KSP2 Tracking Station and map view suggestion.

[Sev]

Since this is the official KSP forum I figured I’d post this suggestion here in the small hope that someone somewhere might see it and implement it. It seems to me it would be a relatively easy thing to do and could be something you choose to enable or disable on starting a new game in KSP 2.

I love KSP, as we all do, but for me the one thing which ruined the sense of exploration (which is what the game is all about surely) was the fact that as soon as you go into the tracking station or the map view to create a manoeuvre node you see all the planets and moons. You can’t avoid knowing that Duna is red, Jool is green,  and all the rest. In a game about the wonders of exploration this defeats the purpose entirely and obliterates the realism and sense of awe when seeing them once you get to them for the first time.

Therefore I suggest, in the hope someone somewhere involved in KSP 2 sees this, that instead of showing the celestial bodies as they are now in the tracking station and map view right from the start you instead you have a question mark “?” in the place they should be and that only once you actually enter their SOI does each one appear as how they are represented in KSP. Give me the sense of not knowing what I’m going to see until I actually get there, please.

Thanks.

[Gargamel]

Moved to KSP2 Suggestions 

[Pthigrivi]

9 hours ago, Sev said:

Since this is the official KSP forum I figured I’d post this suggestion here in the small hope that someone somewhere might see it and implement it. It seems to me it would be a relatively easy thing to do and could be something you choose to enable or disable on starting a new game in KSP 2.

I love KSP, as we all do, but for me the one thing which ruined the sense of exploration (which is what the game is all about surely) was the fact that as soon as you go into the tracking station or the map view to create a manoeuvre node you see all the planets and moons. You can’t avoid knowing that Duna is red, Jool is green,  and all the rest. In a game about the wonders of exploration this defeats the purpose entirely and obliterates the realism and sense of awe when seeing them once you get to them for the first time.

Therefore I suggest, in the hope someone somewhere involved in KSP 2 sees this, that instead of showing the celestial bodies as they are now in the tracking station and map view right from the start you instead you have a question mark “?” in the place they should be and that only once you actually enter their SOI does each one appear as how they are represented in KSP. Give me the sense of not knowing what I’m going to see until I actually get there, please.

Thanks.

I wish I could source it but there is some evidence this will be a mechanic, certainly for for worlds beyond the kerbol system but possibly also for those within it. 

Edited May 16, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[CFYL]

In a somehow "real" situation:

Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were discovered by human eyes and recognized as "planets" that do not stick to the same place, relative to stars, in the night sky.

The moons of Mars: Phobos, with a diameter of only 22km, was discovered by Asaph Hall in 1877. Deimos, with a diameter of only 7.3km, was discovered by Asaph Hall in 1877, a few days earlier than the discovery of Phobos.

The moons of Jupiter: The biggest moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto were discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610.

The moons of Saturn: Titan was discovered by Christiaan Huyghens in 1655. In 1907, a Spanish astronomer Comas Solà became the first to point out that Titan may have an atmosphere. In 1944 Gerard Kuiper confirmed that methane exists in Titan's atmosphere.

Uranus was discovered before history could track its obervers, but it was considered to be a star for a long time. In 1781, Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel pointed out, vaguely so that he would not be criticized harshly, that this "star" moves across the night sky and may be a comet. In 1783, Pierre-Simon Laplace confirmed that this "star" is a planet. Then it got the name "Uranus".

Neptune was observed by Galileo Galilei in 1612, but he recognized it as a star. Inconsistency between the observed location of Uranus and the calculated location of Uranus was recognized in the 19th century. In 1843, John Couch Adams calculated the orbit of "a celestial body which caused the change in Uranus orbit". In 1846, Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier gave his calculation. On 23/09/1846, Neptune was discovered. Its location was less than 1° off course from Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier's prediction. It was later proved that John Couch Adams's calculations were also correct and accurate, but astronomers refused to use his data at first.

Many celestial bodies in the Kuiper Belt were discovered in the 20th century.

