Kegereneku

Novel opinions : Playing Without Mechjeb is cheating. Dead serious here, real rockets were never flown by hands except in rare & exceptional conditions, everything was programmed even before the invention of the transistor and will always be. The future of Astronautic is pre-programmed interface for their users, far better than pitiful hum...kerbal skills. Seriously... everybody play how he want. This is not a competitive game.

When its launch tower double as a space Elevator.

Let's bump this, we've been waiting for too long. Also, when do we get that damned Kerbal-Engineer dV-per-stage-reader ? When you have a Node Maneuver system which give maneuvers-cost in m/s the first question that come is "how much do I have left ?" and it is a critical tools to learn the distinction between high-thrust and high Impulse.

That's..... a tweak which should be suggested (moving the topic) in the suggestion forum. That's a very good idea. I wish we just had as many tweakable that we hoped for.

Then there's no more reason to pick on what I said about "maintaining thrust" (which is as correct as "not loosing thrust"). It's been a while since I last played, but I remember the Aerospike as not particularly different/efficient in comparison to other engine, at least not enough to use them for a light SSTO/reusable SSTO. Doesn't help that there is only one size available and that engine-clusters lose in efficiency. You also have to balance them/balance the jet-engine to not overshadow it on Kerbin.

I'm not misunderstanding really, having a Specific Impulse as high as possible is so obvious that it is meaningless to mention, you wouldn't even bother to compare a classic Bell nozzle to an aerospike if it didn't have any use. In terms of game-design the Isp would be the specs you change to balance the Aerospike, after making its dynamic correct toward other engines. What you want to compare is whether you can use one aerospike for an atmospheric ascent rather than 2/3 specialized engine. But for that the other engine must not act like Aerospike themselves. NothingSpecial above explained it simply.

I'm also sorry, but that's nitpicking. Aerospike are best at maintaining thrust over through their resistance to pressure change, which in term of gameplay basically meant the very same as being able to maintaining thrust at (any)various altitude. I do not have right now a working KSP install to check out the newest value, but as long as the Aerospike do not have the advantage over other engine to maintain the thrust BETTER at different pressure, then its intrinsic quality are not properly taken into account. And so, maybe the problem isn't the Aerospike but how all other engines were originally balanced with static thrust (as an consequences of the old aerodynamic system) and the Aerospike to not be utterly superior under the old unrealistic rules. I understand that SQUAD can't simply rework entirely the balance without making the forum burst into an infernal rage, but at least we can search where the real problem is. The Aerospike isn't simply an upgraded engine, it is the one engine to rules them all ...... as far as varying pressure is concerned. It's non-stackable nature and low TWR is enough to balance it. That's all I have to say on this.

Maybe we can agree that with the new aerodynamic model, an Aerospike should in fact maintain Thrust at any altitude whereas classical bell are optimized for more specific altitude. This is to me the most critical point. The Aerospike must become the engine of choice for all Single-Stage vehicle.

Cycler's DO save deltaV... indirectly. Their point is to avoid accelerating-decelerating each time an important mass : the live-support infrastructure. ex : Rather than needing to spend (say) 100tons of propellant to accelerate (then decelerate) a large ship containing both Engine, fuel, A LARGE LIFE-SUPPORT INSTALLATION (and the fuel to propel that mass) it would allow to just use a shuttle which can be kept more versatile later. So they are to be useful if : - You need Life-support (space farm, centrifuge gravity...etc) - You already have comfortable habitat and life-support at your destination Also, it can allow tremendous economies of scales. If we ever were to colonize a close by planet, a Cycler would over a few years save as much dV as its life-support would have added for the same number of colonist. Though, just saying : I don't believe we will ever have a need for them. Colonizing a planet is less efficient that simply living in asteroid belt (though you could use an asteroid-cycler).

