tater

I was thinking a simple "competition" flowchart. Not that it actually plays the game at all. So a certain milestone would nominally occur at a time stamp, DayX. The game would have DayX=(a random number in some range)+Y, where Y (which can be positive or negative) is adjusted based upon if the player has done some related milestone. If player has achieved reaching mun SoI, then make Y more negative for the Mun milestone for the competing program (they react to your achievement by rushing things). The chance of failure of the competing program would go up as the Y value goes negative---the more they rush, the larger the chance of a failure. Totally abstracted. You get a news report that Nickered's Rocket Program attempted to send a kerbal to the mun, but the rocket exploded on the pad, or that it made orbit, stranding the astronaut, or whatever.

Yeah, an "ultimate" "Space Race" mode (note that the race can be between nations, or something more akin to BO vs SpaceX) would have a full AI economy/politics (totally abstracted, the player need never see any of it, it's just to decide the pace of the opponent). A simple mode would just look at what achievements it has unlocked itself, and what you, the player have done, and that might adjust what it does. If you just achieved munar orbit, maybe it tries now for a landing, but with a much larger % chance of a failure (giving you a rescue mission).

Yeah, the idea is that the "news" aspect is critical, as you need a push to launch unprepared At the time many people (including astronauts) thought that Apollo 8 was sent because of intelligence about an upcoming Soviet manned cislunar flight (because of Zond, presumably). Current thinking is that this is not the case, it just worked out tempo wise, and they did not have a LEM ready for LEO testing. Still, the idea that you get some news/intelligence that the opposing program/company/nation has just completed a munar impact might get you to launch a lander probe or something is intriguing. The most gain is really in the later game, since right now things get easier and easier. The rescue missions would then be predicated on the opposing side's milestones. Perhaps any given attempt by the opposing side rolls a die with a chance of failure... So the opposing side will send kerbals to the Mun on day 326. Day 326 dawns, and the game checks for opposing success. They fail this day, and the game has a choice of it failing in Kerbin orbit, Munar orbit, or Munar surface, this time it picks LMO. Every fail means that a new attempt for them comes in 1-2 months (or whatever). You get a news flash AND a rescue mission. Kerbal stranded around the Mun. Now, you have an incentive to go NOW and land, because they will likely not fail, and you can get huge rep by rescuing their astronaut at the same time. If the game had LS, this would be even more challenging.

You could perhaps assign craft to as many missions as you like, but then their particular rewards are tied to completion of all those missions in some fashion. So a Voyager-like mission would assign a craft to multiple explore missions. Again, it's not fleshed out, I'm spitballing ideas. I agree with the race aspect, that's why I often ask for a new mode with an AI opposing program to actually race with, as I think it was the Space Race in RL that made things really interesting, and created trade-offs that currently don't exist. Now we would worry about that last 0.5% risk on a Mars mission, whereas during the Cold War's Space Race we might have sent it with a much higher risk to "win." We have rescue contracts, which imply a competing program. Here's a thought experiment. You create some new time mechanics (R&D time, etc). You playtest it. This gives some benchmarks as to how long it takes to do X, Y, and Z. Say the first manned Mun landing should take place (in new time mechanics) in a year (pulling a number out of my head). Then we have the game abstract a Space Race and at 426 days, +-100 days it gives that milestone to the opposing program. It might first "roll a die" to determine if the opposing program does Mun or Minmus first, BTW. All other progress is appropriately scaled to these first determinations, and randomized within some range. At some period before they actually are given the milestone instead of you, the game can provide news reports that the opposing program has just completed some mission that puts them on track for the important milestone "soon." If you see one of those, consider rushing your luanch with what you have. It's a space race without really having to have sophisticated AI, they are really just prompts to push the player towards perhaps taking risks.

