Your opinions on the solar flare/winds?

[CrazedGunman502]

So I heard somewhere that orbits around Kerbin would be (slightly) more risky with the addition of solar winds/flares somewhere in the near future. What is your opinion on this?

[DevoidLight]

Have you got a source for this?

Assuming it's true, I don't really like the idea. More difficulty like this would be great for other planets, but I think the Kerbin system should remain easy to navigate for new players.

[Odo]

Have you got a source for this?

Assuming it's true, I don't really like the idea. More difficulty like this would be great for other planets, but I think the Kerbin system should remain easy to navigate for new players.

I disagree, more difficulty = more pride when you finally do something

[Toastie_Buns]

CME's would be cool, but ultimately not that big an issue due to irregularity + chance of it being in Kerbin's direction. It's also HIGHLY unlikely that dangerous CMEs would be added, because SQUAD firmly stated that they didn't want random disasters in the game. CME's pretty much count as a random disaster.

On the idea of solar wind however; this would be utterly awesome. It could give birth to the slow but lovable solar sail and would give a reason to escape the solar system (termination shock/heliopause etc) to gain science Pioneer/Voyager style.

[CrazedGunman502]

CME's would be cool, but ultimately not that big an issue due to irregularity + chance of it being in Kerbin's direction. It's also HIGHLY unlikely that dangerous CMEs would be added, because SQUAD firmly stated that they didn't want random disasters in the game. CME's pretty much count as a random disaster.

If that's the issue I think there should be some way to detect them before they occur and a way to keep safe from them.

[AlamoVampire]

I think its a good idea! would add that much more to the sense of accomplishment when you do something cool. also, it would also add a wealth of science gathering ability in career mode!

[DevoidLight]

I disagree, more difficulty = more pride when you finally do something

That's all well and good for those who already know how to play the game but you have to think about new players as well. You're throwing another layer of difficulty on to a player's first flight. Give them the Kerbin system as a chance to learn basic orbital mechanics before adding other mechanics.

[Wallace]

A constant solar wind would be nice, solar sails would be so very cute. Solar flares would be a bit of a pain in the butt tho, you're just bringing in an important and delicate ship to land at Duna, it's essential to your huge colony effort and will need careful airbraking, oh but at the critical stage what's this, a solar flare has hit your Kerbin space station and it will breakup and kill a dozen kerbals unless you quickly EVA them to the escape pods, but you can't leave the Duna ship.

I don't think things happening in the background would be good, like you go off some other planet and come back and it's like, solar flare destroyed your satellite while you were gone.

edit: I guess it depends on the consequences, if it's you come back and your satellite is now bricked forever, it's now a useless piece of debris, haha sucker, that would blow, if it was you get a pop up, saying MonkeySat 1 has been damaged by a solar flare, and you can send up a Kerbal to EVA and repair the damage then that would be cool.

Edited November 3, 2013 by Wallace

[SRV Ron]

Flares or random meteors that damage ships or probes? Those events are so rare in real life as to be unnecessary to incorporate in the game. Now, one could use the flares as a hazard if a ship or probe is deliberately sent to a close orbit of the sun, say halfway between Moho and the sun.

Solar winds would be something that could be set up as a mod with a solar sailing craft. While providing propulsion for free, it should be in the form of 1/10 the push of an ion drive with the sail allowing for speeding up or slowing down in relation to the solar orbit. One would be able to use solar assist to visit outer planets and return. Such missions, however, should take several years to acomplish.

[CrazedGunman502]

Now, one could use the flares as a hazard if a ship or probe is deliberately sent to a close orbit of the sun, say halfway between Moho and the sun.

Ahah! That is what I was thinking. Instead of simply exploding once you get at a certain point too close to the sun.....

[FITorion]

No random events.

Your failure should be the result of your mistake and not a CME frying your ship.

But solar wind... and solar sails to take advantage of it would be most welcome.

Unless you were very close to the Sun there would be nothing visual to indicate you got struck by a CME. Your ship would just stop working for no apparent reason. Imagine all the whining we'd get on the forum. Now if you were say within 100Km of the sun... then maybe... it'd be cool to have a solar flare occasionally to dodge... But this would be rather unrealistic ... because if you're close enough to need to dodge... you're already fried.

Edited November 3, 2013 by FITorion

[AlamoVampire]

Why not have cme's? I think theyd be that much more better! If nasa has to contend with solar weather we should too

[Sandermatt]

Didn't squad always want to have equations of motion that are analytically solvable (no three body interactions e.g.). Would this still be possible with solar winds?

Another thing is you cannot use more than 4x physical acceleration with ion engines, wouldn't it be unfair to allow long accelerations by a much weaker force?

