Poll: What Human Year Equivalent is Career Year 0?

[inigma]

Taking into account the stock starting tech, available milestones and contract rewards, what do you think is the human year equivalent to stock KSP Career Year 0?

A number of us contract and tech tree developers want to know your opinion!

Personally, I think it's 1906, as aviation has not been researched yet. The command module can be reasoned away as a car chassis. The SRB can be reasoned as just an advanced firework.

Now if Squad were to simply allow spawning into Command Seats, make it a starting tech, and moved the current Command Module to a later point in the tree, and give us just a basic wheel, I think this argument would be made even clearer.

These two simple changes to the starting techs (making the Command Seat and a small wheel starter techs) would easily have the rest of the tech tree make more sense I think.  I think it's just that durned Command Module messing with most people's minds on the matter.

Switch out the Command Module with the Command Seat... and you have 1906, which is what i think it should be given the data, what with aviation tech yet to be researched being the primary give away. This is why I include CommandSeat and wheels as starter techs in my Contract Pack: Giving Aircraft a Purpose (link in sig). A very simple change if Squad were to implement it, as it would easily clarify the timeframe at Career start.

Edited January 23, 2016 by inigma

[worir4]

The year 2050. WW3 has just happened and the remaining humans have been mutated into kerbals. All that remains are some random rocket parts and a perfectly preserved space centre (Apart from the runway) No cities remain and all the kerbals can think to do now is go to space. 

[gonzo98x]

If you go the fallout route tie-in. The bombs have fallen on alternate 1950's America. And the world is a very different place. Years of living underground have caused......changes in the people that remained behind.

Hundreds of years in the future and with the planet unable to sustain large amounts of life, the remaining residents of the planet have taken to picking up the torch of the scientists from the world before the bombs. Using what few remaining texts have been scavenged the inhabitants have begun to develop the technology that will allow them to leave this planet and start anew.

The year is 2147.

[razark]

There is no way to compare human and Kerbal timelines.

Seriously, the game starts with you having a Mercury-level spacecraft, but wheels and ladders are some sort of science-fiction wonder technology that you won't find out about until you visit the Mun in your third flight, slightly after lunchtime.

How are you supposed to compare that?

[Guest]

No way to compare.  At the start of the tech tree Kerbals haven't developed the wheel, wings, or a reliable method of separating two things but have rudimentary solid rockets, telemetry, and pressurized cockpits that can survive re-entry.

[gonzo98x]

Left over rockets and missiles from the war. 

[inigma]

20 minutes ago, regex said:

No way to compare.  At the start of the tech tree Kerbals haven't developed the wheel, wings, or a reliable method of separating two things but have rudimentary solid rockets, telemetry, and pressurized cockpits that can survive re-entry.

Then can you answer the second part of the question? What should the year be equivalent to?

25 minutes ago, razark said:

There is no way to compare human and Kerbal timelines.

Seriously, the game starts with you having a Mercury-level spacecraft, but wheels and ladders are some sort of science-fiction wonder technology that you won't find out about until you visit the Mun in your third flight, slightly after lunchtime.

How are you supposed to compare that?

Then can you answer the second part of the question? What should the year be equivalent to?

Edited January 22, 2016 by inigma

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, inigma said:

Then can you answer the second part of the question? What should the year be equivalent to?

Since it is possible to make orbit during that year, and Duna by the second, I'd say anywhere between 1957 and now.

E: I mean, seriously, you're trying to pin down a start date for a tech tree that is designed for part introduction rather than historical progression.

E2: Oh, you want an opinion for modding?  Here I thought this was General, not Modding Discussion...  uhm...  1950, I guess?  That's what RP-0 sets it to.

Edited January 22, 2016 by regex

[razark]

3 minutes ago, inigma said:

Then can you answer the second part of the question? What should the year be equivalent to?

Sorry, I actually meant to, and then forgot.  I even voted in the poll.

I'd like to see Year 0 be set around 1947.  The post-war beginnings of the jet age, breaking the sound barrier, and more advanced rocketry.  Personally, I'd rearrange the tech tree and have sounding rockets and early jet technology well before reaching the point where you can run a crewed mission.

 

[AbacusWizard]

In a very broad interpretation of the term, humanity probably did discover rocketry very early... all it takes is one neanderthal sneezing hard enough while falling off a cliff.

[inigma]

11 minutes ago, razark said:

Sorry, I actually meant to, and then forgot.  I even voted in the poll.

I'd like to see Year 0 be set around 1947.  The post-war beginnings of the jet age, breaking the sound barrier, and more advanced rocketry.  Personally, I'd rearrange the tech tree and have sounding rockets and early jet technology well before reaching the point where you can run a crewed mission.