Given we now have more possible parts to play with (64 bit), I think that having 1.875 would be awesome. It would be fun to have perhaps 2 kerbal programs fleshed out at some point. In career maybe you'd choose one or the other as a starting point, but you could pay a premium and unlock the other programs parts if you like---they have this cool shuttle thing, so you make a near exact copy, but add jets or something really unlikely like that . Then do a full suite of RL-inspired, but kerbal parts. HGR (which I like) is still a little more "replica" in terms of Soviet parts. Have those parts have a nod to Soviet design, without being copies. The mk1 and mk1-2 are clearly not Mercury/Apollo copies, they look different other than the rough shape (particularly the mk1). So have a 1.25m pod that is round and holds 1 kerbal. Have a 1.875m 2-man in the conical shape, and a 1.875m pod that is a bell shape like Soyuz. Maybe add a 2.5m either in the style of PTK NP, or make up something more visually similar to Soyuz, only larger as the goal is a distinct look that nods to Soviet without actually being a replica.

Given that I think a total overhaul is not going to happen, I'd like to agree with @Mr. Scruffy above regarding soft time limits... I do agree with the bulk of the rest of the posts, however. I wonder if the game could have a more intelligent way to set time horizons. As has been said before, attaching them to transfer windows is an option if the players are actually given that information. My concern is that such time limits just might not work as planned given that KSP doesn't have the real reason a "time limit" mattered in RL---we have no explicit space race (only the implicit one due to rescue contracts and milestones). I would probably go with making time meaningful via R&D taking time, and time-release "budgets" instead of 25% before, and 75% upon completion for missions (or whatever it is). So your Duna program, instead of a hard 10 year limit doses out the budget (the total reward) over some other time period, say 3 years given Duna mission timelines. You'd intentionally warp at times to pile up some budget (which might include points to spend on R&D). You apply the soft-limit idea such that after a certain point the reward (rep?) declines over time. It would require adding a new thing to the game, but what if in addition to assigning a craft a type (probe, capsule, station, etc), you could assign a craft to a "contract/mission?" Then the game could use that hook to mark progress after a fashion. Once assigned to a mission, the craft doesn't earn points for other missions. So you can launch a test of your Duna craft so that the soft limit sees progress, but when you send it to the Mun on a test, the science/whatever it does doesn't apply to your Munar program that is also live, because it's a Duna test mission. I just thought of this, so it's not fleshed out, but I think you get the idea.

A bridge is hardly an example of the government creating an economy where none existed. Before governments took over lighthouses (the typical (wrong) example of an economic "public good") there were actually more (privately built) lighthouses---even though a shipping company in building one aided their competitors. So the government ended up decreasing the number of lighthouses. Does't matter, neither create an economy from nothing, which is what a Moon based economy would be. It's either a real economy, or it isn't, it's either worth doing economically, or it isn't. If you were a ferry operator, the Golden Gate didn't help your business at all. GPS? It was not built to create an economy, it was built as part of the Cold War. There would still be a private market for it... so no, GPS did;t create an economy from whole cloth. FDA? The bottom line is that the market would act, particularly in a litigious country like the US. Government regulation is not about creating an economy, it can merely put the brakes on a free market. In the case of therapeutic drugs, we can decide that those brakes are right to be placed, because we will hold lives to be more valuable than they are "actuarily." That's not the government creating an economy, it's the government getting in the way---just in a way that most people agree with.

Skills assume a level of "management" in the game that simply doesn't exist. As such, they are sort of pointless. Right now I can fly any craft with the lowest level pilot just as well as with the highest level pilot. The only pilot skill that matters is MINE. Having that skill at all is pointless, and bad game design unless it can actually be used---which means autonomous piloting. I give them a task, and they do the task without me micromanaging it. "Land this resupply vessel within 100m of Mun Base Alpha." Short of that pilot skill is actually wrong-headed, as for new players the game just becomes easier, not harder. Engineering and Science skills are at least not stuff that the player actually does, but there are not enough things for them to do, anyway. Same deal, the part of the game that uses "skill" values is career, and career needs to have completely autonomous kerbals for skills to make any sense at all. Engineers can fix stuff on their own, or maintain stuff (we'd then need failure/maintenance as a thing). Scientist can do science. Deliver them someplace, and let them explore. More skilled scientists can collect more per unit time, bu the need to be there for more than just a "click collect surface sample" amount of time. Then add life support at the same time as a trade off (and now resupply can be done on a schedule, because kerbals can actually pilot).

