Stephanie's Suggestions

[Stephanie the Viking]

Every event has to be predictable. There has to be a reason for something happening

Life is not like that...

I don't see any reason why a spacecraft couldn't have certain things that could go wrong, an EVA to the affected part would make spacewalks necessary and fun. We can already manually repair certain things that break as Mr. Speed pointed out. From a realism point of view, it adds an element of risk, and from a gameplay point of view it makes the player engage with their kerbals and spacecraft in a new way via a few very simple code tweaks. I never suggested that an entire craft should suddenly explode, simply that it would be nice to have a repair mechanic in the game for our kerbals. The worst thing that can happen to a game is for it to become repetitive, samey, predictable and droll... any element of chaos no matter how small can give unceasing quality to a gaming experience.

[Superfluous J]

Whether or not random breaking of stuff on your ship would be fun or not (I don't think it would be) is not the issue. The issue is the developers have specifically said they will not do it.

Instead of asking them to do something they have said they won't do, add it as a mod. If it's truly fun people will use it and then maybe they'll change their minds. But actually what will happen is people will install the mod for the thrill of it and the realism, and then when the very first thing goes wrong sending their multi-hours-invested Jool ship into a Kerbol escape trajectory, they'll uninstall the mod and never ever go back.

Oh,and...

RNGesus

...is my new favorite word. Or acronym. Or something. Acronyrd.

[Sirrobert]

Life is not like that...

I don't see any reason why a spacecraft couldn't have certain things that could go wrong, an EVA to the affected part would make spacewalks necessary and fun. We can already manually repair certain things that break as Mr. Speed pointed out. From a realism point of view, it adds an element of risk, and from a gameplay point of view it makes the player engage with their kerbals and spacecraft in a new way via a few very simple code tweaks. I never suggested that an entire craft should suddenly explode, simply that it would be nice to have a repair mechanic in the game for our kerbals. The worst thing that can happen to a game is for it to become repetitive, samey, predictable and droll... any element of chaos no matter how small can give unceasing quality to a gaming experience.

Right, I'm sorry. I thought I was playing a GAME. Stupid of me.

The things you can 'already manually repair' are things that break for a predictable, consistant reason. Wheels break because you were driving to fast. Lander legs break because you hit the ground to hard.

You can identify the problem, and not do it again.

Things breaking is no problem, as long as there is a REASON for them to break.

And when you have random malfunctions, there is NO REASON behind them. Atleast nothing you can influence.

The only differece between a bug breaking your ship, and a 'random event' breaking your ship, is that one is unintended, and the other one is intended, by the devs. In both cases your ship is broken, and there was nothing you could have done to prevent it

[Arran]

Life is not like that...

I don't see any reason why a spacecraft couldn't have certain things that could go wrong

We had this in the game for a long time, and still there are reverences to this phenomana or random breaking ships, it drove people insane, and costed the Devs countless sleepless nights, Its called The Kraken, and it showed mailfunctions that you have NO control over in this game, are really not wanted features most people want to have..

If you really want to have such a feature, and since you mentioned youre a game dev on Unity you'rself then i would suggest make such a mod, for those who are looking for this kind of Realism, there are prolly more hardcore Realism fans out here that are looking to add every bit of extra challenge to the game.

Going forth on this trying to get this as Vanilla item in the game, is a waste of time and efford and can result in rubbing some people the wrong way, since you're suggestions are allmost all allready suggested many, many times before, and answered many many times before..

Hence the Do-not-suggest-list, some topics kinda get brought up over and over again, while they are discussing a dead beaten horse, in the sence of, its not going to happen, or its going to happen, when its going to happen.

But a bit tongue-in-cheek, i do find it funny how you talking about realism, and totally go past the notice that using Dv Calculators, flying by autopilots and computer assisted navigation is standard in Human spaceflight, and deemed unrealistic in KSP.

Sounds to me a bit like playing a racegame with a steer and pedals in cockpit view, and then be called a cheater because it not realistic to use a steer and pedals to control a car in cockpit view, but i have to use a xbox controller in 3rd person view to race realistic.

