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Career 'hump'


Hyomoto

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I'm a fan of career mode, played it since it was science mode, and never bothered with creative once it showed up.  I've also played on 'Hard' since difficulties were introduced.  Playing today I noticed something about career mode that I'll just simply refer to as 'the hump'.  There's a lot of debate over what order parts should be unlocked in, whether manned or unmanned missions should come first, whether planes should show up before rockets, etc... There's a lot of mods that try to address this but I have a theory that there is a more subtle issue with career mode progression than that.  Remember the old 'barn' tier of buildings that will be making a comeback in 1.1?

Basically, my view is this: there are some pretty significant non-part specific limitations at the beginning of the game because of the number of parts you are limited to, and the weight/size of your vessel.  It can be quite challenging to cobble together 30 parts to make the trip to Munar orbit, let alone anywhere else.  Granted we all have different tolerances or preferences which make this easier or harder (I play on hard so science is quite grindy at the start), but it seems to me those initial building restrictions posed by the launch pad and the vehicle assembly building are far more significant than a lack of part diversity.  I can build a cluster of engines and fuel tanks that bypass a need for a mainsail, but only if I can cobble together enough parts to do it and get it in under weight.  In fact, the biggest benefit of unlocking some parts early on is the ability to simplify otherwise ridiculous, yet still effective, designs.  Essentially while some parts do unlock new gameplay opportunities, many of them simply open routes of efficiency.

This is basically the early game hump.  And I'm not complaining.  That moment where I'm on the cusp of getting somewhere but trying to get it in under budget, or running a mission to get science to unlocks parts that will let me do so, is where career 'feels' the best.  So for me, the issue is once you have enough money to unlock the expanded VAB and launch pad, the gating is pretty much over and it becomes science mode again.  The jump between 30 and 255 parts is pretty much endgame material—you can build a ship to go anywhere with those restrictions, and later contracts give exponentially more rewards versus difficulty so money is really only an issue as long as you are stuck on Kerbin.  It seems, more than anything, this has the single largest detrimental effect on the progression of career since, in my experience anyways, my first hurdle is literally to expand the VAB and launch pad and then that's it: hurdles over.  It doesn't matter what order you force the player to unlock parts in; ingenuity will win the day.  The imposed size/weight/part budget is far more imposing, and I'm really hoping another tier of buildings will help with that.

Of course, and this goes a bit off my original topic but folds in nicely is I wouldn't mind seeing a couple other building gates.  The administration building goes mostly unused, and like I said: money is no issue once you get past Kerbin.  So why not crank up the part cost gradient and add in a part discount to the admin building?  Or perhaps rather than gating science on the R&D, have it reduce the cost of nodes making it more attractive, and less mandatory, of an investment?

Anyways, these were just some thoughts I had this morning while playing and I wanted to share them with the community.  It looks like my ship is nearly in Munar orbit though, so I'll cut it off here.

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Edited by Hyomoto
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I run pretty exclusivity career mode, my published and private games, so Ill wade in a little here.

I'll agree with you that early game mass and part counts are the restrictions, and rightly so I wouldnt (even if I could) want my second flight to go to the Mun. Once you have unlocked the medium pad/VAB then they effectively cease to be a concern, even on my 64k scale game I am quite happily sending manned missions to Mun/Minmus on the medium level.

However, where I disagree with you is funds, funds are a massive bottleneck for me, in pretty much every game I have to weigh the benefits of launching a fun mission versus a profitable mission. I am currently up against a wall of trying to save to upgrade my R&D to the final level, and it is taking me ages.

More granularity in building upgrades would be welcomed, so long as it goes towards splitting the progression down into more, smaller, cheaper upgrades rather than the 2 big jumps currently. Or perhaps requireing additional checks to be passed, any nuclear or advanced tech requiring the top level VAB to handle, tying certain techs to specific upgrades. all possibilities.

