bigbadben

Looking at resource picture...is squad separating resource placement from biome locations? I read the new karbonite put resource locations tied to biome locations, havent played it yet though. Anyone tried it both ways, procedural locations vs biome, and think one is better than the other?

Thanks for the release, will test her out tonight

So the transition from the sun's soi to another body's soi is not loading? Does this happen if you go from kerbins soi to the sun' soi? Physics not loading for new soi? Do the trajectories in map view show an encounter?

Since life support options are up... Snacks! is a great mod. Light-hearted and fun to use. The thing that the developer of Snacks! got right, is that the life support function is tied to your existing crewed parts (habitats/pods/etc), which reflects real life. If we are sending out a mission to the moon or what-not, the existing containers will be crammed full of food, to eat and discard. There isn't a greenhouse on the ISS, Mercury, or Apollo missions. It was already contained. But... The book, 'The Martian' by Andy Weir, illustrates how important food is for a long-term planetary outpost. I think life support should be a factor in that, not so much space travel (since it's implied as cargo in the pods). A greenhouse-etc., and the underlying requirements/problems for managing that, would be more 'realistic' if you are trying to create a Duna base. And I would love the challenge, since that is one of the major issues in managing long-term manned missions. Just my 2-cents.

Random failures would suck. Too many things I mess up already, without including random dice rolls. I like the current system, where failures are a direct outgrowth of your skill as an engineer/pilot, and as you get better and more experienced in the game, you -tend- to have less failures. Procedural parts are cool, but only for certain things. I enjoy seeing what some monstrosity someone built, and seeing exactly what is going on. Say the orange tanks, for example. Whenever someone sees those, they get a sense of scale and feel for that craft. Same reason Harv is against random systems for everyone, every time. It takes away from the shared community experience. While it might be smarter to have all procedual parts for everything...it is not better.

Macey Dean. Hands down. Shelbus................!

Was thinking about that stuff, and discussed some different ideas on it earlier. Seemed a lot of the ideas were too much of a headache and needlessly complicated for what English Mobster's trying to do(or just plain wrong lol). As far as creating a map, why not start simple? From Kerbol, you can jump to A, B, and C. From A, you can jump to A1, A2, A3, from B jump to B1, B2, B3, and C jump to C1, C2, and C3. Then, from A1 you can jump to A1A, A1B, and A1C, then A2 can jump to A2A, A2B, and A2C.......etc. Would be simple, easy to program, and the initial name of the systems(A, B, C, A1, A2, etc...) can be the 'seed' for the system generation, so everyone has the same starmap. The map generation and looks of it would not be as elegant as some of the other generation methods, but it would be easily do-able. A proof-of-concept, if you would. However, it would require a change in the warp generator logic. When you select it, it would only show the systems it can 'currently' jump to. Not sure if English Mobster could put that into it's current implementation, or would require a toolbar button addon. Of course, this is just to make a starmap, instead of parallel dimensions. Either way, I'm excited for what he's doing and am looking forward to where he decides to take this

got a question for you: When you randomize the Kerbol system, do you 'have' to keep the same number of planets and planet types? In that, the seed spits out one modified Kerbin, one modified Duna, one modified Jool, etc. Or have you figured out how to randomize the number and type of modified planets? For example, one system only has two modified Jool's, while another system only has four modified Kerbins and three modified Dunas. The reason I was wondering, was that procedural planet generation seems to be a show stopper for modders. Planet Factory is no longer being updated, Star Systems original dev went silent, Kopernicus is close but still in development. Seems you could skip all that, if you could randomize the total and type of planets in a new seed. Wouldn't be as pretty as full procedural planets with unique terrain and stuff, but would be an easy stop-gap until you decided to take a crack at the procedural stuff. And, for those of us looking forward to a Star Control map, we could get started laying out the framework for the system map

sweet man, you're doing something pretty amazing with all this

woohoo!!!!

congrats on cracking the persistant issue. Personally, I figure just dump it for now. Any modern tracking system cannot see beyond our solar system, anyways. They have a few extrasolar planets identified, but nothing like the info for Sol system. It keeps in line with the exploration mechanic of your mod, and creates less headaches for you.

yeah, revert button's gonna crash the game, especially if it has flightstate data that conflicts with current seed. That would be up to English Mobster, to take the revert save for kerbol prime, and rename it and stash it away somewhere, and do the same for each different system you visit, so they all have individual revert 'type' saves. or... ...just jump back to kerbol prime before revertings

yeah, I say leave out time dilation for now, simply because of the possibility of multiplayer incorporation of what you're trying to do.

