Kerbal mortality

[cocoscacao]

So, I know life support is out of the question for vanilla, but there will be colonies and a concept of reproduction. Doesn't it make sense to then restrict Kerbal lives to [N] years, so we can't launch 1 member crew to 140 years gravity assisted mission...? Any thoughts? Opinions?

[VlonaldKerman]

I think it should be configurable. However, I suspect that this will be left to modders.

[Meecrob]

Nah. Would you make Doom and have the only difficulty option "Nightmare?"

Just make it a mod, or if IG/T2 can get their stuff together, maybe they can make difficulty options, but I think they are kinda swamped with making the game actually work at the present time.

 

Edit: Sorry, @VlonaldKerman, I just repeated what you said.

Edited July 11, 2023 by Meecrob

[Spicat]

The stance about life support is weird.

First in 2020 life support was thought about:

Quote

The campaign is “explicitly designed to be non- punitive” so you’ll never reach a fail state where you’ve run out of money and have to start over. Colonies won’t require tons of micromanagement. If you leave one in a dangerous state, without enough power or food, it’ll simply underperform. You can ignore it and keep on building that next rocket

https://www.pcgamer.com/space-odyssey-our-first-big-look-at-kerbal-space-program-2/

After this mention of life support, we heard in the Nate's ama: 

Quote

We made a determination that, at least in the short term, the addition of life support won't enhance gameplay that much, for most players.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1Oc0y60B1g&t=2814s

The "at least in the short term" is not in the transcript so maybe life support is still not planned, but that's like the radiation question where he says in the short term there won't be radiation but in the long term, it might: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnudM_iIDr8&t=514s

But anyway, I agree with the PC gamer quote (with the non-punitive mention), you will have a lot of different crafts and leaving one where a kerbal will die if you don't check on him is, in my opinion, not fun. Besides, I think some people want to keep some of the OG kerbals (like Valentina or Jeb), so I don't think death is a a good addition.

Edited July 11, 2023 by Spicat

[cocoscacao]

46 minutes ago, Spicat said:

 I agree with the PC gamer quote (with the non-punitive mention), you will have a lot of different crafts and leaving one where a kerbal will die if you don't check on him is, in my opinion, not fun.

Check, or no check, my point is that you have to take the passage of time into consideration (not supplies). However, I agree that this is good counter argument:

49 minutes ago, Spicat said:

I think some people want to keep some of the OG kerbals

[RocketRockington]

49 minutes ago, Spicat said:

The "at least in the short term" is not in the transcript so maybe life support is still not planned, but that's like the radiation question where he says in the short term there won't be radiation but in the long term, it might: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnudM_iIDr8&t=514s

Sounds like a team that's had 6 years to design a game and still doesn't know the specifics of much of what they're planning to do, that isn't a direct lift from KSP1.   I wonder if a real post mortem ever comes out, whether much of the projects troubles are going to be ascribed to frequent changes of direction.  

[Meecrob]

1 hour ago, RocketRockington said:

Sounds like a team that's had 6 years to design a game and still doesn't know the specifics of much of what they're planning to do, that isn't a direct lift from KSP1.   I wonder if a real post mortem ever comes out, whether much of the projects troubles are going to be ascribed to frequent changes of direction.  

Its pretty clear the people in charge are the ones impressed by the idea of KSP being an "explosion simulator, and you can also glitch it to do space missions"

Edited July 12, 2023 by Meecrob

[Strawberry]

The concept of "boom events" to where completing milestones causes your kerbals to reproduce has been repeated pretty consistently across the years, if kerbals reproduce seperate from time, I dont think theyd go with the design choice of making them die over time as well, that just seems like a cruel and unusual punishment which violates the US constitution, a country in which intercept games is based in.

[stephensmat]

KSP1 has Colony Part Mods, Life Support Mods, even Interstellar mods.

KSP2 will have half these things as stock, given time; and already has Mod Support. Anyone who really needs a Greenhouse Module to feel like they're playing a realistic space game will be able.

It's the difference between the Studio's vision of a personal space program, and the player's. They've gone out of their way to make it possible for everyone to have both.

[RocketRockington]

1 hour ago, Strawberry said:

The concept of "boom events" to where completing milestones causes your kerbals to reproduce has been repeated pretty consistently across the years, if kerbals reproduce seperate from time, I dont think theyd go with the design choice of making them die over time as well, that just seems like a cruel and unusual punishment which violates the US constitution, a country in which intercept games is based in.

Oh fug I had forgotten about that horrible  gamist design idea.  Ugh.  More evidence that to the ksp2 design team, Kerbal is just a silly little game about silly little green creatures that do silly little things and make stuff blow up.

