How do you feel about this ?

[SkyRex94]

On the Ask Maxmaps Thread Maxmaps posted this:

"More planets are a big maybe right now. We have to finish making the current ones as good as Kerbin."

This makes me a bit sad. 'big maybe' sounds to me like a chance of less than 50%.

I totally agree with making the current planets as good as Kerbin, creating Biomes maybe overhauling biomes-system and new cool things to do and effects on the current planets. That is needed for scope completion.

But the idea of the current System being the hole KSP System already... i don't know, i just think there are missing some more Planets. Not a hundred more and no new Solar Systems, but a few ones are missing i think.

At least a second big Gas Giant with diverse Moons and a Planetoid really really far out, if nothing else. With far out i mean so that Kerbol is just a slightly big Star among the other stars in the sky, like Pluto or Charon.

I think the System of the Planets just doesn't feels complete yet.

What do you think of this? Do you think, after polishing all the Planets KSP's System is complete and big and diverse enough for you? Or do you think there is missing at least something, and what, after polishing the planets?

Let's hear the opinion of the community of the news " 'probably' no new Planets" !

P.S.:I thought of putting this into suggestion thread, but i'm not really suggesting what they should do, but pointing out how i feel about this news and wanted to hear other opinions on this. So i thought General Disscussion was more fitting, but if a Mod thinks this has to be moved feel free to do so.

[Tweety]

I think after playing for almost a year it is disappointing to imagine that is all they have to offer for planets in the current stock game but our modding community has already and I'm sure will continue to support the idea of additional planets to the point where the current mods and possibly some more mods will become available in the future.

I would like to see another gas giant with a plethora of additional moons but it certainly isn't a game changer for me.

Who's to say they wont bring out additional DLC (free or otherwise) that supports more planets. I'm not sure how intensive more planets and moons becomes on gaming performance but I imagine it might be a reason as to why they haven't just created 20 more and said 'there ya go, have at it' because they want to keep computing requirements to a minimum.

Just random thoughts and babbling mostly from me though

[95tiger59]

I think that more planets would be nice, but we need more work done on the existing ones. Its like having 10 lego sets but it didn't come with all the pieces and here is 5 more sets that don't come with all the pieces

[KingPhantom]

more planets??? in carrer i only was on duna and passed by eve... nothing more....

[Renegrade]

As I mentioned in the other summary thread, I'm really hoping that "maybe" is just referring to 0.25 (or near future), and that we WILL see more planets in the distant future.

Also to the best of my knowledge the long term plan has always included more planets. I'd definitely love to see actual proper Plutos and Charons, and also Vestas and Ceres and Saturns and all that goodness.

If they were adding Pluto/Charon types, it would also be a good time to go to an inverse-square solar energy model...

[Red Iron Crown]

Judging from some of the feedback I've read here on the forums, only a fraction of players ever go interplanetary. Not sure why, I think it's probably a combination of the lack of stock planning tools and the popularity of spaceplanes, which aren't overly well suited to IP travel. If the data Squad gets back matches that impression, I can see why they'd be reluctant to put more effort into additional celestial bodies.

That said, I really want more bodies. A nice ringed gas giant with a few moons. Maybe a comet or two for an intercept challenge. I don't know that all the bodies have to be Kerbin quality, none of the others gets visited as much as that. Anything more than a few biome type would seem like overkill to me.

[Pecan]

I'm not really interested in more planets just for the sake of them. We have big ones, small ones, ones that are easy to reach, ones that are hard to reach. Another one wouldn't actually add anything new as far as I can see, just one more place to take the same ships to do the same jobs.

[razark]

How do I feel? Apathetic.

I think they should work on giving us new things to do and new ways to do them, and getting what we already have correct before they start giving us new places to half-ass our way through half-finished tasks.

[Thomas988]

To be honest, new planets would be nice, but I don't think they're necessary. Sure, another gas planet (with rings, of course) would be awesome, but any more than that would just be crowding the solar system.

[LethalDose]

Really really disappointed. It feels like the start of another round of "oh yeah, we canceled plans/development of that months ago".

