My Multiplayer Idea

[doom_of_anubis]

Here lately I have heard a large ammount of noise about putting multiplayer into KSP.

I believe i may have a way of doing so that is, if nothing else, doable, if a bit cumbersome.

My idea is based around the warp drive mod. (The one shown by Scott Manly as being, "not OP".)

If you could disable the time acceleration feature and add in different kinds of warp drive,

you could, in theory, make it so that you never actually 'need' time acceleration.

You could have an inter system warp drive. This could be good enough to get you to say....

menmas in five minutes? Also, have it use normal fuel, but at a massive rate, so you have to

sort of feather your use of it.

You could have an inter planetary warp drive. This should be able to get you to the near planets

in 5 or so minutes, and out to the farthest in like....20 minutes. I could see this using nuclear

power to run.

You could then have an inter stellar warp drive. This could have the capability to get you to the

far planets in 5-7 minutes. This would, of course, need to be run off anti-matter.

This, IMHO, would be do-able, and playable. Not exactly the fastest time from planet to planet, but

a 20 minute round trip would be reasonable. Sure, that is alot of flying around, but add in a chat

function, and you have a decently functional multiplayer.

If you did this, it might be a good idea to create a sort of....anti matter storage container part.

One that allows a player to transfer their stored anti matter to it, and to take anti matter from it.

This could be put on a space station that orbits kerbin or other planets.

This could be player locked, or a server bank, of sorts.

I could see older players offering a sort of 'towing' service to newer players. Have the newer players

dock up onto their ship, and then have the older players warp drive them out to the farther planets.

This would allow newer players to still get out to the farther planets, while giving older players

something to shoot for. (That is, a ship that can get a docked ship to another planet. (and back, if

the player is feeling kind...and doesnt want to strand noobs out in space....but...who would want to

do that? -shifty eyes- ))

Just my thoughts on how I would try for multiplayer....if i was a coder.

[Faark]

- KSP is about orbital mechanics. Its pretty much the only challenge and yes, that also means waiting for the correct time to burn. => You need timewarp, or you could play some other generic space "simulation" (action like "press w to play forward") game. Ofc its fine for a mod to do sth like that, but i doubt there would be a high share of players playing it... since it just isn't ksp.

- You should you try to get rid of time warp? We have a bunch of solutions for it, and while i haven't found the time to play KMP yet, afaik they did handle it as well.

[ljdp]

Imo, multiplayer in ksp should be more of a co-op experience, I wouldn't want to play multiplayer with more than one other person anyway, at max 3. Rather than the other player flying multiple ships you cooperatively work on the same ship (occasionally controlling two ships for docking etc), then you just sync time warp with the other player. I'd also like to see multiplayer in the VAB, it would be cool if your friend builds the lower stage while you're building the upper stage.

KMP does have an interesting solution to time warp, but it does seem a little convoluted. I can't imagine squad going that route if they ever did implement multiplayer.

[LaydeeDem]

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/55835-Kmp-0-22-wip-alpha