How can resources make Kerbal's Ground Game Fun - Ideas, Suggestions, Discussions

[SolarAdmiral]

So of all of KSP2, resources are what I'm most looking forward to. Ultimately, the economy, manufacturing, and transportation of stuff is what I'm interested in most and just adding that kind of industrial and logistic side to the game would be more than enough for me to be interested alone.

 

But, I've also been wondering how the ground nature of the resources could be used to improve the ground gameplay of KSP, which has always been a bit lacking and unnecessary. Just something to have fun with on the side but no real purpose.

 

Do you think it's possible resources could be used to make the ground gameplay both necessary and fun? I don't expect it to match this, but what I'd look to as the absolute best example the game could strive for, is Snowrunner/Spintires. If they could figure out a way to add even a little bit of that to the driving game of KSP I think that would be fantastic.

 

I don't even know if that's possible though. Could such difficulty be added in a low gravity environment, where in KSP vehicles can't really get stuck in the same way they do in the mud and snow of Snowrunner? Can it be done on the massive scale of KSP planets, without being one or two handcrafted sites on an otherwise massive boring world. Can KSP do that kind of gameplay without merely being frustrating.

 

I think the first problem to solve is, why not simply use landers and rockets. Maybe to encourage the use of rovers, some resources could be placed in caves or overhangs. There could be steep cliffs and deep valleys. There could be tall rock spires or other obstacles around the resource, easier to drive around but hazardous to land in. So they could encourage landing nearby on nice flat land free from obstacles, and then find a route to drive over to where the resources are.

 

Anyway, I was just interested in starting a discussion about what could possibly be added to make the experience deeper.

 

Again, I don't really expect it to be too in depth, whatever is done has to be able to cover the massive area that are full sized kerbal planets. It can't be something that requires too much work.

[SolarAdmiral]

Oh the other hand, maybe more realistically and just as good, rovers might simply be encouraged out of efficiency. They don't need fuel just easily generated electric charge. 

 

A planet could have three different resources. They never generate in the exact same place, but maybe you can seek out a spot that has all three nearby within easy driving range. Build your base between them and drive them all to the central base. Maybe even more key in high gravity like eve and tylo.

 

I just hope they can figure out a way to make the driving fun and challenging without being tedious and boring.

[Lowi_Sace]

Rovers will probably be an efficient way for transporting resources. So that is one usecase. I must be very honest, out of patience reasons I will probably fly most of my transport routes. Exception is if I don’t have to set up all drivable routes by actually driving the stuff from colony A to Colony B. On low gravity bodies you might also use rovers on long (ramped) runways to get resources to orbital stations

On 3/30/2024 at 9:34 PM, SolarAdmiral said:

I think the first problem to solve is, why not simply use landers and rockets. Maybe to encourage the use of rovers, some resources could be placed in caves or overhangs. There could be steep cliffs and deep valleys. There could be tall rock spires or other obstacles around the resource, easier to drive around but hazardous to land in. So they could encourage landing nearby on nice flat land free from obstacles, and then find a route to drive over to where the resources are.

They talked about recources being places on challenging locations. Some might be best done by rovers.

[Presto200]

What I always imagined is that I can set up a main colony and a couple “mining” colony closer to different resource locations within driving distance then I can truck them to the main colony and set that up as an automated delivery route. Then I can launch rockets with the materials from the main colony to wherever I need them to go

[Flush Foot]

6 hours ago, Lowi_Sace said:

long (ramped) runways to get resources to orbital stations

A ‘stairway to heaven’, even?

6 hours ago, Lowi_Sace said:

being places on challenging locations. Some might be best done by rovers.

Though to appease those who hate rovers, you might get away with planting a surface colony exceedingly close to the resources and have to rove-around under 1 km to refill the colony that is ship-accessible. (I’m 95% certain the devs talked about ‘multi-leg delivery routes’)

[SolarAdmiral]

8 hours ago, Lowi_Sace said:

I must be very honest, out of patience reasons I will probably fly most of my transport routes.

I'm right there with you. I find even going short distances with a rover very tedious. I've only done a handful of missions involving rovers, often only to go over to one or two other biomes, and every time its boring enough to make me avoid them for years.

