Kerbal mortality

[cocoscacao]

3 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

RTGs have a limited life, and produce less power each day that passes.

Uhm, I think there was a mention that this will indeed be the case in KSP 2. Or my imagination is running wild...

[KincaidFrankMF]

I always assumed Kerbals have the ability to hibernate at will. You send them off for years at a time into deep space with a packet of peanuts and a pat on the back, and they're just fine.

[Wheehaw Kerman]

On 7/11/2023 at 6:56 PM, Spicat said:

The stance about life support is weird.

First in 2020 life support was thought about:

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: 

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.

Am I the only one who doesn’t like this whole “nom-punitive” thing?  Stupid *should* hurt, and the best way to learn why you want to keep your guard up in, say, boxing, is the get punched in the face a few times.  Not entirely sure why some failure modes (e.g. crashes) are supposedly less “punitive” than running out of life support?

[KUAR]

4 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

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.

It was something I noted (and appreciated) in KSP2 that RTGs do now have a lifespan, albeit I don't think with an exponential decay.

4 hours ago, cocoscacao said:

Uhm, I think there was a mention that this will indeed be the case in KSP 2. Or my imagination is running wild...

It is the case, albeit with continuous output up to such a date.

[Grogs]

On 7/13/2023 at 3:49 PM, KUAR said:

It was something I noted (and appreciated) in KSP2 that RTGs do now have a lifespan, albeit I don't think with an exponential decay.

It is the case, albeit with continuous output up to such a date.

The thing is that we picked Pu-238 for real RTGs largely because it's half life matches our mission times. With an 87.7-year half life, it's still giving you 2/3 of the starting power 50 years later. When they were choosing isotopes to use, Pu-238 was kind of the sweet spot on half lives - short enough to have a high specific power, but long enough not to decay for an interplanetary mission. If the mission length was 1,000 years, we would pick a different isotope like Pu-240 with a 6,500 year half life to power the RTGs.

In the stock game, the longest mission in most cases is probably a round trip to Eeloo, so 10-12 years and a normal RTG would work fine. If KSP2 is going to have missions that last hundreds or thousands of years, they should allow for longer-lived RTGs. Maybe make it a procedural part where the mass scales to the useful lifetime in much the same way as piston mass scales with motor size in KSP1. An RTG mass of X gives you 50 years, 5X mass gives you 500 years (a lot of the base mass is just shielding, heat recovery, etc.), 50X mass gives you 5,000 years, and so on.

[joratto]

On 7/11/2023 at 11:56 PM, Spicat said:

The stance about life support is weird.

First in 2020 life support was thought about:

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: 

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.

I was disappointed to hear that life support had been put on the backburner, but this sudden disinterest in radiation is heartbreaking to me.

Properly implemented, radiation could introduce a paradigm shift in late-game spaceship design with a whole slew of wonderful new construction constraints like the need for radiation shielding and distance attenuation, and giving a purpose to the triangular shape of those radiator fins besides just looking cool. Not to mention the new flight constraints like "don't land at your colony with nukes" or "don't approach ships from the radiation-side unless you want your kerbals fried".

Radiation hazards would help to balance out nuclear engines so that the late game doesn't solely consist of putting the shiniest nuclear engines on everything, which was largely the case in ksp1. Players would be encouraged to branch out and find more creative uses of more "primitive" (or otherwise non-nuclear) engines in situations where maximal efficiency just isn't necessary.

so I sincerely hope that by "long term" the devs just mean "after there are lots of radioactive engines in the game" instead of "never". This was one of those new, game-changing features that I looked forward to the most.

Edited July 16, 2023 by joratto

[AngryBaer]

I think the danger here is that it moves away too much from the engineering part of the game towards something like The Sims in space. And I have questions. How old can they get and why does it matter? Do they have different life expectencies and how do you plan for that? What does "comfort" mean for Kerbals? Do they need company? Do we need to bring a "snacks" module? Do the snacks run out? The additional engineering challenge could be interesting but it also sound like a barrier for more casual players.

For immersion purposes I find "underperformance" when missing certain features is ideal and would work fine for me, not just for colonies but for interstellar ships too. Missing a "living area" module? Your Kerbal now performs this many levels below their skill, or something like that. Kind of like how the placeable solar panels performed worse when not placed by an engineer in KSP1.

