Small Rock Update? (Sqaud please Read)

[PlutoPlanet126]

So i have been thinking that asteroids need an upgrade. first i think the biggest types of asteroids should be 200 kilometers hence i think more types of asteroids need to be added.  also comets would be an amazing addition. With the success of missions like Rosetta and Stardust i think they would be great.  Ok parts. I think there needs to be more solar panels, RTG,Probe cores and small high thrust engines for probes. (And Better Harpoons for Asteroid or Comet landings). And when i said add more planets it think we can stick with mods for now.

Thank you for your amazing creation Squad I don't know what i would do without it.

 

Edited November 1, 2016 by PlutoPlanet126

[Snark]

Bearing in mind that 200 km is the size of the Mun.  Essentially what you're saying is "add more small planets."  An "asteroid" in KSP is a completely different kind of object than a planet-- it's not simply smaller.  Specifically:

• Planets have gravity, run on rails, and are completely immune to physics.
• Asteroids have no gravity, and are just big heavy "parts" in the game.

It might be kinda fun to have some asteroids that are a few times bigger than a class E.  Add a class F.  Maybe even a G.  However, anything bigger than that would be so slow and cumbersome to move that I really don't see that it would add anything worthwhile to the game.

[Hotaru]

31 minutes ago, Snark said:

However, anything bigger than that would be so slow and cumbersome to move that I really don't see that it would add anything worthwhile to the game.

Just because they'd be too big to push around doesn't mean they wouldn't be worthwhile. At some point they just become new destinations that can be orbited, sampled, and landed on like very small planets. 

Personally I'd love to see an intermediate class of body: procedurally generated and discoverable just like the current "potatoroids," but bigger and otherwise treated the same as planets. These could populate an asteroid belt, with the occasional Trojan or near-Kerbin asteroid, and maybe even a few periodic comets. I think such bodies would make for a very interesting new category of mission targets, just like asteroids and comets have increasingly been targets for missions in real life the past decade or two. They also should be relatively easy to add to the game compared to, say, new major planets. 

[PlutoPlanet126]

On 6/16/2016 at 11:57 PM, Snark said:

Bearing in mind that 200 km is the size of the Mun.  Essentially what you're saying is "add more small planets."  An "asteroid" in KSP is a completely different kind of object than a planet-- it's not simply smaller.  Specifically:

• Planets have gravity, run on rails, and are completely immune to physics.
• Asteroids have no gravity, and are just big heavy "parts" in the game.

It might be kinda fun to have some asteroids that are a few times bigger than a class E.  Add a class F.  Maybe even a G.  However, anything bigger than that would be so slow and cumbersome to move that I really don't see that it would add anything worthwhile to the game.

Well i was thinking about real life for a second

[Tyko]

I'm just exploring asteroids and the thing I'd be most excited for would be to turn them into true Biomes so the full suite of science experiments could be conducted on them. It took at least as much planning and skill to successfully rendezvous with an asteroid as it did to orbit the Mun (maybe land on it) yet the Mun orbit yielded many more science points from many experiments. The efforts of meeting an asteroid could be rewarded better.

It might be enough to have all asteroid act as the same Biome type (like midlands craters on the Mun) or maybe each asteroid class could be a Biome - science from small rocks may be different than big rocks?

EDIT: I'm guessing this could be modded by adding the right situational trigger to the experiments???

Edited November 1, 2016 by tjt

[Rath]

I just wanna hop on a comet that comes around near kerbin and ride it out to eeloo.  I don't care that it's probably inefficient, it just sounds really cool.

How would a 50km part interact with the physics bubble?  with it all being outside?

[Capt. Hunt]

Squad has said no to procedural solar systems, so I doubt a procedural asteroid belt is in the cards.

 

The reason they don't want randomly generated planets is because they players to be able to share their experiences.  Sure you and your buddy can talk to each other about your crazy Eeloo missions, but your friend can't visit that awesome procedural comet you told him all about.

Edited November 2, 2016 by Capt. Hunt

[Rath]

There are already the procedural NKO's, the reason we can still talk about them is because they dont have their own textures or anything.  If it's the same with large asteroids it would be ok.

[natsirt721]

Even the largest class of 'roid right now is still fairly small in terms of what we've seen IRL.  However, the Kerbin system is at ~1/10th scale so those medium 50km asteroids are going to boil down to about 5km.  That being said, 5km is still significantly larger than any other procedural asteroid.  They would be practically immobile, but if one were willing to use a good fraction of the mined propellant they could probably be nudged around a bit.

The issue with large asteroids in KSP is that the draw for mining the belt (IRL) isn't to get fuel, but raw mineral goods.  The carbonaceous asteroids there are only mined to support the mineral extraction services, something that KSP doesn't need.  Fuel extraction is much more practical if you can extract it at places you're already going, i.e. planets or moons (Saturn's rings, Deimos, Europa etc.) - hence KSP's small mobile asteroids.  Having to stop near Dres in order to fill your tanks is going to add a ton of time to your trip, because even with NERVAs it isn't really practical to use anything other than low-energy transfers.  Unless you've got a gigawatt fusion rocket and can do the trip in 100 days or so, your transit time (first to the belt, and then to Jool or whatever, including time spent waiting for transfer windows) is going to be significantly increased. Of course, there is always the humble fuel tanker, but in the end, you're still moving your fuel around before using it.

I think comets and KBOs (kerbier belt objects?) would be a neat addition, however the dV required to rendezvous with a long-period comet would be absurd and they would probably go unappreciated by most players.  It would make neat challenge though!  

[tater]

16 hours ago, Capt. Hunt said:

Squad has said no to procedural solar systems, so I doubt a procedural asteroid belt is in the cards.

The reason they don't want randomly generated planets is because they players to be able to share their experiences.  Sure you and your buddy can talk to each other about your crazy Eeloo missions, but your friend can't visit that awesome procedural comet you told him all about.

The shared experience notion is the worst idea, ever, IMO.

I'd much prefer a game mode about exploration where I had no idea what I'd find next.

[Codraroll]

On 2.11.2016 at 5:50 AM, Rath said:

I just wanna hop on a comet that comes around near kerbin and ride it out to eeloo.  I don't care that it's probably inefficient, it just sounds really cool.

Unless you want to slam into that comet at speeds of several hundred metres per second, you'd be better off without it.

To land gently on an asteroid, you need to match its orbit. That is, you need to be going at speeds high enough to reach Eeloo anyway, before you're even close to the asteroid.