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I would also like to see a change in the progression of building upgrades to give us some choice about which features we invest in, at least for the SPH & VAB.  For example I'd rather be able to unlock 1 or 2 action groups before upgrading to support larger craft.  Not having custom action groups is just frustrating, doesn't actually impose a challenge, just more clicking required.  But I really enjoy the challenge of working with a small set and limited number of parts but I find I often upgrade just because I want action groups.  I'd rather stay small but have more functionality, but equally I can see other users would want the opposite.  If we could choose smaller, modular upgrades to the buildings that would be great (and would be even greater if those upgrades made small changes to the buildings form so you end up with different looking buildings depending on the path you take).  

I also think smaller, less expensive upgrades would help keep the interest in the mid-late stages of career as you'd have more frequent upgrade choices to make rather than just grinding away to afford the one big one.

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Well, I chose a hard mode with 50% rewards and 200% penalties and for me the hump (or grindy bit) comes with getting the funds to unlock the R&D center to allow 500 point items. There is still a lot of my tree below that level that has not been researched but I want the large docking ports and the last of the science sensors before I go for lots of the other parts. I find it grindy if I go back to the same biomes on Minmus and Mun and I end up doing that a bit with the first interplanetary expeditions on their way to unlock the things I need for Jool and Eve exploration. My order for upgrading the complexes are astronaut complex to allow EVA first, pad to 140t limit 2nd, 7 contracts 3rd, tracking station to conic sections 4th, R&D complex to allow surface samples, then VAB to allow 255 parts - which is where I am at in my 1.0.5 career with my desire to get the big docking ports (hey anyone want to invent 3.75m docking ports?) and science sensors before I send my first kermanned interplanetary missions (an unmanned one is already on the way to Duna/Ike on a fast orbit using my first nuclear engines), then I will want to remove the 140t weight limit at the launch pad.  Oddly enough one of the things that makes early career grindy for me is trying to do things in the least amount of elapsed Kerbal time, so I don't accelerate time as much as I could and rather fill that time with tasks that start to feel a little grindy as they advance my science and funds a little more slowly than just following the interplanetary adventures would. But that is simply a choice of how I like to play the game and not a complaint about the game.

I must say the new contracts that ask you to follow up with existing stations, probes, science surveys have helped make it seem less grindy. Also are making me rethink my tech tree unlock priorities to allow for rovers much earlier.

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Hmm, katateochi I never considered it like that but I think you might be onto something.  Perhaps rather than a bulk investment and upgrade to the building, the various buildings could provide smaller bonuses you could invest in.  Not sure if it's too gamey for some tastes, but after investing enough the model would update to the next stage.  I think that would be an excellent way of going about it because not only would it provide a better gradient, it could easily be tweaked for the number of stages, bonuses, etc... per tier rather than having to add an entirely new building just to provide an extra route.

nadreck, Personally I like the large drops required for most of the upgrades since it gives you these definitive progress points to work towards.  I've never really rushed science because like I said, I can usually do the same thing with more parts from earlier stages.  Don't get me wrong, I love building planes and the research for those is expensive, but a large docking ring can easily be made out of four smaller ones which come at 90.  But that's an interesting point, and I agree the new contracts definitely encourage certain gameplay it might have been easy to ignore before.  But if we're playing on similar settings, I find it amazing you don't see the VAB and pad to be the bottlenecks.  Perhaps it's just that you have two humps?

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Naw, I am versatile enough to make do with 30 part ships up to and including the first landers on Minmus and Mun. After that I need to unlock the R&D centre to the 2nd level so that I can do fuel transfers, I can refuel the 2nd generation landers in orbit around the Mun and Minmus then and send bigger ones with the next few science instruments because they can refuel in Kerbin orbit too.

 

I find I need the big docking rings to make stable craft that are easy to do 2000m/s interplanetary burns that can last as long as 30 minutes. Even with the big docking rings, by my second kermanned interplanetary expedition I am probably sending 3 separate craft that are made up of docked sub craft.

 

140t for the launch pad is not a problem at all, I can put up almost a half orange tanks worth of fuel in an SSTO tanker that docks with whatever vehicle that needs it then gets 75 to 80% of its initial cost back if I can drop just offshore of the KSC complex.

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I'm for smaller and specialized upgrades, as well. They could be integrated into the techtree or parallel to it, so no need for another menu. perhaps more like "space center capabilities" than "building upgrades". the graphics should still change at certain point, of course.

too late for refined ideas, but I'm in. 

