Surprised noone has posted this: 0.24 and story arcs (plots)

[hzigy]

Hey guys, i've been lurking these forums for quite a while, but had to break my status to bring up something i'm surprised noone thought of yet - the new contracts system gave us the ability to create custom story arcs.

Now, i know that we don't play KSP because of the plots or rich deep stories, but someone might still be interested in this.

I'm talking about the ability to come up with extensive plots, being progressed by completing contracts - finish one contract and the next part is unlocked. Granted, this can be made even better using mods (like kerbtown to place custom structures or KAS to enhance the spectrum of possible tasks), but even the vanilla version should be enough to produce some interesting plots.

To get the ball rolling, heres a quick idea how a story arc could look like, based on something similar like the Alien franchise (since KSP could really do spooky stuff - sometimes even driving a rover on the mun at night can feel unnerving ):

Contract 1: The host company (Weyland-Yutani) gives you a simple task of transporting some fuel to a station around Jool (hey, if the system can spawn kerbals in orbit, why can't it spawn whole stations...)

Contract 2: The host company detected some strange readings on Vall during your last mission. It now gives you some scanning equipment to test in Vall orbit (can be stock or a new modded part)

Contract 3: Your scanning equipment found a wreckage on Vall surface. Land with 3 Kerbals at it's coordinates (or something like that) (the wreckage could be pre-modelled and then positioned with KerbTown)

Contract 4: Examine the wreckage and collect a valuable item (let's say exomorph pod - this could be again done with the 'rescue Kerbal in orbit' mechanic, just replace the Kerbal model with something else. Or KAS could be used to pick up a pod-looking part and later attached to the lander for retrieval).

Contrack 5: Land at the KSC. Obviously there would be some catastrophe during the trip, making sure only 1 Kerbal returns (like a scripted event).

and so on, there are a lot of movies to cover ...

Now, i'm no expert at KSP modding, so i'm not sure how much of this particular story would be possible, but you get the idea. If anyone is interested in picking up the ball and make a mod out of this, i'd be glad to help (i have 4 years Unity experience and am a hobby 3D modeler, plus professional software developer), but i don't have nearly enough time to pull something like this myself.

Cheers