Is Squad Planning Full Recovery Ability?

[Sasuga]

I picked up KSP when I saw it finally had Career Mode (Actually, the name "Career Mode" didn't catch my eye, but seeing other people play it and how it worked did.)

Since there's a resource of money, and with contracts being the only way to get money (and thus a finite resource), I of course was doing everything I could think of to save money.

The first thing I did was to strap parachutes onto my stages, so they would drift down to the planet and be collected up to be reused later. After all, our real world space programs used to do that.

However, I was sad when I got back to planet and found that all the little bits that had safely landed on the planet were gone!?

So, I tried several other things, and then watched a video by a very popular KSP YouTuber, and saw how I could recollect pieces if they had probes or cockpits, and then only if I kept the camera (more or less) focused on them (the range is the real issue) until they reached the ground.

So, I'm sad.

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So, my question, as the title asks: Does Squad plan on making full recovery possible (without attaching probes or command modules to everything)?

[regex]

No idea and they're not liable to tell us until and if it's been released in an update. Anyway, why would you want that? You already get so much cash from contracts that funding is meaningless past a certain point; having everything be recoverable either means the game has to be balanced around that (which messes up disposable play styles) or it makes funds even more useless (a case of "why the hell is this in the game anyway?").

[RenevB]

There have been several discussions about this. Someone made a mod to do exactly what you expect KSP to do and it's called Debrefund.

And in a way you did not intend, there is already full recoverability in the game. The refund percentage for the runway is 100%.

[vexx32]

Short answer: we have no indication if it's officially planned.

Addendum: in my opinion, they'd be somewhat crazy not to, even if they don't do physics sim all the way to the ground.

[Kasuha]

I was paranoid about not losing stuff in Career at first, too. Of course I know the game well so I did not try to mount parachutes on my spent stages, instead I relied on cheap disposable SRBs in early stages and moved on to SSTO designs as soon as possible. I ended up with lots of money, more than I ever need and every contract just adds up to that. On the downside, my space program did not resemble any real world evolution of space programs.

Personally I hope future tweaks to the system will clear the gap between SSTOs and classical staged rockets. At present, SSTOs are just way too beneficial.

[Sirrobert]

Actually you're wrong in the asumption that Funds are a finite resource.

Conctracts are indeed (currently) the only way to get them, but contracts are not finite. And thus, funds are not finite

[Rusty6899]

Considering how easily obtained funds are, I don't really think that it's vital to meticulously recover every spent part.

I wouldn't be surprised if the plan was to keep recovery as it is at the moment. It's already ridiculously easy to have rockets go SSTO, meaning recoverability can be shamelessly abused.

I suppose it just depends upon your playing style. I tend to set up satellites and spam the "science data from space around..." contracts, which in itself is a function that can be exploited.

[vexx32]

Word of caution -- don't mistake the way really anything is for the way it will always be. Funds are still quite a new thing, especially, and they've only done a cursory balance pass for the feature. It would not surprise me to see them rebalance them fifty times in the future, if not more. If it's going to be a key point of balance for the game, they ar going to rebalance it. A lot, in all likelihood.

[Clockwork_werewolf]

Firstly I will say an important point.

There is NO LIMIT to the number of contracts. There is NO limit on the funds you can accumulate.

Each contract can (and often will) come up multiple times. Sending data from around Kerbin is a common one and will net you 30k EACH time you complete it even when the data has 0 science value. That's right ZERO science points.

The funds in the game for an experienced player can be far too high. People talk of having 4-20 million in the bank. I personally modded the game so each part cost 8 times its original cost. It's been an interesting game so far, Jeb keeps sending sponsored messages from orbit to fund my program and one launchpad disaster cost me 500,000.

Recoverable parts are a long and complex matter but the simple answer is that they either cause stupidly simple simulations or complex ones, no reason ever to not just strap parachute or no cost benefit to doing it, no reason to ever use an SSTO or no change to the game. The present setup is the best game mechanic I can think of even if it's not the best real world simulation. As always we are bless to be able to mod our games to be played any way we like.

[Renegrade]

Personally I hope future tweaks to the system will clear the gap between SSTOs and classical staged rockets. At present, SSTOs are just way too beneficial.

Well, one thing they could do to help with that is actually impose a recovery cost maximum of less than 100%.

If the maximum was say, 80% on the runway or launchpad, then any spaceplane or rocket SSTO landing there would have a 'refurbishment' cost. If a player elected instead to re-fuel the craft with a fuel tanker, THAT would eventually have to be 'refurbished'.

Alternatively fuel could be made into a much larger portion of the cost of a craft, although that takes it even further from reality than it is now (but who knows? maybe fuel is scarcer on Kerbin -- maybe they lack the large fossil hydrocarbon reserves of Earth, and have to synthesize all of their fuel slowly from renewable sources and power with a costly and inefficient process or somesuch).