Dreaming about the future of KSP

[John FX]

I`ve had a tentative thought on how KSP could expand in the future. This may be better suited for a set of mods than altering the stock game, it may be too adventurous for Squad.

There seems to have been a lot of work lately on things that are not just rockets going into space. We have kerbal spaceplane program,. kerbal submarine program and so on.

I`d like to expand on that concept with some extra thoughts. These would apply to career or science career.

I had a vision where you could start off in a field with a few buildings, one being the early VAB or SPH, I think the SPH would fit better. You have a small amount of parts, none of which can get you off the ground but which will allow you to explore your surroundings. There are enough parts to build a basic rover and a static fuel mining operation. You would sell fuel to get funds and explore to get science. There would also be basic exploration contracts and milestones. This could be land speed records, maybe biome milestones.

This would open up basic flight where you could break more records, set more milestones, get more science and complete some more basic contracts which would open up advanced flight.

and so on giving the player a great sense of achievement once they actually got into space.

Currently it is hardly an achievement at all to get all the height milestones, that would change. There could be depth milestones for subs and hopefully underwater easter eggs (maybe that`s where the as yet undiscovered easter egg/feature Harvester hinted at is?)

I know this sounds like just a rearranged tech tree but it would require different contracts and parts giving the early game more breadth. Hopefully in combination with extra stuff to do on planets once they are landed on this would flesh out the game. Currently it feels very much like the bones of a game.

There would have to be very large parts at the start that the payer has no hope of getting into the air but which could be placed on the ground to harvest and fuel storage parts which would make no sense to put into space (maybe very large dry mass) I`d like to see stock refuelling of reusable craft be something built into the game.

Essentially the player would have to actually build up a space program from the ground, developing a way to get fuel, flight, then faster and higher planes until one can just about get out of the atmosphere at which point tech for orbit would be available and the game would proceed roughly along similar lines to what we have now.

When you got into space there would be a few kerbals with "the right stuff" who had flown plenty of experimental planes. Currently planes seem a bit out of place...

 

Sorry if this is a bit jumbled, I typed it as I was thinking it.

 

What do you think? I reckon if it does not become stock a set of mods could be made for those that would want to play this way, like RO. Might even be a good career model for RO?

[Knaapie]

This, my friend, is amazing.

I can already see an intro scene of Bill, Bob and Jeb driving around in a rover, looking at the stars as the final frontier, when a fireball emerges!! It is a pod crashing down with a half broken parachute, nearly killing everyone. Valentina steps out of her broken space craft with urgent news: "we need to start a space program!"

 

Building it all up from nothing is great for story telling. I love the idea and possibilities !

[DeadlyKerbal]

This would be great! I would play more career if I was involved. Sandbox story combo's are hard to pull off, but I think Squad could do it. Currently I mostly play sandbox, because that's what I bought it for, right?

[StarManta]

I think the main problem is that this would result in many reviews saying "It's called Kerbal SPACE Program, and they have me tooling around the base and selling fuel?" New players would lose interest before ever setting foot on a rocket, which is where KSP gets fun.

3 hours ago, John FX said:

and so on giving the player a great sense of achievement once they actually got into space.

 

This is one area in which KSP is not hurting. Universally, reviews of KSP praise its ability to make every step of the way feel like an accomplishment.

As a mod, this is fine, but this would be terrible for the core game.

[quasarrgames]

for some reason your avatar reminded me of Universim...

 

#threadcontribution2k16

[Kobymaru]

6 hours ago, John FX said:

I`ve had a tentative thought on how KSP could expand in the future. This may be better suited for a set of mods than altering the stock game, it may be too adventurous for Squad.

You are right, that's nothing for Squad.

6 hours ago, John FX said:

I had a vision where you could start off in a field with a few buildings, one being the early VAB or SPH, I think the SPH would fit better. You have a small amount of parts, none of which can get you off the ground but which will allow you to explore your surroundings. There are enough parts to build a basic rover and a static fuel mining operation. You would sell fuel to get funds and explore to get science. There would also be basic exploration contracts and milestones. This could be land speed records, maybe biome milestones.

