Sonic1305

Recovering and reusing would increase the depth a lot, a whole new level of planning and preparing. But I think it is also some kind of "reuse" when you don't need to develop new rockets every time a new part unlocks or even change the way new parts unlock by adding an upgrade system where you can increase the performance of some components by a small amount if you choose to invest time and money so you save that on prototyping a completely new rocket. This way, you add a new level of managing and depth without limiting the players freedom. You can still play the old fashioned way and not reuse, always prototype new stuff and earn money with that or choose to maximize each and every rocket to the limits. Maybe the overall career difficulty would influence the required amount of "reuse" in the later game. Including test flights would fit best to my certificate idea, like your idea with the stage recovery. You may need one test flight for special achievements / things your rocket should "learn", like stage recovery or kerbal transport but the later one could easily be implemented as a multi-layer contract where the missions include the certificate for kerbal transport or space station resupply for example. Thanks a lot, I wish I could speak english that way lol

Yeah, I already adressed that part in my latest answers, got a bit carried away by my interest in solving unexpected things ^^

The way you describe it here was also the way i first imagined it, but I got carried away by my interest in solving unexpected things. After thinking about it, I guess the best way to look at the concept of reliability is to only introduce it to the part where you manage your rockets, contracts and company reputation and not on the actual live gameplay and if we still would like to include failures or so just do it like scripted optional challenges as a sub part of the game and not related to any of your personal prototyping. But I really think the focus should be on the reputation part. In my last answer, I explained a bit more of how I ended up overthinking the reliability part. As I said by myself, it would be nice to include more depth into the managing aspect of the game and I still believe my rocket reputation idea with rocket designs you keep using although you could build a new rocket with new parts, would greatly enhance the way of planning rockets to be more of a long-term thing if you plan on getting better contracts for example. So let's just forget about that warhead I was trying to sneak into each rocket and come back to the managing and planning aspect of leading a space company which was my original goal. Thanks a lot for your feedback!

Obviously, these mechanics need some way of balancing and probably some restrictions to when things can go wrong. It should not destroy your work when you do a mission that takes 30 or more real time minutes and then while landing on another planet suddenly your engines fail. It is more meant for some prototypes you build in your early game if you play "the spacex way" and maybe not happen at all if you do it "the nasa way", if you get what I mean. Also, when thinking about it now, it could probably be a good idea to focus the "rng part" on the stuff the player doesn't directly do like automated missions you do not fly by yourself anymore and if you try to save money, there might be a really small possibility things could fail, which would only cost you some money and not cause your long work getting destroyed, only a single mission giving you some "problems" to deal with. Maybe it would be interesting if these automated flights get interrupted by mistakes of your flight controllers and then you can choose to fix the mission by yourself, like small challenges which will rarely come by in your normal ksp-career life where you need to do a rescue maneuver or some other mission changing stuff. Maybe it would be enough if you added these tests and so on only to the science part and they become a way of early game thing where you still kinda develop the components by yourself before handing stuff over to specialized researchers. Could be interesting to include a few of them to show the process of developing and testing a new component like an engine and later breaking it down to a time factor which just makes these "always required" tests delay your launch times so you need to better plan your launches. I maybe did not think enough about the pain it could cause but still, the most important part (for me) was the reputation part, as my original concern was to have a reason to use a specific rocket design longer even though I unlocked new parts where I normally would just build a new rocket. I wanted to add the process of maximizing what an already finished rocket could do and using that rocket like spacex will still use Falcon 9 when starship and super heavy is ready. I got a bit carried away with the "reliability" part which was originally only meant to be one thing influencing the overall rockets reputation. (And I really do like challenges where you need to handle unexpected stuff). Thank you for your feedback!

Well, the "social media part" was just my kind of "roleplay" to better explain my general concept, not meant as a real game feature. It was just the roleplay-explanation to better explain how the rocket reputation works in general.

I get your point, thats why it should be considered optional settings for the career mode only. It is supposed to add a new layer of management and also as I explained you can remove the whole factor of "randomness" through the required tests. If you use the principle of teaching things as an argument, why is there money in the career mode? Why do you need to research things first? All that are just optional settings, only meant for people who are looking for some kind of limitation in their creativity to increase difficulty and depth of some other aspects. Is it a dice roll if you know you did not do enough research into your components? I don't think so.

