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How does Starfield compare to KSP2 (ship & base building, environment, IVA, HUD)?


Vl3d

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What do you think about the Starfield features revealed by the gameplay videos and photos - as compared to KSP2?

I'm not comparing genres - only "apples to apples", things that KSP also has: ship building features, base building, celestial body environment, ship IVA and third person HUD features.

Also remember: Starfield players cannot actively pilot their ships to a planet's surface

Ship Building (with details here & here):

Spoiler

Starfield-ship-design-modules.jpg

starfield-ship-design-cosmetics.jpg

starfield-build.png

Base building and resources (details here):

Spoiler

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ngcb8

Exploration & environment (details about planets here):

Spoiler

First-Starfield-Gameplay-Teases-Planetar

yWtnEkxLBeekX9HUr6jsrf-970-80.jpg

AgvR7RQ.png

 

Ship IVA / flight deck / HUD (but no seamless spaceflight):

Spoiler

H3UOA7c.png

Starfield-trailer-screen.jpg

Clearly KSP2 is doing something amazing that technically has never been done before (even before speaking of the multiplayer aspects).

"An update on Kerbal Space Program 2 and how we're enabling players to travel from planet A orbiting star B to planet C orbiting star D, continuously, without any loading screens, pauses, faked out transitions, "warp drives", or other trickery. We're simulating a multi-light-year spanning 3D volume at a sub-millimeter level of resolution, and enabling players to travel to any point in that space if they can build a ship capable of making the journey. Unprecedented in gaming." - Paul Furio, the Senior Engineering Manager at Private Division

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/paul-furio_kerbal-space-program-2-episode-5-interstellar-activity-6920089169021014016-J_5I

Edited by Vl3d
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With the limits of information on both games, all I can confidently say is that Base Building on an assembly mechanic looks comparable - Otherwise any similarities are skin deep. You can already see the starfield ship builder is abstracting the realities of the ship design decisions one might make in KSP (Aerodynamics, CoG, etc) into a few generalized mobility stats. IVA is probably superior, but this is just by virtue of being a FPS set in space, of course it'll let you get closer and more detailed internally where you fight. Exploration is fundamentally different, with Bethesda design almost universally focused on deliberate Points of Interest; a design choice I don't see changing, whereas we haven't seen much of what drives KSP 2 exploration past the joys of adventure itself, we've just inferred from the prior game.

The one I can say to completely discount at this time is graphical comparisons - Both games are yet unreleased, KSP 2's final visual fidelity is very likely still in flux as timelines and hardware shift, and Bethesda is well known for pushing the graphics to max during reveals only to scale back to what's realistic at launch - This isn't a malicious action, they just tend to be more optimistic than reality allows regarding what they can finally deliver.

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There's no apple to apple applicable comparation possible aside from both games being set in space.

At that point how do both games compare with StarCraft? That game is also set in space, has resource gathering, base building and exploration mechanics for different environments technically speaking.

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This is a VERY different game from KSP2, even if they share some elements.

I don't think it will compete with KSP2, directly, but they both might turn out to share some of the same demographics w/r/t playerbase.  (Space-interested people who like to build and explore).... But the gameplay is SOOOOOOOOoooooo different from what I expect (or even want) from KSP2.

That said: it's likely to be a game I might buy.  There are elements I like.  I especially liked that the crab things did not automatically attack (I assume that, had the player shot one, they'd all attack).  It was a cool design choice to allow players to just avoid certain fauna.

Still - it's ultimately a story-driven FPS with a space exploration theme and base/ship building elements.

KSP2 is... KSP, too.

Edited by JoeSchmuckatelli
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5 hours ago, Vl3d said:

Clearly KSP2 is doing something amazing that technically has never been done before (even before speaking of the multiplayer aspects).

"An update on Kerbal Space Program 2 and how we're enabling players to travel from planet A orbiting star B to planet C orbiting star D, continuously, without any loading screens, pauses, faked out transitions, "warp drives", or other trickery.      [cut]      Unprecedented in gaming."

SpaceEngine did seamless planetary landings and real-scale interstellar and intergalactic flight with 0 loading screens. Paul Furio is not being honest, unless you only cherrypick things that count as games, ignoring all the potential SpaceEngine has for game development - these are all feats that have been done before, even if still impressive.