You sir, are a good man. Current ideas on persistents looks cool. Some ideas (not sure on some stuff though): Benefits: 1. Backup. Glad you thought of this, saves us players grief from game crashing. 2. Simple to execute, and should work great. 3. FLIGHTSTATE data -should- be different for each system, so you can set up different satellites in different systems, and they wouldn't appear when you went back to Kerbol...and vise/versa. Drawbacks: 1. If you visit 1,000 systems, you would have 1,000 persistents lol. 2. The time would be static, so if you left for a couple years, when you went back, the planets would of been frozen in place the whole time. Questions: 1. When you leave a system, and the mod creates a new 'snapshot' persistent, will your current vessel be in the FLIGHTSTATE data? If so, when you return back and the mod loads up the persistent for the system you just left, there will be two of you now? 2. When KSP initializes a save game, it first loads the planets data, at time 'zero', right? Then, it syncs with the time in your quicksave file, FLIGHTSTATE -- UT (which I 'assume' is universal time?), and since the planets are 'on rails', all you need is a specific time to move them to. So, it essentially time warps to the UT time, then, it loads all the position data from your current vessels from the rest of the FLIGHTSTATE? If this is right...then 'theoretically' you wouldn't need a persistent file for each system you enter/leave, you just need the UT time from where you left to sync to. You could make a 'master' persistent file that is created whenever you leave a system, that has the FLIGHTSTATE data from just the 'current' vessel, and the current UT. Your seed generator generates the system data. All it needs is the UT time to sync on rails to the current master time, and the current vessels FLIGHTSTATE to load in. Unless there is a way to pull the information you needed from the running memory, instead. Although, having the same location loaded each time for your vessel could cause problems. Might be better to have the master have a location that is hardcoded to be well away from any possible issues, such as outside sun's soi, or even opposite, in a low orbit next to the sun. So if you visit a hundred systems, but only leave satellites in ten of the, then that would be ten seperate persistents created. But I don't know if you can create a master persistent, with time and current vessel, by being able to go into the standard persistent and delete all the 'other' FLIGHTSTATE data automatically. Or perhaps go in and edit the UT instead. Dunno. Example: Player leaves a system, but with no vessels or objects left behind (he was just passing through). Wouldn't need a persistent, since when he re-enters, the seed re-generates the world at time zero, which is then re-synced to the 'master' persistent to get the current time, for when the game loads it. Or perhaps there is a call for the UT at KSC that it can sync with. Dunno. Example: Player leaves a system with a satellite in orbit. A persistent is created, with the UT and FLIGHTSTATE for that satellite. Player goes back to original Kerbin system. A couple years later, they decide to return to the system where the satellite has been orbiting by itself. So....if this is right...the game loads the planetary information from the seed generator at time 'zero', then it looks at the saved persistent for the UT, and syncs planets orbits to reach that, then it load the FLIGHTSTATE data for the satellite (and maybe a mirror image of you lol), and viola! Your're in. What would be cool, is that after it load the FLIGHTSTATE data, it could then sync -again- with the current time, since the UT it is using is from years ago. That is where I was wondering if Dark Multiplayer's sync function could work. He figured out how to make current vessels that are loaded to be able to sync forward/backward in time. You could skip a lot of this nonsense, just load a persistent for each system, then sync to current time. Or perhaps the 'master' could be used to...errr...ugh.... gah, lot of guessing here haha

