[SUGGESTION] Career Mode and Funds in KSP 2 and issues, that come with removing them from the game.

[SOXBLOX]

Yeah, I know. I love imposing rules upon myself as well. For example, I never launch an interplanetary mission without providing realistic amounts of space for my Kerbals. I don't have to, the game leaves the decision to build realistically up to me. I think that even if there will be no limit on ship spamming in, KSP2, we can all impose these limits on ourselves.

[Lewie]

40 minutes ago, SOXBLOX said:

Yeah, I know. I love imposing rules upon myself as well. For example, I never launch an interplanetary mission without providing realistic amounts of space for my Kerbals. I don't have to, the game leaves the decision to build realistically up to me. I think that even if there will be no limit on ship spamming in, KSP2, we can all impose these limits on ourselves.

One of the few limitations I don’t impose is rtg spamming on craft. (I usually only need 8-12)

[mattinoz]

5 hours ago, Acid_Burn9 said:

So guys this is a glimpse of new KSP 2 Developer Update 1.5 video.



Parts are in fact balanced by their cost in resources, just as i suggested. I can sleep in peace now!

(still hope that funds make it into the game tho)

This doesn't rule out funds as there is also a stock figure. So how does one get stock of an item if one can't trade them and have to make them from resources?

 

[dnbattley]

Lots of speculation here, with the only facts available being that parts will have a "cost" in terms of raw materials, which it is also possible to stockpile, but in certain circumstances or game modes, as shown in the picture, stock of raw material is not available or relevant.

It seems likely to me that we were seeing a sandbox mode in the image, hence the "-" stock, but I accept the possibility (albeit one I see as less likely) that in all game modes stock is not relevant from the "home" location.

More likely, I think, in non-sandbox mode is that missions will offer materials from which the player is free to make rockets, and efficiency is this rewarded with excess material to undertake "off-contract" missions.

But we will see. Either way, I am happy to see the existence of a (non-cash, in this case) "cost" for building in circumstances it can be made available, and fully expect this to be able to be disabled for players who do not like this limitation.

[Guest]

7 hours ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

Follow the logic from the point of a game designer; you want your players to have to spread out to get the needed raw materials for the next stage/tier/tech level. So you either have to provide alternatives that don't require them; or put those materials within a reasonable distance/grasp of the player at the level they're expected to be at before attempting to grab them. You won't need to find them all in one place; just the ones you need to pop off the next series of rockets and colony ships.

My point is that you'll probably need multiple mining outposts to have a self-sufficient colony on the Mün and then maybe importing some resources from Kerbin anyway.

Most people never set up a base on the Mün (except when for "Base" you mean any random stranded lander), setting up all the infrastructure, veichles and fuel depots (you don't want to build a new rocket to transfer mined resources every time, especially when you still have to bring them all the way from Kerbin) to have a working Mün Space Center could be more difficult, engaging and intresting than simply spamming random generated contracts and have a mission toward your goal every 9 of money grind.  

7 hours ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

The moment you've left kerbins gravity well; you have just removed the largest source of inefficiency and waste possible. So without funds there is absolutely no reason to not just keep building bigger and bigger, and use those massive ships to setup a network of mines and layover stations between you and laythe.

But having money on Kerbin would just delay this, you take more time before you have that first off-world space-center but then it doesn't change anything.

7 hours ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

That scale is WHY i'm worried that there's no money; because with it comes the potential to rapidly snowball into a state of essentially "Iv'e won, but the game won't know it for another 200 turns" very easily.

I don't think there could be a "win state" in KSP, everyone of us play by his own rules, limits and restrictions. I care about habitation space, I would never send someone for a months long mission in a Mk1 pod, does that mean that I'm winning less than someone doing a "42 crew capacity station with 600 ore" contract by putting 42 EVA seats on a Ore tank?

8 hours ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

Why reuse anything when all the materials you could ever need are a few moments of timewarp away? Why refuel when you have a massive series of low-gravity moons ready to churn out massive ships with 10-20K DV at a moments notice?

You need to reuse and refuel because those hoppers doing back and forth between the colony and the mines can't yet be built at the colony itself and would be way less efficient to to build them every time anyway (your 200 ton per hour mine only produce 20 because you need to spend 180 every time to rebuild your non-reusable hopper).

