Astronauts (Robots?)

[left kraken]

So reading the other group messages it sounds like people are leaning towards bipedal robots as the “astronauts” which I guess makes sense. Small onboard battery for EC and they align well with a ship as when you run out of EC you are pretty much FUBAR anyways… so when you run out your robonauts? Have enough charge to kick some basic staging or jump ship.

Robots 🤖
LS - EC “Beep Beep Beep”

Only need Space Suits for Water. Susceptible to high radiation. Can’t handle Corrosive Atmospheres nor Lava

Middle of the road, small solar pack to keep going.

Rocks 🪨
LS - None “Rocks don’t breath, rocks don’t eat, rocks just be.”

No Space Suits Required

Can handle Lava, always sinks in water. Radiation just makes them glow.

Weight a literal tonne each, not very smart (low science rewards and XP gain).

Ents 🌴
LS - Light/Rads “Photosynthesis for the win”

Space Suits anywhere O2 is higher than 21% or Atmosphere is less than 0.5Bar.

Cann’t handle Lava, always floats on water. Radiation is food.

Slow rate of motion, can’t jump, and poor XP gain.

Avians 🦜
LS - Hydrogen and Oxygen "Phoenix Baby!"

Space Suits in Space they can handle down to 2-0.1 Bar atmospheres.
Can’t handle corrosion, nor Lava, Can’t swim, always floats.

Lightweight, can “fly” and don’t need parachutes. Excellent pilots, terrible at everything else.

Capybaras 🧸
LS - Snacks (carbon + water) & Oxygen

Space suits require beyond 2-0.5 Bar and in Water or Corrosive environments. Can’t handle lava, can swim/sink.

Cute as a button and likely to press a few. All around good but higher LS requirements makes space travel more complicated.

Enternals 🔥
LS - Fuel + Oxygen “The colder it is the more they need.”

Space suits always required unless temps >500C
Can swim/sink in Lava. They emit radiation.

These guys are not exactly at “home” in space, but they have the highest intelligence in the galaxy.

I’m sure robots are a good idea, someone can mod the rest of the framework for different stats & models are there. Obviously if someone makes a colony there may be questions on population production but I expect that is scope creep at the moment. For now you can make new robots from a factory I think is the straightforward method.

To Avoid Scope Creep, only have the framework in place for what astronauts require and the variables to handle the various conditions. A modder can add the additional species later (plus whatever others they come up with) but it does play well into the story-driven portion of the game.

[tall tiger]

The issue with robots is is makes probes seem kind of pointless

[wispy olive]

I don't think so, a sentient robot vs. a dumb computer is about as big of a distinction as a human vs. a hamster imo

and obviously even robots wouldn't want to undergo unnecessary risks/get stranded somewhere on a desolate planet

[bright linden]

could also explaion why we'd be able to control multiple different "astronauts", they're just frames to pilot around.

[iron snow]

Maybe different species and roles per species?

[left kraken]

I think it could be very easy to give each astronaut various skill stats that effect their behaviour and capabilities. As for occupation, I think it would make sense some are better at one job than another but “Avian is always the pilot” I think pushes too far.

You want an autonomous probe core?

Pro: It can fly itself.
Con: You need more EC and it’s likely on a one way trip 😦

I’m assuming each Astronaut requires a certain amount of resources to make, so there is a degree of how much resources do you want to put towards a mission.

[iron snow]

How so?

[left kraken]

It’s a series of variable like species, sex, age, skill levels.

And then have that correlate to an abilities table and say you score 5/10 you have the ability. Less than 5 you don’t. 10/10 expert in whatever and you get a bonus. As your astronauts do things they gain a level in a skill and eventually they get 10/10 across the board assuming the survive that long.

Again, for the core game you only need to add the framework for such things and then modders can add the distinctions.

Similar to KSP, first make an astronaut, then give it all the abilities (as you work out what they are) and then later segregate the abilities by occupation/skill.

Finally if there is a desire make different species which is a new model and the same rigged-skeleton . And then add speciation with various attributes as define already (such as say a robot weight 85kg requires electricity to run, where a rock-naut weights 1000kg -and doesn’t require any LS).

[neon mesa]

I think that if we go with robots we should aim to create something similar to the tesla robot

[slim turret]

I struggle to articulate the full extent to which I hate this idea

[left kraken]

that the astronuts are robots, or specificly teh suggestion of tesla robots?

[slim turret]

I mean I wouldn't prefer astronaut robots because realistically you could just manufacture as many as you want and that kind of trivializes having actual crew and makes it hardly different from just launching probes, but specifically I hate the idea of modeling them after what the average AI crypto NFT techbro thinks is cool

[left kraken]

Nah, making robots costs precious science points. Problem solved 😛

[wispy olive]

you can manufacture as many kerbals as you want, too

[left kraken]

Honestly they should of made it where Kerbals come from the Mystery Goo you send to space...

