Hopes For Colony Building (GIVE OPINIONS)

[Presto200]

I wanted to voice my concern about how the devs are going to handle the actually building of the colonies in the next major roadmap update. I was thinking that the best guess as to how they will do it is you get something on the ground with a bunch of resources and a special module that allows you to go into "Colony Building Mode" wherever you have landed. Then I imagine they just put a camera above that module that you can treat like a camera in the VAB and start building your colony like you would a craft in the VAB except you are outside on whatever celestial body you landed on. I think this would be a good system at it's base and makes sense.

My concern however, is that I don't want the colony building process to feel too  "God-like" if that makes sense. It doesn't make sense for a colony to essentially spawn there instantly after I build it, especially if I built some massive colony with many different buildings ect. It wouldn't feel like the massive accomplishment that it should feel like, the VAB gets away with it because the building feels like it is separate from the rest of the game. once you finish your craft you get it onto the launchpad or runway and the process seems like there is an implied amount of work that the Kerbals went through to get it there. That's why in the VAB you can see the Kerbals on the ground doing "work" and get an atmosphere that they are actually putting together your design (even if it isn't seen explicitly).

For colony building, there are a couple things that the devs could do to avoid this feeling. They could make the colony building process more of a colony designing process, that once you exit the build, you see Kerbals build what you just designed from the ground up. They could either do this in a quick animation or in a long period of time (maybe weeks/months depending on size of colony) where the player can time-warp past to see the finished result.  This would give the opportunity to put fun little details of Kerbals working in a kerbal way to build the colony when the player is watching it in real time. There could also be a functionality that based on how many kerbals you have with you to build the colonies, the animation could be faster or slower, this would give players incentive to bring massive "colony builder" ships to their build site so they can waste no time! I feel like getting to add those details will give the game a little bit more polish that the community is looking for and give the feeling of accomplishment of something big and new. This would also pay dividends once multiplayer comes out! The devs have talked about how players will not be on the same timeline unless they decide to "sync-up" for in person interactions. I think it would be so cool to go to some celestial body and to see that your friend's Kerbals are in the middle of building his colony instead of it just suddenly being there from one moment to the next.

I do see how some players would see this as just annoying though, they might say that it just is an extra waste of time before getting to actually use the colony. I think this is a fair assessment and I think a solution that doesn't use week-long animations could be having a quick animation every time you put down/remove a part/building/road when building colonies. It would differ from the VAB, instead of just some sparks that imply welding and such it could be a sped up animation of Kerbals building the colonies. Having an animation for each part of the colony will still give you the feeling of it being a massive effort of the Kerbals without it taking a while for the player to enjoy their spoils.

I hope others can see my vision, I just dont want something so big to feel like such low effort in game. Please give your opinions and hopefully the devs have something good cooking up for us.

 

^ Like seriously, it just makes sense that something like this should take time or at least look/feel special during the build process^

[Flush Foot]

5 minutes ago, Presto200 said:

it just makes sense that something like this should take time or at least look/feel special during the build process

Agreed, though this is why I am hoping that in v0.3 and v0.4 (pre-resources) there are ways to 'gradually' build up the... points?... needed to expand from the starting seed / whatever initial parts are required for that base-building mode so you don't need to 'truck in' every single tonne of mass from the KSC to eventually look like your picture.

I have no objection to not being able to go from landing with the correct / magical 2 parts to being instantly as well established as you've shown so long as I don't have to bring ALL of it with me, launch after launch.

Which I am now realizing mirrors (less eloquently) much of what you said... 

[Presto200]

5 minutes ago, Flush Foot said:

Agreed, though this is why I am hoping that in v0.3 and v0.4 (pre-resources) there are ways to 'gradually' build up the... points?... needed to expand from the starting seed / whatever initial parts are required for that base-building mode so you don't need to 'truck in' every single tonne of mass from the KSC to eventually look like your picture.

I have no objection to not being able to go from landing with the correct / magical 2 parts to being instantly as well established as you've shown so long as I don't have to bring ALL of it with me, launch after launch.

Which I am now realizing mirrors (less eloquently) much of what you said... 

True! this post I haven't even touched the resource management side of things, thanks for bringing that up!

[Scarecrow71]

I've got a few thoughts on colonies, some of which may make sense and others...may paint me as a mad scientist without the scientist part.