Just to counter-arguments, Procedural content, especially if they are active game-mechanic (engine & tank) rather than passive one (fairing), are so much of a pain to balance right that you recognize a game built around them by their simplicity and monotonous gameplay (MMO like Eve Online or Elite Dangerous). This is not to say that procedural generation do not have its use, quite the contrary. But it is hard to keep a game balanced if several features can now fail in an infinite number of way. - The fairing being procedural is... mostly complicated because of aerodynamic. Just to make sure everybody know, Realism don't necessarily equate to "more fun". - Tank being procedural cause problems on the little balance there is, you would have to balance the system for Technological-progression anyway, and prevent the game from becoming too easy, or some Exploit (at least not make clipping easier) - Engine being procedural, as much as I see an interest, would be the trickiest as any change to them or the ability to massively parallel them is enough to break the game. Another unforseen consequences is that you need point/form of reference to estimate the size and "range" (dV bugdet) of a spaceship, yours or seen in a screenshot. Procedural many-thing, even with standardized capsule/hatch can make this hard. Equally there is an innate interest in SOLVING THE PUZZLE that are Standardized Part Size & Spec into whatever you want which isn't available the same with purely procedural. So I mostly wanted to remind people that LEGO-style construction is a perfectly legitimate and voluntary game-design choice and not any sign of weakness or bad/incorrect design, not everybody have the time (or knowledge) to finely shape the fuel & aerodynamic until it work. In the end : I would rather improve the TWEKABLE than go further on the procedural route. (and this post got longer than wanted, that's all from me)

As last time I'll recommend OpenTree. That's not the total-reworking some want but a good stock tree.

Nice contradiction with your edit... Procedural only mean that you generate following a method, randomness is something that must be added on top of it, they are separate things. Ex : The planets of KSP are generated procedurally, will always appear the same way and are not randomized between players, something they don't need to. Still, I'm giving you the doubt that it is all a semantic error... Did you as I think (rereading 3 times your posts now) : generated ONE map where you procedurally generated the main feature (volcano, wind, rain...etc) and use a random tool to fill-up the crater/volcano...which will always appear ? OR... did you program something that actually generate a new continent/map/weather each time one play following only basic layout ? Because, yes, if you don't attempt to randomly generate planet surface/geomes "each game", you indeed keep your geomes only procedural, not random. No matter if a noise generator is used to shape the original relief. Still, to me it seem you still haven't understand how you are only changing the problems while solving the rover's one. - increasing mindless click-fest. - making rover dominant over static probes (though I'll agree it can eventually be accepted as a feature). - worsening the balance of reward per biome/planets. Anyway, I will stop participating to this discussion. Even if you were supporting me or I supporting you, your way of "discussing/editing" is giving me headache and I've better things to do. ps : I should have been clearer that I meant 10 Area-of-Interest per planet, but it really should have felt obvious considering the number of them I gave as example for Duna. Thank you for that, but you are also giving me headache (really). So I'll try my best to answer a few points without being unnecessarily blunt as well (note : I failed). First, I insist you are like children who speak of stacking features that are mutually exclusive/self-defeating. Yes you can call that a strawman, know that it is occasionally a valid rhetorical device to make someone understand his error, albeit in an irritating way. ...just like calling someone's argument a strawman is also a form of strawman, and not necessarily the constructive kind. NEXT ! I'm one fervent defender of time-based game-mechanism...I made a few thread about it, especially go along a periodic-budget. Still, the flaw in your 10h-scan logic is that you are still considering the Act of scanning the planet as a GOAL rather than as a MEAN to have fun. It is a understatement to say that not everyone here play to have the planets 100%-explored, really most play for the Act of exploring which include a lot of firework. During timewarp you aren't playing, Timewarp is meant as a tool to lessen a boring parts of a game that have little to no relevance in the gameplay : waiting. In our case, you still have to make it relevant in the first place. The act of waiting for the scan is pointless (and punishing) in term of gameplay. Even if Career-mode had periodic-budget it would still be pointless. So once again I think you are confusing "it's realist" for a game-mechanic and simply going for the argument because you really like the idea. NEXT : Trial & Error Again, just because you can don't mean you should. Apollo-13 random part failure would NOT be fun. It only "could" ...assuming some miraculous Game-AI prevented it from happening every time it would make players tears their hair off and cursing. Basically you are trying to 'win the argument' with an hypothetical situation based on pure luck. That's certainly a logical fallacy. No, no, no... that's also not the rationales quoted at all, and that's also wrong !!!1! (1 for emphasis) The less two player have in common, the less experience they share. The very reason Seed were created in Minecraft was to share them ! Solving what was a FLAW in randomly generated map. Anyway the whole comparison with Minecraft make no sense ! Different game = different design. I could make thousand analogy of what you've done here but it would only detract us more. NEXT : "God doesn't play dice" Well, sorry but I can't imagine your game being well made seeing how ou are confusing the game having randomization features with the game rules being made up randomly. You think you are doing the former when you are doing the later (KSP's uniques planets parameters act voluntary as rules, same rules, same players experiences). THAT. IS a strawman, just so you know. I won't deny my provocative rhetoric, but keep in mind that if you DO say stupid things, reader might agree you are. Also, you are confusing a specific use of FoW (for exploration, wargame do not randomize) with random generation and grasping at straw to justify a GOAL for players (exploration) which is a subjective opinion. Which is what I was trying to make you understand. I gave many arguments explaining in details why random generation conflict with many of the aspect of the current OR expected/wished game balance/gameplay. So your dismissing of all this as "me saying stuff is always bad" is insulting. Not that I frankly expect you to understand anymore... Even though you like some of my idea, I don't think you get the logic behind. So, since it's clear this whole discussion is leading nowhere, I'm out. I'll still read answers for courtesy.

