Transfer windows, Time-warp, and Pacing

[Pthigrivi]

The idea of this thread is to talk about how KSP2 might be different from KSP in terms of pacing. Anyone who's spent time playing career mode knows there are a certain number of repetitive tasks that bog down play over long periods, some of which we've heard solutions for (automated milkruns, orbital construction, BAE), and others we've not, (science grind, kerbal skills). I dug into an old save of mine that was pretty well developed to use as an example of what things could look like with lots of bases and outposts, tankers, freighters, deep space exploration, etc. I've shown below what things look like after about 4 years game time, after the first crew return from Duna. Importantly the save includes the Near Future mods and USI-LS but no extraplanetary launchpads or MKS, so everything is being shipped from Kerbin. 

I think there are a few lessons here. 

1) The game needs streamlining. This save probably took 3 years IRL to build and the first crewed mission to Jool is a year and half in-game from arrival. I think automated milkruns and orbital construction will help enormously with that, as a lot of time was spent on repeat refuel runs from Minmus, sending up dozens of modules for manual assembly of big interplanetary vessels. Etc. I'd also personally eliminate leveling kerbals individually. Upgrade them collectively by some other means. The other thing that really bogs you down is manually moving data around and processing it in labs. We've talked a bit about science grind in other threads but I think a lot of it just needs to happen automatically. 

2) Its worth considering the long periods between transfer windows and in-transit travel compared to how quickly you can do things in KSOI. While I think time needs to be considered for ISRU and (hopefully) LS, players also need to be allowed and encouraged to time warp for weeks at a time to space things out comfortably. A lot of good ideas around construction, research, and science processing time have been proposed for this, but I think it's worth keeping things simple to avoid wasting players time fussing with lots of little timers. This is broadly why Im in favor of one big hopper for processing raw data into usable science as a delay on new tech instead of research and vessel construction time. 

3) Over time you also begin to see rhythms emerge between transfer windows. Moho and Minmus (no inclination burn) windows are frequent, Eeloo and Jool are about once a year, Eve and Duna are longer. You'll often have several concurrent waves of deliveries on their way to Jool before the first one ever gets there. Eve and Duna also have return windows pretty close to the from-Kerbin window, so it makes sense to have 2 reusable freighters each hauling equipment both ways. Since the broad idea in KSP2 will be to build ever-growing colonies it will be worth balancing the rate of construction in-situ vs these long waits and transfers so everything feels like its growing believably and naturally, and factoring the time it will take to explore with probes, then with Kerbals, then set up shop over several years in-game.  Especially if we're encouraging players to build colonies capable of supporting interstellar vessels understanding these long timescales and how they interact will be really important.

Here's the save for reference. Ive got a series of stations and smaller outposts in the Kerbin system, mining and processing data:

Spoiler

A satellite network and Ike-miner left over from the first crewed mission are awaiting a big 30-kerbal Duna base:

Spoiler

Crew is returning to Kerbin from the surface of Eve while another crew heads there to expand a permanent ground base.

Spoiler

 

This little bug is on its way to Dres. First probe landed about a year earlier. 

Spoiler

The first probes have arrived at Jool, while a much larger colony convoy is still en-route: 

Spoiler

This Eeloo mission re-uses a VASIMIR drive from a previous Moho mission. Its going to top-off around Jool before continuing on. Other eeloo probes are still 2 years from arrival. 

Spoiler

 

Edited December 28, 2021 by Pthigrivi

[HebaruSan]

A mission to a further away body should generate some kind of game currency that you can't get from the starting planet's moons (rather than just more money, more science, and more reputation). If that currency was required to unlock later parts of the game, then repeated local milk runs would hit a point of diminishing returns naturally, and time warping to transfer windows would feel more like optimal play.

[theJesuit]

My two cents is this...