8 hours ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

Pretty simple; each system has it's own financial account which then is added or subtracted from/to the global account. You would have an administration center that would have policies or cards that would increase the efficiency of this, allow you to change what contracts (Or bias it towards specific ones) you'd be served etc.

Also you're not paying for oxygen; you're paying for the rocket that'll deliver the mining and IRSU equipment that'll produce it for the colony.

I don't understand how would you use money when you stop buying parts in KSC and start building them with resources from your mines.

I'm not arguing not to have money, I'm just trying to immagine how could they not become obsolete as soon as you build your first colonial VAB.

[AlamoVampire]

@dnbattley hate to be a wet blanket but what was in the video is pre-alpha and subject to change. Could very well just as easily go away as it could get more polished into a more refined material cost system. I for one will hangout on the towel bar and drip dry whilst i wait for more information.

that said, personally, unsure of my feelings on this i am. Wait and see i will. Rush to judgment i will not.

 

034506262020

[Incarnation of Chaos]

11 minutes ago, Master39 said:

I don't understand how would you use money when you stop buying parts in KSC and start building them with resources from your mines.

I'm not arguing not to have money, I'm just trying to immagine how could they not become obsolete as soon as you build your first colonial VAB.

I think this is our fundamental disconnect here; i think of KSP "Funds" as an abstraction of the wages paid to workers to build the craft, the people who process the materials, the mission controllers who sit for long hours at the DSN monitoring the signal going to a probe that's been adrift for a decade etc.

So in my mind; you would still pay for things on colonial VABs or Orbital VABs. Resources would be an additional constraint on top because we can't assume infrastructure and a supply chain is already in place like there would be on Kerbin and would have to be either built, mined or otherwise developed beforehand.

 

[Acid_Burn9]

9 hours ago, Lewie said:

One of the few limitations I don’t impose is rtg spamming on craft. (I usually only need 8-12)

ONLY? You can launch multiple science missions to the Mun(can easily be fitted under 50k-70k for each mission) and almost unlock whole tech tree for the same price as putting 8-12 RTGs(23.3k each, 186k-280k in total) on the craft! In my eyes that is literally the rtg spam i talked about. It's not like i'm trying to shame you for doing so, i just don't think, that the term "only" can be used, to describe this amount of RTGs lol.

11 hours ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

Pretty simple; each system has it's own financial account which then is added or subtracted from/to the global account. You would have an administration center that would have policies or cards that would increase the efficiency of this, allow you to change what contracts (Or bias it towards specific ones) you'd be served etc.

Also you're not paying for oxygen; you're paying for the rocket that'll deliver the mining and IRSU equipment that'll produce it for the colony.

I don't agree with this part. Even arguing for money being absolutely essential for the game like KSP, i still think that making ships cost money on colonies makes very little sense. Cost in resources is much more fitting for this specific situation. Although, as discussed earlier, there are many other cases, where money can and will be a better option.

Edited June 26, 2020 by Acid_Burn9

[Incarnation of Chaos]

15 minutes ago, Acid_Burn9 said:

I don't agree with this part. Even arguing for money being absolutely essential for the game like KSP, i still think that making ships cost money on colonies makes very little sense. Cost in resources is much more fitting for this specific situation. Although, as discussed earlier, there are many other cases, where money can and will be a better option.

Having essentially a black box where X+Y materials go in and having Ship Z come out makes even less sense to me. These people aren't just handling dangerous fuels, using dangerous tools, they're having to extract the raw materials, return them to the facility and then finally assemble it afterwards all while in alien and hostile environments. They'd have to be incredibly well-compensated to even consider hopping aboard a colony ship knowing that's what awaited them at their destinations, and them doing it without any sort of required compensation wouldn't even be a thought.

That being said; i would think having the materials could provide a discount or something. Overall if this thread has demonstrated anything; it's that any potential career mode will need to have a variety of options and be extremely configurable for individual tastes. Or else KSP2 modders will have their work cut out for them.

[Acid_Burn9]

52 minutes ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

Having essentially a black box where X+Y materials go in and having Ship Z come out makes even less sense to me.

Noone said anything about magical black box. Most likely there will be mining sites, that extract resources and cargo vessels, with designated parts to contain and transport said resource, that deliver it to the actual colony, first time driven by player and then through automated "supply lines" that devs mentioned in one of their insights.

