Collection of what is on my mind.

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

Hello everyone :)/

you might know me for a while now here on the Forum or have seen me on Twitch now and then.

I am playing KSP for almost 2000hours now since I bought it in its .20 Alpha-State.

This Game opened my eyes to what is going on in Space and how things work beyond this world.

It never happened to me before that a game, for which I spent 16.- Euros or so, kept me occupied at this rate.

Dont get me wrong, I still play other games but Kerbal Space Program is something Special - Just like its community.

Now..

Why am I writing all this stuff?

Not because I want to have the game shaped to my will, no. Not at all.

All I want is, to point some attention to Problems in the game mechanic.

Maybe the Developers are already aware of it, but I also try to point out a solution to the Issue that occurs to me

I am not pushing to have those Issues fixed.

Maybe they will be, maybe they won't.

Thats completely fine for me

Btw. if anything below triggers the developement of a Mod, feel free to do so

Current Update:

Under Construction

Techtree Layout:

-Sepatrons need to be accessable earlier in the techtree now that we have to turn our rockets early/continously.

-Fuelcells should come before(or maybe along with) Solarpanels. Providing you with an adequat amount of power but draining a noticeable amount of fuel from your craft.

-Bi-Coupler, Tri-Coupler and Quadcoupler should be introduced along with its parent tanks.

-Roverparts and Planeparts should be on a seperate techtree and enabled for its own progression right from the start.

Parts:

-Sepatron heatoutput of the Engine-Exhaust is somewhat incredible and spreads throughout the entire vessel.

-Tanks of Rocketfuel should be more vulnerable to Re-entry heat than Planeparts.

-Structural Parts should be more vulnerable to Re-entry heat.

-Delta-Deluxe-Winglet should have surface attachment enabled

GUI:

-Temperature on the Thermometer and Overlays should be toggleable to different Units than just Kelvin as Celsius and Fahrenheit is more convenient. (options menu)

Contracts:

-Experimental Contracts for engines should also come with a fueltank, demanding you to burn the fuel from the tank through the engine. I.E xenon engine testing gives you only the engine at the moment.

-Experimental contracts for parachutes should demand you to decelerate the craft by an amount of X G's.

-Decoupler Contracts should demand you to decouple a Mass of X.

Contract Progression:

-Filtering unwanted Contracts i.E. by locking your Spacecenter for tourism, exoplanetary construction (Outpost Orbital Stations), experimental testing, emergency rescue, world records.

-You should be prevented to go further than X until you gained X Reputation which will enable you to sign a treaty that will cost Reputation. Violating against your given boundary will be retaliated in a loss of Money and reputation.

Return of the Magic Boulder:

-Now that we have Asteroids for quite some time it should be no problem to bring that little boulder back.

-Dont forget that people will try to mine it

Still open/pending:

Current Behavior

An action is performed right after the action-group got activated

Problems with the current System

This simple behaviour makes it rater hard to perform complex action with only one action group.

I.E. Firing the Launch-Escape System (Decouple the Capsule, fire the Escape-Tower, eject the Escape-Tower after Flameout, deploy Parachutes)

Tweak

A possible Tweak would be to attach to each action inside the action group a number of seconds which will count down after the action-group is toggled. After the time is up, the action will be performed.

(I.E.: Abort-Button: Decouple=0, Fire LaunchEscapetower=0, Decouple LaunchEscapetower=1, Deploy Parachutes=2)

Another Tweak, but more complex, would be to bind one action to a condition of another part (Flame-out, overheating, occuring blast awesomeness)

(I.E.: Abort-Button: Decouple, Fire LaunchEscapetower, Decouple LaunchEscapetower when flamed-out, Deploy Parachute when LaunchEscapetower decoupled)

Usage

This would give the the Player the opportunity to tidy up his actiongroups and to get a hold on assymetrical flame-out on Spaceplanes...maybe

Current Behavior

The Biomes are toggle-able in the Debug Menu to have them displayed in the Mapview.

Problems with the current System

There is no Problem. I was hoping for this feature since Biomes were introduced.

However, there are some possible tweaks to it.

Tweak

- Accessability: Making the Biomes toggleable by the push of a button in Mapview

- Mouse-over-Information:

-- By moving the Mouse over a Biome in this Mode, the player should have a read-out at which Biome he is looking right now.

-- In addtition to that it would be great to have also displayed what experiments have been performed in this Biome and what experiments are still possible with an open percentage (Because some experiments never give you 100% of the retrieveable Science at once), so you are not hunting for a remaining 1% Science Value by accident.

-- This Mechanic should be accessable for mods like SCANsat for further Infos, like Degree-of-Slopes, Height, etc.

-- 2D-Map of a Planet in the Science Archive and the possibility to highlight a Biome.

Current Behavior

The Contracts in Mission Control are only telling you the Name of a Part that you have to Test or the Name of a Region that you have to observate.

Problems with the current System

While you are searching in mission control for the right contract to accept, you are unaware or maybe mistaken what the part looks like, that you have to test.

