Do you think Life Support should be Vanilla?

[Magzimum]

Just now, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

actually, I didn't realize I was doing that, and I usually agree w/ your point. But I don't want have to decide whether Bill should go on an endless spacewalk so that Jeb can live.

Maybe I read more in the words than you meant to put into them...

Personally, the game is full of tough decisions. And if you don't like to kill Kerbals, you should use plenty of quicksaves and save games so you don't have to. I always load a saved game when one of my guys dies (again). Personally, I do not see the difference between a Kerbal who burns up, explodes, EVAs and crashes into a planet or suffocates. I would however hope that the game makes the graphics nice and cartoonish: I don't need to see my green men change color to something else.

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

Miss that rescue contract by a few hours? Now you've got a DEAD Kerbal in orbit. (but you still have to recover his body to return it to his grieving family.) 

[Andem]

7 minutes ago, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

If I have 5 days of air for 2 people and 10 days to go, do you kill them both??

Well, that would be a decision the player makes. A game should never be a babysitter, and you shouldn't have to develop around bad parents. A child, at a certain age, typically won't even think that far ahead. As they get older, are more likely to ask someone their opinion on the matter. #Kindofmyjob

3 minutes ago, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

Miss that rescue contract by a few hours? Now you've got a DEAD Kerbal in orbit. (but you still have to recover his body to return it to his grieving family.) 

And we've left the game's scope again. It will cancel the contract. that simple. If you kill a tourist in an explosion, the contract gets cancelled.

[ShotgunNinja]

4 minutes ago, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

Miss that rescue contract by a few hours? Now you've got a DEAD Kerbal in orbit. (but you still have to recover his body to return it to his grieving family.) 

I want to pharaphrase you, for the sake of argument:

Quote

Entered too step in the atmosphere? Now you are a blood stain on the ground. We should remove gravity

Quote

Lots of mistakes in that insertion burn, now your vessel is doomed to an eternal trip. We should make fuel infinite

 

[Magzimum]

6 minutes ago, r4pt0r said:

-I dont want my kerbals at X to die, because I just spent a 3 years timewarping and returning a different mission from Y (I start and finish my missions in 1 sitting, and that may take over 2+ years in warp).

Even though I am in favor of the life support, I think this is a very good argument that needs attention. It would suck if you got to fly 10 resupply missions in between one Bop landing (to give an example).

I am not convinced yet this problem cannot be overcome by simple planning: you can just get your guys back from the station in LKO before a long mission. Stations further away from LKO should probably not be on a life-supply-line from Kerbin anyway... but operate independently, and therefore survive a 3 year warp.

Still, to me this is the best argument against life support, as it will put the most burden on early-career players who shouldn't have fancy space-greenhouses or oxygen generators yet, but may still send a drone or even a Kerballed mission to Duna, Ike or Gilly. If implemented, it should be balanced in the tech tree quite well, to ensure that you can do time warps safely as soon as they become relevant in a career.

[steve_v]

Yes, but simple (ALA Snacks) and optional (tied to difficulty options?). With hooks for mods to extend it.

[Wjolcz]

11 minutes ago, ShotgunNinja said:

The 'fun' is in the engineering to avoid that. In my opinion this is a game about engineering. 'Fun' is difficult to define, but we can say it is about understanding mechanics, and end when these have been mastered completely. So adding limits increase 'fun', as without boundaries creativity became pointless.

This, this, this!

That is the exact reason why I play this game. Because planning is a fun challange. Right now we build things for the sake of it. Maintaining them would give some more meaning to keeping them up there.

12 minutes ago, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

 

^^^This is an accidental quote that I can't seem to remove in any way

13 minutes ago, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

Miss that rescue contract by a few hours? Now you've got a DEAD Kerbal in orbit. (but you still have to recover his body to return it to his grieving family.) 

That's just a problem with contract system being dumb.

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

5 minutes ago, ShotgunNinja said:

I want to pharaphrase you, for the sake of argument:

Quote

Explosions: kerbals disappear in a puff. Cartoon violence. More easily dismissed than a long painful agonizing death. IMHO 

and the poll results speak for themselves. I  just appear to be the only one speaking for the majority,

[Andem]

2 minutes ago, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

Explosions: kerbals disappear in a puff. Cartoon violence. More easily dismissed than a long painful agonizing death. IMHO 

and the poll results speak for themselves. I  just appear to be the only one speaking for the majority,

And cartoon violence is completely 100% impossible to create in a situation outside hitting the ground at two km/s?

[Red Iron Crown]

4 minutes ago, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

and the poll results speak for themselves. I  just appear to be the only one speaking for the majority,

At time of writing there is no majority for any of the poll options.

