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I don't want realism, I want believability


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Warning, wall of text ahead.

So I was reading an excellent post here earlier that I can't find now, but it was on about making things believable, not realistic. I found myself realising that I didn't in fact want realism (which is something I've thought I wanted for ages), I wanted the game to be believeable. Let me give you some examples:

Clouds. An atmosphereic planet like Kerbin, with obvious trees and mountains and water, doesn't have any in the stock game. Why do I like EVE? Not because it makes things realistic, but because it makes me actually believe the planet could exist in real life (because those things make clouds). Granted, it's a bit more problematic on Duna, but it has an atmosphere and no doubt places that heat up quicker than others. This creates wind which kicks up dust storms. It's believable.

Ion drives. People say their thrust is unrealistic, but before KSP, I hadn't even heard of them. I researched them and found that they use electricity to accelerate argon/xenon etc ions up to a high speed and spit them out the back. Huh, sounds believable.. I don't know enough about them to know if they're similar to KSP but I know inert gas ions don't have a high density so the thrust will be pretty low and oh look, it is. That's believable.

Aerodynamics. I like FAR not because it makes aerodynamics more realistic but because it makes them behave more like I would expect them to. Yes, there's a fine line between them but when you can create such ridiculous designs like this with pFairings, it breaks my sense of immersion and I stop believing something like that could exist (it's why I see pFairings as cheating with FAR and prefer KWR fairings where I have a fixed space to work with).

Life Support. Granted, I don't know how kerbals survive (photosynthesis? Snacks?) but I don't like going to Jool and Eeloo in a Mk1 lander can because I don't believe it's something that could happen in the KSP universe. It takes years to get there and they were sat in their seat the entire time? I'm not looking for mental/physical health deterioration or anything like that, I just want to be able to say to them 'don't worry guys, you won't run out of oxygen'.

RemoteTech/AntennaRange. I do find it hard to believe that a single extendible whip antenna on a probe on Eeloo can transmit stuff directly to Kerbin. I know Voyager does it, but it's packet size and speed is extremely low. But I do believe that, with a proper relay around Kerbin to catch incoming transmissions, a directional dish would be able to reach Kerbin and deliver decent speeds.

Those are just a few examples, but it helps me with the 'you're talking about realism in a game with 75cm tall green aliens?'. No, I'm talking about believability. KSP, while it does contain 75cm tall green aliens, is based on real world physics. The orbital mechanics are very real and can easily even be transferred into real life situations and vice versa (I do know that some guys at NASA play KSP). It's realistic for the world that we're given and that is what I want the direction of the game to head. Many films ignore this - sure, have aliens or vampires, whatever, but at least stick to your own rules that you've outlined. KSP makes it very clear that the process of getting into orbit is extremely similar to how it's done IRL - again, given the universe it inhabits. Yeah, the atmosphere isn't terribly realistic for the gravity well, but it's believable enough - there's no 'point straight up and thrust and you're in orbit' or 'ships are planes in space' incorrect tropes, it's very real because it's very believable. If it had such tropes, I'd wouldn't be half as interested (although getting spaceplanes into orbit would be easier..) but as it stands, that's what keeps me coming back. The fact that I believe this universe/solar system could exist somewhere (before you mention n-body physics or the fact that stable orbits do still degrade or whatever, I am aware of the game engines limitations and am willing to cut it some clack in that area). Asteroids are step towards believability. The new NASA parts are too - no longer are massive asparagus-staged, orange-tank lifter necessary for lifting heavy loads. As I mentioned, when I see something that ridiculous, it breaks immersion and honestly, lowers my fun a little. The ARM parts didn't allow for more realistic rockets, they allowed for more believable ones. There's no need for asparagus pancakes, just a liquid core with big can of boom at the bottom. I believe that kerbals would more likely consider that as the next step in the space program rather than radially decoupling 40 orange sides.

