Search the Community

Hello! welcome to my sizeable list of suggestions to make the game more difficult / fun! These range from Science to Life support, remember these are all my opinion, you may not like these suggestions, so please discuss below. 1 - Parts / Structures - Structural failure Structural failure refers to parts falling off of your rocket / plane similar to what we see here. The chance of this happening should be changed by multiple factors such as the amount of weight/force on the decoupler, the size of the decoupler, and the amount of research on the decoupler. For example, the formula could be: (((W x F)/S)/Si)/100)/100, so say you have a booster with a weight of 1000 kgs, it is pushing with 2 Gs, and is on a size 2 decoupler with a research value of 1; that would mean you have a 10% chance of the decoupler breaking. Now there are a few problems with this: A - performance could take a big hit for all the math involved. B- It may just become annoying. - Engine failure This would be similar to structural failure, but these could be fixed with an engineer Kerbal. I would also imagine that SRBs would explode on failure. The Reason these could be nice additions is that it will make for more interesting rocket designs, you would have to have a launch escape system, and redundant parts. I think these should only be enabled for the Rocket Scientist difficulty just because you can reset below hard, and hard shouldn't have to worry about failures in hard mode. 2 - Science TBD Yes, I know there isn't much here for now, but there will be more soon.

Colonies need more challenges Say, a real-life colony would face the planet's hostile environment. A surface colony on Venus wouldn't exactly be easy to make, as it would have to contend with extreme weather. That's what I suggest. On Duna, you couldn't rely solely on solar panels, since sandstorms could form. On Eve, you have to contend with temperature, pressure and possibly acid storms. A floating colony on Jool (assuming the atmosphere could be chlorine) can withstand unbelievably powerful winds, and an oxidizing atmosphere. Even planets with little or no atmosphere would not be as safe as it would have to deal with radiation and possible asteroid rains (On planets like Dres this would be frequent, since they are in an asteroid belt, or even moons that are inside the rings of some planet). Also on Jool, colonies on its moons would have to face the radiation that Jool itself possesses. A good way to prepare is to predict what might happen, with weather stations being built. Weather balloons could also be launched. This could bring a significantly greater challenge to building colonies.

To start off with, I have suggested things for other games before, however, most of these are fantasy games. This is a realistic game, and thus, if my suggestions are hard to read, and you have a stroke reading this and die, then sorry for my bad "ordering" and explanations. I've also never really talked about physics much before, which is another reason this might be hard to read. Anyways, radiation. We know what it is, you get too much of it and you die. We also use it for power, which is why I think that some of the more efficient EC generators later in the tech tree should be powered on radiation, maybe not by radioactive materials, but radiation in space. Or this radiation could be used to turn a non-radioactive material into a radioactive material, which can then be used for EC generation. There could also be a toggle for kerbals to get radiation poisoning if exposed too much radiation, and if you don't get them to an area with mostly no radiation "quickly", they could die (or go MIA on easier difficulties). However, if this toggle is on, there needs to be some form of having radiation bounce off of ships, or radiate out of the ship during interstellar travel, due to what is known as "heliospheres." Basically, stars have atmospheres. Yes yes, the suns corona (which fun fact is hotter than it's surface) is an atmosphere, but it also repels radiation out of its most outermost layer of its atmosphere, which extends well past the Keiper belt. Most stars if not all have these "astrospheres" or "magnetospheres" (which the earth has its own magnetosphere), and outside of this, is an astronomical amount of cosmic ionizing radiation. Basically, if you decide you want kerbals and parts to be affected by radiation, if you dont have practically 9000 layers of 50 feet thick lead, or any other material good at stopping radiation, you will instantly be vaporized. While the astrosphere doesn't stop all of this radiation from entering it's system, it stops a large majority of it (excluding uncharged gamma rays), which means that if that setting is on, if 2 years of floating around the sun between duna and kerbin in no ship were to give a kerbal radiation sickness, being outside this heliosphere would cut that time down to a very short time. Personally, I don't know the exact specifications, but it would probably be a matter of seconds.

