Giving the Various Companies More Functions

[Windspren]

In KSP, you get contracts from several different companies, and perform specific tasks for them. Currently, all they are is a name and a flag.

My suggestion is that the "reputation" system is broken down into a reputation bar for each company. The main reputation bockomax's ar seen on the KSC screen is  the average of the company reputation bars. You would gain or lose reputation for each company, so if you failed Vac-Co's part tests a lot but completed every one of Kerbodyne's contracts, your Vac-Co rep would be very low and your Kerbodyne rep would be only slightly affected by failures for other companies. Tourists would have their own class of rep, and killing a tourist or kerbal, even if the kerbal is not on a tourist mission, would give you a massive hit to your rep.

With the new contextual contracts in 1.0.5, companies can ask you to move an already existing satellite, even if it was not launched for them. I suggest that when you launch a satellite or probe for a company, it gets a flag saying which company it belongs to. Companies can only ask you to move ships that you launched for them. If you moved a satellite belonging to another company without them asking you to do so, you would lose ~10 rep points for that company.

[Hcube]

I really really like this idea !

This actually makes much more sense than what's in place right now. But that should not replace the existing rep bar, just be an addition :

The general rep bar should still have a role : if you keep failing contracts for companies A and B, company C will be less likely to offer you generous contracts even though you have never failed them.

[LordKael]

I think Hcube has the right of it. This brings to mind that ps2 game "Mercenaries", and how any given faction could have 'hostile', 'unfriendly', 'neutral', and 'friendly' status with the player. Something similar to this could very well be implemented, giving incentives to the player to complete contracts and keep all the various companies happy, to give a boost to rewards. And since certain companies make similar but different parts, you could get a discount on parts from friendly companies, be charged more from unfriendly companies, or even have companies set as rivals to each other. 

Just my two cents.

[Alshain]

This has been discussed to death already.  There should be nothing preventing you from moving/deleting/trashing crap in your orbit, including penalties.  Just no.  I don't care who asked me to launch it, that doesn't mean I should leave it there forever.

[Hcube]

7 hours ago, Alshain said:

This has been discussed to death already.  There should be nothing preventing you from moving/deleting/trashing crap in your orbit, including penalties.  Just no.  I don't care who asked me to launch it, that doesn't mean I should leave it there forever.

Okay, what about the concept of having separate rep bars for each company ? Forget about penalty for moving stuff

 

This idea makes me think of Spore with relationships to maintain... ( It should be WAY less restrictive and invasive than the system in spore wich made the game close to unplayable though)

Edited December 13, 2015 by Hcube

[Windspren]

17 hours ago, Alshain said:

This has been discussed to death already.  There should be nothing preventing you from moving/deleting/trashing crap in your orbit, including penalties.  Just no.  I don't care who asked me to launch it, that doesn't mean I should leave it there forever.

Maybe after about a year, you could do whatever you want with the satellite? While it's not cheaty to get multiple science contracts with the same probe, it is when you supposedly set up a different satellite for 3 different companies when it's really just one.

[KrazyKrl]

17 minutes ago, Laythe Dweller said:

Maybe after about a year, you could do whatever you want with the satellite? While it's not cheaty to get multiple science contracts with the same probe, it is when you supposedly set up a different satellite for 3 different companies when it's really just one.

 

I'd recommend that launched satellites get handed over to the company the contract is for. Then the crafts themselves get "hidden"; they still exist in your persistence file as a flight, but the crafts themselves never get loaded or displayed. This way, the contract craft can be out of the way for performance and other stuff; but still be accessible for contracts. The game just needs to calculate the satellite's updated position when the contract for the satellite disables the "hidden" flag; when you accept a contract for that specific craft.

I can accept the craft "going missing" after control is handed over; a config entry could be added to "hide/show craft not owned by player."

[RocketSquid]

I agree that you should not just be able to move a satellite to satisfy 3 different companies, but I think that you should be able to re-use them if the purpose is similar. In real life, if one company wanted a satellite to monitor weather data, and the other wanted a satellite to take pictures every other day, The same satellite could easily be used for both, assuming it was in the right orbit to do both simultaneously. I think that for some contracts, it should be "Send up the satellite and keep it there for x amount of time. You get the full pay as soon as it is in the correct orbit, but if it gets put into a significantly different orbit too soon, you get penalized.

Essentially, I think contracts should have a purpose, not just conditions to fulfill. The purposes would alter some things about the craft, for example a comsat would need a fast antenna, a monitoring satellite would need scientific instruments, a Kerbolar observation probe would need GravMaxes or some other instruments for observing the sun. A satellite with no antennae is useless, but antennae are not always a requirement for satellite contracts.

I also support adding more nuanced contracts. For example, you get a rep bonus if you fulfill a contract while sporting the flag of that company.

[pandaman]

I like the idea of satellites belonging to the company that contracted you to launch them, so they shouldn't be moved by anyone else without permission or penalty, that just makes sense to me.

I don't like the fact that they could potentially sit there for ever just getting in the way, and much worse - using up processing power.

With that in mind the suggestion that they get 'hidden', and therefore effectively removed from the game, until a new contract from the original owner would be my favoured solution.   I have no idea how easy or practical it would be to implement mind you.

[Windspren]

57 minutes ago, RocketSquid said:

I agree that you should not just be able to move a satellite to satisfy 3 different companies, but I think that you should be able to re-use them if the purpose is similar. In real life, if one company wanted a satellite to monitor weather data, and the other wanted a satellite to take pictures every other day, The same satellite could easily be used for both, assuming it was in the right orbit to do both simultaneously. I think that for some contracts, it should be "Send up the satellite and keep it there for x amount of time. You get the full pay as soon as it is in the correct orbit, but if it gets put into a significantly different orbit too soon, you get penalized.

Essentially, I think contracts should have a purpose, not just conditions to fulfill. The purposes would alter some things about the craft, for example a comsat would need a fast antenna, a monitoring satellite would need scientific instruments, a Kerbolar observation probe would need GravMaxes or some other instruments for observing the sun. A satellite with no antennae is useless, but antennae are not always a requirement for satellite contracts.

I also support adding more nuanced contracts. For example, you get a rep bonus if you fulfill a contract while sporting the flag of that company.

I like the idea of having the satellite have to be in a certain orbit for X amount of time, although maybe that could also be a function for science, where you can set long-term observations for probes with the right instruments?