Possible Solution to the Multiplayer Issue

[razark]

I didn't say you (specifically) were.  It's obvious that you are opposed to the idea, and why.

The post I quoted specifically referred to different time frames, however.

[razark]

1 hour ago, AlamoVampire said:

...you cannot warp in ksp with out said warp hitting everything in the same way.

Except that this idea is exactly that.  It warps one object in the universe, while not affecting everything else.  And as repeatedly acknowledged, yes, it breaks physics and gives you one magically moving object.

[Tex]

@razark is hitting what I mean. It's not throwing out the concept of time in KSP, it's not making anything else go wonky. 

The

Only

Thing

Affected

By

This

Idea

Is

The

Vessel

Itself

Nothing else. No celestial bodies are going crazy because time is progressing normally, one second at a time like always. You will still need to burn, expend fuel, in order to get the orbital trajectory to actually go places like the Mun or Jool. The ONLY thing this idea that I've called Non-Time Time Warp does is make you get to the destination faster. It does not alter your actual speed. It does not alter time. It does not alter orbital mechanics or physics, and I honestly am at a loss as to why people think it affects it. The only thing being affected by this idea is the vessel itself. This form of warping will not allow you to propel your ship in any direction other than what the vessel is stuck to according to the orbital trajectory that you had to create with a burn. Burning, orbital insertion, orbital maneuvers, actually landing on the Mun or wherever else is exactly the same. This warp just gets you between points of gameplay faster.

[Cucco-Master]

3 hours ago, Tex said:

@razarkNothing else. No celestial bodies are going crazy because time is progressing normally, one second at a time like always. You will still need to burn, expend fuel, in order to get the orbital trajectory to actually go places like the Mun or Jool. The ONLY thing this idea that I've called Non-Time Time Warp does is make you get to the destination faster. It does not alter your actual speed. It does not alter time. It does not alter orbital mechanics or physics, and I honestly am at a loss as to why people think it affects it. The only thing being affected by this idea is the vessel itself. This form of warping will not allow you to propel your ship in any direction other than what the vessel is stuck to according to the orbital trajectory that you had to create with a burn. Burning, orbital insertion, orbital maneuvers, actually landing on the Mun or wherever else is exactly the same. This warp just gets you between points of gameplay faster.

Let's say you are in an orbit around the sun. Your periapsis is about at the height of Kerbin, your apoapsis is as far out as Eeloo. With time passing normally or with regular time-warp, you wouldn't get an intercept with any planet during your next orbit, but of course after many orbits you will end up in the SOI of either Duna, Jool, Eeloo, Kerbin or even Dres. Which planet this will be and after how many orbits it will happen is mathematically predetermined by your orbit and the current alignment of the planets. For some reason you make the calculations and then find out that you don't want to go to that planet. Well, with the non-time time-warp you wouldn't have to. By warping at certain points in time, for certain periods and with certain warp factors, you could change your position in relation to the planets at will. If you want to make an encounter happen, but you wouldn't normally reach the SOI of this body fast enough, you could speed up your ship alongside your orbit to reach the planet in time. If you want to avoid an intercept, you can warp past the body quickly, before its SOI has the chance to intersect with your orbit ... From the sun-orbit I initially described, you could freely decide to go to Duna, Dres, Jool, Eeloo, back to Kerbin, or just orbit the Sun forever - just using non-time time-warp and ... without spending a single drop of fuel!

Yes, in empty space, non-time time-warp wouldn't alter your orbit, just speed it up, but in a system populated with other physical bodies, it would change your position and trajectory in relation to said bodies. And this is what completely brakes orbital mechanics.

(Hope this made any sense :P)

Edited April 22, 2017 by Cucco-Master

[Kaizen]

No, what I'm proposing is every object automatically SYNCS to the object that completed warping once it finished warping. So the planet moves to the position it would be in, and if someone is travelling to that planet, they will be teleported to the planet's new position in such a way that they don't notice anything.

Same for people leaving planets.

