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Upstream: Why does it matter


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I haven't seen many #lolsplosions posters either, when I said "vehement opposition", I meant Squad. I think that Squad thinks (lots of think-thinking) that adding more available info makes the game unapproachable to potential buyers and new players.

Squad not only thinks that as they said that with all the words a lot of times. I heard it live from Maxmaps once in a Squadcast regarding the science archives having intel on the science that is this to be found on a biome ( would spoil the joy of discovery according to him ), Harvester wrote about that regarding dV meters and the devs already used that exact same wording regarding showing all the tech tree nodes at all times until some supernatural entity convinced Harv otherwise two weeks ago :P

Edited by r_rolo1
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Another point would be that Squad has explicitly stated they don't like "random," so for career or science that massively limits their game design options (remember that when I say ":game design," I'm talking about the gameplay mechanics dropped on top of the "sim" aspect of spaceflight (or craft building).

The new resources I think are actually random, however, which is a good sign. Were they not, you'd wiki the best location, then always land there, if you were of a mind to do that (no need to scan or otherwise locate the resources). I'd personally think that both science and career modes would benefit from exactly THIS kind of random with respect to "science." In other words instead of generic "science from orbit," you might need to scan a world a certain amount. Then perhaps most of the "biomes" (terrible word choice by Squad, as almost all are lifeless) could in fact be randomized in some fashion---or made less important. Say instead of X "biomes" on the Mun, each of which gives you 120 science for a sample return, they only give you a small fraction of that amount of science. Then add a new feature, "unique" or "important" geology that can be scanned for, but is random. You'd then locate those regions via photo-mapping (scanning), then land and EVA/collect for the higher points we think of for each "biome" now. Might create some novel situations where you have to land places that you might not otherwise go if you want the big science payoff.

That's a good idea for the science, and one that could possibly be modded into the game. An alternate way implementing something similar would be to require scanning of a planet before FinePrint contracts appear.

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I don't really want to cause too much of a fight here... so PLEASE don't get after me here.

The problem with KER and MechJeb is a question of how much information is appropriate. I am on note for calling "using a certain amount of universe information" cheating because it feels so wrong... and people have made good points as to counter that feeling; on the other hand, I know you can get something like airpressure without having a single "airpressure sensor" on your rocket by using either of the two.

As a dV calculator, while again invaluable... it also provides you with information that you technically shouldn't know (though, I think it may be in the planetary database); without having sent a probe to eve, how do you know how the atmosphere is going to affect your craft? But, of course, there are people who don't WANT to send a probe first, they just want to do their mission.

While I agree with providing tweaking; and I'll support nearly any feature that doesn't "replace" something (only adds in new, unique, functionality) and can be tweaked to death; historically, modders were the ones who provided ways to "tweak" the systems. And they have done so very well...

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I haven't seen many #lolsplosions posters either, when I said "vehement opposition", I meant Squad. I think that Squad thinks (lots of think-thinking) that adding more available info makes the game unapproachable to potential buyers and new players.

Gotcha. Thankfully, the devs are coming around on some of these things. It's not healthy to stick hard and fast to design guidelines. That closes you off from strategies that might work better, even if they're dissimilar to what you were planning to do.

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... The problem with KER and MechJeb is a question of how much information is appropriate. I am on note for calling "using a certain amount of universe information" cheating because it feels so wrong... and people have made good points as to counter that feeling; on the other hand, I know you can get something like airpressure without having a single "airpressure sensor" on your rocket by using either of the two. ...

See, that's the kind of discussion that should be happening. Finding the compromise between information overload and blind guessing would allow the devs to keep their notion of keeping things simple.

I also like how you hit on an idea for a new mechanic, too (maybe unintentionally). Adding parts to your rocket in order to get specific in-flight readouts might be an ok compromise. Though, I'd personally still embed KER into my pods so I don't have to dangle bits all over my ships.

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As a dV calculator, while again invaluable... it also provides you with information that you technically shouldn't know (though, I think it may be in the planetary database); without having sent a probe to eve, how do you know how the atmosphere is going to affect your craft? But, of course, there are people who don't WANT to send a probe first, they just want to do their mission.

While I kind of agree with you ( some stuff should be inaccessible to the player until direct exploration of the area ), the example you are giving is wrong. You can have a fairly good idea of how a engine will perform if you know the pressure, the temperature and the composition of the atmosphere you are targeting and all of those can be reasonably gauged at a distance via sprectrometry. In fact that was done in RL for all the terran planets with atmosphere where we have put landers ( that is Mars and Venus ;) ) even before we had sent any probe outside of the Earth gravity well.

OFC that really precise numbers could only be got after some probes were sent, but what could be gathered just by observation from Earth was enough for what KER does in game with a decent precision ...

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