Mr. Scruffy

Hmmm... How about a checkbox in the tweak-menus of fuel tanks - something like "walkable" and some logic to handle its use. If you check it, some capacity is deduced from the tank, but it makes it traversable for kerbals, which they otherwise would not be. I like the original idea, too.

Uhh, i totally missed that thread - really good stuff, there, imho!

´Sandbox´ is the name of just one of three modes of the game, as it is now, and doesnt even feature science at all. So this post is entirely irrelevant to the topic at hand.

About things to do when landed on a distant body: I dont think science-mini-games are a good idea. In essence, i think, what that would do is encourage save-scumming (after all, you are not going all the way there, just to end up failing in some mini-game, are you?) and/or more clicking, which will feel tedious as well, after a couple of times. Also, such mini-games would need to stay within the theme - least we were to play some sort of tetris or the like in order to perform a temperature scan - and i find it hard to imagine minigames for all the instruments that would not be either trivial (reading a thermometer), tedious or overwhelming (how is a gravoli detector operated?). I think one way to encourage ground-activity would be to have terrain-properties ´below´ the ´biomes´ (and maybe have less of the later to compensate): Altitude and slopiness, for example. This way, you´d have a reason to travel a bit, within the limits of what you can realistically reach with one landing in a reasonable amount of time. Like when you land in a small crater, you might want to go/drive to its rim, to take seperate measurements on its slopes and at different altitudes. Or simply being incentivized, somehow, to take several readings within the same ´biome´ with a certain moderate (as in a couple of km max) distances from each other, just to acertain the charactistic nature of the values for the ´biome´ in question (´sample-size´).

This, or a browsable folder structure, where the stock-vessels reside in a folder called ´stock´ or something.

Problems with that: - If you attach maintainance cost to the R&D-building itself, it becomes a fixed, unalterable cost, over which the player has no influence. It could end up running his/her finances into the ground, especially, if he/she focuses on long-term programs (like Jool). With hired scientists, when you focus on long-term programs and already have most of what you need for it, you could simply fire some scientists. When you have researched everything you´ll ever want or need, you can fire them all for good and avoid any further expenditure on something you are done with. - These hard caps, which we currently have inside the R&D-building, is something i distinctively dont like. Do you? I´d much rather like to have the freedom to research whatever i find to be affordable and judge what is, by myself. If i am okay with my next project taking 6 months (maybe, because i am waiting for a transfer-window and have no active programs), i should be free to research big stuff even at low research capacity. Also, if i just want a temporary surge of high-speed research (or just one ´expensive´ part), i dont want to be forced to pay for that for the rest of the game with high building maintrainance cost. On a sidenote: I also wouldnt make the difference in the tiers of the R&D building too steep. If 10 hireable scientists would be the cap for tier1, i´d maybe have tier 2 have 20 and tier 3 40 (or 25/50, something like that). Missions later on will tend to be longer, anyways, and that will cancel out higher "SCI"-cost for items partially, on its own. As you begin focusing on more distant targets, the pace of the game will tend to have you timewarp more and more expensive techs may take longer, even when researched at their ´appropriate´ time. The average time to research something en par with your current progress in the game may go from days to months during the course of the game. So if the cost-layout for techs is something like it is now (ranging from ~10 to ~1000, i dont remember exactly, but ballpark suffices), quadroupling maximum research rate throughout the course of a game seems about right. EDIT: Actually, this is something that would make the player go to more distant targets in the first place - if the next item on your research-list takes like 200 days, anyways, you could as well start your first interplantery program, now. If intervals keep being too short for too long, you will always go "hmm, i´ll wait for this tech to finish first before i activate program X", so long as you can afford it. It´d be like in civ, when you are 3 turns away from your next military upgrade - constantly - and you´d never end up actually building ´units´ unless you reaaallly need to. The tech-costs and branches need to be balanced in accordance to avoid that.