[Kaizen]

OK here's a more in-depth explanation.

 

(This will work for more than 2 players)

Say there's 2 players. One's launching from Kerbin and is at 88,000m, and one's just finished a transfer to Duna.

 

The one that is travelling to Duna warps so they can get to duna quick. That stays the same. But, when they come out of warp, this happens:

1. All planetary objects update to their new position after someone warps.

2. The people that aren't warping are teleported to the same place, but above the new planetary position. People that are currently warping see it when they come out of warp and the server changes to their planetary positions. This makes it so people don't notice anything.

3. People that are in interplanetary space are teleported in the same way, but just teleported above the sun at their current orbit.

 

By "their new position" i mean the position viewed by the people that have finished warping.

[Enceos]

Here are two discussions of the model I proposed, it covers almost all aspects if the time warp in Multiplayer:

Continuation here:

 

[Wjolcz]

1 hour ago, Kaizen said:

OK here's a more in-depth explanation.

 

(This will work for more than 2 players)

Say there's 2 players. One's launching from Kerbin and is at 88,000m, and one's just finished a transfer to Duna.

 

The one that is travelling to Duna warps so they can get to duna quick. That stays the same. But, when they come out of warp, this happens:

1. All planetary objects update to their new position after someone warps.

2. The people that aren't warping are teleported to the same place, but above the new planetary position. People that are currently warping see it when they come out of warp and the server changes to their planetary positions. This makes it so people don't notice anything.

3. People that are in interplanetary space are teleported in the same way, but just teleported above the sun at their current orbit.

 

By "their new position" i mean the position viewed by the people that have finished warping.

Well, this is just a horrible way to mess up everything.

If we want different players roleplaying different agencies there's only one way to do this:

There's only one timeline. People open that timeline and set from when to when they want to warp and the speed of the warp. If the warp sections of the players overlap the warp happens with the lowest speed set by one of the players. AFAIK there was a Star Wars game that did it just like that.

Still involves a lot of waiting and boredom but at least isn't as frustrating as other proposed ideas and the way DMP works. KSP is just not suited for multiplayer in any way (unless it's a co-op in which everyone sits in one ship, but for some odd reason people don't want that). If you want to have a game with kerbals and multiplayer better ask for a new game.

Edited April 22, 2017 by Veeltch

[Red Iron Crown]

To my understanding this would mean that after I perform an ejection burn to another planet, whether or not I actually encounter it is dependent on which warp rate I use. For me this would be worse than the waiting or sync issues other multiplayer warp solutions have. 

[Tex]

9 hours ago, Cucco-Master said:

Let's say you are in an orbit around the sun. Your periapsis is about at the height of Kerbin, your apoapsis is as far out as Eeloo. With time passing normally or with regular time-warp, you wouldn't get an intercept with any planet during your next orbit, but of course after many orbits you will end up in the SOI of either Duna, Jool, Eeloo, Kerbin or even Dres. Which planet this will be and after how many orbits it will happen is mathematically predetermined by your orbit and the current alignment of the planets. For some reason you make the calculations and then find out that you don't want to go to that planet. Well, with the non-time time-warp you wouldn't have to. By warping at certain points in time, for certain periods and with certain warp factors, you could change your position in relation to the planets at will. If you want to make an encounter happen, but you wouldn't normally reach the SOI of this body fast enough, you could speed up your ship alongside your orbit to reach the planet in time. If you want to avoid an intercept, you can warp past the body quickly, before its SOI has the chance to intersect with your orbit ... From the sun-orbit I initially described, you could freely decide to go to Duna, Dres, Jool, Eeloo, back to Kerbin, or just orbit the Sun forever - just using non-time time-warp and ... without spending a single drop of fuel!

Yes, in empty space, non-time time-warp wouldn't alter your orbit, just speed it up, but in a system populated with other physical bodies, it would change your position and trajectory in relation to said bodies. And this is what completely brakes orbital mechanics.