I agree, that adding some complexity, in form of multiple refinery&crafting facilities wouldn't hurt, but that is much more logical, then paying money and having resources magically appear out of nowhere. That contradicts with fundamental concept of money, where money is just an universal intermediary in the process of trading goods. Purchase always has 2 sides by definition. One side has money and wants goods, while other has goods and wants money. This works very well on Kerbin, where buying resources/parts from independent manufacturers, that have said products in their possession, is pretty believable and logical concept, but on a planet, that no Kerbal has stepped before, there is just noone to buy anything from. And if there is no "other side", the purchase is impossible by definition. Receiving something for money, in place like this, not just makes very little sense, but rather makes no sense at all. Resources in the ground won't magically turn into a rocket, just because you threw couple of dollars at them. You have to refine them and make rocket out of them all by yourself. And that's what colony system in KSP2 is all about.

Edited June 26, 2020 by Acid_Burn9

[Incarnation of Chaos]

4 minutes ago, Acid_Burn9 said:

Noone said anything about magical black box. Most likely there will be mining sites, that extract resources and cargo vessels, with designated parts to contain and transport said resource, that deliver it to the actual colony, first time driven by player and then through automated "supply lines" that devs mentioned in one of their insights. I agree that adding some complexity in form of multiple refinery&crafting facilities wouldn't hurt, but that is much more logical then paying money and having resources magically appear out of nowhere. That contradicts with fundamental concept of money, where money is just an universal intermediary in the process of trading goods. Purchase always has 2 sides by definition. One side has money and wants goods, while other has goods and wants money. This works very well on Kerbin, where buying resources/parts from independent manufacturer, that has said products in his possession, is pretty believable and logical concept, but on a planet, that no Kerbal has stepped before, there is just noone to buy anything from. And if there is no "other side", the purchase is impossible by definition. Receiving something for money, in place like this, not just makes very little sense, but rather makes no sense at all. Resources in the ground won't magically turn into a rocket, just because you threw couple of dollars at them. You have to refine them and make rocket out of them all by yourself. And that what colony system in KSP2 is all about.

You don't have to be able to purchase anything to be paid for your work; i'd imagine they'd want some money to use on shore leave when the next crew rotation came up.

But if you're talking about a ship of people that goes somewhere and never comes back, then sure that's perfectly valid. But that still only holds true in the earliest stages of Interstellar colonization, and wouldn't in the local Kerbol system due to the distances involved being much smaller. Truely self-sufficient colonies would surprise me if they existed earlier in the game than that.

[Acid_Burn9]

 

28 minutes ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

You don't have to be able to purchase anything to be paid for your work; i'd imagine they'd want some money to use on shore leave when the next crew rotation came up.

But the thing is - we haven't talked about paying for/to Kerbals. That is completely different subject, that has very little connection with what we have discussed. And anyway you said it yourself:

28 minutes ago, Incarnation of Chaos said:

if you're talking about a ship of people that goes somewhere and never comes back, then sure that's perfectly valid. But that still only holds true in the earliest stages of Interstellar colonization, and wouldn't in the local Kerbol system due to the distances involved being much smaller. Truely self-sufficient colonies would surprise me if they existed earlier in the game than that.

Truly self-sufficient colonies are the exact thing we talked about and you just agreed with our point. And when it comes to non-self-sufficient colonies, that are close to Kerbin, they are being supplied from Kerbin, where concept of purchase works very well. If you want to build your "thingy" at orbital station/surface colony and don't want to have to produce resources yourself, you don't buy the resources for it on the spot, using, as you called it, "local balance", you buy resources ON KERBIN and deliver them to the station/colony in order to use them there. Because once again - there are nobody selling this stuff at your station/colony, but there are on Kerbin. Once again my point stands:
on Kerbin - cost in money or in resources, that are purchasable for money,
and in colonies - cost in resources, mined on the spot or brought from somewhere, where they could have been mined, or from Kerbin where they could have been bought.

And paying Kerbals for their work, that you have suggested, doesn't not interfere with this system whatsoever. It just adds up on top of it.

