tater

Search is terrible in this forum. It would be nice to be able to search keywords by author as we used to.

I agree with some of your observations regarding career, but I disagree entirely on what career should be. Career is a context, a storyline that the player creates. Ideally, it should present the player with novel problems to solve (how to do X, with only Y available). Sandbox has the same problems to cover every time. Make an Eve return lander, visit Jool and all moons in 1 trip, whatever. Honestly, career needs a FOIL for the player. Career would be vastly more interesting/engaging as a Space Race. Time and Life support would need to be a thing (it's a race, after all), and the tech tree would need to be redone entirely. Ideally failures and some limits to extant part would be added---how deeply different engines might throttle, how many times or if engines can restart, etc. The goal would be to create choices for the player vs his foil. You want to push the speed, but waiting for better parts results in a better chance of success.

I'd like something like KCT

Yeah, it's ridiculous that the gyros somehow stop spinning instantly when you open the hatch.

Kind of pointless given that time is meaningless in KSP so there is no reason to parallelize anything.

It's not inflation. You can argue that the drop in US import demand has forced them to compete in asian markets with other producers who used to sell more in the US, but it's not inflation. The Saudis could cut production, and then they'll claim they'd lose market share, but the Saudis have also been smart about diversifying assets to cover potential losses, and they really want to hurt Iran. I recall reading that before sanctions were planned to be lifted, Iran needed $80/barrel to keep the government lights on. What's oil today, $36?

Yeah, the US/Canadian shale oil business, and Russia are all suffering from the Sunni oil price war on Iran. The recent deal with Iran is a 135 B$ handout, so the Saudis are going to drive oil far lower than the initial plan I think. I read that there was talk of $20/barrel oil again. Welcome to the 1990s.

So true. Science needs to actually be useful, not a point collection, but this requires gutting the extant career. Like camera and radar instruments required to map surfaces, and your map-view zoom level is dependent upon the resolution available for that region. If you try to show up and land without mapping first, you functionally have no map view to work from at all, the world is a colored ball. I don't mind the cost, really, it's the only thing that stretches the early game out a few days, lol. The building are poorly labeled. Mission Control is not a real mission control, it's a contract office. Mission control is the tracking station, really, monitoring missions in flight. Yeah, I agree. And the idea that being in another SOI magically ranks them is silly. It should be based upon training and actually doing stuff. Use an engineer for an engineering task, and he gets some points, for example. Training could be a check box in the astronaut complex for each astronaut---clicking it trains them a point every X days, but costs Y funds per day. Yeah, this is true as well. Something to do once you arrive. KIS/KAS should be stock, honestly, but that still leaves pilots and scientists lacking. Non-clicky, useful science would be cool, but I have no idea what that might look like.

I've gotten great value from KSP, but the career is really the weakest part of the game. Not the tech tree, not gathering science, all of that stuff together. I'm not saying that it's easy to work out how to do it right, either, it's not.

I dunno, I expect that you are probably right, but personally, I want better stuff, or at least stuff to do things I want to do. I never totally fill out the tech tree anyway, as I don't bother with a few nodes that are exclusively plane junk.

It's sorting hazards, and knows that traffic cones are cones. The programming must certainly allow for the vehicle to hit a cone in lieu of hitting a pedestrian, for example. I would hope the vehicle would hit a squirrel rather than risk an accident as well. all hazards are not, and should not be considered equal, if the vehicle can discriminate between them. Also, the car must already be programmed to proactively avoid some hazards from behind. A fire engine approaches the intersection you are in, with your vehicle blocking the road. You were going to go straight, the vehicle must already be programmed to make a right turn on red and get out of the way.

I'm not giving them emotions, I'm presuming that they could be programmed to minimize harm at some point in the future. In the above TED video, imagine the wheelchair/duck scenario on a single lane, 1-way street, only enough road space for 1 vehicle (perhaps cars parked on both sides of the street). The car's sensors detect a huge dumptruck closing from behind. It's not going to stop. The only egress for the car is through the idiot in the wheelchair---punch the gas, smash the chair, then duck to the side of the road and let the truck blaze past. Stationary possibly kills people in your car, AND you run over the wheelchair anyway. Ramming the chair gets you the heck out of the way of the truck with only the chair driver and duck harmed.

