Does the idea of "Gas planet 2" still have any merit when it comes to ksp2?

[Yellowburn10]

I was one of the many people who had wanted and waited for the addition of the arguably infamous gas planet 2 for ksp1. Since there is now a sequel coming out soon that has the benefit of interstellar travel, and with it a myriad of other planets that could be found among the stars, it really feels that the idea is truly in the trash bin. But, should it? Would anyone really be against having gas planet 2 in the Kerbol system? I mean, it can't be exactly like what was originally planned, otherwise Eeloo would be a moon, and it's been around long enough on it's own that it doesn't feel right stripping it away from it's current position. Also, there is now a proper Saturn analog in the Deb Deb system, so using gp2's original idea of that being a Saturn analog in the Kerbol system seems somewhat redundant. Perhaps then it can be more of an analog to one of the ice giants, Uranus or Neptune? I don't know. But again, I ask, with the introduction of new star systems, does it make sense to still want a gas planet 2? What are your guy's thoughts?

[Drakenred65]

Well considering we never got an ice giant analog to Uranus and Neptune…

 

basically I don’t think it’s in the cards for ksp 1

Edited December 23, 2022 by [email protected]

[shdwlrd]

To plainly answer your question, no. All plans and ideas for KSP1 died when Squad stopped development. When KSP2 went into development, they had no intention of changing the Kerbol system. Also, Intercept has no obligation to add any old, unrealized plans that Squad said in the past.

[GoldForest]

I doubt Gas Planet 2 will come to KSP 2. If it does, it will be way down the line. 

Honestly, at this point, it would be kind of pointless to add.

If they did add it though, one idea they could do is to make it interesting is to make it have a super long eccentric/elliptical orbit. Like the theoretical "Nemesis" star.  They could also add it to Kerbal lore like, "Gas Planet 2 wasn't observed until recently when it's orbit came close to Eeloo's."

[intelliCom]

7 hours ago, shdwlrd said:

When KSP2 went into development, they had no intention of changing the Kerbol system. Also, Intercept has no obligation to add any old, unrealized plans that Squad said in the past.

I recall a previous clip that depicts an extra planet way beyond Eeloo though. It had an orbital path, so I don't believe it's a star. I really do want a Kuiper belt object analogue. Would love Haumea in KSP2, would make for a good challenge for an early update, and probably pretty easy to implement.

Spoiler

I mean, look at my little pancake! He's so cute!

 

Edited December 23, 2022 by intelliCom

[Pthigrivi]

1 minute ago, intelliCom said:

I recall a previous clip that depicts an extra planet way beyond Eeloo though. It had an orbital path, so I don't believe it's a star.

Probably TNO yeah, but I'd also love a far out Neptune/Planet X with a couple of icey moons. 

[Vl3d]

23 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Probably TNO yeah, but I'd also love a far out Neptune/Planet X with a couple of icey moons. 

90% sure there will be at least one new planet in the Kerbol system. Just a hunch.

[TheOrios]

i'm pretty sure glumo is supposed to sorta be gas planet 2

[Drakenred65]

I was under the impression that Glumo was at Debdeb?

[TheOrios]

it is but i'm pretty sure glumo is gas planet 2, but moved to debdeb to avoid adding planets to kerbol

[Scarecrow71]

My uneducated guess is that there will be other gas planets out there beyond the Kerbol system, and that is just for stock once we get that far.  I'm quite positive that we will see all kinds of planet mods for interstellar.

[KerikBalm]

Yes, the idea has merit, no that doesn't mean it will be in the game.

Personally I feel like they would be making a huge mistake by leaving out exploration of outer solar systems and just going straight to interstellar after exploration of the planets from KSP1.

They did say something like that they wouldn't change the KSP1 system other than to update the bodies.

I hope there is enough wiggle room there to mean that the old KSP1 bodies are brought into KSP2, as the inner solar system, but that it doesn't preclude adding an outer solar system.

Really between things like outer planets, the kuiper belt, scattered disk, and port cloud, there is so much more to solar systems than is depicted in KSP1.

KSP2 should try to depict this, and visiting a Sedna analoge (or even a putative planet-9 analogue) would be a good intermediate step between going to Jool, and going to another star 

[tilliepops]

20 hours ago, intelliCom said:

I recall a previous clip that depicts an extra planet way beyond Eeloo though

i noticed that too.

 

[Bej Kerman]

20 hours ago, intelliCom said:

I recall a previous clip that depicts an extra planet way beyond Eeloo though.

Either Intercept is putting pointless details in their animations (bad idea, everything in an animation should be there for a reason) or we're getting a Planet Nine analog.

[Streetwind]

Honestly, I'd prefer more stuff to do on existing planets over just more planets any day.

"Stuff" here meaning interesting reasons to return to the place. In some sense we're getting that with colonies, sure, but I'm pretty sure you won't need a colony on every planet to build yourself an interstellar vessel. You can probably make do with two, or at most three colonies among the stock system's 14-ish colonizable bodies.