Which is why I bring up Snowrunner. With everything put together, that game manages to make it fun. I think it's because Snowrunner poses challenges to the player, deep snow and mud, downed trees, running water. There's risk of getting suck. For KSP, the only risk is getting so bored you floor it, driving as fast and reckless as possible to get it over with. Obviously, KSP won't be able to be as in depth as Snowrunner, it isn't going to have a driving and terrain system like that, especially at the scale of KSP. I just hope the KSP team is able to figure out a way to make the rover driving a little more interesting, posing challenges and risks rather than merely testing patience.

1 hour ago, Flush Foot said:

Though to appease those who hate rovers, you might get away with planting a surface colony exceedingly close to the resources and have to rove-around under 1 km to refill the colony that is ship-accessible.

I don't know if it is possible, or if it fits the team's plan. But I'd almost like to see a system where players can have rovers drive themselves over long distances of easy terrain. Click on the planet map and send them to where you want them. As long as its flat open unchallenging terrain, the rover will drive itself and arrive. But it will stop when it hits difficult terrain, large rock obstacles, steep slopes, cliffs, narrow passages or narrow ledges, requiring the player to drive and find a way through only over the hard bits.

That way, the long boring parts of driving could be skipped over, requiring the player only to drive the interesting challenging bits. I think most people who hate rovers, is due to how driving them is mostly long boring stretches without much challenge. Maybe if driving them was instead letting them automatically drive themselves over the wide open easy stretches, and letting you jump in to drive over a five or ten minute stretch of difficult and challenging terrain, fewer people would dislike them.

[Presto200]

Maybe if they turned on collision of the scatter and then reworked the wheels and added new ones with suspension or tank tracks ect. Then it could be fun driving over all the bumps and such. They need to make/rework parts so that a system is created for rovers that rewards over engineering them. Maybe along with those reworks they can release a tutorial on how to make the best “rock crawler” rover in the training facility (In fact I would love a section of the training facility tutorials just to show how to build the simple crafts in the game such as landers, interplanetary tugs, effective satellites, interstellar motherships, SSTOs, planes, space planes, and of course rovers) 

[Flush Foot]

5 minutes ago, Presto200 said:

Maybe along with those reworks they can release a tutorial on how to make the best “rock crawler” rover in the training facility

Heck… I’d love that just to know how to drive a rover without needing to prevent all torque-wheels from reacting (violently) to pilot-input…

7 minutes ago, Presto200 said:

Maybe if they turned on collision of the scatter

Then I would find / make a mod to disable it again because heck no!

[Lowi_Sace]

18 hours ago, SolarAdmiral said:

Which is why I bring up Snowrunner. With everything put together, that game manages to make it fun. I think it's because Snowrunner poses challenges to the player, deep snow and mud, downed trees, running water. There's risk of getting suck. For KSP, the only risk is getting so bored you floor it, driving as fast and reckless as possible to get it over with. Obviously, KSP won't be able to be as in depth as Snowrunner, it isn't going to have a driving and terrain system like that, especially at the scale of KSP. I just hope the KSP team is able to figure out a way to make the rover driving a little more interesting, posing challenges and risks rather than merely testing patience.

For me this would only make using ground vehicles more frustrating to use. It would just add another reason to make a hopper/plane than a rover. Also a lot of the ground objects will later become collide able, which will make it more chalangin

Important is that they now fix and improve the ground physics in the game. This would give the ability to add bigger wheels and other cool ground parts which would make them way attractive for transporting resources (thinking about stuff like those big mining trucks).

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, Lowi_Sace said:

For me this would only make using ground vehicles more frustrating to use. It would just add another reason to make a hopper/plane than a rover. Also a lot of the ground objects will later become collide able, which will make it more chalangin

Important is that they now fix and improve the ground physics in the game. This would give the ability to add bigger wheels and other cool ground parts which would make them way attractive for transporting resources (thinking about stuff like those big mining trucks).

I probably do as I did in KSP 1 and for getting science in KSP 2, put wheels on the lander. This way you can miss the target with some margin. More of an issue with bodies with atmosphere. On Moho I was able to land withing 300 meter of target, on Duna 3 km is good. 
But 300 meter still require wheels. Moho is not like Minmus there you can hover around a lot, yes could probably got closer but since I had wheels it was close enough. 
On my Minmus bases in KSP 1, I tended to build them at an line from east to west as I could be within 10 meters sideways but more like 50 meters for east west point and just used KAS pipes to dock, even had an extension truck to dock if outside pipe range. 
On other worlds I put the base on wheels as they was smaller. 

Pol base refueling Jool express. Crew for an crew rotation for all 5 bases, Tylo ssto and an refuling truck for Layte for getting science at the other side of the moon.