Environment systems that enhance gameplay

[Vl3d]

I think it's good to have a separate thread where we can discuss environment systems that alter gameplay and are not only visual.

I'm thinking of:

• temperature deltas (freezing, melting, boiling etc.)
• atmospheric dynamics (wind, moisture, lightning)
• water dynamics (currents, waves, tsunamis, rivers, floods, waterfalls)
• terrain dynamics (varied surface friction, earthquakes, landslides, mud, quicksand, lava)
• collidable scatter (trees, rocks, planetary rings)
• particle aggregation - snow / sand / dust (how they impact solar panels,  weight on buildings)
• global weather systems (types of storms, climate, seasons)
• space weather systems (electromagnetic storms, radiation pressure, radiation belts)
• life support
• parts wear and repair

What do you want in the game, beyond just the cool visuals? What do you think would enhance gameplay?

Edited March 6, 2023 by Vl3d

[Periple]

All of these are cool! I think though that only things that fall under "weather/climate" fall in the sweet spot where they have a lot of potential for making gameplay richer and being feasible to implement without huge changes to systems that are already there. 

1. Wind -> weather -> climate: Would make flight more engaging and immersive and would create cool gameplay challenges with areas where you want to go but that have complicated weather; also would make you design colonies with weather in mind
2. Water dynamics -> Probably doable but doesn't have the kind of gameplay impact to make it REALLY worthwhile IMO, at least not until and unless there are many more dedicated water parts (underwater bases, submarines etc). I'd consider this if there's a Kerbal Sea Program expansion one day!
3. Temperature deltas -> I can't see what gameplay this would add, can you elaborate?
4. Earth dynamics -> Could potentially make colony-building and resource extraction more challenging but I don't think it's feasible without completely changing the planet system, would really need deformable terrain, voxels or such. So probably too expensive for the gameplay impact.
5. Particle aggregation -> I'm not sure how you would turn this into fun gameplay. Assign kerbals to sweep the snow/dust off the solar-panels? De-icing stations on spaceports? I'd probably just leave this as visual flavour implemented when everything else is done unless somebody has cool gameplay ideas about it.

Anyway I'd go with wind, climate, weather systems, and everything related to those: meteorological science, weather forecasts, visible weather systems etc etc etc.

[Vl3d]

6 minutes ago, Periple said:

All of these are cool! I think though that only things that fall under "weather/climate" fall in the sweet spot where they have a lot of potential for making gameplay richer and being feasible to implement without huge changes to systems that are already there. 

1. Wind -> weather -> climate: Would make flight more engaging and immersive and would create cool gameplay challenges with areas where you want to go but that have complicated weather; also would make you design colonies with weather in mind
2. Water dynamics -> Probably doable but doesn't have the kind of gameplay impact to make it REALLY worthwhile IMO, at least not until and unless there are many more dedicated water parts (underwater bases, submarines etc). I'd consider this if there's a Kerbal Sea Program expansion one day!
3. Temperature deltas -> I can't see what gameplay this would add, can you elaborate?
4. Earth dynamics -> Could potentially make colony-building and resource extraction more challenging but I don't think it's feasible without completely changing the planet system, would really need deformable terrain, voxels or such. So probably too expensive for the gameplay impact.
5. Particle aggregation -> I'm not sure how you would turn this into fun gameplay. Assign kerbals to sweep the snow/dust off the solar-panels? De-icing stations on spaceports? I'd probably just leave this as visual flavour implemented when everything else is done unless somebody has cool gameplay ideas about it.

Anyway I'd go with wind, climate, weather systems, and everything related to those: meteorological science, weather forecasts, visible weather systems etc etc etc.

I also added space weather and radiation to the list.

[J.Random]

Aside from stuff mentioned above - varied terrain surface friction, collidable terrain scatter and higher resolution/better detail of the highest/closest PQS level terrain (and more PQS levels in general, with smoother transition between them, but that's visual side of things).

[Vl3d]

8 minutes ago, Periple said:

Temperature deltas -> I can't see what gameplay this would add, can you elaborate?

Having enough electricity to keep electronics at at working temperature during a Munar night for example. The game already intends to implement heating management and damage. Why not also do the same for freezing?

[Periple]

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

Having enough electricity to keep electronics at at working temperature during a Munar night for example. The game already intends to implement heating management and damage. Why not also do the same for freezing?

Hmm still color me skeptical. If you want to make the simulation more detailed I think there would be other areas that had more gameplay potential, like the possibility to design your own engines or such. It would be a fairly big simulation system for what amounts to "if it's cold add more batteries and/or this nuclear/Lf/Ox/electric heater." But maybe I'm missing something?

