What are some of your planetary, planetary features, solar system or solar system features ideas?

[Drakenred65]

On 9/13/2019 at 8:29 AM, Tw1 said:

A donut planet. 
This will likely never happen due to some technical limitation or another, but imagine it...
Actually, imagine a couple, with different relative rotational axes, each more physically unrealistic than the last...

 

(Ok, i don't think this should be in it. Would make a cool mod though.)

 

[Francois424]

The full solar system of GJ581 (the one with 6 planets, including Zarmina) -- To this day unproven, and deemed unlikely... I don't care.
The full Kerbol system analogue (OPM mod, which I hope sees the day)

Other than these 2... Really anything goes.

Some Tidally locked planets with proper care to design... meaning one side is this huge harsh desert where it reaches 80-90 C, maybe even worse than that... say 150 C.  And a cold ice/glacier covered side where it's like -65 C.  In the middle band you get water/grass maybe some large seas and few biomes.
Might be a good challenge to make a Rover (or a plane!) on such a world, specially if they model the thermals properly with part stress included... Or life support requirements...  That planet would be fun.  Oh and since it's very close to it's parent star, orbits in like 14-28 days and has huge red sun in the sky at proper latitudes.

I would also love a planet with an extremely long atmosphere (150-200km?) which would feel like landing on an Ice "giant" (not really one because you'd get crushed... even on the smaller ones like Uranus or Neptune).  Something possible but very challenging to fly down to, and from... but not because you burn up in 2 sec like Eve.

A full, 100% waterworld (GJ581 had "GJ581D" who was rumored to be a full oceanic world because the oceans are so deep, no land reached the surface.   Might provide a challenge of it's own with landing the correct contraption... Plus it allows me to attempt designing an "Atlantis" colony. 
Bonus point if we can produce Hydrogen/Oxygen from it's Oceans for fuel.  Now making rovers on this would be extremely fun.  Even more bonus points if it has 2 Large moons. think 4times the size of our moon in the sky, maybe more, for both of them (so one would be bigger but further away so appears same size as the other)

Looking forward to it.

 

[ChrisSpace]

On 13 September 2019 at 10:43 PM, ChrisSpace said:

Also, an extremely long time ago, before there were any planets besides Kerbin, there was a thread for suggesting new planet ideas, which had tons and tons of good suggestions. Can someone find that?

So, despite my best efforts, I couldn't find this thread. What I could find, however, was these:

 

Maybe the larger thread I remember never actually existed, maybe my brain just invented it in the 7 years since I last saw it. I don't know. But even these threads from the distant past provide some good ideas.

Edited September 15, 2019 by ChrisSpace

[nsgallup]

23 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Protuberances on the Kerbal sun. To fly through.

Coronal mass ejections should be a thing!!

[Francois424]

14 hours ago, nsgallup said:

Coronal mass ejections should be a thing!!

haha yes.
Better for (shielded) kerbals than probes that would stop working during the flare.
Imagine, your rolling on the Mun at about 20 m/s and want to slow down as there's a crater in front of you... SOLAR FLARE, and you can't do anything.  Except quick-load and hit the brakes.

[Lord Aurelius]

Some more oddball planets I would like to see in KSP2 (mostly inspired by existing planet packs for KSP1):

• Super-fast spinning planetoid
  • Rotational velocity at the equator is greater than the escape velocity
  • Could be the solid metal core of a much larger planet that was set spinning at a high rate of speed by whatever cataclysm set the core free
• Cube Planet
  • Unusual planet with 8 perfectly symmetrical mountains that make the planet look like a cube
  • Bonus points for having an atmosphere, with the tops of the mountains above the atmosphere
  • Even more bonus points for having craters in a d6 pattern on the 6 faces
• Shattered planet
  • Collection of small planetoids and a bunch of asteroids loosely orbiting each other in close proximity
  • A bit more on the sci-fi side, but would be interesting to be able to fly through a large debris field
• Crushing gravity
  • Super-earth or ice giant with something like 5G (i.e. on the upper end of what's possible to escape from)
• Disk world
  • Spinning metallic disc
  • Could be a blob of molten metal that was ejected into space and the spinning motion pulled it into the disc shape as it cooled

Edited September 16, 2019 by Lord Aurelius

[OutOfAblator]

I know it's unrealistic, but I'd like a kind of little-prince type of hyperdense asteroid planet with very high gravity but very small size.