But yeah, if their life cycle requires them to discover things to reproduce, then who knows/who cares why they don't have a lifespan 

[Lyneira]

19 hours ago, cocoscacao said:

So, I know life support is out of the question for vanilla, but there will be colonies and a concept of reproduction. Doesn't it make sense to then restrict Kerbal lives to [N] years, so we can't launch 1 member crew to 140 years gravity assisted mission...? Any thoughts? Opinions?

Quote

The campaign is “explicitly designed to be non- punitive” so you’ll never reach a fail state where you’ve run out of money and have to start over. Colonies won’t require tons of micromanagement. If you leave one in a dangerous state, without enough power or food, it’ll simply underperform. You can ignore it and keep on building that next rocket

It seems likely for core KSP2 the second quote precludes kerbals dying of old age as in the first quote. But you do hit upon a point I feel is important, which is to provide an incentive to build vehicles capable of faster transfers when Kerbals are involved. I wonder what other incentives the game could provide for this?

[Strawberry]

9 hours ago, RocketRockington said:

Oh fug I had forgotten about that horrible  gamist design idea.  Ugh.  More evidence that to the ksp2 design team, Kerbal is just a silly little game about silly little green creatures that do silly little things and make stuff blow up.

But yeah, if their life cycle requires them to discover things to reproduce, then who knows/who cares why they don't have a lifespan 

What's wrong with that idea? Assumedly, kerbals are needed to perform labor (hence you needing to make colonies), so this would restrain expanding your economy to performing the core of the game (instead of just sitting in timewarp for 4 minutes), thus encouraging you to actually explore so you can get to building more colonies.

Edited July 12, 2023 by Strawberry

[Strawberry]

3 hours ago, Lyneira said:

It seems likely for core KSP2 the second quote precludes kerbals dying of old age as in the first quote. But you do hit upon a point I feel is important, which is to provide an incentive to build vehicles capable of faster transfers when Kerbals are involved. I wonder what other incentives the game could provide for this?

You don't need them to die of old age for them to need to consume food, honestly consuming food sounds like a way better incentive for going faster then dying of old age, as all the latter does is a constant penalty if your mission takes longer then x years while the former actually scales.

[MechBFP]

23 hours ago, cocoscacao said:

So, I know life support is out of the question for vanilla, but there will be colonies and a concept of reproduction. Doesn't it make sense to then restrict Kerbal lives to [N] years, so we can't launch 1 member crew to 140 years gravity assisted mission...? Any thoughts? Opinions?

That won’t happen as one of the design goals is (or at least was anyway, may have changed) to let players do what they want, when they want, which life support in any implementation definitely contradicts with. 
 

EDIT: Now obviously that concept can’t apply to everything (ie you can’t go suborbital and expect to come back years later and land your craft lol). 

Edited July 12, 2023 by MechBFP

[cocoscacao]

33 minutes ago, Strawberry said:

as all the latter does is a constant penalty if your mission takes longer then x years

Not necessarily. That's my point. If you're gonna send a rocket to Eeloo to orbit around it for 140 years, then you'd need to include living compartments comfy enough for "boom" to happen, and you can exploit them as long as you like. The population won't grow, but it will sustain itself over future generations.

[PDCWolf]

59 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

EDIT: Now obviously that concept can’t apply to everything (ie you can’t go suborbital and expect to come back years later and land your craft lol). 

Haven't tried in KSP2, but provided you don't get near enough the ship in question in KSP1, you can get a pretty low, inside the atmosphere orbit.

Life support and mortality are pretty gross oversights. specially when you consider the quote itself that the "campaign is explicitly designed to be non-punitive": losing your Kerbals and even a whole mission isn't anywhere near a "failed state", and since they won't have funds management either (stated in AMA 1), then there's really no legitimate way to fail the campaign, independently of how many ships and Kerbals you blow up. So really, from that design standpoint, the quote is misguided at best, ignorant at worst.

18 hours ago, Meecrob said:

Nah. Would you make Doom and have the only difficulty option "Nightmare?"

Might I ask what's the difficulty in KSP2 right now? After you learn the basics of orbital mechanics, what's left in the way of difficulty?

[dsplaisted]

Kerbals should not die if your rocket doesn't crash or explode.

[Mutex]

On 7/11/2023 at 11:34 PM, Meecrob said:

Nah. Would you make Doom and have the only difficulty option "Nightmare?"

To me, playing KSP without some kind of life support mod feels like playing Doom and typing iddqd.