1. I don't want this to become like Civilization or Sim-City in space.  Heck, even Spore in space went too far.  If I say I want a colony on [insert celestial body], just drop one there.
2. I think all colonies should come equipped with, at a minimum:
   1. Landing site
   2. Launch site
   3. Habitation modules
   4. Power generation
3. I think that if you want a VAB, or research substation, or anything beyond that, then you should have to have the resources or space or whatever other commodity the devs come up with to place it there.  And no, I don't think that every colony should have the capacity to have one of every single building type in it.  Why would you have a research facility on both Pol and Bop other than to say "I have one on both"?
4. I think that the colony update should have...no, NEEDS to have...an auto-landing function built into it.  I'm not going to try manually landing a craft with a boatload of ore or platinum or whatever other rare resource is out there, miss the landing pad by 40 km, and walk the stuff from the rocket to the colony.  This will get old really fast, especially if you don't have the capability of building a rover or trucks or whatever at the colony.  We need precision auto-landing to insure that our goods get delivered to the right place.  Every single time.
   1. Yes, I am fully aware that this then also helps non-colony landings as this effectively becomes MJ in KSP2 (at least for landings).  I'm selfish.  Sue me. 
5. I think that a lot of the options we've heard about for/with colonies need to be just that:  optional.  We have options in the game for infinite electricity, infinite propellant, whether or not to allow heat.  Please don't force me into having to deal with radiation, or weather, or temperature, or geological disasters if I don't want to.  Give me the option to turn that stuff on or off like we have with other stuff.  At least then it's in the game and usable if we want it, but those who don't want it can at least disable it.

For now, that's all I've got.  I'm sure I'll think of other stuff later.

[Flush Foot]

17 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

I think that the colony update should have...no, NEEDS to have...an auto-landing function built into it

I think I had proposed a number of 'compromises' in other threads for colony-landings, but another idea that maybe could work is "kind of like landing in No Man's Sky" (though I'd happily take even more automation, at least by 'landing 2')...
Get it 'close-ish' (distance/altitude/velocity or some 'cone of approach' could be determined purely by the devs or by having 'upgraded landing pads / Instrument Landing Systems' at your colony) and then press a button and the rest of the landing runs automatically from there, within the capabilities / dV-budget of your vessel of course.

[allanp11]

I was thinking that you would have to bring everything, launch after launch, and dock it all together. Is that not the case?

Okay, so bringing everything launch after launch might be a bit tedious, but building it god mode like in the VAB is also much too easy, with not much sense of reward. So, how about this.

In the VAB you build a cargo ship that is capable of carrying as much size and weight as you can from Kerbin to the chosen destination of your colony. After you have built it, you must then fly it manually and land it at the destination. There would also be a new "land at target" mode for the SAS, which doesn't quite land it for you like mechjeb, but will guide you along the same path mechjeb would have, you mostly just have to control the throttle. Once you have done this you can then save the route and tell the cargo ship to fly back to a new loading bay area located back at Kerbin, where it will refuel automatically, just make sure it has good enough comms and large enough fuel tanks for the round trip you have made.

Then, back in the VAB you can build a section of your colony. The limit of size and weight is only limited by what the cargo ship you built can carry (the cargo hold pieces can be truly massive and re-sizeable, like the wings are now). Then instead of selecting a launchpad or runway, you can select a cargo ship. You can have multiple cargo ships in a number of loading bays. Then select the cargo ship and tell it to deliver autonomously to your colony and off it goes.

Once the part has been delivered you can then fly or drive it to the colony and dock it. If you are driving it, make sure you either put rover wheels on it (rover wheels would need a huge buff, they do anyway) or you have a built a wheeled gantry crane type of thing that can lift and carry your parts into place. If you are flying the part into place, such as on top of an already tall stack, then this is where a new SAS anti-gravity docking mode comes into action. Make sure you built your colony section with fuel and perhaps some radially mounted rocket engines. The new SAS anti-gravity docking mode can throttle your main engines allowing the section to hover, after which you can then land it on top of the stack and dock it like you would in zero gravity.

How does this sound? There's still work and player involvement needed as you build your colony, but it's not as tedious as flying every section yourself manually. Plus there's a bunch of cool new stuff to play with. Did I mention the wheeled gantry crane thingy?

