Dream Big: The single-player KSP game loop

[Vl3d]

I feel like, because we've been bogged down by bugs and a lack of visible progress, we have forgotten the dream of what KSP can be. That's why I invite you to imagine our destination and add ideas to the basic game loop described below.

- explore the basic design, engineering, testing and planning methods needed to master transportation on land, in the atmosphere, at sea, under the sea, in space;

- do cool science experiments to unlock new tech and find out more about the Universe;

- achieve orbit, send probes and landers out to explore moons and planets, marvel at the vistas and the alien weather, find anomalies;

- design orbiters for terrain & resource discovery and mapping, make satellite comms networks, build telescopes, complex science space stations, fuel depots;

- use all this infrastructure to send modules for the first colony and set up a logistics system to sustain it while setting up ISRU modules; 

- every craft is our creation: engineer and reuse designs for lower and upper stages for rockets, build SSTos, rovers, planes, helicopters, VTOLS, floating ships, submersibles etc. to explore and mine resources on every celestial body;

- grow the first colony, make new ones, focus on orbital construction to eventually build my first interstellar ship;

- use all the best craft designs to prepare and maximize my chances of success, set off towards a new star system, start exploring, doing science, building again;

- from time to time there should be unexpected events that require the player to design unique missions - like deflecting a threatening asteroid, observing a cosmic event (like a comet crashing into a planet or a supernova), engaging in a space race with a rival agency, saving crew, exploring a derelict ship or abandoned location, building a tourist colony at a place with a great vista, improvise a mission just to have fun with kerbals etc.

- avoid the grind by being able to automate repetitive tasks, always be motivated by uncovering new content and mysteries, making discoveries, learning new things, solving new problems at each step;

- care for my kerbals, develop bonds, find out new things about their civilization and be fascinated by them all the way throughout the game.

Did I miss anything at the highest level?

Edited August 27, 2023 by Vl3d

[cocoscacao]

10 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

care for my kerbals

I still want a Kerbal memorial center for the unfortunate brave ones, where I can add a small plaque with some text 

 

[moeggz]

11 hours ago, Vl3d said:

grow the first colony, make new ones, focus on orbital construction to eventually build my first interstellar ship;

This is by no means anything that was ever suggested by the devs, so I’m hoping for DLC or some mods but I would love for colonies to grow to the point of a mini city simulation per colony. Laying down infrastructure lines, adding landing pads, habitation, work and entertainment buildings while managing habitat with breathable air and farming buildings for food and such would be awesome.

Nothing promised, so nothing expected, but I would love for Kerbal Space Program to be more “space program” than it is now. I still want the rockets, but building a meta game on top of that would be my dream.

Edited August 27, 2023 by moeggz

[Royalswissarmyknife]

1 minute ago, moeggz said:

This is by no means anything that was ever suggested by the devs, so I’m hoping for DLC or some mods but I would love for colonies to grow to the point of a mini city sun per colony. Laying down infrastructure lines, adding landing pads, habitation, work and entertainment buildings while managing habitat with breathable air and farming buildings for food and such would be awesome.

Nothing promised, so nothing expected, but I would love for Kerbal Space Program to be more “space program” than it is now. I still want the rockets, but building a meta game on top of that would be my dream.

Colonies, Orbital Construction and Interstellar travel were never promised by the Devs? or did you quote the wrong thing.

Edited August 27, 2023 by Royalswissarmyknife

[RocketRockington]

3 minutes ago, Royalswissarmyknife said:

Colonies, Orbital Construction and Interstellar travel were never promised by the Devs? or did you quote the wrong thing.

"The roadmap is not a promise.  It's just a set of goals.  Nothing any dev has ever said should ever be construed as a legally binding promise" - T2 legal department + half this forum that likes to argue semantics.

Edited August 27, 2023 by RocketRockington

[moeggz]

11 minutes ago, Royalswissarmyknife said:

Colonies, Orbital Construction and Interstellar travel were never promised by the Devs? or did you quote the wrong thing.

Colonies were, but I don’t believe the sim city level of detail of laying electrical wires, building farms and housing, laying out roads, and such was promised. 
 

