Realism in KSP

[Red Iron Crown]

I think the life support implementation should have a fairly large degree of abstraction. I'm not really all that interested in managing food, water, air, CO2, liquid waste, and solid waste separately. Just a supply resource and a waste resource would be enough, IMO, and provide a way to dump waste off the craft for ships that don't have recycling facilities.

One complication that even that implementation would add is changing dry mass as life support is consumed and wastes expelled; that will throw a loop into delta-V calculation.

[bartekkru99]

I'm using FAR, Deadly re-entry, TAC Life Support and Remote Tech. Those are the "realism mods" that I'd like t see. I think, that it could be toggleable when creating new save file, so if you don't want kind of hard mode feeling you can turn them off.

[The Mechanic]

I'm using FAR, Deadly re-entry, TAC Life Support and Remote Tech. Those are the "realism mods" that I'd like t see. I think, that it could be toggleable when creating new save file, so if you don't want kind of hard mode feeling you can turn them off.

It doesn't even has to be something as extensive as RemoteTech. Do you know AntennaRange? It is relatively lightweight and assigns the stock antennas ranges and gives you some simple options for requiring line of sight to Kerbin and requiring Antennas for controlling probes. Such a "simplistic" approach would work quite well in stock, I guess. It is not too complicated and you don't have to build relays unless you want to control probes that do not have a line of sight to Kerbin or if you want to use smaller antennas for your probe landers.

[tater]

It has been suggested here that increased warp factors should be introduced so that the longer distances are covered in the same real-time interval. But higher warps introduce inaccuracies in the simulation of trajectories affected by gravity, as the ships move through the gravity well in fewer ricks. That certainly would not be realistic, and would require the developers to devote time to ironing out this problem, which need not be introduced into the game in the first place. I am dubious that the art of planet surfaces could be arbitrarily blown up by a simple numerical factor without ruining their appearances, either. It's not as simple as you make it out to be.

In THIS thread, the only size change suggested for stock has been the change in Kerbin from 9% of earth, to 14% of earth that I recall. Even this has been a sort of side suggestion that many are sticking to when the real foreground issues are aerodynamics, the isp issue, and reentry.

You keep insisting this is a necessary change while also arguing that it would make no substantive difference even if it was implemented. If it doesn't change the gameplay experience, then it is arbitrary, and a waste of effort to go full circle and end up where the game started off.

If you cannot understand the difference between the physics, and the mechanisms of gameplay, there is nothing I can do. There is a new sailing gam win the works and they seem to have scaled up all the sailing speed for "gameplay" (they are doing MMO in a game that really requires time compression). So while the controls look the same as they otherwise would, the ships seem to move about 20 knots (they'd be doing great in a stiff quartering breeze at 1/2 that in real life). The gameplay is then faster, but the physics is entirely wrong (ships moving too fast). The paths the spacecraft take would certainly change to more realistic ones, and reentry would matter, but the UI experience would be unchanged. The UI experience of a real car is unchanged if you drive it into a wall, or stay on the road, the outcomes are not.

I agree. Let's abstract the planet sizes and distances between them so as to keep the scale of the game convenient and fun to play. Which is the situation we have now.

This is where you cannot, as it is changes the physics, unlike LS, which can be abstracted. The whole point of the game is orbital mechanics and the interaction of spacecraft with said planets. That is the one part that should NOT be abstracted. BY that rationale why not make the solar system so small as to not require any time compression at all? Once there is TC, there is no reason not to have sort of realistic distances. Note that no one here has suggested the stock game get RSS, so we're assuming a mini system anyway. Making it a few % bigger if that fixes some physics issues (makes it so we're not interacting with neutron stars) is not a big deal.

Again, are you a 0.24.2 fundamentalist? If they changed the size of Kerbin by 5% would you scream "heresy!"? a 50% increase is, though? What about 45%?

[Renegrade]

I think the life support implementation should have a fairly large degree of abstraction. I'm not really all that interested in managing food, water, air, CO2, liquid waste, and solid waste separately. Just a supply resource and a waste resource would be enough, IMO, and provide a way to dump waste off the craft for ships that don't have recycling facilities.

One complication that even that implementation would add is changing dry mass as life support is consumed and wastes expelled; that will throw a loop into delta-V calculation.

If you go with a supply resource/waste resource model in the most simplistic manner possible, dv calculations won't change at all if you use conservation of mass. (ie 1 unit of LS = 1 unit of waste in terms of mass and the conversion is 100% either way).