A version of KCT, where whe you hit the launch button you go to the launchpad but you then timewarp to the craft being ready.   Then you can go off to do other things while you wait.  Maybe the visual could be something akin to the rocket being rolled out.  You can launch when it gets there.  Multiple rolling vehicles heading to the launchpad.

Science takes time.  With kerbalism, as science tales time, even without KCT,  ypu move forward in game time with slower progression.  This could be the solution to that problem.

With AngleCan Progression, funds are only available with WorldFirsts.  Meaning to upgrade facilities and hire more kerbals you MUST head out.  Something similar to this would be good.

Science that happens only at other planets would be great.

[The Aziz]

Proper mission planning would be nice. Set of transfer windows in front of you, and if you have nothing to do in the meantime, you can just click to timeskip to chosen window and you're there with no more than several seconds of waiting. (It's a space game, waiting will always be a part of it, for anyone complaining)

[Pthigrivi]

11 hours ago, theJesuit said:

Science takes time.  With kerbalism, as science tales time, even without KCT,  ypu move forward in game time with slower progression.  This could be the solution to that problem.

This is sort of the trick. Right now most players never leave KSOI and if they do its a series of one-off flags and footprints missions to maybe a couple of planets and then they start a new save. To get multiple colonies up and visit a meaningful number of planets takes takes years of playing. If they’d like to get many players to Debdeb its going to mean radically speeding up player time while simultaneously slowing down in-game time. The thing I like about boom events, like what you mentioned with AngleCan, is that it accomplishes a lot without bogging players down with fiddly management. @HebaruSan brought up the multiple-currencies solution which would also entice players to get out farther faster, but again I think the best solutions are usually the simplest. In fact I might even be satisfied that world firsts could unlock everything including parts, except that would probably constrain players too much in how they developed. They’d essentially HAVE to go to Duna, then Dres, Eve, Moho in a specific order to unlock parts in a sensible fashion and would have very little creative leeway. 
 

None of this would be much of an issue except for ISRU. You really want to carefully calibrate extraction and processing rates so colony growth isn’t wildly faster or slower than interplanetary transfers. If its too slow players will just ship everything from Kerbin and if its too fast there will be no incentive for interplanetary commerce. There should also be a reason to make ISRU efficient and robust, rather than building one tiny extractor and time-warping for decades to get whatever you want. 
 

This is part of the reason I think KSP2 really wants life support as a counter incentive to infinite warping. I know its controversial mainly because most LS mods are way too finicky. USI I think is the closest but even that could be greatly simplified. If done well it could be a perfect motivation to build greenhouses and recyclers and more lavish habitation modules to keep kerbals happy and productive. If not I worry it would be another fiddly bit of micromanagement that eats up exploration time. 

Edited December 28, 2021 by Pthigrivi

[shdwlrd]

Time warping will be abused for resource collection and science no matter what you do. There will be players that are impatient and will skip ahead whether it's practical to do so or not. You won't be able to force the player to wait until they have the proper equipment unlocked.

Basically, the adventure mode has to be flexible enough for the people who won't wait and will start brute forcing everything, but will advance the tech when appropriate.

I personally, don't want Intercept to dictate the pace I have to play. That would be akin to an open world RPG, and I wouldn't play it. I hate unnecessary grind in games. If I feel the grind is unnecessary, I will stop playing. If I have to wait for too long for the next step, I'll stop playing. If the grind starts feeling like a chore, I'll stop playing.

If the adventure mode feels too grindy, I'm will immediately hop into sandbox and forget the grind and do what I want. I will play by most rules, but I won't wait unnecessarily for some arbitrarily point scale to say I'm ready for the next level. 

