What are we gonna do with all those Kerbals?

[Pthigrivi]

So its been on my mind that with colonies we could be dealing with much bigger crews than we're used to. I've sent a few dozen kerbals to Jool and Duna on occasion but even on the most complex missions I really only needed 6-8 at most. Actually if I'm being honest I needed 1 engineer for mining and 1 scientist to run the science lab. So what will be  the point of building colonies with dozens or hundreds of Kerbals? What will they do? To what degree can they behave autonomously? Should experience still be a thing? How do we not get bogged down in staffing decisions? Or are they just lemmings and we shouln't grow too attached? I feel like Shana Markham is right to focus on the core fun of KSP--building rockets and exploring space. The question for me is how do we understand the value of building big colonies and retain kerbals' individual personalities without pulling too much away from that core experience?

Edited June 7, 2020 by Pthigrivi

[mattinoz]

I think the core experience could handle some expansion to give the little  green Guys more scope. They can’t just sit in the in the same chair for decades long journeys a bit of crew rotation helps generate more need. Plus each offworld VAB needs kerbals to wonder around and drive the skidding trucks. There is a whole supply chain on Kerbin that needs staff to replicate in each colony. Add down time for sleep, training and ummm... socialising. So say 3 crew for each active chair. 

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

So its been on my mind that with colonies we could be dealing with much bigger crews than we're used to. I've sent a few dozen kerbals to Jool and Duna on occasion but even on the most complex missions I really only needed 6-8 at most. Actually if I'm being honest I needed 1 engineer for mining and 1 scientist to run the science lab. So what will be  the point of building colonies with dozens or hundreds of Kerbals? What will they do? To what degree can they behave autonomously? Should experience still be a thing? How do we not get bogged down in staffing decisions? Or are they just lemmings and we shouln't grow too attached? I feel like Shana Markham is right to focus on the core fun of KSP--building rockets and exploring space. The question for me is how do we understand the value of building big colonies and retain kerbals' individual personalities without pulling too much away from that core experience?

Using workforce as a resource, we already know at least two useful use for bases and stations: Shipyards (either orbital or colonial VABs) and advanced fuel refineries, even if KSP2 retains that "One ore to make everything" mentality of the first game (which i doubt) you have to add at least a third kind of surface base, the mine and then probably a number of refineries/factories in the middle between the mines and the shipyards, when building all of these you need workforce and you don't want to bring every single Kerbal up from the Kerbin well all the way out to Jool every time you need a worker for a new module.

In KSP1 every kerbal is an astronaut, in KSP2 most kerbals will be simple workers and settlers.

I can't wait for this new layer of the game to be in my hands but I sincerely hope that in this new progression there still will be space for the KSP1 style of exploration, I don't want to go out and "plant" a colony with my first Mun mission, I want to do things gradually, exploration first, then research bases and then and only then fuel mines, factories, colonies and whatnot. In that case it would be fantastic to manage your first manned kerballed Laythe exploration mission ("the Martian" style) from my new shiny Space Center on the Mün. 

Edited June 7, 2020 by Guest

[Lewie]

Bruh, I’m just going to create huge kerbal cannons....mahawawaw!!! INFINITE KERBALS!!! 

[Pthigrivi]

On 6/7/2020 at 4:54 AM, Master39 said:

Using workforce as a resource, we already know at least two useful use for bases and stations: Shipyards (either orbital or colonial VABs) and advanced fuel refineries, even if KSP2 retains that "One ore to make everything" mentality of the first game (which i doubt) you have to add at least a third kind of surface base, the mine and then probably a number of refineries/factories in the middle between the mines and the shipyards, when building all of these you need workforce and you don't want to bring every single Kerbal up from the Kerbin well all the way out to Jool every time you need a worker for a new module.