At its core, the suggestion to add weather and clouds is simple. Clouds, wind, perhaps even storms. Its easy to imagine how interesting it could be. But before we can really delve into the suggestion, we need to consider different ways weather could be implemented, and figure out what the best way would be for KSP. But first, lets talk about the elephant in the room: The fact that it can adjust difficulty: Weather and Difficulty: The way I see it, there could be a number of basic settings for weather. -Full disable: Weather is disabled. It is always clear. -Visual only: Weather does not actually effect you. -Storms only: Weather only effects you when you are in a "storm" like scenario. -Full: Weather, winds, etc, will effect you any time. Depending on the level of simulation, there could also be toggles/sliders for things like wing icing, damage from dust storms, or "gustiness". Also interesting would be a Sandbox option to add a weather system of your choice to a location (presumably your current one). Core Mechanics and Weather Simulation: The first question to ask is simple: How do we design the weather with regards to the game? I do not speak of merely how wind works (it would presumably be a form of modifier to the current aerodynamics), but rather where it comes from. KSP is a physics heavy game, and adding some full-blown weather simulator to it would not be very good for gameplay purposes. So what, then, is the best way to add weather? Three options come to my mind, and perhaps you can imagine others. I'll start with my ideas on the matter: 1. Exceptions to Standard. In this setting, the all-clear weather on Kerbin is still the "standard weather", and any other weather events are things that generate randomly, move across the planet for some time, and then disappear. For other planets, the "standard" could also be clear, or it could be a set windspeed and direction (i.e. if you wanted to give Jool a saturn-like atmosphere) or just being cloudy instead of clear (i.e. if you want to make Eve a little more Venus-like in appearance). These events would be storms, areas of wind, perhaps even benign weather like partly cloudy and drizzles. Whenever one disappears, a new one would generate at a semi-random location, and would randomly generate its path based on some planet-defined directional preferences. Some weather events could also follow a pre-determined pattern of changes over their path (i.e. a "hurricane" might have a building phase, an main phase, and then just be a normal storm on the last leg of its path) This results in a reasonably viable set of weather mechanics that shouldn't require too much processing power to simulate on a global scale. Values worth noting would include the max number of weather events per planet (a value that can change based on the planet), which weather systems can generate on any give planet, and perhaps "seed spots" which are the only region on a planet that can generate certain weather events (i.e. maybe only weather events that generate in certain sea areas have a chance of being generated as a Hurricane event, and only storms that are generated in northern areas have a chance of generating as snow storms). If two weather events overlap, one of them can simply take priority over the other as they pass through each other for simplicity sake. 1b. Permanent weather events: It would be good in this case to have a permanent type of weather event possible. These events would be designed into applicable planets. They would be used for things such as Jool, where you might want to have an equivalent to Jupiter's Great White Spot. 2. Extremely simplistic, low power weather sim. The idea here is to split a planet into a set of "cells" and have the simplest, easiest simulation you can that still causes a reasonable variety of weather, perhaps intermittantly "seeding" it with an effect to get things moving if need be (or to simulate seasons). One option would be to take the "exceptions to standard" idea listed in 1, but just replace weather events with randomly generated air masses with semi-random values for speed, humidity, and temperature (semi-random because they could be influenced by the location they are generated). Any time two of these masses meet, they are replaced with some weather event, based on the values of the air masses. By themselves, these air masses would generally just have some wind, temperature, and humidity, and some form of cloud cover ranging from zero to full. 3. Pre-decided weather patterns. Rather than worry about dynamic weather in this scenario, the developers simply "design" the weather on Kerbin (and each other applicable planet) for a set amount of time, such as a period of 1-4 of that planet's years, and then run it. When it reaches the end, it loops back to the start. The upside is that you can have some good weather variation without actually needing to simulate it. The downside is that the weather is predetermined and thus will repeat. You can get around this somewhat by starting each planet at a random point in its weather "track" upon starting a new career, so you at least don't find yourself seeing the same couple days of weather every time you start a new game. What effects can weather have? The first and most obvious effects are the visual ones. There will be clouds. You can fly through them. They may be simply rendered, but they can still be clouds. Also, there can be rain, snow, and lightning. When you are in space above a storm at night, you might see some occasional flashes from the storm from lightning. There would also be a simplistic fog effect too (perhaps most notably on Duna, where it could be used for sandstorms). If the weather isn't impressive enough visually, then I imagine mods will help fix that. Next we have mechanical effects. -Wind can, of course, cause some ruckus during launches and take-offs. It might be a good idea to add another runway to KSP, and to allow you to choose which one to launch aircraft from (and which end of the runway to do it from). You could display this choice while in the aircraft hanger when you click launch, along with the current direction and speed of the wind. -Wind gusts are another potential one. For simplicity sake, I assume that rather than worrying about what causes such turbulence and attempting to model it, that some weather systems or air masses may simply have a value indicating a chance of encountering gusts of somewhere between X and Y strength intermittently, and that when this happens the wind affecting your vessel rapidly changes for a couple seconds. -Icing could be something that occurs in fairly water-heavy worlds such as Kerbin and Laythe. If whatever Eve has can also freeze and snow, you could perhaps have it there too. -Being a Mars analogue, Duna could of course have sandstorms. These could be windy, reduce vision, and could be at risk of damaging some equipment if it is not protected or put back into its stored configuration (Engineer astronauts could fix them if you forget). -Planets with active volcanoes could have a permanent weather effect near them with an ash-plume storm, and wind direction matching the plume direction. The priority could be set such that this effect disappears whenever another weather effect is in the region, resulting in the volcano appearing to sometimes be erupting, and sometimes not (when in actuality, not erupting just means another weather effect is overriding it). -Given how weird Eve is (its SORT OF a venus analogue, but not really), you could probably imagine some interesting things for it. Dense but slow-moving and harmless fogs (insert Purple Haze joke), small tornado-like storms that look almost more tornado than storm (but which actually only have a small "real" tornado in the very center). -Weather effects could have their own science equipment associated with them. This equipment would gather science based not on location, but rather what kind of weather they are in (for these instruments, all vacuum areas would be considered the same "weather" pattern, unlike the current thermometer and barometer). -Some more major weather effects could temporarily override the biome in the region they are affecting for some instruments. These would generally be major things like hurricanes, or permanent weather systems like the "Great Jool Blot" (has a nice ring to it, actually). -Planets without atmospheres (and maybe those with really, really thin ones) would of course not have weather. Misc other thoughts and comments: -If the SUN is granted some weather, it could have "sunspot" events, along with rare "eruption" events. The sunspot events could just act like a biome for purposes of near-sun spacecraft science gathering, but eruption events could have other effects too. If one of these happens to be pointed towards a planet, you could generate an aurora effect around the poles of that planet. It could also cause a notable additional heating effect when a spacecraft near the sun is above its "biome." -Meteor showers are not weather (and should not be considered such mechanically), but could potentially be an interesting visual effect that occurs on planets with atmospheres at set points in their year, independent of weather. -I wonder if Jebediah Kermin has any type of weather he especially enjoys. Knowing him, probably hurricanes. While in an aircraft he designed himself. With an exterior pilots seat. During re-entry. With boosters ignited. And poor Bob in the cockpit screaming in panic about how horrible an idea this was.

