Colonys and hostile environment interaction

[Dragorans]

Colonies need more challenges

Say, a real-life colony would face the planet's hostile environment. A surface colony on Venus wouldn't exactly be easy to make, as it would have to contend with extreme weather.

That's what I suggest. On Duna, you couldn't rely solely on solar panels, since sandstorms could form. On Eve, you have to contend with temperature, pressure and possibly acid storms.

A floating colony on Jool (assuming the atmosphere could be chlorine) can withstand unbelievably powerful winds, and an oxidizing atmosphere. Even planets with little or no atmosphere would not be as safe as it would have to deal with radiation and possible asteroid rains (On planets like Dres this would be frequent, since they are in an asteroid belt, or even moons that are inside the rings of some planet). Also on Jool, colonies on its moons would have to face the radiation that Jool itself possesses.

A good way to prepare is to predict what might happen, with weather stations being built. Weather balloons could also be launched.

This could bring a significantly greater challenge to building colonies. 

Edited November 25, 2022 by Dragorans
Precision changes

[t_v]

These changes would be cool and I would like to play with them… as a mod.

The first reason is that a lot of these require extra background computation, and things like dynamic weather systems are very intense to model. Systems of this magnitude wouldn’t just be a difficulty setting as they are woven into the core gameplay, and they would drastically raise the minimum spec and reduce performance. 
 

The second reason is that while these challenges introduce interesting gameplay considerations on how a colony should be built, it is difficult to convey the distinction between an event the player can mitigate and a random event outside of the player’s control, which are to be avoided in KSP 2. When your Jool colony floating in a jet-stream reaches the turbulent end of it and is ripped apart, the player probably won’t know  that their design was the problem, or even that the problem could be fixed. Also, losing an entire floating colony would just be terrible for the motivation of most people. This is why it should be left as a mod, so the people who want and appreciate the challenge have it, while those whose playing experience would be worsened by it don’t. 
 

also, what are weather ballons going to do against an acid rain? Just joking, but I hope this reply shows some areas for thought. 

[Strawberry]

I think colony management is planned (and should be) geared towards something you leave in the background most of the time, so I dont think sometimes having a weather events that forces you to change a colony then and there would fit. That being said, I would like to see constant things that change the way you build colonies. I really do hope colonies have some form of heat management in play, so for Moho since theres no atmosphere but a lot of heat, you need to focus on minimizing the amount of colony thats contacted by the sun and use lots of radiators, for Eve you need to use lots of heatpumps to pump the heat from the planet to radiators that will conduct that heat to the air, and for Eeloo you need to build your colonies around your industry that way you can harvest the waste heat from them effectively to keep your colony warm. 

[Dragorans]

19 hours ago, Strawberry said:

I think colony management is planned (and should be) geared towards something you leave in the background most of the time, so I dont think sometimes having a weather events that forces you to change a colony then and there would fit. That being said, I would like to see constant things that change the way you build colonies. I really do hope colonies have some form of heat management in play, so for Moho since theres no atmosphere but a lot of heat, you need to focus on minimizing the amount of colony thats contacted by the sun and use lots of radiators, for Eve you need to use lots of heatpumps to pump the heat from the planet to radiators that will conduct that heat to the air, and for Eeloo you need to build your colonies around your industry that way you can harvest the waste heat from them effectively to keep your colony warm. 

 

20 hours ago, t_v said:

These changes would be cool and I would like to play with them… as a mod.

The first reason is that a lot of these require extra background computation, and things like dynamic weather systems are very intense to model. Systems of this magnitude wouldn’t just be a difficulty setting as they are woven into the core gameplay, and they would drastically raise the minimum spec and reduce performance. 
 

The second reason is that while these challenges introduce interesting gameplay considerations on how a colony should be built, it is difficult to convey the distinction between an event the player can mitigate and a random event outside of the player’s control, which are to be avoided in KSP 2. When your Jool colony floating in a jet-stream reaches the turbulent end of it and is ripped apart, the player probably won’t know  that their design was the problem, or even that the problem could be fixed. Also, losing an entire floating colony would just be terrible for the motivation of most people. This is why it should be left as a mod, so the people who want and appreciate the challenge have it, while those whose playing experience would be worsened by it don’t. 
 

also, what are weather ballons going to do against an acid rain? Just joking, but I hope this reply shows some areas for thought. 

 

I see some truth(s)

Mostly about Jool. But there are things that can be implemented without major difficulties. The radiation thing would sure be easy to do. Meteor rain maybe too, but honestly I don't know if it would be computationally heavy Impacts would probably be the most requiring thing.

And ahout Strawberry said about Moho, it would surely be a thing in the game. I would honestly like to see sandstorms but like t_v said it would boost up the minimal requiriments.

 

Just cover the balloons with gold.

 

 

 

 

[darthgently]

On 11/25/2022 at 11:24 AM, Strawberry said:

I think colony management is planned (and should be) geared towards something you leave in the background most of the time, so I dont think sometimes having a weather events that forces you to change a colony then and there would fit. That being said, I would like to see constant things that change the way you build colonies. I really do hope colonies have some form of heat management in play, so for Moho since theres no atmosphere but a lot of heat, you need to focus on minimizing the amount of colony thats contacted by the sun and use lots of radiators, for Eve you need to use lots of heatpumps to pump the heat from the planet to radiators that will conduct that heat to the air, and for Eeloo you need to build your colonies around your industry that way you can harvest the waste heat from them effectively to keep your colony warm. 

Caves/excavation on Moho for shade  given solar proximity and day length would be stellar.  I don't think we'll be getting caves.  But maybe a mod could provide a way to build a regolith berm over portions of a colony hobbit style