Sorry, i really laughed pretty hard at your comment on realism here

[Fel]

Since this would require the game to constantly simulate each craft in every orbit, you'd get a gigantic perfermance hit with just a few reasonably sized crafts in orbit. When you get really started and have a few big stations in orbit around various planets, plus big interplanetary rockets traveling back and forth, the game would become basicly unplayable.

Even if you simulate only stuf near an atmosphere, that'd still make cool space stations impossible.

Not worth it

Or... you could simply reduce the velocity of the craft by a fixed percentage. Say Vessel.Speed *= 0.999. You don't need to run the physics simulation (and you aren't doing so anyways), you just need to adjust the orbit to account for decay... which has an infinitesimal effect on the framerate.

How is this anything other than just 'add an extra part if you want this to work'? The inside of all parts has cables in them, the end. Your Kerbal Engineers aren't completetly useless without you, they know how to connect things tougether

It isn't really a part in the way that fuellines aren't really a "part;" so it doesn't have an effect on how "slow" the rocket is. But lets say that you have two batteries, one for a lander and another for an orbiter... and the lander battery gets drained. Is it really inconceivable that the FEATURE can be of some use, or that with tweakables you could entirely disable it?

Right, I'm sorry. I thought I was playing a GAME. Stupid of me.

The things you can 'already manually repair' are things that break for a predictable, consistant reason. Wheels break because you were driving to fast. Lander legs break because you hit the ground to hard.

You can identify the problem, and not do it again.

Things breaking is no problem, as long as there is a REASON for them to break.

And when you have random malfunctions, there is NO REASON behind them. Atleast nothing you can influence.

The only differece between a bug breaking your ship, and a 'random event' breaking your ship, is that one is unintended, and the other one is intended, by the devs. In both cases your ship is broken, and there was nothing you could have done to prevent it

As I had suggested... a long time ago... allowing the player to choose between "quality fueltanks" or "subquality engines with a chance of explosion" in terms of expense, tech tree, or w/e can easily add in a "random chance for failure" and provide a means of countering it.

Or, for those who don't get it, you can overtune an engine to produce more thrust but it will have a chance of "wearing out" and increased "overheating."

Again, you don't have to use it... but it adds in an API that others can expand on and satisfies a niche market.

[Camacha]

I like pretty much every remaining suggestion on your list, especially the science and electric ones. Both are intended to make the KSP world come even more alive in a way that is integral to the game.

I can imagine that air intakes would also be limited a bit, as they can be placed in really odd positions right now. Not only the placing would take a bit more consideration, the huge open channels inside the craft would also dictate more careful use of them.

For the electrical system I can imagine something like the music program Reason is doing on the patch panel, only a bit more structured and limited by the vessel (and constituent parts) you chose to build.

Sorry for the rude reception on the forums, we really are a decent bunch :)

Edited March 17, 2014 by Camacha

[Fel]

I think you got the wrong end of the stick about my thread, and the negativity confuses me somewhat, obviously you are used to addressing idiots or something.

Hey, [snip] it isn't their fault that they feel the need to turn down every idea because their own ideas were turned down!

If you read it again properly, you will see that I was talking of minor malfunctions, not complete losses. 'Never' seems a bit blunt too, and a bit presumptuous on your part - perhaps the idea that the game would become more challenging scares you.

They'll never admit it, but it does scare them. Life Support, if added in, could be effectively neutralized by making oxygen weigh 0g and having infinite amounts of it on board the pods. Any mod could add in an "Electric Oxygen Generator" and there, gone... Yet something so easily removed is contested as if it would cause the Kerbin Apocalypse.

In fact it's not really that different to adding fuel tanks to make the engines work, or adding wiring in a circuit to make the bulb come on, laying redstone to power the piston and move the door (minecraft?), though I suppose you probably play with all the cheats on anyway so you never need or run out of fuel.

