Would interstellar be fun?

[RocketRockington]

Not having both high TWR and high ISP isn't just a KSP balance thing, it's a 'thats how physics works' thing.  Both of them require more energy - in particular ISP scales to the square of the energy involved - better engineering can't really get anyone outside that mousetrap.  Hence why interstellar vessels, even slowboat ones, need ways to dissapate energy inefficiencies (heat) elsewhere.  This is something the Expanse just handwaves - the Epstein drive is just BS, whereas much of the rest of it is fairly sold hard sci fi.

Tbh Id guess Uber Entertainment pitched interstellar as a new feature for KSP2 without really thinking through all the ramifications/difficulties of it (just like multiplayer)  and now they're stuck trying to make a game with the promised features and making very poor progress.  

[Bej Kerman]

35 minutes ago, herbal space program said:

it takes the physical simulation entirely out of the equation

It doesn't.

 

17 minutes ago, RocketRockington said:

Not having both high TWR and high ISP isn't just a KSP balance thing, it's a 'thats how physics works' thing

Except for when it's not a "that's physics" thing

[Alexoff]

Interstellar flights are almost as interesting as interplanetary flights. It will just be necessary to turn on the next degree of warp. But since today we have been shown from all science a whole one redesigned part from 2020, and from the whole heating there is a whole one screenshot, then we will have to wait about the same amount of interstellar flights in KSP2 as in real life.

[herbal space program]

1 hour ago, RocketRockington said:

Tbh Id guess Uber Entertainment pitched interstellar as a new feature for KSP2 without really thinking through all the ramifications/difficulties of it (just like multiplayer)  and now they're stuck trying to make a game with the promised features and making very poor progress.  

It seems to me like it's been on the table for quite some time and I'm not really sure when Uber entered the picture, but definitely there is a lot for them to think through if they want to implement it in a way that doesn't cause all kinds of problems in terms of gameplay. Given how long it's already been, I would rather wait longer than get something that ends up being just Meh, or worse turns the game into something really different from what it was. It's a fine line for them to walk. I've made it pretty clear above that for my part, having the other star systems at a distance  of something like  100 times the distance from Kerbol to  Eeloo rather than actual light years away seems like it would make it both plenty challenging to get there and still possible without invoking potentially game-breaking OP technology. Others' mileage may vary!

Edited June 8, 2023 by herbal space program

[Alexoff]

40 minutes ago, herbal space program said:

100 times the distance from Kerbol to  Eeloo rather than actual light years away seems like it would make it both plenty challenging to get there and still possible without invoking potentially game-breaking OP technology

To fly to another star, you need a little more dV than to fly to Eeloo. Kerbals do not age, they do not need food, water and oxygen, for them interstellar flight is not a problem.

[shdwlrd]

2 hours ago, herbal space program said:

It doesn't really feel like KSP to me anymore because it eliminates all pretense that you are actually flying a physical ship, i.e. it takes the physical simulation entirely out of the equation. Maybe if you have to at least start your burn under full physics before you can set it on rails it wouldn't bug me so much.

How else would you start your burn? Make a trajectory correction? There's no auto pilot. 

46 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

To fly to another star, you need a little more dV than to fly to Eeloo

That's an understatement. 

[darthgently]

5 minutes ago, shdwlrd said:

51 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

To fly to another star, you need a little more dV than to fly to Eeloo

That's an understatement

Is it?

[herbal space program]

4 hours ago, Alexoff said:

To fly to another star, you need a little more dV than to fly to Eeloo. Kerbals do not age, they do not need food, water and oxygen, for them interstellar flight is not a problem.