Edited July 13, 2023 by Mutex

[cocoscacao]

46 minutes ago, Mutex said:

like playing Doom and typing iddqd

I wonder how many people here knows what that means without googling... 

5 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Might I ask what's the difficulty in KSP2 right now? After you learn the basics of orbital mechanics, what's left in the way of difficulty?

Not much, but that takes some time to get used to. Many people forget how much effort was put into something, once they master it. 

[RocketRockington]

11 hours ago, Strawberry said:

What's wrong with that idea? Assumedly, kerbals are needed to perform labor (hence you needing to make colonies), so this would restrain expanding your economy to performing the core of the game (instead of just sitting in timewarp for 4 minutes), thus encouraging you to actually explore so you can get to building more colonies.

What's wrong is that it makes it gamey, makes it seem stupid, less like a sim and.more like a goofy game.  

There must already be rewards for exploring - like science gains - so having yet another reward seems dumb especially since it effectively caps the population of kerbals based on how.many discoveries there are.

An easy alternative system, that took me more time to write than to think of, is to make kerbals free but make the buildings needed to support them or enable their work be the cost - just bring them from kerbin, or have them reproduce with time, w/e.  

Boom events are just silly in my opinion.

[Strawberry]

10 hours ago, cocoscacao said:

Not necessarily. That's my point. If you're gonna send a rocket to Eeloo to orbit around it for 140 years, then you'd need to include living compartments comfy enough for "boom" to happen, and you can exploit them as long as you like. The population won't grow, but it will sustain itself over future generations.

You’ll only need to include reproduction compartments if your mission takes more time then the time it takes kerbals to die, and your average mission is less then ten years so with the exception of interstellar missions, unless kerbal lifespans are comedically short then this feature can be ignored for 98% of missions so then its like whats even the point? If you want to make taking longer have a cost, making kerbals consume food would apply to 100% of missions and seems like a saner way of doing it

30 minutes ago, RocketRockington said:

What's wrong is that it makes it gamey, makes it seem stupid, less like a sim and.more like a goofy game.  

This is a game where you play as green spacemen to where canonically in the first game many of the parts literally came from the trash, if this is what makes it feel goofy for you i feel like the only reason for this is because youre used to the former stuff.

1 hour ago, RocketRockington said:

An easy alternative system, that took me more time to write than to think of, is to make kerbals free but make the buildings needed to support them or enable their work be the cost - just bring them from kerbin, or have them reproduce with time, w/e.  

You could just get more materials to build more buildings by once again timewarping, the reason why i like the boom event idea is it makes building colonies not just a game of sit in timewarp and tweak your colony occasionally, but instead actually engaging with the core of the game (flying rockets to explore places)

[Haustvindr]

My 2 cents:

"Time" as a resource in KSP is useless, no matter what concept of "time" you want, and this carries in KSP2. It has zero relevance since it is infinite and we can just fast forward at will.

Of course, there are game loops that can/should be attached to "time", and game loops where it's just silly. The vessel flight is coupled to "time" because it is you -the player- who flies it, and the player lives in a world with a very strict time concept, you cannot fast forward the player "time". EC consumption is coupled to "time", because an orbit necessarily takes time and therefore the vessel needs a little time to go around a planet shadow, where solar panels don't work and you should actually be able to deplete the batteries. Science transmission, even if it is realistic, it's a little silly to couple it to "time" and would be much better (gameplay-wise, not realistic) to couple it to a physical antenna restriction (i.e. not being able to send a giant data pack with an underpowered antenna). Planetary scan is a little more complicated since it is tied to something in orbit. KSP1 version of science labs and ISRU is completely silly.

Generally speaking, almost everything that only needs "time" to complete is probably a bogus loop, because you can just fast forward and skip the loop entirely.

Therefore, when the colony grows, it should be due to something uncoupled to "time", because if it were you could simply fast forward to grow your colony and forget about the game loops that are in there. Having the colony grow when some milestone is reached is much more logical and sound.

As for kerbal mortality, "lore" wise they would be almost immortal, or at least have a lifespan in hundreds -if not thousands- of years. We've send our pilots in missions measured in decades (and more) so there's no way their lifespans are even close to ours.

But let's say they have a much more finite lifespan and that kerbals in our vessels are immortal because it is a "needed evil" and an exception. In that case, we can simply think that colonies can support up to a maximum number of kerbals, and that they have a strict conception policy allowing enough births to replace deaths and thus keeping the same number of kerbals over time. If you build the required facilities, that number can be raised and more conceptions are allowed, and since they would be allowed as soon as the facilities are available, that ultimately gives us the "boom events".