(Hope this made any sense :P)

 

1 hour ago, Red Iron Crown said:

To my understanding this would mean that after I perform an ejection burn to another planet, whether or not I actually encounter it is dependent on which warp rate I use. For me this would be worse than the waiting or sync issues other multiplayer warp solutions have. 

 

I still think people are missing the point. This warping idea is not a propulsion system, and as I've said before encounters would not be as we currently understand how to do them. To do them in regular KSP, you need to burn to create an orbit that intercepts the orbital path of a celestial body, essentially being in the same place at the same time. However, with this warp idea I've tried to explain, you don't need to wait for the Mun or Jool or whatever to actually go anywhere for you to intercept it. You just burn the fuel you need to go straight to the destination. In regular time-warping, this would not work, because as you got to the Mun's altitude away from Kerbin, for example, the Mun would have moved away in that time and you get no intercept. With this idea, you WOULD get an intercept because the Mun didn't go anywhere. It still moves, but at the normal speed which it orbits. The only thing moving faster or differently is the vessel.

I bolded a section of @Cucco-Master's quote up there to show what I mean. While you technically could do what he described, it would take weeks, months, or years to actually accomplish it because no planet is moving faster than normal. It is exactly the same as never touching the time-warp button in a regular game. That's how every body moves, all the time, no matter what. The only way you could get to a body with Non-Time Time-Warp is having your orbital path, the blue line in the Tracking Station, crossing the SOI of the body you wanted, and then warping there. That's the only way. Your vessel cannot use Non-Time Time-Warping as a propulsion system. It just zips you around, on-rails, according to the orbital path you have.

I do feel that I'm repeating myself, but it's as if people aren't understanding this concept no matter how I try to describe it. Everything functions normally, except in that instance that you actually use the warp. Then you move faster on-rails. That's all.

[Red Iron Crown]

It's the moving faster on rails part that is causing the confusion for me. If I up the warp rate and my ship moves faster but the planets don't, how can that not affect my intercept? 

Or are you saying that I just spend the fuel for an encounter no matter the planetary alignment and it magically takes me there? Doesn't that remove all the skill and finesse from interplanetary travel? 

[Tex]

9 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Or are you saying that I just spend the fuel for an encounter no matter the planetary alignment and it magically takes me there? Doesn't that remove all the skill and finesse from interplanetary travel? 

That is exactly what I'm saying, yes. I do agree that it is not a perfect solution. It does take away from the hard-as-rock scientific basis somewhat. I counter this by saying that you still do have to carefully build your spaceships, plan your missions, and actually have the fuel in order to make these maneuvers. As any interplanetary traveller will tell you, without the proper launch windows and intercepts, it becomes much more difficult in order to actually get to a planet. You need to expend more fuel and do some unconventional things to get there.

This solution isn't meant to be pretty, and to be perfectly honest I don't think it will be ultimately implemented. The only thing I wanted was to have a discussion about it and any possible solutions to how to make multiplayer work in comparing this idea to others. This idea has its drawbacks like any other, but I think it's one possible way to do it.

[diomedea]

I'm not truly sure about what is being proposed, may have gotten it all wrong. Of course gravitation makes for a specific velocity in each point of a set orbit, and that makes for a specific rate of change of orbital positions with the flow of time. Orbital parameters are Periapsis, eccentricity, inclination, LAN, LPE, Anomaly (True, Mean, or Eccentric), or equivalent ones.  Anomaly is the specific angle on the orbit an object has at a specific time; it is valid only in relation to a specified time (generally counted as UT, or Epoch). Removing a correct time reference, the orbital positions are invalid (though the orbits still exist and can be rendered as conics). A ship may then be anywhere (and nowhere at the same time) on all points of its orbit... kind of a quantum physics uncertainty problem!

