How to got more than one Star System to work....

[MRab2]

I will quit KSP if a fake sci - fi FTL drive is made and warn everybody to stay away and then I'll scream and scream and scream until I'm sick!!!. I don 't want to have to mine unobtanium from the surface of jool and extract part of kerbol's core to get a cheat wherever I want drive.

Ok, put your toys back in your pram and take a deep breath. Now, that picture in your head of how you think it would work? Yeah, it probably won't work anything like that.

Simple answer, some star clusters have stars 0.1 light years so do that 10 x smaller and you get 0.01 lightyears. Boom you only need to travel at a mere 60 km/s to get there in 5 years or 30 in 10.

Like most simple answers, this one has problems as I've explained elsewhere, but I'll explain it again. Any conventional propulsion system that makes getting to another star feasible will make moving around WITHIN the system trivial. Consider your above numbers; 60 km/s - Assuming a round trip suggests a ship with 240,000 m/s of dV. What's the maximum at the moment? 10,000 m/s ish?

Problem solved. No FTL needed (a sublight speed antimatter drive would be great for this) Antimatter has been made and container so a small antimatter drive would get us to 1% the speed of light.

Further compounding the problem. A ship capable of achieving 1% the speed of light and making a round trip will have a dv of 12,000,000m/s - a thousand times the current maximum. Getting from Kerbal to Jool and back will be like popping down the chemists.

A warp drive that only works once you're outside the local star's gravity well and can propel a ship at a few multiples of the speed of light in a compressed universe allows the game to preserve the difficulties involved in moving around within a star system but still allow people to expand outwards to other systems.

I imagine in career mode you would get your own LHC and upgrading it would make it produce more and faster. (Doesn't go faster in timewarp to stop that obvious problem.)

Well, assuming anti-matter entered the game I imagine it would work the same as any other fuel - available in any quantity your wallet can accomodate.

[MRab2]

IMHO, a multi-star system is the best way to appease both the realism crowd and the "I want to get there in <50 years" crowd.

Not pleased.

I want a multi-star system AND other star systems

Edited August 7, 2013 by MRab2
Added smiley face.

[chaos_forge]

Not pleased.

I want a multi-star system AND other star systems.

Some people . . .

[Anton P. Nym]

Not pleased.

I want a multi-star system AND other star systems.

And I hold up a mirror:

Ok, put your toys back in your pram and take a deep breath.

-- Steve

[MRab2]

And I hold up a mirror:

-- Steve

I was actually making a joke. Obviously, not one of my best.

[Scoundrel]

I was actually making a joke. Obviously, not one of my best.

I am unaware of any culture that considers condescension an acceptable form of humour.

That aside, I personally hope for something blutonium fueled, like a Kerbal version of Orion:

Here it is spitting out a 3m tank from KW

Note the Kerbal architecture on NovaSilisko's sexy Orion, originally posted in Nyrath's Orion thread. It would fit almost seamlessly within the game, and would allow rapid travel between stars in a reasonable time frame if we assume the star systems were quite close. After all, they don't have to be literal light years apart, they just have to be far enough to seem that way.

[MRab2]

I am unaware of any culture that considers condescension an acceptable form of humour.

This'll be using a definition of condescension that I am unaware of. Now that is reasonably condescending. But fair's fair.

That aside, I personally hope for something blutonium fueled,

Which suffers from Problem No2 - it breaks the in-system game. If you have Orion why would you bother using anything else for moving around between planets? No more worrying about Hohmann transfers - just point at your destination and go.

[Person012345]

Honestly that's the only way that makes sense. I love KSP, but I'm likely to love it less if I'd have to sit through 30 minutes of empty space on full time warp to hit up new systems (or 30 minutes of grabbing a coffee and doing other less fun things).

It would likely be a lot more than 30 minutes, unless they give us like, 250 million times timewarp.

[Person012345]

I actually think the jump solution is quite good. You -could- have it so that once you leave the system and your trajectory is calculated, if your trajectory passes close to another star then you could click a warp button and jump to the next star system you pass close to. If you're one of these purists, you could always have the option to not do this (by say, not fitting a warp drive, or not clicking the button) and you could go ahead and run ksp for the next 3 years until you arrive.