Asteroids and comets have a long history of observation. The biggest of them: Ceres was observed by Giuseppe Piazzi on the first day of the 19th century (01/01/1801). Carolus Fridericus Gauss calculated its orbit in 1801. On the last day of 1801 (31/12/1801), Olbers confirmed Gauss's calculations by observing Ceres at the exact location given by Gauss.

Excluding the discovery of Titan's atmosphere, all of these discoveries were made prior to the 20th century, and the confirmation of Titan's atmosphere was made before the first sounding rocket was launched in America in the autumn of 1945. Those discoveries were mostly"I saw a moving dot in the sky". However, very vague surface features have been recorded about the 5 inner planets, especially Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and its Rings.

I personally would prefer a low-resolution "ball" (like a "very vague" Kopernicus ScaledVersion) instead of a question mark hanging there in the sky prior to spacecraft vistis, or implement a system like SCANSAT for acquiring surface features in detail. 

Edited May 16, 2022 by AllenLi

[CFYL]

[snip]

Edited May 16, 2022 by AllenLi
No. I thought about it again and decided to start a new thread. https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/208205-visual-distant-object-enhacement/

[Rutabaga22]

20 hours ago, AllenLi said:

I personally would prefer a low-resolution "ball" (like a "very vague" Kopernicus ScaledVersion) instead of a question mark hanging there in the sky prior to spacecraft vistis, or implement a system like SCANSAT for acquiring surface features in detail. 

This would be awesome! when I first started KSP and found the tracking station, evverywhere I could go was instantly there for me to see.

[Sev]

On 5/16/2022 at 3:36 AM, Pthigrivi said:

I wish I could source it but there is some evidence this will be a mechanic, certainly for for worlds beyond the kerbol system but possibly also for those within it. 

I very much hope it is!

21 hours ago, AllenLi said:

I personally would prefer a low-resolution "ball" (like a "very vague" Kopernicus ScaledVersion) instead of a question mark hanging there in the sky prior to spacecraft vistis, or implement a system like SCANSAT for acquiring surface features in detail. 

I would definitely prefer this to a question mark for the planets, with the moons just being a featureless ball; definitely.

On an unrelated point connected to the rest of your post (very nice synopsis!):

Le Verrier, who calculated where Neptune would be, also calculated that because of the, at the time, unexplained discrepancy in the orbit of Mercury and where it was believed it should be claimed with full certainty after Neptune was discovered that there was also another planet orbiting closer to the sun inside Mercury’s orbit. He named this planet Vulcan, and 120 years or so later Gene Roddenberry resurrected it for Star Trek  

[WisconsinWintergreen]

I'm also interested in this as a mechanic. If not for the Kerbol system, at least for other solar systems. IRL we don't really have any pictures of any planets in other star systems, so it makes sense that we wouldn't know much about what orbits other stars.

I suggest that we start out knowing where all the stars of these systems are and what the statistics of those stars are, but we have to perform some activity to be able to catalouge the planets and objects around that star. 

Obviously as we play the game more, when we start a new save we'll be able to find all the objects with ease and be super prepared, but the first time playing and discovering planets and systems ought to be really cool.

[magnemoe]

On 5/22/2022 at 6:20 PM, WisconsinWintergreen said:

I'm also interested in this as a mechanic. If not for the Kerbol system, at least for other solar systems. IRL we don't really have any pictures of any planets in other star systems, so it makes sense that we wouldn't know much about what orbits other stars.

I suggest that we start out knowing where all the stars of these systems are and what the statistics of those stars are, but we have to perform some activity to be able to catalouge the planets and objects around that star. 

Obviously as we play the game more, when we start a new save we'll be able to find all the objects with ease and be super prepared, but the first time playing and discovering planets and systems ought to be really cool.

Then you build this 

You should have telescopes who make WEB look like an toy as its hundreds of meter in diameter , and you build it at Jool L2. 
In short you should know as much about an an distant solar system as we did about our own in 1950 then you launch. Probably less about smaller stuff