Military Weapons in KSP

[sounthernrebel78]

Why do people feel the need to develop weapons when your the only person in the Kerbal universe? I feel, now this is just my opinion, that people who develop such weapons could use their time to produce mods that would help player create larger and more elaborate space programs.

Boats and planes are great because you have to be able to recover your probes and Kerbals when they return to back to base.

[xvdBanksbvx]

Because why not, there doesn't have to be a reason for it and plenty of people do game improvement mods already, so you would just end up with lots of cross over.

[Temstar]

As it happened rocketry is inseparably linked to weaponry. From V-2 to R-7 to Atlas to Titan to even Project Orion. So it's difficult to totally divorce a game about building rockets from weapon making, regardless of the intention of the makers.

In fact if Kerbals where a totally peaceful race that's never engaged in warfare, it's difficult to imagine how they ended up with a space program.

[hoojiwana]

The Kzinti Lesson seems pretty appropriate to mention.

Peoples obsession with wanting to shoot things in space with ridiculous weapons in a game that's about building rockets and exploring does to me seem a bit silly, but hey. It is a sandbox after all, people can do what they want in their own games.

[jwenting]

And don't forget a lot of people are into collecting old military vehicles, and keeping them in working order.

From jeeps to M60 tanks to jet fighters, someone owns and drives/flies it.

And indeed, people are obsessed with blowing things up.

[Levelord]

Because in this day and age, people proclaim their undying respect for soldiers in the military, who to put it bluntly; specialize in killing people.

Then they neglect to mention any respect for astronauts, who remain as a shadow of an afterthought in the public realm and who put their lives at risk to a greater degree in order to further human understanding of the universe.

[xvdBanksbvx]

Because in this day and age, people proclaim their undying respect for soldiers in the military, who to put it bluntly; specialize in killing people.

Then they neglect to mention any respect for astronauts, who remain as a shadow of an afterthought in the public realm and who put their lives at risk to a greater degree in order to further human understanding of the universe.

Broad overstatement, is broad.

[Levelord]

Broad overstatement, is broad.

Of course it's a blanket statement. But being an exception to the rule doesn't make the statement any less true. It's like the last time a friend of mine told me that not all smokers get lung cancer, pointing out that I made a blanket statement by saying smoking causes lung cancer, which is of course a defensive and retarded thing to say.

Edited May 5, 2013 by Levelord

[Stez]

Isn't making giant rockets that inevitably blow up part of the game's appeal? Weaponry just cuts out the middle-man.

[xvdBanksbvx]

Of course it's a blanket statement. But being an exception to the rule doesn't make the statement any less true. It's like the last time a friend of mine told me that not all smokers get lung cancer, pointing out that I made a blanket statement by saying smoking causes lung cancer, which is of course a defensive and retarded thing to say.

Clearly you read into things to much.

[twelveways]

What's the difference between a rocket and a missile?

When NK was in the news a couple of weeks ago I tried to copy their long range missile (Musodan?). Reclinable launch pads would be nice.

I also like the idea of being able to shoot my debris out of orbit, my map is getting a little messy.

[TwoHedWlf]

Also there "Hurr hurr, I'ma put guns on it! Lolz!" is a common theme among children and teenagers in just about any area and I think the average age of people posting on the messageboard is in the mid teens.

[Frankiebolo]

Since weapons and rocket technology goes hand by hand, expecially in the firsts years of missile history, I personally find it difficult to not stick with weapons. Since the first ballistic missiles were engineered to deliver warheads on the other side of the globe, to actually "simulate" a real space program would come up soon or less with military hardwares, maybe in a camouflaged way, but still military derivative stuff. Space exploration has been born by military competition between two superpowers, I wonder what would have happened if one of them weren't around.

[Tw1]

In fact if Kerbals where a totally peaceful race that's never engaged in warfare, it's difficult to imagine how they ended up with a space program.

While I don't imagine the Kerbals are totally warfare free, I do like to imagine that one of the founders of the space program saw a young Jeb playing with a toy rocket, and thought, "this would be a way to put someone on the moon."

It doesn't have to be that Kerbal history brought it about the same way human history did.

The only reason I've used weapons in this game is to do a bit of tidying up.

And on that day, the Kerbals awoke to less laggy launchings.

[UmbralRaptor]

Making weapons in KSP bothers me in 2 ways: There are no enemies, and most of the weapon designs I see are rather bad.

