bigbadben

Include space chemistry, in the science/resource parts of the game. I never thought a game about orbital mehanics could be fun, but squad managed it. Maybe they can make chemistry fun too?

what about combining all three? run out of snacks, stage 1: rep decreases and random control inputs (although I disagree with control input thingy, games hard enough flying now and could mean insta-death anyways when planning tranfers, intercepts, etc.) --after some specific amount of time,-- stage 2: craft is unresponsive (semi-death) A probe core could bypass this, but that is realistic anyways. --after some specific amount of time,-- stage 3: perma-death This way, you could combine it all, with the amount of time between stages balancing how hard you think your mod should be.

woo-hoo! !!!!!! and yeah, you are incredibly good at making videos. ever think about making a "star-trek(y)" ksp-ixs youtube series?

I think whyren's suggestion is cool. easy, medium, hard == rep loss, pass-out (semi-death until snacks are re-filled), perma-death. However, your stance on snack containers makes sense. ISS doesn't have huge containers of food floating outside their habitat. And longer trips would require more living room, anyways, so your method scales up. Your stance also encourages a method of 'growing' snacks, as opposed to just heaping up 20 containers. However you decide to implement 'growing', will look forward to it. I hope it's keeps with the overall feel of your mod, too. But I think the partial loss thing kinda detracts from the original appeal of your mod, which is pretty cool, simple, and quirky. And, simplifying it will be less work on you for coding

ok, thanks for the reply and considering my post. collision mesh seems like a good idea.

since you're working on the doors, what about including an option to open them twice as wide? give more utility use to the indoor hanger? people who like the original can use it, and those that want moar can have it as well?

man, just keeps getting better and better...

sweet! looking forward to being a space trucker!

any way to make the front docking doors open twice as wide? tight fit for probes/what-not to get in and out. otherwise, she's a beauty

.12exp is out!

sweet! thanks for your hard work, enjoyed your channel!

great idea has anyone read Andy Weir's 'The Martian'? In light of that, I say for the new resource...potatoes!

nice, I like it! fits in very well with stock gameplay. toggleable kill switch for kerbals is a fun idea. make you sweat as you decide who eats and who doesn't as you scramble for a re-supply mission. a simple snack generator could destroy the whole reason for the snacks life-support system. good to hear you have some ideas, hope it fits with stock as well as your snacks idea does.

congrats, you do good stuff!

Kerbal Engineer Redux NavBall Docking Alignment Indicator -Most of the other mods are for convenience, realism, fun, or graphics. Without these two it actually hurts gameplay. Why they are not stock now is .....?

'any landing you can walk away from is a good landing' i've been trying to land a long vertical stack of mks pods on Mun. figured to use a booster to land, with large wheels for stability, and individually fly my stack of mks units down where i want them. like landing spaghetti haha Seen that movie Armageddon? How the problem was, they kept burning through drill bits? Could be an idea there to kick-around. Meshes up with real-life, too, as rigs burn through drill heads.

For making repairs mandatory for karbonite system, how would that work for long flights, such as star systems? after a 50 year flight, converter breaks down because no parts, so after a 150 phase angle change and another 50 year flight, I can repair it....? Or if using karbonite for a grand tour, and run out of spare parts, i'm hosed unless I make another supply run from kerbin? I guess you could use MKS's 'Mobile Repair Shop' for repair parts, if you want to make MKS mandatory for Karbonite. For long flights, that's what it would do. Don't have any ideas on how to balance unlimited resources, though. I thought the logistics of transportation would handle that. The 'Mar's Direct' modules land years ahead of the astronauts to harvest fuel for the return trip. As far as actually being in the oil industry, all the repairs happen when actually drilling. After the pumping stations is set up, they run decades with minimal maintenance. The delays are always infrastructure or legislative in nature. So if you are deciding on a method of balancing unlimited/limited resources, I would suggest bouncing around some other ideas or tweaking 'repairs', simply because new people looking for a kethane replacement could get hosed or very frustrated by the inoperative equipment.

man, she is shaping up to be a beauty! good work!

hhmm...the Fine Print mission mod has a waypoint generation system in it. But is it something Karbonite can use, or is it something that ScanSat/ORS would need to check out? btw, will Karbonite work with OvenProofMars' StarSystems mod, when he updates it with planets? Will Karbonite dynamically spawn resources on the other planets, or is the only way, is to manually update the maps of the new planets/systems? I'm thinking StarSystems, KSPI, Karbonite, MKS.....!