Ok so i am not new to modding. i have done a number of surface level modding and even part modeling. i have an idea for mod that goes into the programing aspect which as much as i would love to be able to do it. it is taking me longer to understand how to do in the confines of ksp. i do not know how hard it would be to do this or if it is even possible but anyway, so here is the idea. I think it would be a good a addition to carer mode/science mode if you needed resources to build your rockets. not just funds but also exp.. metal. some parts need resources from specific planets. you need to mine for some of the rarer resources to build with certain parts. simple idea for Prof of concept. you need Duna metal to build robotic parts and some of the more expensive engines you need a resource from Tylo to build RTGs you get the idea. each planet will have its own resource that you need to build with some parts. i would say i haven't given much thought to balance yet but i think it is possible. it should work like the funding system you need so many units of this resource to build this part. i think there should be 3 modes first 'easy ' where you can buy the resources for a high price in credits or if you do get the the resource it will cheapen the over all price to just the resource or a discounted price per part. 'normal' you cannot buy the resource but have to mine it and return it to Kerbin or with other mods like ground construction use it to build off world. lastly 'science mode' each part needing the resource would instead be lock to science entry exp- you get a surface sample off duna you unlock those parts. things that would need to be added: cost per part in the VAB and space plane hanger resources in the Vab display the resources, weight of each resource, each world's richness ect.. ( easily done with the community resource pack) each part would need to be set up with what its required resources would be and how much it would cost. drills will need to be set up with the ability to mine the various resources. will need tanks to carry the resources (Interstellar fuel switch or modular fuel tanks could be used to keep part count down) missions would need to be altered to include the resources and be locked to the resources from the planet in question they are requiring you to go to. optional: science experiments of the various resources. must be performed in a lab on site. option to set up a refinement process and combining process for really advanced parts ( mainly modded parts exp- near future nuclear. the reactors might need resources from ike and duna combined/alloyed few more thing not yet known..... thank you for all input and thoughts regarding this .

I was wondering if there were any mods that allowed for 2 different space centers and two separeated careers at the same time. Me and my little brother are going to play multiplayer by this method: It would be excellent to have 2 different careers running in the same game so we could advance at different rates and have a true space race. Dose anyone have any info on a mod like this? It would be much appreciated if you could share.

A mod inspired by 364, that had re scaled the distances to 6.4x and the planetary sizes 3.2x larger. This makes the game much more difficult, but still possible with stock parts, it truly is a game changer. Dependancies Module manager http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/50533-130-module-manager-281-june-29th-2017-with-n-cats-physics/ Kopernicus http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/140580-130-122-kopernicus-release-4-june-15/ Sigma http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/126548-wip130-sigma-dimensions/ Installation instructions Simply unzip the file in your ksp directory, overwrite existing files, and enjoy Spacedock link: https://spacedock.info/mod/1487/6.4x scale 12.8x distance?ga=%3CGame+3102+%27Kerbal+Space+Program%27%3E

Hi Guys, Right, I'd firstly like to say that I am very much looking forward to the upcoming release of version 1.2 it is truly looking fantastic. Now admittedly what I'm about to suggest may encourage some to beat me over the head with a chair until it's worn out but... here goes. At the moment AFAIK there will be an integrated network of ground stations dotted around Kerbin, now for the sake of difficulty could it be possible for there to be a setting to disable them? That way players must make the ground stations themselves (of course if the player so desires). Then have relays to bounce the signal back to the KSC and so forth... It's just a thought for some of the more "special" players such as myself Cheers, Ollie

I'm not usually much of a challenge seeker. But even so, the incredible successes of NASA, the Russians, and the bright future of other space programs inthe face of difficulty can be inspiring. The more I learn about the perils of space travel, the more impressive it gets. And it makes me want to be bold in my Kerbal career games, sometimes! I've seen a lot of ways to make things harder on onesself in pursuit of realism or raw challenge. I recently started a stock gameplay career on Hard mode. What about you? Tell us all about YOUR most daring, most teeth-grinding, most successful hard career! Or if you like taking it easy, just check out what we crazy people do to ourselves.