I'm thinking more akin to small... "storyline prompts", for the lack of a better word, that give a sense of the Kerbals actively exploring space as opposed to just putting flags and footprints everywhere because they can.

Something akin to, I don't know... let's think about it in terms of the KSP1 contract system. There's no guarantee KSP2 will have anything like it, but it's a frame of reference we all have, so we can understand each other.

You get these "Explore" contracts for each body, like "Explore the Mun", which first has you go there and orbit (if you haven't already), then go there and land and return. Now assume that you've done that for the Mun, and you've also done that for Ike. The game knows this, and because you have both, you now unlock a new unique mission that requires you to land a seismometer in a specific location on the Mun and another in a specific location on Ike and keep them there for a few months, because the scientists ran across a weird and unexpected similarity in the way these moons might have formed, and now they need more data to confirm or reject the hypothesis. It would be a delightfully unexpected reason to do another Mun mission even when you're already going interplanetary - and one that does yield new science even in already-harvested biomes, plus an interesting little story tidbit that lets us learn more about the celestial bodies that we explore.

And how deep does that rabbithole go? Maybe if you completed the moon formation study on Mun and Ike, then something new might unlock at Jool too... or perhaps even in another star system...

This would be far more interesting to me than having a Gas Planet 2 where I'm puttin an unmanned probe into orbit, press an action group to transmit all science, and then switch back to the Space Center View to do something else.

[Bej Kerman]

2 hours ago, Streetwind said:

Honestly, I'd prefer more stuff to do on existing planets over just more planets any day.

"Stuff" here meaning interesting reasons to return to the place. In some sense we're getting that with colonies, sure, but I'm pretty sure you won't need a colony on every planet to build yourself an interstellar vessel. You can probably make do with two, or at most three colonies among the stock system's 14-ish colonizable bodies.

I'm thinking more akin to small... "storyline prompts", for the lack of a better word, that give a sense of the Kerbals actively exploring space as opposed to just putting flags and footprints everywhere because they can.

Something akin to, I don't know... let's think about it in terms of the KSP1 contract system. There's no guarantee KSP2 will have anything like it, but it's a frame of reference we all have, so we can understand each other.

You get these "Explore" contracts for each body, like "Explore the Mun", which first has you go there and orbit (if you haven't already), then go there and land and return. Now assume that you've done that for the Mun, and you've also done that for Ike. The game knows this, and because you have both, you now unlock a new unique mission that requires you to land a seismometer in a specific location on the Mun and another in a specific location on Ike and keep them there for a few months, because the scientists ran across a weird and unexpected similarity in the way these moons might have formed, and now they need more data to confirm or reject the hypothesis. It would be a delightfully unexpected reason to do another Mun mission even when you're already going interplanetary - and one that does yield new science even in already-harvested biomes, plus an interesting little story tidbit that lets us learn more about the celestial bodies that we explore.

And how deep does that rabbithole go? Maybe if you completed the moon formation study on Mun and Ike, then something new might unlock at Jool too... or perhaps even in another star system...

This would be far more interesting to me than having a Gas Planet 2 where I'm puttin an unmanned probe into orbit, press an action group to transmit all science, and then switch back to the Space Center View to do something else.

These aren't mutually exclusive.

[Drakenred65]

5 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

Either Intercept is putting pointless details in their animations (bad idea, everything in an animation should be there for a reason) or we're getting a Planet Nine analog.

Ironically  I was under the impression that a lot of the so called “evidence” for a planet 9 was mostly wishful thinking and statistical clustering.

[Nirgal]

I'm convinced they're going to add a 'planet x' analogue in the outer Kerbol System for 3 reasons:

1. The cartoon teaser video with an orbital trajectory of a celestial body far beyond Eeloo
2. The lore from KSP 1 which was not implemented included a large planet in the frozen depths of Kerbol's orbit, which was the original home world of the intelligent species who left monoliths around the system. KSP2 has these developers from KSP1 on their team.
3. The reason we haven't been explicitly told this planet will be included is because it's supposed to be a surprise for us to discover within the game, using the 'celestial body discovery system' Nate mentioned.

I apologise for not sourcing and providing images of all this (can't be bothered), but it's all out there on the forums if you really want to go down the rabbit hole.

9 hours ago, Streetwind said:

Honestly, I'd prefer more stuff to do on existing planets over just more planets any day.

"Stuff" here meaning interesting reasons to return to the place. In some sense we're getting that with colonies, sure, but I'm pretty sure you won't need a colony on every planet to build yourself an interstellar vessel. You can probably make do with two, or at most three colonies among the stock system's 14-ish colonizable bodies.

I'm thinking more akin to small... "storyline prompts", for the lack of a better word, that give a sense of the Kerbals actively exploring space as opposed to just putting flags and footprints everywhere because they can.