I think this is right, and it closes the loop on the colony cycle of build rockets > explore > new kerbals born > build more rockets. I guess Im worried that filling all those positions could become cumbersome, though perhaps many or most are entry level and don't require experience. On a previous save I had 50 or 60 kerbals on various missions and it took pages and pages of notes to manage crew rotations and get them leveled up in KSOI before they shipped out interplanetary. Part of this was the clunkiness of the UI for crew management, looking down the tiny text on the roster in the Astronaut complex and figuring out who had and hadn't been in munar orbit and landed where. I have a pretty high threshold and it tested my patience. I like the idea that kerbals gain experience and increase their abilities in principal, but in practice it can be a tedious thing to manage, especially once we have hundreds of them. Even if we discount experience for most jobs do the 3 classifications of pilots, engineers, + scientists still make sense? I could see needing engineers to work foundries and shipyards and scientists for greenhouses and nurseries, but how many pilots would you really need? Maybe if there were some more automation and mech-jebby abilities I could see needing more. Are kerbals born with an occupation or does the player choose for them? I think having crews automatically filled when you build modules and some kind of streamlined UI to manage them would help, but it still seems like a lot of fuss for an omelette. 

Im sort of leaning toward the idea that we could ditch experience entirely in favor of a habitation mechanic. If properly engineering your colony or vessel with enough LS + hab space contributed to a vessel-wide happiness rating you could use that to determine mining efficiency and science outputs rather than individual kerbal stats. I think it takes something away from making hero 5 star kerbals, but in the end is time spent managing that really worth it? Maybe instead kerbal skills could be purchased like building upgrades and apply across your program so you weren't bogged down micromanaging each kerbal's career. 
 

Edited June 9, 2020 by Pthigrivi

[ArtemisAZ]

Have them there just to look at and feel accomplished.
 

Like little green uhhh... what were those pet shrimp things that you put in water and they started being alive?

Edited June 7, 2020 by Krulliam

[Lewie]

34 minutes ago, Krulliam said:

Like little green uhhh... what were those pet shrimp things that you put in water and they started being alive?

Those were sea monkeys, my dude. One of he largest advertisement scandals ever...

[OOM]

On 6/7/2020 at 7:03 AM, Pthigrivi said:

So its been on my mind that with colonies we could be dealing with much bigger crews than we're used to. I've sent a few dozen kerbals to Jool and Duna on occasion but even on the most complex missions I really only needed 6-8 at most. 

KSP 1 is a game about one space agency, that explores its system and creates small outposts.
KSP 2 is a space colonization game in which the WHOLE world is involved.

Edited June 8, 2020 by OOM

[kerbiloid]

Last time I had a look on USI (MKS), its ISRU modules efficiency was significantly depending on presence of a qualified Kerbal in the module.
So, the more modules a base consists of, the more Kerbals you need to run it efficiently.
Of course, they need food, so greenhouses (which in turn also require Kerbals for productivity),

So, when there are about tens of Kerbals per colony, this model should work well.

If there are hundreds of Kerbals, we could drive them all in a coal mine, a metallurgical plant, and a textile factory, and get a steampunk colony.
Then the main question we get is: what to do with that amount of cast iron and cloth.
Maybe we could be building steamships for oceanic adventures.

Also, already for several years, I' keep suggesting an oarman seat for muscle power generation.
This would let us have muscle-powered powerplants and galleys. Each of them could utilize a half-thousand of unemployed Kerbals.

And roads. Thousands of Kerbals could be employed by building autobahns around the planets. (Railroads would be even better, but KSP doesn't have rails.)

Edited June 8, 2020 by kerbiloid

[pandaman]

Been thinking about this one, and here is one possibility...

Let's assume that all Kerbals are just 'ordinary dudes and dudesses' with no stats, traits or occupation assigned.  Each colony, of which presumably, Kerbin will be one, will have a population level.  From that you recruit your spacefarers, but it won't list all of the population, maybe say 1% of the total apply and show up as applicants, and at that point their stats and occupation etc (or whatever the new system  uses) are generated and they can be recruited as they are now.

A proportion of the rest of the population (say 50%) are deemed to be children and carers etc and the remaining 50% become 'workers'.

It is then simply a case of assigning a given quantity of workers to a given task, which will determine how quickly a task is done or how much is produced etc, with presumably an optional 'auto assign' function to give a reasonably efficient, if not optimised result.

E.g..

There are 3 processes to be done... 1 mining Ore, 2 refining it into fuel, 3 transporting the fuel to the space port.