I'm guessing it probably takes a couple of km/sec on top of a Hohman transfer trajectory to Eeloo to actually get on any kind of a Kerbol escape trajectory, but I'm too lazy to do the experiment right now since KSP2 won't let you place maneuver nodes that exceed current dV.  More importantly wrt my argument, that would be technically true no matter how far away you put the other star system.  The question is how long will it take you to get there?  If you take your minimal escape trajectory and add another 2km/s to it to take out of Kerbol's SOI (something quite easy to do with current tach), it will take you ~1200 Kerbal years to reach a body that is 100 times more distant than Eeloo. If you add another 200km/s, it will take you 12 instead, which is an amount of time that will allow you to keep up various other activities while you wait, which in turn to me is the critical element to make interstellar travel something that can be integrated into the whole rest of the game, including in-system missions in other star systems, rather than just representing a singular end state. Having said that, maybe 100 times the distance to Eeloo is actually too short  to make it a sufficiently new tech-requiring thing to do. I mean I'm just spitballing here,  but I have to believe that the sweet spot for general gameplay lies much closer to that value than to anything resembling actual interstellar distances in the Sun's neighborhood. And of course you can always bring in magical engines, but just like the Transporter in Star Trek, those are sure to introduce embarrassing plot holes IMO. So TLDR version,  it's a tough call!

3 hours ago, shdwlrd said:

How else would you start your burn? Make a trajectory correction? There's no auto pilot. 

This is really not a hill I want to die on. You may be perfectly right, and they may well implement unfocused boosting on rails in a manner that won't chap my hide at all. My issues about interstellar are really much more around the other stuff I was talking about

Edited June 9, 2023 by herbal space program

[Alexoff]

7 hours ago, herbal space program said:

The question is how long will it take you to get there?  If you take your minimal escape trajectory and add another 2km/s to it to take out of Kerbol's SOI (something quite easy to do with current tach), it will take you ~1200 Kerbal years to reach a body that is 100 times more distant than Eeloo. If you add another 200km/s, it will take you 12 instead, which is an amount of time that will allow you to keep up various other activities while you wait, which in turn to me is the critical element to make interstellar travel something that can be integrated into the whole rest of the game, including in-system missions in other star systems, rather than just representing a singular end state.

In ksp1, a flight to other planets takes months and years, although each of us is able to significantly reduce the flight time to days and weeks by spending a few more kilometers of the dV. But for some reason, I practically did not see such missions. During the flight to another planet, you can engage in other missions, for example on the Mun. And instead of more fuel and less time, most will take more payload.

[herbal space program]

6 hours ago, Alexoff said:

In ksp1, a flight to other planets takes months and years, although each of us is able to significantly reduce the flight time to days and weeks by spending a few more kilometers of the dV. But for some reason, I practically did not see such missions. During the flight to another planet, you can engage in other missions, for example on the Mun. And instead of more fuel and less time, most will take more payload.

If you have a mission going to Jool on a 3-year Hohmann transfer orbit, you are probably going to run out of interesting things to do inside the Kerbin SOI long before it gets there. That doesn't matter so much however, because there are plenty of other interplanetary missions you can work on that will have time scales similar to your Jool mission, so it will be easy to keep several balls in the air as you advance the clock in relatively small increments of each mission needing some intervention. The ability to do that makes for much more interesting gameplay, but it will break down completely if you have one mission that takes 1200 years while all the other ones available take 10 years or less. That is my whole point  -- that the disparity in time scales between the different things you may be doing at various stages of the game needs to be kept within reasonable limits, or else the experience just becomes one-dimensional. I really think they need to figure out how to avoid that without throwing other aspects of the game out of whack, and thus the tension I see between reducing the interstellar spatial scale and introducing brokenly OP technology. Anyway, I think I've belabored this point quite enough. Time to go play the game some!

[shdwlrd]

15 hours ago, herbal space program said:

This is really not a hill I want to die on. You may be perfectly right, and they may well implement unfocused boosting on rails in a manner that won't chap my hide at all. My issues about interstellar are really much more around the other stuff I was talking about

I don't blame you.

The thing no one wants to understand; the late game drives and engines are based on theoretical designs. (MH engines included, think of Nertea's near future mod) None of the late game engines have/can be built/tested/flown because of human politics or gaps within human technology.

This is a game where a fictional society that doesn't have those limitations. So if they want to build a nuclear detonation pulse drive, they can. If they want to build a fusion impulse drive, they can. If they want to use a linear particle accelerator for a drive, they can.

As I said earlier in this thread, interstellar travel is going to suck. It's going to take a LONG time. It's not going to be fast, practical, or easy. It's just going to be possible, that's it. (Much like rowing a boat across the Atlantic. It's possible, but it's slow, energy intensive, not very practical now a days.) There won't be any instance gratification with interstellar travel in KSP2. You will have to be patient.

