[1.8.x] Monthly Budgets 5.0.1 (22/12/2019) - UP FOR ADOPTION

[Rocket88]

@severedsolo

Thanks for quick reply and this answers my question.Thanks again for awesome Mod. Makes career a lot more fun and less grindy on higher difficulty settings

[severedsolo]

Monthly Budgets 4.7 Released

• Recompiled against KSP 1.5
• Building Base Costs have been lowered slightly to take into account the fact that it's more difficult to pick up rep from World Firsts on the first launch, due to current bug with drag/lifting bodies

 

[captainradish]

Err, I'm having an odd issue with this and (I think) USI Sounding rockets. Basically, my entire maintenance budget is going to launches to where a good 95% of my budget is gone. I have absolutely no clue why. I have to turn off maintenance costs for launches otherwise I will go completely bankrupt. Any ideas?

EDIT: OK, on further experimentation it's something do with BUILDING maintenance costs.

Edited October 16, 2018 by captainradish

[Starwaster]

3 hours ago, captainradish said:

Err, I'm having an odd issue with this and (I think) USI Sounding rockets. Basically, my entire maintenance budget is going to launches to where a good 95% of my budget is gone. I have absolutely no clue why. I have to turn off maintenance costs for launches otherwise I will go completely bankrupt. Any ideas?

EDIT: OK, on further experimentation it's something do with BUILDING maintenance costs.

Is this stock sized planets or scaled up? If scaled up then you may have to adjust your funds/rep/science payouts.

[Beetlecat]

15 hours ago, severedsolo said:

Monthly Budgets 4.7 Released

• Recompiled against KSP 1.5
• Building Base Costs have been lowered slightly to take into account the fact that it's more difficult to pick up rep from World Firsts on the first launch, due to current bug with drag/lifting bodies

 

Ha! Cheers for the 1.5 update. The second bullet seems like it may be a short-lived "fix" -- but appreciate the consideration, just the same

[severedsolo]

8 hours ago, captainradish said:

Err, I'm having an odd issue with this and (I think) USI Sounding rockets. Basically, my entire maintenance budget is going to launches to where a good 95% of my budget is gone. I have absolutely no clue why. I have to turn off maintenance costs for launches otherwise I will go completely bankrupt. Any ideas?

Do you happen to have Extra Launchsites enabled (from MH) - previous versions would charge you triple maintenance if you had that option turned on (removed in the latest release)

[Hoelk]

First Thanks for a great mod!

One question/request: is it possible to configure the penalty for a dead Kerbal? So to change the 25% rep loss to something custom?

[severedsolo]

7 hours ago, Hoelk said:

One question/request: is it possible to configure the penalty for a dead Kerbal? So to change the 25% rep loss to something custom?

Right now it's not configurable, but I can easily make it so it is. Leave it with me.

[Hoelk]

5 hours ago, severedsolo said:

Right now it's not configurable, but I can easily make it so it is. Leave it with me.

Great, thx.

I don't know how complex the following would be, so just an idea, but what I would really like is a formula that is based on a "basePenalty" if any Kerbal is lost on a mission, multiplied by a "perKerbalPenalty" based on the number of Kerbals killed. My basic idea is that the reputation loss is more based on the fact that a mission went horribly wrong and a Kerbal was killed at all, than the question whether it's 1 or 3 or 10 Kerbals.

Example with numbers:

Spoiler

basePenalty = 20% and

perKerbalPenalty = 5%

You would get a reputation change like this:

1 Kerbal killed:

newRep = oldRep x (0.8 x 0.95 = 0.76)

So almost what we have now, but in case of e.g. 3 Kerbals killed:

0.8 x 0.95^3 = ca. 0.69

vs now: 0.75^3 = ca. 0.42

If that's too complicated, the configuration of the present penalty factor will do, thanks for your effort!

 

 

[Gordon Dry]

I'm hoping for a better compatiblity of MonthlyBudgets with Strategia:
https://github.com/jrossignol/Strategia/issues/76

[severedsolo]

7 minutes ago, Gordon Dry said:

I'm hoping for a better compatiblity of MonthlyBudgets with Strategia:
https://github.com/jrossignol/Strategia/issues/76

Could you explain exactly what it you expect to see / what is happening now? To the best of my knowledge, MB should already handle strategias "programs" because they are just contracts, which the contract interceptor should already pick up.

or are there other strategies that MB is ignoring?