Some kerbals will be assigned to mining (eg1 kerbal 10 kg per hour), some to refining (eg 1 kerbal 50kg per hour) and some to transportation (eg 1 kerbal moves100kg 50km per hour) .  If the Ore ratio is higher then the mining rate per kerbal per hour goes up and if distance it needs to be transported is long then more will need to be assigned to get it there quicker.  Players could adjust the number assigned to each task to change priorities, or just let the 'auto assign' function give as good a balance as it can.

Edited June 8, 2020 by pandaman

[shdwlrd]

Without getting into colony mechanics or professions too much. I can see a few things happening. Kerbals won't out grow their colony or base. You can recruit from the colonists if you launch a rocket from there. You can manually add/remove Kerbals, or abandon a base or colony. You need a certain number of Kerbals to reach max efficiently. (Not including the metrics required for the colony itself.)

This seems to be a distant possibility, but I will throw it out there. Kerbals have natural life spans. They are a long lived species. They can live hundreds of years before they die.

Depending on the number of colonies, stations, and outposts you build, you can easily reach 100+ Kerbals off world. I really hope that they will add something to help find where your Kerbals are located. There's nothing worse than bouncing from craft to craft trying to find where you left Jeb at.

[SOXBLOX]

I really don't want to see Jeb die. Not that I don't crash him, though.

The lifespans might be in the thousands. Yoda Kerman, anyone?

Edited June 9, 2020 by SOXBLOX

[Pthigrivi]

6 hours ago, pandaman said:

Let's assume that all Kerbals are just 'ordinary dudes and dudesses' with no stats, traits or occupation assigned.  Each colony, of which presumably, Kerbin will be one, will have a population level.  From that you recruit your spacefarers, but it won't list all of the population, maybe say 1% of the total apply and show up as applicants, and at that point their stats and occupation etc (or whatever the new system  uses) are generated and they can be recruited as they are now.

A proportion of the rest of the population (say 50%) are deemed to be children and carers etc and the remaining 50% become 'workers'.

It is then simply a case of assigning a given quantity of workers to a given task, which will determine how quickly a task is done or how much is produced etc, with presumably an optional 'auto assign' function to give a reasonably efficient, if not optimised result.

A) Love "Dudes and dudesses" and hope this is what they're called, concision be damned. And I agree there should probably be a stock of general workers that are auto-selected to fill greenhouses and VABs and the like as they're built to cut down on staff-management time. You'll probably also need to be able to manually move crews around depending on your situation. 

B) I also like the idea of Kerblings, i: because they would be cute af and ii: because it sounds like there will be some form of non-punishing LS and I like the idea that after a "boom" you'd have a hot second to catch up on your LS volume before they mature. Otherwise you'd feel like you needed to overproduce LS before a achieving a goal and you wouldn't necessarily know how much to plan for. 

C) Recruitment to the major professions (scientists, engineers, pilots) is the last bit. Im cool pulling from the general pool mainly cause I like to pick the best sounding names. The first question is should recruitment come with a cost in terms of time, energy, and/or facilities? I think there needs to be be some limiting factor but I'd prefer if it was controllable. Again Im of the probably controversial mindset that we should ditch individual kerbal experience because it takes too much time to fuss over with that many crew members. From my experience you spend more time touring them around to level them up than doing almost anything else. It's fine if touring them around earns them cosmetic ranks but giving big bonuses creates grindy incentives. Just make perks and abilities purchasable and generalized. 

D) This also begs questions about what is the progression from first landing to ISRU to building a self-sufficient colony. Im guessing by now the devs have some specific ideas about this, but generally I imagine first it's about producing fuel and LS and then grows to allow for the building of new and more complex modules and new vessels from scratch. I think it's okay if a max-tech colony capable of producing and supporting interstellar vessels is a little complicated to orchestrate so long as that complexity builds slowly enough to not overwhelm or bog down gameplay. I'd also like if there was some flexibility and strategy to how you allocate resources, workers included. Like you could devote a colony more heavily toward fuel production or science collection or rocket manufacturing or buoying population depending on the resources available on site and how you combine them with supply routes. It be nice if it wasn't just a rote, linear, A leads to B leads to C build for every situation. To add flexibility it would also be nice if we could recycle and convert parts and resources in order to adapt over time, much like the way you can convert water and carbon to rocket fuel and back irl. 