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

I also added space weather and radiation to the list.

If radiation is in the space weather would definitely be a nice addition!

[MarcAbaddon]

As long as they start by making the Dres ring real I am open to everything

[Vl3d]

1 hour ago, MarcAbaddon said:

As long as they start by making the Dres ring real I am open to everything

I added collidable scatter to the list.

[Uuky]

I think this could have effect on a mechanical failure rate and on ketbal health.

[mcwaffles2003]

3 hours ago, Periple said:

Hmm still color me skeptical. If you want to make the simulation more detailed I think there would be other areas that had more gameplay potential, like the possibility to design your own engines or such. It would be a fairly big simulation system for what amounts to "if it's cold add more batteries and/or this nuclear/Lf/Ox/electric heater." But maybe I'm missing something?

I think some of these systems wouldn't be too complex. For more realistic heating/cooling conditions, for example, you could add blackbody radiation for cooling which would be a simple exponential decay function modified by  an emissivity factor if you wanted to really dig into it (maybe make this based on color so the color of ships can matter? But Id prefer cool looking ships over realism here). Heating would be a positively shifted negative exponential decay with an albedo modifier multipled by the incident power based on what solar panels already have built into them (the detection for incident light). Something like this would add to the complexity of the build puzzle as radiators and now heaters which would have a power draw would need to be kept in mind. Volcano lava could even give off heat as light  possibly though it might require more source points which could be fairly computationally expensive but I wonder if there's coding tricks or fancy math to skirt that.

Things like moisture in the atmosphere could be added as a scaling factor with atmospheric density as that's the only way it would really affect the physical aspect of the game. Visually it could be a factor in atmospheric scatter (moisture leads to less draw distance in a direction. Maybe it could also be linked to the clouds system as a noisy bubble around clouds.

I think really rudimentary solutions would do for a lot of this stuff in general as apposed to realistic simulations but that would require more performance head room which we are strapped for and then some right now.

Weather and climate systems in tandem with some volcanic activity I think would be cool, at least for the visual effects giving the planets even more character and making the world feel more alive instead of just different sized rocks.

A "Living World" DLC would be dope if it is feasible

4 hours ago, Periple said:

1. Particle aggregation -> I'm not sure how you would turn this into fun gameplay. Assign kerbals to sweep the snow/dust off the solar-panels? De-icing stations on spaceports? I'd probably just leave this as visual flavour implemented when everything else is done unless somebody has cool gameplay ideas about it.

Id like this for dust storm climates making rover lifespans possibly limited with permanently exposed panels

Edited March 6, 2023 by mcwaffles2003

[IronGremlin]

I think the thing when freezing and weather management is that these types of changes create cascades.

 

Like Eelo is cold - so include a heater. Which needs batteries. Which need energy generation. Which all adds mass, which needs more fuel, which needs a better engine...

 

You can see this a bit in life support mods, where you'd think it just "adds a chore," but by including another cost calculus you end up changing the mission profile quite a bit because now you care about things like "well how long are we on the surface?" because that lets you cut corners elsewhere.

 

The other massive change to gameplay is that omnicraft are now drastically less practical - you can't just fly a Duna probe down to Eve and expect it to work. I can see pros and cons to that, but I think largely it would add to the game.

[Astr0Guy5]

Some of the items listed sound very neat, while others sound excessively realistic for KSP.  The nerd in me screams, "Yes!  We need all the realisms!"  But the KSP player in me says, "I don't really want to have to consider 90 things every time I do a mission."  I think if some of these were implemented, they would need to be carefully balanced as not to make the game frustrating or too complex.  Ultimately, KSP is about space travel and that's an important fact to remember.

Temperature

• This could add a lot of depth to science experiments.  If different biomes had different temps, you could perform temp studies at each of them and get different data.
• Yes, this could connect with life support, but this might add that "too complex" element to KSP.  I think that temperature life support should only extend to protecting Kerbals from radiation/heat on ships with radiators (honestly radiators were kind of underused in KSP1).

Atmospheric Dynamics

• I really like the idea of wind when flying craft.  I think it could make aerodynamics even more important to consider in KSP.  However, I don't want KSP to become MFS.  If wind effects mean I can't build a ridiculous single-launch space station with a massive fairing because it falls over on the launchpad, that's a hard no from me.
• Moisture?  I don't know if it's interesting enough to add.  @Vl3d, I'm interested to know how you were thinking this affect gameplay?
• The tricky part of adding atmospherics is balancing them with gameplay.  Lightning strikes would be visually cool, but I wouldn't want my vessel destroyed every time there's a thunderstorm and it gets struck.  I think weather should also be purely visual and only affect gameplay in that your vision is impaired during flights.

