New inventions, life support, parts...

[Darnok]

Bring some new real world inventions and ideas to KSP...

Planes have many different landing gears and I feel that spamming small landing legs is wrong, so maybe we could use some SpaceX like landing legs ideas for larger landers?

Draco like engine (with pretty shell that is on Dragon V2) with thrust between 24-77 "Twitch" Liquid Fuel Engine and Mk-55 "Thud" Liquid Fuel Engine, because there is huge gap between those engines. This engine would be very useful for development of medium weight landers/crafts.

Anyone heard about this huge airship? It could be fun to have those in KSP, with ability to hover on few kilometres above land or sea...

 

It is 1.2 version of KSP and still no pressurised rover cabin... guys it is wrong!

Since we have water pressure, can we have proper submarines parts? That would allow to submerge just like in real world? Also jet engine for sea ships or submarines doesn't look good

Kerbals should have at least one oil ring, barge or some ship on the planet... so we could use it as landing pad. In carrier mode recovering craft from this spot could be cheap, but not as cheap as recovering it from KSC.

We could also use some very large structural parts, some of them could be flat as barge landing pad.

Ramps... this is not new technology, so why we still have no simple ramps?

Another not new technology, but still not available for Kerbals... tracks.

Planet could be covered with few railroads, Russians use them to transport their Soyuz? So why we can't use it to transport our rockets or planes on different parts of planet? We would also need special wheels that would stick on tracks.

 

Life Support:
I've read few ideas about life support and almost everywhere people were afraid that this would make game too much repeatable. In 1.2 I can see "hibernate" option for probes, maybe we could have hibernation option for Kerbals?
So once we are focused on other missions our space station/base is draining less resources that on normal use. It could require additional part, something like "hibernation compartment".
Once kerbals are in hibernation they should lose all experience, but not permanently, they would recover it slowly once you awake them.
After being awake recovery of experience points should be slow and take day or two. Also making kerbals uncontrollable for some time after being awake should force players to plan ahead and do not use hibernation for every time they are going to manage super short missions elsewhere.

 

[Alpha 360]

WOOH, that is a lot of ideas. The airship and submarine stuff, there is mods of it already. I admit, we need bigger landing gear and several different points on Kerbin that we could land on and recover for full price. Of course there would have to be fiddling around with the recovery values/distance from recover point but I agree. The life support thingee however, not everyone wants life support, including me so that should be a mod.

[Legendary Emu]

I feel like life support could be a difficulty level thingy. It would be tricky cause life support would have parts and if you disabled life support in difficulty settings would the parts still be there? What would happen to the tech tree?

Ramps would be super awesome. They could make a part that you attach like a ladder, and you can adjust its deployment angle in VAB. You could slap it on the side of a service bay or something and call it a rover bay.

Edited October 10, 2016 by Legendary Emu
accidentally an entire sentence.

[Choctofliatrio2.0]

Ramps are a lovely idea. Trains... talk to @Overland about it. He's an expert.

[Hannu2]

At least railways are technically and programmatically complex to make and play at even mediocre level. KSP's physics does not support such large area structures. As much as I personally like railways, I think that there is better ways to use development resources than to put in half baked railway system in KSP. Moreover, there is no real use for it because there is not any high volume production and industry in KSP. But certainly some kind of combination of KSP's space flight mechanics and Factorio's automation would be extremely addictive game and there should be realistic (-ish) railway network too.

[Darnok]

1 hour ago, Hannu2 said:

At least railways are technically and programmatically complex to make and play at even mediocre level. KSP's physics does not support such large area structures. As much as I personally like railways, I think that there is better ways to use development resources than to put in half baked railway system in KSP. Moreover, there is no real use for it because there is not any high volume production and industry in KSP. But certainly some kind of combination of KSP's space flight mechanics and Factorio's automation would be extremely addictive game and there should be realistic (-ish) railway network too.

But we do have terrain with different shapes. Why we can't have single terrain shape repeated for few kilometres?

and wheel shaped in way to stay on tracks... physic in real world allows trains to fall from tracks.

I don't want tracks to be physical (parts like) structure that would need to be loaded into physics engine. Tracks should be terrain-structure shaped like rail (picture above), so when you put train-wheel on this terrain-rail it would be possible to travel safe and fast, but not 100% safe

There would be no special ability or mechanic for this kind of wheels except their shape and size would fit shape of terrain (rail).

Simplest solution I can think of and I can't see reason why Unity wouldn't allow that?

 

[Hannu2]

Tracks would probably better be entities with collision boxes. It would be much more practical to build, remove and change tracks. But KSP's current wheel models are not accurate enough to act reliable as train wheels. They go tens of centimeters inside the soil and fly on air (at least in previous versions). Spatial and temporal accuracy should be increased much, but that would consume insane amount of CPU power. Additionally, railways are not only tracks and trains. How about switches, signals and other traffic control devices, path finding etc? Of course that would not be impossible, if devs really wanted that, but in my opinion that development work would give more entertainment in another things.

And another question. What would we transport with the trains? We should have huge ore mines and refineries. And then, what would we do with couple tens of million units of rocket fuel and oxidizer? It would need huge modification into the game that trains would be really usable to something. I think that interplanetary logistics and automation would be the great idea for example to sequel game or new game of some other company but too massive and distruptive thing to add into the current game.