Edited June 9, 2020 by Pthigrivi

[kerbiloid]

At some limit, the Kerbals should become resources rather than persons.

Let alone O'Neil cylinders, but even a 1k population colony hardly can be populated if you need to put everyone in his seat.
And CPU will smoke if call them to a city meeting.
Unlikely you could even read their list.

So, colonies larger than tens of Kerbals inevitably separate Kerbals in a privileged class with personalities and occupations (Pilot, Scientist, Engineer, several more) and faceless mass of plebs/muggles.

A funny fact. If someone finds here an analogy with the Time Machine, the Morlocks are the individual ones, as exactly they do all job, while others are just a resource for them.

Edited June 9, 2020 by kerbiloid

[Guest]

WARNING: PURE AND BASELESS SPECULATION AHEAD

I think we'll have 2 kinds of Kerbal in KSP2, astronauts and civilians.

Astronauts are astronauts, divided in classes (ex. Pilots, Engineers and Scientists) and created from the KSC at the astronaut complex or at colonies in some way (more speculation on this later).

Civilians are your settlers/tourists/citizens they could range between being a pure abstract resource up to being fully simulated kerbals similar to Rollercoaster Tycoon / Planet Coaster guests or City Skylines citizens that you can use to gauge the problems of a colony.

They use different modules when travelling in space, can't EVA, are a little more costly in life support terms and loosing them in an accident has a way worse effect on reputation.

WARNING: EVEN WILDER SPECULATION AHEAD

Not all civilians are equal, you have specialized and normal kerbals.

Some facilities require specialized kerbals, laboratories, nurseries, shipyards and so on.

To make specialized kerbals you need a "colonial university" that turns some civilian kerbals into specialized ones.

If you don't have specialized kerbals you can use any astronaut kerbal.

How to make astronauts? You need a Kerbal academy manned by a veteran pilot to make new pilots, a Kerbal university manned by an engineer to make new engineers (on top of the academy) and a research laboratory manned by a scientist (on top of the academy and the university) to make new scientists.

This is an example on how I think a system like this could work.

[mattinoz]

34 minutes ago, Master39 said:

WARNING: PURE AND BASELESS SPECULATION AHEAD

I think we'll have 2 kinds of Kerbal in KSP2, astronauts and civilians.

Astronauts are astronauts, divided in classes (ex. Pilots, Engineers and Scientists) and created from the KSC at the astronaut complex or at colonies in some way (more speculation on this later).

Civilians are your settlers/tourists/citizens they could range between being a pure abstract resource up to being fully simulated kerbals similar to Rollercoaster Tycoon / Planet Coaster guests or City Skylines citizens that you can use to gauge the problems of a colony.

They use different modules when travelling in space, can't EVA, are a little more costly in life support terms and loosing them in an accident has a way worse effect on reputation.

WARNING: EVEN WILDER SPECULATION AHEAD

Not all civilians are equal, you have specialized and normal kerbals.

Some facilities require specialized kerbals, laboratories, nurseries, shipyards and so on.

To make specialized kerbals you need a "colonial university" that turns some civilian kerbals into specialized ones.

If you don't have specialized kerbals you can use any astronaut kerbal.

How to make astronauts? You need a Kerbal academy manned by a veteran pilot to make new pilots, a Kerbal university manned by an engineer to make new engineers (on top of the academy) and a research laboratory manned by a scientist (on top of the academy and the university) to make new scientists.

This is an example on how I think a system like this could work.

Why have separate classes not just skills. can fly, can science, can engineer or have say 5 stars each can be in any skill?

Kerbals start general don't specialize till mid to late game and even then might have 1star diversity at most times anyway. There could even be some skills that can be learnt regardless of level. Hobbies like Gardening or Docking.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, mattinoz said:

Why have separate classes not just skills.

Just keeping the speculation rooted to KSP1, I would love to see everything regarding classes, skills, science, funds and, in general, the whole progression part of the game being rewritten without using KSP1 as a base.

[Laie]

It's probably beyond the scope of anything anyone has ever considered, but..

Do you guys know Dwarf Fortress? I think I'd like Kerbals going their ways, doing whatever needs to be done and / or strikes their fancy.

