New energy sources, communication, wheels and failures...

[Darnok]

Energy

I've noticed there is technological gap between OX-STAT solar panels and panels that track sun. We could have two new parts based on HG-5 High Gain Antenna animation. Instead of antenna on the end put solar panel (circular and triangular), they wouldn't be able to track the sun.

Next thing is wind turbine, since we have drills that require lots of energy and we want them to work at night, we could use at least one small wind turbine.

Making PB-NUK Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator larger version for 1.25m would also be nice.

Geothermal energy would be great to have on few planets, it can be heavy and large part, but it would add 24/7 energy source to the game.

Z-400 Rechargeable Battery are small, IMO we need 800, 1600, 3200 radially mounted batteries.

 

Wheels

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecanum_wheel  lots of people in here would make real wonders with those wheels

Communication

Current antennas and communication system is easy and lets keep it that way. For harder and more realistic game play we could have laser communication systems that would require visibility between devices.

Failures

I was thinking about random failures that would add to the game, but not make it frustrating and there are minor game mechanics that may break randomly to makes things harder, but they won't break your mission.

Solar panels - they could have malfunction in sun tracking system, this would require engineer to repair them, but you could keep going with your mission without repairs.
Antennas - they could lose their ability to relay signal, this one could break your mission if you have single antenna per relay satellite. But making critical systems double/backup is good idea in space flights
Lights - it is not critical system
Wheels - motor malfunction, you can go further on other 3 motors, but you will go slower.
Engines - broken alternator or Thrust vectoring won't make your rocket crash, but it will make your mission harder

 

 

Edited December 2, 2016 by Darnok

[Wjolcz]

Wind power would be nice. It's really hard to have any ISRU in the Jool system (especially Laythe) even with the RTG. You have to have quite a few of them. And they don't look very nice spammed around a fuel tank. I guess we have the fuel cells, but burning fuel to make fuel doesn't seem right.

It seems you have enabled the easiest settings for the communication system. If you set it to hard, the line of sight doesn't clip through the planets.

Random failures? Well... I'd rather if the failures were player-dependent. If you bump a tank it has a chance to leak, if you bend an antenna it's range decreases and things like that.

Edited December 2, 2016 by Veeltch

[Darnok]

7 minutes ago, Veeltch said:

I guess we have the fuel cells, but burning fuel to make fuel doesn't seem right.

Well IMO convertion ORE->Fuel require balance

[mattssheep4]

There's a mod for stuff breaking/failing randomly, but I don't remember off the top of my head what its called... There's also Kerbal Krash Systems, which models damaged parts by making engines less efficient and causing 'fuel leaks' and other such things.

Edit: Kerbalism readme:   "Kerbalism is a mod for Kerbal Space Program that features life support, quality-of-life,
  malfunctions, signal, radiation, space weather, a decent GUI to monitor existing vessels
  and to plan new ones, and coherent background simulation."

Edit2: @bobston314 Yes, DangIt! is what I was thinking of, thank you.

Edited December 7, 2016 by mattssheep4

[bobston314]

On 12/4/2016 at 7:47 PM, mattssheep4 said:

There's a mod for stuff breaking/failing randomly, but I don't remember off the top of my head what its called...

 

DangIt? 

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

While I think wind power would be awesome, I feel like before we add that, we should add the first bit: the wind. Having a wind turbine but no wind effects would be kind of like having solar panels that but not having your ship get lit up by the sun.

I like the idea of a larger PB-NUK, but I feel like that might be something for a mod because, at least in career mode, the small one is already pretty expensive. Simply scaling the thing up so that its radius and height are 2x the original would theoretically put it at around 180k! Maybe something with like half the blutonium of a rescaled PB-NUK could be called "PB-NUK Kirling" and have a greater power/cost ratio, but weigh a bit more? I dunno.

I also think part failures would be cool in stock (perhaps just in hard mode or by toggle though? That way the newbies wouldn't be put off by their ships randomly breaking). Perhaps in addition there could be some kind of research function that you could spend money to improve a part's reliability.

There could definitely be more wheels. Any more wheels, especially Omni or Mecanum wheels, are cool.

Edited December 6, 2016 by EpicSpaceTroll139

[Ultimate Steve]

Energy: I totally agree with you.

Wheels: That would be sooooooo cool looking, but might cause issues with key bindings.

Comms: A "Hard Mode" would be interesting.

Failures: As long as it is a toggle able feature.

[JadeOfMaar]

On the subject of energy, Mark @Thrimm has a concept for a windmill part already and it may do well to have him pitch in here. Weather systems would indeed be an intriguing addition to KSP, but until that happens I'd like to suggest here like I did for Thrimm: Have the windmill efficiency depend on a function of atmosphere pressure ...and sun exposure. The sun drives most weather, so let that count but only as a bonus to efficiency, and let it be something eccentric like only at sunset/sunrise because the planet's received and released heat have a delay, and it's the dance of the hot and cold-fronts in an atmosphere that leads to weather variation. Let atmosphere pressure stand in for the fact that windmills have brakes to limit their efficiency cap and prevent RUD IRL when they spool up in a lively (in our case, a thick) atmosphere, see Eve...and yet let them perform poorly when the atmosphere has no weight to push the blades (or fill your parachutes like at Duna).

Near Future Electric has an up-scaled RTG that produces 3Ec/s. That's something.

On 12/2/2016 at 1:16 PM, Darnok said:

Well IMO convertion ORE->Fuel require balance

Balance is good. Everyone's fine spamming solar panels (but not so much spamming stock RTGs) to power the drills and ISRU, or to keep just a probe core alive at Jool and beyond but the idea of using the fuel you intend to produce to power the mining rig is obscene.   A stock RTG produces 0.75Ec/s. One large ISRU by itself is going to need 20 of those per fuel. Then there's each of the drills, then there's the low Ore concentration you likely landed in, then there's the physics calculation for all those little things when you don't need them.

 

[PrathamK]

Comms issues and random failure is what that will make Game a realistic one, fixed solar panels are a good idea, i would love the laser comms system and in-line of sight comms, a challenge to keep pointing antennas to planet and dovk while the time. Game Update or Mods can help.

Fixed panels, the easiest way is to copy the solar panel codes and modify to make it untraceable, I will try.

[passinglurker]

Energy: Wind turbines would only be useful on about 4 bodies (Kerbin, Eve, Jool, and Laythe (duna is too thin)) and without weather simulation it could easily become a perpetual motion device.

RTG's don't scale up that big in real life they are for remote probes and rovers that run off next to nothing and so that's all stock is obligated to provide for. Whackjobing a big array of them is cool but that doesn't mean such shenanigans should be accommodated as it could easily lead to part catalog bloat.

Batteries are also a case for part catalog bloat without a mesh switch feature.

Geothermal isn't viable because most planets are geologically dead. Like wind turbines the role is just too specialized for stock.

Wheels: cool but I shudder to think how the key bindings would work with so many degrees of freedom.

Comms: that actually makes things easier as lasers offer greater range for less power than traditional radio.

Failures: NO RANDOM FAILURES!

*ahem*

Having additional ways for parts to fail or break when you crash or are careless is acceptable but this game has an engineering element a random number generator or a breakage timer won't fly all failures need to be predictable, avoidable, and repairable by a cautious and engineering minded player

[juanml82]

The alternate solution for power are nuclear reactors

[tater]

SNAP-10A, SP-100, TOPAZ, etc.