What kind ? None. It's a feature I will easy ditch to avoid needless micromanagement. Rocket-science is all interlinked, but Life-Support is only a timer or at best temperature&ISRU that are already covered in more simple (and fun) way. So I'm not yet interested.

Mr.Scruffy, with all the respect I give to longly constructed argument that are not quote-war. I do not see answer to my/ours points in your updated-posts and you do not seem to be getting answers out of mine, so we are still in disagreement. Even if you think we are not that far of each others, generating automatically sub-biome based on randomly-generated topology is still not different from random generation since the result is random (and worse if homogeneous), dixit what I said about increasing the click-fest and grinding. (btw : so far we also have yet to address the topic of how the player will distinguish in-situ/non-map the different sub-biome) At least I think we can agree that we do not see "RANDOM procedural generation" the same way. The personal anecdote you described is everything but random (you choose the equator to be hotter for ex) and the finesse of the details you required to actually improve the game was clearly inferior than needed in KSP. Different Game = Different design = Different method = different finesse. Hence to me you are suggesting to improve an AAA game using Candy-crush design. To rephrase it : What is the point of your sub...topological-biome/geomes if it is only dividing the click-fest from probes unto rovers ? I'll wholeheartedly agree that Rover really need incentive but making them the next "only efficients mean" of getting science (due to the necessarily world-wide homogeneity of automated topo-biome/geomes generation) would simply change the problem. A note on my "huge rover trek" : You seem to believe that I want to force people to accomplish the entirety of the trek for it to have any meaning, this is not the case. By focusing so much over the sheer leng....Epicness of accomplish suck mission, you are missing the implication that -even on a smaller scale- by manually choosing/refining/improving/balancing where Greater quantity of Science-point are localized (with a voluntary dichotomy between high-science area and normal-science area) you are adding a different gameplay that properly make use of the relief in a way that no automated generation can distinguish (unless you've all hidden sentient AI from me). so, consider the following along what I've said : - Each Area-of-Interest can go from intricately complex (ex : all science at various place of a giant rock that EVA have to climb) to methodical (ex : you know you have to stop every 100m-1km starting from the center of a crater/magnetic thingy to get all the science) - Each AoI have been placed to make the best use from an human perspective of the already generated reliefs (this cannot be automatized) - Each AoI position have been considered & balanced for an optimal user experience (see High-science / Low-science dichotomy) - Subtle "road" (aka : rover-friendly surface) could be generated in between on the height map (best use of procedural generation) to ease high-speed travel. - Overall AoI diversity is made unique and fulfilling by not auto-spamming them. And don't be fooled that it look like more work, this is nowhere complicated or long for human (by that I mean it's been done in other games), it would actually take longer to automatize right (or why so many modern game still use tiles-based map, it's easier to generate and not f***-up). The way I see it, you can procedurally generate Place-of-Interest, just not their placement and balance. Note that making them random would bring strictly nothing for reasons already explained before, Players like having the sames maps/challenges. Example of Area of Interest : -type 1 : concentric circles of science, to be manually placed and sized to match BIG crater size. (plus the mentioned mean of delimiting the sub-biome) -type 2 : non-concentric circles of science, to be manually placed over a gigantic mountain, a distinct one as you go higher. -type 3 : area of science, to be manually painted to match canyon/crest -type 4 : rocky-terrain with big pebble, various size. A sub-zone by themselves, generated or not around other AoI feature. -type 5 : dozen of small-asteroid-like rock with 1 sub-zone each, randomly generated over an non-randomly positioned/wide area. -type 6 : dozen of small-asteroid-like rock with 1 sub-zone each, those generated in a random-looking line toward the next AoI. -type 7 : single BIG-asteroid-like rock with 3/4 biomes, the biggest generated alone, like a rocky mountain. -type 8 : single BIG-asteroid-like rock with 3/4 biomes, small surrounded by pebble and/or smaller asteroid-like rock. ...etc I think what describe the best my preferred approach is : - classic biomes that can be 100% explored with classic means. - super-Area that can only be 100% explored with more complex means but only break even if ~25% of one is explored. The goal being to make unique zone that you are encouraged to explore (which wouldn't be the case if they were too numerous to balance, leading to grindiness) and which require Rover and/or Crew. The only downside I see is that, knowing which Instruments to use is still a trial&error click-fest. It would have to adapt.