Interesting! Not my current playstyle, but it could work for some people. However, if you already write "sell fuel to get funds", the chance is that all of this is gonne become very, very grindy.

 

6 hours ago, John FX said:

Currently it is hardly an achievement at all to get all the height milestones, that would change.

You see, for us Pros, it is not really. For a new player, the learning curve is already pretty steep. With your changes, the learning curve would turn into a brick wall.

 

6 hours ago, John FX said:

I know this sounds like just a rearranged tech tree but it would require different contracts and parts giving the early game more breadth. Hopefully in combination with extra stuff to do on planets once they are landed on this would flesh out the game. Currently it feels very much like the bones of a game.

See, this is where I disagree. All of what you want basically happens before the current game as it is. So a player goes through your part, finally gets into space and then ... well, then the game is as it was before. You see the problem? Time spent before getting to space is finite. Time spent in space is infinite.

It doesn't really add to the game long-term, and turns a "space program" into a grindy, tedious, ground-crawling operation on kerbin, where quite frankly, there isn't that much to see.

[John FX]

It would be quite a stretch for the stock game, a collection of mods along the lines of RO seems more reasonable. I`m wondering if it is a possible thing using existing mods. There would be resource gathering and making of parts with the resources so (not sure) kerbtown or the launchpads one?, some custom heavy mining parts for early career, stagerecovery and kerbal construction time to allow a craft hanger. I am imagining time being important. Want to catch that transfer window? Better get enough resources together still allowing enough time for the craft to be built and launched.

23 hours ago, Kobymaru said:

Time spent before getting to space is finite. Time spent in space is infinite.

This will always be the case and is an argument to only play sandbox, not an argument to keep career limited to space travel.

There is always a danger of any career being grindy, some people regard the current career as too grindy. I`m not too sure whether leaving the atmosphere is the second or third contract you get though. That is far too soon, no wonder new players feel the learning curve is steep, they are being expected to get into space straight away. If they were allowed to build up to it maybe they would not find it so daunting...

Maybe instead of a grindy build it yourself mining operation it could be just another building (or for ease a simulated building in a window)  that can be upgraded along with the others. It would be another element that could provide pace as opposed to grind in a career game although there would be something satisfying and fitting with the lego theme to build it yourself, framerates are a concern with essentially pointless craft sitting about just mining though.

I`m not sure about other people but for myself there seems to be not really enough `program` in Kerbal Space Program. Plenty of kerbals, plenty of space, but very light on managing a space program. I am looking forward to the contract improvements with 1.1, hopefully with the removal of the memory addressing limit mod makers might find there are more possibilities than before.

[MKI]

Make a new game for Kerbal Submarine Program and Kerbal Rover/Car/Train/ Program

 

Many others and I all play this game to go to space. Everything else goes with that concept. The water change allows players to get a space plane to land on Laythe, and Kerbin. Yes you can make a boat, but that is just a by-produce.

 

I see there being a lot of fun mods for this sort of stuff, since the game is capable of doing it. But the current implementations are fine. Id rather not have any prop parts, or sub parts taking up space for my space parts.

[KSK]

7 hours ago, John FX said:

There is always a danger of any career being grindy, some people regard the current career as too grindy. I`m not too sure whether leaving the atmosphere is the second or third contract you get though. That is far too soon, no wonder new players feel the learning curve is steep, they are being expected to get into space straight away. If they were allowed to build up to it maybe they would not find it so daunting...

Yes but you don't have to leave the atmosphere on the very next launch after you accept that contract. There's good money to be made from progressively flying higher and further before then. I actually think Squad has done a pretty good job with the early milestones, if anything they're perhaps too finely grained for the available rocket parts but that's not a real problem. 

7 hours ago, John FX said:

I`m not sure about other people but for myself there seems to be not really enough `program` in Kerbal Space Program. Plenty of kerbals, plenty of space, but very light on managing a space program. I am looking forward to the contract improvements with 1.1, hopefully with the removal of the memory addressing limit mod makers might find there are more possibilities than before.