Why have I posted this here and not in the general discussion? Because this is the direction I want KSP to take. I want it to become more believable given the rules already laid out. Yes, this would mean making a few mods stock, but it also should give devs an idea of what to aim for with regards to 'what do we do with KSP next?'. And the answer to that is simply 'make me believe Kerbin exists. Make me believe kerbals are real things in a far off solar system.'

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That was a very read. It has a very good vibe to it, you know it's just the vibe of it (anyone get it?).

What my objection is is realism for the sake realism. Which is why I hate it when people argue for a feature and say "But it's realistic". I think that this is a very good way to think about it.

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I agree with you on a lot of points here, but I can see some issues with this kind of approach. The main problem being that believability (for lack of a better word) is entirely subjective. While you and I may consider pancake rockets to be totally absurd, for example, to a lot of people, that might not be the case. And that's what makes this so difficult to balance. I guarantee that there have been plenty of people playing KSP who just thrusted, straight up, into space - and were confused when they fell back down to Kerbin. In that way, being realistic may even stop the game being believable for some people. But, overall, I do agree with you. Even though we are playing a game with little green men who occasionally die of shock, the link to reality in the form of believability is what makes KSP what it is. Without it, it's just some fun little game that might entertain you for a few hours. But, having that link allows the game to work on so many different levels - from MOAR BOOSTERS to hardcore pen-and-paper orbital mechanics. And I feel the ease with which the game can be modded exists mostly for this purpose. Are more realistic aerodynamics believable for you? Then download FAR. Want to design your rockets perfectly for the task at hand? Kerbal Engineer.

So, in summary, I wouldn't worry about this too much. The way I see it, the game has only been getting more and more believable with time, both through stock development and mods. Chances are, the career and multiplayer mode stuff might put it all on hold for a bit, but I doubt it will be forgotten. :)

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The main problem being that believability (for lack of a better word) is entirely subjective. While you and I may consider pancake rockets to be totally absurd, for example, to a lot of people, that might not be the case.

I know and that's what kind of irritates me about the game. Harv likes the 'seat of the pants' kind of building and flying, I don't think it's a stretch of the imagination to think that he doesn't mind asparagus pancakes and thinks they should be a staple of any budding young kerbonauts program. But yes, the trouble comes when people disagree and want something that at least looks like it could go to space. People aren't stupid, they know what a rocket looks like. I remember my first creations in KSP and I was thinking 'well, if it works, it ain't stupid..' and I can kind of see the draw for that, but since I downloaded various mods that make the game more believable (FAR, KW, EVE etc), I found myself enjoying the game a whole lot more because I could see my rockets on a real life launch pad. I could see real people in the command pod, I could, with the help of Hullcam's launchpad camera, see my launch being televised around the world. One of my personal favourite screenshots ever is this one - you can see the power, you can feel the sense of wanting to know more about the universe surrounding the planet.. Yeah, it was just launching an interplanetary tug into LKO, but I honestly feel like I wouldn't enjoy launching the same thing, had I not installed FAR and KW beforehand. It'd just be a repeat "45 at 10k" launch that gets me into the same orbit every time otherwise.

But yeah, I can see people do want to play stock and enjoy Kerbin's soupy atmosphere and everything which is why, above all else, I wish the devs would, in 1.0, implement difficulty sliders. Turn on/off life support, believable aerodynamics, re-entry heating, clouds etc etc. People could customise the game to their personal preference and I would keep enjoying the game as much as I already do.

Edited by ObsessedWithKSP
spelling. because i'm drunk
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But yeah, I can see people do want to play stock and enjoy Kerbin's soupy atmosphere and everything which is why, above all else, I wish the devs would, in 1.0, implement difficulty sliders. Turn on/off life support, believable aerodynamics, re-entry heating, clouds etc etc. People could customise the game to their personal preference and I would keep enjoying the game as much as I already do.