[KUAR]

32 minutes ago, Haustvindr said:

My 2 cents:

"Time" as a resource in KSP is useless, no matter what concept of "time" you want, and this carries in KSP2. It has zero relevance since it is infinite and we can just fast forward at will.

Of course, there are game loops that can/should be attached to "time", and game loops where it's just silly. The vessel flight is coupled to "time" because it is you -the player- who flies it, and the player lives in a world with a very strict time concept, you cannot fast forward the player "time". EC consumption is coupled to "time", because an orbit necessarily takes time and therefore the vessel needs a little time to go around a planet shadow, where solar panels don't work and you should actually be able to deplete the batteries. Science transmission, even if it is realistic, it's a little silly to couple it to "time" and would be much better (gameplay-wise, not realistic) to couple it to a physical antenna restriction (i.e. not being able to send a giant data pack with an underpowered antenna). Planetary scan is a little more complicated since it is tied to something in orbit. KSP1 version of science labs and ISRU is completely silly.

Generally speaking, almost everything that only needs "time" to complete is probably a bogus loop, because you can just fast forward and skip the loop entirely.

Therefore, when the colony grows, it should be due to something uncoupled to "time", because if it were you could simply fast forward to grow your colony and forget about the game loops that are in there. Having the colony grow when some milestone is reached is much more logical and sound.

As for kerbal mortality, "lore" wise they would be almost immortal, or at least have a lifespan in hundreds -if not thousands- of years. We've send our pilots in missions measured in decades (and more) so there's no way their lifespans are even close to ours.

But let's say they have a much more finite lifespan and that kerbals in our vessels are immortal because it is a "needed evil" and an exception. In that case, we can simply think that colonies can support up to a maximum number of kerbals, and that they have a strict conception policy allowing enough births to replace deaths and thus keeping the same number of kerbals over time. If you build the required facilities, that number can be raised and more conceptions are allowed, and since they would be allowed as soon as the facilities are available, that ultimately gives us the "boom events".

I really like this analysis. The time delay of science labs, ISRU, etc. was only a problem in as much as you needed to start and stop a time warp. There was no constraint over the amount of time one could spend on the surface of a planet, or in transit to/from it.

Perhaps one way to introduce some temporal jeopardy is in Science/Career Mode, to have a time limit on certain missions by which point the scientific benefit available to be reaped starts to diminish?

Or - for interstellar - perhaps the transfer windows are so rare that there's an imperative to get to a point where you can exploit it?

I'm really not sure how I feel about an overall time pressure though that isn't a take-it-or-leave-it challenge. Perhaps something should be swept up in optional difficulty modes.

[Lyneira]

41 minutes ago, Haustvindr said:

"Time" as a resource in KSP is useless, no matter what concept of "time" you want, and this carries in KSP2. It has zero relevance since it is infinite and we can just fast forward at will.

This is definitely a point that should determine the design of game loops in KSP2. Sticking with immortal Kerbals for a moment, I also see nothing inherently wrong with having no simulated population growth at all , keeping full agency and responsibility with the player for bringing Kerbals to distant worlds as needed.

It will give a much needed incentive for designing ships supporting large amounts of Kerbals. Since it will be possible to automate trips between colonies, it need not be a hassle to keep a distant colony well stocked on Kerbals, even when you occasionally take some out of the colony for other projects.

The balance of this could change if time becomes a resource that you would prefer not to fast-forward unless needed. But that risks getting players trapped in short term projects while they wait for the years or decades to pass for an interplanetary or interstellar mission.

[PDCWolf]

7 hours ago, KUAR said:

The time delay of science labs, ISRU, etc. was only a problem in as much as you needed to start and stop a time warp. There was no constraint over the amount of time one could spend on the surface of a planet, or in transit to/from it.

7 hours ago, Lyneira said:

The balance of this could change if time becomes a resource that you would prefer not to fast-forward unless needed.

Just as an example, the idea that RTGs shouldn't be magic and actually have an EOL is as old as when they were introduced in KSP1, for example. This is just another shortfall of the extremely easy, happy-go-lucky, consequence-less, and may I say BORING approach to space exploration that KSP takes. In real life everything decays:

• Solar panels getting covered in dust (or just degrading in space when made of certain materials, or their performance decaying for other factors).
• RTGs have a limited life, and produce less power each day that passes.
• Radioactive shielding decays with use, proportional to how much radiation they receive.
• The efficiency of life support systems and the quality of their production/byproducts.
• Certain fuels just boil off, needing venting, albeit more slowly in space.
• Food rots or expires.
• Crew dies.
• And so on.

Kerbal mortality is just another side of a many-sided coin.