[Tex]

Just now, diomedea said:

I'm not truly sure about what is being proposed, may have gotten it all wrong. Of course gravitation makes for a specific velocity in each point of a set orbit, and that makes for a specific rate of change of orbital positions with the flow of time. Orbital parameters are Periapsis, eccentricity, inclination, LAN, LPE, Anomaly (True, Mean, or Eccentric), or equivalent ones.  Anomaly is the specific angle on the orbit an object has at a specific time; it is valid only in relation to a specified time (generally counted as UT, or Epoch). Removing a correct time reference, the orbital positions are invalid (though the orbits still exist and can be rendered as conics). A ship may then be anywhere (and nowhere at the same time) on all points of its orbit... kind of a quantum physics uncertainty problem!

Precisely. The ship can be anywhere along its orbit when the warp engages, but when the player is not warping, the vessel most certainly rests at one point at a given time. The planets and other bodies, however, are not affected because they are not controlled by this warp.

[Red Iron Crown]

Seems like this would make interplanetary travel trivial. Just burn until your trajectory touches the destination planet's SoI and crank up the warp and there you are. As a bonus, if you play with life support you basically don't need to worry about transfer time at all, all transfers can be high energy, low time affairs even if you only spend minimal fuel. 

For me this breaks the game's appeal. Turns it into just another hand wavy sci-fi warp drive. You can say that it's not propulsion but when it affects craft velocity and travel time it's hard to think of it as anything else. 

[diomedea]

Let me check if I got this right. Planets/Moons orbits are immutable (at least in KSP), so is always possible to determine their position for any specific UT. Same goes for any vessel while on-rails. In those cases, we could totally dispense with KSP simulating time flow, we could just set a new UT at a future time and compute the updated positions. The only problem comes if there are maneuvers done during that time. Is the idea meant to sync times with all players to a unique UT when they all are not warping anymore?

[Tex]

4 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Seems like this would make interplanetary travel trivial. Just burn until your trajectory touches the destination planet's SoI and crank up the warp and there you are. As a bonus, if you play with life support you basically don't need to worry about transfer time at all, all transfers can be high energy, low time affairs even if you only spend minimal fuel. 

For me this breaks the game's appeal. Turns it into just another hand wavy sci-fi warp drive. You can say that it's not propulsion but when it affects craft velocity and travel time it's hard to think of it as anything else. 

It's not technically propulsion because you need to expend fuel only to set the orbital trajectory, the actual warping itself doesn't consume fuel and has no power to change your direction. If you applied the same thing to a car, you can coast on a highway, and when you take your foot off the gas you lose the ability to steer but gain the ability to go in a perfectly straight line at any apparent speed you want without consuming fuel.

It does make things trivial, but I figure that people can either have the super-realism standard offered by single player, or the ability to cooperate with players, build space stations together, have races on Duna, and all that stuff without having to worry about mucking about with time travel.

 

2 minutes ago, diomedea said:

Let me check if I got this right. Planets/Moons orbits are immutable (at least in KSP), so is always possible to determine their position for any specific UT. Same goes for any vessel while on-rails. In those cases, we could totally dispense with KSP simulating time flow, we could just set a new UT at a future time and compute the updated positions. The only problem comes if there are maneuvers done during that time. Is the idea meant to sync times with all players to a unique UT when they all are not warping anymore?

Not creating new or unique time streams, per se, because from the moment the server goes online, the time flow used by the game remains unchanged. It would be impossible to affect time in the multiplayer setting with this idea. Unfortunately, that means for ~6 hours at a time, the KSC would be dark, but there is a trade-off of sacrifices and gains made that I want to see what people think about.

[Red Iron Crown]

8 minutes ago, Tex said:

It's not technically propulsion because you need to expend fuel only to set the orbital trajectory, the actual warping itself doesn't consume fuel and has no power to change your direction.

It is technically propulsion, because it changes the craft's velocity. That is pretty much the definition of propulsion in space. That a craft requires another propulsion system to be fully functional doesn't change that. It's a fuel-less, inertia-less drive, which for me is anathema to what KSP is all about. 

