Career Mode and Mods

[NeoMorph]

I'm really hoping career mode is stock only. This would be good for new players to learn rather than just use mechjeb. It would build some skill level on them and allow them to more deeply understand what it takes to get into orbit and why.

I'm a MechJeb fan for sure... but for Career mode I think it should be stock only too. That said, I think there should be something like Protractor and Engineer in the VAB to help build and time the launch. After that it's all up to your driving.

[DChurchill]

but for Career mode I think it should be stock only too.

Why? And this has nothing to do with any particular mod, just mods in general. If someone wants to magic his station to orbit with hyperedit and give himself a bazillion kerbal dollars with some other mod, what difference does it make?

[EmissionGeneration]

Why wouldn't they? Are you afraid they're going to grief you or something?

They'd have a hard time trying to Grief someone that hardly uses any Mods in the first place now wont they.

[FITorion]

I hope and except them to stick with all stock with career. The stock sandbox game is already intimidating to new players. There are too many parts and their descriptions do not reveal what they do.

Think of career as a tutorial for sandbox.

[JakeGrey]

How about requiring stock parts only to earn some or all in-game achievements, if and when Squad decide to include some? That would be one way to satisfy the purists, who can now feel smug and morally superior about not being punished for "cheating" without inconveniencing anyone else very much.

[regex]

They'd have a hard time trying to Grief someone that hardly uses any Mods in the first place now wont they.

Then why all the fuss over this thread and your proclamations of how awesomely you use MechJeb if their decision to allow mods in career mode literally doesn't matter?

[FITorion]

Why? And this has nothing to do with any particular mod, just mods in general. If someone wants to magic his station to orbit with hyperedit and give himself a bazillion kerbal dollars with some other mod, what difference does it make?

In sandbox... none.

In career it makes a difference to the experience and storyline (if any). It's like popping in a movie and fast forwarding to the end or reading the last page of a book...

Sandbox is a place where you can do what ever you want. Career mode is a game... a presentation... a crafted experience that the devs want you to experience. Why would they not try to ensure you get the experience they're going for? I fully expect them to limit career mode to only stock parts so they can control the environment in which the game is played. However I for one would like Mod importation to be unlocked for career mode either after a certain point of technical competence or after a career mode "win" so subsequent plays of career could have mods from the start.

[EmissionGeneration]

Then why all the fuss over this thread and your proclamations of how awesomely you use MechJeb if their decision to allow mods in career mode literally doesn't matter?

Obvious Answer is Obvious.....

But there are also alot of Mods out there that add extra to the Game, such as RemoteTech which I've just started getting into and have no idea how I lived without it, as well as KAS, it's Mods like these that I'd love to have the ability to use in Career, you get no benefit from them but more creations to build and challenges to over-come.

Reading disability?

[regex]

Career mode is a game... a presentation... a crafted experience that the devs want you to experience. Why would they not try to ensure you get the experience they're going for?

I can only point to games like Oblivion and Fallout 3 for examples. Some people don't even consider Oblivion playable unless they've got a few mods installed (I don't play without OOO, the stock game is way too easy). KSP career mode may end up with a very lively mod scene intended to make the game more difficult.

Another point is that we have no idea what career mode will look like right now. It may not have a story at all, maybe just a series of random missions that scale up until you're doing outer planet transfers all the time.

They'd have a hard time trying to Grief someone that hardly uses any Mods in the first place now wont they.

Reading disability?

So you don't care but you do care? The answer isn't so obvious.

Edited July 11, 2013 by regex

[FITorion]

All this talk about MechJeb and it's Autopilot when I recall a Live Stream with Squad saying later down the track they hope to implement Kerbals doing activities that you ask them to do, this includes flying your Ship to Orbit if you wish. The stats will effect how efficient they are in the task though.

Personally I use MechJeb and I have never used Autopilot. I love it purely for it's information Windows, I try and avoid using the Map Mode or creating any Nodes, and MechJeb provides me the information I need to fly my ship 100% Manually.

Sure there are many parts out there that are "Cheat" Parts, but honestly, the people who use those Parts I don't see as the people who will be playing Career mode at all, they obviously only play the Game to screw around and have a good time in their own way. But there are also alot of Mods out there that add extra to the Game, such as RemoteTech which I've just started getting into and have no idea how I lived without it, as well as KAS, it's Mods like these that I'd love to have the ability to use in Career, you get no benefit from them but more creations to build and challenges to over-come.

If Squad do allow Mods in Career Mode, and people want their Cheat Parts in the game, then sure, they payed for the Game, so they should enjoy it in which ever way they want.

What if... career mode wasn't the only one...

What if... modders could create their own... using the modded parts on the tech tree...

