Loans

[Northstar1989]

Simple enough idea- I would like to suggest adding the ability to take out loans for your space program.  You would borrow a sum of money upfront, and then have to pay it back later, with interest- helping to relieve frustrating Career progression bottlenecks for many players without the need for grinding contracts they find annoying...

The easiest way to implement something like this would be through the Contracts system.  In fact the easiest way would be to *literally* offer up "loan contracts" where you get a large advance for nothing, but an even larger "failure" cost (and no way to "complete" the contract) which is really just the loan repayment after some fixed time (this would beat having a system implementing regular loan payments for sheer simplicity and ease of implementation...)

Alternatively, the "completion" condition could be to have enough Funds on-hand to repay the loan on a certain date- possibly leading to a very small Reputation boost for your space program for repaying its loan on-time.  By contrast the "Failure" condition could be a large Reputation hit (but no or less Funds penalty) for defaulting on the loan...

The ability to convert contract Funds to Science and Reputation through the existing administrative strategies system wouldn't be a bad interaction either.  After all, maybe you're investing the loan money in R&D or a public appreciation campaign!

 

Regards,

Northstar

 

Edited January 14, 2017 by Northstar1989

[Gaarst]

Anything time related will not work in KSP's career mode.

You can easily land on the Mun in less than 10 in-game days after starting a new career. And going to Duna is just a matter of time-warping until the first launch window.  At the moment when you need the most money, early-mid game (when you need to update buildings to launch large-scale interplanetary missions and are stuck grinding contracts on Mun/Minmus), you can basically launch dozens of missions to Mun/Minmus and complete as many contracts. It's long and tedious IRL but takes no time IG.

Time starts to make sense when you go interplanetary, but unless you're playing on Hard settings, at that point you have several million funds and money isn't a problem anymore.

 

I find that money in career mode is unbalanced and not really a constraint of any kind. You start with way to much money, doing a simgle LKO mission gives you more than enough to pay a Mun mission, and going to the Mun gives you enough to basically launch any mission. Adding a way to get more instantaneously isn't going to help it.

[Zhetaan]

You're not alone in this:  as it turns out, there are several mods for that.

In order, we have @nightingale's Contract Configurator, @Arachnidek's Banking contract pack that goes with it (it's a bit dated, but the basic principle still works with Contract Configurator), @severedsolo's Monthly Budgets, @johnqevil, @magico13, and I think a couple other people's (sorry if I didn't catch your names) B.R.O.K.E., and @nathan1's AltFunding (also just a bit dated).

I'm sure that there are others.

Edited January 14, 2017 by Zhetaan

[Wjolcz]

8 hours ago, Gaarst said:

Anything time related will not work in KSP's career mode.

You can easily land on the Mun in less than 10 in-game days after starting a new career. And going to Duna is just a matter of time-warping until the first launch window.  At the moment when you need the most money, early-mid game (when you need to update buildings to launch large-scale interplanetary missions and are stuck grinding contracts on Mun/Minmus), you can basically launch dozens of missions to Mun/Minmus and complete as many contracts. It's long and tedious IRL but takes no time IG.

Time starts to make sense when you go interplanetary, but unless you're playing on Hard settings, at that point you have several million funds and money isn't a problem anymore.

 

I find that money in career mode is unbalanced and not really a constraint of any kind. You start with way to much money, doing a simgle LKO mission gives you more than enough to pay a Mun mission, and going to the Mun gives you enough to basically launch any mission. Adding a way to get more instantaneously isn't going to help it.

That's true. Launching rockets is ridiculously cheap. Daily/weekly/monthly budgets would be much better. Also the tree should be researched with money. I have it working like that in my modded game and it all balances itself perfectly. When I warp the money accumulates (until it hits its maximum) and the time passes which means I don't unlock the tree before the first transfer window. In fact, I'm in the middle of it and I've just sent my third interplanetary vessel.

Anyway, the career is pretty bad. Rebalancing or adding new things won't fix it. Its concept and design was broken since the begining and it needs to be redone, not tweaked.