[Gordon Dry]

Over the time using these mods together, I recognized that the funds given by Strategia were not converted to reputation by MonthlyBudgets under some circumstances.

So I could witness that the money that Strategia gave was "pruned" on the monthly budget report...

But I will do another test and see if it's still like that.
Could be that some other mod's incompatiblity jumped into my pool of beta-testerability (aka. too-much-mods-some-guys-say).

[severedsolo]

1 minute ago, Gordon Dry said:

Over the time using these mods together, I recognized that the funds given by Strategia were not converted to reputation by MonthlyBudgets under some circumstances. 

Oh that's easily fixed. Worst case I can have MB intercept any fund gains at all (will make it configurable though in case it's a bit too aggressive) - I'll add it to the next update.

[severedsolo]

6 hours ago, Hoelk said:

what I would really like is a formula that is based on a "basePenalty" if any Kerbal is lost on a mission, multiplied by a "perKerbalPenalty" based on the number of Kerbals killed.

Also - I am going to implement this. I broadly agree that the reputation penalty should be "oh no, we lost a manned vessel" - it doesn't really matter if it's one, or 100 kerbals. The reason I never did, was because Kerbals don't just die by vessels being destroyed. If you have a LS mod for example, they can die like that too.

Technical reasons why this is difficult in the spoiler if you're interested, otherwise skip to the TL:DR below.

Spoiler

I detect crew deaths using an event, which is basically MonthlyBudgets saying to KSP "Hey let me know when someone dies, and I'll run this bit of code here", Now, usually an event will give you something useful you can use to interrogate the data. For example, onVesselRecovery will give you the vessel, so you can check if it has crew.

Unfortunately, onCrewDeath gives you literally nothing. It doesn't even tell you which Kerbal died. Literally all I know when it gets called is that a kerbal, somewhere, has died. I have no way of knowing which Vessel they were on, who they were, or even if you were looking at them when they died. So I can't tell if you've killed 5 kerbals across 5 vessels (which would give you a higher penalty in an ideal world) or 5 on one (which is still bad, but not quite as bad, because it's still only one disaster).

I can however, detect whether a vessel was destroyed. I can also detect whether that vessel had crew. So, here's what I propose:

When a vessel is destroyed, we'll check if it had crew. If it had crew, a "base penalty" will be applied. Then we'll apply a penalty for each kerbal who died. If kerbals don't die by vessel death (LS failure or something) - only the penalty per kerbal will be applied.

So if you like it how it is now, you set vessel death penalty to zero, and put per kerbal to 25%. If you want something more like what @Hoelk wants - that's doable too.

Oh and on top of that, I'm planning to add localisation support too. AND I need to update my other mods for 1.5. So this may take a while (or it may not - you know how it goes, sometimes I say "this is going to take ages" then I knock it out in 24 hours).

Edited October 25, 2018 by severedsolo

[Hoelk]

19 hours ago, severedsolo said:

When a vessel is destroyed, we'll check if it had crew. If it had crew, a "base penalty" will be applied. Then we'll apply a penalty for each kerbal who died. If kerbals don't die by vessel death (LS failure or something) - only the penalty per kerbal will be applied.

Sounds great! One possible problem I see might be vehicle breakups. If a vessel consists of several crew cabins which break up during reentry and are destroyed on impact, will that be counted as one vessel or several vessels? I guess technically it might be considered separate vessels by KSP, but from a user point we would see it as one accident.

Maybe you could also consider adding a cooldown timer to the "base (vessel) penalty" so it's only applied once per configurable time period (maybe 5 minutes as standard). This might miss cases where really seperate vessels are destroyed at the same time, but I think that's very unlikely and therefore acceptable.

[Guest]

Does this mod work well with RP-1?

[severedsolo]

13 hours ago, dundun92 said:

Does this mod work well with RP-1?

Haven't tried it, but there's no reason it wouldn't (as far as I'm aware) - if you do encounter any issues, give me a poke and I will see what I can do.

[Starwaster]

20 hours ago, dundun92 said:

Does this mod work well with RP-1?

You will probably have to scale up payouts... I scaled up Funds and Reputation by x4 and Science by x1.2. (What would have been Funds payouts will mostly map to rep but there were some that did not hence the x4 Funds)

I think these multipliers work well but it will be subjective for your personal experience; YMMV.

[Rocket88]

On 5/20/2018 at 12:03 PM, severedsolo said:

Well, my setup is a little... specialised.