I hate seeing gems like SpaceEngine discredited to make other things look even better - barely two people have been working on it at any given time since it begun development with a single Russian guy sometime in the mid-late-2000s and now all the developers are doing everything in their power to stabilize development due to recent events, so as to continue to deliver actual feats, like a ray-marched real-time Kerr black hole metric running in OpenGL (same for the Alcubierre metric, for spaceships in warp) describing the way light is actually deflected in warped space, volumetric accretion disks around black holes, wormholes with throat length as described by general relativity, real volumetric clouds with no fakery (earlier in development compared to black holes, as paradoxical as that sounds), et cetera.

Sorry for that ramble, I just think it was a bad move to claim these are all new feats, that are "unprecedented in gaming", even worse that people are going further to say "KSP 2 is doing something that technically has never been done before". This all discredits others that have done similar things before... Not just similar. but a million times better. SpaceEngine also does seamless travel between galaxies, simulating a cube with a radius of ~30 billion light years (IIRC, it's still on the scale of dozens of billions though), showing you the web-looking way that galaxies are distributed and letting you travel to any individual galaxy you can see. 

Edited by Bej Kerman
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I think @Bej Kermanbrings up a really good point there - KSP is not the first to do the things it is doing, and not the best at doing them. It won’t have the amazing graphical quality and densely packed areas of starfield, it won’t have the good compromise between fidelity and scale that Space Engine manages to achieve, it won’t have the well optimized and expansive manufacturing system of a game like factorio, it wont have the accurate orbital mechanics of many old-school orbital simulators…

But being on par with the best isn’t the goal for KSP 2, it is the combination of elements like these. There isn’t another pretty accurate orbital simulator in 3D which has relatively good graphics and more than one planet with avatars/characters as well as a colony system with resource management, plus modular ships… 

So, I think that we can look to starfield aspirationally for planetary graphics and design if you like that sort of style, or their ship building system which apparently has IVA included, but know that KSP isn’t going to be on par with many of these games because these games have focused a lot more on different aspects. 

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3 hours ago, The Aziz said:

If anything, Starfield is comparable to No Man's Sky.

NMS plus a full Skyrim worth of RPG into it.

Even at its worst (random encounters and radiant quests in Skyrim and babysitting settlements in FO4) Beth quests and stories are better than the best of what "traditional space games" like  NMS, Elite or X4 can offer.

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I think the last trailer was a negative for anyone who's played the previous Bethesda (not necessarily fallout) games. The group I was watching SGS with instantly recognized the classic "beth rpg" gameplay and engine mechanics. This adds up on top of negative articles coming out. Now, for your apples to apples:

  • Starfield's ship building looked like a direct repurposing of FO4/76's base building, with building (ship in this case) blocks interconnecting to provide bonuses/maluses. Shape really didn't seem much relevant in what they showed, because neither were physics relevant in what they showed.
  • Base building: Again, they literally have no reason to do anything different from what they did in 4/76, those systems were liked, even when limited and buggy, and it seems they've really gone and done nothing but new assets.
  • IVA in Starfield is probably limited to walkable "interiors" and first person flying. With this I mean that you'll be able to move inside your ship only when your ship isn't being flown (so, only after you land, or if they maybe have some "in flight" phase). KSP2 seems to have nothing different from KSP1 in regards to IVA.
  • Planets in KSP1 were absolutely barren and KSP2's are looking no different, other than maybe some heavily planned and worked geographical accident I don't really expect anything but random scatter. Beth probably will do the same, with either small explorable zones as "maps", or ME's Barren giant maps with some scattered POIs.
  • As for environments, they've gone for the magic space clouds and stars with 0 realism, and magic space particles to visualize movement in controllable flight. Combat really looks no different than NMS in that it is the most simplistic "dogfighting" you could come up with without having people learn how stuff actually would work in space.

Outside of that, Starfield will literally be FO4/76 with fake air combat. Bethesda clearly has no intention of stepping up their elementary school writing, or give up bad systems like "infinite quest generation" composed of "grab X from Y after killing Z". Another show of wasted potential until modders decide to switch to it and maybe make something out of the game.

 

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26 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

Planets in KSP1 were absolutely barren and KSP2's are looking no different, other than maybe some heavily planned and worked geographical accident I don't really expect anything but random scatter.

Why would a planet not be barren?

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53 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Why would a planet not be barren?

Note that with "Barren" I don't mean "lacking life/civilization/aliens", but rather "lacking anything interesting other than random scattered models you'll look at once and never have any reason to go back to said world". When your worlds are procedural, with the same recolored texture over them, there's literally no reason to revisit, this is why career forcefully coerces you to do the same thing over and over in different "biomes", which again are no different from one another.