Yeah, this is basically my stance on the matter. As much as mods allow you to customize the difficulty to an extent, it is a pain to keep everything updated. I don't really see any drawbacks from implementing them stock (although not actually just copying the code from the mods - the problems with that are detailed here). Although, as I mentioned in my last post, I doubt we'll be seeing any of these any time soon, seeing as Squad are currently trying to get the game "feature-complete" - a lot of these things are just polish really, and the placeholders we have now are probably going to be around for a while.

Of course, I'm not a game developer, or even a coder, so I don't really know what I'm talking about. :P

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That was a very read. It has a very good vibe to it, you know it's just the vibe of it (anyone get it?).

What my objection is is realism for the sake realism. Which is why I hate it when people argue for a feature and say "But it's realistic". I think that this is a very good way to think about it.

AMEN. It gives me a vibe reminiscent of the one Build Fly Dream gives you the first time you see it.

Also, yeah. I've been privileged enough to once have a conversation with Matt Higby of the Planetside 2 dev team and the one thing I remember of that was "reality does not make for good game balance."

Deadly re-entry for example. I want reentry heating, because that makes the game believable. Its a fundamental law that when you hit an atmosphere at 3km/s, your gonna get toasted. BUT, I don't want to be unable to do a direct entry from a Munar return because I'll evaporate. Full realism reentry heating would take a lot of the fun out of it, but doing a straight vertical direct entry from Minmus, I think should kill you (I need a picture to better explain this). Its enough so that a fundamental principle of science stands, while not making gameplay overly difficult for the sake of realism.

Ion drives. They create long burn times and high dV. They are massively overpowered compared to RL, but it creates the FEELING of being realistic. They are believable, but not realistic. Near Future does the same thing.

Raster Prop Monitor. This makes IVAs look kind of like I'd expect for real spacecraft. Realistic or not, it adds enough complexity and computer-looking stuff to feel believable.

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Raster Prop Monitor. This makes IVAs look kind of like I'd expect for real spacecraft. Realistic or not, it adds enough complexity and computer-looking stuff to feel believable.

I was going to add that into my examples, but couldn't think of a way to express it. But yeah, that's it - RL astronauts probably do have better MFDs than what RPM can provide but what RPM does is give you a sense of what it's like to be in control of a spaceship. It gives you enough info (and then some) to think "yeah, I can see myself doing a real life mission like this.. seem simple enough". It's believable enough, given the current game limitations. MFDs, LCD displays, lots of numbers.. it's all very scientific looking, it must at least similar to what astronauts have.

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People complaining about ion drives being unrealistic are referring to their thrust. I think these people are masochists, because if they were realistic, any significant burn (like say, changing orbital inclination by a degree) would take a loooooooooooong time. Like set ship to burn, get a coffee, make supper, watch a TV show, go out clubbing, come back and it's half-done kind of loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong. Tangent rant time: And forget about MechJeb. That's "unrealistic" too. So best just sit there staring at KSP while the ion engine puts out a tiny amount of thrust for hours. That's fun right? (Seriously, even NASA, the ESA, CNSA, and RFSA could at least set any ion-engine probes they had on autopilot and go get themselves a coffee, maybe even have a nap.)

So, I conclude that people complaining about ion drive realism must be masochists.

Edited by phoenix_ca
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I was going to add that into my examples, but couldn't think of a way to express it. But yeah, that's it - RL astronauts probably do have better MFDs than what RPM can provide but what RPM does is give you a sense of what it's like to be in control of a spaceship. It gives you enough info (and then some) to think "yeah, I can see myself doing a real life mission like this.. seem simple enough". It's believable enough, given the current game limitations. MFDs, LCD displays, lots of numbers.. it's all very scientific looking, it must at least similar to what astronauts have.

The best RPM IVAs can actually make you forget you're playing a game if, like me, your running a joystick at the time. I once did an all IVA munar landing with the ALCOR capsule and for a bit, the only thing that kept me grounded in reality was the distinct lack of microgravity (a man can dream). Nertea's Near Future capsule has the best IVA I've ever seen or played with. KSO shuttle has the most realistic.