[The_Rocketeer]

I think this is about the most original and outside-the-box suggestion I've read regarding multiplayer in some time. +1 for that alone @Tex.

22 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Seems like this would make interplanetary travel trivial.

Personally, I think this is the least attractive part of MP KSP (EDIT: or any KSP come to that - that's why we time-warp it!) anyway. The point is in interacting with another player in a local environment, but the simple practicality of meeting another player far from KSC is the whole problem with MP. The KSP orrery can be a very impressive machine, but it is a one-player game.

I envision a small radial part (quantum field generator or something  ) that gives the player the ability to manipulate the passage of time for a single craft only, in effect dilating or contracting the passage of (craft) local time without a change in relative velocity. This would allow a vessel to proceed along it's orbital trajectory at a rate determined by the player rather than by the mathematical laws of KSP physics. The parameters of the orbit are still determined by the expenditure of fuel in the conventional way, but the rate at which the vessel then progresses along it's orbit is now in the hands of the player.

Sure, it's not for those who seek a realistic experience, so they need not use it. For those with more toy-like expectations of KSP (be they LEGO fans or Trekkies), this would be a real asset to their make-believe games.

Edited April 22, 2017 by The_Rocketeer

[Wjolcz]

This is still way too overcomplicated, me thinks. I feel like having some sort of Star Gates or Mass Relays, or even Monoliths scattered around the system would be a better idea. At least Einstein Rosen bridges are theoretically possible unlike this FTL-but-not-FTL warp thing.

[diomedea]

11 minutes ago, Tex said:

Not creating new or unique time streams, per se, because from the moment the server goes online, the time flow used by the game remains unchanged. It would be impossible to affect time in the multiplayer setting with this idea. Unfortunately, that means for ~6 hours at a time, the KSC would be dark, but there is a trade-off of sacrifices and gains made that I want to see what people think about.

Again I may be missing the point completely. What I'm getting is, MP server dictates common time for all players connected. Doesn't mean all to be tied to 1:1 (non-warping) time, all players may be fine to be warping 50:1 during a same time interval, so the MP serve would be able to allow common timewarping. But any time one of the players requires to slow time flow, either the server complies for all players (which could be pretty annoying to those just waiting time to pass), or the interested player would disconnect from MP, do what maneuvers, builds, or else he needs, do, and then try to reestablish a common time with the server (meaning his time may have to advance suddenly to sync again with others). That player vessels may appear as ghosted in the meantime, as the server can't but keep their positions updated to its own time, rather than with the time current for the player. When reconnecting, the ghosted vessels would be changed to "true" vessels whose orbital state, positions may have changed differently due to maneuvers done in the meantime.

[Enceos]

Can someone explain me how the orbital rendezvous works in this model?

Edited April 22, 2017 by Enceos

[Wjolcz]

1 minute ago, Enceos said:

Can someone explain me how the orbital rendezvous works in this model?

If I understand this correctly: you approach a station. The station is controlled by another player. You are 1 meter from the docking port. The player controlling the station warps. The station flies away trolololo

[The_Rocketeer]

9 minutes ago, Enceos said:

Can someone explain me how the orbital rendezvous works in this model?

As I understand it, you no longer need to make a rendezvous per se, you simply need an orbit to reach the target's orbital altitude and proceed towards it at a suitable rate to meet the target there. As far as the game is concerned, your vessels rate of progress is affected by a multiplier to increase or decrease the number of meters it moves along its orbit trajectory without changing the parameters of the orbit itself. A bit like running at x speed on a treadmill, which is inside a train doing y speed. KSP calculates your orbit as though you are moving at x velocity, but your ship moves along it's orbit at x + y m/s.

Edited April 22, 2017 by The_Rocketeer

[diomedea]

3 minutes ago, Veeltch said:

If I understand this correctly: you approach a station. The station is controlled by another player. You are 1 meter from the docking port. The player controlling the station warps. The station flies away trolololo

I'm figuring the kraken getting pop-corn and making itself comfortable to watch the show, sure would find it amusing .