Edited March 22 by allanp11

[Flush Foot]

22 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

And no, I don't think that every colony should have the capacity to have one of every single building type in it.

I will slightly disagree with you here... I see no problem in letting someone build all the things at every colony, should they wish it. Maybe there can be tunable-penalties for "overburdening" a colony (e.g. too many research labs? ship/base-fabrication / fuel-generation slows down by some factor)

Just now, allanp11 said:

There would also be a new "land at target" mode for the SAS, which doesn't quite land it for you like mechjeb, but will guide you along the same path mechjeb would have, you mostly just have to control the throttle.

Ooh! That's kind of a neat compromise that I hadn't considered! Like maneuver-lock SAS where you're in charge of completing a burn but it holds the proper orientation, but for it to (at least try to) set you down 'on target' as long as you throttle appropriately. 

1 minute ago, allanp11 said:

I was thinking that you would have to bring everything, launch after launch, and dock it all together. Is that not the case?

Before we can extract and ferry in resources (3 away in the Road Map... EA, For Science!, Colonies, Interstellar, Resource Gathering, Multiplayer, v1.0), that might be how they do it, but I am hopeful we're not forced into hauling every tonne of material for all vessels and colonies up from the KSC until getting to v.0.5 ... Especially since if we are, that would affect both v0.3's Colonies and v0.4's Interstellar-class ships 

At least in the short-term, (before 0.5) I think something that could work is a 'fabricator' part that consumes copious amounts of energy and (I guess 'optionally' @Scarecrow71) produces loads of waste-heat and it either piles "build-points" into some on-base storage-bin or virtual bank [like Science Points now], or else it must be running constantly when building stuff and has to run for X amount of time based on how much you've queued up to build. [just spit-balling here though]

[Flush Foot]

@Dakota, are we getting warmer? (and no, that's not meant to be a thermal-management pun )

[allanp11]

20 minutes ago, Flush Foot said:

Before we can extract and ferry in resources (3 away in the Road Map... EA, For Science!, Colonies, Interstellar, Resource Gathering, Multiplayer, v1.0), that might be how they do it, but I am hopeful we're not forced into hauling every tonne of material for all vessels and colonies up from the KSC until getting to v.0.5 ... Especially since if we are, that would affect both v0.3's Colonies and v0.4's Interstellar-class ships 

That's true, but I see recourse gathering as like gathering ore and stuff like that. Everything I mentioned, such as the autonomous cargo ships that hauls the stuff for you, loading bays at Kerbal, SAS landing mode, SAS anti-gravity docking mode and the wheeled gantry crane parts can come in the colonies update. I imagine the recourse gathering update would be (relatively) smaller, only really adding the gathering of ores and converting it onto different types of fuel, as well as scanning celestial bodies for ores and such.

Sure, they might have said in the past that autonomous cargo ferries are coming in the 0.5, but is that set in stone? It seems 0.3 necessitates that it comes sooner.

Edited March 22 by allanp11

[Flush Foot]

1 minute ago, allanp11 said:

gathering of ores and converting it onto different types of fuel, as well as scanning celestial bodies for ores and such

I think it is supposed to be a fair bit more complex than KSP 1's "magic" ISRU that can convert raw ore into useful fuels...

We might be looking for methane, water/ice, uranium, "metallic hydrogen" [eventually], whatever fuel-type is involved in the Interstellar-grade drives.

3 minutes ago, allanp11 said:

the autonomous cargo ships that hauls the stuff for you

I could be wrong, but I thought that while they are planning 'automated routes' (delivery routes, I think is their term for it?) for gathering/moving resources, those are only scheduled to come in "v0.5" when the resources themselves get added in, so probably (regrettably) we would not get "transfer raw-mass from KSC to my colony" routes in v0.3, but maybe they'll surprise us.

[stephensmat]

The real question for me is how they build into the terrain. They say we can build anywhere. Do we pick a 'spot' and get a terrain map in the Colony builder, and have to play a game of lego? "We need more support here, a longer strut there, to keep the platform level..."

Because if so, the bugs about terrain collision are going to have buildings falling through the ground for a while. That shot at the end of the first trailer, playing dominoes with a row of colony buildings, may yet prove prophetic...

[Kerbart]

I just hope this will explore new worlds, and new civilizations. To boldly go where KSP1 hasn't gone before.