Water Dynamics

• Variation in waves would be great, adding detail and beauty to bodies of water.  I'd love to build a nice seaside resort on Laythe for Kerbals to vacation at!  Tsunamis and floods would be cool, but might be overkill for KSP.  Having a budding colony I just built last week be swept away by a giant wave would be more frustrating than fun.  Plus, the devs said they want colonies to function mostly autonomously and endangering them with floods would require too much player maintenance.
• Waterfalls would be nice to have, but the terrain system would have to be good enough to support it.  I don't think this is reasonable.

Terrain Dynamics

• This falls into the same trap as tsunamis/floods/lightning.  I don't want my rover to be buried by a landslide on Duna after I spent hours getting it there.  I do think varied surface friction and lava could be added without much issue, though.  Lava is easy to avoid when landing/building colonies, and varied surface friction adds strategy to rover driving.
• Again, the terrain system is likely just not there to support landslides, quicksand, earthquakes, etc.

Collidable Scatter

• Of course!  Parallax 2 demonstrated how awesome this is, and thankfully the KSP2 devs have already confirmed we are getting collidable rocks, trees, and rings in the future! 

Particle Aggregation

• Having the accumulation of particles weigh down buildings detracts from the purpose of KSP.  It's not Kerbal Colony Simulator, it's Kerbal Space Program, right?  I also don't see the point to adding this even if it affects solar panels.  It would just be too much of a gameplay hassle.  Having distance from a star affect the productivity of solar panels is enough imo.

Global Weather Systems

• This sounds spectacular!  Having weather effects to immerse yourself in colony and aircraft activities would be amazing for adding interest to planetary adventures.
• I'm guessing the glaring issue here is the processing power required to implement proper weather systems.  It can't be nice on the GPU.

Space Weather Systems

• I think this is a great idea.  Having your vessels' power systems/communications be temporarily down because of electromagnetic storms or solar flares would be a unique gameplay element.  The key word there is temporarily.  This should be something that's easy to recover from, not something that compromises your entire mission.

These comments are mostly ignoring the elephant in the room, though.  System requirements are going to increase dramatically if all these extra effects are implemented.  I'm no developer, so maybe there's an optimized way to do it, but I don't want to compromise playability at the expense of (ultimately unnecessary) environment systems.  Thanks for the intriguing topic though, Vl3d!  This was a lot of fun to consider and write about. 

Edited March 6, 2023 by Astr0Guy5
Added a sentence or two to the first paragraph

[Vanamonde]

This discussion of the game's development has been moved to Development Discussions. 

[gussi111]

I miss the days when we were throwing in all those cool ideas on little things we wanted in the game, who could have expected that after multiple delays 80% of the things wouldn't be there at launch and that the biggest wish of most people now is to have at least 30 fps most of the time.  

[kicka55]

I like the idea but they all seem to hit performance. Maybe KSP3 when they really develop the game from scratch using a different engine, preferably their own engine written in C++. By adding such features or any features you always have to keep one thing in mind: Multiplayer. How does that feature work when two people share one world but have separate time warp. Aka, one player could be fast forwarding while the other remains in real time. So how does the environment change now? It's a bit of a conflict.

So my guess is they will refrain from adding any gameplay relevant environmental change in order to make that happen. It would be cool to transform planets with resource extraction and what not. I just don't see that being in the scope of KSP2. Maybe said future KSP3 that is built from the ground up with a dedicated engine for such space games. It has to be written on a low level language like C++ in order to get some performance out of it.

[Astr0Guy5]

1 hour ago, gussi111 said:

I miss the days when we were throwing in all those cool ideas on little things we wanted in the game, who could have expected that after multiple delays 80% of the things wouldn't be there at launch and that the biggest wish of most people now is to have at least 30 fps most of the time.  

'tis unfortunate, but oh won't that be a glorious day when the other 80% is there and we're flying off through interstellar space to plant our first colony.  *sniffs* Brings a tear to my eye just thinking about it.

[Vl3d]

Added "life support" and "parts wear and repair" to the list.

[stackocakes]

If you add wind, I suggest adding an Anemometer part to give a visual readout (think hurricane tracking aircraft where they can see wind speed/direction)

Also, lightning hitting an aircraft or spacecraft isn't uncommon and does fairly little damage considering how much shielding and protection the electronics have.