In general, the question seems to be what you want to model in RO. From your opinions I gather you'd like the 'space program' look more than the 'company' look. My idea would be the following: - Funds: Represent the money available. This is basically your budget. - Reputation: How 'good' you are. Whoever backs you will increase your budget depending on the reputation. - Science: The engineering aspect. The relations could be done as follows: - You get a certain amount (budget) per month/year/whatever. This represents a general funding level. This is dependant on reputation. - You get 'contracts' (which is basically just you promising to do something). Those would give you reputation to fulfill, and loss of the same if not. Only advance pay, the only reward you're getting is more reputation (therefore more advanced contracts and money). - There'd have to be some differentiation between science and engineering, but I don't know what. Maybe developing new parts costs money only, and you get one science per year to progress in a linear fashion? - The cost of rocket parts might be dependant on your usage of them: According to a report I read fairly long ago [1], doubling the number of parts built results in about 85% the cost for the aerospace industry. So, for example, if you've launched the same rocket 32 times it costs less than half the original costs. By combining this with a time-based reduction of such a factor - for example, every five unused years reduce the factor by one [2]. This gives a player the interesting task to decide between oft-used and cheap or new and more powerful or efficient rockets. Please note that I have no idea whether this is at all codeable in ksp. [1] I can try finding it, somewhen. [2] The same rocket, launched 32 times five years ago would then cost 52 instead of 44% the original cost.