"Exotic" colonies

[Lo.M]

In ksp2 we will have colonies in space and on land this is confirmed. I created this topic to speculate and discuss more "exotic" colonies that are those that are not terrestrial and space colonies. 

• Floating Colonies: they are huge "airships" that can be built and/or taken to planets with dense atmosphere (such as Venus), or on gaseous planets (such as Jool)

Spoiler

• Floating colonies in water: Colonies made for aquatic planets or planets with large parts of water.

Spoiler

 

A floating city, which would be made on Earth, a floating colony would look like this. 

• Submerged colonies: Colonies that were totally or partially submerged, by staying in the water the radiation is totally or partially barred. As solar panels would be a difficulty for this colony, we could use Oceanic Thermal Conversion and /or sea currents power plants  to generate energy (but of course if we had an advanced climate and weather system), we could also use nuclear energy.

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• Buried colonies:  they could be built in lava tubes, for example, it is built below ground, so radiation is partially or totally barred, as well as in submerged colonies.

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A lava tube:

Sugested by @Vinhero100 :

• Colonies on asteroids and comets: colonies that could be built on large asteroids like Ceres (in ksp Dres) or smaller bodies like Ida or some comets. Well the biggest problems are the gravity that wanted to be generated artificially and the radiation.

Spoiler

Ceres

Ida and your moon Dactyl 

Discuss!

Something to be added/changed/tidy, comment on the comments.

 

Edited February 21, 2021 by Lo.M

[Dr. Kerbal]

I only said Yes to the buried colonies because proven to real science early bases may be based underground to protect colony members form the harsh radiation from space.

And astroids or any other debris that could har, the base.

[Vinhero100]

Idk if this counts as an exotic colony but ASTEROID colonies, either in interplanetary space or in the rings of a planet,  sound super cool!

[K^2]

Subterranean is a tech nightmare. That's the reason I'd vote no on that. It's not as cool as other options to begin with, but would be a much bigger tech challenge and take a lot longer to implement than the other options on top of it. I can definitely see some structures being shown as only the small surface part, with it being implied that there is more underground, but that's different from actually having meaningful construction underground.

Colonies floating in thick atmospheres of some worlds or in the liquid oceans should be relatively easy to add. I don't know if devs necessarily need to spend time on it, but I would like to see them in mods at least. All that I want to see from Intercept is not strictly requiring attachment to terrain for colonies. Which might already be the case due to how orbital construction is going to work.

Building at the bottom of oceans should just work the same as building on an airless world. You basically have all the same requirements. (Other than structural, but that always gets hand-waved.) I would probably make solar collectors unavailable if submerged and change the look of heat exchangers for reactors, but everything else can just stay identical. Small amount of effort for a lot of variety. And we have heard that devs want to make submarine exploration more interesting, so hopefully being able to build bases is a part of it.

[pandaman]

I voted yes to all, but simply because I think it would be nice if they could be included.  If tech/programming difficulties make it impractical then it's no big deal,  I will be content with what turns up.

I think large scale buried/subteranean colonies is not going to happen, and terrain deformation is out of scope IMO.  But I could envisage small 'habitats' and 'landing pads' etc being constucted out of local regolith (similar to the Tylo cave, Mun arches or Dessert Airfield) or into cliff faces by sticking a 'facade' on the cliff to indicate what's there, without changing the actual undelying terrain.

[Wubslin]

1 hour ago, pandaman said:

I voted yes to all, but simply because I think it would be nice if they could be included.  If tech/programming difficulties make it impractical then it's no big deal,  I will be content with what turns up.

I think large scale buried/subteranean colonies is not going to happen, and terrain deformation is out of scope IMO.  But I could envisage small 'habitats' and 'landing pads' etc being constucted out of local regolith (similar to the Tylo cave, Mun arches or Dessert Airfield) or into cliff faces by sticking a 'facade' on the cliff to indicate what's there, without changing the actual undelying terrain.

This. If there was a poll option for "would you like an immediate deposit of a thousand dollars into your bank account upon purchase of the game?", yeah I'd vote yes in the poll. This thread is a thinly veiled ideas and wishes post. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

[Kernel Kraken]

Yes to all three! I'm not sure how colony building will work, but buried colonies would probably have to be in naturally generated caves and not just shoved into the ground. From what I understand, there isn't voxel deformation so we probably won't be able to dig. Floating colonies and submerged colonies are easy, though. Just give floating colonies huge solar-powered rotors to keep them in the sky and put weights on underwater colonies- people already do that.

EDIT: I read the post. I don't think the airships or crazy sci-fi underwater structures are necessary. Just take your normal colony and sink it.