How do you plan on handling the persistant for the different systems? Could you just create a different save for each system you visit, and when you re-enter it, it syncs the persistant save time to your current 'master' time? Dark Multiplayer mod has a sync function, maybe you can borrow that? That would just leave unloading/loading your current ship separate from the persistant file.

here we go... First, everything hinges on planetary generation, using Perlin Noise or something. Good luck. If you accomplish that then....well....KSP explodes! 1. Distance Scalar: Add that to your seed. Lock out people (us) from modifying the system seed, and use Fibonacci sequence or something as the seed to generate your systems. Then, add a distance scalar to the different systems. Remove the seed input from your warp engines, instead enter coordinates for the system. If your warp drive can reach the system, you go there and Fibonacci(for example) generates the system for you. This would make your mod, and KSP in general, into a Star Control type map. Would work online, since everyone would have the same seed generators. The distance scalar, to determine 'location', can be based off different things. You can use another procedural seed to populate the universe. Polar coordinates for the system's location relative to each other, with Kerbol in the center, would be most realistic, but would have laaaaarge coordinates eventually, unless you capped the maximums initially. And you would have to make sure you can reach the different systems some how, and we don't hit dead ends and are unable to jump further. An X-Y-Z coordinates would work, but would make the universe look like a giant rubic's cube, with Kerbol being in the center, and each system being a different cube radiating outward. Or a vector system, with lines branching off from Kerbol SOI. Kinda like a starfish (Kerbol) with the lines radiating out to other starfishes(systems). Would work but overlap and the connection of nodes might be a problem with different systems that generate close to each other. So...now we have a galaxy map! By just adding a distance scalar to your seed generation. other things for flavor: 2. Different warp drives that can be unlocked for different distances. 3. Put the warp activation tied to a maneuver node, so an intrepid modder can add a 'black hole' effect for your ship to fly into lol. 4. Make activation of warp be outside the soi of the systems sun. For multiplayer 5. Make warp drives use a resource that is a pain to refine(He3 or whatever). But have a few systems that have it in abundance...which leads to supply routes and commerce. 6. Make the distance/connection information available in a raster form, to make maps. 7. Include a way to find out information about the systems we explore. For instance, you enter a new system, launch probes, and they give information(atmosphere/gravity/delta-v requirements/etc) on the different planets so you can decide which ones look interesting to explore...or exploit for resources. 8. Multiplayer. Man, if you could transfer funds for different resources, it would create a crazy thing. People would be heading out to different systems for 3 main reason: Explore, Exploit, or Exterminate. Craziness would commence!

Seems squad chose simulator vs. game. Lots of questions on Kerbal exp progression, since we take away the game-y aspects of it. The exp system should follow my personal achievements, since this is more simulator-ish, mirrored onto my kerbals. The badge/flair/costumes system fits in perfectly with the simulator meme. The other stuff....certification/auto-pilot/perks/roles...... As long as it mirrors my achievements as a player into my kerbals, or things I have to learn, that would be cool. But once that distinction gets blurry, and piloting gets more game-y....I hope squad avoids crossing over too much again. The biggest strength of ksp is that squad managed to make 'space physics' fun! I had hoped they would use 'science' to make 'space chemistry' fun! --Because I always hated chemistry....lol

Just for the record: I've seen posts with the suggestion that an increase in SAS/RCS control would be ok to have with Kerbal exp. I do not agree, and here is why: How do you, as the player, get better sas/rcs control? What steps do you learn to take? How to use wings on the bottom of rockets? Where to position the sas modules to get max performance from them? How to use rcs thrusters to help control, and how to position them to get desired turn performance. To use struts to reduce wobble. Etc, etc, etc... See, it is YOU who learn to get better, to increase YOUR exp and building and flying. I don't want to watch a youtube video of a ksp'er making an ascent that turns correctly and there is no wobble, but when I try it I cannot turn at all and it wobbles itself apart. I examine the placement of control surfaces, see his technique, sas module location is the same...... But it turns out his pilots are lvl 5. Therefore his ships works, and mine doesn't. Suggestions for exp: Flair (glasses/costumes/etc), Certification (based on real-life/unique roles for kerbals), badges (final frontier/reddit challenges), perks (as NO MR BOND posted), or as a last resort, standard money/rep/science bonuses.

