Orbital Megastructures

[SciMan]

We already know we're probably going to be building ships (let alone stations) that are on the order of 2+ kilometers long.
Being limited to 10m structural elements would be pathetic from a purely "parts count matters" perspective. They're almost certainly not naive enough to limit things to 10m structural parts when the drive parts and fuel tanks are so much massively bigger. If they did that, it would lead to a repeat of KSP 1 where the best long "structural" part isn't even a structural part like a girder or structural tube, instead it's a Kickback (or Clydesdale, or Pollux) SRB with all it's solid fuel removed.
That's problematic, because sometimes the game's Delta-V calculator gets confused when you do things like that. Additionally, the part could be too heavy or too light from a game balance perspective when considered as purely a structural piece (likely too heavy, withstanding lateral loads AND significant internal pressure like an SRB likely increases dry mass considerably compared to a truss structure).

So my bet is that we get structural parts that are on the order of twice as long as the longest of any other part in the game (including the deployed state of things like solar panels and radiators).

I do hope that we get additional parts that are specifically "radiator trusses" or "solar panel trusses" because that would again lower the part count.

And the best solution (but probably not within the scope of the current ideas for KSP 2) would be some sort of part-welding function where you can take any number of parts that have identical (or compatible) function and combine them so that the game's physics and resource calculations treat them as one part. Not sure if that should be allowed for things like engines, radiators, or solar panels, but it should be fine for things like girders and fuel tanks and maybe crew compartments.

[Bej Kerman]

On 3/28/2022 at 10:47 PM, SciMan said:

So my bet is that we get structural parts that are on the order of twice as long as the longest of any other part in the game (including the deployed state of things like solar panels and radiators).

Then the other parts would be too small to match the structural parts.

[SciMan]

The whole point I was trying to propose was that the structural truss "spine" of something like a torch ship or interstellar vessel would be composed of at most say 10 parts attached end-to-end.

And that's when the vessel is at least a couple kilometers long.

The whole point is that we get really long, really skinny girder parts (think like the Kickback, but at least twice as long, and a skeletal girder instead of an SRB), so that it's easier to space those "probably horrendously radioactive" high tech drives FAR away from any potential crew containing parts or places on the vessel where it might interact with another vessel that contains crew.

We already know from multiple videos released by the KSP 2 developers that the vessels are going to be "one long boi" kinda looking things (with video 5 on Interstellar missions being the latest as of the time of this post).
What I'm hoping is that I don't need 50 truss parts to make up that length. 10 is acceptable, 20 is too much. At least by KSP 1 standards, perhaps KSP 2's "physics LOD" will have some improvements to make here. I don't really know anything except that minimizing the part count is of utmost priority on any vessel in KSP 1, and that that should hold true for KSP 2 even if they do a lot of optimizations.

Of course, the best solution would be ONE "spinal truss" part per size or cross-section, with a little window you can type in how many iterations of the truss you want it to be long.

Sort of like the Frisbee antimatter engine in Nertea's excellent Far Future Technologies mod, but minus the radiators (or maybe not!) and obviously the engine would be supplied as a separate part.

EDIT:
This would also do good things from the point of view of "slaying the Kraken", which they half-said (and then quickly re-worded in a more vague sense) in video 5.

Edited April 10, 2022 by SciMan