To sense or not to sense, future updates idea

[Comwarrior]

Career mode, seems to be a lil bit on the easy side.

Some of the more advanced players are able to complete career mode in one go.

So... I was thinking...

With the ARM update, you have to scan the asteroids and that gives me a thought.

Why should the entire kerbal system be available to view and launch to the other planets right from the beginning?

Why not use a 'fog of war' type of masking so that you don't know where planets are and their orbits unless they are within range of a ship with a dedicated sensor array?

Same goes for asteroids, if you don't have a sensor satellite in orbit then they don't show up to be scanned in the first place.

It seems sensible that you can't see everything right from the beginning.

So, you then HAVE to do most of the science on kerban in order to unlock the version 1 sensor array which then might allow you to see the mun provided the mum is not on the opposite side of kerban to the satellite.

Then, once you've done most of the science on the mun, you can then unlock sensor version 2 which then lets you see even further... etc etc...

Seems like it would be more interesting, especially with asteroids and even more so if the start positions for the planets was also randomized too...

[*Aqua*]

Planets and moons should be visible from the start. You don't need a high end sensor array to spot them. Look at the sky and you can see all planets up to Saturn easily. A small and cheap telescope is more than enough to make all planets and the biggest moons visible.

But I like the idea of some kind of researchable technology (+ maybe parts) for detecting asteroids.

[Kurtvw]

KSP Doesn't start at the dawn of time.

One assumes that any race that has worked out how to build a rocket engine has probably long previously looked at the little dots in the sky and figured out that some of them are planets... especially that great big Mun hanging in the sky.

Every planet in Earth's system (meaning those so far discovered) with the exception of Pluto were known before we even figured out how to build an airplane. We even had the major asteroids named by then. So it doesn't really make sense to me that Kerbals would need space flight to detect something they can see from the ground with their eyes.

[LethalDose]

KSP Doesn't start at the dawn of time.

One assumes that any race that has worked out how to build a rocket engine has probably long previously looked at the little dots in the sky and figured out that some of them are planets... especially that great big Mun hanging in the sky.

This. Even in the descriptions of the planets (especially the Joolian moons), it's clear that the Kerbals have been studying their system using telescopes for some time.

Beyond, uh, canonical in-game sources (man, it feels weird referring to anything in KSP as "canon"), I think keeping planets behind "tech walls" would hurt gameplay. As it is, in Career mode you're limited by your tech (implemented), reputation (not yet implemented and kerbol-willing, never will be), and your budget (also not yet implemented), which should be a sufficient hurdles to overcome and no more need to be added. The purpose of sandbox mode is to play without restrictions, so I don't see that the OP's suggestion would have any place there.

Overall, this suggestion is very similar to other suggestions to hide planet data behind tech/achievement walls (e.g. surface gravity information is not available until probes are landed on the surface), which I think are also bad ideas.

But who knows, maybe GP2 really is out there and the kerbals just haven't built scopes to find it yet... not that the idea even remotely makes sense...

[Raven.]

Mars right now can be viewed in the Northen Hemisphere with a cheap telescope from Walmart. In fact, my girlfriend and I did this very thing last night. Jupiter and the Galilean moons are also visible with a cheap telescope. The bright side of the moon can also be mapped using a cheap telescope.

With that being said, I have a hard time believing that a planet such as Eeloo, can be mapped with even a powerful telescope. For this, you really need a probe, which does fall within the mission parameters of what we can do in KSP. My inclination is that anything further out than Duna need to be observed with a probe before terrain details are revealed.

[merendel]

I have to agree with the other responces. Theres no good reason for the kerbals to not know about the other planets in the system from the start. Ancient astronomers knew of all the planets out to Saturn even if at the time they did not have a firm grasp on their orbits. Uranus and Neptune were also discovered hundreds of years before we could even think about going into space. Assuming an even somewhat similar development the kerbals shoud at least know about the planets from the start and have a pretty accurate picture of their orbital situation.

[Kurtvw]

Uranus and Neptune were also discovered hundreds of years before we could even think about going into space.

Well, no... Neptune was discovered in 1846... Only about 60 years before we started to 'think about' and about 111 years before Sputnik.

[Twreed87]

They should start out with some information known about some planets, and make you discover the rest. All the current planets and the biggest moons would be seen, but you'd need to search for things like Dres, Eeloo, and some of Jool's smaller moons. And you would only start with certain information about them.

