Reddit post from HarvesteR

[John FX]

So long as every single part has a way to get 100% reliability out of it, I'm cool with this. However I'm in the same camp has HarvesteR, I don't want my Jool 5 mission to fail after 40 hours of gameplay because the internal D100 rolled double 0's and a critical piece of the return craft failed in a totally unfixable way.

It may be an idea to see reliability as a grey scale for performance, not fail/no fail. Then a part with low reliability would degrade quicker and to a lower point rather than fail instantly. This would make your Jool 5 mission harder but would not make it fail automatically. Maybe if your engines were only working at 75% thrust on your interplanetary stage that would not be a problem but it may on your lander stage, if your solar panels were working at 60% at Moho that would not be an issue but it might if you were past Dres and so on. Maybe the panels work less well with low light than fully working ones but are fine with bright light, I could see that happening.

If a system for making parts better with upgraded buildings becomes a thing then this system would be easy to implement.

EDIT : On the topic of fixable, maybe a `spare parts` part could be a thing so you could recover the efficiency of a part (up to a limit based on your available spare parts) while on EVA.

[White Owl]

Let's just say that I fundamentally disagree with that. There is nothing stopping people from making weird contraptions with multiple dynamic parts the same way they make weird contraptions with multiple static parts. What currently limits opportunities for inventiveness is more so a lack of detail by the simulation than too much freedom, right now there is no thinking involved with making a wing in the game, practically any configuration will give the same results. And as such the base game has no real need for the detail dynamic parts allow in this case.

When it comes to customizing pods, engines and so on the game is however more susceptible to allowing the users more freedom to make the smaller detail choices dynamic parts allow.

In my wildest dreams, I'd like to see the vehicle editor become a full 3D modeling program. Like launching Blender from inside KSP, with everything preset to the right format for the game. (Hopefully a lot easier to learn and use than Blender, though.) No static parts at all. Total freedom to design however you like, with configs for as much realism and/or silliness as you like. All these procedural parts - which you of course started - are a great first step toward that kind of freedom.

[m1sz]

the key in random failures, is capacity to repair...

5thhorseman, if you could repair that with an EVA Kerbal with a few spare parts, would it be funnier?, I think so!, or even, if you had to launch a support ship to repair the broken one, I find it funny :-)

[Brethern]

one further point...

As snipped from the reddit...

Harvester types: "As for random failure events. This is one idea I'm very much against. It's something we designed out of the game on the very earliest design docs nearly 4 years ago now. The moment you (the player) realize that a failure happened through no fault of your own,..."

I would suggest here that Reliability and Risk are two CORE concepts in space systems which if ignored lead to a highly unrealistic perspective of the whole systems view of managing a space program.

Reliability should be fully under the control of the player (and any decision to ignore it) If a player does not put enough science and/or testing contracts behind the final unlocking of a part then there should be in increased change of mishap when using that part. A player selects the desired reliability level based on the amount of risk they are willing to take. For example: If you select a low reliability ion engine for a probe to Eeloo and it fails to operate then what is surprising about that?

OK, make it part of the difficulty settings - I'm fine with that - "brutally hard mode".

So on that specific point, I must respectfully disagree with Harvester. I recommend a requirements change control be initiated.

So you're telling me that you're alright with spending four hours working on an eve return vehicle only to have a system that could potentially prevent a solar panel from deploying or having a rocket engine fail to ignite. Or any number of random things that can destroy a mission,

ksp already is an annoying game to play with the numerous bugs that already cause the exact thing you want. Having them basically become a feature is going to turn allot of people away from the game.

For once I fully support this design decision.

[I_Killed_Jeb]

So you're telling me that you're alright with spending four hours working on an eve return vehicle only to have a system that could potentially prevent a solar panel from deploying or having a rocket engine fail to ignite. Or any number of random things that can destroy a mission,

ksp already is an annoying game to play with the numerous bugs that already cause the exact thing you want. Having them basically become a feature is going to turn allot of people away from the game.

