Especially hostile planetary environments

[Godot]

The thread in the science sub about the effects of venus atmosphere on the human body made me think about one interesting thing that could be included in KSP.

At the moment, as son as we have landed, our spacecraft and Kerbonauts are more or less safe from harm.

In real life however there is at least one planet where we cannot even safely land a probe for more then 1-2 hours.

I.e. Venus

There are also several planets which are harmful for human landing (due to radiation and vulcanism) like Io and other jupiter moons.

So I would suggest certain atmospheric and planetary conditions which make staying on the surface/within the atmosphere of a planet moon dangerous

(with maybe future planets and moons which are subject to them)

Examples for hostile environments:

Atmosphere:

Pressure

Temperature

Corrosive elements

Surface:

Radiation input (for example by narby gas giants)

Vulcanism

In addition to this the tech tree could be expanded with modules that counteract the effects:

Special cooling elements

Armor against pressure/corosion

Radiation armor (and maybe expecially shielded electronics)

Special spacesuits

The effects would be a damage per time on the spaceship modules or the Kerbonaut while they are subjected to the environment, with the special researchable countermeasures acting as a buffer (that is, first the buffer pool gets decreased by the dpt before the spaceship modules or the kerbonaut itself take damage)

Edited August 25, 2014 by Godot

[prophet_01]

I like the idea. It reminds me of the way deadly reentry works. The heat shields in the mid work by consuming "resources" of the shield during reentry and aerobraking. Would be cool to have similar systems for radiation or corosion. I think there already was a discussion about it that drifted into the "I want more planets" subject.

Still may be worth discussing it. I see a problem with regard to new users as the learning courve already is a thing. But if it is a feature that it is more or less limited to areas far away from kerbin it may be an interesting factor for planing a mission. I am thinking of moho, eve, maybe one or two joolian moons, but not something like radiation while going interplanetary.

[Hyakkidouran]

I think implementing armor degradation like prophet suggests is probably too hardcore for most players. Unless it becomes a difficulty option that you could disable.

Otherwise, having specific parts to accommodate for harsh conditions could be a thing.

The player would have to launch slightly heavier crafts as well as remember to use the proper parts, which would add a layer of complexity that could be manageable.

In order to be truly fair, the player should be able to learn fairly easily that he needs to use such parts on certain planets. Science experiments in orbit or in the upper atmosphere of a planet should provide obvious clues that this planet has a "harsh condition" modifier. Otherwise, it will just be an unfair rookie trap.

Edited August 26, 2014 by Hyakkidouran

[Beeman]

I don't know about hostile mechanics on planets, but I do know they had a volcanic planet in the works at some point. I think they were holding off on implementing that(and other planets they had finished back then) until they got around to implementing planetary discovery via the observatory. I wonder if that stuff is still on the roadmap >_>

Would be interesting if the volcanic planet had dangerous surface features like lava pools, gravitational anomalies or whatever, though

[Ikaneko]

We used to have Moho's atmosphere which was stupidly superheated so we definitely can do it.

[1of6Billion]

Normally, I am not in favour of stuff that makes the game harder. But in this case, I am glad to make an exception. This would be awesome.

[Sky_walker]

That's quite an ambitious project - it'd require adding damage system to the game (as in: progressive damage, cause currently we have just 3 states: Good, Damaged (eg. wheel) and Destroyed) and that will have by far more implications to the game than just enabling devs to add damage from the atmospheric effects. For example one logical and pretty much implied consequence would be to add damage on collision that depends on mass and velocity, damageable docking ports (instead of flexible hyper-magnets they are now), visual cues to the damaged parts (what means: new models and new textures) and so on, and so on.....

It'd be a huge development project.

I doubt devs would go for something so ambitious.