What if... Squad comes out with their own parts that do the same types of things as those mod parts?

The game isn't done and the parts in it are just the bare minimum needed to test the systems they have in place. When they're done with systems they'll go crazy making parts to take advantage of those systems. The last phase of development is always the fleshing out of content where as before you were making the structure to support the content.

[EmissionGeneration]

What if... career mode wasn't the only one...

What if... modders could create their own... using the modded parts on the tech tree...

What if... Squad comes out with their own parts that do the same types of things as those mod parts?

The game isn't done and the parts in it are just the bare minimum needed to test the systems they have in place. When they're done with systems they'll go crazy making parts to take advantage of those systems. The last phase of development is always the fleshing out of content where as before you were making the structure to support the content.

Yeah thats true that they will eventually bring in new aspects of the Game, such as Resources, but as the Game Developes, so will the Mods, neither will ever be ahead of the other, and I don't see Squad implementing everything known in Astronomy into the Game unfortunately.

[stupid_chris]

Personally I think the choice should be to the player. Forcing the player to play pure stock is like forcing the player to use mods. All of those who preach we shouldn't use MechJeb, how would you feel if they announced MechJeb is required to play career mode? Well that's how I would feel to learn I can't use mods for career. Everyone plays the game differently. I've said it in other threads, and I'll say it here too. I find the flying part of the game boring. What I love the most is building awesome stuff, and seeing it work. And I can say I'm having just as much fun as any of you is. My piloting skills are okay, but far from being awesome. When I build something, I wanna know what it's really capable of. And this is why I use MechJeb most of the time. Getting to visit other worlds with the rockets I conceived thrills me beyond imagination. If I had to do it all by hand, I'd get really bored honestly.

If you don't want to use mods in career because you think only stock parts should belong there, why would you force everyone else to do like you? Letting people play the game as they want to play it is the key to me. If someone wants to start career with an Orion drive, then good for him, it's not affecting my career mode in any single way and I couldn't care less. If he's having some fun, I'm glad for him.

Also, if stock parts will have some graduation pattern with unlocking parts as we go, I'm 100% sure modders will have a tool to implement this to their mods. This way, mods will have a logical progression pattern set by the modder so that parts unlock at different steps through the career, preventing your game to be overpowered from the beginning. This could also find itself in the cfg file of the part, so everyone could modify it according to what they want and on how they want to play the game.

[SleepyWacKo]

You shouldn't need an autopilot to enjoy the game.

who are you to tell someone how they should or should not enjoy a game? maybe you shouldn't need manual control to enjoy the game?. I personally think using a autopilot feature is more realistic, space flights are handles by the flight computer, the pilot only takes controls when more precise control is needed such as docking. etc. I'm glad mechjeb exists, i'm also glad the devs themselves under their planned features are going to implement some type of autopilot feature of their own but using kerbal abilities as it should be. IMO the kerbals fly the ships not me, mechjeb helps me RP that factor until there is an built in way via devs!

[fatfluffycat]

I paid for the game with my own money, And I shouldn't be allowed to play with mods? Its a single-player game, why should you care about how I play the game? Plus stock gets pretty old really fast.

[Sathurn]

Here my two cents.

Career Mode equals a challenge. There should be no mods in career mode when going for an "achievements." If you move over to the challenge forum, most of the challenges there prefer to limit in some way the mods used to achieve them (even if it is only alternate scoring). Right now the game demands mods. This is mostly because a lot of what should be stock is mods.

What I'm hoping Squad does is:

1. Career Mode, all stock.

2. Career Mode, mods.

3. Pure sand box. And I hope like !@#$ that they don't tie Sandbox to Career mode progress in any way.

[stupid_chris]

There should be no mods in career mode when going for an "achievements."

There might not even be achievements. And even if there is, what does it change for you if someone used mods to get them? I mean really, it only affects their gameplay and only their own. There's literally no competition in KSP, so using the cheat panel or not only affects the one using it, and has no effect on other people because there's no ranking. I'm sorry but I'll be pretty upset if I can't unlock some things because I use mods.

[NeoMorph]

Why? And this has nothing to do with any particular mod, just mods in general. If someone wants to magic his station to orbit with hyperedit and give himself a bazillion kerbal dollars with some other mod, what difference does it make?

If they want to do that, just use Sandbox. Career should be about a fixed difficulty... Easy, Medium, Hard, Jebediah... Adding mods would break the difficulty. Like I said, mods should be limited to Sandbox as that is supposed to be "Anything Goes".

This is just my view and if I had the option of using mods or not in Career I would use stock... and I'm a VERY heavy mod user (as others will tell you).

[SleepyWacKo]

Here my two cents.