For once I fully support this design decision.

put it this way, how badS would you feel if you could reverse an apollo-13 kind of disaster situation? you'd feel like a rockstar! the same way one of the best moments for a lot of us is when we fixed what seemed to be a hopeless deathspiral/flatspin/crash to death/etc. there are ways to do this in a manner that doesn't induce ragequits. it takes thought and execution, something that is lately a bit in short supply with ksp to be honest

as for life support this has been discussed ad nauseum but honestly i can't believe a game about rockets and space travel don't intend to implement something that is arguably the most mission critical portion of manned ships. why bother with electricity then?

[Brethern]

put it this way, how badS would you feel if you could reverse an apollo-13 kind of disaster situation? you'd feel like a rockstar! the same way one of the best moments for a lot of us is when we fixed what seemed to be a hopeless deathspiral/flatspin/crash to death/etc. there are ways to do this in a manner that doesn't induce ragequits. it takes thought and execution, something that is lately a bit in short supply with ksp to be honest

as for life support this has been discussed ad nauseum but honestly i can't believe a game about rockets and space travel don't intend to implement something that is arguably the most mission critical portion of manned ships. why bother with electricity then?

The problem isn't solving a crisis, the problem is that the crisis always has the potential for getting worse and worse. That's the part that isn't fun.

[Jovus]

I'm going to chip in here and support the 'no random failures in stock' paradigm. It's already far too easy to screw up a mission due to deterministic factors; if you want random failures, play with a mod.

[Wallygator]

So long as every single part has a way to get 100% reliability out of it, I'm cool with this. However I'm in the same camp has HarvesteR, I don't want my Jool 5 mission to fail after 40 hours of gameplay because the internal D100 rolled double 0's and a critical piece of the return craft failed in a totally unfixable way.

Agree 100%. (No strange die rolls involved)

[Wallygator]

So you're telling me that you're alright with spending four hours working on an eve return vehicle only to have a system that could potentially prevent a solar panel from deploying or having a rocket engine fail to ignite. Or any number of random things that can destroy a mission,

ksp already is an annoying game to play with the numerous bugs that already cause the exact thing you want. Having them basically become a feature is going to turn allot of people away from the game.

For once I fully support this design decision.

All I'm suggesting is the deterministic elements of this type of scenario should be fully within the control of the player.

[Brethern]

All I'm suggesting is the deterministic elements of this type of scenario should be fully within the control of the player.

Something like a config file where you can activate the specific failures you want? That I could see working, but just random things happening isn't something that I could see working.

[razark]

I used to be in favor of random failures. Failure is something that happens in spaceflight. Look at the explosion of Apollo 13, or the broken circuit breaker on Apollo 11, or the Skylab launch. These were major malfunctions that endangered mission success or even crew survival.

But if you think about it, we don't have the same interaction that the astronauts had. Apollo 11 was saved with a pen. 13 jury-rigged an air filter and figured out how to use what they had to get back. Skylab was repaired through EVA efforts and unconventional thinking. We don't have that sort of open access to the spacecraft we create. Without it, random failures just aren't the same.

[Brethern]

I used to be in favor of random failures. Failure is something that happens in spaceflight. Look at the explosion of Apollo 13, or the broken circuit breaker on Apollo 11, or the Skylab launch. These were major malfunctions that endangered mission success or even crew survival.

But if you think about it, we don't have the same interaction that the astronauts had. Apollo 11 was saved with a pen. 13 jury-rigged an air filter and figured out how to use what they had to get back. Skylab was repaired through EVA efforts and unconventional thinking. We don't have that sort of open access to the spacecraft we create. Without it, random failures just aren't the same.

The best we get would be right click on the part and choose repair.