Hey everyone, this text is my attempt at proposing the idea of a system which could greatly improve the career mode gameplay by introducing new challenges and new mechanics inspired by real life. Please bear in mind that I am not a rocket engineer nor a specialist in any of the topics I talk about. The features i suggest should be considered optional difficulty settings for the career mode and may not be included on easier difficulties by default . Also, sorry for any spelling mistakes as I am not a native english speaker and my native language is german. So...let's begin! The concept of rocket reliability My first idea is not only a requirement & a big part of the second idea coming later but also, in my opinion, a concept really missing in the current KSP. Rocket reliability could change the well known gameplay a lot as not only (just somewhat!) random incidents & misfunctions are introduced as also the way you will build & use rockets will change. No longer will you be operating a just recently constructed rocket with 100% reliability as you first need to gather some science data of the vehicle and its components itself to increase the reliability of all the different parts and the rocket itself. Starting with things like engine tests, rocket static fire tests are now always (maybe a science option to remove that?) required. Propellant tanks need to be pressure tested before you know the exact data. All of that requires money, space, the right equipment & scientists. With that, the research system also changes: No longer will you see the whole tech tree and know what you need to research to get part X. Now you have to have the right scientists & engineers specialized in the genre you want to advance in. You want a new sea level rocket engine? Get your team to work & research and they will develop a prototype. You don't have scientists trained in your desired components technology? Buy components from other companies for an increased amount of money. I think you get the idea: New rocket stuff needs science, testing & also construction time (also a whole new gameplay mechanic as your parts have a limited stock) but that costs money & more so you get a whole nother level of ways to play the game. You got a mission from a rich guy living alone in the woods and he wants you to launch a satellite into LEO and gives you a hard deadline? Maybe quickly develop a prototype & launch the rocket without much testing? Or should we just buy some engines from another company and attach them to our tanks? When you decided which way you wanna go, you will create your rocket concept and announce the plans to the "media" (Well, in reality you just click "submit"). The rocket is now officially known by the space fascinated kerbals around kerbin. Now it is your time to shine as the rocket is now able to gather reputation (which directly incorporates reliability in a way). More about that in the second part of my post. In case it isn't clear: These are just all my ideas stuffed into a quite simple concept so of course you could and should change things. I just think these mechanics could add a LOT more replayability and gameplay depth to the career mode which is my favourite way to play anyway and could really need some more managing aspects. The concept of rocket reputation Your rocket got a name now! Yay! Be aware of people annoying you on social media with strange WENHOP questions. Now with your rocket known around the world, you could start creating a wikipedia article with pictures & flight data of your fancy rocket (not a gameplay feature). But wait? Didn't your last mission (the one where you should deploy a satellite for some rich unknown guy) fail on stage separation, as you did not test the decouplers nor the second stage engines? Please don't forget to add that to the article! Oh, some random internet dudes already did that. Your customers won't like that! Enough roleplay, I hope it still introduced you well to the second part of my concept. Rocket reputation is a stat that is bound to a rocket you created and "submitted". That means, if you change too much (how much is too much requires a lot more thinking) on the rocket itself, the rocket will lose all it's reputation as it is technically a (almost) completely new one (maybe keep some reputation if it still has a lot in common?). Of course you could replace an engine with an upgraded version of the same one, as your newly trained engineers continued to work day & night on improving the already existing concept to increase it's stats (btw this is again a whole new game mechanic on it's own) but you cannot simply replace the whole upper stage or switch your engines with a completely new one without losing (some?) reputation. Now, some time later, your rocket has earned some good reputation, higher level contracts are available as the global trust in your abilities to build rockets and especially in the rocket you just proved to be working has increased. It is finally time for the rocket to become a global contender and not just a simple toy for random rich people or small satellites nobody will talk about. You want to transport THE BIG & IMPORTANT STUFF and, ofcourse, our beloved kerbals. To get the most rewarding contracts, you need to earn specific certificates. Certificates work like "achievements" but are (mostly?) bound to your rocket. Prove your ability to deploy stuff into LEO and your rocket get's certified in that task which would not only offer your higher star contracts but could also allow you (if you want to enable that mechanic in your career) to let your star engineers prepare & launch contracts by themself, working in the background while you create new concepts or try to improve the existing one. The same is required to launch kerbals: Do some demo missions and prove that you CAN do it. If you can show the reliability of your rocket and your skill in achieving a specific task your rocket will get huma....i mean kerbal-certified and the big companies will ask YOU to launch their future kerbonauts. Yay! Also, your star engineers do your daily business to secure consequent funding. Finally, you are not only a rocket engineer but a real space company manager. The end At first, thank you for reading my suggestion for Kerbal Space Program 2. I am happy to discuss my ideas with you all and would really like some feedback. Ofcourse nothing is written in stone as this was just something I thought about an evening while talking with friends & watching a spacex mission. Again, keep in mind that all the introduced mechanics should be as customizeable as possible and just be some optional gameplay elements people CAN choose to enable. If you really like my concept, feel free to share it whereever you want. See you next launch! EDIT: Please read my answers to some concerns about the reliability part. I got a bit carried away by my interest in solving unexpected things so it would be nice If you would focus future answers on the reputation part and not so much on the reliability part, as I already realized that there shouldn't be such a rng factor in the game.