In SpaceEngine for example you get interesting constructs, hints of activity (even if geological), and can look at many different geographical formations, along with a full suite of astrophysical data. In No Man's Sky every planet might be a single biome, but at least has its own flavor of generated native constructs to have anything different from other similar bodies, plus a whole system of derelicts from other spacefaring individuals/races, and then the two tech tree unlocking facilities, plus some specific planets set aside to be entirely different from the rest tying into the sentinel narrative. KSP1 (and seemingly KSP2) do none of that.

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15 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

Note that with "Barren" I don't mean "lacking life/civilization/aliens", but rather "lacking anything interesting other than random scattered models you'll look at once and never have any reason to go back to said world". When your worlds are procedural, with the same recolored texture over them, there's literally no reason to revisit, this is why career forcefully coerces you to do the same thing over and over in different "biomes", which again are no different from one another.

In SpaceEngine for example you get interesting constructs, hints of activity (even if geological), and can look at many different geographical formations

KSP 1 (and probably 2) has geological formations - Kerbin has many rivers and the Mun is home to many valleys and funny-shaped craters, and there's no reason to assume KSP 2 won't do the same.

16 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

In No Man's Sky every planet might be a single biome, but at least has its own flavor of generated native constructs to have anything different from other similar bodies, plus a whole system of derelicts from other spacefaring individuals/races, and then the two tech tree unlocking facilities, plus some specific planets set aside to be entirely different from the rest tying into the sentinel narrative

Alas, planets in real life are barren wastelands. Don't expect to see anything like this in KSP 2 (or outside of a single planet / the endgame, if the devs choose to pursue NovaSilisko's scrapped KSP 1 narrative).

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I kind of agree with both of you. In real life (sadly) most planets are actually super bleak and barren. Thats a real challenge for game-planet designers, because making a thing look realistic also in many ways means making it positively empty and tedious to traverse at the human (or kerbal) scale. If you climb up a mountain in Skyrim and look down what you're seeing is bonkers unrealistic, but who cares! When you walk around in first person its relatively dense with content you can interact with, much of which on a per-acre basis is hand crafted. Now, we've heard what I personally think is good talk about the level of hand-crafted work applied to Starfield, number recorded audio lines, some big cool cities, but I think anyone listening understands 'okay but thats now spread over 1000 planets rather than crammed into Skyrim's 14.3 sqmi (37km^2) or even F4's 9700 sqmi (25000km^2). Necessarily you're not going to find the same kind of on-foot hand-crafting/square mile density. There's going to be big stretches of space with procedural whatever or nothing. Im guessing as they were designing someone decided 'well, if you need a space ship to travel from one outpost to another who cares if there's 20 on a planet or 2?' We'll see if that calculation paid off next year.

I dig into this only because @Vl3d is right that Intercept must have had to deal with similar questions of density, traversal, and the fuzzy border between procedural generation, curation, and hand-crafted environments spread over truly ludicrous surface area. KSP is a very different game because its not a primarily on-foot experience. Its got to straddle between sub-orbital hops, aerial, and rover-based traversal, which we've all learned even without collideable debris is incredibly tedious over distances in excess of 3-5km. We don't yet know how many systems will be available at launch, but I think they'd be wise to land between Kerbol +3-5, because this offers the chance to make each body feel like its own and concentrate on maybe 2-5 specially hand-crafted geographical features per body (or anomalies if you prefer) that players could map from space and then even without laser precise landing skills approach from that 3-5km rover-recon radius. At that point you've got a series of unique science and resource opportunities on each body that players can locate from orbit and then within feasible and fun gameplay find and explore. 

As to the other questions in the OP I think we just don't know enough about either game to compare. There are some necessary differences because KSP2 needs to manage potentially hundreds or thousands of kerbals more like a survival city builder than an RPG, and because KSP is a fully-simulated game based centrally on continuous physics. I think both those facets should/will make colony management and interplanetary resource economics much different. But the basics of VAB UI probably is very applicable to base building, so long as all the other tools for resource flow and population/workforce management were present. 
 

Edited by Pthigrivi
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6 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

Why would a planet not be barren?

I think the word PCDWolf should've used is bland or uninteresting. For it to not be "barren" by Wolf's definition, it needs actual geological landscapes instead of a bunch of smooth hills, which KSP2 has already shown.

Edited by intelliCom
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5 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

KSP 1 (and probably 2) has geological formations - Kerbin has many rivers and the Mun is home to many valleys and funny-shaped craters, and there's no reason to assume KSP 2 won't do the same.