what about KerbalEdu? doesn't this kinda defeat the point? For example: Suzy sits down, pays attention to the teacher, consults a delta-v map, and does the rocket equation. She launches, does the gravity turn correctly, and barely makes orbit. Bobby sits down, but his computer has a Kerbal that is leveled up all the way. He pays attention to the teacher, consults a delta-v map, and does the rocket equation. He launches, does the gravity turn correctly, and makes orbit with extra fuel in his ship and at a higher orbit. ...which means the delta-v maps are all wrong, the equations don't work, and grinding his Kerbal to a higher level of experience replaces his understanding of orbital physics, rocket assembly, piloting, and personal understanding. It reduces KerbalEdu to a game, instead of an educational tool. Which is fine, if that's what you want. I personally think it takes away something special that KSP has. The end of a dream, the dream that was Kermelot. Again, I personally think that in this instance, KSP should retain the simulator aspect instead of the game aspect for flying. In the long run, I think people would like that more. One of the points in having the same Kerbal system instead of a random solar one was because of the community sharing their experiences. I think the flying and parts should be the same, so the community can continue to share. I enjoy watching twitch, seeing something, and wanting to try it myself...because -I- became better at piloting, not my kerbal. Use Kerbal exp for flair, costumes, certifications, or non-flight bonuses.

No, I am the one piloting the craft. I am the one deciding how much thrust to use, I am the one measuring delta-v to see if I can make it, I am the one planning maneuver nodes, I am the one turning the craft during the burns... I am the one, with sweat on my brow, tapping my keyboard with careful precision as I guide my ship in for a Mun landing. When you start adding arbitrary stats to the parts, based on Kerbals driving them, suddenly -they- are the one piloting it, using their bonuses, and not my careful piloting. It takes me out of the picture, and puts Kerbals in charge. Personally, I prefer to fly the craft, not them.

Easy. When I have a Kerbal that does a Grand Tour, I want to be able to put a mohawk on top of his helmet! Use the badge system from final frontier/reddit challenges, and add in some flair or costumes for cool achievements. ...and some perks/science/funds/reputation if you really want to

This guy over in the reddit forum has some ideas that I think would be a better fit, in the idea of 'perks' for piloting: [–]No_MrBond 7 points 41 minutes ago Not sure if outright boosted science (or ISP) is even ok, maybe things like Perk; Scientist - Allows results processed in the lab by this Kerbal to return more science by transmission than normal. Perk; Navigator- Ships piloted by this Kerbal will show an intercept line when a target is selected for rendezvous in the map screen. Perk; EVA Specialist - Kerbal can repair OX and SP type solar panels whilst on EVA in addition to wheels and landing gear.

Yeah, except -I- am the pilot. When I watch KSP youtube videos of people doing amazing thing, I know if I get good enough, -I- can do it. When I watch tutorials for difficult maneuvers, I know that -I- can do it too if I learn and understand what's being taught. With the current exp system being developed, it revolves to leveling up my Kerbal, and then I can attempt some of that stuff. It takes away my piloting skill, and replaces it with an RPGing skill instead, which I think is not meant for this community.

If you want to improve the hardware (ISP), it should be done in the research tree, or something like it, to that matter. Leave the Kerbal bonuses to something non-related to actual piloting. The idea of a pilot "tweaking" a ship is not a result of exp, but a result of your personal exp in the vab/sph. Speaking as a real-life-pilot, some things squad could do with increased Kerbal exp is to unlock new certifications to fly different things, as we do today. Not sure if the community would agree to another game limiting mechanic such as this, though.

hey, with the word out about kerbals gaining experience and different boosts to their stats, that could be an excellent segway for an additional penalty for running out of snacks, in addition to the reputation hit. You could just deprive the kerbals of all their bonuses, or maybe include penalties if they starve long enough. Seems like it would be something keeping in-line with your vision for Snacks, which btw I enjoy very much