Satellite Mechanics

[Shadow]

In KSP there isn't a ton of reason outside of communication and initial research to create satellite networks. The mod "SCANSat" (https://spacedock.info/mod/129/SCANsat) added a ton of fantastic mechanics that enabled extensive gameplay that imitated real life space agencies. These changes drove the player to reach out to planets with complex satellite networks dedicated to mapping the planets and helped them interact and view gameplay layers that were sometimes obfuscated or required wiki reading.

My suggestion would be to look to this mod, other like it, and IRL uses of satellite networks to expand upon existing systems, possibly add new ones, and increase the amount of mission types a player can run.

One of my favorite gifs of SCANSat, showcasing how your orbit impacts the scan.

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Examples of Satellite Types

- Communication

The basic satellite. Creates a web that allows you to access and control various spacecraft. Losing access to a satellite (it goes behind a planet for instance and breaks its line of communication) breaks your ability to control your spacecraft. Requires players to build a network for satellites across the cosmos to continue their operations.

- Imaging

A satellite that develops an image of the stellar object. In SCANSat you could even "fog of war" a body, and paint only revealed imagery from the satellite. Exploring an object with a satellite before you landed then became necessary.

- Mapping

A slightly more advanced scanner, would show specific biomes and locations for game mechanics that are biome-based (research per biome, etc.)

- Resource

Would scan for resources, gas, minerals, etc. for future systems where we would be gathering those resources.

- Weather

A satellite that would track weather data and showcase when storms are hitting, driving players to plan their launches and landings around specific weather situations on some stellar objects. Could enable an entire new system with cosmic weather and potentially biome-based hazards.

- Solar

Similar to a weather satellite but for solar data. Tracking hotspots, solar storms, and the like it would give players more reasons to launch to their star. These solar storms could interrupt communications temporarily or risk radiation to kittenauts so operating around them (or at least shielding for them) might be something to keep in mind.

 

[TheUssLoliChan]

Just posting some info that people may not know:

In Game KSA photos of a map view:

Spoiler: Dev-Update Photos from discord of a "map" view

[/ISPOILER]

In the discord dev-updates it starts here.

Also a quote from Dean about sensor technology, however NOT talking about scan-sat.

This is from early builds, but it shows some stuff of what was shown like a map, it also has some photos

• Day/Night
• Orbital Lines
• Red Is In "Atmosphere"
• Time Before Impact
• Impact Area
• Ground Trackers adjusted for body rotation and 3 "next" orbits

This info might be old, and was from July and earlier. Im just doing this to waste time, however, it also shows that there IS some level of stuff in the game to do something like a sat-scan system, possibly.


I would also love to see this mechanic in the game if it hasn't been talked about or if it is already (Discord Searching Is NOT Good).. I didn't like the KSP 2 version of this idea as it tanked the performance while in time warp, or more than 2-3 crafts doing it at once.. but that was ksp 2.

The Spoiler Didn't Work.. thats the edit.

 

[Shadow]

Thank you so much for the pics! That's exciting. That map is incredible and would be the kind of thing these things could build off of wonderfully.

Yea I've seen others post this suggestion elsewhere, but wanted to codify it on the official forums for better discussions and visibility. I really, really enjoyed this in KSP1 and it drastically increased my playtime and also just drove me to do some fun things and learn a lot of stuff I never knew (its silly but I never knew that a satellite's altitude, speed, and orbit changed how it mapped the world. It just never occurred to me.)

With that detailed of a world map in KSA you also open up contracts/research for providing services (internet, communication, GPS, etc.) which would be really neat too.

 

[TheUssLoliChan]

Thank you so much for the pics! That's exciting. That map is incredible and would be the kind of thing these things could build off of wonderfully.

Yea I've seen others post this suggestion elsewhere, but wanted to codify it on the official forums for better discussions and visibility. I really, really enjoyed this in KSP1 and it drastically increased my playtime and also just drove me to do some fun things and learn a lot of stuff I never knew (its silly but I never knew that a satellite's altitude, speed, and orbit changed how it mapped the world. It just never occurred to me.)

With that detailed of a world map in KSA you also open up contracts/research for providing services (internet, communication, GPS, etc.) which would be really neat too.

It would be a intresting concept to have actual different "sensors" making a higher and higher resolution, or color, or depth map etc.. You can really "stretch" the amount of entertainment by doing a couple parts that only do SPEFIFIC things and different "tiers" of this, then make general purpose ones, and then high tier tech ones.