Alas, planets in real life are barren wastelands. Don't expect to see anything like this in KSP 2 (or outside of a single planet / the endgame, if the devs choose to pursue NovaSilisko's scrapped KSP 1 narrative).

54 minutes ago, intelliCom said:

I think the word PCDWolf should've used is bland or uninteresting. For it to not be "barren" by Wolf's definition, it needs actual geological landscapes instead of a bunch of smooth hills, which KSP2 has already shown.

Alright, let me put it like this:

KSP1/2 planets (for KSP2 seemingly) have no organic reason for me to come back, and that's organic as opposed to forced. "We made biomes so you can farm more science although the planet still looks exactly the same anywhere" is forcing me to come back, because even if the text from the experiments is different, the rest looks exactly the same. This is the opposite to the absolute myriad of missions we've sent to the Moon, Mars, and all those we've designed for other bodies, where each of them has a different profile, goals, and study subject.

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13 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

SpaceEngine did seamless planetary landings and real-scale interstellar and intergalactic flight with 0 loading screens. Paul Furio is not being honest, unless you only cherrypick things that count as games, ignoring all the potential SpaceEngine has for game development - these are all feats that have been done before, even if still impressive.

I hate seeing gems like SpaceEngine discredited to make other things look even better - barely two people have been working on it at any given time since it begun development with a single Russian guy sometime in the mid-late-2000s and now all the developers are doing everything in their power to stabilize development due to recent events, so as to continue to deliver actual feats, like a ray-marched real-time Kerr black hole metric running in OpenGL (same for the Alcubierre metric, for spaceships in warp) describing the way light is actually deflected in warped space, volumetric accretion disks around black holes, wormholes with throat length as described by general relativity, real volumetric clouds with no fakery (earlier in development compared to black holes, as paradoxical as that sounds), et cetera.

Sorry for that ramble, I just think it was a bad move to claim these are all new feats, that are "unprecedented in gaming", even worse that people are going further to say "KSP 2 is doing something that technically has never been done before". This all discredits others that have done similar things before... Not just similar. but a million times better. SpaceEngine also does seamless travel between galaxies, simulating a cube with a radius of ~30 billion light years (IIRC, it's still on the scale of dozens of billions though), showing you the web-looking way that galaxies are distributed and letting you travel to any individual galaxy you can see. 

I think this post is very good and it should be republished as it's own topic. It makes a good point about Space Engine.

Later edit: although, if I think about it more.. does Space Engine manage time (warp) and syncing multiple vessels / simulated processes in the same universe? Also does it have sub-millimeter resolution?

Also, as in KSP, I really feel weather and seasons would be truly revolutionary for the game / simulation.

Edited by Vl3d
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7 hours ago, Vl3d said:

Later edit: although, if I think about it more.. does Space Engine manage time (warp) and syncing multiple vessels / simulated processes in the same universe? Also does it have sub-millimeter resolution?

SpaceEngine does not have multiplayer yet. Yes, it has timewarp (10,000x with vessels enabled, something crazy like 10e12x in planetarium mode) and it has enough precision - you can dock two vessels aligning them within the 1m margin required to couple them while at the far edges of the Universe.

7 hours ago, Vl3d said:

Also, as in KSP, I really feel weather and seasons would be truly revolutionary for the game / simulation.

But it wouldn't be necessary.

9 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

This is the opposite to the absolute myriad of missions we've sent to the Moon, Mars, and all those we've designed for other bodies, where each of them has a different profile, goals, and study subject.

KSP 1 has that as well - Duna has a paper thin atmosphere, so you adapt your vessels for that. Mun has low gravity and rough terrain, so you need to design rovers around that (low COM, wide base). KSP is an engineering game first and foremost, and the planets and part selections are varied enough that you can spend years topping yourself in your engineering skills. Science not having the depth of a real life mission is a nitpick at most, besides the fact that sandbox mode is right there for you to indulge in better, less limited gameplay.

If you have any suggestions for making planets less boring (even though they really aren't), without resorting to simulating the entire history of the Universe and allowing you to dig up the ground with all the physics of that simulated enabling you to dig up rocks from the planet's ancient history and infer the planets' past from what you can see on the rock, do tell us.

Edited by Bej Kerman
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3 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:
7 hours ago, Vl3d said:

Also, as in KSP, I really feel weather and seasons would be truly revolutionary for the game / simulation.

But it wouldn't be necessary.

