Kerbal astronaut wage

[tomf]

How much should a kerbal astronaut get paid?

Assuming that there wasn't an upfront cost to hire kerbals, but instead they got paid a regular wage how much should they get a year, in funds?

On normal difficulty.

Does the amount vary with the experience of the kerbal, what does a 0 star and 5 star kerbal make?

[Warzouz]

In stock game, you have to pay once to get a new kerbal. Price increases with the number of Kerbal you already have (maybe because you have to bribe all of them so they accept the new guy/girl !)

The cheapest way is to rescue them from Kerbin orbit. Your get many of them there. You can still rescue them from other bodies but You'll need time and resources to get them back to Kerbin (and that'll lock a contract slot longer)

Kerbal stock hiring is quite strange.

 

 

[Tatonf]

Probably 0, or something so marginal that it would be considered 0.

The reason is, players would be tempted to minimize their crew for avoiding to pay too much wages, and therefore would never take rescue missions, as the rescued kerbal join your crew at the end of them.

[Butterbar]

Hmm, let's see.  Each rescue mission grants me 75,000 funds including advance, which I can determine to be the a fee from the company to cover the expenses of adjusting and retraining the Kerbals they strand in space as well as their weekly wages for the duration of retraining.    Since each Kerbalonaut requires a month of retraining and adjustment and each rocket I send to rescue the Kerbals is standardized at a cost of 17,000 funds per Kerbal and each rocket can rescue two Kerbals, then 18,000 funds is allotted to each Kerbal upon their return.  (2,500 is the "processing" fee for the bureaucrats at the Administration Building)

Due to the strict safety standards that my space program oversees, the price of land around the space center is extremely high since it surrounds the largest spaceport on Kerbin, and so it is comparable to rent in Silicon Valley ($3,000 per month).  Toss in another 10,000 funds for food, transportation, uniforms, and training, and you'll end up with a monthly wage of 5,000 funds, which means a wage of 60,000 funds every year.  With each Kerbal serving a three year tour of duty in space unless they are slated for an exploration mission, this comes out to a cost of 180,000 funds, which isn't that unreasonable when you realize how outrageously expensive the Astronaut Complex hiring is.

Yearly Wage: 60000

Weekly Wage: 1250

Daily Wage: 178.60

Hourly Wage: 29.8

 

Edited March 17, 2016 by Butterbar

[Kaiser82]

They get paid in snacks, and more dangerous missions.

[Jhawk1099]

If you get them from rescue contracts then they should be indentured servants as you saved them from a lifetime of orbit in a command capsule of some sort. This I feel like is a payment far higher than any amount of funds. And the astronaut complex hiring is so outrageous anyway I would hope you get most of your people from contracts

[Wallygator]

9 hours ago, Butterbar said:

Hmm, let's see.  Each rescue mission grants me 75,000 funds including advance, which I can determine to be the a fee from the company to cover the expenses of adjusting and retraining the Kerbals they strand in space as well as their weekly wages for the duration of retraining.    Since each Kerbalonaut requires a month of retraining and adjustment and each rocket I send to rescue the Kerbals is standardized at a cost of 17,000 funds per Kerbal and each rocket can rescue two Kerbals, then 18,000 funds is allotted to each Kerbal upon their return.  (2,500 is automatically invested into the Kerbal's 401K fund)

Due to the strict safety standards that my space program oversees, the price of land around the space center is extremely high since it surrounds the largest spaceport on Kerbin, and so it is comparable to rent in Silicon Valley ($3,000 per month).  Toss in another 10,000 funds for food, transportation, uniforms, and training, and you'll end up with a monthly wage of 5,000 funds, which means a wage of 60,000 funds every year.  With each Kerbal serving a three year tour of duty in space unless they are slated for an exploration mission, this comes out to a cost of 180,000 funds, which isn't that unreasonable when you realize how outrageously expensive the Astronaut Complex hiring is.

Yearly Wage: 60000

Weekly Wage: 1250

Daily Wage: 178.60

Hourly Wage: 22.30

 

There are only 6 hours in a kerbal day. 

Edited March 17, 2016 by Wallygator
Sphelling a Ghrammer

[tomf]

Ok, some context: I'm working on a mod that will, among other things make the kerbal hiring cost 0 and will instead give you a periodic wage bill and I'm looking for opinions on what a reasonable sum would be.

It will leave a lot of kerbals stranded in orbit as you decide your space program can't really afford another astronaut right now.

[Wallygator]

35 minutes ago, tomf said:

Ok, some context: I'm working on a mod that will, among other things make the kerbal hiring cost 0 and will instead give you a periodic wage bill and I'm looking for opinions on what a reasonable sum would be.

It will leave a lot of kerbals stranded in orbit as you decide your space program can't really afford another astronaut right now.

Surely one could rescue them regardless, after which they are then placed in the astronaut complex as candidates (retaining any experience gained) unless you hire them immediately at the moment of recovery. 

It would also be good to allow paying money up front to set a kerbals experience level. Just like pre-mission training investment. Who would ever send an untrained astronaut into space!?!

also delinking a kerbals experience from his training level completely. Like having a set of gold stars that drive skills and a set of blue stars that record experience/fame. if killed the commensurate loss in reputation is based on the kerbals fame. And the funds spent to train the kerbal are obviously lost. 

Just thoughts. 

[Butterbar]

57 minutes ago, Wallygator said:

These is only 6 hours in a kerbal day. 

Fixed.  I was estimating their wages from a 8-hour workday, which is the standard in most countries.  