Self-driving cars poll available data far faster than people can. While you might drive through a neighborhood aware that a kid could possibly run into the street once you notice the kid there, the car can observe this, and say to itself millisecond by millisecond, could I stop now? How about now? In this way, the car can subtly adjust current path and speed over time timeframes to maximize the chance of not hitting the possible threat. The large issue is not having the vehicle paralyzed. This is a good watch:

I'd honestly not care at all about a monument, but YMMV. Depending on the tech, it would be interesting if it was possible to make a kind of system for intelligently tweaking parts. What I mean by this is not just making a 1.25m engine with the thrust of a 2.5m engine, I mean to stay with engines, something like a balance of trade offs in part design... gimbal range increases, but the mass increases as well (is there a thrust/Isp implication due to changes in combustion chamber design, or engine bell to allow more gimbal? Then add that, too). Thrust increases, Isp decreases, and vice versa. If failures were a thing, more complexity might also decrease reliability, and cost might be proportional to reliability (design to match whatever the base cost of current engines is for 100% reliability or something). Pods might have cost/strength/heat resistance/battery/mono/LS/crew capacity in the mix, you can design your own pod (external art stays the same, internal seats can be a range, say 1-4 for the mk1-2, pick 4, and something has to give). The tech tree could then be a constraint on this design process some how (requiring tests of related tech to unlock the ability to change a certain aspect of a given tech. Not expecting anything like this, just throwing out crazy ideas.

1. 99.999% of automobile accidents are driver error, so the chance that driverless cars won't be safer is small. 2. The ethical question I see is: would a car ever be programmed to minimize harm to all humans or will be to programmed to minimize harm to me, and my passengers. It's the train switch dilemma---you see a locomotive heading towards 5 workers past a set of points, and you can throw a lever, putting the locomotive onto a siding where it will only kill 1 worker, you have to pick one. Generally people throw the lever, actively participating in the death of 1 person to avoid the loss of 5. If I own the vehicle, I want it set to maximize the survival of the occupants of my car, period---it's the train switch where the lone worker is my kid, so tough luck on the 5 workers. Here's a self-driving car analogy: Car is clear to move through an intersection, and detects a car about to run the light. In the crosswalk is a slowly moving group of 10 old people with walkers (crossing parallel to the self-driving car's path). The car could, with sufficient computing (I'm not thinking early models here, but who knows) see that it could continue, and serve as a barrier between the 10 pedestrians and the oncoming, light-running vehicle, deciding that my car, with at most 4 people aboard is a good trade for 10.

Makes sense. The gameplay issue in general with career is that the game already gets easier as you play, largely due to arbitrary parts limitations early in the game. It seems to me that good game design would have the game become more, not less challenging as you progress. Better and better parts doesn't help. This is why Life Support matters most, IMO, and LS with death, frankly. Improving LS recovery rates, etc, is an actual tech issue still being worked on now, so earl game attempts at crewed flight far afield will require more planning with early LS.

Aside from the magic spaceplane stuff (parts all seem to be stronger, lighter, and better than any equivalent rocket part), all the tech tree stuff is mid-1960s tech. What would you add, fantasy stuff?

I posted this in the tech tree thread, but it belongs here just as much because they are all connected... Yeah, because the whole thing is bass ackwards, as they say. Exploration doesn't make new tech, new tech is purpose-built for exploration. What we really need, is a whole new system for creating non-commercial missions. You'd select from lists/buttons for each numbered section. Note that you might be limited in bodies you can pick, and how much the kerbal government is willing to risk based upon REP, Rep is now the thing you want to buy the "reward" of more mission design choices: 1. Pick broad mission type (crewed orbital, crewed landing, probe orbital, probe landing, others that we can come up with) 2. Pick target body (Kerbin, Mun, Minmus, Duna, Ike, Eve, Asteroid, etc, etc) 3a. Pick broad goal (b. science, c. base/station construction, d. resupply) 3b. Set science goals (radio boxes with all the science instruments, plus EVA, sample return, etc available to check). 3c. Set facility requirements you wish to build (min crew capability, power, RCS, etc) 3d. Set resupply target, and amounts. The game would then generate a budget based upon your stated mission parameters. This budget might include points for buying new tech to accomplish this mission. The game provide serval choices of budget, with lower budgets offering a higher rep reward (where rep might increase the base budgets for future requests). Since there are a small number of target worlds, and a smaller number of possible instruments, this really describes all possible missions. Early on, you might only have the rep for simple probe missions, and early crewed attempts, you need to build rep to be able to build more complex missions.

Yeah, because the whole thing is bass ackwards, as they say. Exploration doesn't make new tech, new tech is purpose-built for exploration. What we really need, is a whole new system for creating non-commercial missions. You'd select from lists/buttons for each numbered section. Note that you might be limited in bodies you can pick, and how much the kerbal government is willing to risk based upon REP, Rep is now the thing you want to buy the "reward" of more mission design choices: 1. Pick broad mission type (crewed orbital, crewed landing, probe orbital, probe landing, others that we can come up with) 2. Pick target body (Kerbin, Mun, Minmus, Duna, Ike, Eve, Asteroid, etc, etc) 3a. Pick broad goal (b. science, c. base/station construction, d. resupply) 3b. Set science goals (radio boxes with all the science instruments, plus EVA, sample return, etc available to check). 3c. Set facility requirements you wish to build (min crew capability, power, RCS, etc) 3d. Set resupply target, and amounts. The game would then generate a budget based upon your stated mission parameters. This budget might include points for buying new tech to accomplish this mission. The game provide serval choices of budget, with lower budgets offering a higher rep reward (where rep might increase the base budgets for future requests). Since there are a small number of target worlds, and a smaller number of possible instruments, this really describes all possible missions. Early on, you might only have the rep for simple probe missions, and early crewed attempts, you need to build rep to be able to build more complex missions.

