What planet mods do people want?

[Mythical Donuts]

Hey everybody, I'm a planet mod maker with Kopernicus, but I'm running out of ideas as everything seems to have been done before. so just post any suggestions you have or ideas, or just put your opinion on the poll.

Thanks!

Edited January 24, 2019 by Mythical Donuts

[Geonovast]

Can you change the pole so we can pick more than one?

[Tyko]

I'd try a mod that offered a) higher quality planets than stock b) a different set of challenges than stock

Maybe your survey choices should be around what qualities people want in a planet mod

1. Higher quality textures or optimized low res - easier on potato computers
2. more or less biomes - should every planet have a bunch of different areas to explore requiring more time spent per planet or would players rather keep each planet simple and focus on going to more planets
3. access to science and contracts - should it be easy to gather science and fulfill contracts in the local system or do players want to be forced to go interplanetary earlier on in their playthrough to progress?
4. smaller systems with lower travel times or more spread out systems and longer travel times - think compact system like Trappist-1 versus a system around a hotter star that's more spread out

Other details could be:

1. more or less anomalies
2. more or less asteroids
3. Asteroid belts - either around planets or around the sun
4. more or less rocky inner planets
5. more or less gas giants with their own systems of moons
6. single star or multiple stars
7. Should it have more than one "earthlike" planet to visit?

Edited January 24, 2019 by Tyko

[rib3irojr]

A earth sized planet to potato computers!

[Mythical Donuts]

6 hours ago, Geonovast said:

Can you change the pole so we can pick more than one?

Done

[cooltot]

I would really like a planet with a story behind it. Maybe loaded with anomalies, and science descriptions could fill out lore, maybe about a lost civilization. Sorta like nova's original ideas.

[PunkyFickle]

I feel like variety should be key here, if you want to please the widest range of players (disregarding technical limitations, of course). A nice principle would be to provide scaling up objectives to ensure an increase in challenge and reward throughout the game. For example, you could create a game universe with a star system quite close to Kerbol so that players can reach it relatively early in their game, but with only a few planets and moons to explore, and a further, bigger one, harder to reach but more rewarding given the diversity of bodies to discover.

[Espatie]

I'd like one that randomly constructs a solar system, hides the orbits from the map view and forces you to build orbital telescopes and send probes to discover them before you can send Kerbals.

 

So easy, right? 

[DStaal]

On 1/26/2019 at 2:47 PM, Espatie said:

I'd like one that randomly constructs a solar system, hides the orbits from the map view and forces you to build orbital telescopes and send probes to discover them before you can send Kerbals.

 

So easy, right? 

Somebody was working on a mod for that a while back...

[Dafni]

On 1/26/2019 at 8:47 PM, Espatie said:

I'd like one that randomly constructs a solar system, hides the orbits from the map view and forces you to build orbital telescopes and send probes to discover them before you can send Kerbals.

 

So easy, right? 

Best option at the moment would be to install an existing pack that you dont know yet, and use the mod research bodies for that exploration feeling. I did it once with GPP and it was very nice.

[Tyko]

1 hour ago, Dafni said:

Best option at the moment would be to install an existing pack that you dont know yet, and use the mod research bodies for that exploration feeling. I did it once with GPP and it was very nice.

(Sorry for the brief tangent, but it's relevant to this thread) I'm always torn over how Research Bodies should work. In reality we can glean quite a bit of detail about local stellar bodies without leaving the surface of the planet. Requiring orbital telescopes for basic info feels a bit odd.

Maybe it would be worth some quick research on what we actually did know about planets in...say the 60's / early 70's and use that as a baseline for what a new planet pack should reveal at start of game? We had planetary gravity and orbits down accurately enough to launch the pioneer and voyager probes with an amazing degree of precision. I think Voyager 2 was within something like 100km of it's target window when it was passing each gas giant.

Edited January 28, 2019 by Tyko

[Espatie]

1 minute ago, Tyko said:

(Sorry for the brief tangent, but it's relevant to this thread) I'm always torn over how Research Bodies should work. In reality we can glean quite a bit of detail about local stellar bodies without leaving the surface of the planet. Requiring orbital telescopes for basic info feels a bit odd.

Maybe it would be worth some quick research on what we actually did know about planets in...say the 60's / early 70's and use that as a baseline for what a new planet pack should reveal at start of game?

The logical thing to do would be to increase the available information/known planets with Tracking Station upgrades.

[Tyko]

13 minutes ago, Espatie said:

The logical thing to do would be to increase the available information/known planets with Tracking Station upgrades.

Yea, makes a lot of sense. Even Pluto was discovered by 1930. So I'd say you'd know all the planets + their mass/gravity and orbits by start of game. The only "large" moon discovered after the 1950's was Charon and that was still discovered using ground observation. This is a cool reference for discoveries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_discovery_of_Solar_System_planets_and_their_moons

 

Edited January 28, 2019 by Tyko