[slim turret]

but can you build a kerbal replication machine that turns minerals on an asteroid into kerbals after a few hours?

[left kraken]

Any colony is going to need new astronauts, no matter how you make them.

[wispy olive]

I mean, who said you can do that for the robots?

what if you need some super rare resource

[slim turret]

they're robots so it would automatically be quicker to manufacture them even assuming they require the entire periodic table

[wispy olive]

quicker than going into the astronaut complex and clicking "hire"?

[left kraken]

I mean if you want a whole growth cycle

[wispy olive]

if anything, this introduces more complexity

[left kraken]

Plus I don't think we want to "dead end" someone's space program unless one of the challanges we want players to face is "how long can you go?"

Science is an easy one, and you can almost "always' get more science if your science system is repeatable time-periodically generated by your various colonies/ships/astronauts. But you don't have an unlimited amount of it.

[wispy olive]

I mean, from most discussions we've had, there is probably no science system

at least not anything like specifically putting instruments on your craft just to get something like "science points"

[left kraken]

No Science, no Technology Levels?
Basically Sandbox?

[wispy olive]

no, that's what all the resource gathering and colonies and factories are for

that's the main progression loop

[slim turret]

not a big fan of KSP's science system but ideally there should be an actual gameplay reason for hauling a bunch of science equipment across a solar system

[wispy olive]

before this gets out of hand, maybe let's move to #🟡game-general

[iron snow]

I’d be happy to do some voice work for it 🙂

What are we thinking about it?

[left kraken]

Not sure yet, do we want them to talk or do jibberish like Kerbals (or random beeps because… robots).

[slim turret]

even if they are robots they should probably speak some kind of mechanical gibberish rather than just generic beep boop noises

anyway, while it may fall under the category of "scope creep", I was thinking that it could be a major point in the game's favor to have multiple playable civilizations with different charactaristics that affect how they and their space programs function

so instead of just having robots for astronauts, or just having plant people for astronauts, or just having rat people for astronauts, you could have all three as different options, with each one having certain tradeoffs

like robots might not require any life support or anything but would lack innovation and would consume resources otherwise used for fuel and construction, while animals would need a lot of life support and similar things to function, but would be more creative and wouldn't consume expensive metals and fuels

plant people might require less life support than animals but also require large amounts of light, either natural or artificial

each species could even have a different preferred environment so that a planet perfect for colonization by one wouldn't be particularly good for others

like you could have a generic race of animal people from an earthlike environment that have humanlike life support requirements but then also have species with exotic biochemistry that can only survive in environments much hotter or colder than earth, or species that need no life support at all but also are only at home in zero gravity and can hardly function on planets at all

maybe even a species that metabolizes radiation and requires heavily irradiated environments that would kill any other species

even assuming their rocket technology all functions exactly the same, this would dramatically alter the kinds of environments you are seeking out to build stuff in and the kinds of stuff you build in those places depending on which civilization you are playing as

[serene barn]

I think some sort of voice system similar to chatterer would be really fun and it would avoid the game lacking personality like juno

[iron snow]

Yes

I’ve got plenty of experience with odd bleeps and bloops

[left kraken]

I was thinking something like this, but then we actually build a language structure so they are saying something but if it was English… oh no… bad robot.
https://tenor.com/view/star-wars-r2d2-beeps-provocatively-annoying-gif-4059356

[iron snow]

I was going to base it off of the amateur radio digital modes (PSK31, FT8, FT4, Olivia) and maybe vocode it to something

We could hide some easter eggs in there

[slim turret]

one possibility for the appearance of the astronauts that is worth taking into consideration is just making them... astronauts
not realistic human astronauts, but cartoony astronauts with exaggerated proportions and nothing visible under the visor
provided they have appealing designs and expressive animations, they could easily work just as well as kerbals, and there's no need to have detailed face models and animations, or to commit to a particular species, because, what's under the suit? is it a human? is it an alien? is it a robot? you don't know, and that can be part of the appeal

[crisp lintel]

Would this imply that in some cases you might want to deconstruct some of your astronauts for resources?

[wispy olive]

I don't know that sentient robots would cannibalize each other for resources, I hope not 😆

[crisp lintel]

A USB drive of their brain contents, then all of the rest is just unprocessed resources 😛

[jade wind]

That would be kind of funny though, like hold on I need to deconstruct some robots to get more resources to fix a ship that crashed.

