Flight Automation

[Vl3d]

Always fly to test and once for the whole mission. Automate subsequent identical missions to avoid repetition. Simple and it seems to be the way it's going to be done. But... again... without a proper reveal and marketing campaign we're in the dark.

[MarcAbaddon]

4 hours ago, Vl3d said:

Always fly to test and once for the whole mission. Automate subsequent identical missions to avoid repetition. Simple and it seems to be the way it's going to be done. But... again... without a proper reveal and marketing campaign we're in the dark.

In concept this is my favorite idea as well - player does the run once to demonstrate it can be done, and then repeat flights can be performed automatically. 

In practice, I think identifying repeat flights will be quite a challenge for the design team. Just to start with consider the following:

On interplanetary missions how strict are you with transfer windows? There's a transfer window for Duna on a regular basis, but with they differ with delta-v requirements. What happens if you take control of the space station while docking to it on your qualifying flight and maybe even use a limited resource like monopropellant? What if your target orbits changes slightly, e.g. due to numerical inaccuracies or even a very minor change due to impulses transmitted by previous dockings? 

[kerbiloid]

4 hours ago, Master39 said:

Sorry but yes. It is.

I get the feeling that some people here forget that Mechjeb isn't stock.

And many people use MechJeb, kOS, kRPC, Kramax Autopilot, Throttle Controlled Avionics, etc.
Because supply and demand.

KSP is a game engine providing the possibility of automated flight, and this possibility is demanded by many users.

Alarm Clock, Infernal Robotics, RemoteTech, and KIS also were not from the very beginning.
But later they had been added either to stock, or as DLC.

So, the flight automation is an important part of the KSP flight system, which somebody uses, somebody doesn't.

Obviously, they won't be implemented in the stock game because the project is finalized, but this does change nothing.

Edited November 9, 2022 by kerbiloid

[Vl3d]

25 minutes ago, MarcAbaddon said:

On interplanetary missions how strict are you with transfer windows?

You would be able to repeat the mission only when the orbital parameters are exactly the same (like for Mars every 2 years). If you want to haul more, you do another flight that also gets repeated automatically - so now you have 2 trips every 2 years etc.

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

And many people use MechJeb, kOS, kRPC, Kramax Autopilot, Throttle Controlled Avionics, etc.
Because supply and demand.

KSP is a game engine providing the possibility of automated flight, and this possibility is demanded by many users.

Alarm Clock, Infernal Robotics, RemoteTech, and KIS also were not from the very beginning.
But later they had been added either to stock, or as DLC.

So, the flight automation is an important part of the KSP flight system, which somebody uses, somebody doesn't.

Obviously, they won't be implemented in the stock game because the project is finalized, but this does change nothing.

Replace warfare with automation.

Or warp drives.

 

KSP is a game in which you manually fly things you built. Mods existing doesn't change that.

Even more than the game being a peaceful one, flying is part of the core gameplay loop of the game.

Removing kerbals and adding guns and bombs would be a lesser hit to the identity of the game.

 

There are better space colony games, better space resource management games, better games about war in space. The one thing KSP does good is the whole building and flying rockets loop. If you make that secondary you loose what makes Kerbal Kerbal.

If you want any of the things they'd replace flying with you have plenty of options both indie and AAA, from Stationeers to Surviving Mars, literally hundred of games.

If I enjoy flying and they make it optional and not the focus than I loose the only game of its kind.

[Vl3d]

30 minutes ago, MarcAbaddon said:

What if your target orbits changes slightly, e.g. due to numerical inaccuracies or even a very minor change due to impulses transmitted by previous dockings? 

You either abstract away the journey and just show a recorded takeoff and landing at the right time or you automate using consecutive waypoints autopilot. This would allow you to also plan the journey and make modifications to a route.

[kerbiloid]

5 minutes ago, Master39 said:

Replace warfare with automation.

Or warp drives.

Warfare and especially warp drives are used by much smaller number of users, and the warfare is ethically ambiguous in this game paradygm.