About science, Veeltch: The ´SCI´ i mentioned in my earlier post would just be a unit of measurement for the rate at which you research - like the beakers in civilization, say. Your system would work, too, and i am sort of on the fence about which would be preferable. On the one hand, your suggestion is simpler, which is a good thing. On the other, being able to hire scientists and having to pay them constantly, might be an interesting game-mechanic in and off itself: It would be about the choice of pushing R&D upto your financial limits and, when you are getting short of these, reducing the staff to save money. I think, especially if we´d aim for a flat tech tree, the rate of research must rise throughout the game, to prevent the really neat stuff to be researched first. Things like the Rapier (to name just one arbitiary example) should almost be prohibitve to research at the start of the game, while being affordable later, and researchable in a reasonable amount of time. That would require a raise in the rate of research across the game. Simply making the Rapier super expensive might have a comparable effect, technically, but might come off quite different in its appearance to the player - namely that of a ´pay-wall´. Also, if the research rate would be constant troughout the game, you´d lose a vital part of the game´s equation as i envision it. You´d want to reap the early completion boni of missions, primarilly to sustain a high research rate (to enable you to take on the next mission and so forth). Progression through the programs and the rate of research are like interlocking gears which you´d want to keep in sync with each other at as high a speed as you can manage(! important word here). Now, to increase the rate of research during the game, simply upgrading the R&D facility could suffice. Still, each ´node´ of the tech tree would have to have something like ´SCI´ attached to it, simply to quantifiy the amount of time needed to research it at different rates of research. So, yeah, maybe scientists (on ground) are not needed. Different research rates are, though (imho). Hired scientists would give the player some mini-mechanic to fine tune that rate, according to his/her needs and financial resources, that would tie in neatly with reward-decay-mechanic, translating reaped boni into an increased rate of research, which needs to be maintained, though, and isnt a pay-once&forget affair (like simply upgrading the R&D-facility would). Example: If i understand you correctly, under your model, a ´node´ or a ´part´ (doesnt matter for now) would just have a monetary value attached to it, which you´d pay upfront, and then research begins on it, at a fixed rate, which, as i understand, must be something like x money per day. So, if that part you want costs 10K and the fixed research rate is 0.5K per day, you´d take 20 days to research it. Always. If you have surplus money, all you can do, is put more items on the queue, but that wont affect how fast you research any of them. The paying upfront part as pros and cons: The pro is, that it´s easier to manage - pay once and forget about it. The con is, that you have to have the amount avaiable in its entirety even before you start working on it. The fixed rate is a clear con, though, in my book, since it puts a fixed speed on game-progression and turns R&D into a boolean affair (either you do have the money to research something, or you dont - if you do, it will happen at a fixed speed). Now, with hired scientists, that part you want might cost 10 ´SCI´ ("beakers", whatever). How fast you can accumulate that amount depends on how many scientists you have employed. Say, it´s not vital for you next planed mission, and you are short on cash before you complete that -> fire a couple of scientists. Say, it is vital for you next mission, and you dont even need to consider a launch for it without that part, but the program is already active, and you have some spare cash: Max-out on scientists, maybe upgrade the R&D-building in order to be able to hire even more. Sure, that will leave you just enough money for the actual launch, but if that succeeds and the mission runs well, you´ll get a couple of Ks in early completion bonus, which will pay your R&D-efforts later on.

The rewards are mission-specific and its important to see the decay as one of a bonus, especially considering balance. That bonus decays by 1% per interval (which is program specific), after a grace period of the tier of the mission * interval length. This simply means, that higher tier missions´ boni will start ticking off later. Suspended programs are taken from until you re-activate them. The cost of suspending is the main disincentive to activate-deactivate willy-nilly. That´s also why it probably should not be universal, but program-specific: Start with a lax-regime for Kerbin-SoI objects to open up the game rather quickly, then crank up the suspensions costs gradually for other programs, to add challange. While the REP-rewards is flat between programs (they solely depend on the tier of mission, regardless of program), the costs for suspending them rises. So, basically, yes and yes. I partly misread your post ;P - sorry.