I don't understand why people want to limit career mode. We'll always have sandbox mode for the ability to just do whatever you want, build anything to go anywhere. As it stands now, career mode is just sandbox except it takes a while to get all the parts. Career mode should mimic the feeling of, well, running a space program. It should be about starting small and slowly venturing out and discovering more about the solar system, little by little. I think running the science experiments should do more than just give you "science points," it should actually be required to learn about the system. You don't know what altitude you need to aerobrake at for Laythe until you send a probe into the atmosphere to check it out, etc.

As a side note, I also hope that when money comes into play, it's not just needed to unlock the part in the first place. That'd be no different from the science points. I think there should be incentive to keep missions as cost effective as possible. It'd be a fun challenge to not only find just the right amount of fuel to bring, but also making sure I make the most efficient maneuvers possible, utilizing flyby's, etc.

[vger]

Even with our current tech though, keep in mind, we're still finding new moons around the gas giants.

[Twreed87]

Also, it'd be really cool to have a purpose for building and launching space telescopes.

[LethalDose]

well... based on the second post from a mod in this thread, it sounds like the devs have been holding off on adding planets until they had a solid discovery mechanic... So, it sounds like there's some evidence that they want planets to be discoverable.

[Guest]

The majority of large planets should be well-known by Kerbals when the game starts and their orbits known. You'd send missions to find out more about them, but there's no reason for the afore-mentioned "tech wall" (lord knows why people think it's a good idea to make the game more "grindy") keeping Kerbals in their little neck of the woods.

What should be discoverable are those things we're only now discovering: TNOs like dwarf planets, asteroids in lagrange points, centaurs, comets, etc...

[Armchair Rocket Scientist]

To summarize:

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

By the time of Sputnik, we has discovered all the planets, all the moons in the inner solar system (i.e. Luna, Phobos, and Deimos), and all the planet-sized moons of the gas giants (Miranda in 1948 was the last to be found). We also found Pluto, Ceres, and Vesta. The only really big stuff discovered since has been beyond the orbit of Neptune. Most of the large objects discovered since then have still been found with ground-based telescopes. The kerbals would know the approximate mass, diameter, and orbital parameters of every non-asteroid body currently in the game long before they had the technology for spaceflight.

On the other hand, most of the planets were very poorly known until probes were sent to them. For example, we really had no idea what was under Venus's atmosphere, or even how thick it was, and the dark side of the moon was completely blank. Pluto, Ceres, and Vesta are basically blobs when viewed from ground-based or Earth-orbiting telescopes.

To translate this into KSP, the devs could do the following:

Leave the maps of most celestial bodies blank until you send a probe to map them. The Mun (side facing Kerbin only) and Minmus should be visible in full detail, while Duna and Jool would just be blurry as hell. In addition, probes could discover procedurally generated "minor moons" (generated like asteroids, only in in orbit around a planet).

Note that this would work well with the stock Kerbol system, but AWESOMELY with procedurally generated systems. Even if procedural systems are never in the stock game, the functionality would be nice to have around for modders to use.

[Deathsoul097]

Note that this would work well with the stock Kerbol system, but AWESOMELY with procedurally generated systems. Even if procedural systems are never in the stock game, the functionality would be nice to have around for modders to use.

Well, large parts of the stock system are procedurally generated, just not randomly generated. I understand what you're saying though, and it would be cool to have some stock telescopes we could use to discover stars and exoplanets that aren't part of the skybox, much like we are in real life. Perhaps, once the game has reached V1.0, a DLC for interstellar travel could be made. It's the only feasible way for anything that nature to be put into the game, IMHO, as it would be incredibly OP, as is the Warp Drive in KSPI. I don't like the idea of discovering major bodies such as the planets though. Dwarf planets like Pluto and Ceres analogues would be cool to make discoverable, but a planet is pretty damn obvious in the sky you know. (Obvious enough for even the kerbals to find easily enough.) Also, the discoverable moonlets would be a really cool thing to have, I actually thought about that when ARM was made public, but never really voiced it. Ah well, Kerbal minds think alike, right?

Edited March 31, 2014 by Deathsoul097

[boomerdog2000]

One idea could be you know the planet, it's orbit, and maybe generally what it looks like for the closer ones, but maybe for more high-resolution mapping you need to send a probe first? Same for the moons of said planet. I would like for them to better nail down mapping in timewarp first but I think ScanSat had that working.

We still don't actually know what Pluto even looks like. Hubble's best shot is just a yellow spot. New Horizons is going to take the first good pictures of it. So it doesn't seem too unrealistic that you might need a probe for good pictures of the planets farther out. Without having to discover the entire planet or its orbit.