Hopes For Colony Building (GIVE OPINIONS)

[magnemoe]

On 4/3/2024 at 5:15 AM, Scarecrow71 said:

One thing I failed to mention in my last response in this thread:  colonies in Kerbol orbit.  How many is too many?  Between which planets?  And for the planets way out there, do you have several?  For example, you may have one in orbit between Moho and Eve...but perhaps 4 of them between Jool and Dres?

My question is why, unless they are in transit, or are you making an Armstrong cycler? See orbital colonies as an way to launch ships and probes in space.
LKO is the obvious one to build stuff who is hard to launch into orbit. Second most useful at Jool because the long travel time and all the various missions you can do there. 
Then Eve and Duna on a distant 4'th.  This will obviously change with resources. 

[Presto200]

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

My question is why, unless they are in transit, or are you making an Armstrong cycler? See orbital colonies as an way to launch ships and probes in space.
LKO is the obvious one to build stuff who is hard to launch into orbit. Second most useful at Jool because the long travel time and all the various missions you can do there. 
Then Eve and Duna on a distant 4'th.  This will obviously change with resources. 

Eeloo might be a good one once interstellar comes into the mix because it’ll be the closest to interstellar space. Actually think again maybe not because of the inclination change but maybe that’s doesn’t matter on the scale of interstellar travel. If it does matter then you can make a Kerbol space colony way out close to Eeloo instead of further

[Flush Foot]

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

are you making an Armstrong cycler

I thought they were ‘Aldrin Cyclers’…

That does give me a question I hadn’t considered before though; while generally static/unmoving, can a colony cycle between SOIs? (Probably it would take an impressively perfect orbit / gravity assist to constantly swing from Kerbin to Duna and back without course-corrections)

[Scarecrow71]

1 hour ago, Presto200 said:

Eeloo might be a good one once interstellar comes into the mix because it’ll be the closest to interstellar space. Actually think again maybe not because of the inclination change but maybe that’s doesn’t matter on the scale of interstellar travel. If it does matter then you can make a Kerbol space colony way out close to Eeloo instead of further

This actually brings up an interesting question.  At least to me, anyhow.  How far out then is the Kerbolar SOI?  Does it make sense to build a deep space colony on the edge of the SOI for the purposes of interstellar travel?  If that's the case, wouldn't you need several due to orbits and such?

[Presto200]

  

Credit: @Stephensan

I saw this post in the Colonies Sneakpeeks thread a while ago, It shows some data mined colony building screen (crude but the idea is there). 

Spoiler

This is a photo from that, note the "Base Assembly Editor" in the top left, so it looks like you'll be flying above the ground and build the colony similar to how you build a vessel (you likely go into this screen after landing a specific "starting part", not sure). Anyways I would like to point towards the green button in the bottom right that says "Construct" instead of "Launch". This worries me that the base building will have that "god-like" feeling that I talked about in the original post to this thread:

On 3/22/2024 at 2:10 PM, Presto200 said:

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

I hope that when you press that button that you don't just instantly have a fully working colony with seemingly no real work put into it. Especially with no resources before the later roadmap update it will just be a sandbox mode way of building. To see my ideas to go around this issue please read the original post to this thread all the way through. Anyways I hope that the colonies update can bring more than just this VAB-like building of Colonies, I'm excited though!

Edited April 4 by Presto200

[Flush Foot]

1 hour ago, Presto200 said:

hope that when you press that button that you don't just instantly have a fully working colony with seemingly no real work put into it. Especially with no resources before the later roadmap update it will just be a sandbox mode way of building.

I agree 'god-mode / insta-build' could trivialize such an important accomplishment, but I also don't want to have to bring every single part / ton of material up from KSC all the way from v0.3 Colonies release, right through v0.4 Interstellar, and only stopping once v0.5 Resources comes out, so I am hoping for something like I'd said before (pointing out just one of those instances in this thread):

On 3/22/2024 at 3:57 PM, Flush Foot said:

hope that when you press that button that you don't just instantly have a fully working colony with seemingly no real work put into it. Especially with no resources before the later roadmap update it will just be a sandbox mode way of building.

 

 

[Presto200]

1 minute ago, Flush Foot said:

I also don't want to have to bring every single part / ton of material up from KSC all the way from v0.3 Colonies release, right through v0.4 Interstellar, and only stopping once v0.5 Resources comes out

I'm imagining that the colonies update wont bother with resources at all, itll just be choose a location and build in the VAB-like screen. Again stating why I think resources should come directly after colonies instead of interstellar  

[Flush Foot]

1 minute ago, Presto200 said:

I'm imagining that the colonies update wont bother with resources at all, itll just be choose a location and build in the VAB-like screen. Again stating why I think resources should come directly after colonies instead of interstellar  

Instead of resources though, it could be like some of the FS! experiments, where "oh, you want to add the 'Jumbo Orange 2.5m tank' to your colony? That will be 3 minutes of in-game build-time. [where multiple copies of some magic 'fabricator' would reduce the 3 minutes proportionally, but each one sucks down 50 EC/s or something]" ... the only thing I am not sure about pre-resources is if those tanks that you add should be empty or if they should be granted "immunity" from resource-requirements for refilling them until we can legitimately fill them in-situ.

