How is KSP 2 going to handle long duration manned missions?

[Luriss]

Now this of course depends on how complex the kerbal side of the game is, but long duration (~50+ years) missions are no small feat. Of course there a few ways it might be done.

1) KSP 2 may have some sort of cryogenic freezing system where you can just put your kerbals in stasis. This would probably be the most simple system that just boils down to managing power and resource consumption.

2) Assuming there is no cryo in the game, you'd have to rely on either really long lived kerbals, or generation ships. Now this opens a whole new can of worms because your interstellar ship is now essentially a completely self sufficient colony with engines strapped to it.
Gameplay wise this would probably just reduce down to designing a ship to support x kerbals (+ growth) for y amount of years. This however I'd argue leaves a bit to be desired.


Although I don't expect it to be in the game, the social aspect of slapping kerbals on a one way trip out of the system is just as important as the engineering of the ship that carries them. In fact it dictates the engineering of the ship.

Say your 50 year long interstellar mission requires you to bring 100 engineers. Now unless you can find candidates that have both no familial ties and no qualms about leaving their homeworld forever, you're going to have to deal with families (read, extra food and living space.) What was previously 100 kerbals can now be as high as 400.
Furthermore, standard of living. Kerbals might be fine living in a 0g tin can for a week or so, but not so much for 50 years. This extends beyond simple housing as well, amenities such as recreation and schooling would now also be required (those aforementioned families might include young children). In engineering terms, this is all added mass, power usage, deltaV requirement, and life support in exchange for the capabilites and benefit the extra crew provides.

To put it briefly, morale, I'd argue, is kinda important. I hope it finds its way into the game somehow. What do you all think?

Edited January 1, 2023 by Luriss
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[regex]

They're going to sit in their external seats with a big ol' grin on their face for hundreds of years, just like how they'd do if you left them in Eeloo orbit and forgot about them.

[Drakenred65]

Right now all we know is that we have the properly working time warp physics. For some of the longer flights? Time dialation will have some impact on how long it takes to fly, but only at far higher Sustained Gload and duration than I’m expecting  to be in game being perfectly honest…maybee a later drive?
 

if the average speed is .1 C your looking at ~40 years flight time and I think you age I think 38 or 39 years.

Edited January 1, 2023 by Drakenred65

[Luriss]

31 minutes ago, Drakenred65 said:

Right now all we know is that we have the properly working time warp physics. For some of the longer flights? Time dialation will have some impact on how long it takes to fly, but only at far higher Sustained Gload and duration than I’m expecting  to be in game being perfectly honest…maybee a later drive?
 

if the average speed is .1 C your looking at ~40 years flight time and I think you age I think 38 or 39 years.

I'd argue that 40 years is even a stretch in terms of an interstellar mission. You'd be sending 20 somethings and then tasking them with colonization in their 60s. You'd need at lest one generation of kerbals.

[Drakenred65]

4 hours ago, Luriss said:

I'd argue that 40 years is even a stretch in terms of an interstellar mission. You'd be sending 20 somethings and then tasking them with colonization in their 60s. You'd need at lest one generation of kerbals.

Oops sorry I thought that was obvious I was thinking the same because this is remotly realistic then your looking at 40 To 400 years with less than1-2 % time dilation from relativistic effects.

[Bej Kerman]

7 hours ago, Luriss said:

1) KSP 2 may have some sort of cryogenic freezing system where you can just put your kerbals in stasis. This would probably be the most simple system that just boils down to managing power and resource consumption.

No sci-fi tech will be in KSP 2 from what the devs have said.

7 hours ago, Luriss said:

2) Assuming there is no cryo in the game, you'd have to rely on either really long lived kerbals, or generation ships. Now this opens a whole new can of worms because your interstellar ship is now essentially a completely self sufficient colony with engines strapped to it.
Gameplay wise this would probably just reduce down to designing a ship to support x kerbals (+ growth) for y amount of years. This however I'd argue leaves a bit to be desired.

Er, your assumption of how it's going to work leaves a bit to be desired. We don't know how the devs have done it.

[Drakenred65]

Cryo tech already exists, as is research on it.  Granted for most if not all currently stored this way, it’s most likely an expensive alternative to burial, but on the other hand their is ongoing research into things like Organ preservation and hybernation.

[Drakenred65]

Also. Kerbals are not Humans.

 

and we do have a number of species who are extreme hybernaters such as Cyclorana alboguttata

Edited January 1, 2023 by Drakenred65

[Pthigrivi]

I don't think there's any particular need for cryotech. Its dubious and doesn't really add anything. At 10-20%C players could be to Debdeb in a few decades. For the purposes of the game you could just consider Kerbals immortal I think. I would very much like to see a simple LS system though. If late-game, interstellar LS tech got you up to 99.5% or 99.8% efficient you could keep them going with 20t of equipment and food. On the scale of the vessels we've seen that sounds pretty reasonable. It also creates interesting gameplay trade-offs between speed, efficiency, and overall mass. Things like schools and social dynamics are interesting but probably best left to mods.

Edited January 1, 2023 by Pthigrivi

[Streetwind]

There were dev statements along the lines of "the need to keep Kerbals alive will be a thing at some point".

You could read into this that there'll be a stock life support mechanic, but I'm not so sure about that. It could simply be that those game mechanics that specifically deal with long-term in-space habitation - i.e. colonies and interstellar spacecraft - will require you to include special parts for life support.  But not regular missions, and not in the sense of having actual resources onboard.

For example, a colony might not be "complete" until it has a greenhouse. An interstellar craft might not be "complete" until it has cryopods. Or whatever else you can imagine. As long as these parts are present, the life support requirement is ticked off, and everything is fine.