[Lithobrake]

I think that the game should add construction time as a feature so that technology you send on interplanetary missions doesn't become obsolete a week after you launch it.  This also makes sense within the context of colonies, as having colonies that can produce ships nearly instantly would break a lot of players' immersion. Moreover, upgrades to offworld VABs could include perks like faster construction time. I agree with the point that people have made that missions shouldn't be grindy and repetitive. The way career works currently in KSP 1 is that you send like 10 missions to the Mun in a row, back to back, to get science from every biome, and spend 40-50 hours grinding in the Kerbin system over the course of a couple weeks in game in order to launch one mission to Duna that takes 10% of the time you spent visiting the Mun. KSP 2 should increase the in-game time it takes to reach a high technology level, but make it so that at most, you're not spending more than 10-15 hours in the Kerbin system before launching interplanetary missions. One of the main reasons career in KSP 1 sucks so much is that  I spend the majority of your time grinding boring missions on Mun and Minmus, and most of the time, I burn out shortly after my first interplanetary missions. I've never been beyond Duna in career because it takes so long to get to that point that I've already moved on. I've visited every body in the game, but only in sandbox, because career is just mind-numbingly repetitive. KSP 2 should fix this issue, so that players can have a sense of the work it takes to get a space program beyond its home planet without forcing them to put in 50 hours grinding just to reach their 4th celestial body in a game that might include dozens of planets and moons. 

[The Aziz]

Construction time isn't going to solve it, it's a matter of yet another time skip. Extraction and refinement of resources is going to take time anyway, and I believe, so do discoveries on which the whole progression is based. And with reusability and automated resupply missions, there shouldn't be such thing as obsolete technology too soon. They can keep going until new tech is discovered. Which can be already on new planet, and hey, there's a chance you won't be able to use this new tech there because you may lack resources to build it. So you'll be stuck with old ships until you create a supply line to haul required materials. Problem with KSP1 is that science is just another currency. You can get to Rapier engine without touching most of the tech tree. But the tech tree here isn't very... progressive. I don't know why seismograph is more expensive than pressure meter. If the progression works in a way where I have to discover all elements needed for a tech first, that's better. But what I mean: to be able to build a rapier, I need to know how to build a airbreathing engine but also one that works on the same fuel but with oxidizer. Two different technologies used together to discover new one. That's progression. That was of course oversimplified example, but the situation is the same everywhere. If I want to create He3 engine (which I probably wouldn't know I wanted to build) I'd have to get somewhere with large quantities of said element to study it. Xenon engines? Need a lot of power to work, where do I get lots of power? Close to the sun, or by using nuclear power. Probably need one or both working first before xenon propulsion can be discovered. Logical cause and effect is the way to do it.

[Pthigrivi]

8 hours ago, shdwlrd said:

Time warping will be abused for resource collection and science no matter what you do. 

Maybe I've been thinking about this wrong. My feeling was of course players will 'abuse' resource collection as much as they can, so the key is to modulate resource collection rates to stretch out in-game time to something reasonable. I still think collection rates are important and there are clever ways to control them (more later*), but in the end the tech upgrades are what everyone is after. Some players might smurf a huge Methalox capacity out of low-level tech, which is fine I suppose, but what most players care about is getting that next new fancy engine or reactor. We talked about this in some of the science threads but I really think that means tech needs to be gated based on exploring more and more challenging planets, so you cant just grind around in KSOI, you need to go to Gilly or Moho to upgrade to He3, or to Jool's moons to get MH tech. You also don't want this to be so 1:1 that players need to go to specific places in a specific order, so there should be flexibility too. Its a tall bill but I think it's achievable in a relatively simple way like locking some tech branches until players had explored one of some class of planet, like inner planets or icey planets or planets with atmospheres, etc. I think this should carry to colony-tech too, so bigger VAB upgrades and fancier hab modules also require interplanetary exploration. So I agree with you completely about the game not dictating pace. The "pace" is the rate at which you gain and build up new technologies, and it's the rate of exploration that drives that. 

