[IDEA] Space-less Age

[Nestacdo]

Preface:

I find myself in a weird position of a player who had waited for SA with ever increasing enthusiasm, insta-carted SA within 1-1.5 minutes from release, only to remember a few dozen hours later that my thirst for space-related activities was well oversated by SE so much, that I've decided to reject all the content it adds, only to play on a single surface a long time ago. Maybe I just need a longer break. Still...

SA offers so much more mechanics, visuals and content, that I'm struggling with space-stuff just to experience it all.
I understand that this situation is solely my own issue, but describing it gives context to where this idea for a mod came from.
As I understand there is some percentage of players that prefer no-space gameplay for whatever reason, but how they fare now, or how many they actually are, I do not know. However many you are, this is for you.

This is not a request, because neither I think it is reasonable to ask someone to actually do all that stuff, nor I actually have solid design concepts for what and how should be done.
This is more of a conversation starter. If it resonates, maybe it could inspire some modders. And I can get it all out of my head in an appropriate place.

Idea (or, rather, large-scale vision)

• Obviously SA would be a dependency.

• Planets are massive, rare biomes with transition zones that are resource-empty to separate them from default Nauvis biomes.

• All gravitational/pressure requirements are satisfied through additional research. It is more than plausible to sustain more/less pressure in a facility, if production process requires it. As for the gravity, well, lower gravity requirements are usually for space-related stuff, which we try to avoid here, while higher are kinda possible to emulate?

• These biomes are really rare, and really far away from starting location, to keep them remote and uncommon. Obvious issue here is huge savefile size, but
  1) It could still be done with multiple surfaces, only without space (-ships, -platforms, you get it) as a medium.
  2) there might be another solution I'm not seeing just yet
  3) If you value savefile size more than single-planet gameplay, maybe SA is fine for you as it is?

• Requiring player to not only cover such distances, but establish logistics would require some new transportation methods.
  What I think of, is SE-style ICBM "sub-orbital" rockets (carrying materials, not nukes). Silos could have large “too-close” radius restrictions to preserve trains for your average "far" transportation needs, while allowing for extra-far transport without needing to clear and maintain every meter between main base and your developing "gleba-biome" outpost. Plus, the current implementation already encourages self-sustaining "outposts" with export-focused logistics.
  It also could be done in form of a railgun with extra packaging for fast small-scale deliveries, or some cargo-aircraft for slower yet denser runs. Or something entirely different.

• Piloting a spidertron in a random direction for an hour or so realtime is really boring, and disgustingly manual, so we'd need to expand on biome-discovery tech. Specialized radar arrays (synced with satellites?) seeking bio/heat/EM anomalies and pointing in a rough direction of where these are located. As soon as we have a general idea where to point our Extra-Far-Transport, we can launch the Engineer over there, to build up a base, and get back with first export delivery.

Outro

Please share your thoughts on the concept: whether you like it or not, whether you want this to be a thing or not.
Any suggestions for specific problems or solutions to make it feasible?
I'm especially interested in understanding how relevant this would be for the playerbase, so please, make your presence known.

[kiwidrew]

I'm sure you have already seen it, but the Any Planet Start mod provides a nice way to enjoy the new planets without needing to do any space stuff. It's also quite challenging, because you won't be starting with any technologies unlocked and you're limited to the resources available on that planet. (Gleba in particular is a rough place to crash land without any supplies.)

As to your idea of integrating everything into a single gigantic and diverse planet: what about different continents separated by vast oceans? Use the Cargo Ships mod to provide the needed logistics. Oceans wouldn't have territory that you'd need to defend, and in theory you could have a ship that just automatically sails in a particular direction until it discovers land. If it's good enough for Christopher Columbus, it ought to be good enough for this giant world! Vast empty oceans should also help keep a cap on the savefile sizes.

And you could replace the pressure/gravity restrictions for the planet-specific entities with a tile restriction instead, so you'd still be forced to build those structures on a particular continent.

As a bonus, now you get an element of randomness, because you don't know a priori which biome/continent you'll end up discovering first.

Does this idea scratch your itch?

[BraveCaperCat]

I like your ideas, but I'm pretty sure I'd enjoy space age better. I would be willing to HELP with this idea, but couldn't do all the work myself. Note that Surface Construction Requirements apply to the placing of machines and buildings, not their crafting.

[Aco]

I was also thinking about a similar idea the other day. I really like the new planets/biomes (and the specific challenges they pose) but they feel more like they should exist on Nauvis. (Not a huge fan of the way space travel works)


Thinking about how this could potentially be implemented; in the world you could find traversable tunnels (which allow players to walk through), which leads to a different biome. Going through the tunnel to that biome would require the same research that you needed to previously unlock that planet. The tunnel is a one-way trip until you research the appropriate tech in that biome. At that point you could go back and allow trains to move back and forth through the tunnel. So you're still required to complete the challenges of that biome using only what you brought with you, the only difference being that you wouldn't have a space platform being able to send you free unlimited resources. It would make going through each biome potentially more difficult at the beginning (not having access to the space platform's asteroid resources), but then easier later on.

A secondary method would be that the biomes are "so far away" but still on the same planet (or something like moons of nauvis), so that you needed to travel up to space, but then drop down to the different part of the world after researching that biome. The space platform acting more like a hub between the biomes rather than a spaceship, this still allows each biome access to the resources from space (keeping the balance for biomes essentially intact) and still requires sending rockets up to space to send resources from one biome to another. I like the first method better since it allows me to build a train network that connects all the biomes but that's my opinion.

Optional thoughts:
- 1st method could allow an easier version for players where they don't require tech to travel back/forth and use trains (this trivializes the challenge of the biomes but some people might not like being stuck in a particular biome)
- 1st method could also limit the amount of trains being able to pass through a tunnel at once (or require an advanced tech to build more paths so multiple trains could pass through at once, but I imagine most people would simply build a large multi-car train)