yeah, as RoverDude said it is better to have a concentration based system so that when you do build a giant MKS base, you don't have to move it again when the resources run out, as in kethane. And, it is more immersive, in that as KerbinDallas said the idea that a single base could use up all the resources in a couple tanks is 'ludicrous'. However, maybe an art pass on the ORS overlay, if deciding to keep it? I personally prefer ScanSat mapping, as I feel it is more immersive and I get a greater sense of accomplishment(!) in hunting out a good concentration. Stupid of me to feel that, perhaps haha. One drawback on concentration base, is that it can hurt gameplay if a player is trying to simulate an 'economy', in hunting for rare elements/minerals to mine and cash it on. It removes the need to seek out and continually prospect different places, to track down a good load, and then mine it out for profit. But this is beyond the scope of this discussion, anyways. I think that is what ultimately Thurak's MoonMining Precious Metals was taking a crack at. Be cool to get the author of ORS to implement both concentration and limited based resources in his system. What options are there for the ORS overlay that you, RoverDude, are considering anyways? Man, an ORS overlay toggle would be a great stop-gap fix. Too bad you said it would mess up things.

RoverDude, is it possible to add the map view on/off to a button in the 'toolbar' settings? There is a sizable amount of people that like the scanning progression of ScanSat. Or would that mess up other dependencies/mod compatibilities?

@Qberticus, from an earlier post by RoverDude: "Thank - and yep there's a line in the config for the detector: MODULE { name = ORSResourceScanner resourceName = Karbonite mapViewAvailable = true } Just change mapViewAvailable to false." me: what it does, is remove the instant view of the ORS bubbles from the map view, and makes you scan with ScanSat to find the largest concentrations of Karbonite

new version ready? without MS?

you are doing a great job, appreciate your hard work! oh, and is it possible to do a contract where you go to a planet and mine a certain amount of 'karbonite' and return...? Or use ORS (open resource system) to give a contract to skim helium3 from Jool's atmosphere and return? Not sure if it is able to tie in contracts with resources. Seems like a logical progression.