[WWEdeadman]

I would totaly be fine if they wouldn't add more planets until scope completion. Once every system of the game works like it should, they can add all the content, like new planets, (space-) plane parts etc. Hell, if they aren't going to add any more planets at all we still have planetfactory for a neverending supply. I'd love to see more planets, and I'd be the first to go to newly added ones, but I totaly understand if they won't add more in the near future.

[Russoft]

What I hope for is one or two more gas giants (Saturn, Neptune, or Uranus analog) with moons and a Kuiper belt or Oort cloud with randomly spawned asteroids. Maybe a hidden planet or two that is discovered only by observing certain "asteroids". Personally, I haven't been to all the planets yet (and by "been to" I mean landed on) but I think interplanetary is an important aspect of the game for those who've played long enough that Mun landings are routine if not a chore.

But I'd agree with the notion that completing the existing planets is more important than simply adding more. Duna and Eve would be far more fascinating with biomes. In fact, I'd like to see every terrestrial planet get the same treatment that the Kerbin system got.

Edited July 29, 2014 by Russoft
comment on biomes

[Karriz]

Well, it's clear that they should add biomes and update the ground details in all of the existing planets before adding more.

I'm optimistic that when they finally get to the scope-complete phase and start focusing on content, they'll add more planets.

[TimePeriod]

A new solar system would be a lot better then a few measly planets.

[Col_Jessep]

Judging from some of the feedback I've read here on the forums, only a fraction of players ever go interplanetary. Not sure why, I think it's probably a combination of the lack of stock planning tools and the popularity of spaceplanes, which aren't overly well suited to IP travel.

Yup. Getting to Mün or Minmus is easy. You will likely get an accidental encounter with Mün if your orbit is somewhat in the same plane and large enough.

Interplanetary means you need to plan ahead and wait for your transfer window or you need to know how you can get the intercept one orbit later. It's easy enough once you understand orbital mechanics but you can't expect a new player to have that knowledge. A good 20 minute tutorial on Youtube is all it takes but it should be in the game. A simple link ingame would probably already help a lot.

And there is another factor: time. If I just hop to Minmus anytime I like and be done with the mission between two coffees. Going interplanetary means more planning, a bigger rocket, long burns, endless minutes in time warp doing nothing, planechange maneuver, correction burn another long burn or aerobraking... Without Kerbal Alarm Clock I would go nuts.

TL;DR:

A good Youtube tutorial, something like Kerbal Alarm Clock and an increase in max time warp would help a lot to help players to go interplanetary. And another moon/planet with an atmosphere that allows the use of jet engines. Laythe feels too much like Kerbin. I would love to have a heavy gravity world where I can fly, closer to Eve than Kerbin.

[KerrMü]

Of course, I would love to have a few more planets, moons, comets etc to visit. And I´m guessing the devs would love that, too. I mean, it would be awesome obviously. So they must have good reason/s to not implement them now.

Pure speculation, but it would be nonsense to create new bodys, if you´re planning to change/improve the appearance or the groundwork, which celestial bodys are based upon.

I personally would kiss the feet of that guy, who puts an saturnish planet into the stock game. And at least one moon around it (just imagine the view of an ascending "saturn"! sigh). But IMO it really should have rings around it. Or maybe just one ring. Even a simple one. I´m surely not a programmer, so I don´t know how that would be done best. Some sort of a ring shaped volumetric cloud with groundscatter (better ringscatter) in it would be more than fine by me. Maybe parts of your ship explode when you fly through it, to simulate impacts, but that´s just dreamstuff by now, because we´re not even having clouds yet.

I can´t think of any reasons why they would say "we don´t want more planets!", but quite some reasons why they say "not right now, there are other priorities first".

If it can be done properly, I bet they´ll do it at some point.

[r4pt0r]

sure, i would like a saturn and pluto analogue, but i would much prefer to be able to collect science from dunas icecaps and get special ice cap fluff text. actual clouds and maybe some more detail on planet surfaces. flesh out the current before anything else.

also GP2 was novas idea i thought and hes not on the team, so GP2 isnt squads responsibility?

