My Disappointment in Career mode and 1.0 in a Whole

[Xavven]

14 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

To me then this is really all about the Explore X and World First contracts. They are the main quest. My suggestion is that they show up from the very beginning, and the reward can be collected if you're good enough.

Come to think of it, one of my frustrations is when I'm ready to hit Minmus and the "Explore Minmus" contract doesn't appear. And if I visit Minmus anyway, the "Explore Minmus" contract will never show up ever, so it's missed funding forever. This one small change that would incrementally improve career, but incremental might not be enough overall, to be honest. I'll take what we can get though.

[Camacan]

I suspect the contract system works best for new players. Having an array of goals laid out in challenge order seems highly useful for climbing the "difficulty wall". But I'm not a new player and I find contracts become grindy fast. Doing stuff for the means of doing what I want to do doesn't appeal.

Some contracts are informative and I like that: the ones for specialised orbits were educational, but they are not something I'd repeat. The rescue contracts have a bit of drama to them: the poor pilot waiting in the chilly wreck, deep in the clutches of Jool's gravity. Then there is a garbled voice on the radio, a flare of light as the pitch black approaching rescue craft lights all eight nuclear engines in a crash stop ending eighty meters away.

I think I'd benefit from turning the rewards from contracts way up so I don't have to worry about them that often. And I think the system would benefit from a greater diversity. Not that it is easy. KSP has great depth, but not that many basic mechanics.

[tater]

I think science mode is best for new players if the goal is reducing the choices to reasonable levels for a "progression." Career is definitively not really for new players, IMO, as it is in fact most difficult period in KSP career is the start.

 

[Norcalplanner]

After thinking about this, I think the solution is fairly simple - have two selections (maybe with new personalities associated with them) in the administration building for "celestial body of interest" and "program focus". It could cost some currency of some sort to choose each one or change it to something else. Then it would feed into mission control somehow, and guarantee that at least two or three of the currently offered contracts comply with both criteria, and half of the remaining contracts are associated with at least one of the two criteria.

An example is probably worth a lot here. Let's say my program has gotten some kerbals to space, and now I want to go to the Mun. I go into administration, pay some sort of currency, and set my celestial body of interest to "mun" and my focus to "exploration". The contract internals will now require at least two in the next batch of contracts to have something to do with Mun exploration (flyby, explore, plant a flag, etc) and half of the other contracts to do with either one or the other (such as explore minmus, or science from the Mun). If i want to keep exploring, i simply choose a different celestial body (such as duna) and I'll start seeing exploration contracts for duna. Or if I want to stick with the mun, I could change my program focus to science, or infrastructure, or tourism. You could even set it up so that different levels of administration building unlock different celestial body options (tier 1 is just Kerbin, Mun and Minmus, tier 2 adds Eve and Duna, and tier three adds everything else) or program areas (tier 1 is exploration and science, tier 2 is tourism, tier 3 is infrastructure). You could also set it with prerequisites, so that you have to focus on mun or minmus before eve or duna.

It's late so I'm not sure how much sense this makes, but I wanted to write it down while it was still fresh in my mind.

[HebaruSan]

On 12/17/2015 at 1:48 PM, Motokid600 said:

Here's what I did to spice up my current career. And it works REALLY good.

Spoiler

 

Reduce science and money rewards to about 2 or 3. They can be adjusted later in the persistent file should it be too easy or hard. Rep is whatever you like, but I recommend lowering that to around 5.

Open up cheats menu upon staring a new game ( alt-f12 ) then hold left alt for 5 seconds. This reveals more cheats allowing you to give yourself money, science and rep. We need a lot of each to setup the career before we begin. 

Upgrade the R&D building so you can max out the tech tree. And do just that. With the debug cheats give yourself the resources to unlock every node and buy every part ( make sure you enable part cost entry ) except the science parts. Unlock the nodes, but don't buy the science parts. ( maybe just a thermometer/barometer ) This way the tech tree stays somewhat relevant and you can't load a probe up with every science part. ( You wouldn't be able to afford it anyway )

So now you have the full assortment of parts to play with making it so you can actually create the craft you want in your career. 

Now we move over to the strategies (it's name iirc ) any give yourself enough rep and science to enable the strategy that converts science to funds. Crank it up to 100% so ALL science is converted to funds. After this your done. Zero your science and money in debug then give yourself 10k to start.

Then it's a really good idea to download and install Contract Configurator along with the Advanced Progression Pack and as many others as you like. I also highly recommend Field Research to go along with this play style and Anomaly Surveyor. That's just straight fun. The more contract packs you have the more your going to want to turn down there rewards. 

This way your contracts relate more to what you want to do instead of "test BACC on suborbital trajectory of the Mun ( how stupid is that.. ) You need contracts however because once you run out of local science your going to run out of income. You'll need the contracts to go along with it.

And play. You now need to perform science and contracts to fund the missions you want to carry out. You may have all the parts for a grand tour mission right off the bat, but lol good luck funding it.

 

 I've been playing like this for a week now and its a completely new, fresh experience.

I also recommend DMagic for this style. More science parts=more avenues to gain funds. And some science parts are very expensive.

I believe the "Tree Toppler" mod does something very much like this in fewer clicks (except for setting up the Strategy). I plan to try it in my next career, since optimizing designs around Funds cost is fun, but grinding the final R&D upgrade to spend all those accumulated science points was a real drag.

Since we have Science Mode, and Career Mode is basically Science Mode plus funds and contracts, maybe there could be a stock "Budget Mode" which does away with the tech tree but keeps funds and contracts along the lines of your model. It's clear that the building blocks are already there, and they just have to be assembled in a new way.

[Emperor of the Titan Squid]

I wish there wer a way to turn funds into science.

[tater]

There is. It's in the admin building as a "strategy."

[Kerbart]

2 hours ago, Emperor of the Titan Squid said:

I wish there wer a way to turn funds into science.

You could use Funds to pay for scientific missions?

 

[Malich]

I can strongly recommend

Nightingale's Strategia

As an awesome way of making your career mode plays a bit more rewarding for focussing on specific goals.