[Flush Foot]

[stephensmat]

My great hope is that the Colonies Update will include Fuel production. Not Resources, just fuel. If the colonies can't even refuel the craft that brings them...

[allanp11]

11 hours ago, Flush Foot said:

could be wrong, but I thought that while they are planning 'automated routes' (delivery routes, I think is their term for it?) for gathering/moving resources, those are only scheduled to come in "v0.5" when the resources themselves get added in, so probably (regrettably) we would not get "transfer raw-mass from KSC to my colony" routes in v0.3, but maybe they'll surprise us.

No you're right, that is what they have said. But if building colonies really does require you to bring every piece from Kerbin* then maybe autonomous routes should come sooner. Or maybe we just have to accept that this is indeed an early access game, and that while colonies will be there to play around with in 0.3, they may not be fully playable till 0.5.

*But the question is, should every part have to be brought from Kerbin? I'm leaning towards yes, only because it's hard to imagine that a colony could ever make  components like nuclear engines, or even just a VAB itself, from just raw materials found on another planet. You would have to bring up a massive amount of infrastructure and manufacturing facilities first, all manually, which would be a pain. I think it would make more sense for the Kerbals to build everything on Kerbin then have it autonomously brought to where they needed it.  

[Presto200]

I’ve been saying for a while that they should restructure the roadmap to have resource delivery routes come before interstellar. It would make the colonies have full functionality before going onto the next big thing for KSP2. I made a thread about it earlier

 

[magnemoe]

18 hours ago, stephensmat said:

My great hope is that the Colonies Update will include Fuel production. Not Resources, just fuel. If the colonies can't even refuel the craft that brings them...

I agree, so spoiled by KSP 1,  base need fuel to land the rest is history. 
Jool express landed next to Pol base who suddenly looks small. Jool express carry an Tylo SSTO an Laythe tail-sitter for water landings and its tanker to be dropped at other side of Laythe to collect some science I did not need. 


Now that makes me pumped about  colonies at stage one is: is not an orbital colony an ship, devs responded you can move them. 
Now could I not dock my ship to the orbital colony, modify it and release, using the "part" resource, nice then you forgot parachutes, antenna, only have small solar panels at Jool, 
It will not help with forgetting docking ports  

[Urus28]

I hope it will not be a mess full of bugs...

[Dakitess]

I really don't even know what could please me about that colonies content. I guess I want it to be challenging as well as beautiful, aesthetic. To be able to finetune the colony on a very specific place, like leaning against a cliff partially with the launch pad overhanging over a canyon. The kind of aesthetic and terrain adaptability we've seen in the original trailer, that's it.

But since the actual terrain is miles (sorry, light-year) behind what we saw in the trailer, the lightning and colors so weird, the physics not quite on point, etc, I don't see how we will end with some very basic quasi-flat station with some buggy overhang pillars tentative that will float a some meters above ground, missing the shadows, or not fitting the ground textures definition, etc.

Yeah, quite pessimistic about it, since Terrain and Aesthetic is what I consider as the top priority for KSP2 and it's nothing to say that it under delivers a lot.

[Presto200]

8 minutes ago, Dakitess said:

I really don't even know what could please me about that colonies content. I guess I want it to be challenging as well as beautiful, aesthetic. To be able to finetune the colony on a very specific place, like leaning against a cliff partially with the launch pad overhanging over a canyon. The kind of aesthetic and terrain adaptability we've seen in the original trailer, that's it.

But since the actual terrain is miles (sorry, light-year) behind what we saw in the trailer, the lightning and colors so weird, the physics not quite on point, etc, I don't see how we will end with some very basic quasi-flat station with some buggy overhang pillars tentative that will float a some meters above ground, missing the shadows, or not fitting the ground textures definition, etc.

Yeah, quite pessimistic about it, since Terrain and Aesthetic is what I consider as the top priority for KSP2 and it's nothing to say that it under delivers a lot.

Hopefully they will find ways to use the new engine to it's fullest to solve these problems as well as make the game more accessible for less powerful computers, I'm sure the community will find very interesting ways to build colonies in these epic sceneries (like off a cliff as you said ect.). I hope the system makes sense and gives a good challenge, that's also why in a separate thread I suggested that the developers enable scatter collision when colonies come. This could work because it would be hard to land on the rough terrain but after you build a colony you can make large landing pads/runways to make it easier and smoother for future missions. 