Edited February 21, 2021 by Kernel Kraken

[Guest]

16 hours ago, K^2 said:

Subterranean is a tech nightmare. That's the reason I'd vote no on that. It's not as cool as other options to begin with, but would be a much bigger tech challenge and take a lot longer to implement than the other options on top of it. I can definitely see some structures being shown as only the small surface part, with it being implied that there is more underground, but that's different from actually having meaningful construction underground.

 

6 hours ago, pandaman said:

and terrain deformation is out of scope IMO

We wouldn't necessarily need terrain deformation. In current KSP you have the surface and that's it, nothing under it. You could have something similar. Have a surface part called the adaptor part. then you can build under the terrain, it wouldn't necessarily need to change the terrain. If it gets destroyed you can make the excuse that the regolith filled it all back up. I don't see how it's that big of a tech problem. 

 

[Lo.M]

28 minutes ago, Kernel Kraken said:

EDIT: I read the post. I don't think the airships or crazy sci-fi underwater structures are necessary. Just take your normal colony and sink it.

They need some outlet for the surface.

Some equipment wanted to be adapted.

If you are on a planet totally covered with water, the only form of mining would be to mine the Oceanic crust, that is, connection with the surface and the crust.

Some "air pockets" would be needed

 ...

You don't need very futuristic things, but it's not just sinking into something.

[Davi SDF]

I think floating colonies might be nescessary for gathering resources in gas giants like Jool.

Floating colonies and underwater colonies seem very possible even if they dont have especific parts for them.

Only underground that seems out of scope for now.

[Kernel Kraken]

1 hour ago, Lo.M said:

They need some outlet for the surface.

Some equipment wanted to be adapted.

If you are on a planet totally covered with water, the only form of mining would be to mine the Oceanic crust, that is, connection with the surface and the crust.

Some "air pockets" would be needed

 ...

You don't need very futuristic things, but it's not just sinking into something.

I guess you're right. I feel like super-specialized colony parts would be good as an expansion to be released later. I have played around with airship mods for KSP 1 and they're the excrement- I kinda changed my mind on that. I think a mid-tech tree pack of hydrogen envelopes and rigid airship parts (maybe put envelopes inside fairings?) Would be an interesting addition I would love to play with.

[Guest]

I voted yes on all but subterranean colonies. Reason I voted no on that is that I think they require more work— an underground construction UI is different from a regular one — without adding much gameplay value, although they would clearly be more realistic in some circumstances.

I would love airborne, floating, or submerged colonies, they would be cool and all of these would add their own unique gameplay challenges, for what I think would be a fairly reasonable amount of work.

[TLTay]

I think for floating and underwater colonies, a few special inflatable parts that can double as ballast and balloons would work wonders. No need to redo every part for underwater/floating use. Assuming the atmosphere and liquid physics and pressure curves are done realistically, achieving neutral buoyancy should kind of take care of itself with the right amount of weight/displacement.  Something like those inflatable landing cushions from that one mod would be perfect...

[PlutoISaPlanet]

I actually made a thread about asteroid/comet colonies a while ago. While I think it will be possible I think that this will be limited. For example, to sustain colonies you need to send missions to it (if you do it once the game does it for you). But if you leave the system on the asteroid/comet then you cannot send another mission because it has a different orbit. Sustaining a colony on a asteroid/comet is possoble, but if it leaves the system then we start to have problems.

[K^2]

4 hours ago, The Doodling Astronaut said:

We wouldn't necessarily need terrain deformation. In current KSP you have the surface and that's it, nothing under it. You could have something similar. Have a surface part called the adaptor part. then you can build under the terrain, it wouldn't necessarily need to change the terrain. If it gets destroyed you can make the excuse that the regolith filled it all back up. I don't see how it's that big of a tech problem. 

It's cutting holes in terrain that's a bit problematic. Plus anything you want to build purely subterranean would require some sort of a UI to show you that you're building it... and then you basically never get to see it again. I just don't think it's worth the hassle for, "Trust me, there's an entire colony down there." Now, if we had giant caves and lava tubes that were accessible, that'd be another matter, but that leads to so many additional tech challenges, including the aforementioned terrain holes, a robust system that works with large colliders that aren't heightmap terrain, camera, etc.

Nah, way too much work. There are definitely more interesting things to implement that are higher up on the list. The floating/submerged colonies I like simply because between orbital and ground colonies, they should have most of the tech and assets already in place. It's a fairly small change that opens up a lot of cool new environments you couldn't explore before. That has gameplay impact.

[Guest]

17 hours ago, K^2 said:

"Trust me, there's an entire colony down there."

Behold my colony!

*proceeds to post the picture of a rusty trapdoor on Duna*
 

[K^2]

7 hours ago, Master39 said:

Behold my colony!

*proceeds to post the picture of a rusty trapdoor on Duna*

(Kin-dza-dza)