While flight automation systems are demanded by much greater part of community, and they were obviously used in most of real spaceflights, including the Apollo flights, let alone all crewless spacecrafts.

5 minutes ago, Master39 said:

KSP is a game in which you manually fly things you built.

KSP is a game in which you fly as you wish, manually or not.

The absence of the flight automation in the stock game means just that the stock game doesn't have a built-in automation.

Edited November 9, 2022 by kerbiloid

[Vl3d]

8 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

KSP is a game in which you manually fly things you built.

Autopilot should be available for any previously flown journey / mission profile. This would also allow the integration of part failures (get notified to intervene if necessary to save a mission, not getting frustrated by too many failures when piloting manually, only some to keep things interesting).

Edited November 9, 2022 by Vl3d

[Bej Kerman]

8 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

This would also allow the integration of part failures (get notified to intervene if necessary to save a mission, not getting frustrated by too many failures when piloting manually, only some to keep things interesting).

Assuming KSP 2 will have part failures. Having failures that are out of the player's control would detract from the game so I don't think that's something to bet on.

[Guest]

22 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

KSP is a game in which you fly as you wish, manually or not.

Stock KSP is a game in which you fly what you built.

If we consider modding than you have to accept that KSP is also a game about war, about warp drives and about many other things.

Removing flying as a core gameplay element is not without consequence. It's like saying that it's not a big deal if shooting at things is optional in the next Doom game.

By the way, there's nothing "ethically ambiguous" about warfare in KSP or in games in general, it just appen to fit the theme and the gameplay of the game badly.

 

24 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

Autopilot should be available for any previously flown journey / mission profile.

That's already confirmed and nobody is arguing about that.

 

25 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

This would also allow the integration of part failures

This would also go against the KSP core concept that if something goes wrong is usually because you made a mistake somewhere.

"Let's remove the part of the gameplay loop in which the player (even an experienced one) is more prone to make errors to replace it with the game rolling the dices in the background on the success of the mission."

Is exactly the kind of consequences I'm talking about.

Feel free to mod the game like you want, I'm not judging, but personally I prefer failing my Mun mission because I landed too hard or failed to get back to orbit because of an inefficient burn rather than failing because while I was a mere spectator of the gameplay a script rolled a D20 and got 3, making my oxygen tank blow up.

[Pthigrivi]

51 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

You either abstract away the journey and just show a recorded takeoff and landing at the right time or you automate using consecutive waypoints autopilot. This would allow you to also plan the journey and make modifications to a route.

Yeah the orbital parameters are never exactly alike so this is harder than it seems. I think what you have to do is start a proving run for a given vessel, make the run--whatever its, fly from a station above minmus to a colony on the Mun and back--and then upon completion the game should know a) what the starting resources are b) what was transferred along the way c) the total dV traveled and d) the converted resource cost of the vessel itself. From this you might be able to use the mission planner to assign future transfers at or less than (or maybe + 5% margin for ease of use) the dV spent on each leg of the demonstration run and schedule repeat resource transfers. 

Edited November 9, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[kerbiloid]

33 minutes ago, Master39 said:

Stock KSP is a game in which you fly what you built.

Does it mean I must place a pilot on my ICBM?

[Caerfinon]

Just now, kerbiloid said:

Does it mean I must place a pilot on my ICBM?

This would certainly provide a sober second thought about deployment of such devices.... 

[Bej Kerman]

1 minute ago, kerbiloid said:

35 minutes ago, Master39 said:

Stock KSP is a game in which you fly what you built.

Does it mean I must place a pilot on my ICBM?

Rephrase?

[shdwlrd]

For those who don't believe in autopilots, I'm just going to leave this here. 

 

[Bej Kerman]

1 minute ago, shdwlrd said:

For those who don't believe in autopilots, I'm just going to leave this here. 

Are you going to explain how this video is relevant to the discussion?

[kerbiloid]

Buran has performed its flight automatically. What can be more spacy?