NOTE : Trying to answer everything despite the repetition have been pretty long and straining. If you see 'sign of exasperation', please take them on a purely rhetorical value. I don't have anything against anyone personally but some arguments are best addressed... directly. Have a nice reading. I did, we are just not forced to agree with your personal opinion or consider it objective. To avoid repetition, let's just say that trying to make a game "like reality" do not necessarily make a better game, no matter how realistic you believe that game is in the first place. Next, assuming you read our posts, you fail to address the point that simply adding 1000 sub-biomes will only increase the already grindy nature of Science-point. In result it is pointless IMHO to be alarmed of "Place of Interest" becoming boring when your proposal so far suggest worse : more clic-fest, no reason to go to interesting relief, no reason to do a long rover trek...etc Consider the following : - Randomly generated sub-biomes : You land a Kerbal/rover, gather immediate science around like a automate (roll, stop, science, roll, stop, science). If the Reward was balanced down, you only do that 100 more times to break even. - 10 'Places of Interest' per planet : You have the choice of launching 10 classic missions to classic-biome and gather (say) 50 sciences each, Or you land Kerbal/costly rover at 'Place of Interest' and you can get up to 200 sciences if you manage to reach all more complicated micro-biomes. The goal is more or less to recreate the : "Cheap Probes" versus "Huge Mission" paradigm choice many dream of. For starter, this is quite a logical fallacy to equate my sentence into "you want to railroad players". Especially since taking your logic people should be FORBIDDEN of sharing similar experiences and playing by the same rules just because you pretend that it is inferior to what you personally want. You do realize that the whole "Challenge" forum depend entirely on physical and gameplay parameter being the same to all, right ? Simply said : Different game = Different game-design. You do not necessarily need to randomize a map and doing so wouldn't necessarily improve thing. There is too many game example of that. So, since you talked of stupidity you feel like a child who think he can put everything randomly in his cake and it will somehow become the best cake ever even if he don't know the first thing about cooking. Sorry to not give a more throughout answer to the entirety of yours posts. But most of it have been covered already. I don't know but it should easily be more entertaining than exploring copypasted sub-biome pattern for the same duration. The way you didn't realize that "magnetic anomaly" can be interchanged with ANY science-you-deem-acceptable (like Mystery-Goo) hint that you are just being contradictory here. The reasons I talked of adding "subtle road" was precisely to alleviate the travel time by making it easier to go very fast. Right now, I wonder why I keep trying to make you (& tater) understand that Realism don't necessarily lead to interesting Gameplay. It's incredible how some players can denounce "unrealistic feature" that are more often than not the very reason the game is playable in the first place. I'm sure you'll understand if I avoid a Fractal-Quote-Answer apocalypse. I'm not yelling (at last wasn't at the time), I was emphasizing points that I think you are missing. What you are describing is -to me- roughly the same as spamming sub-biome (in the form of thing to do at scatter-level), and randomly generating "Place of Interest" into "whatever the player consider as such" miss the whole point of the things. Anyway, I can tell you just want a gameplay fundamentally different from a "improvement of previous game mechanic". That idea of yours to simply gather data in a Completionist way until all is known, is a pretty distinct form of entertaining with different expectation. From my point of view 99% of a planet reliefs is decoration and only 1% is fun to play in, so we should encourage design-variety through them (ex : a Rover for cave could not use solar energy). Exploring where those 1% are should NOT be a dumb use of Trial&Error, it should be a voluntary choice. "Do I go to that place or do I not for equal reasons ?" Equally, what is the point of taking 10hours to scan entirely a planet when this time is not interesting in itself ? It is simply Masochist and potentially PUNISHING !!! "did you scan for 10 hours the planets ? No ? Then you don't get to know the fun place..." Again, you are pushing a feature for realism, despite it being having no point in term of gameplay. That's one of those features many would support once they discover the full implications. Like Aerodynamic-realism, Deadlyreentry, AntennaRange, LifeSupport, RSS...etc. Next : The minor Trial&Error aspect of KSP only concern easily reversed or bypassed aspect of the game. (A crash can quickload, running out of fuel can change the mission objective). But the longest aspect of KSP pretty much avoid trial&error : No luck based mechanic (random failure), everything is predictable (+ Maneuver node), all data required to do the mission is available (because this is the thing to do) and you are more and more encouraged to plan contingency plans for long mission rather that abandon/redo them entirely. The lack of dVreader is a game flaw that ought to be corrected once SQUAD have the Engineer do it, maybe stop underestimating players ability to learn, or as pointed out in my signature : realizes that they built features pointless without it. At that point I leaning to believe they KNEW it was needed but wouldn't put it until they could insert it within a game-progression. The utter inability of current Career-mode to make you feel you are slowly-building a space program is certainly at the root of your apparent disdain for "keeping a Savegame" and wishing to increase game-length through forced micromanagement. Beside your clearly different expectations. If you can't understand how everybody playing on the same system and sharing the same experiences is a GOOD THINGS for KSP, we might as well stop the discussion here. Not caring about other wishs & expectations is not constructive. You still don't understand... A "mountain biome" don't actually care about what is hilly, what is a steep slopes, what is a ravine or what is a peak. A crater-biome don't even care about the center of the craters. DETAILS need to be added manually or dumbed-down so much for a computer that they'll lose any interests. NOT FORGETTING HOW as said numerous time, if you are only subdividing a biome/task to do you are only increasing the grind-fest, not the actual fun. Hence my point that QUANTITY can not always replace QUALITY. If you don't gain anything with random procedural generation, don't ***** use random procedural generation. I retract what I said, you don't actually know much about game-design. Paper pencil and good old dice game required and still REQUIRE A LOT OF HUMAN-INTELLIGENCE !!!!! There is STRICTLY NOTHING RANDOM in the way they where created. And even if today computer-TOOLS are used, it take extremely subtle decision and arrangement from Sentient entity such as human to turn random data into a GAME. Now you can say I'm yelling at you. You are being stupid here... "Random Generation =/= Fog of War" no matter how you look at it. It's confusing the actual gameplay of exploration, with the mean you produce the "contents" that you will be exploring. As I'm trying damn hard to make you understand : You can get bored of exploring 100 randomly generated/copypasted pattern on 50 planets, faster than exploring 10 handcrafted place (of choice !) on 8 planets. The more I try to grasp your wish and expectations, the more I think you simply want another game because the feature that make KSP, KSP, simply can't entertain someone eternally. Just for the record, you missed the point of the dichotomy between : - Place that are more science-efficient for cheap easy mission. - Place that are more science-efficient if the complex mission is capable of getting all sub-zone. 1) You get to chose whether or not you go with one or the other. 2) You get to use more of the gameplay features (EVA or rover) 3) The improvement is of higher quality than using badly "random generation" to generate less refined contents.