Imagine RDR2 without the weather.

Now imagine Space Engine and KSP2 with the weather.

Weather generally creates a completely immersive and emotionally amplified experience.

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Just now, Vl3d said:
7 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:
7 hours ago, Vl3d said:

Also, as in KSP, I really feel weather and seasons would be truly revolutionary for the game / simulation.

But it wouldn't be necessary.

Imagine RDR2 without the weather.

Now imagine Space Engine and KSP2 with the weather.

Weather generally creates a completely immersive and emotionally amplified experience.

I get that a space game is not much of a space game without somewhere to land once your vessel is done traversing the vast distances between planets, but this really is not too necessary. Some cloud effects would suffice.

RDR2 also does not need to simulate that weather on an intercontinental scale, as KSP 2 would have to do. Some flashes to represent lightning would be nice, but again it's not that big of a deal.

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2 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

RDR2 also does not need to simulate that weather on an intercontinental scale, as KSP 2 would have to do. Some flashes to represent lightning would be nice, but again it's not that big of a deal.

There's this cool mod for KSP1 global weather (wind actually works and has an impact on gameplay), but I don't think anyone implemented the visual weather effects for it (rain / storm).

 

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Just now, Vl3d said:

There's this cool mod for KSP1 global weather (wind actually works and has an impact on gameplay), but I don't think anyone implemented the visual weather effects for it (rain / storm).

 

Not a requirement for launch. Maybe something that could be done with mods or post-release updates.

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1 hour ago, Bej Kerman said:

KSP 1 has that as well - Duna has a paper thin atmosphere, so you adapt your vessels for that. Mun has low gravity and rough terrain, so you need to design rovers around that (low COM, wide base). KSP is an engineering game first and foremost, and the planets and part selections are varied enough that you can spend years topping yourself in your engineering skills. Science not having the depth of a real life mission is a nitpick at most, besides the fact that sandbox mode is right there for you to indulge in better, less limited gameplay.

If you have any suggestions for making planets less boring (even though they really aren't), without resorting to simulating the entire history of the Universe and allowing you to dig up the ground with all the physics of that simulated enabling you to dig up rocks from the planet's ancient history and infer the planets' past from what you can see on the rock, do tell us.

That's a wide berth you have to take to go from "planets are uninteresting" to "the only way to fix that is simulated geology and meaningful voxel terrain". On top of that, the challenge you mention applies once per body, thus again back to my argument: You have no reason to visit more than once. 

What I'd suggest is they look at planets from a level design perspective and not just a collection of PQS parameters to form a homogenously boring collection of hills and craters.

  • Moho has the mohole, and other than that is just a brown Mun;
  • Eve is probably the only one you visit more than once trying a return mission but outside the difficulty of returning, again, a purple Mun with metal oceans
  • Minmus lets you play with marginal gravity, but it is such an easy body to do whatever you want in that its huge contrasts of flatness and mountains matters zero;
  • Duna is everybody's first target, but it is no more than an orange Mun with its poles being interesting, yet they offer no difference in gameplay;
  • Dres has an amazing canyon, which you'll land in or around once and then never visit again, if anybody ever visits in the first place;
  • Joolian moons offer an oversized Mun, an ice Mun, a smaller and geology-lacking Kerbin, and 2 asteroids which offer no difference between each other (or with the other asteroid, Gilly);
  • Lastly Eeloo offers a challenge in solar panels being mostly useless, but its geology is again really uninteresting.

If you really want a collection of suggestions, here:

  1. Make the biome system meaningful: More biomes, and actually visually different from one another, instead of random, arbitrary boundaries. The most visually varied biome collection, where you can actually discern you're in a different biome, is the KSC right now.
  2. Manually design planets with its geology in mind, PQS and other procedural systems are great to spam, but they've got a very limited number of planets, with even some gas giant wildcars they don't even have to model.
  3. Make landing challenging: If I can literally land anywhere with enough legs/SAS, then examining the geology of a landing site becomes meaningless. I'd prefer planets with obvious landing targets and accesible science on those than just rocket hopping, which again is only a choice because landing is no challenge.
  4. Planets shouldn't be completely identifiable at first glance. This has been "fixed" by many mods, you shouldn't be able to just look at a planet and chose a landing site with magic tracking center map data, you should need to at least send a mapping probe first.
  5. Meaningful atmospheres. Atmosphere density was barely played with in KSP, and there was no wind either, let alone clouds or weather. Those make landings and launches hard, as you can't just land or launch anywhere and anytime.
  6. Sample returns should be meaningful, and so should be probe science. Breaking Ground added some good changes to that system, the trend should continue.
  7. Life support. Not all planets are supposed to support life, most don't even give a place for grass to grow, sustaining anything from landed vessels to colonies should be a challenge, and this would greatly tie in with all the previous points.