[nimble spade]

can i add into the concept pile:

mystery goo has evolved....

this art (with the exception of that last one; which is loading art from KSP mod Planet Jam 2) is from a very elaborate star trek OC/headcanon thing i have. the idea is you have amorphous gelatinous creatures which can assume any shape, from humanoid to geometric to animal, and they have essentially a modern space program but with warp drive and access to the Federation slotted in haphazardly.

but the important part for the purposes of this thread is "amorphous gelatinous spacefaring creatures which can assume any shape"

i'm not a fan of the robots idea tbh

the feeling that the astronauts in JNO were just robots is one of the things that really feels like it has a lack of charm.

[edgy quest]

Okay Im gonna stop you here

Before you say you dislike the idea, you need to actually know what the idea is

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1235254576853028936/1235269387901206638/Idle.gif?ex=6656b184&is=66556004&hm=4a9d8caa2a7db002011ed2378bd73207e01a025880cc56c60c19f160c058535b&

The robots idea is based off of some of these references

[nimble spade]

hmm.

well that is what i was gonna say, it'd have to be like, wall-e level expressive

[edgy quest]

And its already been discussed that its very important they are expressive and have personality

JUNO's lack of personality is cited as one of the bigger issues with it

[edgy quest]

I think that is the sort of idea yeah

This kinda highlights an issue with this project, only the people who have been here since it started actually have the full picture for everything discussed, and it's easy for people to be on the wrong page about things. That's probably only going to get worse with time

Really need a design document

[slim turret]

I keep saying it but no one listens

[edgy quest]

It's a pretty monumental task, and one that kinda gets to the problem of the concept of open sourcing this game

[slim turret]

not really

[edgy quest]

In a game with far less scope, that I had full creative control over, and I knew exactly how things were going to work, it took me 3 days to write out the design document

Which was 10 pages long

There is way too much content in a design document to run a poll over everything, so you need to decide what is actually worth the community input on, and the person who does actually have authority in the project needs to make these decisions

[slim turret]

true

but I've worked on design documents for similar projects

with other people

it's not impossible or even especially difficult

[edgy quest]

The person who would write the design document in this case doesn't have experience with game design though

I think it took a lot of time even just to establish this gameplay loop

[slim turret]

that sounds like a skill issue

anyway, it's not going to be perfect immediately

but something is better than nothing

I think that other than a few personal preferences people have over what the characters or starting scenario look like, the basic premise of the game and the gameplay elements that it would logically contain are pretty obvious and easy to grasp by everyone

[edgy quest]

Going to move this discussion to #🟡game-general since its getting off-topic

[nimble spade]

just a sketch

[slim turret]

anyway, in terms of astronauts, I've proposed already that there be multiple different species to choose from, with each one having different properties that affect the kinds of places you'd prioritize building stuff
for example, robots that don’t require life support and are more comfortable in space than in an atmosphere or gravity well, furry rodent creatures that require earth-like conditions to survive, and slime people that are at home in very cold titan-like environments, among other possibilities

[nimble spade]

maybe each species has their own homeworld.

and one of those can be earthlike, just as a baseline.

[slim turret]

yeah I assume each option would have you start on the surface of an object with conditions that match the species' living requirements

[quiet canyon]

Pls no furry roboths.

But yeah with personality and stuff

I like the idea

[nimble spade]

Anthropomorphized animal protagonists are cute and fun!

[quiet canyon]

Idk but nothing that would stereotypically be assiciated with furries.

Would not sit well with a lot of people

But i can see things like palicos from mhw.

Just like sentient bipedal animals

[nimble spade]

Bugs Bunny cancelled for not sitting well with people

[quiet canyon]

Bruh.
I meant like not this

But this

If we have bipedal and expressive animals

Also no protogens please 🙏

[slim turret]

yeah kerbals are literally just the animal crossing version of a cucumber, why not have the animal crossing version of something else instead?

[quiet canyon]

For robots i can see something similar to this

Which would make facial animations really easy since you can just map the textures onto a screen and basically just 2d animate it.

[edgy quest]

I didn't think the discussion of avoiding making the game furry would happen not just once but twice

[quiet canyon]

Wait it happened b4?💀

[edgy quest]

yes

#🟡game-art message

Cheese is the project lead and has final say, she said the project is not going in that direction, so it doesn't need to be discussed further

#🟡game-art message

There's also this follow-up message that sums up the issue nicely

[quiet canyon]

Yeah.

Which is why i really like this style of robot they used for one of them in Love death & robots

It makes them really expressive, while also being easy to animate.

And its a robot

[edgy quest]

I think the original idea was basically that with some animal elements blended in

Having some amount of cuteness is good for developing an attachment to the characters so that you feel more guilty about killing them lol

Humanoid robots strike an uncanny valley for me

[quiet canyon]

Yeah so give them a screen face.

