Make Kerbin More Realistic ~ Suggestion

[Eveeloo]

I think Kerbin should look better, trees, cities, clouds, cars, boats, people, animals etc. because I mean on the whole world there's only one structure the KSC. I know this be one of the hardest mod/addon to make, but Kerbin just looks ugly it needs buildings and trees and all that. Just my suggestion - KerbalSpace AKA KerbalSpace337 or taylosaur

Edited April 10, 2016 by KerbalSpace
Make Kerbin More Realistic

[Grumman]

Cities and clouds would be the best place to start, as they would have the most effect on the intended play style. Cities would add landmarks visible on the night side of Kerbin, making navigation easier, while clouds would hide landmarks, making navigation harder.

I would also like to see a few cities scattered around with civilian airports that are used as optional objectives for tourism contracts. Getting paid extra if you can return the tourists to Kerbin by landing at Kerbopolis Airport (which might not be on the equator, unlike the KSC) would be a nice way for people to challenge themselves.

[Pthigrivi]

The dev's have wanted clouds for some time now. The reason they've been left out thus far has mainly been to cut down on memory usage, but after the Unity upgrade we may be seeing them very soon. Cities, especially 3d cities with collision grids would incredibly cool and fun to see, but would take an enormous amount of work and could gobble up much too much memory to really work. These do however get suggested a lot and are on the what-not-to-suggest-list.

In the mean time, if you have a decent enough system you can download the Environmental Visual Enhancements or Stock Visual Enhancements mods to get something similar. Especially with Scatterer the effect is actually quite stunning.

[Ser]

1 hour ago, KerbalSpace said:

I think Kerbin should look better, trees, cities, clouds, cars, boats, people, animals etc. because I mean on the whole world there's only one structure the KSC. I know this be one of the hardest mod/addon to make, but Kerbin just looks ugly it needs buildings and trees and all that. Just my suggestion - KerbalSpace AKA KerbalSpace337 or taylosaur

City lights and clouds are already implemented in the mods like EVE and its inheritors. Even the weather simulation is being actively developed by modders. Trees (cannot call them "forests" though) are already there in the stock game (the "terrain scattering" setting), but up to 1.0.5 they became visible only on quickload. The mod Scatterer among all of its amazing stuff also made the trees appear properly.

As for animals, there's a problem IMHO. If Kerbin astronauts look like umm... live cucumbers in spacesuits then how should the animals look like? If they were like the Earth animals then why astronauts look so weird? If animals were like some weird creatures then IMHO that would move us into some alien evironment and broken the sense that we are playing almost Earth altered only for gameplay simplicity. Plus the memory issues, modelling, texturing and AI effort for the things that aren't actually supposed to be seen during space launches.

You may say "Why the space launches only if we can fly airplanes and drive rovers around Kerbin and thus be able to see all the micro stuff?" Well, then you could also say that city life should be implemented with interactive kerbals to talk with. But the game isn't quite about it.

Edited April 10, 2016 by Ser

[Whirligig Girl]

There are trees. Turn on Terrain Scatter in the settings.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

We all know Kerbal's live underground.

The only thing we need on the surface is the piles and piles of dirt and rock that they've excavated from the depths.

I mean they wear their spacesuits and helmets at all times, that's indicative of a race that can't survive on the surface of their own planet (not to mention you get rewarded for exploring the surface of Kerbin...almost as if no one has ever done it before.) 

Edited April 10, 2016 by Rocket In My Pocket

[Ser]

1 minute ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

I mean they wear their spacesuits and helmets at all times, that's indicative of a race that can't survive on the surface of their own planet (not to mention you get rewarded for exploring Kerbin...almost as if no one has ever done it before.) 

That leads us to conclusion that Kerbin is not the native planet for Kerbals but an alien world on which the Space Center have got somehow. I suppose it could be built by the ancient race of Kerblantide

[Grumman]

9 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Cities, especially 3d cities with collision grids would incredibly cool and fun to see, but would take an enormous amount of work and could gobble up much too much memory to really work.

Cities only take as much memory as you're willing to assign. Skyscrapers are cheap to implement, for example, since they're basically just collections of blocks of different sizes with random window textures tiled on the sides. Shamus Young's website has an example of what procedural generation can do.

[John JACK]

4 hours ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

they wear their spacesuits and helmets at all times

Only selected kerbanauts wear spacesuits. Because how they may prove they are real kerbanauts otherwise? Construction workers and KSC staff run around in ordinary clothes, with hardhats as a best enviromental protection.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

22 minutes ago, John JACK said:

Only selected kerbanauts wear spacesuits. Because how they may prove they are real kerbanauts otherwise? Construction workers and KSC staff run around in ordinary clothes, with hardhats as a best enviromental protection.

