What do you want in the new KSP 1.0 Resource System

[RatchetinSpace]

The Devs showed a sneak peak image of the new resource system on their Tumblr. I was wondering what everyone wants to see in the resource system.

-Only available on certain bodies (including asteroids)?

-Refining required?

-Able to manufacture Fuel, Oxidizer, Xenon, RCS and other things or only some of them?

I would personally like to see it similar to the Kethane mod which judging from the picture it seems thats the case. What does the KSP community think?

[Bill Phil]

Pretty sure they're going with a Karbonite esque system.

I would like like to see a system worthy of the hype.

[Brotoro]

I'm not going to ponder what I *want*. At this point, it's only likely to make me disappointed if what I *get* does not match my desires. I doubt that Squad would be paying attention to what I have to say in this thread anyway.

So, Ill just wait and see.

Oh... But I will reiterate my oft-repeated wish for refueling hoses that kerbals can run from one ship to another (so we can do without the silliness of surface docking when kerbals should be able to figure out the advanced technology of hoses).

Edited January 31, 2015 by Brotoro

[klgraham1013]

I want some rarity with the resource. I'm not going to get it, but that's what I want.

[AbacusWizard]

Frankly I'm going to be happy as long as I can send a huge interplanetary ship on a five-year mission to explore strange new worlds... and not have to follow up by sending several colossal tankers that are more expensive than the ship itself. Being able to harvest resources and manufacture fuel during the mission will be a magnificent game-changer.

[technicalfool]

Something deliciously moddable.

[bartekkru99]

I hope, that it's going to be better than Kethane, Kethane is so unrealistic...

[RainDreamer]

I want it to be a profitable venture to mine offworld resources and return to Kerbin to sell them. Make contracts with them. Even on-going contract types that give you payment for every unit of resource.

[bartekkru99]

What about mining rare metals on asteroids and then bringing them back?

[Athlonic]

Something deliciously moddable.

This

I am sure many remember this :

I am confident Squad/Roverdude will put a nice backbone in place, and community will then flesh that out nicely ^^

Also something moddable will help to set the complexity to please anyone.

[r4pt0r]

God that old idea was terrible.

[CaptRobau]

Oh... But I will reiterate my oft-repeated wish for refueling hoses that kerbals can run from one ship to another (so we can do without the silliness of surface docking when kerbals should be able to figure out the advanced technology of hoses).

That would be something I'd want to. KAS-like functionality is greatly needed. Would give Engineers more stuff to do.

[Arugela]

I would love to travel around the solar system refueling my plane in flight and through flight or something.. It would be cool to make a very complex multi engine type ship that can use the environment to keep itself going.

[bartekkru99]

That would be something I'd want to. KAS-like functionality is greatly needed. Would give Engineers more stuff to do.

Agreed on my save file things break very rarely, so Bill and other guys have nothing to do...

[Louella]

I only want to see a surface refinery, and a mobile device.

Surface refinery, to deploy onto Minmus, that uses electricity, to turn ice into liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, which can be used in liquid fuel engines.

And a thing, developed from the asteroid grabber, to grab comets, and uses electricity to turn the ice into liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, so a spacecraft can refuel elsewhere than from Minmus. This would be a lot slower than the Minmus surface refinery.

I'm not sure on the need in stock, for monopropellant and xenon gas fuels. I'm sure people could add them in mods, but I think if in stock, it's liquid fuel only, then it remains a challenge to build craft capable of visiting multiple bodies. Have to conserve limited RCS fuel, that sort of thing.

being able to refuel the liquid fuel engines makes going outside Kerbin's sphere easier, but keeping it liquid fuel refueling only, stops it from becoming trivial. I think.

[Pthigrivi]

I had an idea ages ago about using a catalyst to refine surface resources. It would weigh like 1/50th what it produced in LF/O, and would add some challenge and balance to unlimited surface resources. You could also mine catalyst in places but it would be much more rare.

[Tuareg]

i want a single inline part i can attach to a claw land it on an asteroid and with a click refill the requested fueltank, be it rcs or lf+o whatever....

well its not true, but i think this will happen

Edited January 31, 2015 by Tuareg

[Superfluous J]

I had an idea ages ago about using a catalyst to refine surface resources. It would weigh like 1/50th what it produced in LF/O, and would add some challenge and balance to unlimited surface resources. You could also mine catalyst in places but it would be much more rare.

I kinda like this idea, but it does add an extra resource which seems to be against the mantra. But if that catalyst is there INSTEAD of Kabonite or whatever, then yeah I think that's cool.

I really like the idea that you have to mine stuff from different places. So you can't just plop down, suck some magical stuff from the ground, turn it into all 4 different fuel types, and then blast off again to the next area with more inifnite, free fuel.

I also really like the idea of getting your ground bases set up, doing a single mission up and down to a space station from those bases, and then having the game assume you are capable of doing that busy work so your refueling station is just always full of fuel. This way, you can make the setup and implementation fairly complicated and more difficult to achieve, without introducing the grind of "Oh great I have to make 3 round turn trips in this 100% vetted system simply to fill up my massive Jool-bound mothership."