[technicalfool]

With regards the "random failures" comments, have a look at this old thread, that got past the WNTS filter because it was a pretty novel suggestion:

Random failures of experimental parts

[bigbadben]

Random failures would suck. Too many things I mess up already, without including random dice rolls. I like the current system, where failures are a direct outgrowth of your skill as an engineer/pilot, and as you get better and more experienced in the game, you -tend- to have less failures.

Procedural parts are cool, but only for certain things. I enjoy seeing what some monstrosity someone built, and seeing exactly what is going on. Say the orange tanks, for example. Whenever someone sees those, they get a sense of scale and feel for that craft. Same reason Harv is against random systems for everyone, every time. It takes away from the shared community experience.

While it might be smarter to have all procedual parts for everything...it is not better.

Edited November 13, 2014 by bigbadben

[White Owl]

We always have Kerbals for scale. Build a completely procedural/dynamic/welded/custom contraption, stand a Kerbal in front of it, and people instantly know how big it is.

[Jovus]

I feel I should expand on my comment above. I don't want random failures to be part of the stock game. There are two reasons for this: a reason for me, and a reason for others.

First, the reason for others: newbies would leave the game. I know I would have decided the game wasn't for me if after launching my first or so mission it suddenly didn't work because the game decided my fuel tank should explode, or whatever. I'd have said, ".... this," and never looked back. Squad (and the KSP community) wants KSP newbies to stick.

Second, the reason for self: having a feature as part of the stock game makes it an 'opt-out' (at best) rather than an 'opt-in'. This holds an entirely different psychological space and weight. To explicate, when you 'opt-out' you are choosing not to play the whole game. When you 'opt-in' you are choosing to play the game PLUS something else. Yes, this is 'silly' in some sense, but it's a real psychological phenomenon (for me, at least). That's why, at some point in the future, I'll probably enjoy playing with the Dang-It mod, but I don't want it to be part of stock functionality, ever - I don't want to have the back-brain feeling that I'm not playing 'the full experience' of KSP.

[Tw1]

Having craft take time to build also helps to provide pace and removes that big gap between your last Minmus/Mun mission and your first Duna/Eve mission. You don`t get the feeling of `Come on, I`m waiting` that makes you warp to the next thing that will happen, you have stuff happening.

This is what there is to stop you Harvester. Better paced game mechanics.

People only warp to `the next thing that will happen` so don`t make `the next thing that will happen` be years into the future or that is the point people will warp to...

I completely agree with the rest of the post though. No life support, no random failures and procedural parts given consideration before implementation but not ruled out.

I don't quite get the "no time based mechanics, because you can just warp" logic. Isn't that the point of warp, so you can have things that take a long time, but don't need to wait for it?

Like a trip to the Mun, which should take six hours, but with warp is dismissible in a flash?

If done well, a few timed mechanisms, like having to wait for a materials exposure experiment to happen, could add to immersion. Plus, it's your choice if you warp for forever, or go and do things while waiting.

And if you have a few things going on at once, then there is less reason to warp to far.

I think the critical thing is it should not just 'reward' you for warping but make it necessary sometimes, and penalise you for warping too much. Life support could come into this.

I disagree with not having life support at all- it's such an important part of real life space exploration. Especially if it was done so simply, you could easily work out how long an amount would last per number of crew. Sure, you might need to check on some missions, but that's part of managing a space program.

If they had something that let you check it from the tracking station, or a notification system like for contracts, keeping track would be pretty simple.

There's a fair bit to add there, but features like these would help flesh out KSP from a launching and flying game to more of a space exploration experience.

Edited November 13, 2014 by Tw1

[GoSlash27]

We always have Kerbals for scale. Build a completely procedural/dynamic/welded/custom contraption, stand a Kerbal in front of it, and people instantly know how big it is.

Tw1,

I'm definitely not on board with adding complexity to KSP simply to make it more realistic. *I* personally am fine with playing it that way, but the folks at Squad aren't trying to make a simulator. They just want to make a game that's engaging, but not so complicated that the uneducated get overwhelmed and give up.