Since I brought up NFP, I'll make a comment to ion engines. Yeah, realistic ion engines = bad for gameplay. Horribly overpowered by IRL standards yet very very weak by gameplay standards = believable & decent balance (unless you are a hardcore realism lover). Now, if you, like me, run Near Future, then you have some ion engines (namely MPDTs) which have enough trust to give you a decent TWR, enough to actually get sh&% stuff done. Of course they guzzle electric charge faster than a redneck slams beer, but there's nuclear reactors for that.

:wink:
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As Captain Sierra said, RPM does a great deal of improving the look of some of the cockpit IVAs. Truth is they provide about half the information the F-16Cs MFDs provide a real pilot.

Overall KSP is great because you can mod it to fit your level of "realism". I would love to see more finished IVAs and clouds and even weather patterns but I am not going to get my hopes up for them anytime soon.

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I really like this. Anytime there is a discussion of realism versus fun in KSP there is some ambiguity and no one ever really hit the nail on the head quite like OP in terms of what players (and maybe devs) really want. This was a necessary post.

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So I was reading an excellent post here earlier that I can't find now, but it was on about making things believable, not realistic. I found myself realising that I didn't in fact want realism (which is something I've thought I wanted for ages), I wanted the game to be believeable. Let me give you some examples:

Clouds. An atmosphereic planet like Kerbin, with obvious trees and mountains and water, doesn't have any in the stock game. Why do I like EVE? Not because it makes things realistic, but because it makes me actually believe the planet could exist in real life (because those things make clouds). Granted, it's a bit more problematic on Duna, but it has an atmosphere and no doubt places that heat up quicker than others. This creates wind which kicks up dust storms. It's believable.

You forgot to mention contrails :) Why rockets engines and jet engines produce it but no clouds are there, even just a few (which could be a user setting, cause some gfx card have trouble with smoke-like thing as I remember the NV 9600M GT have serious FPS drop in GTA3 when clouds were on screen).

We can also have high thin clouds which could be some rendering tricks (visible only from low altitude/high altitude) kind of skybox thing.

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Deadly re-entry for example. I want reentry heating, because that makes the game believable. Its a fundamental law that when you hit an atmosphere at 3km/s, your gonna get toasted. BUT, I don't want to be unable to do a direct entry from a Munar return because I'll evaporate. Full realism reentry heating would take a lot of the fun out of it, but doing a straight vertical direct entry from Minmus, I think should kill you (I need a picture to better explain this). Its enough so that a fundamental principle of science stands, while not making gameplay overly difficult for the sake of realism.

I agree it shouldn't be that super difficult. I'm not sure if that actually IS unrealistic though because KSP orbital speeds are much lower than RL ones... that Munar or even Minmus return is going to be far less velocity and thus far less heat than a LEO return in RL.

Ion drives. They create long burn times and high dV. They are massively overpowered compared to RL, but it creates the FEELING of being realistic. They are believable, but not realistic.

Eh, I actually disagree about this one... but just "lower thrust" is not the answer. The thing is that in RL ion engines are not used in the same way as chemical rockets ... it's not a "burn and coast" profile but a "burn most of the mission time" profile (I think something like 70% of the time for Dawn?)

That's why they aren't "believable" to me... they don't function in the same way at all.

They'd need a thrust-during-timewarp feature.

EDIT:

People complaining about ion drives being unrealistic are referring to their thrust. I think these people are masochists, because if they were realistic, any significant burn (like say, changing orbital inclination by a degree) would take a loooooooooooong time.

That's why they should be able to function at 10,000x warp (but have like 1 N thrust*). That way the burn actually takes 25% less real (player's) time than a current 2 kN engine at 4x warp... but you can thrust for weeks or months of in-game time and make it actually act like an ion engine.

*That's still more than 10x Dawn's, IIRC

Edited by NERVAfan
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Believability of any event or fact strongly depends on person's own structure of knowledge, experience, and beliefs.