[skyace65]

in all honesty I think an answer depends on the state of shipbuilding at the point in time when we can discuss it. right now with the parts we have we can come to 1 conclusion, but once we have fully fleshed out part options and maybe even a new type of ship or command modules(though not likely) or the ability to have some sort of space center upgrade to build ships in orbit.

with the limited amount of parts right now some kind of hyper drive or warp drive would seem like the obvious solution. depending on the parts we have access too in the future we could come to a completely different conclusion. if we have some really powerful engines we might not need a hyper drive if we could come to some kind of solution to time being slow when traveling.

also worth noting is how many solar systems there would be, assuming just 1 hyper drive might now be necessary(again if we can come up with some solution to the time problem) but if we have 3 or more, hyper drive would be a must especially if you would have to go from 1 star to the next to the next.

EDIT: another thing i just thought of is a researchable mass effect relay type machine. make it 1 of the top tiered things in the tech tree if not the top and extremely expensive. maybe even require some resource missions to eve or duna. plus than it wouldn't be as overpowered as a manually flyable FLT drive or something like that.(not saying a FLT drive would have to be manual, it could be implemented in any kind of way)

Edited August 7, 2013 by skyace65

[chaos_forge]

-snip-

Never have I wanted something more

EDIT: And in regards to Orion making everything else obsolete:

1) LVN's don't make liquid engines obsolete. Each engine type has benefits and drawbacks

2) For sandbox mode, you should be able to use any engine you want to. If you think Orion is game-breaking, don't use it.

3) For career, the Orion could be expensive enough so it's only worth using in interplanetary missions.

Edited August 7, 2013 by chaos_forge

[Beeburgers]

EDIT: another thing i just thought of is a researchable mass effect relay type machine. make it 1 of the top tiered things in the tech tree if not the top and extremely expensive. maybe even require some resource missions to eve or duna. plus than it wouldn't be as overpowered as a manually flyable FLT drive or something like that.(not saying a FLT drive would have to be manual, it could be implemented in any kind of way)

Does this work like Star Gate or is some kind of Mass Driver system? Personally, I'd like something that still required something to be built one either side. For the Star Gate type thing, it's just an entry and an exit. For the Mass Driver, I was imagining some kind of "throw and catch" system. Personally I like the latter, simply because it seems closer to reality. In fact, it could add layers of difficulty. Because the "throw" end would be accelerating a ship to interstellar speeds almost instantaneously, it would be ill suited for anything living. So you would have to build several gateways within the Kerbol system to accelerate, and then more in the other system (Alpha Kentaruai?) to "catch" the ship at the other end.

I can't remember where it was that I saw this, but I do recall it was being considered as a realistic, albeit distant, concept for interstellar travel. There was something in tthere about using gravity manipulation, or bending the space/time continuum, but it was a while ago.

Anywho, I'm still in the frame of mind that interstellar travel should be actually interstellar, just like a trip from Earth to another star system would be. Don't get me wrong, a multiple star system, system, would be interesting and fun to explore, but it's not like anything that we've seen. I think it should be reserved for when interstellar travel has been found, not as a means of making a more simplistic form of interstellar travel.

[Anton P. Nym]

And in regards to Orion making everything else obsolete:

1) LVN's don't make liquid engines obsolete. Each engine type has benefits and drawbacks

The LVN is a "nerfed" NERVA, with the thrust cut way down to match the game's need to balance I(sp) and thrust. In the game, you have to pick between high thrust or hilgh fuel efficiency.

You can't nerf ORION the same way without making it useless. ORION is all about high-thrust, high-I(sp) propulsion. In-game (having played with the mod a bit) the only disadvantage is the relative clumsiness from hauling all that mass around... but thanks to how powerful the engine is you can slap on lakes of hydrazine to fuel absurdly large RCS arrays. Heck, I used a gang of 6 LV-Ns for coarse attitude control on my ship with no significant performance hit.

The real-world disadvantages of fallout and political opposition (as, let's face it, its fueled by hundreds of fusion bombs) just don't apply in KSP... so it would make all other engines obsolete in-game. I'd love to see it become a stock part, but I just don't see how Squad could include it without completely breaking the game balance.

-- Steve

[Alex_Leonardo]

Never have I wanted something more

EDIT: And in regards to Orion making everything else obsolete:

1) LVN's don't make liquid engines obsolete. Each engine type has benefits and drawbacks

2) For sandbox mode, you should be able to use any engine you want to. If you think Orion is game-breaking, don't use it.