[Wiseman]

I'd also like to see more polish on the existing planets before seeing additional ones. In terms of gameplay, I think the variety of planets offered is plenty as a first pass; there's not much that really jumps out at me as something I sorely miss and would want to be in right away. As a bit of a novice player with only ("only" ) 150-200 hours logged, I still find it pretty challenging to get to other planetary bodies, and that's with a pile of informational mods installed and my second monitor displaying a transfer calculator.

This morning I launched a probe into LKO with nearly 12 km/s of delta-v remaining on a mission to fly by Moho and return. Using all the calculators, I was able to get a good trajectory and encounter, hooray. Then, just to see what I could do, I launched another probe with the same configuration to play with maneuver nodes and see where else I could reach - without using the exact angles and timeframes, I couldn't even get close to an encounter. The problem there isn't so much that I couldn't reach it with what I had, which is totally reasonable, it's that there's not really any information on what I needed to do that I could glean from the game itself.

tl;dr: If I didn't know anything about phase angles, I'd never reach another planet. I think that needs to be addressed in the stock game before consideration is given to expanding the solar system or galaxy.

[Renegrade]

And there is another factor: time. If I just hop to Minmus anytime I like and be done with the mission between two coffees. Going interplanetary means more planning, a bigger rocket, long burns, endless minutes in time warp doing nothing, planechange maneuver, correction burn another long burn or aerobraking... Without Kerbal Alarm Clock I would go nuts.

There's a third factor: You don't need to interplanetary to finish the stock science tree. So why bother? (In fact, you barely need to visit the Muns of Kerbin to finish it with the science bonanza which is Contracts)

I'd love to see the stock science tree extended and modified in such a way that you actually have some time to play with a given set of technologies, and that interplanetary is necessary to finish it.

(well that and so that it had an actual sense of progress like RealFuels or BTSM)

[Stargate525]

Well, they're missing anything with a ring structure. They're also missing asteroid belts, anything with serious orbital eccentricity, retrograde spin planets, any axial tilts, and geological activity. When they say 'we want to make them as interesting as kerbin' I have no idea what they mean. Biomes? There's been a mod for all the other planets for at least six months. Done by ONE person. Come now.

Really really disappointed. It feels like the start of another round of "oh yeah, we canceled plans/development of that months ago".

And this is why I've stopped listening to anything the Devs say.

[Col_Jessep]

There's a third factor: You don't need to interplanetary to finish the stock science tree. So why bother?

Agreed, it would be so much fun if some parts would unlock after you reach certain milestones. Maybe Toroidal Aerospike after visiting Duna or Eve; NERVAs after leaving Kerbin SOI. You could get contracts to build a space/refueling station in LKO or in the Jool system. Not to mention how much a resource like Kethane would expand the possibilities!

[Kamuchi]

In all my games I haven`t been to all planets yet as I just went on to try and build big things that are near impossible to get into orbit lol

[Red Iron Crown]

Thinking about this a bit more, more celestial bodies is a perfect fit for an expansion pack, it is literally an expansion of the existing solar system.

[Renegrade]

Agreed, it would be so much fun if some parts would unlock after you reach certain milestones. Maybe Toroidal Aerospike after visiting Duna or Eve; NERVAs after leaving Kerbin SOI. You could get contracts to build a space/refueling station in LKO or in the Jool system. Not to mention how much a resource like Kethane would expand the possibilities!

Ah, those are nice ideas! Could very well be done in the contract system too, I imagine. And man, I'd love for something like Kethane to become part of stock. Infrastructure building is fun

[Guest]

Thinking about this a bit more, more celestial bodies is a perfect fit for an expansion pack, it is literally an expansion of the existing solar system.

Damn, I'm glad I get those for free. That's a ridiculous idea.

Anyway, yeah, the current planets need polish and should obviously come first, but seeing new planets being considered a "big maybe" is just really dumb. Planets are the real "content" of KSP, it's the whole reason to play the game, to get out and explore.