[Drakenred65]

Intercept, Science recovery missions, and capture of objects like C/2019 Q4 (Borisov)

[kerbiloid]

A Kubik Rubik planet.

[rextable]

Bringing things back down to Earth for a moment (ha, see what I did there?)...

I'm really hoping that each planet will have more distinctive regions and unique geological features. Extinct volcanos like Olympus Mons on Mars or Jupiter's great storm for example. I know these ideas are a little more pedestrian than doughnut shaped planets and alike but think of the views as you fly over them while doing SCIENZE. I believe the devs have already hinted at their plans to make surfaces more interesting and varied from region to region so I'm happy. 

On the subject of gas giants. I assume everyone has seen the latest and greatest pics from the Juno space craft? They're so mind blowingly intricate. Just imaging flying over that and peering down into the cloud layers as you pass by. Might give one more reason to get up close and personal with Jool - the great featureless green blob of nothingness that it currently is.

There are sooooo many ways the devs could make the existing planets more interesting and detailed that wouldn't be asking the Earth (haha, I did it again) in terms of developer time and players' computers. Craters, lake beds, boulder fields, canyons, volcanoes, geezers, sand dunes, cliffs, cloud layers, mountains, spam etc. The list of real life planetary surface features is endless. just google surface of Mars or Pluto for inspiration.

At the very least I hope the devs make planets more moddable in KSP2 so we can add surface features and detail to our hearts content 

X

[GoldForest]

43 minutes ago, rextable said:

Bringing things back down to Earth for a moment (ha, see what I did there?)...

I'm really hoping that each planet will have more distinctive regions and unique geological features. Extinct volcanos like Olympus Mons on Mars or Jupiter's great storm for example. I know these ideas are a little more pedestrian than doughnut shaped planets and alike but think of the views as you fly over them while doing SCIENZE. I believe the devs have already hinted at their plans to make surfaces more interesting and varied from region to region so I'm happy. 

On the subject of gas giants. I assume everyone has seen the latest and greatest pics from the Juno space craft? They're so mind blowingly intricate. Just imaging flying over that and peering down into the cloud layers as you pass by. Might give one more reason to get up close and personal with Jool - the great featureless green blob of nothingness that it currently is.

There are sooooo many ways the devs could make the existing planets more interesting and detailed that wouldn't be asking the Earth (haha, I did it again) in terms of developer time and players' computers. Craters, lake beds, boulder fields, canyons, volcanoes, geezers, sand dunes, cliffs, cloud layers, mountains, spam etc. The list of real life planetary surface features is endless. just google surface of Mars or Pluto for inspiration.

At the very least I hope the devs make planets more moddable in KSP2 so we can add surface features and detail to our hearts content 

X

Kerboler system isn't changing except for a face lift so I wouldn't count on a volcano on Duna or Dres, but they did say each new planet will have it's own unique features and will provide both landing and taking off challenges. 

[Kaerbanogue]

On 9/13/2019 at 3:47 AM, GoldForest said:

2) A super fast orbiting body -

Spoiler

whether around a star or a moon that is just grazing the atmosphere of its parent planet, this would give a unique challenge for sure. Would also make orbiting the planetary parent interesting as you would have to either maintain a high orbit or get into a synchronous orbit with the moon. Not to mention the havoc it would cause for gravity when you land on the planet. Low gravity when the moon is over head, high gravity when it's on the opposite side if the planet. Though, you would get a helping hand if you launched in the low grav effect the moon caused.

 

Very nice idea! They were no "exotic" orbital or rotation speed in ksp og and it would be a cool addition to the game. Like having a recently collided body which spins and goes fast as sh*t, I wonder what it could be to land on such things... 

 

On 9/13/2019 at 3:47 AM, GoldForest said:

4) A water world with changing tides -

Spoiler

I know this might be hard to do in game, but having to build a colony to withstand tidal forces would be a fun challenge I feel.

 

Nice idea! I don't think we will see tides  in KSP2 but water worlds are very interesting! It would be my most wanted feature to have subsurface oceans that maybe would host simple life forms... (I don't think we will get that either but a man can dream...) 

[coyotesfrontier]

A habitable, two-leveled world, with tall, continent-sized plateus sticking out above a sea of clouds. Below the cloud-sea, humid and dark lowlands exist around a water sea. Pressure at the top of the plateaus is 0.5atm, while pressure in the lowlands is 2atm. This is actually doable in KSP1 if you have kopernicus and EVE, but so far I've seen nobody do anything like it.