Actually, Pthigrivi, i´d prefer not to. Since you ask, though, i will, under the provision, that they can only give rough ballparks and are by no means chisseled in stone, even when they are just meant to be approximations. For normal difficulty levels, the player could start with, say, 100K (i´ll use this sign for money*1,000) and 0 REP. The ´Kerbin program´ is activated right away. Your R&D-lab at its first tier could hold upto 10 Scientists, who can reserach 0.1 SCI and cost 0.2K per day each. The Kerbin program has a basic interval of 1 day. It has couple of branches right of the bat, each themed and thusly colorcoded in its appearance. There´s a Tier1-Science(yellow)-mission, requiring you to collect temperatur scans (thermometer provided) from 3 different biomes of Kerbin with a basic reward of 50K - this is followed up with a Tier 2 mission, requiring you to add another 5 biomes to that, maybe with a higher basic reward. There´s also a Tier1-Exploration(lightblue)-mission, which requires you to reach a sub-orbital trajectory, with a basic reward of 50K, followed up with a Tier2-mission, which requires you to reach orbital, for 100K. Once you complete this last one, another branch opens up "infrastructure" (red), which is about station building in LKO mostly. Each mission gives REP on completion according to its Tier. (Tier 1 -> +1REP, T2-> +2 REP...). Suspending the Kerbin-program costs 1 REP. The threshold for the mun and minmus programs is 3 to see, what their first missions will require, and 5 to activate (these arent paid, just needed to be collected: so you need 5 REP to activate both - not 10 - and you would still have at least 5 REP afterwards). Mun has an interval of 2 days, Minmus of 10 (say), suspending either costs 2 REP, and each have their own mission trees, like Kerbin´s, but designed to fit the body at hand. The decay would work like this. Beyond the Basic reward, you can get a bonus of the same amount, which starts to decay after a grace period which is one interval per tier of mission. The decay is 1% per interval. If you complete any one of the above T1-missions of the Kerbin tree after 3 days have elapsed since you activated the program, you´d get 50K + 50K * 98% = 99K. Keep in mind, that science takes time, and canceling the program is not possible before you collected 1 REP. Fully having staffed your R&D you will have collected 3 SCI and spent 6K on it. The player would probably have a little SCI to start with, but the point is the pinching issue of hurrying the mission vs. spending time to research better stuff for them.

I´d like to repeat what i said before, albeit in a different thread, it seems: IMHO, REP should not decay at all. You should lose some for killing kerbals (crew & tourists) and for suspending programs. But it should not decay over time. What should decay over time is a portion (say 50%) of the financial reward you get for completing missions inside active programs. This way the relevance of time becomes more program/mission specific and balancing becomes a lot easier. If you chose to focus on just your Jool-program, you get taxed in REP once for any other active program you want to suspend, in order to prevent its rewards from decaying, while you are busy with Jool. Once you did that, your entire game runs on the timescale of Jool-missions and you dont have to do any "filler"-missions, at all. That would accomodate the ´one mission at a time´-playstyle. OTOH, this would not prevent the ´multiple-missions-at-once´-playstyle at all, either, because if that floats your boat, you could opt not to suspend your other programs and carry on with them, at their own reward-decay-rates, while your Jool-mission is en route. Another reason not to have REP decay with time, is that i´d like to imagine certain levels of REP to be pre-requisites to activate certain programs - if it decays with time, you could run into a deadend-street, just for taking too long to figure things out. That the mun-landing is 50 years in the past should not prohibit you from initiating a duna-program. If you like to spend this much time doing things in the Kerbin-SoI, you should be free to do that. For time to matter, spending a lot of it, need