Quantum mechanics, for example, is generally considered weird because it does not match anyone's preceding knowledge, experience, or beliefs. It is, however, a real thing.

On the other hand, people have usually no problems reading fantasy novels with magic and unnatural animals and beings because it matches their beliefs.

Making anything in KSP "believable" is just matter of making up a logical enough "excuse", something that will put the thing in context with knowledge, experience and beliefs of players. I am pretty sure a good enough excuse can be made up for each and every thing in the KSP at present. Of course, accepting such excuse is matter of will of each individual person. But that's another story. That person has clearly already accepted that Kerbin can have the same gravity as Earth despite having ten times less diameter - something clearly impossible in real world. Accepting another fact about the game as normal is just matter of choice after that.

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one of the best arguments i have yet heard agree 100% who cares if its not realistic as long as it is believable i personally never used the old ion engines as i did not enjoy doing burns that were way to long over a payload that was just to small i prefer the new ions by far also its a game fun should be the objective not realism

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Hear hear! OP sums things up very well, no wonder there's so much agreement in the replies.

The only problem is that the realism required for suspension of disbelief varies greatly from player to player, often because some are far more trained in the actual physics involved. Some things that people suggest for realism's sake don't bother me at all, like n-body physics. I know patched conics are only an approximation and n-body is more realistic, but it would add very little to my suspension of disbelief because I never play the game and think "That orbit is just plain unrealistic". But I'm sure that the differences between the two models stand out like sore thumbs to some of the more educated rocket scientist types around here and breaks their immersion.

Some of the realism enhancements are fairly easy calls:

- Visual enhancements like EVE don't make things appreciably harder for players while being more believable (and pretty!).

- Better aerodynamics. I don't think anyone would look at a pancake rocket in real life and say "That looks like it should fly".

- Reentry heat (really part of the better aerodynamics). Even Hollywood generally gets this right often enough that everyone knows about the perils of aerobraked reentry. People to whom I've shown KSP always ask about possible reentry burnup, even if they're not into spaceflight, because it's a commonly known effect.

- Life support. Similarly, just about everyone knows that you need to bring your own air, food and water with you into space, even the newest player would see the lack of life support as unrealistic.

Some realism enhancements are a bit more questionable (to me at least):

- N-body physics. As mentioned above, I think patched conics are close enough to realistic that most people don't find it jarringly inaccurate.

- More realistic engines. Fixed fuel flow with variable thrust/Isp is a more accurate model than the fixed thrust with variable fuel flow/Isp model used, but for me it's a simplification that makes design easier without seeming like variable efficiency is being completely ignored.

- RemoteTech-style communications management. I know many players love this mod, and it is a more realistic representation of some of the challenges of spaceflight. But for me, maintaining a satellite network is not overly fun gameplay and it creates modes of failure that can be difficult to anticipate.

So the balance that Squad must find is one that provides good suspension of disbelief for as many of their players as possible while keeping the complexity (both for player and programmer) within reason and the gameplay fun. I don't think it's possible to be completely satisfactory for all players, so it's a tough balance to find.

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Just skimmed the OP and thread but I agree in general, yes.

- RemoteTech-style communications management. I know many players love this mod, and it is a more realistic representation of some of the challenges of spaceflight. But for me, maintaining a satellite network is not overly fun gameplay and it creates modes of failure that can be difficult to anticipate.

Just one thing to note: I think just antenna range - omitting occlusion by planets or position of receiver on kerbin - should be implemented at least.

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Just one thing to note: I think just antenna range - omitting occlusion by planets or position of receiver on kerbin - should be implemented at least.

Nuts, meant to clarify that. Some sort of communications simulation would be good, especially for unmanned spacecraft, but I think the complexity of a detailed simulation like RT might be a bit overwhelming for some.