Edited June 26, 2020 by Acid_Burn9

[Tonas1997]

I can see how a "buying resources" mechanic could kinda solve the problem of having no direct monetary funds to worry about (well, sort of). As a RSS/RO career player, I also think there should be a money-driven progression gamemmode; like so many others already said, it imposes a lot of constraints and forces you to think beyond delta-v when deciding on launch architectures. Should you go for distributed lift (Direct proposals), monolithic all-in-one launchers (Apollo) or a mix of both (SLS/Artemis)? Does it make sense to fill up your pockets to unlock that lander part by doing commercial launches? I could give examples for hours.

In any case, a resource-driven system where parts don't cost money but cost specific resources which you can buy or mine for would bring the whole economic dynamic to the game to a different layer, therefore not getting rid of it entirely or changing it beyond recognition. If, for instance, you check out SmarterEveryDay's excellent ULA Rocket Factory Tour video, you can see how it all starts with resources. Aluminum, stainless steel, carbon composits... the final "price tag" of the rocket is just an amalgamation of the costs of the materials, labour, processes, installations, services, bureaucracy and so on. I personally wouldn't mind a material-based career mode that extends the funding mechanic by adding this extra layer of complexity. I reckon this would have more of an impact in the early game, when the prospects of space mining are still a distant dream - but down-to-earth space programs are fun on their own as well, and I think it would be quite satisfying to progress from old, boring commercial/institutional contracts where you have to manage a stockpile of money/resources to a post-scarcity type of world where you can mine the resources by yourself instead of buying them from the Kerbal Resource Emporium, Inc.   

[Lewie]

4 hours ago, Acid_Burn9 said:

ONLY? You can launch multiple science missions to the Mun(can easily be fitted under 50k-70k for each mission) and almost unlock whole tech tree for the same price as putting 8-12 RTGs(23.3k each, 186k-280k in total) on the craft! In my eyes that is literally the rtg spam i talked about. It's not like i'm trying to shame you for doing so, i just don't think, that the term "only" can be used, to describe this amount of RTGs lol.

No...I play science mode...

and I have only done it a few times. Mostly for my Jool mission for the mining equipment. (Still am working on trying to being them home)

[magnemoe]

On 6/23/2020 at 4:22 AM, AlamoVampire said:

@magnemoe i do not know if you have read all 3 or so pages of this thread, frankly I would not blame you if you have not. But, rather than I write it again, I direct you to my post on page 2, with my timestamp: 134906202020. It is my first entry in this thread itself. I think you may be overlooking the issues laid out there. If I have however misread your meaning and those issues I lay out in said post are not issues to you, I apologize for the misunderstanding.

 

212206222020

No I did not read your post or all of the previous posts. 
And I agree with you, having some kind of quest story would be nice. I would move the planets around a bit so you got Duna and Eve windows some months into the game. 
Then give players an option: send an probe or an manned mission. An fresh player might well select the probe option while some who has played a bit would go manned. In short they skipped the probe part of the quest who would come after the probe had landed. 
The manned version would also tell you to return 3 kerbals to Kerbin after landing. Yes this includes Eve, and yes manned to Eve would be an dialogue trying to talk you out of it
Then build an base, note that if you initially landed an base you will get an auto complete here. 

I still stand with the previous commet that funds are only limiting how many kerbals you can recruit after you got KSC fully upgraded.
Now the incremental cost for minions made perfect sense in Dungeon Master, it does not for KSP, yes having more kerbals let you do more stuff but simply having to pay an salary would work well enough, perhaps more upgrades for astronaut complex and mission control to handle all the missions and kerbals.
On the other hand having kerbals on very long missions should cost more, say past 3 year they cost a bit more, after 5 its doubled, after 10 it doubles again, this do want you to do crew rotations. 

This will not be as much an issue in KSP 2 as we have colonies not bases. 

[fizy45]

Like I said in the previous post this topic debete can also be solved by having options. Personally I care about Career mod and never played in Sandox (except testing mod fps) so for me its important but contracts should be meaningul I mean rescue this take that to this no thats plain dumb.

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, fizy45 said:

Like I said in the previous post this topic debete can also be solved by having options. Personally I care about Career mod and never played in Sandox (except testing mod fps) so for me its important but contracts should be meaningul I mean rescue this take that to this no thats plain dumb.

They're not removing science and career and leaving sandbox only, they're rewriting the whole progression system. 

The fact that they're using completely different terms instead of the ones we're used to ("progression" or "adventure" instead of "career", "missions" instead of "contracts") makes me thing that they're rethinking the whole thing from the ground up.