not, and should not, mean ´game over´ - that would be punishing the player. What we want is to incentivize the player to attach some importance to time - no more, no less. Ideally, a player would want to have a certain idea on how to progress through every program in quick progression, even before he/she activates it, and be rewarded for all his/her planing ahead and trying to achieve multiple goals with single launches. Yet, failure to do so should not lead the player crushing against a wall. EDIT: The idea is, that you, as head of the KSC, announce what program (=body-specific mission-tree) to persue and the quicker you deliver, the higher the reward. Sure, this is not 100% realistic, but it´s close enough, in my book and facilitates interesting gameplay. Universal REP-decay is problematic as outlined above. So, when you announce to the kerbal public "The mun is our next goal", the difference in achieving your first orbit the next week or the next year, needs to be money. You´d persue that program upto your abilities and/or ambitions and then announce "We have gotten as far as is sensible on the mun, for the time being", suspend the program at a mediocre rep-cost, and then move on to the next program (or have multiple run in parallel or just take a break from the programs entirely and focus on commercial mission, aka contracts, as we have them now) and announce "now, it´s time for minmus (say)". All the while, outside of catastophic desasters and crazy amounts of program-suspending, you accumulate REP. This way REP becomes a bit like the completion scores of old adventure games. Later missions of any program would be harder to achieve than earlier ones, but also yield more REP. Your REP is your score, so to say: If you only complete the first 3 or so tiers (out of say 10) of any program, just enough to accumulate enough to initiate the next program, you might be able to visit all planets and moons, but your ´score´ would be pretty low, when compared to a player who focuses on completing entire programs in one go without suspending. Once you completed all programs, your REP could be normalized against your difficulty settings and give you a final score with an entry to a ´high score´ list (while still offering the option to play on, anyways). Now, if science requires money, too, then quick completion of programs/missions becomes self-amplifying: If you are able to reap the bonus for quick completion entirely, you will have more money on your hand, enabling you to research quicker, which in turn, will enable you to complete the next mission quicker, which yields you its quick-completion-bonus, which in turn... you get the idea. I think that´s enough incentive to get and keep things rolling. There really neednt be this sword of damocles hanging over your head called ´out-of-REP - game over´. Rather keep things positive, let inexperienced players progress at their own pace, while offering experienced ones the possibilty to figure ever more effecient ways to get about progressing through the game and allow them to have ´slingshot´-experiences, where they, due to planing really clever, rip through the programs at light speed, utilizing the aforementioned self-amplifying effect, as well as synergies between programs and missions (e.g. complete various missions in one launch, even across programs, when applicable). EDIT2: The above is for a model, that doesnt have budget-intervals, which i´d find preferable, at least for now, even if only as a transition stage to a budget-interval model. Your science staff on the ground could simply cost daily wages, which gets deduced daily. But that´s not really a budget-interval-model, yet, in my book. For a model that presents you with budgets on certain intervals and grants you money on these, based on your REP, the missions inside programs should probably not give any financial reward at all, and instead the REP-reward you gain for completing them, should start to decay once you activate the program (again down to a cap - so not 100% of it would decay away). Still, this seems much harder to balance, and i´d like to push any further thought on such a model beyond the point, where time-relevant mechanics are implemented at all.