Promised colonies seem to be “build a rocket with a hab module. Land it somewhere and build a VAB, connect it to resources from other colones and build more ships.” 
 

Which sounds fun, but I would love a whole space program sim with a  colony sim with a rocket sandbox sim in it. 

Edited August 27, 2023 by moeggz

[Royalswissarmyknife]

1 minute ago, moeggz said:

Colonies were, but I don’t believe the sim city level of detail of laying it electrical wires, building farms and housing, laying out roads, and such was promised. 
 

Promised colonies seem to be “build a rocket with a hab module. Land it somewhere and build a VAB, connect it to resources from other colones and build more ships.” 

they never said they wanted the first thing just to make your colony grow launching more Hab's some refinery's then get it to be self sufficient and eventually build spacecraft  is probably what they meant

Spoiler

IMO I think colonies shouldn't be sim city level of detail but more like making a base become able to produce enough materials to keep itself sustained and build more miners and refinery's to build spacecraft is more suiting for Ksp-2

Also if the colonies are just bring a Hab modules some resources and build a VAB then that is concerning.

If so I think it would be yet another bad/ok late game. Just not as bad as Ksp-1's.

[cocoscacao]

6 hours ago, moeggz said:

laying out roads, and such was promised. 

Actually, that should be a thing. Or at least, establishing some sort of routes. Don't ask me for a source, I can't remember where I've seen it. One thing I doo remember was showcase in official video with resource gathering buildings on other bodies, surrounded by a road. 

Edited August 28, 2023 by cocoscacao

[Vl3d]

All the colony sim stuff is great, but what I'm really looking forward to it having to build all the trucks, ships and aircraft needed to transport resources using delivery routes. I mean, it's going to take a lot of iterative creativity to make good, efficient, big trucks and such.

[Alpha_star]

I'd imagine that we will be able to simulate battles and trades between multiple different interstellar species, hopefully someone would realize it after multiplayer and exploration being added. The picture in my head looks like this:

1.Different players pick their own solar systems and build colonies/cities within it.

2.Each player advances through the tech tree to unlock advanced technology that can be used to construct/refit ships.

3.Players can earn money through developing colonies or trading with the others.

4.(Hopefully) There will be a mod for weapons that players can add to their ships.

It's just MY hope, but I'd honestly wish that it would be real.

[Lyneira]

Alright, here's some big dreams of mine, which I realize are probably beyond even an extended scope the devs may have of KSP2 past its 1.0 release:

• Deeper colony management and expansion with a central role for all kinds of vehicles, differing by the environment they have to operate in.
• Landscaping: The ability to change the terrain and leave your mark on it, from new craters when something big impacts the ground at high speed all the way to shaping the terrain around your colonies to your liking. Flattening, raising and lowering the terrain to make space for colony expansion, roads, or just to make the terrain look a bit nicer.
• Space habitats: Not the tiny rotating hab rings that exist in KSP mods or even the presumably larger ones that have been teased in KSP2's interstellar content. I'm referring to habitats on the scale of the Stanford Torus and O'Neill cylinder, or even larger, with entire ecosystems inside.
• Terraforming: Modifying the atmosphere, temperature and ecology of a planet or moon. To make a planet habitable, maybe you need to transport vast amounts of resources from another planet or moon, enough that both will be very different after you're done. With timewarp available to us, KSP2 could be suited to show the vast scale in both time and resources of such a project.
• Dyson swarm: Terraforming will take huge amounts of energy and what better way to provide it than a dyson swarm?

[Pthigrivi]

10 hours ago, Vl3d said:

All the colony sim stuff is great, but what I'm really looking forward to it having to build all the trucks, ships and aircraft needed to transport resources using delivery routes. I mean, it's going to take a lot of iterative creativity to make good, efficient, big trucks and such.

Yeah I would think that would be the primary focus of delivery routes, that it's less about a big economic sim and more about engineering and flying the harvesters and tankers. I did a ton of this in modded KSP1 and actually designing them and flying them was great. It was just the repeat missions that got old so it makes a lot of sense to set them to repeat.

They did show roads and ramps and things but I think that was more about practicality getting rovers in and out of colonies and making runways for space planes. I wouldn't expect you'd actually need to build a road to make a supply route work. 

