Should KSP have realistic planets and moons or whacky ones?

[Robotengineer]

I voted semi realistic, simply because I don't think the devs would ever implement fully realistic planets. So to clarify, I would love real planets, but the devs would never do it so I opted for the more plausible solution. Also, if the devs were to implement realistically sized planets, they need to overhaul all engines, tanks, etc. The current engine TWR's and empty tank masses are way off.

[Bill Phil]

Well, if the units are scaled...

I hear the speed of light is 10x faster in KSP... This would scale the meter. So the planets are realistic. If the speed of light is 10x...

[regex]

I hear the speed of light is 10x faster in KSP... This would scale the meter. So the planets are realistic. If the speed of light is 10x...

Citation? AFAIK nothing in stock KSP really cares about the speed of light, including data transmissions since they simply "teleport". If you're talking about, say, the RemoteTech mod which actually does care about the speed of light, that's not a useful source of information about how the game should be judged as far as "realism" is concerned since any player can change the speed of light constant in the mod (if they couldn't, RSS configs wouldn't be possible, but they are).

[RatchetinSpace]

I've voted for "Unrealistic Planets and Moons" despite having both the ability to fly with harder difficulty and the knowledge to appreciate realistic details.

Want to know why ?

- To offset Regex preemptively,

- Because Game design trump realism,

- Bigger planet would merely create more relief we are never going to appreciate or move to in rover,

- Increased size & distance merely increase the time it take to launch or land without bringing interesting change.

- What we need is content, reasons to do stuff on planet/moon, not more boringly similar planet/moon/relief.

- Realistic planet formation would make it statistically improbable to have all sort of planet&moon, whereas game-design.

- I've played Outer Wild alpha recently

In any case this poll is pointless. KSP isn't going to rewrite all its planets nor change its scale.

I ment this poll more on the point of realistic types of planets and realistic formations, rather than realistic distances

[Bill Phil]

Citation? AFAIK nothing in stock KSP really cares about the speed of light, including data transmissions since they simply "teleport". If you're talking about, say, the RemoteTech mod which actually does care about the speed of light, that's not a useful source of information about how the game should be judged as far as "realism" is concerned since any player can change the speed of light constant in the mod (if they couldn't, RSS configs wouldn't be possible, but they are).

Scott Manley... I know, not official.

But not that much is.

[rkman]

- Increased size & distance merely increase the time it take to launch or land without bringing interesting change.

My experience with 6.4x scale KSP is that specifically ascent in atmosphere is much more interesting than in stock KSP.

Because in stock everything is very small, various phases of ascent pass so quickly that there's very little point in adjusting trajectory to make it more optimal. By the time it has been adjusted you're already on to the next phase, and it has little effect on whether or not you make orbit.

I won't ramble about the details of ascent in 6.4x ksp, but it is a lot more involved than stock.

[tater]

At 2X, or even 3.2X, KSP plays almost identically to stock in terms of what crafts get to orbit (maybe a couple moar boosters for some missions), and I find the ascent/reenty to not be substantially different. A little longer? Yeah, but if you play with DRE and are used to shallow reentries anyway it's not terribly different (soon to be a thing in stock, anyway).

In a perfect world, they'd scale everything up in size/distance to at least the minimal size that makes sense for the current balance and the new aero. With FAR it's around 2X, right?

There are things about this scaling that actually make certain elements easier, BTW. Docking. You've got more time in daylight instead of spinning around Kerbin like a top, then closing the dangerous bit in the dark (this is like a Murphy's Law corollary for KSP in my experience, "all terminal docking operations will end up taking place at night." ). I suppose the plus side is that I now dock really well in the pitch black, watching nothing but the navball.

[Darnok]

IMO we need planets-editor-tool, like Devs said they are building for tech-tree, so if you don't like default you can create your own solar system or just tweak a bit one planet or moon.

Depends what is fun for you.

[tater]

What should really happen is the ability to generate new planets and orbits for them on the fly. Most complaints about science, career, and really any replay of the game could be mitigated by the option to have all the worlds generated via a random seed (so you could share solar systems). Combined with the inability to know more than you should about distant worlds, this would make exploration really feel like exploration.

At that point, you could have all kinds of variation in planets/moons, and have the possibility of anything, really.

[Valley]

I prefer realistic if I can get it. Fact is somethings stranger, and more interesting, than fiction.

[Moss]

Realistic or otherwise, it would be nice if there were more things on the surfaces of planets to interact with. Like lava. Or puppies.

[AbacusWizard]

Or lavapuppies!