If you go even simpler (like Snacks or BTSM style, wherein LS is consumed), you will have dv changes, but they'll always be upwards as the craft gets lighter. That sort of change is a lot easier to compensate for (ie just ignore it completely and be happy your safety margins are thicker).

BTSM's own 'recycling' system is basically just a slowdown on consumption, which is a particularly elegant way of handling a less-than-100% recycling system.

[Red Iron Crown]

I would like it if we could avoid the term "fundamentalist", it's a bit inflammatory.

[tater]

Having said that, one of the fundamental and recognised appeals of this game is big firey explosions when your absurdly built rocket tears itself apart.

Most KSP rockets look absurd and don't break, though.

[RuBisCO]

I would like more realistic difficulty, but I like the kerbal's design, I like the idea of exploring an alien solar system, so I'm not interested in human models for the kerbals or a human solar system, but to each their own.

[tater]

I would like it if we could avoid the term "fundamentalist", it's a bit inflammatory.

I get your point, but if you think that no physics can be tweaked without the sky falling… what else shall we call it? "0.24.2ers?" FWIW, it was meant in the spirit of fun. A buddy of mine used to walk around his room at the U, imitating a TV evangelist preaching about solving partial differential equations as a memorization tool.

But it's a valid question as to whether some people are demanding zero physics change from the extant game or not---ever. If they are advocating NO changes, then they are at least consistent. If they are would not be against some changes, then we're just talking about what those changes should be, that is, the magnitude of any such changes. Any change will result in slightly different outcomes and design optimizations, that's a given.

Read the part descriptions. Lander cans say they they are not designed for reentry, for example. Me hitting the atmosphere with the velocity of an extra-solar object with one and nothing bad happening shows that to be a lie, so I can only assume they mean to correct it .

The same thing with the very existence of nosecones, something entirely unnecessary in the current, stock game. We can only assume it is meant to be fixed (we're not at 1.0 yet).

[Red Iron Crown]

Hey, I'm on your side regarding improvements to the physics simulation, but calling people who disagree "fundamentalists" is not helping to make your case. You seem like a decent writer, try to convince rather than insult.

<--- Not a moderator, just friendly advice.

[cantab]

Most KSP rockets look absurd and don't break, though.

That is another thing that warrants looking at. The .23.5 changes made rockets too strong compared to their stiffness (or alternatively too flexible compared to their strength). While we don't want rockets falling apart easily, we also shouldn't be able to have a rocket bend through 90 degrees and stay intact. A little more flex than is realistic would help the player pinpoint the failure in the absence of a "highlight stress" feature, but the game currently way overdoes it.

[tater]

Hey, I'm on your side regarding improvements to the physics simulation, but calling people who disagree "fundamentalists" is not helping to make your case. You seem like a decent writer, try to convince rather than insult.

<--- Not a moderator, just friendly advice.

Advice heard and taken. There had been complaints about "anti-realism crowd" so I was looking for a replacement. Invariants? I'm open to being called something funny myself, fire away.

I think it is fair, though, to ask what the "anti" crowd would allow to be changed without having a problem with it. BTW, I'm not using the word because they disagree with me, I'm using it because they see to want the current physics to be written in stone, and unchanageable. If they were for changing the game to reactionless drives with no conservation of momentum, etc, I'd not be calling them fundamentalists for being in disagreement with me, as they'd be advocating a radical change from the current game model. The "more realism" crowd is suggesting that future changes aim in the direction of making things more realistic (in terms of physics, or expected outcomes), the anti-realism crowd seems to be saying that any changes are either bad, or must head in the direction of less realism.

What do we KNOW?

We know that the game is a WIP, and that elements WILL change. We know that, right? Can we all agree that;s a given, that there will be changes in the physics? If this is true, then why should changes not be in the direction of expected outcomes (realism) vs unexpected outcomes (fantasy)? A new player should expect that a rocket with something that looks like an LEM stuck on top should possibly undergo a catastrophic failure upon launch---since such payloads in RL have a fairing around them to avoid this. They quickly learn that it doesn't matter, and they can put a fire truck---sideways---on top, and it will launch just fine . ANyway, if things will change, and we'd all expect they will, why not in the direction of realism, particularly when bad outcomes (burning up, etc) could be turned off with the new difficultly sliders we've heard about. Also, in terms of launching ridiculous crafts, perhaps there could be a mode where the game starts with a Munar facility… then you could launch stuff made from girders, etc and it would not be jarring to see.