[DevoidLight]

Why not have cme's? I think theyd be that much more better! If nasa has to contend with solar weather we should too

As long as it's predictable or there is something you can do to prevent the damage. Random failure that's not the fault of the player does not make for very good gameplay.

[Deadweasel]

Or what if a CME had a certain percentage of a chance to cause failures on a ship? They're not necessarily devestating; the ISS has weathered a few. It might be cause to introduce the concept of shielded ASAS parts, or create a situation where exposed solar panels could short out, or pass a surge to one more more battery banks/probe cores/etc. These sorts of damage could be considered repairable by a kerbal on EVA, thereby creating even more of a reason for them to even GO on EVA in the first place! More purpose! I'm all for that!

Heck, the career mode introduces that, and even if the parts restrictions are frustrating compared to previous plays, the added PURPOSE to missions makes it absolutely worth the hassle in my eyes.

[DevoidLight]

Repairable failures wouldn't be nearly as bad in my opinion. They might even serve to make longer missions a little bit more interesting. But having a long mission randomly and irreparably fail due to no fault of your own would be a terrible mechanic. Maybe the more expensive/heavy parts could come with shielding to protect your ship.

[Boosterspice]

This will be a interesting add-on for KSP. If anyone's interested, check out this thread, it deals with something similar:http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/54805-Idea-Cosmic-Radiation-Plugin

[FITorion]

Why not have cme's? I think theyd be that much more better! If nasa has to contend with solar weather we should too

because this is a game. And I agree with Squads assertion that random uncontrollable and unavoidable failures are not fun and not something that should be in the game.

There is nothing Visual about a CME disabling a satellite. They don't look cool. Your ship would simple stop for no apparent reason.

The only way I'd approve of their inclusion is if...

1. They could be predicted.

2. They could be guarded against... possibly by making you ship heavier with the inclusion of shielding.

3. Some sort of graphical depiction of this invisible phenomenon could be devised so you could see what's happening.

[Deadweasel]

Why not just assume that the KSP is actually still there and doing something to support the launched missions, and make that evident with transmitted warnings?

Shoot, there really wouldn't have to be anything too visual. Just fire off some alert sound, show a countdown timer to predicted impact, then represent any failures with the same kind of *poof* used for popping kerbals on the affected part.

Afflicted solar panels or components get a scorch mark to show what got hit, and maybe the crew report could reflect the damage as well.

OR... maybe it's only visual inspection that helps find the troubled part UNLESS you have a special diagnostic part aboard to locate the damaged components.

Take it a step further and include a diagnostic and repair system that can handle it all automatically for a power cost.

As it stands, there's certainly a challenge to the game, but once you're in orbit on on that transfer, there's that long boring period where there's little to do unless you want to warp through it all, or go back and launch something else. This would add some flavor to the periods in a flight where it's otherwise just a lot of waiting around.

Edited November 3, 2013 by Deadweasel

[Toastie_Buns]

Why not just assume that the KSP is actually still there and doing something to support the launched missions, and make that evident with transmitted warnings?

Because in my missions, it would go something like this:

Hot dog! I've finally got my ship to [x] planet! Yeah boi! Time to send confirmation to KSP that we're here and all is well.......damn. No coms device eh?

Wait, no coms device.

NO COMS DEVICE?!

NO CME WARNINGS OH MY GOD JEB WE'RE SCRE-

FRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZLE

[Deadweasel]

Because in my missions, it would go something like this:

Hot dog! I've finally got my ship to [x] planet! Yeah boi! Time to send confirmation to KSP that we're here and all is well.......damn. No coms device eh?

Wait, no coms device.

NO COMS DEVICE?!

NO CME WARNINGS OH MY GOD JEB WE'RE SCRE-

FRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZLE

LOL

Well, it could be even more detailed for long-range flights. Let's say every capsule has a HF transmitter which is hardened but low power and slow. CME warnings arrive often only seconds ahead of the event on those channels.

Adding an antenna improves reception and accesses a more powerful spectrum, allowing warnings to arrive sooner.

Plop a dish on there, and you get access to the pulse comms, which are much faster but are line-of-sight (could be overcome in local space with relay sats).

Big CME events are rare, but can cause big damage, requiring time and energy to repair in flight. Smaller surges can do unexpected things like reset the computer systems, maybe even corrupting collected data? (Thereby adding some more urgency/incentive to the transmit/return choice for science collection).

Given enough warning, a properly-designed ship could protect itself against large CMEs by brining in any extended solar panels, and enabling an EM shielding device (at a power cost, so hope you brought some batteries!) to drastically diminish the chance of damage.

[Brofessional]

How about we get weather on Kerbin before we worry about space weather.

[DevoidLight]

I'll assume that OP doesn't actually have a source on this then.

[vexx32]

Moved to Suggestions and Development Discussion.

[Sirrobert]

Devs declared there would be no random events. So no