I really don't think I'm overreading your answers. First point was that you are trying to justify random generation of sub-biome with an improper analogy to real-life, IRL some place are simply not worth exploring because we can get the same meaningful data at better place. Second point is that we are talking of game-design here, meaning that you shape game-mechanism to represent the fun part of reality, not the boring part. My stance in short : mindless quantity do not replace skillful quality 1000 sub-biomes which all share 99% of the same simplified characteristic and underuse game-mechanic (like EVA). ...are less fun (euphemism)... Than 10 "place of interest" made by an human mind with roughly the same amount of work. (more on this later) (many players don't like being forced to play 100 hours to achieve a simple result) Next on another misunderstanding : I meant that we don't need to stick on the "Contract given marker" if we want an User-Interface to display place of interest. We can simply display them on the Map-view without contract (after building upgrade or orbiter-scan or else). The ability to delimit biome from space or at least see them in Real-Time without needing experiment is an often requested feature. Planning a mission (and having fun) mean having the ability to predict where and what amount/quality of data you will have BEFORE committing a lot/all effort in it. Lastly , Trial&Error is hardly the best game-mechanic we ever made (euphemism again). Clarification time : I'm not on a position purely antagonist to yours. So far I'm saying the randomness you described so far, do not meet (my) criteria to take sub-biome from 'mindless copy' into 'place actually interesting'. Your suggested use of "Random procedural generation of content" to "increase the game length" isn't new... but it is more often than not what I would call "polishing turd", hiding an inability/unwillingness to generate REAL content with copypasted crap. (Opposite to more skillful use of procedural generation) It depend entirely of how much data and tools you intend to require a player to micro-manage. Being forced to send cheap probes at every single place to know if it worth considering a rover or a manned mission is precisely what is painfully frustrating in Trial&Error gameplay. Beware of fake difficulty. Not what I understood. But then I fail to see a point to customize your system at all, nor in doing that "each game" as you suggest. There's strictly nothing good in separating all players experience (plus DeltaV map). So at best it would be an optional Joke-feature. I see no interest either in having around thirty planets/moons alternating. Rather than making 8 awesome planets with all interesting feature, you are suggesting to make each game have only 50% of all features in a non-optimized way... and for what ? Fake longevity ? Because that's what that would achieve, forcing players to rebuild all infrastructures with no added-value. The inferiority ensue from the balance requirement to overcome the handicap caused by the randomness. Randomness mean that you cannot customize/finely tune "scatter level detail" (Area of Interest) to fit optimally : - Interesting reliefs (crater/hills/crest/access to other site and ISRU). - distance with others AoI. - distance with ISRU place. - planetary balance in term of science-point quantity. - predictability and fairness of career playthrough. (if enough "scatter level site" are too easily accessible, why explore the rest ?) Worse, it lead to a FAILSAFE generation of bland but FAILSAFE area that have FAILSAFE parameters so it stay FAILSAFE anywhere. No bets you know the importance of Game-design, but the impression that random generation is a good idea every time is hard to shake off. That's why I insist so much on this. Again, Random generation isn't a goal, if it bring nothing good to the game -not even replay-, don't do it. And let's be clear : We are NOT talking of crafting Area-of-Interest with an unrealistic attention to details here. This is simply improving what SQUAD did often like the Mun's Crater-ravine-Crater area, except visible from space, with more sub-biome and with a "slightly painted" road to make it more enjoyable to plan and send a rover. Natural selection don't determine who is right, only who is left. If you wanted all the coolest animals and reliefs of Earth at one place, it can't happen randomly.