Edited November 9, 2022 by kerbiloid

[kerbiloid]

46 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Rephrase

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercontinental_ballistic_missile

[Bej Kerman]

1 minute ago, kerbiloid said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercontinental_ballistic_missile

That is the answer I would expect for a question like "What's an ICBM?". However, I do not have much trouble googling things myself when I find I don't know what an acronym stands for or what something means. I asked "Rephrase" because I truly don't understand what you were trying to do with the below question...

52 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Does it mean I must place a pilot on my ICBM?

...or how it had any relevance to Master39's statement.

[kerbiloid]

16 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

That is the answer I would expect for a question like "What's an ICBM?". However, I do not have much trouble googling things myself when I find I don't know what an acronym stands for or what something means. I asked "Rephrase" because I truly don't understand what you were trying to do with the below question...

When I build ICBM in KSP, should I make it crewed instead of automated?

[Bej Kerman]

2 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

19 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

That is the answer I would expect for a question like "What's an ICBM?". However, I do not have much trouble googling things myself when I find I don't know what an acronym stands for or what something means. I asked "Rephrase" because I truly don't understand what you were trying to do with the below question...

When I build ICBM in KSP, should I make it crewed instead of automated?

That's not the subject being discussed.

[Guest]

[snip]

4 hours ago, shdwlrd said:

For those who don't believe in autopilots, I'm just going to leave this here. 

For those who want the game to play itself, I'm just going to remember that we talked about the existence of IRL autopilots several times already. Some of which in this very thread.

In fact I saw that video when it first came out given that I'm subscribed to that channel.

Edited November 9, 2022 by Vanamonde

[shdwlrd]

47 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Are you going to explain how this video is relevant to the discussion?

Sure, it best shows both the capabilities and limitations of an autopilot. Even a non-pilot can use the automatic flight systems to land a plane with the proper instruction. That's the point.

You still need to know how to use any flight automation for it to be effective, but you really don't need to have the skill required. If you watch the video, the person in the pilot's seat still has to tell the flight computer what they want to do and when. It's not a click button and I just land from anywhere. You still need to provide guidance for the flight systems. You are still involved with the decision making. 

In real life, pilots hand fly certain portions of a flight because they have and want to. This is a game, leave the choice up to the player if they want to hand fly or not. What I'm not advocating for is removing the player from the decision making process. Just removing/reducing the physical skill required. 

[Bej Kerman]

10 minutes ago, shdwlrd said:

You still need to know how to use any flight automation for it to be effective, but you really don't need to have the skill required. If you watch the video, the person in the pilot's seat still has to tell the flight computer what they want to do and when. It's not a click button and I just land from anywhere. You still need to provide guidance for the flight systems. You are still involved with the decision making. 

I wouldn't say requiring no skill is a good thing.

[Guest]

3 hours ago, shdwlrd said:

What I'm not advocating for is removing the player from the decision making process. Just removing/reducing the physical skill required. 

I subscribed that school of thought for Elite Dangerous.

Last time I checked they spent years of development to make a crappy planetside 2 clone because players felt there wasn't enough to do in the game.

That happened because the flight system itself is as bare as it can be, why wouldn't it be? It's an optional gameplay mechanic, it's wasted dev time making flying interesting when it's just a secondary consideration. Many players use the autopilot for everything.

The same will happen to KSP, flying is a core pillar of the game, the central part of most challenges, making it optional means replacing that pillar with something else.

Something that there's indubitably a better versions of in other games.

What is it going to be? A crappy version of Surviving Mars? Yet another clone of Factorio? A discount Oxygen Not Included?

 

Disclaimer: I'm not talking against automated routine flights or QOL features like a heading/altitude hold for planes.

I'm specifically talking about "hands off" autopilots that remove taking off, landing, docking and doing randezvous from the game as required skills for the players.

Not because you have to prove you're good enough or anything, but because that's the intended KSP gameplay, if you don't enjoy it you're free to mod the game as you please.

I never reached the end game of Oxygen Not Included, I suck at it, but you won't find me on Klei's forum asking to remove the Hunger system because I haven't figured it out yet and I'm unwilling to put in the required time to master it.

Edited November 9, 2022 by Master39