For the first one, consider all known lifeforms in the KSP universe at this point: grasses, trees, and kerbals. And every kerbal ever seen is part of a single unified space program. There is no one to compete with. Just a handful of explorers on a world almost devoid of infrastructure. The works of Kerbals consist of the craft that *you* create, KSC, a second space center (probably) in a valley on the other side of the planet, and a statue in the desert. That statue may have been made by someone else. There is evidence of one or more races of precursors -- the monoliths, the kraken statue, the SSTV message, the crashed saucer, etc. They are not around at this time, but may return. They may be friendly (the monoliths suggest so), or they may be hostile. In either case, there is little reason to believe that the Kerbals can effectively stand against them.

As for the second, just think of all the ships that have manually aimed low ROF guns (often with <10 rounds per gun), and/or unguided rockets. There are depressingly few proper missile buses, and typically the design goals are purely aesthetic, with accuracy and range utterly ignored. This is somewhat understandable for gun-based systems due to the limits of the current physics engine, but for those with missiles or laser mods...

[Echostatic]

Just wanted to say, this is pretty amazing.

[MRab2]

Why do people feel the need to develop weapons when your the only person in the Kerbal universe? I feel, now this is just my opinion, that people who develop such weapons could use their time to produce mods that would help player create larger and more elaborate space programs.

Well, aside from how people spend their time being none of your business I would say weapons on space ships are an inevitability. The majority of fictional space craft in movies and TV series over the past fifty years typically have one thing in common - they're armed. Couple that with the majority of games out there feature combat in one way or another - and often the most popular games have combat as the POINT of the game (Call of Duty, Battlefield etc).

If I was a betting man I would say the first proper multiplayer mod we'll see will be aimed at letting two or more players pound each others spaceships into an expanding cloud of debris.

@Echostatic - yeah I'm loving that series. That guy can build ships.

[Rastaman]

Every spaceship in the game is also a "kinetic kill vehicle" - in Transhuman Space jargon. Macey Dean's vids, as linked above, show that pretty well when two of his larger kill vehicles break the back of that capital ship. Actually there is no need for lasers in Kerbal warfare. It is realistic to use autonomous kill vehicles since minute burns by the target make you miss it with lasers of mass drivers because of engagement distances in space made possible with such kill vehicles.

That said, I like the peacefulness of the game, that there is no enemy to fight, and that it's made purely for exploration and development of space and builing fancy moon rockets. There are enough games about war already.

[Tw1]

That said, I like the peacefulness of the game, that there is no enemy to fight, and that it's made purely for exploration and development of space and builing fancy moon rockets. There are enough games about war already.

Definatelly agreed. So many space themed games or stories are about people shooting each other. Kerbal is free of that. I really like the game maker's no weapons stance.

[JonoRig]

As for no enemies cause they're all kerbals in the same space programme... What happens if the probe bodies rise up like cylons?

[Vanamonde]

What happens if the probe bodies rise up like cylons?

Then they'd all bicker among themselves childishly and fail to get anything done. I mean, seriously, BSG started off awesome, but by season 5 the Cylons were just annoying.

[Richy teh space man]

I've done lots of exploring and got kind of bored and wondered what if the makers of the anomalies return and are belligerent.

With that in mind I've designed missile ships and used them to shoot down unmanned rockets, just as a bit of fun in testing.

No Kerbals were harmed in the making of these ships though.

[Custard Donut (In Space)]

In fact if Kerbals where a totally peaceful race that's never engaged in warfare, it's difficult to imagine how they ended up with a space program.

Maybe they thought they'd like to go to other planets and needed a transportation device to do so? It's only weapon related to us because we are violent, crazy apes, Kerbals might be sane.

[JonoRig]

Haha, I never watched the latest series. But it was the only thing I could think of at the time. And was more appropriate then terminator, the original cylons, they were badass

[MBobrik]

I tried once to get rid of a big chunk of space debris by shooting separatrons at it. My idea was to blast it into smaller pieces that could be handled by my janitor class ships. The only result was, however, that I found a bug in game physics that caused the big piece of junk to survive virtually anything I threw at it. Separatrons at 2 km/s relative velocity just made it spinning like crazy w/o doing any kind of damage. So I had to give up, build a specialized rig to attach itself to it and deorbit it. And then to spent hours catching ricocheted separatrons on all sorts of wild orbits. So much for my try with weapons in KSP .