KSC Located Further From Equator On Higher Difficulty

[Glaran K'erman]

I think it would be interesting to move KSC north or south of the equator depending on the difficulty to simulate the advantages of having an equitorial launch. As most of the bodies favor the current equitorial setup, that means more dV would be required early game for plane changes to other bodies making design and piloting more thoughtful. Taking it a bit further, this would allow being able to "Rent" or "Purchase" a launch site closer to or at the equator as an upgrade. Feedback would be awesome, curious what people think of this?

Update: Found this, figured someone had thought of this before, would still like to see it done for stock though too http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/105247-1-0-4-Kerbal-Konstructs-v0-8-4-You-Can-Tip-It

Edited July 26, 2015 by Glaran K'erman

[Excellent]

Thats actually an interesting idea that could add another flavor of difficulty to the game. Only problem I can see with this is changing how you play career mode. The devs balanced the game to give you science, money and rep depending on where you are in the game. Hard mode makes those rewards much less so you have less room for error and makes you have to have a more thoughtful "design and piloting". Moving the KSC away from the equator would require a rebalance of the reward system so its actually possible to make it into orbit.

Or maybe i'm just overestimating how much it would scale the difficulty, definitely a good idea though.

Edited July 25, 2015 by Excellent

[Red Iron Crown]

Or maybe i'm just overestimating how much it would scale the difficulty.

I think you might be. It's at worst <200m/s more delta-V to get to orbit, and the latitude of the launch site is the minimum orbit inclination for a simple launch. It also requires a bit more finesse in timing launches for rendezvous with other objects in orbit, what time of day you launch suddenly becomes important. It would be more difficult, but not tremendously so.

[Grumman]

I would like to see this idea done combined with having non-KSC points of interest on Kerbin.

Say there were three different potential launch sites: the Kerbal Space Center, Kerbopolis Spaceport and the Nezrelyy Kosmodrome. One of the three is your base of operations that functions the same as the KSC currently does, but the other two still have some utility, allowing better recovery percentages in their vicinity, and being potential destinations for tourists, VIPs or part recovery missions. Maybe you'll get paid $50,000 to recover such-and-such a part from Kerbin orbit, but you'll get paid $80,000 if you recover it right at the Kosmodrome - meaning you can get paid more for performing a more challenging mission by landing at a site far from the equator.

[Glaran K'erman]

Nice, I think you guys see what I mean, just a little extra spice to the experience.

To Grumman, I like the part of that where maybe different locations lend themselves to different types of contracts. A research facility does a lot of part testing, a space port does a lot of ferrying...interesting....

[BlueCanary]

What if you could pick the location of KSC when you start a game by dragging it on a map of Kerbin? This would give a lot of options, although I think Grumman's way would be more fun.

[Bashir_203]

Maybe you can have a way to choose the point in pre-game or purchase a new point?

[Mikki]

Maybe you can have a way to choose the point in pre-game or purchase a new point?

Simple and effective, and adding a different rep multiplier for missions started/ ended at that point, would be a alternative way to get other contracts, maybe better payed/ reped ones... would be a nice to have.

[Technical Ben]

It could be added just as multiple launch locations. Either as stock, or as a "option". Such as "buy/sell launch facilities". We could have multiple places, and certain bonuses/drawbacks.

IE, the little island would have a "no reputation loss from explosions/crashes/lost building" but be limited to teir 1 sizes and part limits.

The "secret base" would have no money bonuses and no reputation gains on mission completion (so science only) but would be totally top secret, so explosions and failures offer no reputation losses.

Then launching from a city location would give reputation and money and sit seeing bonuses on missions, but hold harder launch restrictions due to being far from the equator, and very hard landings avoiding the city! (Plus no nukes or other fuel restrictions)

There could even be a city location with just a runway, so either space plane, or ferry to KSC.