Career Mode equals a challenge. There should be no mods in career mode when going for an "achievements." If you move over to the challenge forum, most of the challenges there prefer to limit in some way the mods used to achieve them (even if it is only alternate scoring). Right now the game demands mods. This is mostly because a lot of what should be stock is mods.

What I'm hoping Squad does is:

1. Career Mode, all stock.

2. Career Mode, mods.

3. Pure sand box. And I hope like !@#$ that they don't tie Sandbox to Career mode progress in any way.

but why does it matter how someone decides to play a single player game? If this was multiplayer i would see every ones point, but considering this is a single player game why does it matter if mods are used or not? The only reason i can for see why most would be against it is simply ego stroking! The i can do this and you can't haha attitude!

[stupid_chris]

If they want to do that, just use Sandbox. Career should be about a fixed difficulty... Easy, Medium, Hard, Jebediah... Adding mods would break the difficulty. Like I said, mods should be limited to Sandbox as that is supposed to be "Anything Goes".

This is just my view and if I had the option of using mods or not in Career I would use stock... and I'm a VERY heavy mod user (as others will tell you).

I'm fine with that, but do we really need to force everyone to play like this?

[SleepyWacKo]

I'm fine with that, but do we really need to force everyone to play like this?

i wouldn't worry about being forced, I will be shocked if the devs went the route of blocking mods in career mode for a single player game! There is no advantage and reason to do so other than helping pet some ones ego! Ego is what this whole thread is basically about, there is one side that wants to force everyone to play their way with no mods and there is the other side that just simply wants the choice to use mods if they see fit. Devs can simply mark said saved game as mod enabled so said mod user can't pass off his accomplishments as stock.

[regex]

Devs can simply mark said saved game as mod enabled so said mod user can't pass off his accomplishments as stock.

Why would they even bother? Who's validating these save games? Is there a need to?

[SleepyWacKo]

Why would they even bother? Who's validating these save games? Is there a need to?

in my opinion, no there is no need to, but this has satisfied the ego crowd in past games about this same very subject in career modes! basically it would be a compromise so those that did their crap without mods can gloat about it still

[Tarmenius]

but why does it matter how someone decides to play a single player game?

I suspect that it's not so much how others would play it, but how the game would be built. A game made to include mods (like this one) will potentially be structured much differently from one designed to not have them at all, especially in the difficulty department. The fear of game-breaking mods (even in a single-player game) is likely to be based in the idea that the developers will spend their time accounting for the various mods and inevitable breaking of the mechanics, rather than focusing on providing a specific, dedicated experience to the player. So the "vanilla player" would end up feeling as though his or her experience was of secondary importance. And that feeling of being less important is probably the root of the issue, rather than a want for others to play a particular way.

We can already see the push for such divided attention being expressed in these arguments. Suggestions that the developers put in a bunch of extra options for the varying play-styles is a fine example.

At least, that's my guess.

I personally don't care much one way or the other. I love the hell out of this game and I can't imagine the final product being any less amazing as it is already.

Edited July 11, 2013 by Tarmenius

[Eric S]

Another point is that we have no idea what career mode will look like right now. It may not have a story at all, maybe just a series of random missions that scale up until you're doing outer planet transfers all the time.

Actually, career mode isn't going to be anything like a campaign in a normal computer game. The devs have already made it clear that campaign mode doesn't follow a set script/set of missions, just that certain things have to be done before certain parts/missions become available. If you can do a manned mission to the Mun without needing anything that's unlocked by lesser goals, then that could easily be your first mission.

Really, career mode is like sandbox mode but with budget/recruiting(/research?) issues tying your launches together so that it feels more like a space program than it does just a bunch of individual launches.

[stupid_chris]

I suspect that it's not so much how others would play it, but how the game would be built. A game made to include mods (like this one) will potentially be structured much differently from one designed to not have them at all, especially in the difficulty department. The fear of game-breaking mods (even in a single-player game) is likely to be based in the idea that the developers will spend their time accounting for the various mods and inevitable breaking of the mechanics, rather than focusing on providing a specific, dedicated experience to the player. So the "vanilla player" would end up feeling as though his or her experience was of secondary importance.

We can already see the push for such divided attention being expressed in these arguments. Suggestions that the developers put in a bunch of extra options for the varying play-styles is a fine example.

At least, that's my guess.

I personally don't care much one way or the other. I love the hell out of this game and I can't imagine the final product being any less amazing as it is already.

No, the open door for mods is already there. The devs aren't developing with the focus of making mod compatible in every way. They're developing the game to make it work as they plan it to. It's then the job of the modding community to accommodate to the work of the devs and the game's format. When Career comes out, it might indeed have a different save format than sandbox. But it's highly unlikely mods that work with sandbox will break in career.