And for animal elements you could give them friggin cable tails and ears for antennas

[edgy quest]

Pretty much that yeah

I’m a character artist so I could draw something of it, but I usually draw cute humans not cute robots, and I have a lot of other art to draw

[quiet canyon]

But do you like the screen face idea?

[slim turret]

I'm not sold on the astronauts looking like this though

[edgy quest]

No

Definitely not

Lol

That’s pure nightmare fuel

[edgy quest]

It's been discussed before, it's a great way to give more emotiveness

So in my own concept I'd probably do that yeah

[left kraken]

Robots were initially picked because they in theory could go anywhere (which is good for testing purposes), and then once the game elements where constructed we could add different aliens etc with different limitations so players could pick which species they wanted (and those limitations would change the game-play challenges without having to rework the whole game to build them in).

[slim turret]

I think this is a good idea, but it raises the question of what limits the robots would have

as robots, they would logically be able to modify themselves to overcome most conceivable limitations

for example, you could say the robots have a weakness to high gravity because they were designed to operate in space - why can't they just modify themselves to function better in high gravity? are they stupid?

same with waterproofing, etc

[wispy olive]

following strict logic is not exactly something we need, this is just a game

[edgy quest]

Robots were initially picked because we wanted to not have complexity with things like life support, thus keeping the scope of the project down while tying it neatly thematically. This idea of extra races is outside of scope.

[wispy olive]

tons of things in games are there for gameplay reasons and aren't "logical"

plus, you can always say that the robots have been programmed to do A, B, C but not D

you can have what amounts to basically sentient robotic beings and still have them bound by their programming, e.g. all the robot short stories and novel series by Asimov

no point in overthinking this sort of stuff, really

[edgy quest]

I also don't think there is any need for them to have limits?

[wispy olive]

yeah, that's another point

even the living kerbals have basically no limitations other than literally smashing them into the ground (and yes, g-forces when you enable that), on the other hand, the robots will most likely depend in some way on electricity as their "life support", which actually limits them even more than kerbals, I'd say

I think that's challenging enough without introducing any other artificial limitations

[edgy quest]

It also simplifies the IP and marketing significantly if you have just one race. It makes the game more cohesive thematically.

Although, I guess this game doesn't actually technically need to market itself at all?

It still probably should

[wispy olive]

yeah, I think introducing multiple different races of workers (I'd rather call them workers than astronauts because their main purpose/job is not exploring/doing research in space, it's mining and building) would just make things incoherent and again, add just another level of unnecessary complexity and another thing we would have to fine tune all the time to make sure one of them isn't too OP, or disadvantaged

[edgy quest]

To make them significantly different enough to justify their existence you also need to add a lot of other scope-creep things

[wispy olive]

by the way, that isn't to say that we don't want feedback or that we think the ideas are stupid, it's just that the project is already extremely ambitious in its most basic form, and it's not something we will get paid for, there's no telling if more than a couple of people stick around, so we have to really keep our eyes on the target and focus on the parts that are most integral to the core gameplay, everything else is a bit of a distraction at this point

and that goes for everything, not just the "astronauts" part

just to put things into perspective, it took a team of 20 - gradually growing to 70 - paid professionals some 7 years to get KSP2 to a somewhat playable state, without finishing any of the new features (admittedly, partially due to mismanagement, but also, because it's just really hard)

if we ever want to get anywhere, we have to be laser-focused on the core goal and lose as little time as possible on things that "would be nice to have"

another way to look at it is: as far as I'm aware, if we did actually manage to get even to just the very basic gameplay loop being finished, with vessel building, flight, resources, bases and a single star system, it might already be the most complex open-source game ever made

[quiet canyon]

I think a realistic limitation might be temperature

[jade wind]

I agree

Things we should focus on is the core tech

[left kraken]

My current GamePlay Loop is seeing if I can figure out these game engines and actually make anything work… anything.

[wispy olive]

yeah but I don't even mean short-term, I mean for the next couple of years

[left kraken]

True, but first you guys need to figure out your project management structure, clear scope in one document , and which engine you are going to go with. Right now it’s not clear who is doing what. I tried to update the GitHub and it didn’t work so there is a big learning curve (for me) and I’m sure others in various areas. But this project needs some structure (I’ve been watching some game jam videos and reading up on how to do various things on the different engines as the last time I did this the only library I had was a sprite library as they were basically brand new things).

[quiet canyon]

Engine is still up in the air afaik we need a prototype

From both options

[wispy olive]

yes, the game design document is obviously the next big step, but Cheese and I have been very busy lately, it's kinda unavoidable for a project that we're not getting paid for (for me personally, I've been juggling exams, my regular job, and a sickness)

there will be periods of time where other stuff has priority, sadly

[quiet canyon]

Maybe we can at least assign teams to do unity and ue prototypes with specific parameters

So people who have time can work on it