[rextable]

11 hours ago, GoldForest said:

Kerboler system isn't changing except for a face lift so I wouldn't count on a volcano on Duna or Dres, but they did say each new planet will have it's own unique features and will provide both landing and taking off challenges. 

Agreed. 

Though I am intrigued at how moddable KSP2 will be and what that'll mean for the modding community. Who knows what might be possible if an enthusiastic modder put in the time and effort. I've never created a mod before but planetary detail is defo something I'd love to pursue. We'll have to wait and see  

[KerikBalm]

A facelift could include a few new features though...

[GoldForest]

Just thought of something. Comets. There should be comets in KSP 2. And when you fly through the tail, the windows on your craft should ice up. 

[KerikBalm]

comets yes, icing up windows no

[Guest]

BTW I've come around on one topic I've been negative about, largely through the thinking in this thread. N-body physics, at least in some simplified form. 

Reason being, I would really like to see close-orbiting eclipsing binaries and similar systems -- something close to their Roche limit. And you really can't do this without N-body physics. 

It would be worth the extra complications regarding orbits, but it would require proper support from the UI and other gameplay systems so orbits wouldn't decay unpredictably; at least we would need helpers to find and verify stable orbits.

[GoldForest]

1 hour ago, KerikBalm said:

comets yes, icing up windows no

Why not? It would just be cosmetic and limited to IVA view.

There's no reason why they wouldn't ice up. 

[KerikBalm]

Your last statement is false. There's no reason why they would, the material is not that dense, and there's nothing that would cause it to condense on a craft.

[Guest]

3 hours ago, GoldForest said:

There's no reason why they wouldn't ice up. 

A comet's tail is incredibly diffuse. If you went through one your spaceship would only collect a handful of molecules, nowhere near enough to ice up anything.

(I just checked and to give you an idea, we've flown spacecraft through cometary tails, and they experienced on average one dust impact per second. So a little more than a handful of molecules: in the 20-minute traversal it would have collected 1200 grains of dust. Still nowhere close to frost up a window, although some of those would leave micrometeorite marks...)

Edited September 19, 2019 by Guest

[GoldForest]

Really? For how thick some tails look? Huh.

 

Well, they could still add icing windows, just not from comets. High altitude planes, ice worlds, Duna's polar caps, etc.

[Gydra54]

3 hours ago, GoldForest said:

Really? For how thick some tails look? Huh.

 

Well, they could still add icing windows, just not from comets. High altitude planes, ice worlds, Duna's polar caps, etc.

In general I would love more ship effects. Improved reentry effects, freezing, condensation, sound effects, dirt/dust effects etc. I want dirty, damaged re-entered craft!

On topic, I want a retrograde planet, super eccentric comet/asteroid orbits, and a Planetoid rotating faster than its escape velocity, exactly like Inaccessible from Krag's Planet Factory/Sentar Expansion. And finally, I would really like to see a rogue planet in the game; somewhere away from or in-between all the star systems. No light, freezing cold. Would provide a challenge in terms of Solar Panels being useless and requiring lighting on your craft to see what you're doing. They should also disable ambient light boost on it specifically otherwise it's kind of pointless.

Edited September 19, 2019 by Gydra54

[DStaal]

If a planet is rotating faster than it's escape velocity, it's surface would escape into space - thrown off by it's own rotation.  You could have pretty fast rotation (and it'd be an interesting challenge), but 'faster than escape velocity' is just unrealistic.

[Gydra54]

14 minutes ago, DStaal said:

If a planet is rotating faster than it's escape velocity, it's surface would escape into space - thrown off by it's own rotation.  You could have pretty fast rotation (and it'd be an interesting challenge), but 'faster than escape velocity' is just unrealistic.

You're 100% correct, it is totally unrealistic. But then again, the planets in KSP are all ludicrously dense and evidently don't care much for real world limitations. That said, yeah it doesn't need to be as fast as escape velocity. I just want it fast enough that you are forced to use creative means to stay down on the equator (hooks or burning into the ground). Because if it's not that fast, although it would still challenge unsuspecting players when they try to match surface velocity 10km up only to realise that makes their orbit even higher, landing itself wouldn't require any kind of unique design solution compared to any other planet.

Edited September 19, 2019 by Gydra54