Weather.

[Sad+Lonely]

Ok. Hear me out. What if we had weather events? Eg: Dust Storms on Duna, changing tides and even hurricanes or similar events on laythe, any weather event on any planet that has a atmosphere thick enough to have weather events occur. Then we could have strong winds on Kerbal which could interfere with a launches. Have new experiments to measure and view weather events, like satellites to show and predict weather, I just think this'd be cool and fun, and then you could add a option to enable weather or disable it when creating the game, choose if it's very active or very subtle, then in the cheats menu allow the player to start or end a certain weather even on its appropriate planet, the location of the event, even the duration and severity. Just an idea, I think it'd be do able, at least for wind, just apply similar logic to air resistance, waves will be a bit harder and you'll probably need to create new physic interactions, dust storms will just need a reduced visibility, reduction of light strength, and a temporary disablement of orbital scans over the area. You could even have snow storms on Pol! I just think this would make such a great feature and would greatly increase the fun of this already amazing game. Even if you added as a feature in KSP 2.

[Caerfinon]

Have a look at Kerbal Weather Project. It adds some very nice winds that have impact on flights. The effects can be turned off and on. I find it very hard to launch planes during a strong cross wind event.

 

[Dr. Kerbal]

I would go for clouds. I personally think Kerbin would look better with them. 

[Guest]

This one seems to come up a lot. It's one of those things that's really hard to do in a way that adds meaningful gameplay and remains fun. If it's cosmetic only there's no problem of course – EVE looks terrific for example. However if it actually affects things, things get messy.  For example, without other systems such as part failures (cold or rain can screw up a launch, as we know from bitter experience), all weather can do is with wind and visibility. Visibility is pretty much cosmetic. Wind might affect your launch trajectory unless it's strong enough to blow over your rocket on launch. In the latter case, do you think it would be fun to miss your launch window because of a hurricane?

Personally I don't see how weather could be both meaningful and fun. Forecasting it wouldn't really help because you'd still be stuck with it -- if there's a hurricane during your launch window, you can't launch, whether you knew about it or not. The only potential benefit would be that you'd have to consider climate when deciding on a base location, favouring mild climates with predictable weather. I really don't see that as being worth the complexity and frustration.

(Again, I'm all for cosmetic or near-cosmetic weather -- wouldn't mind some crosswind landings from time to time, and I always use the wonderful EVE with Scatterer.)

[TreeBronch]

Should Squad add a KSP Weather update or KSP 2 have weather? What would that add?

List of ideas so far:

Kerbin: Rain/Snow, wind.

Duna: Duna dust storms.

Laythe: Hurricanes.

 

Also, for moons/planets with no atmosphere. Maybe surface activity such as moon quakes, and volcanic eruption. Mainly just a surface activity update.

[Gargamel]

Overlapping threads have been merged

[Hotel26]

On 2/3/2021 at 10:07 PM, Brikoleur said:

weather could be both meaningful and fun

I simulate IMC (Instrument Meteorological Conditions) by simply pointing my camera view Up so that I have few/no ground references, then fly to minima using instruments and navaids only -- then "take the hood off" to proceed to land visually.

Edited February 8, 2021 by Hotel26

[FleshJeb]

36 minutes ago, Hotel26 said:

I simulate IMC (Instrument Meteorological Conditions) by simply pointing my camera view Up so that I have few/no ground references, then fly to minima using instruments and navaids only -- then "take the hood off" to proceed to land visually.

I do that because it doubles my framerate.

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Hotel26 said:

I simulate IMC (Instrument Meteorological Conditions) by simply pointing my camera view Up so that I have few/no ground references, then fly to minima using instruments and navaids only -- then "take the hood off" to proceed to land visually.

Wow, I find night flying tense enough for my needs...!

[wpetula]

Adding (optimized) weather systems to KSP would be awesome!  Getting unceremoniously zapped out of the sky by a lightning storm on Eve would match the feel of the game perfectly. 

[Guest]

On 2/7/2021 at 5:34 PM, TreeBronch said:

Should Squad add a KSP Weather update or KSP 2 have weather? What would that add?

List of ideas so far:

Kerbin: Rain/Snow, wind.

Duna: Duna dust storms.

Laythe: Hurricanes & tsunamis

 

Also, for moons/planets with no atmosphere. Maybe surface activity such as moon quakes, and volcanic eruption. Mainly just a surface activity update.

FTFY.

For me personally, if there was no performance impact then great but that’s pretty much impossible. 
 

I do like the geological activity idea though, gives more interest to planets and moons and could be tied in with science contracts/experiments (ie study the volcano on Tylo)