[Alexoff]

2 hours ago, herbal space program said:

The ability to do that makes for much more interesting gameplay, but it will break down completely if you have one mission that takes 1200 years while all the other ones available take 10 years or less.

Something tells me that no one plans to entertain us with activities during interstellar flights. One could dream of such a thing a couple of years ago, but today it is too naive.

[herbal space program]

4 hours ago, shdwlrd said:

There won't be any instance gratification with interstellar travel in KSP2. You will have to be patient.

This game selects pretty strongly for people who have patience! Still, I think they have lots of options for exactly how to implement this feature, and I'm hoping they'll choose one that won't moot the other parts of the game.

[shdwlrd]

2 hours ago, herbal space program said:

This game selects pretty strongly for people who have patience! Still, I think they have lots of options for exactly how to implement this feature, and I'm hoping they'll choose one that won't moot the other parts of the game.

And don't forget creative problem solving.  Over the years of development, there have been some hints on how they want to alleviate the crawl of interstellar travel. I'm guessing that there will be more levels to the time warp that won't be accessible unless you're in interstellar space. Outside of that, the other methods quick interstellar have been totally shut down. The only other option is reducing the distances between the stars, but something tells me that is something that won't happen.

[Wheehaw Kerman]

On 6/9/2023 at 1:01 PM, herbal space program said:

If you have a mission going to Jool on a 3-year Hohmann transfer orbit, you are probably going to run out of interesting things to do inside the Kerbin SOI long before it gets there. That doesn't matter so much however, because there are plenty of other interplanetary missions you can work on that will have time scales similar to your Jool mission, so it will be easy to keep several balls in the air as you advance the clock in relatively small increments of each mission needing some intervention. The ability to do that makes for much more interesting gameplay, but it will break down completely if you have one mission that takes 1200 years while all the other ones available take 10 years or less. That is my whole point  -- that the disparity in time scales between the different things you may be doing at various stages of the game needs to be kept within reasonable limits, or else the experience just becomes one-dimensional. I really think they need to figure out how to avoid that without throwing other aspects of the game out of whack, and thus the tension I see between reducing the interstellar spatial scale and introducing brokenly OP technology. Anyway, I think I've belabored this point quite enough. Time to go play the game some!

It’s possible that by the time we’re ready to launch an interstellar shot, we’ll have our infrastructure in the Kerbol system built and more or less maxed, and be perfectly happy to fast forward until the starship arrives and then focus on the new system, leaving the Kerbals at home as a source of mostly automated supply missions.

 

 

[Scarecrow71]

I'm looking forward to interstellar, mostly because I'm curious to see if we get planets who orbit their stars in clockwise fashion.  Or if we get planets that spin on their axes (axi?  Axises?) In the opposite direction.

[Starhawk]

On 6/11/2023 at 4:52 AM, Wheehaw Kerman said:

It’s possible that by the time we’re ready to launch an interstellar shot, we’ll have our infrastructure in the Kerbol system built and more or less maxed, and be perfectly happy to fast forward until the starship arrives and then focus on the new system, leaving the Kerbals at home as a source of mostly automated supply missions.

This is exactly the sort of thing I would expect given the time scales we are discussing.

On 6/11/2023 at 11:28 AM, Scarecrow71 said:

I'm looking forward to interstellar, mostly because I'm curious to see if we get planets who orbit their stars in clockwise fashion.

This is a matter of frame of reference, it seems to me.  KSP uses the plane of the ecliptic as the reference.
I am speculating that there is no correlation between the ecliptic planes of various star systems.
So, when looking at a new star system, the reference frame could be chosen based on that system's ecliptic plane.  When choosing, it would purely be a matter of convenience which way you have the planets orbiting.

On 6/11/2023 at 11:28 AM, Scarecrow71 said:

Or if we get planets that spin on their axes (axi?  Axises?) In the opposite direction.

Axes.
Well, we already have axial tilt so, in theory, it would seem that these could easily be added simply by specifying their axial tilt as 180 degrees.

Happy landings!