Wild Resource Speculation

[SolarAdmiral]

So a lot of people have been wishing that the science reports would 'actually teach something'. But I wonder, what if they're already teaching us something. Reports from at least three moons hint to some kind of exotic material. Minmus is ceramic, Gilly is "sticky", Laythe has radioactive water. I can't remember any others off the top of my head. But now I'm wondering if they're hints for resources coming in the explore update.

 

So my guess would be,

Ceramic on Minmus, required to build high temperature rocket nozzles for water cooled solid hydrogen.

Laythe, radioactive water, can I dare to hope there will be a fissile salt water engine? If not then just a good place to build and refuel RTGs and reactors.

Not sure what the sticky Gilly material could lead to.

I'd also guess the Moheart might give something specific. Maybe a metal that allows for powerful electromagnets, required for magnetic nozzle engines or perhaps magnetic contained fusion.

 

I'm willing to bet that at the very least, Eve, Dres, and possibly Eeloo and more Jool moons would have something. Anyone remember seeing any material hints in the reports or mission debriefs?

 

[stephensmat]

I could see that. In fact, I remember a line in an interview somewhere about the whole system offering resources towards an interstellar craft. Could be that's what they meant.

[chefsbrian]

I'm expecting more of a resource distribution system akin to some of the more advanced colony and life support mods, with deposits of varying richness scattered over various worlds, with the far flung ones having more "exotic" deposits in higher abundance that might be part of the backbone of early interstellar.

With all the realism they're putting into fuel and engine types, I find it unlikely they'll just throw in single-category automagic materials on planets, goes against the rest of the design philosophy so far. My expectation is that the Mun and Minmus won't have anything too special, and will just be a local option for whatever resource supply Kerbin gives you for free, but perhaps in higher quantities. Idea being to kickstart colonies and orbital shipbuilding with local resources, much like how a 'real' industrialization of space would go. So structural metals, fuel components, and whatever else is required for that early game tier of parts would be relatively abundant, but radioactives or exotic stuff would be trace or absent - Enough to build ships that use nuclear power generation or small nuclear core engines, but not orions or similar nuclear heavy options.

Stretching past the immediate Kerbin SOI, things get pretty foggy as we don't know a lot about the latter part progression or colony materials yet. What I find unlikely is the idea that a world will have any material 'exclusive' to it, as opposed to just being the highest richness, or one of a set. Making the part tree a case of "You cannot use your new engines because you haven't built a mine on the north pole of Tyloo" would go against a lot of the freedom that the game encourages in how you play and engage. Meanwhile, having the only real economical source of a given material be the Jool moons as a whole would be in line - Perhaps you can pull traces of it off Duna still, but if you want to be using this new material and its parts all over the place, you'd have to start branching out. This way, you have options, and can pull out the "expensive" engine for far flung missions like that, and once you've established sites on those worlds, that engine goes from being the rare, expensive one you use conservatively, to one of your main drives for the game. A system that rewards without hardline mandates.

I am also expecting a category of materials to be restricted almost entirely by colony development, and not just resource extraction. As of last we knew, Colonies would do more than just exist and launch ships, but would have their own sort of internal production and refining, such as the fuel buildings we saw. If I were in their shoes, there'd be a whole chain of parts materials that isn't mined, but instead manufactured, to offer a consistent high performance but expensive option on the design charts. Exotic metamaterials, carbon nanotubes, antimatter production, metallic hydrogen, the sort of stuff that you're not just going to dig out casually from a world but instead need to invest significant time, energy, and colony development into building up a supply of. This provides both a reason to expand existing colonies beyond just "its cool" and offers an escape valve for a player who feels truly stuck with the tools they have vs the challenges they face. If you just can't make a given mission work with your current material flow, and can't get out where they're more abundant, focusing your efforts on industrializing and bringing out that synthetic material option provides another path of advancement.

Overall the player should be encouraged and incentivized to expand their space holdings and worlds they visit, but shouldn't be actively punished for not being "good enough" to make a crazy mission on lackluster parts, and shouldn't feel like there's only one viable progression path for materials, worlds, and colonies. A theoretical "Duna Rush" should be an option because it rapidly expands the players stocks of a given material, rather than because Duna has stuff the muns lack completely, that you need to colonize Eve, etc. 

The only exception to this might be a form of unobtanium, right at the very end of the final interstellar tech tree. Providing something ridiculous at the hardest planet to reach in the hardest interstellar system to reach as a capstone for the entire gameplay experience wouldn't be a problem, as once you can do that by skill, effort, or advanced part selection, you're clearly at the "Just having fun with it" stage of the save rather than the progression stages.

[SolarAdmiral]

18 minutes ago, chefsbrian said:

What I find unlikely is the idea that a world will have any material 'exclusive' to it, as opposed to just being the highest richness, or one of a set.

I'd definitely prefer more spread resources also. Actually, one of the things I find most interesting in real life are stellar distributions. I'd love to see heavy metals be the most common in the inner system, slowly replaced by silicates through the middle and then water ice further out.

I definitely agree the basic resources will be available everywhere. Based on how they talk about setting up a base, I think every body will have some kind of base building material. Stuff like water, fissiles, carbons, I for sure agree will be available almost everywhere in varying richness. I would like to see some stuff locked behind a large developed colony too.

 But, I also expect those resources I mentioned weren't brought up in game for nothing. I also think as far as game design, they're trying to encourage visiting every possible place. I still expect some of the advanced materials for building the far future engines to be rare. Maybe available on only one or two planets in the Kerbal system.