Something akin to, I don't know... let's think about it in terms of the KSP1 contract system. There's no guarantee KSP2 will have anything like it, but it's a frame of reference we all have, so we can understand each other.

You get these "Explore" contracts for each body, like "Explore the Mun", which first has you go there and orbit (if you haven't already), then go there and land and return. Now assume that you've done that for the Mun, and you've also done that for Ike. The game knows this, and because you have both, you now unlock a new unique mission that requires you to land a seismometer in a specific location on the Mun and another in a specific location on Ike and keep them there for a few months, because the scientists ran across a weird and unexpected similarity in the way these moons might have formed, and now they need more data to confirm or reject the hypothesis. It would be a delightfully unexpected reason to do another Mun mission even when you're already going interplanetary - and one that does yield new science even in already-harvested biomes, plus an interesting little story tidbit that lets us learn more about the celestial bodies that we explore.

And how deep does that rabbithole go? Maybe if you completed the moon formation study on Mun and Ike, then something new might unlock at Jool too... or perhaps even in another star system...

This would be far more interesting to me than having a Gas Planet 2 where I'm puttin an unmanned probe into orbit, press an action group to transmit all science, and then switch back to the Space Center View to do something else.

This is excellent, an order of magnitude better than what KSP1 has. This opens up the possibility for a narrative element despite being a complete sandbox game, which players could easily ignore or pursue if so inclined.

[Drakenred65]

A couple of observations.

 

When the animation with of planet unknown was out, planet 9 was still thought to be out there….

From what I’ve read and seen lately it’s beginning to sound like the current thinking is that at best, the evidence for it is a statistical illusion. 
 

That does not mean it’s not  in game,  it may be meant to be a stepping stone to interstellar flight, something that is basically the reason why you build PutPut engines.(seriously there are people who can get to Eeloo using only 1.25 m parts from LKO)  heck it may be a rogue planet, but one that is closer to Kerbin than WISE 0535-7500

Edited December 25, 2022 by [email protected]

[Bej Kerman]

5 minutes ago, [email protected] said:

From what I’ve read and seen lately it’s beginning to sound like the current thinking is that at best, the evidence for it is a statistical illusion

Citation needed

6 minutes ago, [email protected] said:

(seriously there are people who can get to Eeloo using only 1.25 m parts from LKO) 

Would 2.5m parts not be overkill?

[Drakenred65]

34 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Citation needed

Would 2.5m parts not be overkill?

Kevin Napier(university of Michigan) wrote a paper on it about a year ago, trying to find it back, but some other people back orbited the previous objects and found that some of them had their orbits perturbed at least once fairly recently by known planets, indicating that Those objects may not have originally come from the same bit of sky, but may have had there orbits deflected to there current trajectories.(please note that working orbits backward in time is very problematic, especially when you can’t match there current positions to there previous locations like they did with For example Halies comet. 

granted Scott Shepard submitted a new paper on a new group of objects that seem to have come From the same region, ( it’s undergoing peer review this year I think?) and others are working orbits back in time to see how far back they stayed consistent.

 

my thought was more along the lines of it either exists or doesn’t, but planet KeX  or whatever it is, either a Kerbal sister object or a nearby Rogue planet, may be the gateway to interstellar,  as it may be the reason Kerbals built put-put, and either it or put-put (or both) was the reason they went interstellar.

 

Edited December 25, 2022 by [email protected]

[stephensmat]

If KSP2 does well, there could be no end of Planetary options. By 1.0 they'll have Interstellar flight, and at least one more system. The game goes well, they'll add another System in DLC. And a third. Or a fourth. And then the modders will probably add another dozen, just to see if they can.

We'll get every combination of planets/moons/stars eventually. It's just a question of what we'll want to do with any of them. I know people aren't as excited about Colonies as I am, but seriously, I'd looking forward to that more than makes sense.

[Drakenred65]

38 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

 

Would 2.5m parts not be overkill?

Depends, are you using MKS + wolf or other life support/colonization mods?

[Streetwind]

17 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

These aren't mutually exclusive.

This is true in theory, but they might become so when developer time is factored in.

After all, once you give people the expectation that celestial bodies have more than one reason to visit, it significantly raises the work required to add a new celestial body in a way that fulfills these expecations.

[Pthigrivi]

2 hours ago, Streetwind said:

This is true in theory, but they might become so when developer time is factored in.

After all, once you give people the expectation that celestial bodies have more than one reason to visit, it significantly raises the work required to add a new celestial body in a way that fulfills these expecations.

In this case though there are two whole new systems coming each probably with 10 + bodies, so adding an ice giant with a moon or two to Kerbol isn’t really going to make the difference. I quite agree making the surfaces more interesting is critical though. So far the general surface quality looks quite high and they’ve heavily hinted at making anomalies a bigger part of the game. That plus a much more involved resource system and colonies will make the experience much more rewarding. I referenced your other ideas (which I quite like) in a more on-topic thread.