They run around inside buildings without space suits yeah.

Now I know what you're thinking, but the doors to the VAB and the SPH are open!

Take a closer look at those construction workers and scientists...doing doughnuts in the trucks, pushing boxes that don't exist, riding the elevators up and down for no reason, using screwdrivers and wrenches on thin air...they are clearly hallucinating due to exposure to Kerbin's atmosphere!

Edited April 10, 2016 by Rocket In My Pocket

[John JACK]

5 hours ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

they are clearly hallucinating due to exposure to Kerbin's atmosphere!

Or they are just kerbals. You know, the green guys who willingly climb into trash kans on top of exploding barrels?

[Pthigrivi]

13 hours ago, Grumman said:

Cities only take as much memory as you're willing to assign. Skyscrapers are cheap to implement, for example, since they're basically just collections of blocks of different sizes with random window textures tiled on the sides. Shamus Young's website has an example of what procedural generation can do.

Oh its certainly possible, but its difficult, and does eat memory. There's a lot I think thats still possible that would make better use of that memory than cities. This is a huge gamespace and there's still a lot of careful design involved. I'd be very surprised though if clouds didnt appear in the next couple of updates.

Edited April 11, 2016 by Pthigrivi

[Blaf]

Afaik Esri Cityengine has an Unity plugin, not sure what it's capable of though

 

[BeeGeenie]

It might be cool to add Kerbals as scatter on Kerbin. Like, trying to land a plane in the grassland and a random little Kerbal waves, or possibly cowers in fear as you fly by.

[KerikBalm]

On 4/10/2016 at 1:49 PM, KerbalSpace said:

the whole world there's only one structure the KSC. I know this be one of the hardest mod/addon to make, but Kerbin just looks ugly

Just a few minor points:

There are 3 other places where you can find (presumably kerbal made) structures on Kerbin.

There's the obvious one... the island airfield, which due to its proximity, you may consider it to be associated with the KSC.... but I don't.

 

Then there are other easter eggs

Spoiler

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Inland_Kerbal_Space_Center

Spoiler

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/List_of_easter_eggs#Kerbin

There's also this, which is a bit hard to classify

Spoiler

I completely disagree that kerbin looks ugly... I like that its not covered in farms and cities, its beautiful.... but more signs of kerbal civilization would be nice... just don't cover the wilderness with cities and farmland

[pizzaoverhead]

For those who haven't seen them, there have been several proof of concept procedural city mods:

Another addition to make Kerbin feel more alive than the other bodies could be procedural grass. The very first builds of KSP had grass like this before the game switched to the more complex full-planet rendering setup, making the grass incompatible.

As far as making the planet seem like a living home to all kerbalkind is concerned, scripted NPC flights between airports and shipping between ports could be used. They fit well into the macro view that rockets and aircraft have of the planet, and would give a sense that there is more going happening on the planet than can be seen from the air. The extra landing sites could tie into contracts, and you could have the occasional wayward boat entering into your launch range.

[Kerbalstar]

11 hours ago, pizzaoverhead said:

 

As far as making the planet seem like a living home to all kerbalkind is concerned, scripted NPC flights between airports and shipping between ports could be used. They fit well into the macro view that rockets and aircraft have of the planet, and would give a sense that there is more going happening on the planet than can be seen from the air. The extra landing sites could tie into contracts, and you could have the occasional wayward boat entering into your launch range.

I like the Idea of a Wayward boat. So you couldn't launch without possibly hurting the Kerbals and losing rep. Planes fly overhead can't launch take tourists to airports. Etc. Maybe you could make launches private. So like now no extra benefits. But you could make launches public so if you succeed in your launch you get some rep, but if your fail you lose rep, also range safety you could hit the kerbals if your rocket blew up, also you have to make sure not to hit the cites. Also for public launches you can charge admission per kerbal and change the price so maybe five funds per kerbal. Just my two cents. 

[sumghai]

I previously described in detail what considerations need to be accounted for in procedural city generation in-game:

As much as I like the idea of procedurally-generated cities, the only way one could justify development time on such a feature is if the cities, towns and villages actually impact gameplay in a meaningful manner, such as:

- imposing penalties and reputation demerits if spacecraft crash into them

- offering reputation and other bonuses for improving the local economy if the player sets up additional launch sites (e.g. situating a new launch site a short distance from an industrial park means lower part costs, while being near a major city center could improve the chances of recruiting a Kerbalnaut that already has maxed-out experience)

Otherwise, this is just resource-intensive eye-candy that diverts valuable dev time from other, more important, gameplay features.