The end goal would be for the next generation station/habitat. ISS was built the way it was largely as busy-work for Shuttle. The ability to maximize habitable volume per launch is valuable when we are not seeking to cobble something together out of many small parts that happen to fit inside Shuttle.

It was political to suggest that space agencies could create an economy where none exists. There is either a market for something, or there isn't. A false economy of servicing an agency isn't a real economy.

Space agencies are part of the government, and the only thing the government can do with an economy is screw it up, they certainly can't create an economy.

The slingshot certainly has some interesting possibilities for mission requirements. Right now it would be the sort of "grand tour" stuff we have (hit the SoI of X worlds)---those are missions I never do. A more vague requirement that suggests visiting Jool after entering the SoI of 2 other worlds would be kind of interesting. If the game had a built in transfer window planner, perhaps it could look for gravity assist geometries.

It entirely depends on how one is defining "worth." If the metric is "amount" of science done, then manned isn't worth it. If the metric is a sense of adventure, spirit of discovery, exceptionalism, however you want to put it, then I think it is worth it. I send loads of probes in KSP, actually, since I almost always play with LS, and a scaled up system, getting crew to distant places is hard.

I was gonna say that if I paid for that, I'd demand a refund, it's pretty ugly... but I think I did pay for it.

Real international cooperation would require countries other than the US actually spending meaningful amounts of money, which they don't.

^^^Preach it, brotha'!

@Snark is spot on. I would reiterate as well that part of the slow-motion is the superabundance of caution used. 2.5 billion is a lot of money, even if it is dirt cheap compared to a manned mission. The researchers know that this rover might be the single biggest scientific effort of their own lifetimes, so they don't want to biff it. If they were budgeted hundreds of billions, such that perhaps the rovers were cheaper because of some economies of scale in production, and per haps also just cheaper robots, because they are sending many, so all their eggs are not in one basket, then they could be a little more aggressive in their use. Combined with better self-driving capability, they could cover ground faster. Honestly, I think this is just a matter of time.

Yeah, I saw that in the settings, I should really just turn it on, it's not like I ever don't use it

Yeah, looking much better. I think they are just using a surplus of caution, NASA-style. There was a great post on nasaspaceflight by a guy saying that NASA can make anything boring, lol.

Yeah, the challenges for manned Mars are non-trivial, particularly given the risk-averse nature of NASA planning (not a bad thing, there's no plan B halfway to Mars unless you thought about it ahead of time). It's interesting to note that we haven't sent anything like a current state of the art robot rover anywhere yet. I'd say the state of the art is now private, not NASA. It will be interesting to see rover designs that incorporate the lessons of self-driving car research. Imagine Google during millions of simulated kms of offroad driving per day and applying that to Mars rover technology.

Note that I can be in favor of manned spaceflight, but I can do so without deluding myself that somehow "boots on the ground" = more/better science gains. If we're going to go to the trouble of sending people, then yeah, they will attempt to maximize scientific return. The $ per unit science done will always be higher with people going vs robots, however.

Those are not comparable, because you are comparing a low-cost rover to a high-cost manned mission. Give the rover the same 50-100 billion, and you'll have more, and/or better rovers. They will spend far longer on the surface, and will work longer hours within that longer time period. When I took a lunar geology class from Jack Schmitt, I never asked him if his sample collection was qualitatively better than any of the other Apollo missions, and if so was it because of his training, or because Apollo 17 had a more interesting landing site. My gut says that given the volume of rocks they collected, and the limited collection area, it was likely pretty comparable.

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html#public The imperial overlay on the video is triggering me, lol.

There is no planetary science that cannot be done better by robots, and that reality is diverging from manned exploration at a rapid rate. None, particularly on the Moon, as nearly instant telepresence means that you can still look at a wheel problem and note stuff under the surface. Even in the '60s would could have collected more samples with robots given the same effort---but there would never have been the same effort without the manned stunt aspect. Pictures of the Earth... can be taken without astronauts. The only reason to send people is to send people, but don't fool yourself that more or better science is part of the reason, any data gathered by people is gravy, it's not about that.