since you're looking at a kethane improvement.....here's some post from northstar1989 to stimulate some creative juices, from this thread: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/80964-The-Ressources-mining-feature-do-you-miss-it/ tldr: oxygen/hydrogen stuff 1. NorthStar: -The problem has always been figuring out how to make it fun an interesting, and this is what Squad struggled with. Indeed. It can be done though... More on how in a second. Quote Originally Posted by allmhuran: -It may be that most people are locked into one particular view of what resources must mean, and it's basically the same as the Kethane mod: "Land, get out, gather, spend". And if that is the case, then sal's comments about resource gathering in RTS games really does seem to apply: "Gather" is usually not really very inspired, it simply means clicking the "gather" button and waiting. But it's not worth Squad's time to implement all of this simply for the player to click a dialog box. (Which, again, is exactly the problem with science at the moment). NorthStar: -The problem with Kethane mod isn't the "waiting" part (which *can* be done when vessels are on rails, by the game keeping track of how long since the vessel was last loaded, and updating accordingly- as KSP Interstellar currently does with ISRU), it's that it's simple and relatively uninspired... Quote Originally Posted by allmhuran: -For resources to introduce fun and interesting gameplay, it needs to be a different kind of mechanic. But no-one has, as yet, come up with what that might involve. I mean both the abstract concept and the details of how it would be implemented, so that we see what makes it fun. NorthStar: -In-Situ Resource Utilization isn't, and shouldn't, ever be an "active" activity. It's not like you're going to have a Kerbal get out with a shovel and physically start digging through the ground (while that might actually be fun, it would completely break immersion- and be very hard to code the terrain being alterable...) What makes a Resource-gathering system (ISRU- to use the abbreviation used by NASA) fun and interesting is the engineering challenges you build into it. It should be an engineering challenge- not some sort of piloting challenge... It's much like building a rocket that gets into orbit- it's not easy, and a lot of thought goes into it- therefore making it challenging... The same needs to be part of any ISRU system... How? Well, let's say that you find ice deposits on some planet or moon (for starters, they need to make it so you have to FIND randomly-generated resources. That should be the FIRST challenge. They shouldn't be in the same place every game, or everywhere. Kethane's scanning system, while tedious as it doesn't play well with higher time-warps, is the best idea of that mod...) And yes, *ICE*, not "Zenonium" or some silly thing like that. Immersion adds to the fun and suspension of disbelief... The second challenge should be that the parts to harvest resources in the first place are HEAVY. And specialized. Meaning that it's a challenge just to get the right drill and electrolyzer to that moon with ice in the first place- creating incentive to build heavier lifters (not easy) and whatnot... The third challenge needs to be operating the equipment in the first place. For instance, ice should mainly only be found on planets and moons that are far from the Sun (the closest locations to Kerbol might be a few craters on the Mun's poles, or at low concentrations on Minmus- much like in KSP Interstellar), though even that should not be an absolute- NASA recently found evidence of ice in permanently dark polar craters on MERCURY. So there should always be a chance of finding it somewhere unusual- which unpredictability would add to the fun and create a REAL feeling of exploration... http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/me...f20121129.html Anyways, back to the ice. Solar panels don't work well when you get far away from the Sun (a proper inverse-square rule should probably be implemented before ISRU- making solar panels even weaker further from Kerbol...) So you would need a LOT of them to melt+electrolyze large amounts of water-ice on an icy moon of Jool or Gas Giant #2 (whenever it's released), for instance. An alternative could be a fission nuclear power (NASA is looking at using them on Callisto and Mars for ISRU, why can't KSP?), but that could pose its own engineering challenged such as a heat radiation system (like in KSP Interstellar). So far, it probably sounds like I'm talking about a KSP Interstellar clone, with a detection system from Kethane, but I'm NOT (though both mods have good ideas to lend). Here's where things get a bit more interesting... Resources would need to have real relevance to the Science/Reputation system to be fun. I don't just mean it takes a certain amount of Science to get the parts. Resources should be a SOURCE of Science. That is, the Science Points costs should all be increased (effectively nerfing the existing sources- but actually nerfing them would require a lot more effort I suspect...), and there should be BIG rewards in Science and Reputation Points for discovering a resource in the first place- especially any form of water or ice (after all, the search for water has been a big part of NASA's exploration missions over the past decade- and we've found a surprisingly large amount of it in an awful lot of places we didn't expect...) That would make the Science system feel a little more relevant and interesting, and allow the player to relate KSP to REAL space programs if they were searching for REAL resources... (such as water-ice, methane/CO2-ice, rocks containing bubbles of Xenon like on the Moon, oxygen in atmospheres, and alumina in regoliths...) There should be specific parts to detect the resources, of course, and the first tier of rewards should be achievable using probes (like the probes that have discovered all water-ice in the solar system so far in real life). but the biggest rewards should come from taking ACTUAL SAMPLES of a resource- whether through soil/water samples (currently implemented) or through atmospheric samples for atmospheric resources (new action/feature). Early on, the most interesting thing about resources should be simply finding them, as it should yield big Science and Reputation rewards... The next interesting thing about resources should be figuring out ways to use them. There would need to be some diversification of engines, for instance, to include at the least some type of solid-liquid hybrid rocket with intermediate performance characteristics (there are several resources in the real solar system that can be burned in solid powders, Alumina from the Moon only being the most prominent...), and some resources that are only really useful in their raw form as reactant mass for thermal rockets (like ammonia- though it could also be useful to make Hydrazine) or in alternative ion engines (Argon, CO2, and N2), but can be refined into other resources (like CO2 into Kerosene in combination with H2 via the Fischer-Tropsch Cycle, or into methane via the Sabatier reaction). Here, they could take a page out of the book of KSP-Interstellar, with its diverse resources and ways of using them... The key is, though, not every resource should be useful for everything, but every resource should have multiple uses... I know it sounds like I'm describing a huge encyclopedia of resources- but that should be half the fun. Complexity and (limited) realism should be one of the draws of the system- players should feel a bit like a chemical engineer trying to figure out how to make useful rocket fuel out of local resources, rather than just a Kethane-style "land and refine" system... This would make ISRU a whole complex part of ISRU that players would have