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Yeah I know they are planning to bring in a fourth tier, I think this will alleviate a lot of the bottlenecks. In fact if the second tier was more accessible I think the size and weight constraints could be even tighter. Id personally also like to see more of the basic flight necessities like action groups and conics moved to an easy second tier, and more important information like real flight planning including dV and flight time estimates integrated at later tiers.

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One problem with Career balance is that the buildings only have three tiers.  We told Squad last year that three tiers was not enough of a nuanced approach and that they really needed to go with five or six.  There should be new tiers inserted between the existing tiers, especially for the hangar, VAB, launchpad and runway.  It shouldn't go from 30 parts to 255 parts to unlimited, it should be more gradual like 30 / 60 / 100 / 150 / 250 / unlimited, or the launchpad mass limits of 20t / 140t / unlimited should be 20t / 60t / 120t / 180t / 300t / unlimited.

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I agree that early career is challengine, and that challenge quickly goes away when you upgrade your buildings.

For me, the real hump is mid game. When you start getting to 160/300 science nodes, it seems to take forever to gather the needed science.

But yes, RND upgrades are the bane of my life, too expensive (and add to the "hump")

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Yes I agree that the difficulty curve is unusual.

The begining can be pretty hard, but after you reach Mun/Minmust things get easy.

Then there are endgame challenges that can be hard again.

Depending on the settings you can make the midgame grindy, but not really hard.

 

http://tvtropes.org/Main/SchizophrenicDifficulty ?

Edited by Joonatan1998
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7 hours ago, WuphonsReach said:

One problem with Career balance is that the buildings only have three tiers.  We told Squad last year that three tiers was not enough of a nuanced approach and that they really needed to go with five or six.  There should be new tiers inserted between the existing tiers, especially for the hangar, VAB, launchpad and runway.  It shouldn't go from 30 parts to 255 parts to unlimited, it should be more gradual like 30 / 60 / 100 / 150 / 250 / unlimited, or the launchpad mass limits of 20t / 140t / unlimited should be 20t / 60t / 120t / 180t / 300t / unlimited.

We would probably have more tiers now if people hadn't lost their ever loving minds over the barn haha

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Well, based on what you guys have said I don't really think unlimited should have it's own building at all then, if a 'fifth' tier is needed it could easily be a 'legendary' upgrade that serves as a sort of endgame content since unlimited is something I'd wager most computers rarely make use of.  It's also weird that the pad goes 140t -> unlimited since you can EASILY hit that ceiling with the later parts, but 250 parts is pretty much enough to build all but the most insane of crafts.

Speaking of which, your guys comments on science got me thinking.  I really like building planes, but it's something I pretty much always have to put off to some extent because of the lack of scientific gains from it but mostly that the lucrative contracts require parts you cannot unlock until later anyways.  So it seems rather than having R&D limit the price of the node you unlock, it could instead limit the science you can spend altogether?  That should help with the science hump some of you described since you could specialize in whatever you wanted, upgrading to fill out your tree rather than progress further along in it.  For example, right now the tree is about 1200 science to unlock everything with the first R&D upgrade, why not let the player spend that however they want?  If you want to pick up a 500 science node, so be it.  I think there would definitely be a lot more interest in how you go about unlocking the tree at that point, even if you did it 'wrong' you can take a loan from the bank out for an upgrade.  With a fourth tier of building you could do something like 400, 1500, 10000, 50000, unlimited.  It's interesting because it would serve as a gate on node value to some extent still but you'd have more freedom to choose your path which is generally a good characteristic for a progression model.

Edited by Hyomoto
me stupid
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Hyomoto,

 I start my careers "caveman" and I've gotten to the point where "the hump" doesn't exist for me. It's a snap to unlock all of the tech nodes and build up a half a million dollars without upgrading any of my facilities or grinding. It's really just a matter of properly designing your rockets.

What gets grindy for me is rescuing all those kerbals to fill out my crew roster and then strip mining the Mun and Minmus for science in order to get them all experienced. One biome per kerbal gets tedious in a hurry.

Best,

-Slashy

 

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17 hours ago, Waz said:

The "hump" for me is doing a Mun flyby without maneuver nodes, especially since you need to upgrade two buildings to get them.

