Random planetary starting point work arounds

[LethalDose]

Hi all. Random planetary starting positions (in reference to kerbin) are something I've suggested myself and seen suggested by others on these forums.

While it is unclear if this option will ever be included in the stock game, I think I may have a work around for this.

All game start with time ("UT", measured in seconds) set to zero, and positions are calculated based on UT. If you start a new game, immediately save (so no flights are underway), and then go into the persistence file and set the time to some random value, that should effectively randomize planetary positions.

I'm thinking that using a uniform distribution with range of 0 to 156992048 (1 revolution for Eeloo around Kerbol, in seconds) should accomplish this nicely. It will give a nice large time counter, so you can RP that kerbals are starting their journey to the stars in some kind of "Kerbal era", or KE. I think this will be even cooler after 0.23.5 drops so this time can be counted in Kerbin days and years.

Has anyone tried this before? Are there major problems with this that I'm missing? I think I'm going to try this when I start a new career mode with asteroids... "soon".

[NovaSilisko]

A mod could do this quite easily I think, if you apply a random number to the epoch of every planet, then this would accomplish the same effect as offsetting the universal time, without affecting the ingame clock display.

[Kasuha]

You can just deploy command pod on launchpad and go to highest time warp for random amount of time (e.g. one coffee).

Starting with 0.23.5 you can do that in tracking station.

I would not recommend doing that manually in persistence file because if you happen to set too high values, you may start discovering precision-related bugs in time dimension which do not appear in games played normally.

[vger]

I was already wondering if multiplayer was going to have such a feature. In the event of having modes of play other than co-op in the same space program, multiple launch sites will certainly be a necessity.

[LethalDose]

A mod could do this quite easily I think, if you apply a random number to the epoch of every planet, then this would accomplish the same effect as offsetting the universal time, without affecting the ingame clock display.

Yep, I feel like you could also alter argument of periapsis. But until I see a mod to do it or its included in stock.

You can just deploy command pod on launchpad and go to highest time warp for random amount of time (e.g. one coffee).

Starting with 0.23.5 you can do that in tracking station.

I would not recommend doing that manually in persistence file because if you happen to set too high values, you may start discovering precision-related bugs in time dimension which do not appear in games played normally.

Yeah, but I don't drink coffee... Seriously though, I take your point about high values, but if the UT is edited to a value that would reasonably occur in a game (e.g. less than several rotations of Eeloo, which is the longest reasonable interval I could think of) I don't think it's reasonable to expect precision issues...

If there are issues with that... there are bigger issues in the game.

eh, yeah, on review, I can see where precision would get screwed up... It's still one more reason this should be an options.

Edited March 31, 2014 by LethalDose

[Guest]

But until I see a mod to do it

1. Get RSS.

2. Edit config file to change only the values you want changed (Argument of Periapsis, SMA, etc...)

3. ...

4. Profit.

This HAS NOT been a "there's a mod for that" post. E: Pretty sure you can also simply set a global "epoch" in RSS, should do what you want globally for saves.

E: If we're only changing the epoch for the save it would probably be bearable for those of us using external tools.

Edited March 31, 2014 by regex