Should there be other planetary systems in later versions of KSP?

[Themohawkninja]

It should only be added when/after/if humans figure out a very feasible way to send anything zooming through another planetary system. Fairly in the spirit of things.

Theoretically speaking, Voyager 1 and 2 are just that, assuming they manage to actually intercept another planetary system.

[Dunbaratu]

I get frustrated that requests for the ability to have other planetary systems always get swept aside with the *utterly false* claim that this is a request for FTL.

A desire for other planetary systems is NOT a desire for FTL UNLESS the implication is that you're meant to travel between them. If the request is "I'd like the ability to play a campaign in a different solar system", then that's NOT a request for FTL and shouldn't be incorrectly lumped together with FTL for the purposes of dismissing it.

That being said, while I'd like other solar systems to try out, what I'd like more would be for the current solar system to become more interesting. Most of the planets get kind of same-y after a while because they consist entirely of terrain shape and nothing else and there's just not that much to do on them. Adding more planets or more solar systems isn't likely to change this. Squad's insistence on having no other life forms anywhere sort of ends up making the entire system into just a bunch of differently colored rocks.

Edited January 19, 2014 by Steven Mading

[Themohawkninja]

Squad's insistence on having no other life forms anywhere sort of ends up making the entire system into just a bunch of differently colored rocks.

Which, minus Kerbin, is what the Kerbol system is right now.

[lajoswinkler]

I don't know Squad's current stance on it but in the past they have stated there will be other solar systems (procedurally generated).

For that purpose they have been/are trying to implement some sort of interstellar drive into the game.

That's either whishful thinking or blatant disinformation. Squad never said anything like that. Their statement is precisely opposite.

[Themohawkninja]

That's either whishful thinking or blatant disinformation. Squad never said anything like that. Their statement is precisely opposite.

Actually, I can concur with that first statement. It was from NovaSilsko, but it was many months ago, so such mindsets may be different now.

EDIT: If someone can confirm which dev the Reddit user "SkunkMonkey" is, here are your FTL engines, and here are your procedurally generated systems.

Edited January 19, 2014 by Themohawkninja

[vexx32]

He's no dev. That would be Capt. Skunky, the previous Community Manager.

[Dunbaratu]

Which, minus Kerbin, is what the Kerbol system is right now.

Yeah I know. That was what I was saying. While I like the idea of having more solar systems or more planets within the same Kerbol system and would welcome it, I'd like the idea even more of fleshing out details on the existing worlds so there's more of a reason to go sightseeing on them.

For example, Kerbin itself is supposed to be the Kerbals' homeworld and yet you need a mod to make it look like a populated planet. It looks like it's completely uninhabited except for the KSC. Inhabiting it would also make a nice challenge to where you bring down your missions to land. It would start to matter if it's in the midst of an ocean or on main street.

[tychochallenge]

I think other star systems shouldn't be a priority at least until KSP 1.0 is released, before that we will get comets, asteroids(coming in .24:sticktongue:) , Gp2, Gp3 and their moons and moonlets, (possibly some kind of an Oort Cloud?). There will be plenty to do in the Kerbol System until then. But there was talk of making Kerbol a binary system with another very dim star orbiting very far out with (perhaps its own system of planets and moons). If other star systems are going to be added, for now they should be only visible to extremely powerful space telescopes(hopefully will be added soon).

[Nemrav]

there were, and probably still are plans.... http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Gas_planet_2

but it seems we will have to wait until a response as to what happened...

[chaos_forge]

This topic has come up many, many times. I still maintain that the best way to implement another solar system is to have a binary (or more) star system. A binary star system is where two stars orbit their common barycenter. Since star binary star systems exist with any distance between the two stars (from .01 AU to a light year or more), it would not be unreasonable to tailor-make a binary star system with a distance between the two stars that is far enough to feel big, but close enough to not take too long to get there. Also, having an endgame drive capable of reaching speeds around 100km/s would help.

And as long as we're thinking about multi-star systems, a quad-star system (two binary stars orbiting around their common center of mass) would be pretty damn cool.

Of course, I don't think this should be a priority, but I would love to have it in the endgame or an expansion (along with colonization, off-world construction, etc)

[Ravenchant]

I like the idea of a binary (ternary?) system, but there is the issue of solar panels. As written somewhere, the panels can only take power from a single light source, a.k.a. the Sun. Perhaps it would be possible to "switch" sources from one star to another at points where the power-per-surface ratio of both stars would be the same?

[coolitic]

Please just start banning people who keep posting about stuff in the Dont suggest list. Im getting quite tired of it.

[timsfitz]

Well the Kerbol system still needs a lot of work. Jupiter has 67 moons... Jool a whopping 5. Need more planets and moons. More to do in the vanilla game. Other systems would be great after full release, or for a sequel.

[Northstar1989]

This topic has come up many, many times. I still maintain that the best way to implement another solar system is to have a binary (or more) star system. A binary star system is where two stars orbit their common barycenter. Since star binary star systems exist with any distance between the two stars (from .01 AU to a light year or more), it would not be unreasonable to tailor-make a binary star system with a distance between the two stars that is far enough to feel big, but close enough to not take too long to get there. Also, having an endgame drive capable of reaching speeds around 100km/s would help.

There's another possibility, that would be rather cool- have a secondary star orbiting KERBOL at a large distance.

I'm thinking a Red Dwarf, something like Nemesis - a hypothetical extremely dim Red/Brown Dwarf once thought to be orbiting Earth at approx 1.5 light-years (the idea was proposed in 1984, though later disproved).

Smaller stars *ARE* capable of orbiting larger stars like this, even if it turned out not to be the case with Sol (the sun Earth orbits).

1.5 light-years isn't the minimum distance for a star, either. In fact, another Main Sequence star (one much like our own) Gliese 710 will pass just under a light-year away from Sol in 1,477,000 years. The effect of this- a mere 5% increase in the rate of comets entering the Inner Solar System from the Oort Cloud:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_stars#Future_and_past

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_710

So, you could easily have a Red or Brown Dwarf orbiting Kerbin at 1/11th (1 light-year scaled down to KSP-scale) of a light-year. Still a long way to travel, but with a ship traveling at 20 km/s (difficult but attainable in KSP- especially if they add VASIMR engines as late-game tech) that's "only" 497,712 days (1363.6 years) - 7.16 minutes at a 100,000,000 x time-warp.

Interestingly enough, it makes me wonder if in 1.477 million years, when Gliese 710 is only a light-year away, we might not consider sending a manned mission to it in real life (if humans haven't nuked themselves by then...)

If we've developed 0.1 C Alcubierre Drives by then (assuming we find a way to build them or something similar in 1.4 million years), we could reach it in "just" 10 years... (or as little as 1.2 months with a 10 C drive- which we might never find a way to pull off)

Regards,

Northstar

P.S. 0.1 C is achievable even without an Acubierre Drive- though use of an Antimatter Rocket, for instance...

Edited June 23, 2014 by Northstar1989