Science: How about different types of data and these types grant research-speed-boni to certain techs? ´Oxygen Atmosphere´-data would boost your jet-research - if you have it collected, it will get consumed with priority, when you are currently reseraching a jet-engine and grant, say, a 20% boost to research-speed. ´Oxygen Atmosphere´-data and ´Non-Oxygen´-data for Wings (the later taking priority being used), ´Space´-data for enignes with high effeciency in vacuum. If you are researching a tech that doesnt utilitze a special kind of data, the different points get used equally. This would have the effect have making the jet&wing part a bit more viable and encourage plane-building to a mild extent (I mean: If you really arent into that, there is nothing making you, but if you want to try it, it´s a bit cheaper, if you work a bit on it, by collecting science from Kerbin). Just a thought.

In reply to both posts above: On the risk of it being controversial, but i think this sort of true exploration could best be served by scripted programs. I know, this sounds paradox. Yet, by scripting it, each mission could be better tailored for this experience, with one following up on the other in a very logical way, without having to have actual mechanics in place to accomplish this. Certain aspects could still be random, or semi-random (set as a range or a list, instead of one specific value), though, as to provide better replayability. For example: Ideally, to know the exact mass of a body, you´d have to do a grav-experiment on or near it. One could either contruct a mechanic that blurs out exact data in this before you do, or you can simply have the mission to conduct that experiment somewhere early in the program. In either case, you end up doing the experiment. The later variant seems easier to code, to me, though. Another example: You could have ´fog of war´ over unvisited bodies, or simply make bringing a camera part of any first mission of any program, so that you would get this data anyways, before it becomes relevant in follow-up missions. With scripted programs, you could also guide the player to finding an anomally in a seemingly random way (and vary which anamoly that is between games - e.g. pick one at random at the start of each game). Also, this way, looking stuff up on the nets wouldnt solve the mission for you. If the mass of a body would be hidden (the mechanical solution), you could look it up on the wiki and wouldnt actually have to do the experiment. Not so with scripted missions: Know the value all you want, the game would still ask you to do what would be needed, if you didnt. Another point: If the game would guide you towards certain locations of a planet/moon, from a list, a focus could be laid on fleshing out these locations first and foremost. Instead of re-doing the entire body, the devs could just handcraft these locations with some extra-effort. EDIT: And another - and this is way out there for KSP: On manned missions, with scripted programs, you could even throw in meaningful radio-chatter, with a context to the place they are at and what missions are currently next on your to-do-list for that body, provided kerbals would learn human languages, of course. This could tie in neatly with tutoring. Or it could be semi-historic (or fictional) referencing. From: - "Okay, we´re in mun´s SoI now..." - "Copy that - time to bring your periapsis to x km" to: - "It´s full of stars!", when standing in front of a monolith. (Or "i cant see the stars", if you want to be a little more subtle about it) Beyond Jool, go to IVA, look outside a window back at Kerbin and he/she´d say ´It seems so small from out here´. The big four (Jeb, Bill, Bob, Val) could have their own unique situations and sentences, all others being all the same (except for gender specific voices), maybe (but also: the character traits could come into play here!). This would add some sort meta-layer on the exploration-theme: True fans will want to learn about everything any of the characters may say in any given speech-situation and try out stuff, only to find out what Jeb says when you bring him really close to the sun, for example. The bad-a** he is, he will probably say something special... Heck, it´d be fun just for the re-entry: Jeb is all ´yee-haw´, Bob screams his lungs out and Bill is humming a melody. (sorry, i keep editing this) - maybe this can also be pulled off without transition to human language, IF the voice acting is really good. Maybe the text doesnt need to spelled out and just the tone of voice can suffice to successfully convey certain emotions, like enjoyment, excitement, a ponderous thought, panic, a milder fear, frustration, bewilderment, "Eureka!" (we already have one for those in the ´mission control´)... and then the player can fill in the words, in his/her mind. Some potential humor might not be possible this way, though, like direct referencing. I just realized i rambled myself way into OT-territory - this has little to do with programs, actually. Sorry - carry on without regarding the last half of this post. I might even edit it out later.

@Pthigrivi A couple of things: - To me (and tater will not agree with me here) that the program is progressing unrealsitically fast at the beginning of the game is not the issue, really. The issue to me is, that time is an entirely curled up dimension in career. That you land on mun on day 4 is not the problem - that it doesnt matter wether you do it on day 4, 40 or 400 is. (Though i would like to see the early game getting stretched out a bit, while we are at it - but certainly not to realistic proportions, going 5 years or so instead of the aforementioned 4 days would be way too long, imho.) - To roll out time and thus give career mode another meaningfull dimension would be the purpose of the programs, and R&D-time. They are acting as sort of a atracting/repelling force dichotomy. You´ll want to proceed thorugh programs as fast as you can, but the faster you go, the more you´ll be held back by tech you havent researched, yet. Then, we have an environment where difficulty can be had for challange (Scott Manley doesnt need any technology to complete all the programs, i assume ;P, but even Hodor could run the same satelite mission for the umpteenth time), instead of repeatition, without punishing the player. - I wrote earlier, that i´d have crew wages be monthly and R&D-wages daily. I dont think that´s too much to keep track of. I mean it´s not like having 7 ships arrive at Jool-SoI within 1 month - now that is a PITA (in stock KSP). - Balancing is of great concern. You are absolutely right on that, imho. The DEVS will have to have spreadsheats and graphing-software in order to figure it out in a way that players wont.