[Presto200]

46 minutes ago, Flush Foot said:

Instead of resources though, it could be like some of the FS! experiments, where "oh, you want to add the 'Jumbo Orange 2.5m tank' to your colony? That will be 3 minutes of in-game build-time. [where multiple copies of some magic 'fabricator' would reduce the 3 minutes proportionally, but each one sucks down 50 EC/s or something]" ... the only thing I am not sure about pre-resources is if those tanks that you add should be empty or if they should be granted "immunity" from resource-requirements for refilling them until we can legitimately fill them in-situ.

I like this for pre-resources, It would be cool if they took a lot longer though, at least when building a whole colony. I alluded to this in my original post about things taking weeks/months and getting to see fun longform animations of the Kerbals building the colony or use time warp to see a "time-lapse" of the build. 

[magnemoe]

7 hours ago, Flush Foot said:

I thought they were ‘Aldrin Cyclers’…

That does give me a question I hadn’t considered before though; while generally static/unmoving, can a colony cycle between SOIs? (Probably it would take an impressively perfect orbit / gravity assist to constantly swing from Kerbin to Duna and back without course-corrections)

You are correct, its Aldrin Cyclers, and concept make more sense if you anyway has an time delay  in process anyway, nuclear decay, wood to dry or aging of vine  
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff4100/fc04014.htm
That is in the Freefall universe there you have good fusion.

[Flush Foot]

5 minutes ago, Presto200 said:

It would be cool if they took a lot longer though, at least when building a whole colony

I agree it could/should take longer too… I was just getting the ball rolling with some random time-frame. Probably it could be “X minutes/hours per additional ton divided by # of fabricators”.

Animation would certainly be neat to see, as long as it didn’t harm performance too severely 

[Flush Foot]

Oh… Fabrication-speed could also perhaps get a boost from Kerbals present onboard / in non-command spaces (2-, 4-, 8-, and 16-crew cabins) or else a productivity penalty for being uncrewed

[Presto200]

46 minutes ago, Flush Foot said:

Oh… Fabrication-speed could also perhaps get a boost from Kerbals present onboard / in non-command spaces (2-, 4-, 8-, and 16-crew cabins) or else a productivity penalty for being uncrewed

I agree! I talked about this in my original post also, it would encourage bringing a huge mothership to speed up production. It also makes sense because if you have a colony you will want a bunch of Kerbals there anyways

[stephensmat]

 

We've seen Fuel Manufacture in Colony buildings from before 0.1 came out, so bare minimum, I'm hoping for a landing pad and a fueling station. That'll bring us to KSP1 parity, and surpass it.

[Flush Foot]

Just now, stephensmat said:

 

We've seen Fuel Manufacture in Colony buildings from before 0.1 came out, so bare minimum, I'm hoping for a landing pad and a fueling station. That'll bring us to KSP1 parity, and surpass it.

Don’t get me wrong… we would (I presume) all love it if v0.3 Colonies offered the refuelling-type ISRU/ore we had in KSP 1! The devs / roadmap have just been leading us to believe that we have to wait until Kerbals have had light from another star shine upon their faces before they unlock the mysteries of Resource extraction and so we’re trying to imagine (and/or guide) how the Devs see Colonies functioning in v0.3

[stephensmat]

7 minutes ago, Flush Foot said:

Don’t get me wrong… we would (I presume) all love it if v0.3 Colonies offered the refuelling-type ISRU/ore we had in KSP 1! The devs / roadmap have just been leading us to believe that we have to wait until Kerbals have had light from another star shine upon their faces before they unlock the mysteries of Resource extraction and so we’re trying to imagine (and/or guide) how the Devs see Colonies functioning in v0.3

 

We can have both. Specialized Resources to build 'interstellar Drives' in the 0.4 or 0.5, but regular Hydrogen or Methane? I can't see a Colony that doesn't even let you Fuel up to return back to Kerbin.

[Presto200]

5 hours ago, Flush Foot said:

Don’t get me wrong… we would (I presume) all love it if v0.3 Colonies offered the refuelling-type ISRU/ore we had in KSP 1! The devs / roadmap have just been leading us to believe that we have to wait until Kerbals have had light from another star shine upon their faces before they unlock the mysteries of Resource extraction and so we’re trying to imagine (and/or guide) how the Devs see Colonies functioning in v0.3

5 hours ago, stephensmat said:

 

We can have both. Specialized Resources to build 'interstellar Drives' in the 0.4 or 0.5, but regular Hydrogen or Methane? I can't see a Colony that doesn't even let you Fuel up to return back to Kerbin.

Once again I want to voice my vote to have the Developers Push 0.5 Resource Update to be before 0.4 Interstellar Update

 

[Presto200]

I just had this thought, it would be awesome if when you made a big enough colony with a large enough population maybe there could be a light from the surface of a Celestial Body that you could see from space. Just a thought, also does anyone know how I can move this thread from the discussion fourm to the development suggestions forum? There are a lot of good things here.

[NH4Cl Enthusiast]

Colonies will absolutely be a rehash of the VAB where you can just spawn things from. The only functions a colony can really have without the resource collection system are refueling, building and launching rockets and possibly to act as science gathering base. 

The first iteration of the colony system will not be game changing in any way, you can probably just go and plop them in and that's it. We'll need to wait for the resource system before anything meaningful can come out of them.