Edited August 29, 2014 by tater

[Guest]

If I may, would it be possible to throw together a 1.5x RSS Kerbin? I'd give it a test run if there was one. May be a good 'presentation model' to show to Squad if it really works well.

So, it seems my math was wrong. Either that or I underestimated FAR's effect on launches. I've been playing around with different ways to increase the delta-V to orbit and there are two of note:

1. Reduce Kerbin's rotational speed so that it has a 12 hour day. This had a great effect on launches because craft had less velocity to begin with and I might explore a 16, 18, and 24 hour day Kerbin with 1.5x scale.

2. Increase the atmosphere height. I've tried with 75 and 80km heights and the difference isn't huge but it is noteworthy. I think I'll be sticking with 70km height, though.

My modified Kerbal X (seperatrons to deal with the radial decoupler issue) on 1.5x Kerbin is only about 600m/s off from a stock launch, so there really isn't that much further to go. OTOH, scaling up the distances at the same time has increased the delta-V required to transfer to the Mun by 220m/s over what I normal expend (853m/s) and has also increased orbital speed (and thus landing delta-V), so I'm not entirely sure if this will be well received by the community. I might stick with the 1.5x solar system and try increasing Kerbin a little bit more.

[Renegrade]

So, it seems my math was wrong. Either that or I underestimated FAR's effect on launches. I've been playing around with different ways to increase the delta-V to orbit and there are two of note:

Well, in a stock Kerbin world, a 3.2km dv ship (vac-rated) can reach orbit in FAR if it's well designed (that's zero margin though), whereas the souposphere is easily 4.4km/sec minimum.. 1.2km/sec difference there. v0.14 of FAR/NEAR also experience a lot less drag than before due to some corrections by Ferram.

By the way:

@PART[*]:HAS[@MODULE[ModuleAnchoredDecoupler]] 
{
	// XXX: Bugfix for 0.24 side decouplers being faulty:
	@MODULE[ModuleAnchoredDecoupler]
	{
		@ejectionForce = 0
	}
}

That makes 'em work like strutted boosters in 0.23.5.

I don't suppose we could take a peek at that 1.5x as it stands..?

[Guest]

Thanks for the fix.

I don't suppose we could take a peek at that 1.5x as it stands..?

I'll post the current when I get to work, just packed everything up.

[Renegrade]

Thanks for the fix.

NO problem. Feel free to share it by the way, I generally publish under a 2-clause-BSD license.

I'll post the current when I get to work, just packed everything up.

Cool, thanks man!

[Guest]

Cool, thanks man!

Here it is: https://www.dropbox.com/s/q7oymtisfub5q24/RealSolarSystem.cfg?dl=0

You'll need FAR (or NEAR, never tried it but should work) and Real Solar System (obviously ) for this to work as intended.

I'll post a package with the spreadsheet and everything a later, but this will get you started. You can leave the LaunchSites.cfg alone (or delete it, IIRC) in the RSS mod folder, but I wouldn't recommend changing to other launch sites because they don't conform to Kerbin and I'm not going to add any more to this config. This is the 1.5x scale 12-hour day version with 70km atmosphere height (roughly 3.8km/s to orbit using FAR). If you want to change to another atmosphere height, the scaleHeight should be the atmosphere height in km divided by 13.8155, according to NathanKell and ferram4.

Because we need licences here, I release this into the public domain.

[comham]

There's realism and then there's rivet counting.

[Vanamonde]

But it's a valid question as to whether some people are demanding zero physics change from the extant game or not---ever.

Didn't say anything like that. I didn't say physics changes would break the game, or that there never can be good reasons for revising the game. I am saying that I have yet to see a reason for rescaling distances and planet sizes which a) is not in response to hypothetical problems which haven't arisen yet, and/or would have any meaningful affect on the experience of playing the game. I'm not saying it's dangerous or harmful to rescale. I'm saying it's a lot of work for something which is unnecessary, except that it would please certain people if the game's made-up numbers were arbitrarily closer to the real solar system's numbers.

I really haven't given a lot of thought to most of the other proposals for greater realism in the game, and have no strong opinion one way or the other. But the scaling one is a pet peeve of mine. The solar system is already almost entirely empty space and surface area that no one will ever see. No one is ever going to even take the time to explore the entire surface of the home planet of Kerbin, and yet there are some people who are insisting the planets must be scaled up, even though that would just create more empty land area that no one will ever see. And since we all zip through empty interplanetary space at high warp anyway, what is the benefit of stuffing even more empty, featureless void between the planets? How much empty, useless space/area is enough, simply to make the game's numbers closer to the real solar system's numbers?