@Lithobrake I also agree this is exactly what happens with KSP1, and I think your sense of how many hours should be involved are about right. At one point I estimated that it should take about 60 missions to go interstellar. If we're roughly blocking that out based on the current windows and a more realistic start you could have your first probes to Duna arriving around the beginning of year 2, crewed landing in year 4, colony getting started in year 6. If we're including Jool it would be longer--first probes arriving in year 6, colony starting year 9. You could of course speed that up with less efficient transfers, but this would be a comfortable baseline. I think in the first year you might have 10 missions or more getting started and sending out your first interplanetary probes, but that the pace would slow as you had more automated and longer transfers to warp through. On average though thats what, 6 missions per year till interstellar? 70 days between launches on average? Given that launches would be happening from off-world colonies as well as Kerbin I think resource collection could be really quite slow or constrained by some other means without pinching a reasonable launch rate. 
 

6 hours ago, The Aziz said:

Construction time isn't going to solve it, it's a matter of yet another time skip. Extraction and refinement of resources is going to take time anyway, and I believe, so do discoveries on which the whole progression is based.

Because getting players interstellar will take a great deal of focus I think they should be really careful with players' time and attention and focus it as much as possible on the VAB, BAE, and flight. Other systems are necessary, but if they aren’t happening in one of those places they all risk becoming a distraction. So yeah, I'd be inclined to see Intercept keep it simple as often as possible and pick the one correct tool and discard any step that isn't necessary. The tech tree is definitely part of it and Im certainly interested in how they handle that. 

*One idea that might work to constrain resource supply, storage, and colony growth would be to require a minimum staff to keep fancier equipment operating. They could either assign automatically or just require a population threshold. Since we know population will be driven by Boom events you wouldn't be able to just time-warp to a massive base on Minmus. Exploration would drive that too, so at each stage you're really just growing to the current resource capacity max your population can support. Anything more would be a waste of resources. 

Edited December 29, 2021 by Pthigrivi

[Guest]

14 hours ago, The Aziz said:

Construction time isn't going to solve it, it's a matter of yet another time skip.

I am part of that kind of players that hates to timewarp for years, and I often end up stuck wanting to do something while waiting my Jool probe to reach its destination (I lost count of how many abandoned saves I have with a Jool probe on its way), I feel like the game needs to put in some time wasters and timers to skip (it also feel wrong to send Jeb on Duna the day after he landed from a Mun mission), if anything they fill the space between interplanetary windows increasing the opportunities for missions to other SOIs.

That need to waste time could also be fulfilled by resources generating over time, with colony VABs you need to extract, refine and move them before you can build something, maybe something similar on Kerbin could be useful to set the pace in the early game and limit how much you can exploit the KSC in the mid and late game (it can be time, money, resource management or whatever else, just a way to cap always available infinite  resources).

 

I don't think the game needs a way to limit timewarp abuse, if anything it needs a way to make the players timewarp more often since that could be one of the reasons that keep a lot of the players stuck in Kerbin's SOI.

 

Also being able to set up permanent stations and bases with scheduled resupplies and crew rotations could help, if I have a KSS or a Mun Outpost working on something useful in the background with the crew being rotated automatically warping for a couple of years for an interplanetary mission would be easier.

[The Aziz]

We don't know what early constraints are.

 Like in ksp1, are we limited by part count, mass, size? I don't think we should, but I also think that if we're not, you know fully well that some players will try to reach Ovin only on early methalox engines, despite everything. I also don't think we will be able to build interplanetary mothership without leaving Kerbin system. Not in progression mode anyways (if you don't want limits, play sandbox etc). Purely because (and I hope it's like this) of unavailable resources on the planet. Yes, they could be infinite, but not all kinds everywhere.

Even if your Jeb could hop in Duna ship right after returning from the Mun for whatever reason (while he could stay there and help expanding you first colony prototype) he would just be stuck there on the red sands for two years and do nothing (like in KSP 1). Why do that, if you can use him in local system, while you spend whatever time you need to scout Duna for the best spot for colony and perhaps send first modules there before going to the place with first crew? That alone can take few years. In first game, waiting was literally just sitting there, staring at Tracking Station. Nothing was going on in the middle. Now I think things should be happening in the meantime, and you won't get bored waiting 4 years for joolian probe, but you may spend this time discovering tech, upgrading stations, bases, setting up missions etc etc.