[Grumman]

3 hours ago, sumghai said:

As much as I like the idea of procedurally-generated cities, the only way one could justify development time on such a feature is if the cities, towns and villages actually impact gameplay in a meaningful manner, such as:

- imposing penalties and reputation demerits if spacecraft crash into them

- offering reputation and other bonuses for improving the local economy if the player sets up additional launch sites (e.g. situating a new launch site a short distance from an industrial park means lower part costs, while being near a major city center could improve the chances of recruiting a Kerbalnaut that already has maxed-out experience)

Otherwise, this is just resource-intensive eye-candy that diverts valuable dev time from other, more important, gameplay features.

Having a penalty if you crash into a city makes sense, but would obviously have to be combined with adding contracts for going there (at least as an optional bonus objective) or you'd just never bother to go there. The second idea doesn't make sense - it's going to be a lot more expensive for you to build and maintain a second spaceport than just shipping the parts to your current one, and conducting space launches right next to a major city center will not make you new friends. If there's an additional landing site there, it will be because you're using a preexisting runway.

[sumghai]

2 hours ago, Grumman said:

Having a penalty if you crash into a city makes sense, but would obviously have to be combined with adding contracts for going there (at least as an optional bonus objective) or you'd just never bother to go there.

Even without contracts, there is still an incentive to not crash-land in populated areas. For instance, you may have a damaged craft with limited delta-V to deorbit and bring your Kerbals home safely - the player would then have to choose between an efficient burn that could land their craft smack in the middle of Johnnie Kerman's backyard, or being trapped in an elliptical orbit after running out of fuel while making a less-efficient burn to land safely in an unpopulated area.

Of course, combining penalties for damage to population areas with contracts is a neat idea, with applicable scenarios like:

- Contracts where you fly over a biome and collect science data while airborne; one obviously doesn't want their plane crashing on somebody's house

- Contracts where you travel to/from a unpopulated biome to collect surface biome samples; your craft may pass through population centers on the way, so again you want to avoid causing an incident

2 hours ago, Grumman said:

The second idea doesn't make sense - it's going to be a lot more expensive for you to build and maintain a second spaceport than just shipping the parts to your current one, and conducting space launches right next to a major city center will not make you new friends. If there's an additional landing site there, it will be because you're using a preexisting runway.

Allow me to clarify.

To set up a new space center, you will never be allowed to place it willy-nilly right next to a major city center; instead, you choose from a set of predeterminded isolated sites within driving distance of said city centers, and pour in a significant amount of capital investment to make the new launch sites capable of supporting missions.

The benefits would then depend on being in a certain region or "country":

- The default KSC makes equatorial launches easier, with default part costs, Kerbalnaut candidates and overheads

- Putting a new launch site in a region containing industrialised cities could reduce part shipping overheads (i.e. the factories producing rocket parts are just a short drive away from your new site, instead of shipping it halfway across the world to the default KSC site), but the site could also be impractical for launching equatorial or polar missions.

- Putting a new launch site in another region containing cities with stronger emphasis on academia could mean more Kerbal recruits that already come with higher experience ratings, but conversely decrease the rate you gain reputation due to people being uncomfortable with rocket launches in their proverbial backyard

- Putting a new launch site in yet another region containing small towns could gain you a large but short-term economic boost as the local government appreciates you helping improve the local economy, but maintenance overheads are very high due to the lack of ready access to technical facilities, and there are fewer qualified Kerbalnauts willing to travel to your new faraway site

- Putting a new launch site near a certain biome may mean very low startup costs of getting the site running, but may anger local environmentalists.

[nli2work]

populating Kerbin more than city scape/lights that're visible from orbit is really beyond the scope of the game. at least at this point, and for the foreseeable future.

Edited April 14, 2016 by nli2work

[Kerbart]

On 4/10/2016 at 8:55 AM, Pthigrivi said:

(...) Cities, especially 3d cities with collision grids would incredibly cool and fun to see, but would take an enormous amount of work (...)

Cities can be procedurally generated. That doesn't have to mean it's taking up CPU capacity, as you could use the generator to create "city data" to be used in the game. Of course it neither means there is no work but it shouldn't be a massive amount of work either.

Having a dozen cities spread over Kerbin, each with an airport and runway, would be a tremendous addition of content to the game, well worth the effort. It can add a lot of purpose (especially when you don't have to fly back to the other side of the world after fulfilling an atmospheric research contract), by having all kinds of destinations. I can already see contracts to fly first to city X to pick up some cargo and then deliver it at city Y.