Materials and the circular economy

[Strawberry]

A thing that makes material distribution balance tricky is that as you go outwards from a solar system, lighter elements become more common and heavier elements less common, and the heavier elements tend to be the more valuable ones, lets change that. A resource economy that would promote moving goods to the inner planets then to the outer planets but not force people to play this way would lead to a positive feedback loop that promotes widespread growth. The materials that are useful for inner planets are easy, these would be your source of radioactive materials and metals, the outer planets material usefulness is a bit more tricky but not impossible. The two main obvious outer planets have great concentrations of hydrogen and helium,  hydrogen works as rocket/fusion fuel, helium works as coolant, and helium 3 in specific works as fusion fuel. Beryllium (A great neutron reflector), should also be able to be found in higher concentrations on the outer planets, and lithium can be concentrated through ingenious rocks from water rich magmas, meaning that lithium should be especially common on  far off water rich moons with tidal heating (These same pegmatites can also be a good source of beryllium). Now that we have a good playground of resources to mess with, we just have to put them all together in a way that makes things play nicely. 

Inner planets get far more sun, tend to be tidally locked, and also tend to have high amounts of heavy elements. This means that solar on these planets is dirt cheap on these planets, and the raw resources for making these solar plants are nearby. There's just one catch though, these planets are hot. While normal radiators will work for small colonies, you'll need helium to serve as a coolant for larger ones, and if you wish to do anything with superconductors, you will need helium there as well.  This means that the growth of colonies on inner planets is constrained by the growth of colonies on the outer planets. The inner planets will serve as your manufacturing hubs, these colonies will have very cheap power, meaning that your energy intensive production will be best suited here (such as production of metallic hydrogen and advanced components).  Before you unlock fusion, the inner planets will also be great sources of radioactive materials to power your outer planets as well. The outer planets will be naturally smaller, but serve to support your industrial hubs and will be a source of rocket fuel to enable this trade. Without the rocket fuel and coolant that these outer colonies generate, its much harder to support your civilization. The outer planets initially will depend on fission reactors with fuel from inner planets, however once you unlock fusions, things get slightly easier. You can now source the fuel for your power locally, however the advanced materials to build these fusion reactors is best obtained from inner planets, meaning that your growth of power for outer planets is constrained by your inner planets. 

The main upside of your central planets is the range, they don't specialize in any one resource meaning that these planets are way easier to make self sufficient then your outer and inner planets. This means that these central planets will tend to be your first colonization targets for new solar systems as it will give you a much easier time with supply chains. Central planets are also good sources of carbon dioxide and water, this means they're good for growing crops and they are easy to generate methane on, which means colonies on these planets will have a source of cheap and versatile rocket fuel (which gives them another edge for early colonization). 

Edited October 24, 2022 by Strawberry

[JadeOfMaar]

@Strawberry This is a very nice proposal you have here. I didn't really have something to respond with at first, but now I'd like to comment that this post contributed some to the idea in my mod idea post for interplanetary logistics. My realization, at least granted the way my train of thought went, is that employing this circular economy is going to be its own mini-game and nearly require a scene change for the overview due to how much you'll have to see and consider once you've deployed the infrastructure for this at a handful or more of celestial bodies. You can read it here if you're interested:

 

[Pthigrivi]

God I love this. I wonder in what direction they'll be taking the whole resource processing and transportation system and just how many raw resources vs end-use resources they'll end up with. I think they'd be wise to simplify this quite a bit, but I do like the idea that there would be incentives for interplanetary trade. I think this IRL abundance factor could drive design decisions, but for the sake of simplifying the game I think its almost easier to take it body by body and create some clever synergies. For instance Ike might be higher in Uranium, but Duna might have more volatiles for producing methalox and LS. Similarly Eve and Laythe might have harvestable Xenon, but Gilly and the Mun have more He3 pushing some interesting strategic forks in how you plan your colony growth. 

It gets complicated though. Do we need a separate end-resource for coolant? What about metals vs plastics as raw building materials? Should we separate out He3 and Deuterium? Enceladus is apparently very high in Deuterium, so that could be a good proxy for Vall, but when we're designing do those require separate tanks? Can fusion engines and reactors use either? 

I think these are all very difficult design questions when not just trying to make a game that talks about science but also one that is simple and manageable to play. There's a happy medium, I just don't know where it is. 

[Strawberry]

I think manufacturing chains that are more then like 2 layers deep wouldnt really fit ksp2, because transporting things between a colony doesnt seem like a massive hurdle, and this means that this chain isnt really meaningful because the actual difficulty is transporting those raw ingredients, so why not just use those raw ingredients instead? The main reason for manufacturing base components to me would be for a few generic construction components, stuff like magnetic composite, structural unit, etc. I think one thing that would help a lot with opening up gameplay doors is substitute goods, for example if you want magnets for your fusion reactor, you could either use neobydium from an inner planet, manufacture superconductors, or mine  tetrataenite from asteroids. If there was a system in place to where the materials that you used had an effect on the performance of the creation, I think that would be really cool however it may be too complicated, but it would also introduce a lot of interesting decisions for players, sure supercritical co2 may be a more effective coolant for bulk applications, but the piping you need for it is far more costly, and helium can get things down to a far lower temperature.

I think where a resource fits, a planet should have it, even if its in very low quantities. Some iron would fit on eeloo in the cracks, but itd be very low amounts. The goal of diverse resources isnt to force you to colonize specific areas, its to pull you to colonize them. I feel like He3 on the mun would fit, but Eeloo should be the better place in bulk just because its harder to colonize and wont have too much else going for it. There's definitely something you have to adjust planet by planet (for example dres should be a good source of methalox regardless of anything because its themed as the first planet people will tend to go to/colonize by being a mars clone), however these resource disrepancies should come naturally because these resource disrepancies have a huge role on planet formation (look at how nearly moon on planets past jupiter is basically just a snowball with rare exception). 

The tricky thing for resource balance with jool is that its inherently pretty diverse, so you dont want the meta to just be colonize jool and no where else because you can get everything there. The big downside of Jool would be lackluster energy due to not much local nuclear power, nor much solar, but those issues are worse on Eeloo. I feel like deuterium on Vall should be an okay amount but still not easy, but you give Laythe low amounts of co2 (thus slowing down open air food production, unless you put in the energy to concentrate the co2) and Vall plenty of co2 ice, thus giving Vall a unique draw to colonize, and adding an additional challenge to laythe colonization. Also you should probably be able to filter out heavy water from bodies of ocean on laythe, while this would be more energy intensive then mining for it on Vall, you could also use local wind power here instead of having to use foreign nuclear power for Vall (or maybe export the power you generate on laythe for Vall based mining?)