[shdwlrd]

15 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

My feeling was of course players will 'abuse' resource collection as much as they can, so the key is to modulate resource collection rates to stretch out in-game time to something reasonable. I still think collection rates are important and there are clever ways to control them (more later*), but in the end the tech upgrades are what everyone is after. Some players might smurf a huge Methalox capacity out of low-level tech, which is fine I suppose, but what most players care about is getting that next new fancy engine or reactor.

That's the wrong take on that. The max collection and conversion rates should be based the perfect situation. Then take the rate down based on what situation you have at the moment. If you using a basic drill, in a low resource concentration area, with intermittent power losses. I would expect your yields to be quite poor. I would expect the opposite if you had the proper drills, constant power, and good resource concentrations. That shouldn't change whether or not you time warp or not. You need to leave up to the player make a better situation, if they want to. You can't force a good resource collection situation down because it's deemed too fast. You have to let the players play at their pace. Just because it may take you 2 years game time before you have a surface base on the Mun, it shouldn't stop someone doing it in 30 days game time. 

[Pthigrivi]

1 hour ago, shdwlrd said:

That's the wrong take on that. The max collection and conversion rates should be based the perfect situation. Then take the rate down based on what situation you have at the moment. If you using a basic drill, in a low resource concentration area, with intermittent power losses. I would expect your yields to be quite poor. I would expect the opposite if you had the proper drills, constant power, and good resource concentrations. That shouldn't change whether or not you time warp or not. You need to leave up to the player make a better situation, if they want to. You can't force a good resource collection situation down because it's deemed too fast. You have to let the players play at their pace. Just because it may take you 2 years game time before you have a surface base on the Mun, it shouldn't stop someone doing it in 30 days game time. 

So, with something like crew requirements you can reasonably set a cap to prevent exponential infinite growth via time-warp, but if we're talking about gathering materials for off-world rockets and colony expansion before a cap is met all Im saying is the peak resource collection rates are going to set the standard pace of growth one way or another. You can set them high or set them low, but mechanics are destiny. You're right though, there are multiple factors to that: min and max concentrations for each resource in the ground, how quickly they can be extracted and processed, and how difficult they are to find/reach/combine. If your richest deposits are on the poles, or you have to combine them with ones on the equator to make anything useful, thats going to have dV and logistics costs associated. In fact I hope we do have to make those tricky cost analyses from time to time. But in the end players are smart, and they're going to work to approach optimums wherever they are. 

Let's take the period between the first Duna window and the second: year 1 day 236 to year 3 day 309; 925 days. Ideally by day 236 players have done their initial getting to orbit and first few mun and minmus missions and are sending their first probe to Duna. 300 days later it will land and give them some insight on what to plan for on their first crewed mission. They'll also want to consider their first prime Moho window (day 269), Dres (day 341), Eve (year 2, day 160), Jool (year 2, day 250), and Eeloo (year 2, day 256). They of course dont need to send probes on each of the first windows, or they could rush them, but it should at least be possible to meet that schedule. They'll also hopefully be building up their first stations and colonies in KSOI over this period. That might be 6-10 missions? Thats a mission about every 60 days on average on the low end. So what Im saying is if the optimum resource refresh rate to build an average mission by a reasonably efficient player is 20-30 days over that period there should be no problems having the resources we need to keep moving, even for relatively inefficient players. 

All we're trying to avoid here is what @Master39 alludes to, that players don't like to feel like they're doing nothing. The standard shouldn't be to do 12 missions in 30 days and then time-warp for 200 more to the first Duna window. Players will get used to that pace and continue to putter about and bog down in KSOI for ages before the first Duna window arrives, just as they do now. You want to deliberately create in-game space between missions so the flow into interplanetary timescales feels natural. 