Even more worrying is the fact, that you have to switch to keep the names of the Regions that you are asked to observate in mind, switch to the tracking station, see if you can reach them and then switch back to Mission Control

Tweak

- Displaying the 3D-Model of the Part in Mission Control

- Displaying the 2D/3D-Map in Mission Control with a marker of the Region that has to be visited. Just like KerbalMaps http://www.kerbalmaps.com/

Current Behavior

Each antenna can transmit Data from the furthest place in the Kerbol-System back to Kerbin. Only difference is the transmission speed and rate.

Problems with the current System

Well it is not really a Problem but you might scratch your head why you should use any other antenna than the smallest Communotron 16. Because you can almost always fastforward time.

Tweak

- Communotron 16 can only transmit data inside Kerbins-SOI back to Kerbin.

- Comms DTS-M1 can transmit data back from Eve, Kerbin, Duna and Dres back to Kerbin.

- Communotron 88-88 can transmit from everywhere back to Kerbin.

Current Behavior

Crew can be transfered from one Pod to another on a Craft.

Problems with the current System

Even if some Kerbals have mysterious Powers like surviving a faceplant from outer Space into Kerbins Grassland they should not be able to phase through fueltanks, girders, Science-Parts, Solid Rocket Bossters, etc to reach another Pod.

Tweak

- Kerbals should only be able to transfer from one pod to another if they are either directly connected to each other or docked with 2 Ports

- Some parts (like structurals) should prohibit Crew Transfer

Usage

This will give you a feel that Kerbals are more than just Names that you can push around like there is no body attached to them.

Even if you attach a Docking Port to a fueltank, you can still move your crew via EVA.

Feel free to comment on this Thread.

See Also:

Kerbal Professions

Current Behavior

Pilots control ships, Engineers are able to repair 3 parts in the game, Scientists boost Sciencepoints by up to 20%

Problems with the current System

It is not really a problem but the Scientists and Engineers look a little bit underwhelming compared to the Pilots arent they?

Tweak

- only Scientists are able to Process Data in a Space-Lab

- only Engineers are able to make Sciencebays and Goo Canisters Re-usable in the Space-Lab

- Lvl-5 Engineers are able to re-charge flat batteries and Probecores on a craft to max 5 Units on the entire craft, using resources from the EVA-Fuel. Converted via thermal generators... or something

- Engineers are more efficient with EVA-Fuel.

Fuel Balancing

Current Behavior

Right now the Player is only able to move Resources from one highlighted tank to another (alt+rightclick). By using the buttons IN and OUT which makes the Fuel Flow between them by a fix rate of Units per second.

Problems with the current System

- Perfect Balancing is rather hard to almost impossible

- only 2 Tanks can be balanced at once

- Tanks have to be highlighted during the Process

Tweak

- Third button "average out"

-- balances fuel between two tanks or more by highlighting the tanks in question and pressing the "Balance-button" on one of them

-- fuel balances in the background without having the tanks highlighted

-Balancing Fuel between 2 or more Tanks using the tweakable slider of the Fuel-amount

-- By highlighting 2 or more Tanks the Player should be able to balance the exact amount of fuel by click and drag the Fuel-Bar. The Fuelbar would then turn dark green on all highlighted tanks and the Number of the Fuel inside each tank would show the average Amount of fuel that will be inside each tank when the process is done. After letting go, the fuel would even out between all tanks slowly, even without highlighting the tanks.

Usage

This would make balancing-out the Fuel in a craft much easier without destroying current behaviour but taking it to a higher level.

Wheel-Brakes and Motors

Current Behavior

All brake-able and powered Wheels in the game are currently braking and driving at a rate of 100% by the push of a button.

Problems with the current System

- Rovers flipping over on Low-Gravity worlds while braking and doing a wheelie while driving forward.

Tweak

- Implementing the option to disable brakes on a Wheel like on the Landing Gear even during Flight.

- Braking Power and powered drive can be toggled to 0/25/50/75/100% in the tweakable Menu, so the front wheels brake with less power than the rear ones OR the rear wheels produce less torque then the front wheels.

Edited May 3, 2015 by MalfunctionM1Ke

[r4pt0r]

Crew transfer I like as it is now, because for the creative ways people build craft should not restrict their gameplay.

Take for example when people build big ring structures. they connect parts at 5 degree angles using the tiny girder as an angled joiner. To us it looks like a ring, but to the game it is girder-fuselage-girder-fuselage.... and would be unusable by your suggestion.

Communications I agree that they should have ranges, in the same order as you mention. but make the ranges work based of distances(so if your planet and kerbin are on opposite sides at the time, that extra distance might be a problem)

Biomes A SCANsat type feature should be stock. whereby you use satellites to "paint" in the biomes on your map

[ImJake]

Fuel Balancing I usually use multiple fuel lines to achieve this, but your way seems nice.