All the computers on earth combined during the Apollo program were likely comparable to a single iPhone, or maybe a few. The LEM had something like 4k of memory. Just checked, my phone can do 3.36 billion instructions per second, and the mainframes used by NASA could do 0.00096 billion instructions per second, so it's 3500 times faster than their mainframe. The System 360/75 cost around 3 million $, too. All computers combined was overstating it... still, the computing power represented by all the machines owned by the people reading this thread likely meet that level This is why the entire tech paradigm in KSP is screwy, virtually everything is really tier 1, but they should be improvements over time (lower mass for same specs, or slightly better specs, etc).

I've never had money be even a little bit of an issue except right before being able to get past LKO---then I take some lousy contracts I would usually ignore and it's all better. The global issue with career is that the gameplay difficulty is opposite of what people would normally expect. It starts out harder, and gets easier. The attempt to "fix" this is typically along the lines of "boss" characters in other games (that I don't like playing). They can't make the gameplay harder, so they just make a hoop that is really tedious, sorry, "difficult" to jump through. Career needs mid and end game goals that are not tedious, but difficult in a "real" way (not hauling arbitrary fuel to a base on X, but a legitimately complex design problem).

This is true for me as well, as I usually play with LS, and even when I don't (new patch, perhaps, mods not updated), I play as if LS was installed (I send multiple hitchhikers on even a Duna mission, and treat it like "Mars Direct"). That said, the tech unlock is THE reward system in the game, like it or not. Sure, we play past that, but then it's simply sandbox, and the entire career element os pretty much gone. Funds are only a problem on grind, erm, "hard" mode. The trouble with addressing the tech tree issue is that it means a complete overhaul of science and career as well, they are entirely interconnected.

The tech tree is at the root of the career problem, frankly. The KSP paradigm is that you do planetary science which somehow buys you technological improvements. Then, on top of this strange idea, the large majority of the "tech tree" is in fact concurrent technology. First nuke in space, first solar panels, first manned capsule? All late 50s, very early 60s. The entire thing is screwy. The trouble from a game standpoint is that buying new tech is THE reward system in the game. People will chime in and tell us they play for different reasons, and that's fine, but studies of games have shown that players unconsciously play to the reward system, designers use this to create addictive games. What are the options, assuming that the tech as reward is a desirable game element? One would be a much wider (vertically wider assuming the same layout in R&D as we have now), flatter (less left to right) "tree." This presents the problem of "cost," as left to right in a science point increase. Two would be a change in the entire science/career/tech relationship. Perhaps breaking science into different kinds of science (spaceflight, planetary, and kerbal factors (health, etc). Have different tech require different balances of science points. A hitchhiker requires crewed time on orbit sorts of missions, landing legs might require some sort of planetary science (will the craft sink in the dust of the Mun?), new rocket engines might require parts testing on orbit, etc, and a capsule might require some of each. In addition, some tech might actually require specific missions, or might be made available as a test part, and only unlocked after it is tested someplace (drogue chute on Duna or something). Three, upgrades. At the very least, there could be a dichotomy between "eXperimental" and "production" parts. X parts are what is first unlocked, then they switch to production after some amount of use. Use can be defined a few ways, for engines it might be total seconds fired, weighted somewhat by where (ground/atmosphere/space), as well as unique crafts that have used the X engine, and perhaps some dedicated contacts/missions to test them. The production version would contain performance improvements over the X version. Such a framework could be used by mods as well, and those might add in reliability issues, ideally. Honestly, a chance of failure on X parts would be good, period. It creates a rationale for testing on orbit (where rescue is close at hand) before using a part for a critical application, and rescues are fun, anyway.

Yeah, I was talking about RT (implicit in my talking about comm "networks."

There should be a delineation between "Missions," designed by the KSC staff (Linus and Werner, et al), and commercial Contracts. Missions would be the more sciencey stuff, including crewed spaceflight experiments (stations, etc). My suggestion would be that they are given a budget (ideally dolled out over time) to accomplish them. The budget could include prepaid science points (technology is invented to do missions, not invented because of missions already accomplished).