Orbital Assembly

[SnailsAttack]

I think that a neat feature for KSP could be the addition of machines centered on facilitating orbital assembly. This new system would allow for massive spacecraft and space stations to be built in orbit and with in-situ materials, without the need for building flimsy ships piece by piece with a dozen launches.

 

To start, there would have to be a few new technologies located far down the tech tree. When researched, the player would gain access to several new ship parts :

 

- Metallurgic Refinery

Available as a long rockomax part or a short kerbodyne one, would allow the refinery of ore into molten metal. Would be extremely expensive, heavy and fragile. Ore would be converted to molten metal at a 2:1 ratio at a large power cost.

 

- Orbital Assembly Plant

Available as a very heavy and very fragile part as large as a full-sized kerbodyne tank. When a ship with the assembly plant is in a microgravity environment, high enough above a planet to not hit any land formations or its atmosphere, the player will have the option to right-click it to enter a mode that is similar to the one in the VAB, where you can build ghosted versions of ship parts.

Once you finish building onto your ship in this ghost mode, you can click “confirm” to instantly construct the ghost parts into real ones, using up molten metal in the process. You could also destroy parts one-by-one or in a radial mode with an “are you sure” button every time you want to destroy something, upon which the part would be turned into half its molten metal value.

Building parts would usually take an amount of molten metal proportionate to its cost in kerbucks.

Possible ways to limit the capabilities of orbital assembly include having :

- Large liquid metal costs to construct parts.

- Large electrical costs to use the assembler or heat metals.

- A new “Rare” ore type available only on certain planets or in certain biomes that can create lots of fuel or be required for more advanced ship parts (engines, probes, solar panels, etc). I think this is the best option because it could potentially require the player to go to normally unvisited locations, such as maybe the extremely boring dres, bop or ike, or certain munar craters/canyons. Asteroids could also finally be made useful by giving them a high chance to have a large quantities of rare ore. Additionally, rare ore could be twice as heavy as normal ore to increase the incentive for asteroid mining versus planetary expeditions.

- Molten Metal

Made at a metallurgic refinery and stored in new tanks that are similar to ore containers. These new containers have a toggleable heater that is required to liquify the metal. This setting takes electrical power, and the molten metal in an unpowered container will turn into “solid metal”, which cannot be used at an orbital assembly, but has no other side effects.

- Epilogue

I believe that the implementation of this new feature could :

- Extend the number of endgame activities.

- Create the need for an advanced infrastructure.

- Make the more boring celestial bodies worth visiting.

- Add a use for colossal interstellar vessels and mining ships.

- Provide an alternative to launching large ships and stations in separate pieces.

 

To facilitate the existence of this gameplay feature, there should also be some sort of larger docking ports, larger RTGs, larger fuel tanks, and maybe a nuclear reactor. Also, I’d like to add that orbital assembly is a very real possibility for future space expeditions, allowing astronauts to utilize in-situ resources or construct large parts that are too heavy for or won’t fit in a normal rocket payload.

Anyways, thanks for reading. Tell me about how this suggestion can be improved or added to.

Edited February 13, 2018 by SnailsAttack
bettereererereer

[Greenfire32]

While I would like something like this in stock, you can currently scratch this itch with Extraplanetary Launchpads:

 

[pandaman]

Interesting idea, but whilst i agree that some 'tools' should be included to assist with orbital assembly, I don't think that they should include anything that is much beyond what is currently acheivable IRL.  For me implementing 'Sci Fi' solutions like you suggest would seem to be beyond the scope of what KSP is.

Each to their own of course, but if you don't want to use mods, or do the multiple launches and docking stuff, you can 'simulate' what you suggest already by building in the VAB/SPH, 'launching' to the pad or runway then use the Alt F12 menu to set your creation in the orbit you want.

You could create a 'Factory Station' in orbit, then (using the Alt F12 menu) you could set any new vessels you build to rendezvous with it as if they were built next to it