 

What if they were to simply allow spawning into Command Seats, make it a starting tech, and moved the current Command Module to a later point in the tree, and give us just a basic wheel. What year would it be then? This is why I picked 1900-1910. These two simple changes to the starting techs would easily have the rest of the tech tree make more sense I think.  I think it's just that durned Command Module messing with most people's minds on the matter.

Switch out the Command Module with the Command Seat... and you have 1906.

Edited January 22, 2016 by inigma

[razark]

That might actually make a bit more sense, with a little bit of additional re-ordering (ladders).

I still like the later half of the 1940s as a starting point, though.  Maybe I've just seen The Right Stuff a few too many times.

[tater]

It almost doesn't matter as nearly everything in the tech tree is concurrent, anyway.

[Curveball Anders]

I choose 50-60 but it really reaches a bit on both side of that.

 

[Hotaru]

I've always thought of the start as being equivalent to 1960, since the first thing I invariably do is stick a Mk1 on an RT-10 (which looks a bit like a Mercury on a Little Joe), then graduate to a liquid-fuel rocket with a T-30 still too small to make orbit (Mercury Redstone), then add a second stage to get to orbit (Atlas). Of course I usually deviate from actual history at this point, both by skipping over Gemini and jumping straight on to Apollo since there's no 2-seat pod, and by continuing to send "Mercury" flights to the Mun, Minmus, and in at least one case, Duna.

And of course it all happens way too fast. If my current save (and this is with Kerbal Construction Time, set to 5x slower build times than default!) started in 1960, it's now coming up on 1969 and I've already send Kerballed missions to the Eve, Duna, and Jool systems and at least a flyby probe everywhere.

If I were trying to make a tech tree/contract pack intended to give a more reasonable progression, which is a really good idea by the way and I'd definitely try out such a mod, I'd start at 1960 if I was starting with the first Kerbals in space (first real human in space 1961, minus a year to make it a nice round number) or 1940 if I was starting with unmanned flights (first unmanned suborbital spacecraft 1942, again rounded off to make the math easier).

[Hysterrics]

Certainly the 40's, considering you start with SRBS.

[inigma]

9 minutes ago, Sequinox said:

Certainly the 40's, considering you start with SRBS.

nah, they're just modified Kerbese rockets.

[mcirish3]

OK soooo.... I don't really expect anyone to agree with me but... to me at least could it not really begin with the pre 1900.  Just need to add a shipyard and ship parts to accommodate the new water physics and a wind mod and woot there you have the making of a perfectly good pre 1900 shipbuilding simulator that can slowly progress to trains and cars and planes and then to  to rockets.  so I would say 1784  

[inigma]

9 minutes ago, mcirish3 said:

OK soooo.... I don't really expect anyone to agree with me but... to me at least could it not really begin with the pre 1900.  Just need to add a shipyard and ship parts to accommodate the new water physics and a wind mod and woot there you have the making of a perfectly good pre 1900 shipbuilding simulator that can slowly progress to trains and cars and planes and then to  to rockets.  so I would say 1784  

So did you vote?

[mcirish3]

Yes, but I answered the first question rather than the second with my vote. 1960-70

 

Edit: you should have put two questions to your poll. (you can do that now you know)  Then i could have said both in one shot.

Edited January 22, 2016 by mcirish3

[wumpus]

2 hours ago, regex said:

No way to compare.  At the start of the tech tree Kerbals haven't developed the wheel, wings, or a reliable method of separating two things but have rudimentary solid rockets, telemetry, and pressurized cockpits that can survive re-entry.

Solid rockets might not be that odd (the most primitive gunpowder types have existed for centuries).  Also remember that the capsules need only survive re-entry into a planet with ~3km/s delta-v to LKO not ~9km/s to LEO.  Also, I don't think a kerbal year is that long: Kerbin's rotation is a bit faster.

If you want things to prepare, download and install the realism overhaul set of mods.  It will just work.  Otherwise just set the date at sometime in the 1950s and don't sweat the speed you advance at (it will match history about as well as the tiny ultra-dense planets match our solar system and kerbals match human biology).

[tater]

The poll is also useless, as you ask what it is, OR what it should be. How do you tell what vote is for which question?

[HebaruSan]

September 12, 1962. "Not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

(Inspirational patriotic music plays, fade in to KSC)

[mcirish3]

Kerbin Year is 426 d 0 h 32 m 24.6 s in Kerbin Days which has a sidereal rotation of 5 h 59 m 9.4 s   and a solar day of exactly six hours (I verified the last number experimentally :))  the rest is from the wiki.    So no(or yes?) the Kerbin year is not very long only about 107 earth days.

Edited January 23, 2016 by mcirish3

[Guest]

14 minutes ago, tater said:

The poll is also useless, as you ask what it is, OR what it should be. How do you tell what vote is for which question?

It is implied in the OP that this is for modding.  Maybe it belongs in the modding forums.