 

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10 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

1. Make the biome system meaningful: More biomes, and actually visually different from one another, instead of random, arbitrary boundaries. The most visually varied biome collection, where you can actually discern you're in a different biome, is the KSC right now.

How?

10 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

2. Manually design planets with its geology in mind, PQS and other procedural systems are great to spam, but they've got a very limited number of planets, with even some gas giant wildcars they don't even have to model.

That's already done

10 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

3. Make landing challenging: If I can literally land anywhere with enough legs/SAS, then examining the geology of a landing site becomes meaningless. I'd prefer planets with obvious landing targets and accesible science on those than just rocket hopping, which again is only a choice because landing is no challenge.

How? 99% of planets are made of rock and have easily identifiable flat planes - Rask and Rusk still have cooler solid areas and you won't find a planet that is 100% made of quicksand. Care to give us a solution?

Repeat for points 3-7. These demands are pretty unreasonable - especially 6 and 7 (with the exception of 5 which is fairly doable) which seem more fitting for a NASA supercomputer simulation of a space agency than a literal game that only incorporates some simulation for its gameplay. There's no avoiding the fact that if you can land on Tylo, you can land pretty much anywhere else. There will not be arbitrary barriers preventing a vessel with landing legs and RCS/SAS from landing anywhere else.

Edited by Bej Kerman
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54 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

Minmus lets you play with marginal gravity, but it is such an easy body to do whatever you want in that its huge contrasts of flatness and mountains matters zero;

You go to Minmus also for refueling infrastructure and building a rover-ramp-to-orbit / space trebuchet.

Jokes aside, I agree with your post. Biomes in KSP1 suck.

Besides the reasons your stated there are also anomalies to discover - these can be anything as long as they are unique and interesting.

And also remember ground bases will have purpose now (mining resources / infrastructure / ship building.. also hope for scientific research).

I have been advocating for other mechanics that encourage returning to a celestial body:

- tourism and sightseeing (natural points of interest like you mentioned, but also for player-built architecture like uniquely positioned and hard to build colonies +  extreme sports retreats and other fun activities players think of)

- quests and lore

- custom space races

- building large scale projects and planetary infrastructure (like a Mun highway that would benefit all players)

Come to think of it, building an orbiting asteroid outer shell around Gilly in multiplayer would be an absolutely epic project.

Edited by Vl3d
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1 hour ago, Bej Kerman said:

How?

That's already done

How? 99% of planets are made of rock and have easily identifiable flat planes - Rask and Rusk still have cooler solid areas and you won't find a planet that is 100% made of quicksand. Care to give us a solution?

Repeat for points 3-7. These demands are pretty unreasonable - especially 6 and 7 (with the exception of 5 which is fairly doable) which seem more fitting for a NASA supercomputer simulation of a space agency than a literal game that only incorporates some simulation for its gameplay. There's no avoiding the fact that if you can land on Tylo, you can land pretty much anywhere else. There will not be arbitrary barriers preventing a vessel with landing legs and RCS/SAS from landing anywhere else.

If 2 really is done, then 1 is mostly done as well, they're pretty tight with each other.

3 requires that legs and SAS stop being magically strong, once that is done, hills and such will become pretty hard to land on. Further on, proper aerodynamics (with consequences) will make packing legs a challenge, so you can't just add legs to anything and use those + magic SAS to plonk a vessel down anywhere. Those barriers would not be arbitrary, they'd be as realistic as they get. Real life rockets don't take off with unprepared un-aerodynamic parts hanging off the side.

4 has been done by mods, don't really need to explain, just make the magic tracking station map not magic by blurring it or just showing a 2d image or something, until you send a mapping probe.

6 has progress from breaking ground, they just need to iterate a couple times more on it to get a proper and engaging sample return experience.

7 is again literally made by mods, requiring life support limits your choices in a meaningful way, as crew can't just land anywhere and spend any amount of time hanging out, missions suddenly require planning AND execution. Add to that a layer of wind/clouds/weather and you can't just land or takeoff whenever you want anymore, there are weather mods already for KSP1.

It seems the issue is you grossly overestimating everything suggested as an atom level simulation, when it really doesn't need to be that.

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