[r4pt0r]

Our little cartoon green people are funny, their heads are too big and they fall over and ragdoll. they poof upon death as well.

I dont think that suffocation or starvation fits the theme of the game. I dont think running out of snacks or supplies should ever result in death in the base game.

I think it would best be implemented by making their ships unresponsive, and showing them sleeping/snoring, or hungry with growling stomachs. they refuse to work on an empty stomach is a good fun fluff for the setting.

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

1 minute ago, Red Iron Crown said:

At time of writing there is no majority for any of the poll options.

You're absolutly right. "plurality"  is right word. (by 10%)

1 minute ago, r4pt0r said:

I think it would best be implemented by making their ships unresponsive, and showing them sleeping/snoring, or hungry with growling stomachs. they refuse to work on an empty stomach is a good fun fluff for the setting.

I could get behind that.

[Wjolcz]

Can we just agree that a death is a death, no matter if it's cartoony or not? Some people don't want to see it, some don't care (there's also the third type of people, but not the point here).

Can we just carry on with the discussion? @r4pt0r has a good idea and I actually agree with him. It's not realistic, but if you think about it regaining control of long dead, EC depleted probes isn't realistic either (they need heating, otherwise they become uncontrollable for ever).

[tater]

12 hours ago, Mjp1050 said:

What? No! There are plenty of ways to directly kill Kerbals. Having them die by leaving them alone is an awful idea.

I'm opposed to this because I don't want to worry while I'm playing the game. There shouldn't be consequences for not installing KAC and not restocking your base on time.

It's possible to kill kerbals? How do you manage that?

[r4pt0r]

4 minutes ago, Veeltch said:

@r4pt0r has a good idea and I actually agree with him.

Oh dont sound so suprised now. I am a fountain of good ideas 




 

[Red Iron Crown]

11 minutes ago, r4pt0r said:

I think it would best be implemented by making their ships unresponsive, and showing them sleeping/snoring, or hungry with growling stomachs. they refuse to work on an empty stomach is a good fun fluff for the setting.

Seems like that would be exploitable though. Turn off the life support "tanks", let the kerbals go to sleep, turn the tank back on when needed. Maybe it should permanently turn them into tourists if the feeling is death is too much.

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

15 minutes ago, r4pt0r said:

I think it would best be implemented by making their ships unresponsive, and showing them sleeping/snoring, or hungry with growling stomachs. they refuse to work on an empty stomach is a good fun fluff for the setting.

The more I think about this the more I like it.

I was always assuming (pretending?) that Kerbals has some form of torpor.   But to make that an actual element of the game.....

1 minute ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Seems like that would be exploitable though. Turn off the life support "tanks", let the kerbals go to sleep, turn the tank back on when needed.

That sounds like cryosleep to me!

[r4pt0r]

15 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Seems like that would be exploitable though. Turn off the life support "tanks", let the kerbals go to sleep, turn the tank back on when needed. Maybe it should permanently turn them into tourists if the feeling is death is too much.

While I see your point, I would make them not "turnoffable". No locks. If a kerbal is on board a craft, snacks must be slowly drained. as far as EVA kerbals, I think they should last a week outside of a craft. they carry reserves pulled from their command module.

This is important because when they enter a craft, they deposit their snacks. Those snacks can be used to "wake up" any sleepers onboard. Additonaly, EVA kerbals out of snacks go ragdoll in space, but can be resupplied by any kerbal within 5m with a right click "give snacks". "Give snacks" gives 25% of a kerbals bar back, and removes 25 from the donor supply. on the ground a hungry kerbal might just sit and look at the stars until given snacks.


All that can be tweaked of course, but thats how i would envision it. 

Edited August 26, 2016 by r4pt0r

[Frozen_Heart]

57 minutes ago, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

Miss that rescue contract by a few hours? Now you've got a DEAD Kerbal in orbit. (but you still have to recover his body to return it to his grieving family.) 

Should be they go into hibernation if they run out, rather than death.

19 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Seems like that would be exploitable though. Turn off the life support "tanks", let the kerbals go to sleep, turn the tank back on when needed. Maybe it should permanently turn them into tourists if the feeling is death is too much.

Just have it like probes? An unresponsive kerbal can't switch the tanks back on.

 

You would need another active ship or a probe core with power to be able to turn it back on.

[Andem]

40 minutes ago, r4pt0r said:

Our little cartoon green people are funny, their heads are too big and they fall over and ragdoll. they poof upon death as well.

