Appropriate funds for space station

[cutlercollin99]

Hello, I'm making my own contract for my own challenge. I am just stuck with how many funds should be an appropriate amount to build and launch a space station. 

Thanks. 

[Snark]

Totally depends on the parameters, e.g. how big it is, where it needs to be, whether it has to have any specific parts on it, etc.

Also on what sort of "profit margin" you'd want it to have (i.e. how many times the cost of building it you want the reward to be).

The stock game's typical rewards for a Kerbin-orbiting station are something like 20-30K funds advance and 80-120K funds reward, depending on what the station has on it.  Station around the Mun or Minmus is around 50%-70% more than that, and stations around other planets are several hundred thousand or more.

(Total off-the-top-of-my-head estimates, I don't actually have the game in front of me and am going by memory here.)

[Nich]

LKO?

[samstarman5]

6 hours ago, Nich said:

LKO?

Very good question. If it's meant to be a Munar orbital station, then there should be more of a payday.  Even a geostationary station should have a bit of an extra bonus to it.

[cutlercollin99]

Well what I am looking for is an initial amount of money that the mission/contract should start out with from scratch. I would want all of the people to start out with all of the stock (or moded) parts with no money. That is why I'm looking for an initial amount of money. 

Secondly, I am looking at a way to give points based on what the station can do, how big it is, where it is located, etc. 

Thanks for all of the thought!

[max_creative]

I'm building my first station soon in LKO, and it's in sandbox so I don't need to worry about funds, but yeah. It depends. What orbit, where, how big, all that stuff.

[Nich]

hhmm.. that depends how challenging you want it to be my best payload fraction SSTO can do 65 funds/ton so in theory 20 kerbals (10t and 5500 funds in mk1 cabins) can be put in orbit for 6500ish funds.

[cutlercollin99]

3 minutes ago, Nich said:

hhmm.. that depends how challenging you want it to be my best payload fraction SSTO can do 65 funds/ton so in theory 20 kerbals (10t and 5500 funds in mk1 cabins) can be put in orbit for 6500ish funds.

Haha. That seems like a daunting for me. I'm planning on a decently large station. So does around 250,000 funds suffice? 

 

[Madscientist16180]

I'd say: "Build à station that meet your parameters in the VAB, look how much it cost. Then arbitrarily set a reward amour using that price as a guideline, pondérés by where you ask for the station to be located.".

Something along the line of:

Lko: Cost * 1.2

Hko: Cost * 1.5

Mun or minums: cost * 1.7

I'm just throwing out numbers, but those should work imo.

[Nich]

1 hour ago, cutlercollin99 said:

Haha. That seems like a daunting for me. I'm planning on a decently large station. So does around 250,000 funds suffice? 

 

Lets see does it have room for 770 kerbals? lol  This is the biggest problem with KSP career.  The tyranny of the rocket equation makes contracts either pay WAY too much or WAY too little depending on skill and it is nearly impossible to get the balance right.  Even for me I can spend anywhere from 65-300 funds/ton on an SSTO depending how much effort I put in. That is a crazy 500% increase.  Rockets get even worse.  I have designed a rocket the broke the 700 funds/ton mark (599 is the record) but most of my normal rockets are closer to 2000-5000 funds per ton just because I don't want to do that much optimizing.

Edited April 3, 2016 by Nich