[Wallygator]

6 minutes ago, Butterbar said:

Fixed.  I was estimating their wages from a 8-hour workday, which is the standard in most countries.  

Ah... but wait!

If like most countries it is an 8 hour work day for a 24 hour day...  then the Kerbals would be working 2 hours out of 6.  So the hourly rate would be half of the daily wage.

;-)

Edited March 17, 2016 by Wallygator

[justidutch]

Pay Kerbals?  Wages?  What nonsense is this?  They should pay me for the honour of flying my beautifully crafted vehicles.  

If they don't screw up, I might deem to give them half a snack...

[ArgenTum]

1 hour ago, tomf said:

Ok, some context: I'm working on a mod that will, among other things make the kerbal hiring cost 0 and will instead give you a periodic wage bill and I'm looking for opinions on what a reasonable sum would be.

It will leave a lot of kerbals stranded in orbit as you decide your space program can't really afford another astronaut right now.

I have been thinking about this, since I also have earlier suggested a weekly wage and a weekly/monthly economics/balance report. In my opinion it should be small enough to let you go on a 3-4 year mission to Eve and back (on normal = not very efficient burn) without risking going bankrupt, but big enough so you wouldn't warp a few months just to harvest science from a science lab. My suggestion is 500/week for every Kerbal. If you have for example 8 Kerbals employed and go for a 3 year mission it would cost 624.000. Or perhaps Kerbals on a mission costs 5 times a Kerbal not on a mission, so a 3 crew mission for 3 years would cost about the same (624.000) where 5 kerbals at home cost 200/week while the 3 on mission costs 1000/week each.

624000 I just made up, since it for me represents a large sum on normal, but not overly large at the point in the game where you go to other planets. For early game, having 8 kerbals for a week costs 4000 a week and should not make early game harder.

And I would recommend a retirement fund for those MIA/KIA kerbals, perhaps 20/week.

[Skorpychan]

Wages?

WAGES?!?

They don't get paid. Not in precious Funds, no. They get paid in experience! It's an extended internship!

[SpacedCowboy]

1 hour ago, justidutch said:

Pay Kerbals?  Wages?  What nonsense is this?  They should pay me for the honour of flying my beautifully crafted vehicles.  

If they don't screw up, I might deem to give them half a snack...

"Yes, we just rescued you from many lonely years in space. And oh' by the way, are you done with that bag of peanuts yet, because,,, uhm,,, have you ever been to Dres?

[Wallygator]

10 minutes ago, Skorpychan said:

Wages?

WAGES?!?

They don't get paid. Not in precious Funds, no. They get paid in experience! It's an extended internship!

Unpaid interns...  like the ones in "The Life Aquatic"

[Nich]

Rockets are dirt cheap the new sls is something like 27 billion for 50 planned launches. Astronaught training is probably 100 to 1000 times their annual  pay and even then it is pretty insignificant to the cost of the rockets.  I would say propersionally kerbals should make about 1 kredit a day and cost 50,000 to hire

[HoloYolo]

small loan of a million dollars?

No?

 

I'm already walking out the door.

[KerBlammo]

1 hour ago, Skorpychan said:

Wages?

WAGES?!?

They don't get paid. Not in precious Funds, no. They get paid in experience! It's an extended internship!

If they start getting paid the next thing you know they'll be wanting "safety gear" and "snack breaks" and  even "time off" its a dangerous slippery slope!

[Tantalus]

Just an idea: make wages depend on kerbals experience. So the early-game low levels and untrained rescued "volunteers" are dirt cheap, whereas the later high skilled experts are significant more expensive.

A zero-star kerbal could cost 10 or 20 funds a week, a five-star more in the region of 500.

Regards

Tantalus

[linuxgurugamer]

4 hours ago, tomf said:

Ok, some context: I'm working on a mod that will, among other things make the kerbal hiring cost 0 and will instead give you a periodic wage bill and I'm looking for opinions on what a reasonable sum would be.

It will leave a lot of kerbals stranded in orbit as you decide your space program can't really afford another astronaut right now.

Well, you can rescue a kerbal and then dismiss that kerbal from your program.  You would still come out ahead.

Interesting idea, you may want to look at KSI, which revamps the hiring process.

[cubinator]

Kerbals don't need to be paid, they get to be astronauts! What more could they ask for?

[oglommi]

Astronaut wages is way down on the list squad should focus on.

[CalculusWarrior]

The impression I get is that the way the Space Center is managed is slightly abstracted, in that you don't have to pay an upkeep fee every month for maintenance on the facilities, wages for kerbonauts/general staff, nor do you get periodic grant money from sponsors, thus not requiring an 'income/expenses/profit' readout like you see in most management games. Squad appears to have decided against that style of play for Career Mode and instead have settled on the current method of doing things.

In this, you only pay for the 'big' expenses, such as building and launching new missions, repairing damaged/upgrading new facilities, and hiring new crew members. I assume a lot of the implicit cost is baked into the up-front cost, as you don't have to make sure you have at least 10 kerbal cooks to feed your kerbonauts enough snacks before hiring a new member, but hiring your 25th kerbonaut is much more expensive than your initial few due to this requirement of support staff they'd need.

Just my thoughts on why the game is set up in the way it is. I personally quite like it; as it's a different take on the 'tycoon' genre than most other management games, in which there is much more emphasis on flying missions than there is on making sure your Space Center is always profitable. 

[Wallygator]

2 hours ago, oglommi said:

Astronaut wages is way down on the list squad should focus on.

The context of the conversation as it has evolved is about a mod- not a squad dev request.