 

[Shadow]

Agreed, it would certainly warrant its own progression and convenience creep as you progress through it. I'd love to move from small, black and white scanners that need to be very specific in altitude to gigantic deployable dishes scanning swathes of worlds.

You could even look at lag times in data, throughput/bandwidth, etc. if you wanted to get fancy with it.

 

[Evelyn the Dragon]

I definitely want to see a purpose for probes and satellites. I like what ScanSat does in KSP. But there is a lot of opportunity here to expand functionality and add new kinds of data that would be useful for things we have not had before. I especially like the idea of solar observation with implementation of solar weather effects in the game.

 

[Kiwi Shark]

There’s a lot of potential depth to satellite networks and communications management.

Imagine if the games reaches a state (or is modded to) where medium/large habitation is implemented. Would colony management require certain amounts of bandwidth to support a certain population (at a certain efficiency)?

How about localized probe control or satellite communications using a base as a central hub independent from the starting space center? Then you dive into power generation to support consistent communications for your gas giant moon mining network.

Maybe scanning and “learning” about new celestial bodies would tie into the progression system. “Oh, this moon has a lot of this element. We could utilize it with this part.” Or “That atmosphere is dense and really hot, we’d need this new part to land there.”

So many possibilities!

 

[rafaelxdo]

Really love this idea. Could you post this on the Discord's suggestions forum? I'm not sure if the developers check this forum as often as they check Discord.

 

[TROPtastic]

Really love this idea. Could you post this on the Discord's suggestions forum? I'm not sure if the developers check this forum as often as they check Discord.

The end goal is for this forum to take over the role of #suggestions-forum. Many of the comments in that channel aren't even constructive suggestions.

 

[Wasml]

SacnSat is one of my must have mods. It gives science collection a purpose other than just points to advance the tech tree - returning useful information and interesting orbital challenges. I'm sure we'll have a KSA ScanSat mod shortly (probably before you have the game in a release state!) but would very much like to see a more fleshed out progression like this.
PS. RW - your making it very hard not to get over hyped with this!

 

[Shadow]

I won't be posting this on the Discord as per the post above, but thank you for the suggestion.

Yea I expect we'll see a fantastic mod for it eventually, I just think it'll be something even better if its part of the core game.

KSP for all its joys, was just about shipping a Kerbal to a surface and landing it felt like. It really lacked a lot of reasons for everything in between which I think does a disservice to the thousands of missions that are necessary to maintain everything and further scientific advancement. Things like satellites are necessary to support our way of life and further set up the ability to do the manned missions and I love that being part of the progression and advancement.

Also, I realize this same system could be used to power space telescopes too, with cool generated directional maps of sections of the sky and such.

 

[scotty2164]

I won't be posting this on the Discord as per the post above, but thank you for the suggestion.

Yea I expect we'll see a fantastic mod for it eventually, I just think it'll be something even better if its part of the core game.

KSP for all its joys, was just about shipping a Kerbal to a surface and landing it felt like. It really lacked a lot of reasons for everything in between which I think does a disservice to the thousands of missions that are necessary to maintain everything and further scientific advancement. Things like satellites are necessary to support our way of life and further set up the ability to do the manned missions and I love that being part of the progression and advancement.

Also, I realize this same system could be used to power space telescopes too, with cool generated directional maps of sections of the sky and such.

Great ideas, I need to check out ScanSat. To your point on space telescopes I was thinking this would be a fun direction for science/R&D advancement in the game and interstellar if/when that's a mechanic that is eventually added. This could be something like a fishing like mini game where points of interest can be found by the player and flagged for further research (e.g. exoplanets, asteroids, and cosmology like you said) by building/launching more advanced telescopes.

 

[Shadow]

That'd be awesome, I think its a great outlet because space telescope launches are also _fraught_ with danger when it comes to how many things have to go right for them too. I think they're a fantastic and fun piece of the progression for players making sure your speeds, location, deployment, everything is perfect.

 

[Spaceman3d]

some additons

Communication:

Have Downlink speed be based on the antenna you use. There is a limit for data rate with radio waves, so for very high downlik sppeds use laser based comunication like the IRL laser systems on starlink and Psyche.

Resouce scanning:

have diffrent instruments for different rescouces. For example ground penetrating radar for deep unterground water deposts or spectrometers to anylize the composition of a plantes athmosphere to search for useful gasses.

Space Telescopes:

they can be used for detectiong Asteroids and Comets in the Sol system (something that KSP already has in limmeted form) and finding stars that can be visited...once thats implemented