Lots o Ideas

[deaththrower]

I have jotted down all my ideas so far on how KSP could be improved. I will try to list them but not make a wall of text at the same time.

1. Controlled Leakage Valve- You can attach this to your ship, and if you are, say, trying to get out of orbit but your ship is too heavy, you can click on this valve and adjust the flow. You can see a stream of fuel coming out of your ship and your craft will lose fuel weight.

2. Different sized ion engine- Simple, different sized ion engines.

3. Supercharged ion engine- Varying sizes, uses 5x more energy and fuel, has 3x as much thrust. This way if you have to leave a small moon, and a regular ion engine isn't enough but you need something with a large efficiency, then you can use this.

4. Secondary engines platform- A small sized thing that you can attach to the side of your craft, you can add an extra small sized engine to your ship, if you need the extra power.

5. Coolant tank- When they adjust the heating mechanics (I know they will because I have NEVER EVER had problems with heat. (EVER)), it looks like a liquid fuel tank except it carries water that, when turned on, is slowly fed into engine to cool it? (Sorta not sure on that one, doesn't seem like it would be useful or practical)

6. Coating- You can apply coatings, they look like paint, to parts of your spaceship. They increase heat resistance but also increase your amount of drag. Another variant could decrease your drag but also decrease your heat resistance.

7. Explosions push- Explosions are the heart of the engines. but when you are docking and something goes wrong and explodes, it doesn't push you away. I feel like space should be more dangerous, because it needs more excitement that monotonously going around and around the sun or planets.

8. Gas giant mayhem- The earth's atmosphere is gas. But you can go through that. Why can't you go through a gas giant? This is what I'm thinking. you can travel partway (not all the way) into a gas giant. The atmosphere gets very thick very quickly, but if you apply a pressure resistant coating (see #6) you can go a little farther into the gas giant. It could be two different biomes, surface gas giant and deep gas giant. Even with the coating going too far would kill you.

9. Radar- Detects space junk, see next.

10. Space junk- There you are, floating on your way to Jool. all of a sudden your radar beeps softly. You look over to see an stray asteroid passing by. It passes, but you shudder to think what might have happened if it was another 30 meters closer..... What I mean is as you are going through space asteroids will generate occasionally and pass by you, or hit you. If time is sped up it will automatically pull you out of time warp and warn you. This could be one of the things that make interstellar travel more dangerous, because it's boring going around and around waiting for you to get to your maneuver node.

I hope you like my ideas, if you have anything to add or comment please do.

[vexx32]

1. Aye, fuel dumping is a good idea. I think I've seen it suggested a few times before.

2. Eeeh, limited use, really. Ion engines are too weak to be of any real use on large craft anyway.

3. That's heavy sci fi. KSP's Ion Engine is already many times more efficient/powerful than a real ion engine. The devs have stated that while KSP has sci-fi elements, science should always come before fiction.

4. Already exist in the form of radial engines.

5. Will no doubt be useful when overheating mechanics are implemented. However, since one is in space for extended periods of time, trying to dissipate that heat might mean you just have to jettison the tank, increasing the possibility of Kessler Syndrome.

6. Interesting idea, might be a good thing to look into in the later stages of Career.

7. Not realistic. In space, there is no medium for a shockwave to travel, thus the lack of explosions exerting any force when they blow up in space is very realistic. The only time an explosion would exert force is when there is a physical medium for the shockwave to travel.

8. Pressure isn't the problem as much as density. When density gets too great, the sheer force of buoyancy will push you right back out. There is nothing that humans are capable of building anytime soon that could both withstand the pressure and exert enough force to overcome the buoyancy of a craft attempting to descend into the core of a gas giant. You can already fly partway into Jool. The "surface" is just the point at which it is deemed no craft could descend deeper. Many craft will explode upon reaching it, but it is presently very glitchy.

9. Perhaps... might be useful at some point.

10. Potentially a decent idea, but there are performance issues with this kind of thing. Also, Harv has said he doesn't want any "random failures" so I'm not sure if this kind of thing is included.