For anyone else having this trouble:

A Mun flyby without maneuver nodes is easy once you know how to do it. There are just a few steps.

1. Get into orbit. If you can't do this without maneuver nodes, it can be done, but is outside the scope of this post.

2. Orbit around Kerbin until the Mun is just visible past the planet's curvature.

3. Burn directly toward the Mun until your apoapsist is 11,400km

And that's it! You have a Munar encounter, even if the map doesn't show it to you yet.

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I just feel that the RND upgrades are an arbitary limitation. Pad size/VAB size are understandable (if a little contrived in VAB's case) as you have to upgrade your facilities to be able to accommodate other tasks.

The thing is with RND it's like "Oh, yeah sorry boss, we stopped researching improvements because you didn't build that swimming pool Werhner wanted"

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GoSlash, I've read and reread your post and I just do not get it.  I'm not sure what you are trying to convey in the context of my original post.  The best I can get out of it is "I've gotten so good I have no limitations."  Which, while that's pretty awesome that you've gotten to that point, I don't get what that has to do with my 'hump'.  Are you suggesting if I got better at the game the hump would disappear?  Is this advice?  Are you suggesting my rocket designs suck?  Because, I can assure you, I build highly efficient designs; take this SSTO for example, a model of irreducible complexity.71F7DAB8E8F820BFA91A1F346D97E0D55D5FD6C3

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41 minutes ago, severedsolo said:

The thing is with RND it's like "Oh, yeah sorry boss, we stopped researching improvements because you didn't build that swimming pool Werhner wanted"

Having worked in R&D - I'd say this is pretty accurate, so long as you substitute 'coffee maker' for 'swimming pool'.

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My technique for getting a Munar encounter is far less scientific.  I burn at about a 70-90 degree angle to the Mun.  The encounter window is pretty large so while it's definitely not the most efficient method but I've never missed a transfer, I do need nodes for Minmus though.  I think.  I guess I've never really tried.

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56 minutes ago, Hyomoto said:

GoSlash, I've read and reread your post and I just do not get it.  I'm not sure what you are trying to convey in the context of my original post.  The best I can get out of it is "I've gotten so good I have no limitations."  Which, while that's pretty awesome that you've gotten to that point, I don't get what that has to do with my 'hump'.  Are you suggesting if I got better at the game the hump would disappear?  Is this advice?  Are you suggesting my rocket designs suck?  Because, I can assure you, I build highly efficient designs; take this SSTO for example, a model of irreducible complexity.71F7DAB8E8F820BFA91A1F346D97E0D55D5FD6C3

Hyomoto,

I definitely have limitations. This "hump" you're talking about just isn't one of them.

I am suggesting that if you 1) get better at the early game and 2) build better early rockets, then you won't have the hump that you're talking about. If I can do it, then you can too.

Best,

-Slashy

 

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GoSlash, despite my heavy sarcasm I still argue my point.  This isn't a 'man, it's sucks there's this hump' thread, it's a I've noticed over my 700 hours of gameplay that there is this hump.  I get it, you build highly efficient rockets that waste naught a drop of fuel but it really has nothing to do with this thread.  Optimizing my ascent profile might help me get to the Mun a little easier, but it won't change the fact that the 30 to 255 part increase pretty much opens the entire game up no matter how inefficiently you build.  For me, once I've done that, the rest of the game flow is pretty organic.  It has nothing to do with how I build my rockets.

Look, everyone is very proud of you.  You are an old member, you've got a lot of hours under your belt and you use FAR, and DRE, and AJE and you can build rockets without even looking at the screen.  We're not going to think less of you if you say, "Yeah, 255 parts is a pretty big jump."  But that is what this thread is intrinsically about.

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Hyomoto,

 I see your sarcasm is still in full force, though ;) I have no idea why since nobody's attacking you.

My post isn't about me, it's about this "hump" you speak of. It doesn't exist. At least not beyond being a by- product of how you're playing the early game.

I do agree that the facility upgrades open up a lot of possibilities, but for what you're doing in early career the restrictions aren't really a hindrance.

Best,

-Slashy

 

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