Wheel-Brakes and Motors A thousand times yes. This and wing elevon control. Additionally, I think buttons mapped to max break, no break, break throttle up and break throttle down would be useful. I don't know what a good rate for the throttle should be because unlike real breaks, a keyboard is an all or nothing kind of thing.

Action-Group-Timer / Connected Actions I like the idea, but personally, I probably wouldn't use it much. Also, good use of OK Go

Biomes in Mapview I'm not a fan of having distinct, color coded biomes added to the map. It just doesn't seem that realistic to me (even though theres a hundred other things in this game that aren't realistic). But I think it would kind kill the sense of exploration if you just go through the biomes like a checklist. I do like the idea of adding a 2D map of the planets though and stock SCANsat.

Kerbal Professions I'm not entirely sure what the SpareParts would be good for unless parts had a half broken state the way buildings do now. That would actually be really cool, but it would take 4ever for them to model all those new part states. Engineers could also be useful if something like KAS was implemented. But yeah, the other two professions seem kinda underwhelming compared to pilots; maybe they could be merged into one.

Communications I agree for the most part. Personally I'd like to see something like RemoteTech and some kind of life support system added so that manned and unmanned have more distinct pros and cons. I'd hold off on adding something like life support until they add deep space refueling.

Crew Transfer Yeah, the way it is now bothers me. I'd make it somewhat forgiving, but Kerbals shouldn't be able to fit a radial decoupler or the smallest docking port (does anyone even use those).

Also, I want stock clouds!

And, I'd like to see procedurally generated cities, towns, roads, farms, ect. and better foliage on Kerbin, but that could come somewhere way in the future for all I care.

[Kegereneku]

For once I'll do my market...

I'll take some of your Fuel Balancing and ask for only engineer to be able to do that.

Give me a big chunk of your "Object of Interest" in Mission Control it sound delicious

For your Biomes in Mapview I'll only take the part where you can distinguish biome apart from orbit with a supplement of "What biome I am in" indicator. SCANSAT is hard to digest stock.

I'm not very interested by your Action-Group-Timer / Connected Actions, but good luck for that

Your Kerbal Profession seem kind of superflous, if you have a Mobile Processing Lab you certainly already carry both scientist and engineer.

I'll have none of your Crew Transfer, it's the way it is for a reason as said by r4pt0r

Your Communications is the minimum I expect once they go to it, I would like more relay on it for specialized design.

[jofwu]

Fuel Balancing

They made some sort of change to this for 0.90 didn't they? Haven't heard much talk about it. Anyone know the details?

Wheel-Brakes and Motors

You can't already do this? I could have sworn that I've turned brakes off on my front wheels before...

Action-Group-Timer / Connected Actions

Interesting thought. I REALLY think there ought to be a stock way to edit action groups on the fly.

Biomes in Mapview

As much as I love ScanSAT, I think it's beyond the scope of the stock game. I feel like your concepts here are a bit more complicated than Squad would like. It would be nice if there were a button (right next to the info button) that could toggle a biome overlay in map mode. Maybe it would only overlay the biomes that you have "discovered" (i.e. performed a biome-specific experiment in). That way it doesn't reveal all of the mysteries and surprises right from the start, and you have something to work for. But you can still easily see where something NEW might be.

"Object of Interest" in Mission Control

Here here! New folks especially aren't going to know the names of parts, and it can get really unnecessarily confusing.

Kerbal Professions

Completely agree that Scientists and Engineers are underpowered!

I do think that Scientists should be the ones responsible for cleaning Goo and Materials Labs though. There's plenty of other great ideas for Engineers, and that concept is in the realm of Science I think.

I'd like to see the introduction of an experiment or two that requires a Scientist or two to stay somewhere long term. It would be a heavy part. Heck maybe, the lab could take on the role (it's also underpowered in my opinion). It could either generate a bunch of Science at once or small amounts over a long period of time. It should encourage space stations and bases.

Perhaps it could be used to clean up leftover science? Right now you can go somewhere, say to the Mun and knock out some big experiments to get a bunch of science. But afterwards you have leftovers all over the place. And it's not particularly fun to go back and redo old missions (for less return). Why not plop a base down and let it scrap together whatever you missed over the course of a year? Maybe it has a range, so that it can reach every biome within a certain radius.

Love the solar panels idea, though I think spare parts might go too far. I really really wish they had the ability to "weld parts together". In other words, construction out in the world. They can't bring up parts and place them wherever, like KAS. I just want to be able to bring two ships in close range of one another and then permanently connect them. This is sorely needed for some crazy late-game interplanetary business. Docking ports and all of the mod options I've seen are too flimsy or awkward. I want to come up with a concept for a big interplanetary ship/station and put it together in orbit over the course of a few launches.

I'd really like to see Roles be modable. Don't know if they are or not, but I bet people could come up with some fun concepts if that is open to the community.

This will put your Kerbals a little bit more to work. There are probably even more Possibilities.

Communications

So very similar to AntennaRange. Agreed.

Crew Transfer

Seems like a simple part variable could handle that, like fuel crossfeed

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

I mad a little update for 1.0.2