resource cycle planned for KSP2, because that might give good clues. For instance some food types might be easier where you had more access to water or volatiles, but others would require nitrogen or a dash of minerals to fortify the food products. Maybe some require more labor or energy but keep kerbals happy longer. You could also have some foods that kept for a very long time but didn’t give as big health/happiness bonuses or foods that kept for a very short time but gave big bonuses that boosted mining, processing and science rates. 
 

As in all games you’re looking for some special alchemy where players can create clever exploits while avoiding combinations that are so broken or obvious that they do the same repetitive things as matter of course, irrespective of the resources they have access to or particular challenges they’re trying to solve. 

Edited July 18, 2022 by Pthigrivi