Edited December 30, 2021 by Pthigrivi

[shdwlrd]

3 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

So, with something like crew requirements you can reasonably set a cap to prevent exponential infinite growth via time-warp

That wouldn't happen anyway. There's no way to time warp from outpost to full-fledged colony without player intervention. Nate specify said that would be the case. 

3 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

if we're talking about gathering materials for off-world rockets and colony expansion before a cap is met all Im saying is the peak resource collection rates are going to set the standard pace of growth one way or another. You can set them high or set them low, but mechanics are destiny.

That's exactly what I'm talking about. And you're right, collection and conversion rate will dictate the pace of the game. But leave it to the player to decide on how to leverage the mechanics of the game without unnecessary limitations. Multiple low-tech solutions or one high-tech solution, it doesn't matter, they are both doing the same thing.

3 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

If your richest deposits are on the poles, or you have to combine them with ones on the equator to make anything useful, thats going to have dV and logistics costs associated. In fact I hope we do have to make those tricky cost analyses from time to time. But in the end players are smart, and they're going to work to approach optimums wherever they are. 

I'm expecting to see this too. One thing I will have to say is, if a player is getting what they need in a timely manner, they won't care how sloppy a setup is. Unless the whole point of the game is to create an efficient process as possible, "it's good enough" will always win.

3 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

Let's take the period between the first Duna window and the second: year 1 day 236 to year 3 day 309; 925 days. Ideally by day 236 players have done their initial getting to orbit and first few mun and minmus missions and are sending their first probe to Duna. 300 days later it will land and give them some insight on what to plan for on their first crewed mission. They'll also want to consider their first prime Moho window (day 269), Dres (day 341), Eve (year 2, day 160), Jool (year 2, day 250), and Eeloo (year 2, day 256). They of course dont need to send probes on each of the first windows, or they could rush them, but it should at least be possible to meet that schedule. They'll also hopefully be building up their first stations and colonies in KSOI over this period. That might be 6-10 missions? Thats a mission about every 60 days on average on the low end. So what Im saying is if the optimum resource refresh rate to build an average mission by a reasonably efficient player is 20-30 days over that period there should be no problems having the resources we need to keep moving, even for relatively inefficient players.

That's a nice vision on how to progress, but that is YOUR vision on how to progress. You're forgetting that once a player can brute force a transfer, they just might. Or a player doesn't know what the proper transfer windows are, and just go for it ignoring efficiency. (Probably leaving some Kerbals stranded, but hey, it happens.) You have to remember that there are players that know how to create vacuum rated craft that can have a DV in the thousands even if they are using size 1 parts and engines. (And not using the NERV either.)

4 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

All we're trying to avoid here is what @Master39 alludes to, that players don't like to feel like they're doing nothing.

That's the reason for time warping through resource collection and science. Some people are more than happy to run multiple missions at once. Some don't want that hassle. Some are willing to have it take multiple game sessions to reach a milestone, some don't want that. You may have several hours a week to play, I may have 2-3 hours a week to play. The player is the one to dictate the pace, and if time warping is the thing that allows the player to play at the pace they want, why nerf it?

4 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

The standard shouldn't be to do 12 missions in 30 days and then time-warp for 200 more to the first Duna window. Players will get used to that pace and continue to putter about and bog down in KSOI for ages before the first Duna window arrives, just as they do now. You want to deliberately create in-game space between missions so the flow into interplanetary timescales feels natural. 

 Yes, there are down times between the proper transfer windows. But as I said earlier, if you get a craft with 10000 DV into orbit in the early game, you can go just about anywhere in the Kerbol  system at any time. They may not be the most efficient or the quickest transfers, but they will get you there. Or you can spend a couple minutes and time warp to the next transfer window without losing the resources and science that is do to you.

On 12/28/2021 at 9:37 PM, Pthigrivi said:

One idea that might work to constrain resource supply, storage, and colony growth would be to require a minimum staff

Your right, the number of staff should play into the efficiency of an outpost, base or colony. But as discussed, there are other parameters you have to take into account too.