I dont think that suffocation or starvation fits the theme of the game. I dont think running out of snacks or supplies should ever result in death in the base game.

I think it would best be implemented by making their ships unresponsive, and showing them sleeping/snoring, or hungry with growling stomachs. they refuse to work on an empty stomach is a good fun fluff for the setting.

Am I the only one who thinks having a difficulty scaler would be nice? Have an option for kerbals to die without LS?

[AlamoVampire]

3 hours ago, katateochi said:

I don't think it's the same, because with multiplayer if you don't want any part of it you can just ignore it without any change to your single player game. 

<snipped the response to the other person>

and how is life support any different then? really? take the new comms as a perfect example. some people want nothing to do with it. simple matter of fact that is, whether they are vocally saying this or not. its going to have a toggle, they can turn it off and be like it is now. should they ever put life support in, again, it will be toggled as Squad seems rather nice about giving us features we can simply toggle to OFF and forget exist. I would wager that while you probably could not toggle it off, but simply not "log into" it, you can ignore that IT exists as well. so again, how is life support going to be any different? 

i am not a fan of this game having multiplayer as it simply does NOT suit it. This game was not designed by Squad to have it. SO, a mod was created to fill a presumed void. Works great, or so I hear or rather read. Yet, they are going to at some point unmod multiplayer and make it a stock feature. 

I really do not care if we have life support. I most likely depending on its complexities and how it affects how I play will toggle it off and forget its a thing. The fact is, there is a mod that does life support rather perfectly from what I have seen. Tac LS. For those who love the idea of such a feature, that mod is rather perfect, at least from what I see in the vids that show it. 

Given that the following = true: Remote Tech is a mod, yet we are about to get a variant of it in STOCK. Multiplayer is a mod, and we are promised by Squad that it too shall be stock some day. Now, that we established those 2 truths, I say this: Whether you adore the idea of LS or HATE the idea of LS or are like me and just cant be bothered to care either way, given the established truths, you can place even money on some form of LS becoming stock. as Quarich in Avatar said: Thats a fact. 

SO... in summary: Its even money that it is coming at some point. cant say when, dont care when, but, given that they took remote tech and are giving us a variant of it, will be taking DMP and giving us a variant some day of THAT, life support is all but assured. and thats a fact.

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

34 minutes ago, r4pt0r said:

on the ground a hungry kerbal might just sit and look at the stars until given snacks.

Commander Kean used to sit down on the floor and take out a book if you were AFK too long.

I should have said in the beginning that I've always had head-cannon (i.e. pretending) that solved the LS issue. Just put two words together: infinite+rebreather . whatever it is that Kerbals breath, they can chemically reprocess that indefinately. That, and there are mushrooms GROWING in those cabinets labeled snacks. (infinite food) Problem solved.

That said if the LS sim stopped short of killing them, then it would be fun.

(we need a new poll with that option)

Edited August 26, 2016 by Brainlord Mesomorph

[tater]

55 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Seems like that would be exploitable though. Turn off the life support "tanks", let the kerbals go to sleep, turn the tank back on when needed. Maybe it should permanently turn them into tourists if the feeling is death is too much.

USILS addresses this.

Time limits are great gameplay. Take a common occurrence in stock KSP. You strand a kerbal. So you build a slightly more capable craft to go fetch him. This is a pretty trivial exercise. When you have to get to him with a clock ticking down, it's much more interesting (throw in KCT, and it can become positively nail-biting). A stranded Duna mission could easily result in the player having to make "the Martian" type choices regarding rescue ops... They might lack the parts to make anything substantially better than what stranded the crew, so they elect to send a LS resupply while they work on unlocking whatever part it is that will make a proper rescue possible.

[Curveball Anders]

1 hour ago, ShotgunNinja said:

The 'fun' is in the engineering to avoid that. In my opinion this is a game about engineering. 'Fun' is difficult to define, but we can say it is about understanding mechanics, and end when these have been mastered completely. So adding limits increase 'fun', as without boundaries creativity became pointless.

A good read: Theory of fun in game design

The problem is that too much limits blocks off people from even trying.

And as I've stated earlier, too many options is a nightmare for developers.

A fun challenge isn't very fun if all you do is fail, and your payback is dead Kerbals.

Any game must therefore hover on the narrow line of 'challenging enough' but not cross into 'I can't do this'.

[Wjolcz]

45 minutes ago, Frozen_Heart said:

Just have it like probes? An unresponsive kerbal can't switch the tanks back on.

Or permanent tourists until they are recovered.

46 minutes ago, Frozen_Heart said:

You would need another active ship or a probe core with power to be able to turn it back on.

Sounds HAL-ish.