Best,

-Slashy

[metl]

I used to be in favor of failures. I thought it would be fun. Until I used Dang It! to build a probe which was only going to Duna. The tank sprung a leak during transfer. There was nothing I could do to fix it. Mission over, try again. At that point I realized that had it been a manned craft, I would have had to come up with a extreme rescue mission, or wait for a launch window. That was not what I thought would be fun. I was looking for those "Apollo 13" moments, and instead got a "joke's on you" moment. Mod removed.

I then thought I would give life support a try and used TAC life support. I watched several players using it and honestly thought "I got this." During an early (too early) mission to Mun, I ran out of juice and Jeb died. The next ship suffered the same fate because I failed to recognize the constant power drain from the RemoteTech antenna. I decided that having electricity tied to life support was a terrible way to punish someone for trying to push the tech limits, especially since life support would have lasted for over a year, but I only had enough electricity to last for four hours. Grind Kerbin for science or remove TAC? TAC removed.

I also tried KCT and did exactly what Harvester speculated. As soon as I had to wait for something, I warped. Then warped again for the next. And the next, and the next. Finally I came to the conclusion that as fun and nifty as it sounded, it really wasn't any fun. Not terrible, but tedious. Mod removed.

Prior to these incidents, I would have fully supported having these features in stock. Since then, I have learned that some things need to stay relegated to mods. As far as procedural parts, I know from experience how many tanks I can stack on an LV-30. It took a while to learn that. If I was a new player, I couldn't imagine trying to learn how much fuel to weight to thrust I would need to reach even orbit if I had to manually set the amount of fuel.

I think Squad has things squared away good. Harvester's statement said it best when he said there is something for everyone. Some things some people like, some things others like, but nobody dislikes everything. You can't please 100% of the people 100% of the time. Trying will only result in everyone displeased all the time. they've hit a good balance which is why this game is so successful.

[Northstar1989]

I was immensely disappointed to see HarvestR's apparent dismissal of Life Support based on "babysitting crews" during long-term missions.

*What* crews is he talking about exactly? There's no reason any player should have Kerbals sitting around doing nothing (if they're on a pre-planned mission, they should have been sent with plenty of life support for it), unless they're in a space station...

And there's a *SIMPLE* solution for that one fringe case of permanent stations/based- just add a "greenhouse" part that with 100% efficiency recycles LifeSupport waste back into the Life Support resource(s), using light and/or electricity.

It's NOT that complicated, or far from reality- from a certain perspective *Earth* is just a giant space ship, and plants+bacteria recycle our life support resources (food, water, breathable oxygen, etc.) from their waste-products. Sure, it's hard to achieve that 100% level of efficiency in real-life with a manmade system, but this is a game- and I'm sure most players (myself included) would be OK with that level of abstraction if it meant they could have permanent stations/bases without any babysitting and yet still have to provide life-support for that 5-year mission to gas planet #2 (if it's ever added...)

The greenhouse part could/should be HEAVY, so that players don't send it on flag-and-footprints type missions. (and besides, launching heavy parts on large rockets in just FUN and COOL to watch...) Really, from a balance perspective, it's not all that different from the Mobile Processing Lab- which is only worth sending to permanent outposts (which without life support or ISRU-refueling, don't currently have much use) or on a mothership in multiple-landing missions...

Regards,

Northstar

P.S. I also like the idea of some sort of living-space requirement for long-duration missions, so life support doesn't just become a matter of a tiny capsule plus a huge oxygen tank- although players can always choose to provide living space for roleplay reasons anyways...

Edited November 13, 2014 by Northstar1989

[Superfluous J]

And there's a *SIMPLE* solution for that one fringe case of permanent stations/based- just add a "greenhouse" part that with 100% efficiency recycles LifeSupport waste back into the Life Support resource(s), using light and/or electricity.