On 12/28/2021 at 9:37 PM, Pthigrivi said:

so at each stage you're really just growing to the current resource capacity max your population can support. Anything more would be a waste of resources. 

Or you're just building up supplies for the future.

[Pthigrivi]

1 hour ago, shdwlrd said:

That's exactly what I'm talking about. And you're right, collection and conversion rate will dictate the pace of the game.

…

That's the reason for time warping through resource collection and science.

Maybe its my fault for miscommunicating here but the only restrictions Id like to see are on resource and science rates. Those are necessary restrictions, and I don’t think anything additional is needed. And of course, as mentioned nothing will prevent players from brute forcing anything except access to resources. Theres also nothing preventing players from taking it easy and playing out sequential missions. In any case those levers will exist and the question is where to set them. What I think you’re missing here is that there is an inverse relationship between pacing in game calendar terms and pacing for the player. The faster missions can be churned out in-game the more missions can and will be packed in between transits and windows, and each one of those gobbles up huge amounts of time for the player before they ever get very far, counterintuitively slowing the game down. Thats what very fast research and resource extraction rates incentivize.  Its one of the principle problems with KSP1’s pacing, and its why its so important to be thoughtful about where to set those levers. Im just saying research and resources should take a few weeks in-game so missions are spread out and players aren’t encouraged to waste time grinding on lots of short missions. 

Edited December 30, 2021 by Pthigrivi

[shdwlrd]

@Pthigrivi my point is this; KSP is a sandbox style of gameplay.

Squad introduced a career and science modes that was ok and a tech tree that was poorly laid out. That severely limited the play style of the individual and created the horrible pacing that KSP1 had.

Intercept hasn't said anything about had their adventure mode would work. But in the beginning stages of the game where you're puttering around Kerbin's SOI is a perfect opportunity for both beginner and veteran players to learn the systems required for colony building, the resource collection and transfer systems, how the science and tech unlocks work, among the basic orbital maneuvering required to do anything in KSP. (Please notice that I'm not referring anything to KSP1 science and tech tree. They were garbage and shouldn't be assumed anything like them will be used in KSP2.) So the early pacing will be busy with smaller, less grandiose designs than the latter missions. That way you can spend time doing something productive until the first transfer windows appear, and you don't feel like you're wasting time. You also have to remember, the size of the rocket you build will be limited to the physical size of the VAB, which in turn, limits the launch mass. 

So, why limit the amount of science, resources you can get in the early game? It seems you don't want the player to have the necessary resources available to immediately take advantage of the first available transfer window. Most veteran KSP players do understand you will have to wait sometimes. The impatient players know when and how to brute force the natural timing of the Kerbol system. So why force these players to wait longer than they have to? Why remove the sandbox design and play style from KSP?

I get any type of progression system will limit the design options. But the progression system shouldn't get in the way of the play style in a sandbox game. If the player wants to play fast and loose; so be it, let them play fast and loose. The same goes with the player that wants to play a slow and conservative approach. Both play styles are equally valid ways to play a sandbox style of game.

[Pthigrivi]

I guess my feeling is KSP became more of a sandbox game because of some of stock career's deficiencies. I spent most of my time playing in Career, but it wasn't for everyone and there were times when even I was grinding my teeth. I think you and I both agree that came from a series of clunky mechanics that produced grind. So how do you reduce grind and give KSP2 the kind of well-oiled, tight mechanics that great games have?
 

On 1/3/2022 at 9:27 PM, shdwlrd said:

So, why limit the amount of science, resources you can get in the early game?