Agreed but I don't think your idea really addresses that since it basically just uses the existing game mechanics (find Science, break Milestones) to build a not terribly interesting prelude to the actual business of getting into space. I think your suggestions would be fun to play through once for a change of pace but I wouldn't want to play through them every time I started a new non-Sandbox game. Other people may beg to differ of course.

On the other hand, if the game was more of a program management game then I'd probably really enjoy your prelude stages. Figuring out a way to bring in enough funds and raw materials to build your early rockets, wheeler-dealing your way from a hobby scale rocket launching club to your first significant milestones - at which point the world starts to take you a lot more seriously and new options open up. Heck, I wrote a book about this kind of stuff.

But that would require a ground-up rewrite of the game rules which, realistically (and not unreasonably at this stage in KSP's development), just isn't going to happen.

[pandaman]

10 hours ago, MKI said:

Make a new game for Kerbal Submarine Program and Kerbal Rover/Car/Train/ Program

 

Many others and I all play this game to go to space. Everything else goes with that concept. The water change allows players to get a space plane to land on Laythe, and Kerbin. Yes you can make a boat, but that is just a by-produce.

 

I see there being a lot of fun mods for this sort of stuff, since the game is capable of doing it. But the current implementations are fine. Id rather not have any prop parts, or sub parts taking up space for my space parts.

I do get your point here, though I do disagree a bit.

Yes the game is, and should remain, about space, flying spaceships and exploring the solar system we are given.  A few extra parts that enable us to explore more of that solar system (under the oceans of Laythe for example) can enhance the game overall.  Yes there is a potential risk of adding too much of some things like specialised submarine parts and so changing the apparent focus of the game (several have complained about the dominance of plane parts for example), but that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be any.  Many of the parts can have 'crossover' uses, how many spacecraft use MK2 and MK3 'plane' parts?  And electric propellers could have dual atmospheric and submarine uses if carefully implemented.

So IMO there is a place for a few specialised parts to cater for, and give a few different options for, atmospheric and oceanic uses.

[John FX]

10 hours ago, KSK said:

if the game was more of a program management game then I'd probably really enjoy your prelude stages. Figuring out a way to bring in enough funds and raw materials to build your early rockets, wheeler-dealing your way from a hobby scale rocket launching club to your first significant milestones - at which point the world starts to take you a lot more seriously and new options open up. Heck, I wrote a book about this kind of stuff.

In all honesty this was how I saw things working. I like the sounding rockets mod, something which would allow very cheap hobbyist launches to get progressively higher records to be broken.

For me, career could do with a big overhaul to make it much more like a space program management game which would accommodate basic early stuff like I am suggesting more seamlessly.

Obviously if this was to be considered for stock there would have to be some form of slider to allow you to skip early parts (like the starting science slider). I agree that going through the early stages of a game repeatedly can get tedious.

I would like to note that none of my suggestions reduce the game once you are in space and could be skipped for those who do not find them interesting so those who wish a pure space game would still have it. Liking one thing is no reason to stop others having a different thing. There are those who only play sandbox, science, or full career. None detracts from the others and neither would these suggestions.

As for worries about one part pushing out another, this would be a thing for after 1.1 so that worry would be moot.

10 hours ago, KSK said:

that would require a ground-up rewrite of the game rules which, realistically (and not unreasonably at this stage in KSP's development), just isn't going to happen.

But it is something which could happen if KSP was open enough to mods to allow a full conversion mod. This is something which realistically could happen.

Edited January 9, 2016 by John FX

[Knaapie]

What if you could mod "scenerios" ? Share them with your friends.

Where you can tweak beginning vehicles / buildings / resources / kerbals / part costs / research points / rewards and more importantly:

skill trees, missions and achievements.

 

All those factors can create a story, told by the missions from the start to the end.

Modders would be able to create their unique story and the game would become endlessly replayable!

[KSK]

2 hours ago, John FX said:

For me, career could do with a big overhaul to make it much more like a space program management game which would accommodate basic early stuff like I am suggesting more seamlessly.

Agreed.

