Stock Mod Integration

[MCSquared]

For quite a long time, going back about 4 years, the KSP developers as well as the KSP Wiki have hinted at adding new planets and other bodies into the game. Countless mods have done exactly that, but I feel that Squad and now TakeTwo would be greatly benefited by adding more planets into the game by adopting one of these mods or working with its developers.

An example of this is the Kerbol Origins mod, which adds several new planets and moons in the game that have been previously hinted at, all while keeping with KSP's current art style.

What does the community think of changes like this? How about the developers?

[Alshain]

I think it's winding down.  They might push a few DLC packages but those aren't all that profitable (since mods do most everything) and eventually they will realize it's time to move to the next chapter of the franchise.  Whether that will KSP2 or some other variant in the Kerbal universe (Kerbal Flight Program, , Kerbal Submarine Program, Kerbal Motorsports Program, I could go on for days) is yet to be seen.

I doubt we will see any new planets at this stage.

Edited July 18, 2017 by Alshain

[Casualnaut]

I would love this, but it would never happen.

[HebaruSan]

3 hours ago, MCSquared said:

I feel that Squad and now TakeTwo would be greatly benefited by adding more planets into the game by adopting one of these mods or working with its developers.

I doubt more planets would drive new sales. How many people are there who have not bought the game because Urlum isn't stock yet? When most new players struggle just to get to orbit?

[Red Iron Crown]

On 7/18/2017 at 8:05 PM, Alshain said:

They might push a few DLC packages but those aren't all that profitable.

A lot depends on how accurate this statement turns out to be.

[MrChumley]

On 7/18/2017 at 7:44 PM, HebaruSan said:

I doubt more planets would drive new sales.

I doubt adding more planets like Dres would drive new sales... I'd argue that a well thought out planet would fill some seats on the hype train.

Also the ability to move KSC around would be awesome!  Having to launch from less than equatorial, or even starting your space program on Duna would provide endless replay value.

[Alshain]

52 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

A lot depends on how accurate this statement turns out to be.

A lot of that depends on how much content ends up in them.  I notice they are calling them "Expansions" not "DLC".  Expansion is an older term and usually indicates more content than DLC.   I think Blizzard Entertainment either started or made popular the "Expansion Pack" terms with their WarCraft/StarCraft/Diablo seires.

However, the biggest concern is that truthfully, any parts they can add are already available for free from mods.  All of this "Making History" stuff, I can point you to equivalent mods that have those kind of parts very easily.  So that leaves it up to the programmed content to sell it.  That will differ per person, Personally I haven't seen anything as of yet that interests me in the coming 'expansion' but I'm the type that makes my own story in KSP.  I don't do the challenges forum, I don't participate in the weekly challenges, and as far as I can see Mission Builder has no value to me.  I do my thing, not what other people tell me to.  Unfortunately, given the sandbox nature of this game, I feel the majority would agree with that, but I have no numbers to truly back it up.  Nevertheless, I don't think the Making History 'expansion' will sell very well for all of these reasons (barring of course features we do not know of at this time)

Edited July 22, 2017 by Alshain

[ModerndayLink]

IMO, i don't think Planet mods like kerbol origins should be integrated because as of now so many Planet mods already exist that put planets in the places kerbol origins puts them and this would mean great mods such as opm or gpo would have to be heavily rewritten or even removed which would stink as there are a lot of people who use opm (me included) that would not be able to play with opm.

Edited July 22, 2017 by ModerndayLink64

[Gameslinx]

I doubt they will integrate more planets into the game. As ModernDayLink said, it would mean many mods would need to be altered to fit the change. It wouldn't be too much of a hassle (delete the certain planet files and create a MM config to move the stock version of it) but it would be unnecessary work.

Mods already do this, so what's the point of integrating them? It's just more work.

(I'm looking at you, asteroid day.)

[The_Rocketeer]

I don't expect Making History will have a hard time selling, simply because KSP has a lot of critical acclaim to trade on.

There are 2 places I see KSP offering more than currently-available mods.

The less-intensive is in consistency and balance, but disappointingly it's also an area I real feel has been neglected for a really long time. That said, it wouldn't surprise me if Making History or other upcoming releases took this in hand - I have seen a few dev posts this year that seemed encouraging. For the most part, modders do a great job of making their parts sit well with the stock game, but the devs hold all the cards when it comes to how all the parts balance with each other and what the visual themes and standards are for everything else to match up to.

The second is in breakthrough changes in core functionality - not changing what the game looks like or tweaking the way it does what it already does, but making it do newer more various things. Examples would be multiplayer, flowing water, surface excavation, lavafields, or floating ice-caps. Mods that do this (if they ever even can) will always seem cobbled together and flakey, but the dev team have options to change the code in ways that modders fundamentally don't. I don't feel too much of this is likely tho - the amount of work to make any one of those example features happen seems prohibitive even to a layman like me.