BaphClass

Not exactly, sorry. The idea behind a Manufacturing/Research penalty is to space out the frequency of mission launches so things proceed at a more realistic pace. Let's say you start a new game and pick Comsat I. You go to the VAB and construct a vehicle capable of completing the mission, then proceed to the launchpad. You launch successfully and end up completing the mission. After completing the mission, you idle around for a few minutes in-game time admiring your handiwork, watch it in the Orbital Map while time warping, then finally decide to go back to the Space Center screen. The total amount of time that has elapsed since your last launch is around one hour. You click on the launchpad from the Space Center, and choose the same craft you used last time. On load, you see the cost has ballooned to several times more than the last launch. 10 seconds into the flight, one of your engines shuts down. You re-engage it and manage to regain control. 45 seconds into the flight, one of your boosters decouples, sending you into a tumbling dive. You crash into the ocean. What happened? The Manufacturing/Research Penalty. The Manufacturing/Research Penalty can be broken down thusly: Time Since Last Launch: It's been x amount of time since you last rolled a vehicle out from the Vehicle Assembly Building. Vehicle Mass/Part Count: The vehicle you just launched has x amount of parts and weighs x tons. It requires x amount of time to construct to optimal quality. Similarity to Last Launch Vehicle: The vehicle you just launched has x amount of parts in common with the last vehicle. It requires x amount of time to design to specifications. In this launch, one hour has elapsed since the last vehicle rollout. The player has decided to launch another vehicle that is exactly the same as the last one. In game time, the following events would have occurred: Immediately after the last launch, KSP Administration demanded another rocket be made ready in one hour. From scratch. VAB Crew started laughing. Engineers shrugged and said "Whatevs, it's the same one as last time. We don't have to do anything." KSP Accountants started crying at the cost of crew overtime and rush-delivery part shipping. VAB Crew did an admirable, but extremely rushed job. The rocket ended up being incredibly shabby due to the time constraint given. They got paid anyway and quickly left before the ensuing explosion. Current launch began. Craft ended up crashing into the ocean due to various malfunctions. Let's rewind back to when you were time warping after your first launch. Let's say you decide to continue time warping for another few days of in-game time. You return to the Space Center screen after one week of game time has elapsed. You click on the launchpad and launch the same craft as before. This time around, the launch proceeds flawlessly and has zero Manufacturing/Research penalties. The VAB crew had enough time to construct the vehicle without cutting corners. Another rewind. Instead of clicking on the launchpad, you go to the VAB and build a radically different craft. It winds up having the same amount of parts and mass as the last vehicle so should have taken the same amount of time to build, right? Wrong. Although this craft has the same number of parts as the last one, they're very different. This craft actually has nothing in common with the last one aside from part count. Your Engineers had to design something completely different from the last thing they were working on, and were given an extremely small amount of time to do it. Your VAB Crew are more than capable of building this craft in the span of a week, but this time around, it's the Engineers that are working triple-time. This time around, you're again faced with cost penalties and part malfunctions, and these are much worse than before. Unlike the VAB Crew, which can assemble and launch a medium sized vessel approximately every two weeks, Engineers require several months of research/design time to make something completely from scratch. This is meant to mimic the development timescales (and difficulties) real life space agencies experience. For an example, I'll compare the Saturn V and N-1 rockets: The Saturn V rocket was based on knowledge gained from previous vehicle launches. It took only a few years to build and develop to impeccable quality, due to the similarity between previous vessels launched. Its total cost was manageable compared to its competitor... The N-1 rocket was based on untested designs and involved seriously complex engine assemblies. It presumably would have taken decades to work all the kinks out and get functional, but was launched several years before that point, ending up with many cost overruns and problems. All of them ended up exploding during launch. Obviously, there's some parallels that can be drawn here. Pre-Assembling vehicles basically lets you get a production queue going for your VAB. You take a craft you've saved and designate it to be built, establishing the desired timeframe. You're given a cost and quality estimate and an option to proceed. You can adjust the timeframe until cost and quality levels reach something you find acceptable, then let it start building. The VAB constructs vehicles in the background. While you're playing, time-warping, or whatever, it's building vehicles according to the queue you've set. Once a vehicle is completed, construction of the next one begins. There should be a maximum limit on the amount of vessels you can pre-assemble, depending on their mass and part count. When you go to the launchpad and select a vehicle for launch, it checks to see if any pre-built copies of the chosen vessel are available. If there aren't, it assumes the rocket was scratch built/designed as before. If there are, then the Manufacturing/Research penalty does not apply. Only the cost of fuel is added for the launch.

You deserve serious respect for cooking this up, nobody44. This plugin has a lot of potential. With a few more features, it could be the perfect community content patch for Career Mode. Exactly what we need until Squad's Career Mode is more complete. Seriously dude, well done. I've got a few ideas that would up the immersion factor considerably: Research/Manufacturing Penalties: Mission costs are affected by how quickly you're launching rockets of different make and model. Two large, dissimilar rockets will need to be launched a few weeks apart to avoid inflicting serious cost and manufacturing penalties. Vehicles with higher part similarity (e.g. Satellite launch vehicles whose only differences are payload contents) require less time. Launching a fleet of rockets quickly without insane cost overruns will require pre-assembling your vehicles. The Apollo program's fleet of Saturn V rockets comes to mind. Safety Margins: Manufacturing penalties not only raise the cost of the mission, they also make it more likely to end in a catastrophic explosion. The higher the manufacturing penalty for a vehicle is, the lower its safety margin will be. Safety margins dictate the chance of the vehicle exploding either on the pad or shortly after launch. Vehicle Preassembly: Pre-build saved .craft files and add them to a list of assembled vessels. Cost Penalties and Safety Margins still apply. Fuel Costs are not calculated until the vessel is actually placed on the launch pad. Passive Missions: You need something to do while waiting between vessel construction right? Vessels can generate cash for your space program by performing passive missions. These earn a small but constant stream of cash, even when the vessel isn't loaded. Passive missions can be started and ended at will. Client Control: Payloads that are placed in orbit on behalf of a client (e.g. a private communication satellite) cannot be controlled after the mission to place them there has finished. Destroying or damaging this vessel afterwards will inflict a heavy cash penalty. Mission Timeframes: Missions can have time-sensitive penalties and bonuses to encourage timely completion and discourage taking dozens of missions at once. Example: A 2 week timeframe to launch a satellite into keosynchronous orbit. 25% bonus/penalty for each week early/late. Mission failure past a set time. Hardcore Mode: Quicksaving/loading adds a cost penalty every time you use it. Live life on the edge.