To me in a lot of ways the key link Im missing in the full 1.0 gameplay loop is how kerbals come into it, especially since they seem pretty reticent to do LS. I understand your populations will increase when you make big new discoveries, but is there an advantage to having bigger populations? Do you need them to run fuel factories or laboratories? Are there any habitation requirements? I think making a system that completes that part of the loop is really important but its tricky without becoming really complicated and burdensome. 

Edited August 28, 2023 by Pthigrivi

[moeggz]

1 hour ago, Pthigrivi said:

To me in a lot of ways the key link Im missing in the full 1.0 gameplay loop is how kerbals come into it, especially since they seem pretty reticent to do LS

Adding life support would solve the “time warp 1 million for infinite resources.”

Adding life support now is like when they added reentry heat the first time. A lot of protest but after we got used to it impossible to go back. It’s a necessary step to bring ksp to the new levels offered by the sequel.

Edited August 28, 2023 by moeggz

[Royalswissarmyknife]

1 hour ago, moeggz said:

 It’s a necessary step to bring ksp to the new levels offered by the sequel.

Sadly the Devs seem like they dont want to add more complexity.

and it would likely be something that modders cant fully implement too.

I hope that by a miracle life support gets added.

Spoiler

More complexity might scare away little Timmy!

 

2 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

To me in a lot of ways the key link Im missing in the full 1.0 gameplay loop is how kerbals come into it, especially since they seem pretty reticent to do LS. I understand your populations will increase when you make big new discoveries, but is there an advantage to having bigger populations? Do you need them to run fuel factories or laboratories? Are there any habitation requirements? I think making a system that completes that part of the loop is really important but its tricky without becoming really complicated and burdensome. 

Maybe maintenance and repair work could be something that brings kerbals into the loop by requiring them to check up on the factories and fix anything that's broken.

And if they go without maintenance the factories start to produce less eventually halting production.

Also more engineers would also be required if you build more factories or problems might go unchecked on some factories. Therefore causing you to need more kerbals to increase production .

(all this could apply to miners too)

 

[moeggz]

An idea i have is that colonies may occasionally need random missions. Say the Kerbal demand a certain “object” (in universe, idk more snacks, new carbon filter whatever) and sometimes these are small enough for a small cargo container, sometimes medium, and sometimes big and unwieldy that don’t fit in any container. These pop up from time to Tim wand all work at a colony stops until it is delivered. 
 

This would prevent the time warp exploits and reward players for 1stage reusable interplanetary spacecraft. 

[Royalswissarmyknife]

6 minutes ago, moeggz said:

An idea i have is that colonies may occasionally need random missions. Say the Kerbal demand a certain “object” (in universe, idk more snacks, new carbon filter whatever) and sometimes these are small enough for a small cargo container, sometimes medium, and sometimes big and unwieldy that don’t fit in any container. These pop up from time to Tim wand all work at a colony stops until it is delivered. 
 

This would prevent the time warp exploits and reward players for 1stage reusable interplanetary spacecraft. 

Maybe it could instead be that the colonies cant produce enough resource's to expand and become self sufficient.

So to develop further your colonies you need to send harvesting craft to resource nodes that are easy to harvest but have little materials.

And that will cause them to be designed for a variety of landing situations

But they should also be reusable to not take up most of the resources they just harvested for the colonies.

Spoiler

This is way colonies in other star systems can still progress without multi millennia time scales.

and a cheaper alternative for some colonies to grow then to ship the materials that dont have any nearby colonies/the KSC.

 

[Pthigrivi]

38 minutes ago, moeggz said:

An idea i have is that colonies may occasionally need random missions. Say the Kerbal demand a certain “object” (in universe, idk more snacks, new carbon filter whatever) and sometimes these are small enough for a small cargo container, sometimes medium, and sometimes big and unwieldy that don’t fit in any container. These pop up from time to Tim wand all work at a colony stops until it is delivered. 
 

This would prevent the time warp exploits and reward players for 1stage reusable interplanetary spacecraft. 