Edited July 24, 2023 by AngryBaer

[Geredis]

The moment they decided to add in reproduction, they have to add in death of some sort, if only to create sufficient natural churn that the colonies don't either A) stagnate awkwardly the moment they hit population cap with immortal populations, or B) create a situation with an endless population growth situation that all but ensures that you have unrealistic populations abroad.

[cocoscacao]

On 7/24/2023 at 5:10 AM, AngryBaer said:

it moves away too much from the engineering part of the game towards something like The Sims in space

On the contrary, it adds to the challenge (more on that below)

On 7/24/2023 at 5:10 AM, AngryBaer said:

How old can they get and why does it matter?

Well, since they roughly represent us humans, I'd say ~100 years. It could matter, because you're unable to leave them stranded forever in the capsule. Long term voyage? Send a probe instead.

On 7/24/2023 at 5:10 AM, AngryBaer said:

Do they have different life expectencies and how do you plan for that?

You have a guarantee about minimum life expectancy. Anything beyond that, is your own gamble.

On 7/24/2023 at 5:10 AM, AngryBaer said:

What does "comfort" mean for Kerbals? Do they need company? Do we need to bring a "snacks" module? Do the snacks run out? The additional engineering challenge could be interesting but it also sound like a barrier for more casual players.

I'd say space and company... If you're gonna send a mission to Jool, send at least 2~3 of them, and make sure each has its own sleeping compartments. Don't just cram 3 Kerbals in a tiny capsule. This translates well into colonies. You can't just dump 5 tin cans on the surface and call it a day.

I wouldn't include snacks, oxygen 'n such in the base game. That's life support.

[MechBFP]

12 hours ago, Geredis said:

The moment they decided to add in reproduction, they have to add in death of some sort, if only to create sufficient natural churn that the colonies don't either A) stagnate awkwardly the moment they hit population cap with immortal populations, or B) create a situation with an endless population growth situation that all but ensures that you have unrealistic populations abroad.

Are City Builders awkward because of their immortal populations?

[Periple]

14 hours ago, Geredis said:

The moment they decided to add in reproduction, they have to add in death of some sort, if only to create sufficient natural churn that the colonies don't either A) stagnate awkwardly the moment they hit population cap with immortal populations, or B) create a situation with an endless population growth situation that all but ensures that you have unrealistic populations abroad.

Not necessarily! If population grows through “boom events” triggered by specific conditions then you won’t get uncontrolled exponential growth. And that’s how Nate has described the design intent.

Consider Dwarf Fortress. In Fortress Mode it operates on such a short time scale that the dwarves’ natural lifespan is much longer than even a very long fortress campaign. They might as well be biologically immortal. While they do make babies, that’s not the main engine of population growth, in fact most of the time the babies won’t have time to grow up to do anything useful other than make their parents happy. Instead you get waves of immigrants when you hit certain thresholds and take certain actions.

I’m imagining the “feel” of KSP2 could be very similar — periods of stability punctuated by growth bursts, with you having to intentionally work towards the conditions that trigger the bursts.

Kerbal lifespans would actually run counter to this design as your populations would die out if you didn’t continuously work to trigger the boom events. That could get grindy fast!

Edited July 25, 2023 by Periple

[cocoscacao]

1 hour ago, Periple said:

Kerbal lifespans would actually run counter to this design as your populations would die out if you didn’t continuously work to trigger the boom events. That could get grindy fast!

Since we don't know what boom events will actually be, I'm more fantasizing  how I would implement colony population control... with lifespans. Drop a few kerbals, and they will die eventually. Give each one a proper living compartments and a "space-farm" they can share, and the population will maintain its numbers. Add more stuff, population grows. Original settlers may die, but the memory of them will continue to shine in our minds and our hearts but you'll have new generations to work with.

One member made a good point though. Some players will want to keep playing with original Kerbals (Jeb, Val), so this entire thread is just a stretch of imagination. Maybe with mods, some day... 

[Billy Kerman]

On 7/24/2023 at 8:31 PM, Geredis said:

The moment they decided to add in reproduction, they have to add in death of some sort, if only to create sufficient natural churn that the colonies don't either A) stagnate awkwardly the moment they hit population cap with immortal populations, or B) create a situation with an endless population growth situation that all but ensures that you have unrealistic populations abroad.