3) For career, the Orion could be expensive enough so it's only worth using in interplanetary missions.

mmmmmmmmmHmmmm... I think the Orion shouldn't be obtainable through regular gameplay. Even though Squad said NO ALIEN CIVILIZATIONS- it should be obtainable through finding a Alien Artifact, and then it would be at the end of the tech tree.

[chaos_forge]

-snip-

well I mean it would obviously be a late-game technology

[boomerdog2000]

What if instead of simulating both star systems at the same time it essentially paused one of them. Once a properly equipped ship reached a certain point outside of the kerbin star system the game basically pauses the kerbin system and loads the new one with the ship on the outskirts. I realize it's not a perfect solution, I'm just looking for ways to have multiple solar systems without self destructing computers.

[Themohawkninja]

I'd be fine with 9 x 10^15 time warp, so that you can get to the other systems, however some sort of FTL tech + current time warp wouldn't be too bad either. I don't know, there is just so much that we will be able to do in the Kerbol system upon full release, that I don't really see myself ever wanting to escape it, unless I were to somehow mine out the entire system (which would probably take in-game centuries).

[loknar]

I wonder what the devs really think when/if they read this.

[chaos_forge]

I wonder what the devs really think when/if they read this.

That we may never know (until it's implemented at least)

[skyace65]

Does this work like Star Gate or is some kind of Mass Driver system? Personally, I'd like something that still required something to be built one either side. For the Star Gate type thing, it's just an entry and an exit. For the Mass Driver, I was imagining some kind of "throw and catch" system. Personally I like the latter, simply because it seems closer to reality. In fact, it could add layers of difficulty. Because the "throw" end would be accelerating a ship to interstellar speeds almost instantaneously, it would be ill suited for anything living. So you would have to build several gateways within the Kerbol system to accelerate, and then more in the other system (Alpha Kentaruai?) to "catch" the ship at the other end.

I can't remember where it was that I saw this, but I do recall it was being considered as a realistic, albeit distant, concept for interstellar travel. There was something in tthere about using gravity manipulation, or bending the space/time continuum, but it was a while ago.

Anywho, I'm still in the frame of mind that interstellar travel should be actually interstellar, just like a trip from Earth to another star system would be. Don't get me wrong, a multiple star system, system, would be interesting and fun to explore, but it's not like anything that we've seen. I think it should be reserved for when interstellar travel has been found, not as a means of making a more simplistic form of interstellar travel.

what I'm thinking is for an entry and exit type thing(like a stargate). I would prefer that to building individual relays which seems like something way too complicated and time consuming depending on how you do it. though the problem with this stuff right now is since we are in alpha most of the games complexity is still too come so it's hard to judge what would be too hard.

here is how i would imagine it working for an entry and exit system. you have to get a lot of research money to build the relay/whatever device but it only works one way. you can keep sending out probes and by doing so with the tech tree once you have been too enough systems with probes you than can unlock the ability to build a second relay on the other side to send ships back and forward.(and it would be much cheaper than the first time) and just keep doing that with each system. though this kind of implementation would only work well if we were talking about interplanetary travel with just a handful of star systems (10 or less) if the devs did something with procedural generation(which i would hate) than we would need a different system

[Rufus Callahan]

all this fictional transportation stuff to get to other star systems just doesn't feel like it's in the same spirit of KSP.

[loknar]

all this fictional transportation stuff to get to other star systems just doesn't feel like it's in the same spirit of KSP.

+1: This seems like the kind of thing that would happen if Squad was bought by Disney

[Anton P. Nym]

One idea for an FTL drive that is both somewhat plausible and still preserves KSP's STL travel mechanics is the Alderson Drive, drafted by JPL's Dan Alderson when SF author Jerry Pournelle asked him for a faster-than-light drive he could use in his novels that didn't make Newtonian/Einsteinian mechanics obsolete. Alas I can't seem to find the page with the math (which was way over my head anyway, to be honest) but this page describes the basic principles alright.

Neither for nor against this; just throwing it out for consideration.

-- Steve

[Skorpion]

From what you linked, the Alderson Drive posits the existence of a parallel universe with no quantum effects, and a fifth physical force that accelerates particles in this parallel universe. Unless I'm missing something important, I'm not sure I'd classify that as "somewhat plausible".

Not that I'd care if KSP added implausible tech to the late stages of the game, mind you.

[loknar]

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.urlesque.com/media/2010/10/5.jpg Edited August 8, 2013 by shadowsutekh
meme/reaction omly images are not allowed