The trick with this is players are so different in their playstyles. Some players like to warp all the way to their destination and others like to juggle between a bunch of missions. Im in the latter category but wouldn't want to punish players for playing the other way. They have talked about a kind of mission structure but I feel like it wants to be more event-triggered, like completing one task opens up more. The other thing Nate talked about were relying more in intrinsic goals, tasks that aren't explicitly missions with stated rewards but goals that emerge naturally from the mechanics of colonization. So once you were introduced to the basic needs and rewards of setting up colonies you wouldn't need an explicit mission to "colonize Duna", you'd understand that there were inherent advantages because of science or local resources why that was useful. I kind of think the less the game is up in your face telling you what to do and the more they're laying out a set of understandable dynamics that have lots of creative applications the better. 

[moeggz]

3 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

kind of think the less the game is up in your face telling you what to do and the more they're laying out a set of understandable dynamics that have lots of creative applications the better. 

Agreed, I want it to stay a sandbox a la survival Minecraft - build whatever you want, as long as you have gathered enough resources. The desire to build more things naturally leads you to deep mines and the nether and what not without a list of quests.

So ultimately I would prefer just LS. There’s nothing in the game preventing you from time warping 1 million, but your Kerbals will die/go dormant so the player is naturally led to not time warp too much while they are still in the “gathering resources” phase. When enough resources are gathered for interstellar this changes a bit with the massive time frames required.

As far as the “different play styles exist and therefore we can’t punish one style” angle, I agree with this too but this is where I think the comparison to the introduction of reentry heat is most applicable.

Some peoples play styles was to slam into the atmosphere of jool and pull a  50 g acceleration to be captured. Introducing reentry heat did take away that, but it added a (to me) very enjoyable whole other level to gameplay that made it worth adding. Same with life support. The “time warp all the time sequential missions only, I don’t have to consider transfer windows” playstyle will be hampered, but the game will get a whole new level of depth that is worth it I think. No one complains about having reentry heat anymore, rather it’s absence is felt by how much simpler the sequel is without it. I think a similar story could happen with life support. 

[Royalswissarmyknife]

15 hours ago, Vl3d said:

All the colony sim stuff is great, but what I'm really looking forward to it having to build all the trucks, ships and aircraft needed to transport resources using delivery routes. I mean, it's going to take a lot of iterative creativity to make good, efficient, big trucks and such.

Another thing I would love to do is improve my already existing designs as much as possible when I get new technology

Spoiler

Please add treads so we can make behemoths of rovers for mass material transportation

 

[chefsbrian]

I'm not really convinced the prospect of time warp for infinite resources is even a problem, and if it is it doesn't need to be solved nearly as annoyingly as semi-randomly gating my colony progress behind a radiant fetchquest. For players who don't want to deal with resources, sandbox mode is almost certainly hanging around. If it is still deemed to be a problem to 'hurry up and wait' on resources, the KSP gameloop is to build things to solve problems - So have colonies have resource storage limits, and colony buildings that provide storage. Players can timewarp to full if they want, but not to infinite. Simple solution that integrates into what they want you doing, without being annoying - its just another step in growing and building a colony, and makes sense. We've already seen orbital colonies with piles of spherical tanks, so might just be that's how it already works.

I'd love to see life support added, and I'll definitely be using life support mods, but I don't blame the devs if they're not adding it themselves. Life support is hard - look at the modding space for it. On the extreme simple end you just have snacks, which are a thematic but uninteresting "add another bar" approach to life support. On the other extreme, you have stuff like USI or Kerbalism that provide very involved life support that acts an interesting design challenge to missions - but also a relatively difficult and unintuitive one as you get into long term habitation and all its complexities. Satisfying both groups without making something very compromised that ends up making neither happy is a major design challenge. One that I believe is easier to leave open to the modding community, where bespoke solutions for all the various preferences are more easily compartmentalized.

[Siska]

So much talk about colonies and interstellar travel.

I don't want any of these if the game is in a state like this. Devs are constantly hyping what should we expect...

Multiplayer

Colonies

Interstellar travel

 

I think they should first assure people that state of the game is going to get better, because if until now orbits are unstable, it is impossible to build more crafts. 

For now, it's a single mission game (if you overcome the bugs). 

Somehow it frightens me how it will work all together with al the features they promised. The base game is not working well at all.

 

[Gargamel]

As this is about future ideas for the game, it has been moved to suggestions.