[Godot]

Actually it would be quite doable with a 2 layers Hitpoint System:

Hitpoins (of part)

Armor (of part)

When armor = 0 -> Damage gets transferred to hitpoints

When hitpoints = 0 -> Part destroyed

It would bear similarities to the system Deadly reentry uses, with the exception that the damage over time wouldn´t only occur when temperature > threshold,

but when the part is exposed to he various conditions (corrocive atmosphere, pressure > thereshold, radiation etc. )

It could work similar for Kerbonauts, with spacesuit armor, Kerbonaut Hitpoints and Kerbonaut dead with HP = 0.

In its simplest version as depicted here this would be understandable for everyone and oculd be applied to every effect (by just giving each efect a certain amount of damage over time and making the total damage over time for the module/kerbonaut being the sum of the DoTs of all conditions which affect the module/kerbonaut).

The system could also be turned into a slightly more complex system, by having not a single armor value, but different armors for each atmosphereic condition (like armor(temperature) armor (poressure), armor (radiation) ... )

[thereaverofdarkness]

+1 I've always wanted this.

The pressure idea can go well with my idea for differing densities of structural components. There should be fuselages which are hollow (allow Kerbal passage whenever it's implemented) but which can be imploded with enough pressure. Then either through tweakables or by having more than one type, their pressure resistance and mass would be variable. The lightest could survive in vacuum of course, but you'd need very heavy types for going deep into Jool's atmosphere. Parts with no empty/air space inside wouldn't have a pressure resistance factor and would be immune to all pressures.

Instead of periodic damage for pressure, it should give a pressure warning as you approach the critical pressure, and cause instant implosion when you reach it. It'd be neat if the imploded fuselage remained attached to the craft, no longer useful for transiting Kerbals, but still holding the two ends together albeit with much less tensile strength or impact tolerance than before.

There would be a warning on any contracts asking you to go into dangerously high pressure areas like landing on Eve, and another warning presented to you if you enter Eve's SOI for the first time or perhaps if you do a crew report from space high over Eve.

Edited August 27, 2014 by thereaverofdarkness

[PDCWolf]

There was an atmosphere at Moho, it was also more massive and tidally locked to the sun. Landing on it was challenging but not impossible, all of that got removed probably because "too hard not fun". It was the only interesting place to visit because it was the only challenge for late-game players: landing on the superheated planet, now there's nothing. Nova implemented a similar feature on his Alternis Kerbol mod if I remember correctly.

I'm all in for this idea. Rated the thread 5 stars.

[Hyakkidouran]

I thought a little more about this, and I believe it would be great if it was a difficulty option.

I approved of that feature, but after several fails today, I was reminded that for me the game is already hard enough, and I really don't need extra difficulty. XD

However, I can definitely see the appeal of such a feature for experts. So how about making this and maybe even some other aspects of the game optional?

Maybe the devs could put in an "expert mode" which adds that kind of features. If it is disabled, then things behave as they do now.

In fact, KSP could use difficulty modes in general. Along with integrated support for modded solar systems (so people can create crazy hard worlds or even easier ones if they want to), it would be the best way to make the most people happy.

Airplanes simulators (IL2 sturmovik or flight simulator) often have difficulty levels that match the level of realism. KSP could go the same route.

[JDCollie]

Realistically sized solar system + real fuels + reentry heating + life support + realistic aerospace modelling + hostile environments + n body gravity = JEBCORE MODE.

[prophet_01]

Yeah sky_walker rly has a point here. There would be definetly a need for some kind of damage system and feedback for some influences on a part. I disagree that a damage model for impacts is necessary but even without that it's to much work to get something like this done before 1.0 , but i can imagine that it could be a nice addition after release for an expansion. I am not sure if it should only be included in a hypothetical hardcore mode. In my opinion this is too much of a game changing aspect. I would stick to keep those aspects to a small number of planets/moons that already need a fair amount of skill to reach and by this way making it "late game".

Edited August 28, 2014 by prophet_01

[Megalodon 720]

I think we should have a Uranus analogue, a planet where all the moons orbit at ~90 degrees would be an awesome challenge.