2 hours ago, John FX said:

Obviously if this was to be considered for stock there would have to be some form of slider to allow you to skip early parts (like the starting science slider). I agree that going through the early stages of a game repeatedly can get tedious.

If we're limited to current game mechanics then again I agree. With expanded game mechanics (which I think we both agree would be good), then there's no real reason why the early game can't be as engaging as the late game. If I'm playing Civ (in any of its versions or guises), the early game works fine because there's plenty to do right from the start and, once you become familiar with the game, it's rather like chess in that the early game can shape the flow of the whole thing. 

2 hours ago, John FX said:

But it is something which could happen if KSP was open enough to mods to allow a full conversion mod. This is something which realistically could happen.

Here's hoping! If anyone was interested in doing such a thing, I'd gladly donate some writing time to it. I wouldn't be any use as a coder or graphics guy but I could cobble together some reasonable flavour text for contracts and such, redo the tech tree descriptions etc. 

Judging from mods like Kerbal Construction Time (and I know I keep banging on about that one), I think there's a lot of quite fundamental changes and extensions to the game that could be modded in.

[John FX]

21 hours ago, KSK said:

once you become familiar with the game, it's rather like chess in that the early game can shape the flow of the whole thing. 

This was something I had thought, the better you assign resources at the start the healthier and more robust your space program could be later on. Currently nothing you do in the game meaningfully affects anything except the current contract.

As I have worked in video, I see a story based framework as important when developing a career or campaign within a game. It`s not just assigning a series of tasks that will get you rewards, there has to be some connecting thread that links all the tasks to provide an arcing path towards a final goal (in KSP that would be sandbox). I see not having the ability to get into space straight away as part of that, a feature not a bug, hehe.

In the game Total Annihilation there was a sandbox/skirmish area where everything was unlocked and a campaign mode where you went through a story based set of missions that gradually unlocked all the parts (bots). The campaign was heavily story based and was quite enjoyable even though at the start you had nothing resembling the final gameplay, in fact there was little you could do in the early missions which you could relate to sandobx/skirmish mode. It pretty much held your hand until you had the hang of using the parts (bots) effectively, introducing new parts (bots) with new missions where you explored their capabilities.

This did not detract from the campaign or the sandbox mode at all. It helped players not be so daunted initially with simply playing the game. It could help new KSP players in the same way.

I`m hoping the contract improvements we have been told about for 1.1 will move towards addressing this, I can`t wait to see how they do.

[adjudantloic]

Wow man! It would be just great! I love this idea!

[MKI]

On 1/9/2016 at 3:52 AM, pandaman said:

I do get your point here, though I do disagree a bit.

Yes the game is, and should remain, about space, flying spaceships and exploring the solar system we are given.  A few extra parts that enable us to explore more of that solar system (under the oceans of Laythe for example) can enhance the game overall.  Yes there is a potential risk of adding too much of some things like specialised submarine parts and so changing the apparent focus of the game (several have complained about the dominance of plane parts for example), but that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be any.  Many of the parts can have 'crossover' uses, how many spacecraft use MK2 and MK3 'plane' parts?  And electric propellers could have dual atmospheric and submarine uses if carefully implemented.

So IMO there is a place for a few specialised parts to cater for, and give a few different options for, atmospheric and oceanic uses.

A prop comes to mind to further atmospheric flight, but in the current game they are outclassed in the air by jets and under the water by jets. So they would just be even more worthless than the worst jets if they were just thrown in the game now. You can tweak them by making them work off electricity which would be useful for atmospheric flight where jets don't work, which DOES add to the space capability and having underwater capability as a by-product. But outside of that I can't think of many specialized parts to cater oceanic uses.

Rather There are parts that can be added to further the space aspect, while also being able to preform aquatic functions. But something like a ballast tank just for oceanic use just wouldn't be worth it currently. Hulls can be designed out of current parts, sails are useless, Anything can go underwater outside of delicate objects, and spacecraft are already similar to Subs.

 

PS. Mk2 and Mk3 are Spaceplane parts, not directly Plane parts. Since they are generally to go to go to space. (IE Space Plane Hanger)