IMO, we need a 2-man capsule because of the Pilot-Scientist-Engineer paradigm. The aesthetic is secondary.

You misunderstood what I meant. When I said "visible from orbit", I meant that the User-Interface would display the good places. displaying them after a Scan or Report is mostly a game mechanic doubling as an anti-frustration features. That aside, we sent Curiosity at place which Interested scientist MORE in the first place, we don't have the budget to land rovers on every single square-meter of Mars. Again : "Random generation" is a tools, not a goal. It all tie up to the same reason we have a problem with the more or less random generation of contract, always asking for a more careful procedural generation. What you are describing is more a painful trial&error than a fun exploration. Failure is an tools as well, not a goal. That aside, I have nothing more to add, I invite you to reread what I said about randomly generating 10 borings planets, and put it against understanding what make a planet/science/design interesting and making sure those aspects are (1) present, (2) balanced with the rest, in the best solar system of the Kerbalverse. Your statement is unambiguously wrong for many reasons, some stated above plus simply the wide diversity of players expectation. And this is not a question of semantic. Randomizing aspects do not necessarily increase diversity and diversity don't necessarily improve gameplay/fun, just like play time(replay) do not define how 'objectively great' a game is. (philosophers here can ponder the significance of glorifying the ability of a game to keep us doing the same things over and over again as longly as possible) ...at which point we can debate FOREVER over the longevity of any video game for anyone. My point is that a relatively more caring, focused and discrete generation of place of greater interest (made visible from orbit) would be more fun than a brainless spam of inferior-biomes