Thx for the heads-up, Panel. Well, let´s not be too pessimistic. A lead designer change (a) and an ´overhaul´ (iirc) for the exploration contracts (b)... A) For all good that´s been achieved (and really KSP is THE example, that great games can still come out of ´nowhere´, which has been an awesome, epic achievement so far - allmost facebook-ian, if you know what i mean - you do know facebook, right? ;P), i think that´s what was needed and i did get as far in the past as to suggest renting out the entire game to another dev-team, as i can understand, one may grow really tired of one´s own project as the years go by, especially when further developement moves out of the focus of your personal interest. Fresh ´blood´ is heightening my hopes for fundamental changes to the career-mode and re-newed enthusiasm for it. This statement is not meant to ´dizz´ anything that Felipe has done - i´d still be more at awe getting to meet him, than i would be meeting the pope or some Hollywood-celeb. B) They are not going to announce for patch 1.2 ´implement the ideas from this one thread in the suggestions-sub-forum´, nor can they be expected to actually do so, 1:1*. But it means, that the probability of this thread being relevant for 1.2 to some extent is >0. We, who are just typing out of our a****, pretty much, instead of coding or even modding, can not really hope for more. And we should be aware, that hoping is all we can, ligitely, in the first place - let´s not be dismissive or feel entitled. I certainly got my 17(?) bucks worth many times over, already. *This may sound like braging, and maybe it´s not even true, but i´d like to believe, for those who know these games (both paradox interactive), that devs took my suggestions on (at least) two occasions so far: The newspapers in Victoria II and the little colored triangles on the counters in Hearts of Iron III. The former was just a waste of dev-time, at least to me, as i realized, later - i ended up always ignoring them after playing the game the 2nd time, once they were actually implemented. The later was a good idea. I *think*, Tater, you are a compulsive suggestion-forumite, too, arent you (unless someone else used that name on that subsim-forum)? And look at what they ended up doing to the SH franchise! Bah! We were on the same page back then, also. ;P Anyways, point of all this ramble is: We are not the devs, we dont get to decide, we can only ask kindly, hope and stay in good faith, that what we suggest gets considered and actually ends up being good, in practice if does get implemented. We cant gurantee that, i cant at least, all of what i said here may turn out rubbish if it does get implemented - i dont have to take the risk for it, though. Despite walls of text and hours spent on them, my -our- commitment is minimal, just one increment above 0 - and so are the chances of what we ask for getting done. Okay, now back OT, please. EDIT: That´s how it´s phrased in the devnote: "[...]planetary weighting of contracts, an overhaul of the exploration contracts [...]". From my experience, devs saying that they see the merit of your ideas, doesnt get much better than this. As said: No dev would say ´implentation of programs as suggested in this thread [link]´ - even just to use the term ´program´ in this brief, naturally vague, first dev-note for 1.2 would be confusing. This is pretty much bullseye, in my interpretaion, as far as programs are concerned. Now, R&D-times and wages...? Well, baby-steps... one thing at a time... (they dont seem to go for a cross-program launch on this one ;P ) EDIT2: Cause when you look at it closely: We have pretty much worked out in this thread, that ´planetary weighting of contracts´ seems to be the pre-requisite for the implementation of mechanics that make time relevant. They are tackling the problem from the right direction, laying a foundation for making relevant time vaiable - or so one may hope.

Sorry, MircoMars, i might come back to you later - nice idea, though. Something to keep in the back of the head, imho. But by now, the discussion has become quite specific for me. Please read up on it, if you find the time. @Pthigrivi: Do you get where this could be engaging? You need time to research new equipment and need to run mission to get the data in order to do so, all the while, if you want to progress in the game, you want to do it with the least time possible, as you can not infinitely suspend and re-activate programs. My guess is, in practice, you´d break up the programs, according to your skill, going for streaks between activation and suspension. Like try to hit tier x within the first launch-window, possibly suspend after that and reactivate to hit tier x+y within the next one, or just suspend and take a break from one program, because you want to focus on another for now and dont really feel like building a big LKO base, say. The ´penalties´ involved in any of this needn´t be big. They should be just enough to matter (on default difficulty). The Kerbin program could get away with just one measily point of REP-cost for suspension (so as to allow suspension and focusing on mun and/or minmus, in the example i gave, yesterday, i believe?). Duna and Eve become avaiable at, say, 50 REP (if each of the 3 programs avaiable before would just have one branch each - which they should not - they would yield a combined 165 REP when completed - [10+9+8+7+6+5+.... ]*3). So i´d say suspending mun or minmus costs 10 REP - as would a dead kerbal, say. One branch from t1 to t10 is 55 REP. Since each program would branch out to various branches, Duna and Eve would open up way before you get to complete mun and minmus, as long as you dont screw up royally. In fact, you could skip mun and minmus entirely if you are not losing any kerbals on kerbin and advance far enough on that progam´s tree. But of course, this is all subject to balancing. Yet, i´d like a lax regime on this, on default difficulty - the objective is just that you do not suspend and reactivate willy-nilly. When you have all the programs completed - which would be sort of epic in and of itself - you can choose to end the game officially, and get scored along the lines of: REP + cash / 100,000 (maybe with a modifier from date). EDIT: Other thresholds maybe: Dres - 100, Moho 150, Jool 200, Eeloo 250, Laythe (extra-tree with extra challanges for this special moon) 300.