Actually it's a case of making it more realistic and for the ships and stations to behave differently as you connect them together and build them up, dock them together, split them apart. Unlike some people, I don't throw my rockets together and hope for the best, or use mechJeb, or any mods at all for that matter, I LIKE realism, I like building things and designing rockets to be incredibly dexterous and versatile, not just strapping a load of boosters to a command pod and thinking I'm a genius. I LIKE adding fuel pipes so that fuel gets moved around the ship, I LIKE adding RCS thrusters in the proper places and balancing the center of gravity of my modules. Saying that 'The inside of all parts has cables in them' is a little childish too (not to mention horrible English), I was simply making a suggestion, if you don't like it go have an Eskimo pie or something dude.

I can understand how it can be helpful, but you have to realize that people are insanely resistant to change. Fewer even use RCS (and those that do don't use small bursts and wait for the craft to rotate, they use large bursts and complain when they run out of fuel). Heck, you could even have a separate battery for the "Lights" so having the external lights on doesn't leave you immobile. Again though, people are more likely to throw in NTRs and not care about electric usage than to deal with the problem.

Mechjeb and 'throw my rockets tougether and hope for the best' are mutually exclusive. The entire point of having a deltaV numbers is so you DON'T have to hope for the best.

Which is why she specified OR. (Oh... mutually INCLUSIVE, and no they're not. Kerbal Engineer provides delta-v numbers as do others; and you really only need to know the Delta-V for a section of the launcher... and you're saying she's stupid for being intelligent enough to plug a few numbers in a calculator to figure out the rest?)

I like how you diss mods and claim realism though. How do you think they do it in real life? GUESS how much deltaV a rocket has? NASA uses more autopilots than KSP. Plan a manouver node and than click excecute? That's how NASA does it.

Not really. MechJeb reads the "universal source code". NASA uses careful timing and pre-calculated stages. One is done with no instruments and in real time hence allowing course corrections that would otherwise be impossible, the other requires many many instruments, often makes use of a supercomputer back home, careful observation such that if something isn't right that it can be corrected for (in non-real time). Etc.. Etc..

*I tire of how people keep making this MechJeb argument.

And even then, NASA has issues with reaction wheels breaking ;p

*Oh wait, should I add that DESPITE the reaction wheels breaking, they're STILL using the probe? My god, a small inconvenience makes it impossible for your KSP mission to work, but NASA uses their BRAINS to overcome the issue?

Edited March 17, 2014 by Vanamonde
Please do not insult fellow forum members, no matter how much you disagree with them.

[Camacha]

Electric cabling might even allow you to avert disaster, by allowing the player to cleverly route power in ways that will not mean immediate failure when problems arise. By giving the player flexibility you are also giving the player tools to solve problems. It is not as if NASA wrote off the entire missions as soon as the Galileo antenna failed to deploy, the Kepler reaction wheels failed or the Apollo 13 tank exploded

[S4qFBxkFFg]

It appears I'm late and quite a lot of the initial list has been removed...

Oh well, have my thoughts anyway:

Secondly: intelligent, location-specific scientific expansion with new and varied approaches to the way that research is carried out. Check out the following list and see what you think [it's only a series of examples, the possibilities are endless]...

• Orbit-only (photography, centripetal force of the body being orbited, density or X-ray scans, mass calculations [this could even be confined to a space station/ ship with a science lab part attached] and have specific appropriate targets on the surface, much like biome detection for existing instruments, but would require the generation of a series of special instruments and instrument mounts)
  
• Biome-dependent (humidity, dustiness, local gravity fluctuations, atmospheric molecular makeup)
  
• Above-Biome (magnetic investigations, plate/volcanic analysis, planetary layers [mantle, core etc] depth and composition etc)
  
• Deep Space Observation (telescopes, particle-observation, radiation observation of other bodies / background objects such as distant galaxies etc)
  

No arguments here, I would like to have all of the above but I don't think anyone would consider the number of instruments available in the stock game to be "enough", it's more of a placeholder while the devs work on other parts of the game.

Fourthly, and something I personally would prefer, is the option to toggle realistic orbits; that is to say the probability of orbital decay. In this universe, orbits would have to be monitored much more closely, and would make planning and executing manoeuvres much more realistic and require planning and careful thought. Possibly not to everyone's taste but the option would be very cool [yes I know this would require a total rehash of many things but hey: no ask, no get..]