The concept of "Areas of real interests" hinge around human creator actively thinking about how to actually make best use of the game mechanics available, opposite to "program an half-assed generation of 99% similar content without any foresight, hoping it turn good by chance". Procedural generation is a tool here, not a goal. # If you generate sub-biome in every biome you are only increasing the grind and globally making static probes inferior to rovers. Gathering science become a Rover-exploit or a matter of luck. Aka : "will I have fun here ? Or did I wasted my awesome Manned-Roving-Base on a boring place 100km away from any fun ?" # On the other hand, if you make Area-of-Interest at specific place, carefully balance science rewards between biome & AoI, make them visible from orbit... - Static probes stay useful on normal biome. - Small rover become useful within AoI without having to drive for hours to already covered biomes - Long manned mission become fun because Kerbal become much more interesting than rover (imagine climbing stuff !") You wanted an example : Imagine Duna - One area of interest is at the equator, deep in the basin (large regions of dark soil), it's a "magnetic anomaly" (no that's not a cheesy monolith, it just generate concentric sub-biome), if you look closely, you realize that the anomaly is at the center of an absolutely flat place over a great distance, like... a runway. - One 'cave' is 50km away North, at the edge of the depression/ravine. It is ISRU friendly. - Next one is closer at the top of the depression/ravine it's just a big noticeable rock... if you look closely you'll notice a "road" to the 'cave' - Still toward North is a mountainous crest. One huge point of XP at a place hard to land or drive to. - Another one is 30km away, it is basically Olympus Mon. If you look closely you'll notice something like a roads. - Next one is 30km away at the limit of the polar cap, it's a large crater with something at its center (all interesting things are visible from orbit like survey after a scan except forever), it is also ISRU friendly. - Last one is at the pole. ...if my calculation are right, you now have a line for an awesome Rover-trek from the equator to the pole with refueling place for rocket/shuttle, base, and so much science you can train your scientist here (meaning regular travel) The best in the above ? It's more or less already exist, except visible from orbit and considered as something apart from biome, with Asteroid-like big rock you can climb on without needing 16G of RAM. ...I safely bet that we all consider knowing in which biome you are without doing a report to be a missing feature. From my point of view it would be the WORST idea ever for KSP. You wish to pursue a goal with a process that defeat it entirely. As said, "randomized" don't necessarily correlate with "interesting", nor with increased replayability. In fact it can lessen replay. You can easily randomly generate 10 generic & unsatisfying planets or 1 absolutely marvelous planet desperately surrounded by 9 dull-planets... leading inevitably to "hey let's player customize each system>planets>biome>sub-biome !" then "I'm lazy, let's allow to download system in case a moder do a cool one for free". I'm blaming Minecraft and cognitive bias for the belief that infinite & random generation is a evolution for anything.

...and there's better reasons we don't do thing at random... It might sound counter intuitive but Game-maker actually work to turn uncorrelated logic-function into a sublime & deeply intertwined gameplay. Nothing else to say about the rest of your message as it's within the things that change from Black to White depending of balance and for which Grey is masochist boredom. (aka "we can't actually satisfy everybody") Sometime you really have to DUMP ideas, put them unto fire and send the ash away in space... like the idea that "random = infinite novelty". It's actually sound design. You have to go to great effort (lot of Mun/Minmus landing and retrieval) to actually advance much in the Tech-Tree. By allowing to finish the entire Tech-tree with only the Mun/Minmus or another planet you are giving the ability to play a whole scenario centered around a Moon or Planet. This one seem childish but "Balanced Progression =/= 100% Completion Grinding" many game-maker do that error. I'm afraid it is actually realistic. We will have largely gone beyond KSP tech-level by the time we 'need', let alone 'do' Surface-Base on the Moon. All colonization/Life-support experiments can be done in orbit (yes all, we would barely need sample to reproduce Mars soil) and we will never exploit economically Space-Resources before we have technology which would sound OP in KSP. It's an unrealistic luxury in KSP to be able to send crewed mission to another planet. And in term of gameplay, many know that a Tech-Tree independent from Science, but based on Money and Experience would be more realistic. However, reproducing reality isn't how you encourage Exploration (opposite to spamming satellite contract and sucking Subvention).