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Clouds. An atmosphereic planet like Kerbin, with obvious trees and mountains and water, doesn't have any in the stock game. Why do I like EVE? Not because it makes things realistic, but because it makes me actually believe the planet could exist in real life (because those things make clouds). Granted, it's a bit more problematic on Duna, but it has an atmosphere and no doubt places that heat up quicker than others. This creates wind which kicks up dust storms. It's believable.

Mods have only quite recently shown that clouds can integrated in a graphically not too intensive way, so I wouldn't blame Squad for not adding them yet. Besides, the devs still have a few other systems that modders can't easily fix/add like science and contracts that should have priority.

Aerodynamics. I like FAR not because it makes aerodynamics more realistic but because it makes them behave more like I would expect them to. Yes, there's a fine line between them but when you can create such ridiculous designs like this with pFairings, it breaks my sense of immersion and I stop believing something like that could exist (it's why I see pFairings as cheating with FAR and prefer KWR fairings where I have a fixed space to work with).

Completely agree. With rockets you can learn lessons from real-life designs, but the current aerodynamic system doesn't allow the same with aircraft. I feel that Squad has a better system on their todo list, but it just isn't top priority compared to systems like contracts and career which offer much farther reaching improvements for all players.

Life Support. Granted, I don't know how kerbals survive (photosynthesis? Snacks?) but I don't like going to Jool and Eeloo in a Mk1 lander can because I don't believe it's something that could happen in the KSP universe. It takes years to get there and they were sat in their seat the entire time? I'm not looking for mental/physical health deterioration or anything like that, I just want to be able to say to them 'don't worry guys, you won't run out of oxygen'.

Agree as well. I think the simplest they can make is simply equate life support to living space. Want to go to Duna and not die? Give your Kerbals one or two crew cabins of living space besides the Mk1-2 pod they lived and they'll be fine forever. To really make life support work though, they need to give incentive to bring more than one Kerbal on your journeys.

I agree with you on a lot of points here, but I can see some issues with this kind of approach. The main problem being that believability (for lack of a better word) is entirely subjective. While you and I may consider pancake rockets to be totally absurd, for example, to a lot of people, that might not be the case.

Pancake rockets are still possible with an aerodynamics system à la FAR. Indestructible struts, causing unrealistic structural integrity is what makes them possible instead of a lack of decent aerodynamic system.

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I used to think that they could not go on

And life was nothing but an awful song

But now I know the meaning of true love

They leaning on the everlasting arms

If I can see it, they can do it

If I just believe it, there's nothing to it

I believe they can fly

I believe they can touch the sky

I think about it every night and day

They Spread their wings and fly away

I believe they can soar

I see them running through that open door

I believe they can fly

I believe they can fly

I believe they can fly

-------

So looks like it's again up to me to present the "different view".

First of all i will never ever believe things that are in a game no matter how believable they seem to be.

It's just a game, you know?

Many of us read and enjoy comics, anyone believes in that stuff in there? Anyone reading it because it is believable?

I did not hear a case of someone jumping out of the 5. etage because he thought he could fly like Superman. (At least not without taking drugs)

I don't think making a game believable is bad or something but i fail to see the greater sense in it. If i have fun with a game that is not believable it's fine for me too.

"Kerbals have superpowers and they ship's survive the hottest reentries because they make their hulls out of kerbonium which is undestroyable." -> This sentence makes perfect sense for me.

"I don't think kerbals could survive a trip to Jool because, you know, they are sitting all the time." -> That one does not make any sense in my thinking.

We humans have to stretch our legs from time to time yes, who tells us what Kerbals have to be like? I guess our own imagination. Someone thinks they have to be like us others don't.

Some will tell you they have adamantium skeletons surviving the worst accidents. Some don't think that is possible.

I won't tell myself that a game is bad because it's not believable because i would have to tell myself Superman, Iron Man, Spiderman and all my other heroes are bad too because they are not believable.

This topic has powder keg qualities, i do not feel comfortable discussing about believes.

Espescially not in games.

The rules say no religious content.

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