Rethinking Probes, Satellites, and Pods

[Whirligig Girl]

I think the way KSP handles Probes and Pods need a little bit of reworking. Here's my idea.

Antennas

To be active, they must always be open. They also drain a half of what current probe cores do. The different antennas have certain different optimum ranges. When transmitting below the minimum range, the power requirement increases. This is to prevent the large dish antenna from being used for everything because it's the best. When above the maximum range, the antenna shuts down. It can still be given commands, but they won't work unless they are in range. Of course, the antennas' positions in the Tech Tree needs to be reworked. If more planets are added, these values need to be reworked. Adding more antennas does not affect anything, and will not draw more power.

Communotron 16: 0.1 meters to 15,000,000 meters. Requires the least amount of ElectricCharge.

Comms DTS-M1: 500,000 meters to 20,000,000,000 meters. Requires the second most ElectricCharge.

Communotron 88-88: 15,000,000 meters to 500,000,000,000 meters (Well beyond the orbit of Eeloo) Requires a medium amount of ElectricCharge, until past the SMA of Duna's orbit, when it starts to require exponentially greater power requirements.

Ansible DTS-M3: 20,000,000,000 meters to infinity, requires very large amounts of ElectricCharge. I don't know why you'd be sending anything out further than Eeloo, but at least it's an option. (Probably used with PlanetFactory, or for sending Voyager Probes out.)

Antennas can relay information, and an antenna will connect to the antenna that's in the optimum range and itself is somewhere along the line connected to Kerbin. Note that unlike RemoteTech, lines of sight don't matter.

Probes

Probes have twice the battery capacity, and only drain a quarter of the ElectricCharge of what they currently drain. They only respond to input when an antenna is operational. Probes also have a built in black and white camera that can be used for a small amount of scientific value. Probes can be reset by a Kerbal on EVA to restore it's battery.

Pods and Life Support

Each Kerbal in a pod drains 1 unit of LifeSupport per second. Pods contain there own supply of this. If LifeSupport runs out, ElectricCharge is automatically used to refill it slowly. ElectricCharge is also slowly drained constantly, but Pods have 5 times the battery power. Instead of reaction wheels, the Monopropellant in the pods is used when turning, through small RCS jets in strategic locations. This RCS can not be used to translate, and is not controlled by the RCS key (default R). So that a ridiculous amount of Monopropellant is not required, the Isp of the RCS jets on the pods are much higher than the regular RCS. Because both batteries and Reaction Wheels are unlocked rather early in the tech tree, the limited amount of monopropellant is not a problem. If Monopropellant does run out, a very weak reaction wheel is enabled.

Edited March 13, 2014 by GregroxMun

[LethalDose]

You may want to check out the TAC life support and Remotech 2 mods. They are so close to what you described it's redonkulous.

[Tex]

If I may put in my two cents to probes:

You propose that in order for a probe to work, they must have an antenna active. I propose that probe bodies should have internal comms systems (albeit very weak ones) that fail beyond about 300km. Then, you must switch over to a proper antenna.

Eh, that's all I've got.

[JiWint]

life support? ohh just not the life support.

You know why kerbals are green? They gain energy from photosynthesis.Water? What water -Evolution

Though the idea with antennas are great,but 3 of them are pretty enough.Like the first one for the moons of kerbin,second one for duna to moho,and the last one to eeloo