Because, ironically, increasing the speed and availability of science and resources close to Kerbin doesn't make the game faster, it produces grind. Take all those KSC biomes. Is motoring around KSC clicking the same 5 experiments a dozen times fun? No. So why do people do it? Because the resource is too close and too easy to get. It's incentivizing lazy, repetitive play. The same is true throughout Kerbin SOI, incentivizing players to repetitively hop through every biome on both moons until the tech tree is complete, long before the first window to Duna even appears. So when I say there should be fewer resources and it should take longer to capitalize on them Im not talking about requiring a slower pace of play--just the opposite--Im talking about removing the incentive to play slowly and repetitively. And you can still have a sandbox mode in which the relative availability of resources will only be relevant to colony building, but a well designed adventure/career mode wouldn't create all these bad incentives vis-a-vis science. 


This thread is in the main KSP2 general thread and not suggestions + dev so I've generally tried to keep this all more theoretical. But just as examples I think there are ways to produce better incentives and reduce a lot of repetition. After all, it's not a bad thing that players would want to go back to Minmus a few times to study it, its that right now each one of those missions is essentially identical--land wherever and click around the same half a dozen parts. Instead players could drop a probe for the first landing, then send an orbital scanner, then a Kerbal to take a surface sample or study a surface feature, then track an anomaly and hunt it down in a rover. You probably also want to hold back some of the experiments for those later missions so players are incentivized to travel further out to Duna or Moho, so they can fill in with anomaly hunting later during long interplanetary transits. None of this needs to be or should be proscriptive--players should have all the freedom in the world to do things in the order that they like, but at any given point the best rewards should come from doing something the player has not done before. 

Another way to reduce grind is to make science take time, because as laid out above it speeds up game clock and increases the number of transfer windows per minutes-played. Some of this could be in the experiments themselves--experiments that pay out over time or SCANsat style orbital scans. I'd also like to see the functioning of Science labs ironed out though as right now between manually shifting data around and transmitting they just take too much fuss. I do like the idea that surface samples aught to be returned somewhere to count but just docking with a station or vessel with a lab should do it. If it were me I'd have all experiment results automatically upload with a proper connection and go into one big pool of "Data". Processing Data into Science would take time, but could be sped up by upgrading the R+D facility or increasing the number and quality of off-world labs. That way you wouldn't have to fuss about manually moving data around, it would just happen, and it would be up to you to time-warp ahead till you could spend Science on fancy new parts or just brute force it with lower tech. 

We also talked a bit about the conundrum around money and resources at KSC a few months back. I can't remember the up-shot there, but I think I decided you could ditch contracts and money entirely and just add a production plant at KSC that makes raw materials and fuel over time, and you could upgrade its capacity and capabilities. Again this would be about minimizing management fuss with elements that just do their thing automatically. 
 

Edited January 8, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[shdwlrd]

4 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

Take all those KSC biomes. Is motoring around KSC clicking the same 5 experiments a dozen times fun?

Why do you think KSP2 will keep any of the science systems of KSP1? The way you keep referring to KSP1 science system it seems like you're expecting Intercept to keep the same system. 

I'm not going to quote the rest of your post since I mostly agree with it. Science should be set and forget. You could require an active communication constellation before you can start science collection off Kerbin. But the big thing is you shouldn't be getting much collectable science from Kerbin. Kerbin is your homeworld, you should know it already. Most activities on Kerbin should be testing and researching. You shouldn't be directly involved unless you actually want to do it. Off Kerbin, yes, you will have to visit the different biomes, but all you have to do is drop a science package and be done with it.

Another way to hide the grind is keep the player busy so they don't realize that the grind is happening. Contracts or assigned missions in the early game can help mask the grind. They can be used to teach and provide an example to how you should undertake the next steps. The big thing with contracts and missions are that they can't be too long or too short. After a certain point, they fall into the background and behave more like trackers for different boom events. (Probably after you get the automatic resource transfers working or you have your 1st interplanetary base.)

Ps. Contracts and missions don't fund your early game. They have costs involved, but the funding come from the people and industries of Kerbin. Off world its primarily the resources you collect and transfer that fund the construction of crafts and bases/colonies.