Just to make the place look busy, really. I don't think they need to do much (or anything) of consequence like actually operating the workshops, or becoming skilled at hydroponics or metallurgy or whatever -- that would be an entirely different game, after all. But Kerbals being individual agents with a sleep / work / play cycle, actively seeking out a place according to their desires? That might work rather well, provided that there are enough outdoor activities. Otherwise we won't ever see them.

 

[kerbiloid]

If KSP-2 had the Kethane mod, we could rework excessive Kerbals into useful kethane.
(Though, it's cheaper to produce the kethane directly out of raw materials instead of spending them on Kerbal food.)

Also, KSP-2 could have a Soylent Green converter, especially since they are indeed green.
(Though, having the mentioned Kethane mod we can produce soylent green out of the kethane made of excessive kerbals).

So, maybe the option is a Kraken altar for Kerbal mass sacrifices.
Of course, it can't be a cult of fertility, because the Kerbals chained to the station modules like in USI/MKS are good enough even when not sacrificed.
But it would definitely raise the stability and smoothness of the world because fewer Kerbals should be calculated and rendered.
(Even without altar, even if just follow the Spartan way and drop them from rocks.)

[SchwinnTropius]

23 hours ago, Laie said:

It's probably beyond the scope of anything anyone has ever considered, but..

Do you guys know Dwarf Fortress? I think I'd like Kerbals going their ways, doing whatever needs to be done and / or strikes their fancy.

Just to make the place look busy, really. I don't think they need to do much (or anything) of consequence like actually operating the workshops, or becoming skilled at hydroponics or metallurgy or whatever -- that would be an entirely different game, after all. But Kerbals being individual agents with a sleep / work / play cycle, actively seeking out a place according to their desires? That might work rather well, provided that there are enough outdoor activities. Otherwise we won't ever see them.

 

So Kerbals should act like Minecraft Villagers? Not that it's a terrible idea, but I'd like to see a little more intelligence than that from Kerbals.

 

10 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

[snip]
(Even without altar, even if just follow the Spartan way and drop them from rocks.)

Or, just take them outside and rip off their helmets.

[kerbiloid]

In Dungeon Keeper there was a flag. (In Disciples there was a staff).
When you plant it in the floor, your creatures are called to the flag (usually for a battle, but also to gather them from hidden places).
KSP-2 should implement something like that.

[Pthigrivi]

19 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

If KSP-2 had the Kethane mod, we could rework excessive Kerbals into useful kethane.
(Though, it's cheaper to produce the kethane directly out of raw materials instead of spending them on Kerbal food.)

Also, KSP-2 could have a Soylent Green converter, especially since they are indeed green.
(Though, having the mentioned Kethane mod we can produce soylent green out of the kethane made of excessive kerbals).

So, maybe the option is a Kraken altar for Kerbal mass sacrifices.
Of course, it can't be a cult of fertility, because the Kerbals chained to the station modules like in USI/MKS are good enough even when not sacrificed.
But it would definitely raise the stability and smoothness of the world because fewer Kerbals should be calculated and rendered.
(Even without altar, even if just follow the Spartan way and drop them from rocks.)

Haha that is GRIM my dude. 

On 6/9/2020 at 1:04 PM, Laie said:

It's probably beyond the scope of anything anyone has ever considered, but..

Do you guys know Dwarf Fortress? I think I'd like Kerbals going their ways, doing whatever needs to be done and / or strikes their fancy.

Just to make the place look busy, really. I don't think they need to do much (or anything) of consequence like actually operating the workshops, or becoming skilled at hydroponics or metallurgy or whatever -- that would be an entirely different game, after all. But Kerbals being individual agents with a sleep / work / play cycle, actively seeking out a place according to their desires? That might work rather well, provided that there are enough outdoor activities. Otherwise we won't ever see them.

 

Yeah it doesn't seem from the alpha shots like you'd be able to see much internal activity from the outside, but I like what you're saying. It's made me wonder if designating areas for science collection or regolith mining might allow kerbals or rovers you've designed to autonomously perform actions.  Even if it were cosmetic it would be nice to see them wandering around the exterior of colonies doin their kerbally thing so it looked more alive. 