What ? NO !! It would ruin the gam... just joking. +1

[WILD RAMBLING] I don't support randomly procedurally generated sub-biome (two separate thing here)... because we need REAL contents here !! Procedural generation is all well&nice to fill up unimportant/decorative stuff like the reliefs, texture... but it is a sign of weak-design when it concern a deeply critical gameplay features that require complex consideration to please players. After all...it is really a "point of interest" if a sub-biomes is as boring and grindy as every other biomes ? Nah! Procedural generation is how we got those contracts-description that no one probably read anymore and lack of attention to details is how we get brain-damaging contract (warning : drama at 120% here). And so, I opine that if we really want to encourage surface exploration, like "Build useful heavy-rover and base", you have to create handmade masterpiece Area-of-Interest... around key reliefs, and visible from orbit. So you can actually plan on the long term rover mission and think your mission another way. Prepare ISRU and so... Ideally it would be a different paradigm in gameplay... - If exploring a dozen normal biome with cheap probes got you (ex) 20points - Exploring one of those "point of interest" sub,biome would only give you 10points with a drone too cheap, but 50p with a rovers, 100p if you have a Scientist to reset heavy-science and 200p if you planned a rover to get to the equivalent Area-of-Interest that was put voluntarily 50km away with a hand-made "relief" for Rovers. A zone you really want to explore yourself. And who know, maybe you could craft actual cave there ?(cave are for now incompatible with the tools used to make planet relief) [/WILD RAMBLING]

Well... Regex is entitled to his opinions, no matter if out-of-touch-with-reality. ** snicker ** Joke aside, Regex, just your signature-quote -now out-of-context- can be interpreted in ways that contradict a personal fondness for "realism" (taken here as greater verisimilitude). We could say that we cannot have the advantage of both without the flaws of each. Or that it is because because Gameplay Realism are separate feature, Gameplay-rich/poor and realism-poor/rich games being different goals. Or argue around Realism being the antithesis of Gameplay. Realism representing a constant effort to prevent you from making things to your liking (and not in a challenging way, just "you can't do that"), whereas Gameplay is a constant effort to allow you to make thing to your liking despite realism (your liking including challenge & verisimilitude). A game is the sum of all its parts and their interactions, not of their individual similarity with distinct systems. For example : - Simulating HEAT correctly is pointless if you do not have the means (radiator/heatsink/shield) to manage it. - Having a Realistic nuclear engine is boring as well as logically it is built so you can't possibly mismanage it during flight. Gameplay is something that must be built. - Do the LV-N require distinct rocket-fuel ? Check - Can the LV-N fail if you didn't put enough radiator ? Check (always up to rebalance) - Is part thermal conductivity intuitive enough to play ? ...pending - Still, do the above make design, launch & flight enjoyable ? Check To me we 90% of what's really needed. The rest can wait or is counter-productive. Let's not forget that any feature, no matter how complicated, will eventually become boring. It doesn't make it a bad feature, it simply mean that you have to change the previously interesting gameplay for another new one. Myself I bought Kerbal Space Program, not "Nuclear Space Program" so it is good enough. If anything, the big complain I get here is that KSP balance feel random. Features alternate continuously between too-much or too-little and still don't feel part of a whole.

"Specific", proportionally-speaking maybe. But Orbit contracts are way easier than any Part test contract (other than Landed on Surface). I have yet to see atmospheric test contract generated with parameters that do not ask for conflicting requirement. Part/Speed, Part/Medium, Altitude/Speed (especially since the new aero) Whereas reaching a specific orbit is only 3 self-helping objectives that can be achieved one after the other at any time : Altitude, Speed, Inclination. ...contract really need to be refiltered.

Myself I use OpenTree. I helped calibrating it myself purely for Stock, and it is compatible with mods as well.