I think collision with scatter and having time-intensive animations when building colonies will make the experience meaningful and encouraging. I hope development will go down these roads.

[Flush Foot]

18 minutes ago, Presto200 said:

I suggested that the developers enable scatter collision when colonies come

If they do, I really hope they tune down the scatter too (and/or first fix wheel-physics) because otherwise rovers would be almost useless (have to move at 3 m/s to have the agility to avoid the everpresent rocks)

[allanp11]

Apologies for the possibly dumb question, but has anyone asked the question of what is the goal of colonies? What is meant to be the incentive to build them? 

I mean, we build rockets to explore the different planets and moons right? So is building colonies just something to do or is there another reason to build them, like maybe as a refueling station or as a way to cheese science by having it slowly but continuously trickling out from there?

Maybe I'm just over thinking it. I mean, why explore other planets? Why collect science? Why play the game at all?! Just because we can and just because it's fun (or hopefully will be when they get most of the bugs out of it!) is a perfectly valid reason to do any of these things. Maybe building colonies is the same, just because we can. I only ask because if there was meant to be some specific reason to build them, for example what if they are a necessary step to travel to other star systems, would we want that? If so, then how does that change our wishes and expectations of colonies? 

[Superfluous J]

2 hours ago, allanp11 said:

Apologies for the possibly dumb question, but has anyone asked the question of what is the goal of colonies? What is meant to be the incentive to build them?

The devs basically said that the reason you build colonies is to get the resources and infrastructure to build and supply ships from anywhere but Kerbin.

If you don't want to do that, then colonies may be a bit hollow for your gameplay experience.

2 hours ago, allanp11 said:

I mean, why explore other planets? Why collect science? Why play the game at all?!

Why play ANY game? Why do ANYTHING except the bare minimum to keep ourselves alive?

[Icegrx]

3 hours ago, allanp11 said:

Apologies for the possibly dumb question, but has anyone asked the question of what is the goal of colonies?

I don’t even think the dev team knows the goal at this point. 
 

all we have been teased with are large station like colonies. 
 

seems the goal to me, is to make large stations while getting around the part count problem. 

[Presto200]

4 hours ago, allanp11 said:

Apologies for the possibly dumb question, but has anyone asked the question of what is the goal of colonies? What is meant to be the incentive to build them? 

I mean, we build rockets to explore the different planets and moons right? So is building colonies just something to do or is there another reason to build them, like maybe as a refueling station or as a way to cheese science by having it slowly but continuously trickling out from there?

Maybe I'm just over thinking it. I mean, why explore other planets? Why collect science? Why play the game at all?! Just because we can and just because it's fun (or hopefully will be when they get most of the bugs out of it!) is a perfectly valid reason to do any of these things. Maybe building colonies is the same, just because we can. I only ask because if there was meant to be some specific reason to build them, for example what if they are a necessary step to travel to other star systems, would we want that? If so, then how does that change our wishes and expectations of colonies? 

The way I interpret all the interviews/dev talks I’ve seen is that the end goal for the game is to have the different fuel types need to be extracted and processed from different celestial bodies and you would get to do this with colonies and then set up delivery routes to all your different colonies to make sure everywhere has access to all fuel types. This brings a bit more meat to the game so that you can’t just go straight from Kerbin to interstellar when that’s in the game. I think it’s a similar reason that they wanted For Science! Missions to encourage further destinations than the Mun or Minmus. 
 

My concern however is that resource gathering isn’t supposed to be in the game until after interstellar. So that brings up that exact question of what’s the point. I think they’ll be great for the final game but they will just be a toy for the colonies update. When it drops it will bring being able to launch ships from these colonies and yes fun of building colonies just to build colonies, but that’s it. Gameplay wise it doesn’t bring much until resources are added.
 

I see the benefit however of not adding that all at once. This would be so that players can get used to building colonies without worrying about resource management etc. but I don’t think it’s a big enough reason to wait so long to add resource gathering. This doesn’t make total sense because a player could just go into sandbox mode if they want to play without worrying about resources. Also version 1.0 is going to have resources so if any new player comes then they’ll have to learn colonies with resources anyways. 
 

These are the reasons I will continue to promote my thread on switching the resource gathering milestone and the interstellar milestone so that colonies have complete functionality before we go interstellar