Firstly I have a house rule where I only allow myself to take new contracts if either a) I complete an exploration contract (I use Exploration Plus, so I don't have to deal with the endless "rendezvouz/dock around x body before you can progress") or b) I've completed all the contracts in my list.

Using that, I leave my MB settings at default except I turn Hard Mode on,  give myself 2k funds to start, and turn rep returns down to 40%, leaving funds on 100% (Using MB World Firsts pay rep directly, Contracts get converted to rep from the funds, so this means I get paid mostly for doing contracts, instead of hitting milestones).

That 2k gives me just enough Funds to launch a sounding rocket that can reach the upper atmosphere. The 40% world first from that gives me enough to go suborbital the next month, along with one Field Research KSC contract using a basic rover (using SETI and SXT).

Next month I go orbital (if the contract calls for unmanned) or I keep doing Kerbin science until I unlock pods if it calls for manned. At that point I usually then have to do a month of flying planes (surveys) to get enough to upgrade the VAB.

Once I reach the Mun era, my budget is skyrocketing and I'm picking up building upgrades pretty quickly. By the time I have landed on Mun and Minmus I'm pushing 1.2-1.3 million, so I use the BPF to get the last of the building upgrades.

By that point I've usually missed the first Duna Window so have a year and a half to wait before the next one. I start timewarping to the window (remember I can't accept any contracts until I've done that exploration contract) - and Hard Mode eventually decays the budget to 0 so I'm paying costs out of the million or so I've got in hand from the "Apollo" age. The money usually runs out just before I get to Duna, so when I hit that milestone and complete the contract, that boosts my budget back up again, and pays for the next wave of exploration (albeit at more like 150-200k a month rather than the million or so I had before).

It's quite funny really, it almost replicates the actual Nasa funding situation. Trying to land on Mun you have more money than you know what to do with, but when it comes to the more "advanced" missions you are dealing with a massively reduced budget.

I was curious of how you set the funds penalties slider when using above set up.

[severedsolo]

1 hour ago, Rocket88 said:

I was curious of how you set the funds penalties slider when using above set up.

I just leave it at default, but I'm careful to only take contracts I can do usually.

[vardicd]

@severedsolo Have you noticed an issue with the sliders on monthly budgets being less accurate [almost twitchy] the lower you lower them? I was playing with the kerbal wages slider and slid it to 0 accidentally, and when I went to put it back to 1000, I noticed the slider will jump between values from 0 all the way up to over 5000 when trying to adjust numbers that low. I'm not sure what's causing it, or if it's an issue that can be fixed or not. {or even if it's coming from some sort of mod conflict?} I'm more than happy to provide you with any extra information you want, including log files, should you want them. I won't be able to dig those up till after I get off work tonight and have more time, however.

 

 

[severedsolo]

No need for logs @vardicd

I've been aware of it for a while and know what's causing it. The short answer is "sliders suck".

The good news is, I figured out how text input boxes work in the new ui system, so hopefully we can go back to that with the next release.

For now, you can just go into your save and look for BudgetSettings - it's all in there

[vardicd]

1 minute ago, severedsolo said:

No need for logs @vardicd

I've been aware of it for a while and know what's causing it. The short answer is "sliders suck".

The good news is, I figured out how text input boxes work in the new ui system, so hopefully we can go back to that with the next release.

For now, you can just go into your save and look for BudgetSettings - it's all in there

Understood, it's not a huge issue, I got the number to one I'm happy with, but it's nice to know I can go into the save file and edit it there.

[gamerscircle]

Hi there again,

I have been playing around with this and it is possible that if I toggle the option that don't want contract to be paid in rep that it doesn't revert back to getting paid in kerbucks vs rep?  If I start a game with the option, but change my mind.   The contracts do not show any kerbucks value, but if I start a new game and change it before going to mission control, the contracts have kerbucks.

[severedsolo]

4 minutes ago, gamerscircle said:

Hi there again,

I have been playing around with this and it is possible that if I toggle the option that don't want contract to be paid in rep that it doesn't revert back to getting paid in kerbucks vs rep?  If I start a game with the option, but change my mind.   The contracts do not show any kerbucks value, but if I start a new game and change it before going to mission control, the contracts have kerbucks.

The contract interceptor fires when the contracts generate. Any contracts previously generated will still have the funds stripped out but new contracts will have funds. If you are planning on playing like that I also recommend deleting the MM patch that converts world firsts to rep