[Darnok]

1 hour ago, Hannu2 said:

How about switches, signals and other traffic control devices, path finding etc?
 

 Those are needed every  few kilometres, so it shouldn't be problem.

Quote

And another question. What would we transport with the trains?

Once we will have multiplayer you could transport rockets into your private launch site. For now easy way for transporting planetary bases or vehicles for tests on different biomes would be enough reason for trains.

If Unity doesn't allow that we could have on-rails-NPC-trains that move from one station to another and you can load your cargo on them, but you can't control them. Same thing with ships... this would give little life on that planet, because right now Kerbin is dead.

Edited October 11, 2016 by Darnok

[Frozen_Heart]

Superdraco thrusters and larger rocket landing legs would both be very useful. 

[ZooNamedGames]

Why have boats in KSP? Much less subs. There's nothing to see, no science to gain, no contracts to be done. Besides you can only use them on Kerbin, Eve and Laythe. For such a small feature, it isn't worth the dev time.

[Darnok]

11 hours ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Why have boats in KSP? Much less subs. There's nothing to see, no science to gain, no contracts to be done. Besides you can only use them on Kerbin, Eve and Laythe. For such a small feature, it isn't worth the dev time.

So you are saying there are rare biomes only on 3 planets and you see no reason to take samples?

[ZooNamedGames]

6 hours ago, Darnok said:

So you are saying there are rare biomes only on 3 planets and you see no reason to take samples?

They are not rare considering like earth, water covers the majority of Kerbin, and about 90% of laythe. As to eve, it's about the same as Kerbin. 

Issue is, there's nothing in the water or much less under it. So there's no reason to explore it.

Edited October 12, 2016 by ZooNamedGames

[Planetfall]

Well I'd personally like it if the seas got some love.

maybe sea life (coral, sponges, etc.) and a deep sea biome.

Than add boat and sub parts.

I mean just adding schools of fish as sprites would add a lot to the imersion (literally).

[KAL 9000]

KSP + Factorio? I would play Kerborio for sure! I can picture the grin on Jeb's face when seeing an automatic booster assembly line...

[Francois424]

Airship opens up a whole world of possibilities for any atmosphere worlds.  Eversince watching Scott Manley's "Eve or Bust !" series, I felt Airships would be "nice to have".
It's far from being required, but as someone that likes taking his time roving around, a middle craft that would go say, a very steady 75-100 m/s on Kerbin (faster then 30m/s rover, slower than 250m/s planes) would be great.
I would really like some means of telling the Airship "Hold X sea level altitude", say 8'000m.  In fact that would be great for any plane whatsoever in KSP...  But would really fit with the Airship style.

- - - - -

I am not sure I would use Life Support to be honest.  But if I where, here is how I'd like it to be :

• 3 resources: Snacks, Water, Air.  Small/large containers for each, like current LS mods out there.
• No waste products.  They just get used.
• Advanced LS parts could be: Greenhouse (Solar influx = reduce consumption of snacks), Water recycler (reduce consumption of water), and Air scrubber (reduce consumption of air). could be different levels thereof.
• I like @Darnok's idea of hibernating kerbals (can't control anything tho) to save tremendously on all three supply types. 

That's it, no waste/CO₂ management. Keep it simple and it'll fit nicely in stock KSP.

[Jonfliesgoats]

Even without airships, what about simple weather balloons?  Admittedly there is no wind in KSP yet, so a balloon would only lift vertically over the launch or deployment site, but balloons are cheap ways to get science from the upper atmosphere.

It would be cool to fly around releasing self-inflating balloon probes.

Submarine parts could be useful for exploring the deeper parts of Jool's atmosphere which are currently inaccessible in the game.  Buoyancy is buoyancy and, provided they could survive the temperatures, learning about the innards of Jool would be a neat mission.

Edited October 13, 2016 by Jonfliesgoats
Punctuation

[Darnok]

On 13.10.2016 at 11:55 AM, Jonfliesgoats said:

Even without airships, what about simple weather balloons?

I made few suggestions about balloon few months ago...

[Overland]

Trains as in rail guided vehicles have been proven to work before many versions ago.. No reason why they wouldnt now but as is said we need proper terrain level rails (or splines) 

 

That said though it IS KSP in the way that it doesnt have to be..conventional

 

Land trains like thier railbound sisters provide a realistic option, one that had several examples in the realworld..and still does in the case of self steering trailers of airport baggage and dotto trains .. They do need a dedicated controller though mostly such as the steering wheel I use

 

Other options are also realistic such as having steering only respond decently below 5ms and anything above it restricted to 3 degrees or less

Still though waves can and do idevelop in longer land trains that prove fatal..

Larger mark 3 sized wheels for landship sized trains would reduce it though

 

Rail wise..we may only need a single guiderail and modified landing gear that can enclose that rail when so desired..switching tracks could then be done by raising the guidewheel into off-track running..driving to the desired branchline then on a straight section..lower the.guide wheel

 

Not conventional to some...but there have been many realworld examples of such

Eg

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_Guided_Light_Transit

 

How to transport trains...well they can be made to fly

Edited October 21, 2016 by Overland