[shdwlrd]

On 6/8/2020 at 9:10 PM, Pthigrivi said:

On 6/8/2020 at 3:04 PM, pandaman said:

Let's assume that all Kerbals are just 'ordinary dudes and dudesses' with no stats, traits or occupation assigned.  Each colony, of which presumably, Kerbin will be one, will have a population level.  From that you recruit your spacefarers, but it won't list all of the population, maybe say 1% of the total apply and show up as applicants, and at that point their stats and occupation etc (or whatever the new system  uses) are generated and they can be recruited as they are now.

A proportion of the rest of the population (say 50%) are deemed to be children and carers etc and the remaining 50% become 'workers'.

It is then simply a case of assigning a given quantity of workers to a given task, which will determine how quickly a task is done or how much is produced etc, with presumably an optional 'auto assign' function to give a reasonably efficient, if not optimised result.

A) Love "Dudes and dudesses" and hope this is what they're called, concision be damned. And I agree there should probably be a stock of general workers that are auto-selected to fill greenhouses and VABs and the like as they're built to cut down on staff-management time. You'll probably also need to be able to manually move crews around depending on your situation. 

B) I also like the idea of Kerblings, i: because they would be cute af and ii: because it sounds like there will be some form of non-punishing LS and I like the idea that after a "boom" you'd have a hot second to catch up on your LS volume before they mature. Otherwise you'd feel like you needed to overproduce LS before a achieving a goal and you wouldn't necessarily know how much to plan for. 

C) Recruitment to the major professions (scientists, engineers, pilots) is the last bit. Im cool pulling from the general pool mainly cause I like to pick the best sounding names. The first question is should recruitment come with a cost in terms of time, energy, and/or facilities? I think there needs to be be some limiting factor but I'd prefer if it was controllable. Again Im of the probably controversial mindset that we should ditch individual kerbal experience because it takes too much time to fuss over with that many crew members. From my experience you spend more time touring them around to level them up than doing almost anything else. It's fine if touring them around earns them cosmetic ranks but giving big bonuses creates grindy incentives. Just make perks and abilities purchasable and generalized. 

D) This also begs questions about what is the progression from first landing to ISRU to building a self-sufficient colony. Im guessing by now the devs have some specific ideas about this, but generally I imagine first it's about producing fuel and LS and then grows to allow for the building of new and more complex modules and new vessels from scratch. I think it's okay if a max-tech colony capable of producing and supporting interstellar vessels is a little complicated to orchestrate so long as that complexity builds slowly enough to not overwhelm or bog down gameplay. I'd also like if there was some flexibility and strategy to how you allocate resources, workers included. Like you could devote a colony more heavily toward fuel production or science collection or rocket manufacturing or buoying population depending on the resources available on site and how you combine them with supply routes. It be nice if it wasn't just a rote, linear, A leads to B leads to C build for every situation. To add flexibility it would also be nice if we could recycle and convert parts and resources in order to adapt over time, much like the way you can convert water and carbon to rocket fuel and back irl. 

Both ideas do seem to fit what the devs envision for colonies. Minimal management and simplicity for using Kerbals as a resource for furthering your career. The only thing I would like to see is Kerbals recruited from colonies have a higher skill level than the Kerbals recruited from Kerbin.

On 6/9/2020 at 12:04 PM, Laie said:

It's probably beyond the scope of anything anyone has ever considered, but..

Do you guys know Dwarf Fortress? I think I'd like Kerbals going their ways, doing whatever needs to be done and / or strikes their fancy.

Just to make the place look busy, really. I don't think they need to do much (or anything) of consequence like actually operating the workshops, or becoming skilled at hydroponics or metallurgy or whatever -- that would be an entirely different game, after all. But Kerbals being individual agents with a sleep / work / play cycle, actively seeking out a place according to their desires? That might work rather well, provided that there are enough outdoor activities. Otherwise we won't ever see them.

 

This would be a nice bit of fluff to help flesh out the colonies some. You don't even have to have the Kerbals go outside. It could be nothing more than an animation of figures moving around in corridors or in the domes. Different lights turning on and off at different times. An occasional generic vehicle coming and going from the colony if a supply line as been created with the colony.

Edited June 11, 2020 by shdwlrd