That way the game would not need to bother the starting player with budgeting life support resources on their first Mun flyby. But it would have an answer for the question that started this thread. And if players want more, there will most assuredly be mods.

(All of the above is, of course, pure speculation.)

[Zozaf Kerman]

Maybe kerbals just don’t care and will sit there happy for hundreds of years on end.

[stephensmat]

Maybe that's part of the Progression/Tech Tree. To get to this planet, you need a Radiation Shield. To get to this planet, you need a Satellite Network to warn of Solar Flares. To set up a colony here you need a greenhouse, because we can't use local soil.

Not exactly life support, but things that matter in long-term flights. Things that hold you back until you do the work.

[Drakenred65]

Guys, this is a game where if you really want to you can fly a stock Mk 1 command pod as the only actual crewed holding part with no problem to each and every planet.

 

 

[K^2]

Kerbals are like lobsters. They don't die of old age. Only from accidents. That makes them perfectly adapted for long interstellar voyages. You just have to pack some board games so that they have something to do.

[Pthigrivi]

3 hours ago, Drakenred65 said:

Guys, this is a game where if you really want to you can fly a stock Mk 1 command pod as the only actual crewed holding part with no problem to each and every planet.

Which is honestly not great. KSP1 was very inventive but the scope never really expanded to even to interplanetary travel. The tech tree was exhausted within KSOI, there were no real in-game flight tools for interplanetary transfers, and so its of very little surprise that few players went farther than Minmus. LS was out of scope because the game was never really designed around traveling to let alone living off the land on other planets. KSP2 seems be about exactly that. The plan is to add colonies, likely over a dozen new fuel types and resources, complex prospecting, harvesting and processing chains, all with an eye toward orbitally constructing interstellar vessels. To add that much and pay no attention to LS would be slightly baffling. 

 

8 hours ago, Streetwind said:

You could read into this that there'll be a stock life support mechanic, but I'm not so sure about that. It could simply be that those game mechanics that specifically deal with long-term in-space habitation - i.e. colonies and interstellar spacecraft - will require you to include special parts for life support.  But not regular missions, and not in the sense of having actual resources onboard.

For example, a colony might not be "complete" until it has a greenhouse. An interstellar craft might not be "complete" until it has cryopods. Or whatever else you can imagine. As long as these parts are present, the life support requirement is ticked off, and everything is fine.

That way the game would not need to bother the starting player with budgeting life support resources on their first Mun flyby. But it would have an answer for the question that started this thread. And if players want more, there will most assuredly be mods.

I think its worth talking about closed and open LS in real terms here. I’ll say off out of the gate what you’re describing is possible but would be incredibly disappointing. The reason I say that isn’t because I think the game should be more complicated; Im somewhat notorious in my opinion that the game should be indeed as simple as it can be. There are broad swaths of needless, tedious elements like the class system and contracts that I would cut entirely. The reason I say that is introducing bare-bones criteria parts doesn’t create anything. Its not a genuine game mechanic. There’s no optimization or underlying dynamic design idea that challenges players to seek creative solutions. Its just a checklist. Its just a thing you have to do without alternate solutions or tradeoffs or anything thats worth thinking about, and if its not worth thinking about it shouldn’t exist. 
 

At the very least one might consider closed loop LS. This would be basically a quota system. You add LS parts that support X kerbals and if the numbers line up they remain steady-state and happy.  Given the way nearly all city builders work this is a pretty solid foundation for something like habitation space. Each module has a habitation rating and if you have habitation equal to crew size everyone’s happy.  The same would be true on colonies. Its like adding more housing, and the more consistent rules are between colonies and vessels the less complicated and frustrating the game is because the same rules apply everywhere. Players don’t need to learn two sets of rules. There’s just one underlying principle to understand.  
 

But this still isn’t really a dynamic, not in the way all of the other facets of KSP are. Its not like the tradeoff between thrust and efficiency with engines. Its not like the weight and output dynamic that PV panels and batteries have. What makes KSP interesting are the design puzzles. Thats how resources should behave—as a complex relationship between traversing space, landing where you mean to, and having the energy and heat dissipation to collect what you need and deliver it somewhere useful. 
 

Thats also why you really want LS not just to be a checklist or static mass penalty, but a thing that depletes over time. Including the concept of time fundamentally changes the way you think about space and the way you think about its hostility and the value of life. It changes the way you plan and execute missions. It changes your relationship to care for these fragile little green creatures. They aren’t just a heavy experiment part. They’re beings that require care. 
 

A single depletable LS resource also allows you to delve into the concept of efficiency and generation. It becomes a dynamic and gameable parameter that spurs unique, creative problem solving. Planets and moons with simple harvestable resources become safe harbors capable of growing your populations. Greenhouses and rehydrators might greatly increase the efficiency with which food is consumed so that mass penalties don’t scale linearly with longer missions and larger crews. If water and oxygen are considered recycled and all you’re worried about is food you can also easily include a grace period without consequences so LS isn’t a concern on early and short missions, but slowly scales in with progression. 
 

I honestly think LS is one of the biggest bang-for-buck elements a game like this could promise, and while there’s no need to make it punishing or overcomplicated it would be crazy to ignore it or give it short shrift. 

Edited January 2, 2023 by Pthigrivi

[Drakenred65]

27 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Which is honestly not great.   

Not disagreeing with that. But then they drew inspiration from NASA And we to date have built exactly -0- maned interplanetary ships. We barley managed putting a purpose  built LLM on the moon.  I’ve seen proposals including Lunar Gemini which was a bloat boat compared to the LLM