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Witnessing rare astronomical events


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Hello! This one is easy to describe and hard to implement. I would love if there was a mechanism that would:

1. Give hints or announce the player of an upcoming astronomical event, so the player has time to prepare an observation mission and experiments.

2. Allow the player/s (if multiplayer) to witness astronomical events in the game like:

--- eclipses

--- planetary alignment

--- meteor shower

--- asteroid / comet impact

--- huge volcanic eruptions

--- huge sun flares / solarstorms

--- huge vortex on gas giant (to send a probe falling into it)

--- huge geizer eruptions

--- object getting ripped apart by very strong gravity (like how the rings of Saturn we're formed)

--- comet passing through planetary rings

--- merging of two huge celestial bodies

--- rogue celestial body entering solar system (like an ice planet melting when passing too close to the sun)

--- merging stars

--- supernovae

--- neutron star polar beam scorching a planet

--- and I'm sure there are many more ideas

Example:

Oh and also flying over lava fields and giant waterfalls. :confused:

Edited by Vl3d
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I like the small local recurring events (e.g. volcanoes (minus the lava), geizers, minor impact, meteor shower) and the positional recurring events (thing passing through rings, alignment, eclipse).
Those seem pretty reasonable to implement as special landmarks on the surface of bodies / pre-calculated timestamps and would be cool to have bases near their sites (even if its just for the cool photos).
The rogue planet is kind of interesting thoh, as the game progresses it gets harder and harder to catch as its escapes the star system, an interesting way to scale with player progression for sure. I'm not holding my breath on visuals or changing terrain so likely its perapsis is going to be a bit far out or its a rocky world with next to no volatiles to melt or vaporise.
The ideas like merging, giant impacts or celestial bodies getting slowly spagettified by the roche limit seem a little too out there owing to how planets are implemented and the insane effort it would take for it to look half decent and not just two spheres awkwardly clipping into each other with explosion particles (simply bc KSP2 is likely to be designed with this never happening in mind , making this feature especially difficult to introduce).  

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1 hour ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

you realize you can't really witness planetary ring formation, right? That's not a several year process.

Of course. You can only see the moment the moon breaks up. That video is amazing.

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One problem is that rare astronomical events are, well, rare.  The timescales involved are literally astronomical, so unless the game has far more of these events than really exist, you'll have millions of years between them, which is probably longer than the game is meant to go for.

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--- eclipses

already in the game

--- planetary alignment

already in the game

--- meteor shower

This would be a neat idea. Several of them on annual calendar days and possibly include the comet that cases each.

--- asteroid / comet impact

Reasonable for early solar system bodies, would like to see, but probably not possible with current sim direction lacking terrain deformation.

--- huge volcanic eruptions

Tectonic activity would be nice to see, but again with the lack of terrain deformation I think this wouldn't work well

--- huge sun flares / solarstorms

As a fan if kerbalism I'd like to see these kind of mechanics implemented in life support, personally, but I can see how random radiation of kerbals wouldn't be desired in stock.  As for visuals, I dont think they would present many.

--- huge vortex on gas giant (to send a probe falling into it)

Would be cool to have a biome like this

--- huge geizer eruptions

This would be a nice add on and definitely possible.  Maybe include timing event based science?

--- object getting ripped apart by very strong gravity (like how the rings of Saturn we're formed)

Too rare an event to reasonably come across and without terrain deformation mechanics this is very not possible

--- comet passing through planetary rings

Too rare + terrain deformation

--- merging of two huge celestial bodies

Too rare + terrain deformation

--- rogue celestial body entering solar system (like an ice planet melting when passing too close to the sun)

Too rare + terrain deformation

--- merging stars

Too rare + terrain deformation

--- supernovae

This  would kill everything in the nearby area... maybe in the skybox?

--- neutron star polar beam scorching a planet

Too rare + terrain deformation

 

Dude... you ask a lot, you really do. You should really take the hint everyone around here has been saying about expectations, the game will not live up to the ones you are setting. By a long shot.

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I doubt that I can come up with something the dev team hasn't thought of years ago and decided if it would be implemented or not. But I'm trying! :confused:

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2 hours ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

Dude... you ask a lot, you really do. You should really take the hint everyone around here has been saying about expectations, the game will not live up to the ones you are setting. By a long shot.

+1

Vl3d is asking for an amalgamation of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, Elite Dangerous and Universe Sandbox, among other things. How bout we try remembering that this is supposed to be a sequel of Kerbal Space Program, not everyone owns a GTX 3090, and that the developers likely don't have the licensing to use every revolutionary piece of technology MFS2020 introduced :)

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