This is probably one of those things that has to be done in a mod before it's (by people in general) actually considered to be possible. Specifically for orbital decay, a quick-and-dirty method of doing this might be to have an "on rails" orbit converted into a (steepening with descent) spiral.

Unrelated to your suggestion, but sub-orbital trajectories, and orbits which are partially or wholly within atmosphere should probably have a different colour in the map view (or, at least some sort of warning flag).

Sixth: A means of changing custom number keys on the fly, so that once a ship has been constructed from several docked parts in orbit, it can be given new custom keys that do things only to this new combined craft. They should also have the ability to be reassigned like this indefinitely. This would by logic require GUI elements to display this information in much the same way as the staging is done at present.

Definitely, I don't really use action groups (using one of these: http://www.daskeyboard.com/model-s-ultimate/, perhaps unwisely, makes it tricky) but this can cause problems with abort modes even without bringing docking into consideration - an abort procedure that is well suited for initial boost (decoupling capsule and firing its escape rockets) would be suicidal if activated during descent from Münar orbit (where you might want to jettison everything but your ascent stage, which would then be throttled up to maximum).

Seventh: A means of mapping a planet's biomes from orbit, so that a player can plan their activities instead of going blind.

We need something like this, but balancing it for the best gameplay experience would require care - the SCANsat mod provides this, but not in the shallower parts of the tech tree, which works, imo.

A manual mapping option should also be available before any automatic biome detection - the player could go to the map view and click on points on a body's surface that they think are interesting and add helpful labels (e.g. "Big Crater - land here"). These labels could then be selectable as targets back in the flight view, similarly to flags.

Twelfth: Kerbal Academy: A spacecraft part much like a science lab, but used to train kerbals in zero-gravity and improve various stats. Limited crew: 2

Until the kerbals' stats actually mean anything, this is probably superfluous.

I like the idea though, and it could perhaps be interesting (or infuriating...) as an aircraft part - the trick being that to make it work well, you have to carry out flights where you perform a number of 0G dives to simulate weightlessness.

Thirteenth: Kerbal customization: colouring, clothing, hairstyles, facial hair, height, weight etc. Randomly generated or player-invoked are options.

Yes - apart from their names, they all appear to be interchangeable rocket fodder at the moment - this covered it fairly well: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/62602-Suggestion-Kerbal-Diversity

Fifteenth: more music variety (I love the tunes, but we need more)

Agreed, different compositions for each celestial body would be appreciated, and could give even more of a sense of achievement to reaching them.

Eighteenth: S.E.T.I. ?

This doesn't seem like it fits in with the rest of the game - unless there are transmissions or other evidence to detect, it seems like it could be anti-climatic and actually having evidence of E.T.I. might take the game away from its intended scope. I don't know - the individual components (e.g. radio telescopes) could work well, I just don't think the idea can be taken far enough to be interesting without a lot of work.

I'm willing to be proven wrong though.

Twenty Three: Could we investigate the possibility of laying electrical cable, joining batteries to the items that need power? It could make our spacecraft much more realistic and exciting to build. I propose a series of 'nodes' which are placed by the player between the battery and the powered-item, (raised slightly from any surface clicked), with no regard or worry given to wires passing through any spacecraft part. Wires could go directly from battery to item, though the more artistic would be able to lay them across surfaces, around corners and pass them through other parts at will.

In general, I think this would be more hassle than it's worth and that the current system of assuming the power is carried through internal wiring is adequate; however, where there are parts that either generate, or consume, extremely large amounts of power (I'm thinking of some of the stuff you can get in the Interstellar mod, or even the largest stock PV panels) the players should probably have to actually account for power transmission in their designs.

In any case, please keep playing the game and thinking of ideas - I'd rather more people made 23-idea posts with some on the WNTS list than didn't contribute at all.

Also, you mentioned already developing for Unity games? Despite what you said about not having the time, I'd make a (hypocritical...) plea for you to reconsider developing for KSP mods - people make worthwhile contributions with mods that may only have one part (this is a good example), so the workload involved would be, to a large extent, up to you.