[tater]

Didn't say anything like that. I didn't say physics changes would break the game, or that there never can be good reasons for revising the game. I am saying that I have yet to see a reason for rescaling distances and planet sizes which a) is not in response to hypothetical problems which haven't arisen yet, and/or would have any meaningful affect on the experience of playing the game. I'm not saying it's dangerous or harmful to rescale. I'm saying it's a lot of work for something which is unnecessary, except that it would please certain people if the game's made-up numbers were arbitrarily closer to the real solar system's numbers.

One, scaling is not really first on anyone's list here for "realism." It's brought up by others to slam any other changes. It was mentioned by a few people WRT how a more realistic atmosphere would affect people's gameplay, everything else being equal. I know exactly squat about FAR/NEAR, and how changes in the Kerbin atmosphere model will alter gameplay as of yet. That said, if those that DO understand this well say that play would be preserved in a "Kerbal" way (we are exclusively talking about the Kerbol system, RSS, or anything like it is not even on the table from anyone) with some rescaling, I'm entirely open to it.

I really haven't given a lot of thought to most of the other proposals for greater realism in the game, and have no strong opinion one way or the other. But the scaling one is a pet peeve of mine. The solar system is already almost entirely empty space and surface area that no one will ever see. No one is ever going to even take the time to explore the entire surface of the home planet of Kerbin, and yet there are some people who are insisting the planets must be scaled up, even though that would just create more empty land area that no one will ever see. And since we all zip through empty interplanetary space at high warp anyway, what is the benefit of stuffing even more empty, featureless void between the planets? How much empty, useless space/area is enough, simply to make the game's numbers closer to the real solar system's numbers?

As it turns out, the other proposals are the proposals that actually matter. The whole scaling thing is a red-herring brought up to derail talk about things like reentry, the soup, Isp and engines, etc.

No one is insisting the planets be scaled up. No one. The gist of the argument they make is that if the atmosphere is fixed, then, and only then, there might be problems with an overly tiny planet and atmospheric density (and the interactions that will have with players). That's it in general.

Outside of that, the only real discussion about scaling that matters is one of gameplay. Scale has little effect on the user experience---if all of a sudden they told you that, oh yeah, our "meters" in space distances (map mode, "on-rails) are really 10 m, you'd have no way of knowing. Nothing would change. What WOULD change, would be the elapsed game time. Right now that's sort of meaningless, but it could matter in a planning sense with the larger notion of "management" of s space project. I have no opinion one way or another, frankly, as I have yet to even play modded.

If they fix the Isp issue that will change designs. Is that bad, or should it stay wrong because it is already wrong?

[Aethon]

Vanamonde. A reason I would like to have an option to have RSS scale, is so I learn and memorize the actual numbers involved in exploring our real Sol system. I hope Nathan Kell is around when the game is done so we can be sure there is a permanent RSS/RO mod package.

[tater]

Frankly, it might be fun to have a number of systems to chose from at some point (post 1.0), each with different levels of "realism" WRT world size and spacing. Maybe a paid add-on (devs gotta eat, too).

[Red Iron Crown]

I understand the reasoning behind not wanting to rescale. IMO it wouldn't be the end of the world if they just implemented better aero and reduced the dV requirement to LKO. Most of the interesting stuff happens after you get to orbit anyway.

[Franklin]

I understand the reasoning behind not wanting to rescale. IMO it wouldn't be the end of the world if they just implemented better aero and reduced the dV requirement to LKO. Most of the interesting stuff happens after you get to orbit anyway.

The thing is the majority of arguements against the scale increase is that it'll make the game they understand right now [vaguely] less fun. That logic could be applied to every major update to the game that's been made so far. I mean, if you had to bet between a 1.5x scaled-up planet and fixed aero vs. a budget & economic system, which of those would you have guessed would've made the game less fun? I'm willing to bet if Squad were to release a 0.35 "Getting Our Math Right" update with proper scaling and aero, everyone would get used to it almost immediately, realize things make more sense in real-world application, and we'd roll on past all of this bickering like nothing happened.

It boils down to change = bad, because current = understood, and we enjoy what we understand.

[Franklin]

I recommend everyone try regex's 1.5x config listed above. Once you're used to the different aero and re-conditioned yourself to not build wall-shaped rockets, it's like nothing changed, but as an educational tool it's a big step in the right direction.