to set aside some considerable time to learn to do properly if they wanted to make use of it, much like spaceplanes (most players start with rockets, and learn spaceplanes much later) or learning how to build modular bases off-planet (something *I* still haven't learned, even with a huge fleet currently en-route to Duna to do precisely that...) So, have the player go through a phase of locating water and other resources in the solar system as an important source of science. Make visiting and obtaining samples of the resources the second step. Make the third step (perhaps only unlockable after a sample of a given resource has been returned to Kerbin- though perhaps probes could somehow be allowed to gather and return samples- though this would make Kerbals even more useless...) actually figuring out how to use the resources. Make this challenging and complex (and not as mundane as processing "Dirt"- make players work with real substrates, like CO2, ammonia, water, methane, hydrogen, and nitrogen), and give rewards in Science and Reputation for developing successful ISRU systems, and you'll have a system that's sure to engage interested players for days of gameplay... And if you don't like the system? Find it too complex or boring? The beauty is that you don't have to use it- it would be completely optional; as there are plenty of other ways to obtain Science (and will be for Reputation, I'm sure), and you can always just keep relying of fuel tankers or mammoth vessels with staging, like you would have had to do otherwise if you hadn't had the system as an option to play around with... Regards, Northstar 2. Quote Originally Posted by Red Iron Crown: -I'm not sure I'd like the system to be that complex, I certainly don't want to be hauling puzzle pieces around the system just to produce a bit of fuel. Might just be easier to have water be the discoverable resource to harvest, which can then be processed into hydrogen and oxygen for liquid fuel and oxidizer, or processed into hydrogen peroxide for monopropellant. NorthStar: -Hydrogen Peroxide is indeed used as a low-efficiency RCS propellent in the real world. It could be in the game as well... A big part of what I was trying to get at is that some resources could be a lot easier to make with ISRU than others, thus putting a premium on those that are difficult to manufacture, and rewarding players who go through the extra effort to make the harder-to-get stuff... This would be fun *AND* realistic. For instance, Hydrogen Peroxide (H2O2) is rather easy to make- but Hydrazine (N2H4) is a more efficient RCS propellent. However, Hydrazine requires an extra step- combining Hydrogen Peroxide with Ammonia- making it a 3rd level product made out of two 2nd-level products (Ammonia, like Hydrogen Peroxide, isn't exactly likely to be found lying around many places- except Eve...) Thus, players could get as in-depth or simple as they wanted with ISRU. If they just wanted to find ice and electrolyze it for LH2-LOX rocket fuel, for instance, then fine. But if they wanted to go through the complex steps of making Hydrazine or Kerosene on-site, then there could be benefits to match. One thing that would also be useful, of course, to really make ISRU shine, would be a greater variety of fuels and propellents- so you can have "premium" fuels that are more difficult to make, like Kerosene, but have benefits (Kerosene, for instance, is much denser than LH2- so you can pack a lot more propellent mass, and thus Delta-V, into a given sized/mass fuel can... but it gets less ISP than LH2 when burned wit LOX.) Rather than needing to introduce entirely new parts for the different fuels and such, most of these could be handled with tweakables- much like RealFuels mod currently does with selecting a fuel can to carry Kerosene/LOX vs. LH2/LOX... There I go mentioning another mod though... It's no coincidence that modders have chosen some of the best ideas to implement, however- otherwise why would they have bothered with the effort? Quote Originally Posted by Red Iron Crown: -It may be an ideological difference between us here, in that I'm not really all that interested in resource harvesting being a scavenger hunt and chemistry minigame; I'd prefer it to just be a method to replenish ships at faraway destinations in exchange for some infrastructure deployment. I see where you're coming from about having resource discovery and harvesting being more of a puzzle than a simple mechanic, it just doesn't appeal to me like it does to you (and some others in the thread). NorthStar: -If you wanted to make use of ISRU (rather than ignore it), but wanted a more hands-off approach, there would be a solution for that too... Spend a lot of time/effort scouting out a location with multiple useful resources, and build a single integrated (with docking ports in stock, or KAS with mods) ground base that can process all these different resources in one place. If you can find such an ideal location, of course- one might not exist in your save. If not, you could always build a single orbital station somewhere like the Jool system, with all the needed refineries, and just transport various raw materials to it (from the different moons) to make what you need. And, like I said, part of the fun/complexity would be that there would usually be an "easy solution" and an "efficient/best solution"- with the latter requiring a lot more effort on the player's part, but getting you more useful fuels, or higher production rates. In ISRU, there's always a simple way to brute-force it, and a complex way to be efficient. Need lots of fuel for propellent, and O2 for life support and Oxidizer, on Duna, for instance? You *could* set up a simple brute-force station with a lot of power to simply mine lots of water-ice, and simply electrolyze it to get all the H2 and O2 you could ever want, for low-density, high-ISP chemical propellent (though you might have to cryogenically store it in real life, I doubt this would ever be added in-game, even though it would just be a matter of costing EC/s...) *OR* you could take the same H2 and O2, and combine it with CO2 harvested from the atmosphere in the Sabatier Reaction to make methane (CH4- which can pack more densely into fuel cans than H2) and more water (H2O- which you can electrolyze for more H2 and O2). *OR* if you're REALLY ambitious, you could combine the H2 with CO2 in the Reverse Water Gas Shift Reaction to get H2O and CO, and then combine the CO with H2 in the Fischer-Tropsch Reaction to make Kerosene (6-12 Carbon hydrocarbon mixture), which can be packed even more densely into fuel cans for even more Delta-V, but lower ISP... The sky and your imagination (and your available equipment/storage space) is the limit with In Situ Resource Utilization! It's an end-game feature that could be expanded as long and as far as the devs want (all the way to making plastics with the Fischer-Tropsch Reaction for a very different type of resource harvesting: greenhouses for life-support...) Of course, it would have to start simple. But it's one of those features that could be expanded and expanded and expanded upon whenever the devs got bored with other stuff, if ISRU turned out to be a hit with players... And if not, it could always be a nice supplemental feature that nobody would really have to use if they didn't want to... I've said quite enough for a while, so let me wind up by saying I truly hope the devs re-consider adding "Resources" (ISRU) some day soon... I just hope it'll get a chance to shine someday- though of course not until other "more important" things are improved (like improved aerodynamics, Career Mode, and at the least diversifying the fuels a bit more- so you can choose to use Kerosene/LOX vs. CH4/LOX vs. LH2/LOX with tweakables at the very least...) Regards, Northstar