New approach to difficulty levels

[Buster Charlie]

I feel like the game really comes into the 'cutting edge' feeling when you have life support restrictions on duration, logistic issues like that. And having to have some light probe infrastructure.

For example I like SCANSAT a lot, I feel like this needs to be stock to some degree, and even space based telescopes for similar reasons.  FOR EXAMPLE:

 

If you have a telescope focused on a body, it'll slowly research, all the info we know and love, the orbit, the mass, whatever, what if it was a complete mystery? What if the planets actually were slightly randomized, or each solor system didn't have all the planets, or in the same order. What if in career mode you had such a 'discovery' mode. You use ground based and satellite telescopes to scan for planets like you do for asteroids in asteroid day? The longer you watch and object, the more ways you watch it, the better equipment you dedicate to watch it, or the closer you watch it all dictate how long until you have a complete picture.

What is the orbit of this planet? What is the temperature, the gravity, any atmosphere? ANy oxygen? Can you land on it? Diameter? Atmospheric extent? Lowest orbit (watch out for those mountains!) Escape velocity?

 

Once you remotely gather info, you can run computer simulations. Make these VERY crude, think 1980's video games, wireframe, solid color renderings, low frame rates. Make it look VERY retro, low res. This way, the simulation dosen't take away from the awe of actually exploring a planet for the first time, but you can still test out your lander, rover, jet without dedicating a mission.

 

Then comes stage 2, you send probes, or even manned flybys. Satellites in orbits, scanners, orbital science, anything you do adds more details and info and more accurate simulators, more readout data. Science altitudes, synchronous orbit altitudes, whatever.

 

More in depth biome explorations, anything to give you a sense of actually exploring for the first time, a new world.

 

Of course you can just send out jeb in a rocket on the first day, hurtling into unknown space, and maybe if you're lucky you'll intercept a planet on the first try! But i'd go so far as to say you wont even see SOI intercepts on your map screen unless you've done some basic research, so make it very hard to do any exploration blindly, just like real life.

I dont know how good completely random planets would be, and maybe the Mun and minmus would always be the same, but I think if you had a larger set of stock planets that would be placed in different orbits and characteristics, I dont know what the game engine is capable of doing. 

 

 

 

[tater]

Buster Charlie gets the idea of an "exploration" system well.

Take Mars as a stand-in for Duna.

100 years later, terrestrial astrophotography:

Mariner 4:

 

Then obviously later probes do much better. It would be so cool if you had no idea what a word looked like except stuff about like those terrestrial images, then they improved.

 

 

[Evanitis]

6 hours ago, Buster Charlie said:

I'm, all for non-grind based difficult as mentioned! There are a lot of ways to add challenge without it being too grindy.

There are so many things in this post that echoes my KSP experience... and some quite similar solutions too.

For one, it was also an averted huge cargo-plane disaster that made me realize I want the reverting safety net off (sometimes). After a too heavy pitch-input on supersonic velocity, 8 out of 10 jet engines decided to stop thrusting forward and aim the main fuel-tank instead... in a few seconds most of the craft evaporated in a quite spectacular way. The pod with the crew remained miraculously intact, and I could land it with the canards. Pretty exhilarating experience.

Spoiler

Anways, back on topic indeed, career difficulty.

I totally love that game-mode. Limitations create challenge, that results in fun. But I have the feeling that it's risk and reward system just can't be universally balanced by Squad. The game is too complex, at the same time it can be played so many ways, on so many skill levels. I think it takes a lot of KSP experience to set those difficulty sliders so that most resources stay relevant trough most of a playtrough - while the progress not becoming too grindy. If such setting exists at all. It would only be -slightly- easier if the difficulty sliders indicated what exactly they do. I wonder how many players can tell which one controls the building costs for example.

I dislike the pacing of the rewards. I feel the first ~1000 science takes so much effort and repeating routine missions, while interplanetary trips just unlocks the rest of the tree too fast (even without MPL - that part in itself screams 'I dun wanna do science anymore!'). It's pretty much the same with funds - depending on the gain you initially set, either you play caveman style for a long-long time, or money becomes irrelevant pretty soon.

In every career I start I tried to tackle this problem a different way. One of the closest solution was to start with 100% rewards, but each time I orbited or landed on a new body the first time (Kerbin included) I decreased it by 15%. This way the start was quick, but by the time I was ready to leave Kerbin SoI, I only gained 10% funds and sci. This way I really had to re-use everything I built, and had to do a lot of interplanetary adventures to unlock the most convenient parts.

Though in my current career, I took control, and kinda' ditched the funding system altogether. Started the game with 30-30% gains. (That's abysamal - I think the 'hard' preset has 40-40%) On 30% payouts from the start, a mission needs to be really efficient to even turn a profit. Taking 8 tourists to orbit with 30 parts... damn, that was challenging. It brought 50k profit (minus simulation costs - 100 funds/safe test-launch is a -lot- in these circumstances). BUT I add my own rewards. About a minor tech-node for minor contracts, and a building upgrade or an expensive node for complex, multi-contract missions.

 

It works for me currently, but probably I'll find a new way to make my own balance the next time I play career. I love that modders and Squad provides me tools to tailor my difficulty, but I doubt there's a preset that would fit everyone (or even the majority). Guess that's why I stopped commenting on threads like these. (well, I tried to at least. )

[Evanitis]

6 hours ago, Buster Charlie said:

What if the planets actually were slightly randomized, or each solor system didn't have all the planets, or in the same order. What if in career mode you had such a 'discovery' mode.

That's an excellent idea. I think I'll find a way to simulate such experience by picking a random planet-pack whithout looking into it (or the ingame planet-details.)

 

[Kosmognome]

13 hours ago, Kerbart said:

If the tech tree was built with easing the player into the game, I'd agree with you. But it isn't. It appears to be designed around providing a challenge to grow towards a mature space program, which it does in the beginning before the grinding aspects take over.

So your real problem is with the tech tree. That complaint isn't new, and I share it. the tech tree needs to be regrouped and the early story missions redone. But that doesn't mean that the mechanics behind career mode are flawed.

 

 

13 hours ago, Kerbart said:

the best advice I can give right now is to play the demo version

The demo version has a terrible part selection. New players will not now much about aerodynamic stability. Going to the mun  the demo is significantly harder then in career mode, because you don't get the sviwel with it's gimbaling engine, which makes it much harder to create a vessel that is actually capable of ascending without spinning out of control.

[wafflemoder]

I support adding more mechanics in place of or in addition to the current KSP difficulties. Though I feel having actual levels of difficulty isn't quite the way to go about it. Similar to the current model, where each element is tweak able individually, I think that harder mechanics should also be able to be toggled independently. Say, for example, you want life support but not reentry heating. 

[jwbrase]

One I'd like to see is multiple KSC locations: On easy settings, you get the traditional equatorial location. On harder difficulties, KSC is moved to higher latitudes, and you need to worry about timing your launches so that your ascending/descending node with the Mun lines up with the apoapsis of your Munar transfer orbit.