Planned features

The features listed here are planned for future versions of Kerbal Space Program and may change during the course of development.

This list is not an official road-map for the game. It is maintained by the community, and has no direct relation to what may or may not be included in the final product. Already implemented features can be found in the version history.

Future releases

Current version: 1.12.2

This section lists all planned features for future releases. Entries highlighted in blue are planned for the next update (soon). Entries in yellow have been partially implemented. Entries in green are already in development but are not expected for the next update or are that huge that there are multiple updates incrementally adding that feature.

The next version will be 0.23.5.

The entries on the list are not a commitment, and the developer team is not under any obligation to implement them all. These features may be pushed back or implemented on another way then suggested here.

Flight Operations

• Repairing: Ability to repair certain things^{[citation needed]}

• Enhanced IVAs: Moving and interacting inside of the craft^{[citation needed]}

• Crew tasks: Have the crew take charge of controlling the craft (provided they can handle it)^{[citation needed]}

• More prebuilt crafts, for tutorials or as examples^{[citation needed]}
• Reworked tutorials

Space Center

• Mission control room: Manage contracts, create flight plans and take on missions and challenges^{[citation needed]}

• Observatory: Discover new celestial bodies to visit^{[citation needed]}

Spacecraft Construction

• Exploded view: A schematic visualization of the craft, allowing for greater control over the craft's functionality^{[citation needed]}

• Mining parts: Used to gather resources on other bodies (on hiatus until a better method can be found)

• Stack extensions: Fairings and solid-booster fuel plugs^{[citation needed]}

• Spacecraft stats: Total weight, loaded resources (per stage?)^{[citation needed]}

• New larger sized parts to replace methods such as asparagus staging or using multiple launches and assembling the final craft in orbit.
  • These parts include: A longer SRB, three 3.75m fuel tanks (short, medium and tall), 2.5m to 3.75m adapter, 3.75m (inline) decoupler, two new 3.75m engines and a 2.5m liquid booster.

• Robotic grappling device: Used to grab asteroids and redirect its orbit. This part can also be used to hold onto things other than asteroids.

• An escape tower to quickly and easily remove a command pod from your rocket in an emergency.

• Adds the ability to change the color of lights via an RGB tweakable.

• You can now toggle flags to many parts via tweakables.

• Larger tanks, engines, decouplers and adapters

• The ion engine's thrust has been increased by 4x, but now has decreased ISP.

• The LV-1 Liquid Fuel Engine also received a thrust increase.

Celestial Bodies

• Asteroids
  • Asteroids will be a official missionpack free of charge added after 0.24 was released. Squad is working with NASA to develop a mission pack to capture and investigate an asteroid.

• 3 gas planets (Jool being the only currently available), moons and an asteroid belt.
  • The dwarf planet Eeloo would become a moon of the gas planet 2.

Physics & Dynamics

• Wind & turbulence conditions^{[citation needed]}

• Damage effects^{[citation needed]}

• New lighting system with better shadows^{[citation needed]}

• Better aerodynamics^{[citation needed]}

• Re-entry heat or damage

• Fixed fuel flow and changing maximum thrust depending on surrounding atmospheric pressure (at the moment the fuel flow is changing and the maximum thrust available is fixed)

• Improved part-to-part joints to allow the player a greater control about the flexibility of their craft.

Scenery & Graphics

• Clouds (weather?)^{[citation needed]}

• Static particles (cloudlets)^{[citation needed]}

• Long-duration smoke trails^{[citation needed]}

• Procedurally generated craters (Mun in 0.21)

• Cities and other geographic points of reference^{[citation needed]}

• Space center facilities can be destroyed by crash-landing onto them, and fixing them will cost money^{[citation needed]}

Career Mode

• Monetary system. This is assumed to be in planning since mission productivity can now be quantified, thanks to Kerbal perma-death and science points, in addition to the fact that all parts have a specific cost value.^{[citation needed]}

• Contract system

Audio

• More and better sound effects^{[citation needed]}

Game & Engine

• OSC data interface: Connectivity with external applications^{[citation needed]}
• New GUI
  • Adds time acceleration to space center menu and tracking station.
  • more information about crafts and more filters in tracking station.
• 64-bit support
  • 64 bit is already supported in the Linux version.
• Multiplayer
  • Squad is committed to add multiplayer to the finished game after the success of the user created mod KMP, or Kerbal MultiPlayer. Squad says “Multiplayer is something we had planned to do after it was all said and done, but it’s time for us to start looking at it now”. With 0.24 Squad specifically states that they working on the first steps to add multiplayer after career is finished.
  • KMP is a multiplayer system that is a WIP. Even though it is in it's experimental pre-alpha stage, the mod is available to the public.
• 3D Mouse Support
  • Squad is working with 3Dconnexion to introduce this feature to KSP.

Modding

• A more complete SDK and documentation (you can help by adding to the wiki!)^{[citation needed]}

Other

• Expansion packs/DLCs (different from updates, will be purchased separately and include features distinct from the original game's main idea)
  • HarvesteR mentioned in a devnote that he is "Working on the newly-announced-and-no-longer-a-secret NASA mission pack with C7". No payment is required^{[citation needed]}.

Not happening

The following features won't be in the official game (although may be found in mods):

• Steam achievements^{[citation needed]}

• Autopilot Systems^{[citation needed]}

• Weapons or military features^{[citation needed]}

• Alien civilizations^{[citation needed]}

• Terraforming^{[citation needed]}

• Realistically sized celestial bodies

• Conversion to a different game engine.^{[citation needed]}

Web Services

Feature	Status
Mac Fixes .app packaging (Finder-compatible) Clipboard support	In progress
Auto-resume interrupted downloads	In progress
Downloads through BitTorrent (long-term)	Planning
Load-balanced Repair Packages	Feasibility Analysis