Technically, from what we know, KSP 2 will have interstellar travel and, we can assume that the new engines will propel spacecraft at say, maybe, half the speed of light, that would line up with the theory [from Albert Einstein.] that the faster you go the slower you age.

[Billy Kerman]

Also there might be cryogenics added.

[Infinite Aerospace]

Life support should be an addition to the base game experience, but it should be able to be toggled through difficulty settings. But I'd love to see something like Kerbalism implemented in the base game, it adds much, much more emphasis on design and planning. 

[VlonaldKerman]

On 7/16/2023 at 1:24 PM, joratto said:

Properly implemented, radiation could introduce a paradigm shift in late-game spaceship design with a whole slew of wonderful new construction constraints like the need for radiation shielding and distance attenuation, and giving a purpose to the triangular shape of those radiator fins besides just looking cool.

One asterisk I would like to add to this, while I agree with the sentiment: I think it’s easy to make a rad system more frustrating than it’s worth. For instance, radiation for long term missions is a problem we haven’t solved in real life. If you implement a realistic rad system, alongside other life support things, the players first interplanetary missions will be excruciating (Kerbalism, anyone? It’s an acquired taste, even if I like it). It’s another one of those things that would be annoying to a fault if it’s anything other than a minor or transient concern at some point during the game progression, and not worth implementing if it’s going to be easy.

Remember, at some point, the player is going to have big space colonies on lots of worlds. Are they going to have to worry about the lifetime radiation dosage of all of their kerbals? Or will there be a system to automate monitoring of radiation dosage? As the complexity and the multitude of considerations for each rocket with kerbals in it grows, the harder it will be to integrate individual mission gameplay into the late-game colonization gameplay loop.

[Haustvindr]

My 2 cents:

I think the problem with radiation is something else. Sure, we can put radiation shields, we can even launch lead habitats with a bit of effort and whatnot. The issue about "protecting" our kerbals from radiation is the easy one. But... what should happen when we don't?

Since the game aims to be non-punitive, there's no way a system that can wipe your entire crew is going to feel right. Sure, we could turn them in space tourists instead of killing them, but then how will you be able to fix it in-flight? Reducing their efficiency seems like a no-go as well, for all we know there's no concept of efficiency even. And if we aim for even a little bit or realism, it's not like it could be solved by something like transferring the crew to a protected module either.

And it's not all about the design phase either. You could have an accident and lose your radiation shields, or be exposed to the radiation generated from another vessel. There's even the possibility of your colonies being exposed to radiation coming from rockets. Radiation is not something that can be 100% solved in design, and therefore there's an actual need to make kerbals react to radiation.

My guess it's that's a little more complex than people think, and the complex part is in the "what should happen to kerbals" and not in the "how will our kerbals be protected". If a compromise can be found, I expect it to come sooner or later, but to be fair I can not find a balanced compromise for this one.

Or course, if a mod turn the game in a punitive one, there's no reason to not kill kerbals with radiation.

[cocoscacao]

3 hours ago, Haustvindr said:

and the complex part is in the "what should happen to kerbals"

They die...? And get a suffix to their name? R.I.S (rest in space)?

[Lyneira]

On 8/9/2023 at 8:37 AM, Haustvindr said:

I think the problem with radiation is something else. Sure, we can put radiation shields, we can even launch lead habitats with a bit of effort and whatnot. The issue about "protecting" our kerbals from radiation is the easy one. But... what should happen when we don't?

Since the game aims to be non-punitive, there's no way a system that can wipe your entire crew is going to feel right. Sure, we could turn them in space tourists instead of killing them, but then how will you be able to fix it in-flight? Reducing their efficiency seems like a no-go as well, for all we know there's no concept of efficiency even. And if we aim for even a little bit or realism, it's not like it could be solved by something like transferring the crew to a protected module either.

Consequences for radiation and life support do work differently:

A plausible implementation of life support applies consequences to kerbals if the player doesn't do something. (take measures to constantly keep them supplied) And because of that, there are multiple gameplay reasons that make an argument for not wanting a life support implementation to be punishing to players and kerbals, or for not implementing it at all.

