Make Eve and Duna atmosphere more like Venus and Mars

[thereaverofdarkness]

I like how Eve's atmosphere is 5x as thick as Kerbin's, and Duna's is 1/5th as thick. Neither one presents much of a challenge, however. Venus' atmosphere is ~90x as thick as Earth's, while Mars' is ~0.7% as thick. If Eve had an atmosphere that thick, it would make flight very awkward, and parachuting tedious (might not be too difficult to pull off lithobraking)--but imagine trying to take off from that... And if Duna's atmosphere were thin like Mars', it would be quite a challenge to land on it. You could treat it like a non-atmospheric body, but some intrepid explorers would attempt winged descent for a greater challenge.

All-in-all I think making these planets' atmosphere thickness more different from Kerbin's would make the game more interesting. It doesn't have to be quite like Venus and Mars. If Eve's atmosphere were, say, 15x as thick as Kerbin's, it would be a tremendous challenge to launch a rocket from the surface...but it would be possible. Of course people can also find other methods, such as balloons or maybe a jet engine that can breathe Eve's air somehow (is it even combustible?) And if Duna's atmosphere were 5% as thick as Kerbin's, the atmosphere tickness woould be very significant still--you wouldn't be going orbital velocity when you reach the groound but you'd still need more than just wings or parachutes to stop yourself (or lots of wings/parachutes perhaps?)

Would also be cool to see Eve and/or other planets with a harsh environment requiring special protection to visit it. Perhaps only armored command modules could withstand the pressure without imploding, and the player would have to equip the Kerbals with a researched heavy environment suit to be able to go outside on EVE safely.

What do you guys think?

[regex]

It would be great to be able to land a probe Venera-style using a drag plate and a crush ring because parachutes are just too damn slow, but IIRC the guys doing the Real Solar System mod ran into problems with atmospheres that dense in the game. There is something wrong with KSP's atmospheric model that makes a true Venusian hell impossible.

Anyway, supported on the off chance this can be solved.

[vexx32]

I'd imagine that the problems with dense atmospheres end up something like some of the glitches you can see on Jool sometimes. Attempt to land on Jool the wrong way or with some weird angle (might even vary from ship to ship) and you can have your craft fly apart, slip into Nullspace, be flung out at lightspeed (or higher) and so forth... and if not, you might find your craft semi-floating in the atmosphere in some odd fashion.

[Yargnit]

Basically what regex said. Both crazy dense and crazy light atmospheres have trouble in KSP. I did a lot of the testing for Real Solar System, 5% and 15x would work technically (though both wouldn't really be much fun to play in) but going much farther toward the extremes such as what Venus and Mars have would be unplayable.

A Venus like atmosphere would be like trying to descend/ascend through oatmeal. You're literally talking so think (especially with how KSP makes atmospheres soupy atm) that your terminal velocity would be low enough that landing gear would almost have enough cushion for you to land w/o a parachute. On the other hand, ascent would be completely impossible because the atmosphere would be be so think it'd be impossible to get through it before you ran out of fuel.

At the other end of the spectrum, KSP's parachutes physically won't deploy at all at Mars's atmospheric levels. you basically need to double the atmosphere of Mars at minimum, and even then drogue chutes only stage open about 5km above the surface, and standard chutes around 2km. Basically you're stuck with the negatives of an atmosphere (being limited to physical warp as opposed to regular) without the benefits.

Their current atmospheric levels (1/5th and 5x) are basically at the limits of what's fun to play in. A bit less or a bit more would still be playable, but just wouldn't be any fun. (Also heavy atmospheres have an engine issue where you run into a harsh edge where you go from significant atmosphere to none instantly because of how it does the calculations. (Nathan is going to have to write a completely new atmosphere model to fix it)

[peadar1987]

I'd settle for thicker clouds and higher temperatures. I would love to land on Eve, having specially selected parts that could survive the conditions on the surface, with lousy visibility. Heck, I just can't wait for the Devs to implement weather

[boomerdog2000]

As far as gameplay is concerned I think the current values are fine. Besides if we're going to design a whole new solar system we might as well make our own right? Instead of copying the one we have.

[jwenting]

in combination with dense, you'd then of course also want it to be so corrosive that nothing survives in there for more than a few minutes, right?

[JayCheetah]

As far as gameplay is concerned I think the current values are fine. Besides if we're going to design a whole new solar system we might as well make our own right? Instead of copying the one we have.

Completely agree with this.