Towns

[Sgt Doomball]

Squad Why do you not have any cities or towns and just the KSC? It does not make any sense to only have one structure on the face of the planet and recruit kerbals out of thin air.

[Foxster]

Probably for performance reasons. Makes KSP more likely to run OK on lower spec machines. 

[Azimech]

I'm thinking of building some towns using stock parts, then weld them together to reduce part count. And share the game file.

[Spricigo]

Recruit?! I think you mean rescue.

 

There is some mods  to add that kind of stuff(cities/bases/building), some even to make those locations functional in some way. The performance hit is considerable (reason why I don't want it in the stock game)

[Snark]

Moving to Suggestions.

4 hours ago, Sgt Doomball said:

Why do you not have any cities or towns and just the KSC?

Aside from possible performance implications, as folks above have mentioned, I suspect that a big part of the reason would be development cost versus gameplay benefit.

Bear in mind that nothing's free.  Developing a feature takes time and engineer hours (and therefore money).  Since all your engineers, testers, etc. are 100% busy all the time making and testing stuff, it means that implementing a feature means not implementing something else.

So the real question here is not "Squad, why didn't you give us towns?"

Rather, the question is "Squad, why didn't you give us towns instead of <some other feature that would take an equivalent amount of time and effort>?"

Even if towns had a zero performance hit on the player's machine, they'd still be a complex and expensive feature to implement.  So... is it worth it?  Would you rather have towns instead of, say, the new aero?  Or instead of CommNet?  Or instead of various other features that are related to actually building and flying rockets?

More to the point, would most players want that?

I suspect that the answer is "no".  In other words, it's not that having a feature like that is necessarily worthless-- it might be nice to have, if done well.  But since they have to stack-rank features, i.e. "which ones are most important? which ones should we do first?", I suspect that it falls below a bunch of other features they'd rather do.

[Spricigo]

10 minutes ago, Snark said:

 Since all your engineers, testers, etc. are 100% busy all the time  making and testing stuff

I''m not sure that value is correct, maybe like 85%, making/testing stuff 10% drinking coffee and 5% laughing with our suggestions? 

Now seriously: what you said is also one of the reason why its often more probable to a feature be provided by mods. Mods can be restricted to a few aspects of the game while counting with the game developers to have done enough to ensure a solid base to build upon.

Also it can be focused in the needs /desires of a small part of the player that will install the mod instead of the whole playerbase

 

[juanml82]

19 hours ago, Snark said:

Moving to Suggestions.

Aside from possible performance implications, as folks above have mentioned, I suspect that a big part of the reason would be development cost versus gameplay benefit.

Bear in mind that nothing's free.  Developing a feature takes time and engineer hours (and therefore money).  Since all your engineers, testers, etc. are 100% busy all the time making and testing stuff, it means that implementing a feature means not implementing something else.

So the real question here is not "Squad, why didn't you give us towns?"

Rather, the question is "Squad, why didn't you give us towns instead of <some other feature that would take an equivalent amount of time and effort>?"

Even if towns had a zero performance hit on the player's machine, they'd still be a complex and expensive feature to implement.  So... is it worth it?  Would you rather have towns instead of, say, the new aero?  Or instead of CommNet?  Or instead of various other features that are related to actually building and flying rockets?

More to the point, would most players want that?

I suspect that the answer is "no".  In other words, it's not that having a feature like that is necessarily worthless-- it might be nice to have, if done well.  But since they have to stack-rank features, i.e. "which ones are most important? which ones should we do first?", I suspect that it falls below a bunch of other features they'd rather do.

Can they just buy pre-made assets? Digital 3D Models of stuff are sold. They may not be top notch quality (at least if they are going cheap) and the developers would have limited influence in the art style, but they'd probably be better than nothing. And it's not as if KSP is known for its astounding, modern, graphics anyway. As for performance, they can be made into a one-part non interactive vessel which is usually outside physics range. But even in physics range, they don't have to be destructible.

[Snark]

1 minute ago, juanml82 said:

Can they just buy pre-made assets?

I'm sure they could.  Or they could just have their own on-staff folks model it.  Or they could hire a contractor.  Lots of ways.

But the total work involved isn't just "do some models".  There's a lot of other stuff involved.

And again, I keep coming back to:  if they thought it was worth the tradeoff, they would have done it.  They haven't done it.  Therefore it's not worth the tradeoff.  Q.E.D.

(Bearing in mind that you and I don't have any numbers for just how big a deal it would be for them to add towns, or what the benefit would be in terms of improved player impressions across the user base, so it's idle to speculate about that.)

[NSEP]

Although that would be nice feature, its not really necessary, all it does is make the game look cooler wich will not change anything gameplaywise.

Its quite easy to say that Kerbals live underground.

[Spricigo]

45 minutes ago, NSEP said:

make the game look cooler

A good reason like any other. Just maybe not good enough

[juanml82]

8 hours ago, NSEP said:

Although that would be nice feature, its not really necessary, all it does is make the game look cooler wich will not change anything gameplaywise.

Its quite easy to say that Kerbals live underground.

Actually, cities allow you to fly to them, and through them.

[pandaman]

Town or cities etc would be a welcome addition for me, but only if done sensibly. 

From a purely aesthetic point of view it would make Kerbin feel more like 'home', but it would be pointless if they were only visual features with no physical properties.  The optional Scatter Terrain looks Ok, but having huge boulders and trees you can just walk, drive or fly straight through just seems wrong, imagine this for large building!

Apart from any purely visual benefits, or impacts on performance, they would naturally have an impact on gameplay.  You need to be more careful where you land or drop your ascent stages at least.  A few more airstrips near some of the towns would 'feel right' as well as adding extra 'recovery' locations or increase some options for contracts.

The 'architecture' design would need to be appropriate too, so as not to make it too out of kilter with the KSC, and whatever Squad did in that regard would generate uproar from those who don't like it/think it's ugly etc. 

Even if we assume Kerbals live underground, to minimise the amount of visible infrastructure needed, there would still be some evidence on the surface such as airstrips, and tunnel entrances etc.

 

[Chel]

Including towns and cities would, as others have already pointed out, be a massive performance issue. Sure, if you had a very expensive and high performance gaming desktop, it wouldn't be much of a problem, but for the 'average' player, it would turn the game into either a slow 25-30 fps game, or an unbearable 5-10 fps. I've already tried Kerbinside, and went from a good 50fps to half that once installing the mod.

And, what actual use will they serve? If they are just decorative, then their isn't really much point having them in the game anyway.

[MoarBoostersRUS]

I use mods to achieve this but I'm against this being part of the stock game because I would like to see ksp used in education and schools run on shoe sting budgets. Unlike many gamers they don't throw much money into a single computer that will be used by many kids and will inevitably be damaged.  

[ZooNamedGames]

I'd love to have structures and cities and what not, but ultimately performance is the issue.

Assuming it wasn't a factor, the biggest reason to add it is because it adds scale and means of comparison, familiarity and so on. It's cool and all to build a 500m tall rocket but at the KSC, you don't have much comparison to make it epic. Place it next to a cellphone/radio tower or skyscaper and that's a common object of comparison.