More variety and complexity with beacons and antennas

[real laurel]

The way beacons work right now is a bit magical

Some of the greatest fun I've had was with an old mod called RemoteTech2, which introduced to other space game the concept of different types of antennas that varied in directionality, transceiver sizes and transmission power. The challenge was centered around the limitations of line-of-sight, a simplified radio model, and how that effects the ability to transmit metadata or control instructions to/from remotely operated crafts.

Being able to transmit information to the surface of the moon required either excellent luck and timing or the creation of a constellation of communication relays to continue to send information when LoS from a given origin was lost.

With orbital automation actively being worked on, it's only a matter of time until this is refined into drone spacecraft. If you want to be able to communicate with your drone spacecraft remotely, especially if it's on the dark side of the moon, it should vaguely follow the laws of physics.

https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalAcademy/comments/1rmjyo/complete_novices_guide_to_remotetech_2/

I think such a change would be aligned with the commandments, would give players another good reason to care and learn about orbital phasing, and a good excuse to build satellites.

Image of my own (terrible) network attached, and a much more sophisticated one by the author of above reddit post (sourced in comments).

Some sugar or conveniences may be required to assist the player in steering antennas

I think there are reasonable compromises to be made for early game beacons so players still have a way to "find home".

[lost pawn]

Would you have done it without the magical visualization of KSP?
Just curious ^^

[real laurel]

this is the steering bit that I allude to

but at the end of the day, that was just a viz of a real-ish model that stopped your drones from working if they fell out of comms network

and I think that was the truly interesting piece

[lost pawn]

I understand, but to get an overview of the global positioning of satellites, KSP offers a big visual feedback with its map system.

Without this visual feedback, it's much more difficult, isn't it?

[real laurel]

I'd argue that players should have all the tools they need to start writing mission control centers and visualize it in similar ways.

Or that should be an aspirational goal perhaps.

Or said another way, let me make an MCC and put thought into addressing schemes with beacons (spectral partitioning) and how I want to stage and time my flights but give me a reason to build satellites and a reason to design protocols that allow for data to be relayed

[real laurel]

@lost pawn one more challenge for you: what happens when you have mars and even more distant celestials? do we just say that beacons violate commandments 1/5 (faster than light flow of information) and have enough efficiency to transmit through celestials with substantial mass or across distant spaces for only 10 W or do you lean into the realism?

I am willing to overlook some tachyon/entanglement comms if you give me some more believable parameters about transmitting distances and through things.😁

[lost pawn]

Indeed, some aspects present in the game will need a major update to correlate a bit more with realism.

However, some aspects will potentially be a bit less realistic than reality because they are not feasible for some or potentially too difficult to use for others.

[earnest plinth]

I would suggest 2 types of antenna one omni directional with a 1/r^2 degrading signal and one directional which doesn't degrade (in vacuum). Ignoring light speed is fine since we don't have relativistic effects. Probably a good idea to give the directional antenna an auto tracking.