But the same doesn't have to go for radiation. Let's assume for the moment any crew module is adequate radiation protection from LKO and deep space conditions outside of say, Eve's orbit.

Then radiation only has consequences to kerbals when the player's own actions put their kerbals into a dangerous situation, such as sending them very close to the sun, into a radiation belt around Jool or activating a high-radiation device on their vessel or a nearby one. Provided proper feedback is given about radiation conditions, a kerbal dying from this as a consequence is no different from a kerbal dying because the player put their pod on a collision trajectory with a moon without enough fuel to land or a kerbal pod exploding from excess re-entry heat. The player took an action and the game applied its consequences. And it leaves a lot of room for game design to determine which situations should force players to consider radiation protection.

[DibzNr]

Could be a fun difficulty option

[PDCWolf]

On 7/25/2023 at 11:07 AM, MechBFP said:

Are City Builders awkward because of their immortal populations?

The biggest city builders do simulate life and death. Cities Skylines, Simcity (even the societies spinoff, though not sure about 5), LiF, Banished, and of course base builders as well. Even transport tycoon games simulate populations shrinking by death and exile.

[DunaManiac]

I actually dislike the idea of the game being non-punitive. In any resource management game you will eventually reach some form of fail state if you don't manage it properly. In reality, colonial administration is never going to be a "set it and forget it" system, you will have to make sure that they are properly supplied and prepared for long term inhabitation. On the other hand, gameplay is also important, we don't want to discourage the player from expansion by forcing the player to constantly babysit their colonies.

Ultimately, I sympathize with the frustration of having an entire colony die because I forgot to create a supply route, but if the game allows a mission to fail because you forgot to add solar panels or a parachute, should we then remove parachutes? So I would argue that some form of life support is simply integral to any space management game because it's hard to justify a game about space where one doesn't have to worry about things like oxygen or food. I would instead argue for a system more similar to USI life support: it can be safely ignored or have easy workarounds for the early game, but once players are beginning to go interplanetary, then it comes into play. As for colonies, I definitely think that kerbals should die from old age, and allow for a "birth rate" of sorts to maintain population, but there should eventually be a ceiling where you cannot expand further without expanding the colony. If one is happy with that, they can leave it and as long as it is supplied, it will produce resources. Bottom line, automated resource transfers should allow one to create a perfectly self sufficient colony that can be safely forgot about. If life support is not supplied to it, rather than killing the whole colony I would propose a system where it either goes into stasis or operates at a massively reduced output. This means that any one colony can be left without life support for a while, but it also forces you to pay attention to resource transfer, because if all your colonies do not have life support, you will quickly go into the red.

[VlonaldKerman]

2 hours ago, Lyneira said:

Then radiation only has consequences to kerbals when the player's own actions put their kerbals into a dangerous situation, such as sending them very close to the sun, into a radiation belt around Jool or activating a high-radiation device on their vessel or a nearby one. Provided proper feedback is given about radiation conditions, a kerbal dying from this as a consequence is no different from a kerbal dying because the player put their pod on a collision trajectory with a moon without enough fuel to land or a kerbal pod exploding from excess re-entry heat. The player took an action and the game applied its consequences. And it leaves a lot of room for game design to determine which situations should force players to consider radiation protection

I guess for me personally, if the radiation system would have such limited use cases I wouldn’t consider it worth adding.

[cocoscacao]

1 hour ago, DunaManiac said:

I actually dislike the idea of the game being non-punitive. In any resource management game you will eventually reach some form of fail state if you don't manage it properly.

Somewhere in the middle I guess. Send badly designed colony somewhere, and it will be unable to perform, whatever it was supposed to perform. This gives you an option to send "a rescue mission", to build/bring supplies you've missed the first time. Unless, you really royally messed up on the first try... But that's what crash landings are for, most of the time 

Edited August 14, 2023 by cocoscacao

[Infinite Aerospace]

3 hours ago, VlonaldKerman said:

I guess for me personally, if the radiation system would have such limited use cases I wouldn’t consider it worth adding.

To be fair I disagree, Kerbalism changed the game for me. To have to actually put something resembling consideration into mission planning (for long duration missions) was refreshing and challenging. There's only so far you can go with a do whatever without suffering consequences.