[Pthigrivi]

Yeah that would kind of be the idea. There would be deposits of ice on the surface, but the only other material you would cart around would be catalyst. This way the deposits would be infinite but refining would be finite to the amount of catalyst you were carrying. Otherwise you could get into some weird physics-breaking situations where you're drilling asteroids and flying them around as a magic infinite gas station. For balance the catalyst should be compact and light but expensive, resulting in an easyish break-even by weight after refining about 15t of fuel, but cost wise you wouldn't break even until refining like 50t.

[klgraham1013]

That would be something I'd want to. KAS-like functionality is greatly needed. Would give Engineers more stuff to do.

I doubt we're getting KAS. Stock players will probably have to rely on docking ports.

[Pthigrivi]

Yeah I do hope there's some kind of field-attachable fuel line. Docking on the surface can be a real nightmare.

I hope this isnt a rule 2.3 violation, but there's a lot more discussion about this topic here:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/97174-Squad-s-accounced-there-will-be-Resources-in-Beta-how-should-they-go-about-it

[Scoundrel]

Not that my opinion is worth anything, but I think a catalyst would be a great idea for a hard mode. It would add some nice complexity and mission planning for more experienced players. I don't think it should the default in stock as I honestly believe things should be stupid simple so we can complicate to taste.

Also I am leaning towards the opinion that resources should be split into LFO/Monoprop based, and xenon based resources. You get Xenon from a certain altitude at Jool and a few other places (using an airscoop); Monoprop and LFO requires drilling. Thus you have to take your destination into account when designing your ship.

[basic.syntax]

For historical reference, a 2013 poll asking about adding a resource system. This also links to HarvesteR's feedback at that time. Much has obviously changed since then

My point is, that old plan we had for resources is most certainly not the right solution. It doesn't fit organically with the rest of the game, it requires you to remember to attach a bunch of single-purpose parts to a vessel (forgetting any of which would render a mission a complete failure), and really, that's just not how we want the game to play out.

- - - Updated - - -

I also really like the idea of getting your ground bases set up, doing a single mission up and down to a space station from those bases, and then having the game assume you are capable of doing that busy work so your refueling station is just always full of fuel. This way, you can make the setup and implementation fairly complicated and more difficult to achieve, without introducing the grind of "Oh great I have to make 3 round turn trips in this 100% vetted system simply to fill up my massive Jool-bound mothership."

I like this (with or without the catalyst scenario, that Pthigrivi and you are typing about.) I imagine the following - after setup and configuration of the ground station and orbital station - staffing both stations with one of each Engineer / Scientist / Pilot - Set the output of the ground station, to be routed by your helpful minions, to a named orbital station. Then, sight-unseen, fuel magically appears at some periodic interval. They did all the shipping and processing, while you weren't looking

[Pthigrivi]

Yeah I mean it wouldn't be that hard. ISRU should really be an endgame thing anyway and people are going to be way up the tech tree before they have access to it Im sure. All it means is that the interim resource is something you bring with you, rather than the thing you dig up. In fact the whole idea is its volume is much smaller so its even less to cart around.

Some detail from the previous resource thread:

Catalyst storage:

0.18t radial mounted tank (enough to produce 1x X-200-16 tank of fuel) - 640 funds

0.72t, 1.25m in-line tank (enough to produce 1x jumbo-64 tank of fuel) - 2560 funds

3.28t, 2.5m in-line tank (enough to produce 2x S3-14400 tanks of fuel) - 9120 funds

H20 extractors:

0.5t Radial mounted drill (draws 4 e/s while operating) - 600 funds

0.8t, 1.25m in-line drill (draws 6 e/s while operating) - 900 funds

Processing Unit:

9t, 2.5m in-line fuel processor (draws 30 e/s while operating, produces 0.5t/s of fuel) - 12000 funds

Additional parts:

0.08t Radial mounted H20 detector (draws 1.5 e/s while operating) - 2400 funds

0.2t, 1.25m in-line biome surveyor (draws 2.5 e/s while operating) - 3500 funds

0.075t radial mounted fuel cell (converts fuel to electricity at 9 e/s consuming .005t/s of fuel) - 1250 funds

0.3t, 1.25m in-line fuel cell (converts fuel to electricity at 36 e/s consuming .02t/s of fuel) - 5000 funds

0.05t Field-deployable fuel line - 700 funds

So the smallest break-even-by-weight mining set-up would be 2 radial catalyst tanks, a radial drill, a processing unit and 2 gigantor solar arrays weighing 10.56t, costing 19880 funds, and capable of producing 18t of fuel. It wouldn't be worth the money at that scale of course, and only a much larger economy of scale (after approaching 2 orange tanks of fuel) would it start to pay off. You can save on weight with fuel cells, but at a 10% loss in efficiency.

I also think scarcity is a big, big deal. Resource sites could really limited, which would then become the driver for pushing precision landings and rovers. If they were as scarce as a few to several sites per world, each with patches of drilling locations as small as KSC you'd really want to get down there and do some real investigation before setting up a mining operation. Id also argue strongly for making drilling sites visually apparent. It could be as simple as a surface texture, so long as it was something visible from just above the surface but not from orbit. This would make the whole process much more opaque and clear for both new users and veterans.

Edited January 31, 2015 by Pthigrivi

[whiterafter]

I want it to be fun and intuitive, like the rest of KSP.

I don't know how to make it fun though.