So you want life support but you want a simple way to circumvent it? Sweet, a new part that is a must-include for every long-distance ship, that adds nothing to the game but a little extra mass.

[White Owl]

As far as procedural parts, I know from experience how many tanks I can stack on an LV-30. It took a while to learn that. If I was a new player, I couldn't imagine trying to learn how much fuel to weight to thrust I would need to reach even orbit if I had to manually set the amount of fuel.

Exactly the same way you learned how many fuel tanks to stack. Take a first guess and see how far it flies. If it doesn't fly, remove some fuel so it's lighter. If it flies too far, remove a little more fuel. If it doesn't fly far enough, add a little. Just like those simple little 2D artillery games that were the fad several years ago.

[CaptainKipard]

Life support and construction time would go well together. There's time and resource management to be had there. Adds depth.

[Brethern]

I was immensely disappointed to see HarvestR's apparent dismissal of Life Support based on "babysitting crews" during long-term missions.

*What* crews is he talking about exactly? There's no reason any player should have Kerbals sitting around doing nothing (if they're on a pre-planned mission, they should have been sent with plenty of life support for it), unless they're in a space station...

I can't speak for everyone but plenty of people send multiple missions out at one time. As it is right now it's send and forget, but once you add life support you always have to be thinking, are the solar panels pointed at the sun? Does the ship have a roll that could cause it not to gain full energy efficiency? Am I sure I'm starting that correction burn at the right time to ensure I don't add extra time to the mission? There's other questions but that's the point, KSP as it is right now is an ok game. Electric charge does the proper job of a resource that's semi important but if it runs out it's not the end of the world.

I'm not saying some sort of life support system wouldn't work but it would have to be designed to avoid the tedium.

[Tw1]

I'm not saying some sort of life support system wouldn't work but it would have to be designed to avoid the tedium.

I definitelly agree. There's a lot of good points there. I think set and forget (mostly) would be a good thing to keep in mind with a life support mechanic.

I do think that as long as it's not too hard to bring more than enough, absolutely minimising the life support requirement/time should be something left the player aiming for maximum efficiency. So there is a fudge factor.

Plus, maybe a notification when something has started to deplete.

So you want life support but you want a simple way to circumvent it? Sweet, a new part that is a must-include for every long-distance ship, that adds nothing to the game but a little extra mass.

Personally, I don't think a part that offers 100% renewable life support is that an good idea either. Life support does need to be simple enough that you can send a large amount and not have to worry about it for some time, but having 100% renewable does cheapen it a little. Perhaps a part that can create life support ressorce when on certain planets would be better?

If done well, shuttling around life support would be done much like how some people re-supply far out stations with fuel.

Some have suggested automated resupply missions. I think re-supply to some stations could be subcontracted for a cost- done as a strategy. This would be one interaction with another space company I wouldn't mind. These missions wouldn't show up in the map, or even really happen, it would just cost you a lot to have your stations and based topped up every so often.

It is possible that you'd need to set up bases for this sub contractor- then they could move life support around for you.

A more fundamental problem is that there's not a lot of motivation to set up elaborate stations and bases.

This is why I'd prefer to see a slightly more abstract system for measuring the space program's success- so setting up such things.

They just want to make a game that's engaging, but not so complicated that the uneducated get overwhelmed and give up.

This is true, but I also think the game's potential is wasted if they don't establish things for those that want to take it further.

I don't think that needing to think about how much life support to bring for a mission, or having your exposure experiment need you to fast forward a few minutes before a result would add that much more for someone to learn, when compared to orbital mechanics.

Plus, what do computer games offer?

Challenge- can you achieve things within these constraints and opportunities?

And an experience- plan, build, run, space missions from from your laptop!

There's not a lot of games which offer the experience KSP does while being so accessible. Like I said above, I think it's a waste of potential if some of the more basic challenges of space (life support, reentry) aren't put to you.

Edited November 13, 2014 by Tw1