Wjolcz

Here's @inigma's thread. Go check it out if you want to experience his idea of a commercial space program, or stay here and have a read if you want a lite version of it. FIRST, GO GRAB THESE MODS: - Historical Progression Tech Tree by @pap1723 (I think the name is self-explanatory) - Monthly Budgets by @severedsolo (Grants you monthly capped budgets based on your reputation and keeps the track of the space program upkeep costs) - KerboKatz - SmallUtilities by @SpaceTiger (For the science-to-funds and funds-to-science exchange widget) - Kerbal Engineer Redux by @cybutek (We all know what this one does) - Kerbal Alarm Clock by @TriggerAu (Great for managing manouvers, interplanetary transfer windows, SOI changes and many more) - Strategia by @nightingale (Let's you directly influence the themes of misions) <- This mod is actually not very useful here. Unless it gets a rebalance to fit this mod list. You can get most of these^^^ on CKAN. Now for the settings. I did this: As you can see this is not 100% scienceless career mode, but it's close enough. This mod compilation let's me pick clearly separated paths, "buy" the nodes and get paid based on my reputation. I'm still looking for a contracts pack that directly generates missions about performing science experiments whoch grant reputation. For now I'm playing with the Field Rearch pack, but I hope Strategia will be sufficient once it's updated. My overall experience is that this kind of career is very nicely balanced compared to the stock game. I'm somewhere halfway through the tree, but that's because I didn't have much time recently to play the game. I will be updating this thread and the OP as I add and subtract mods. If you decide to set everything the way I did let me know what you think, what could be problematic and what could be changed or added. EDIT: Shoutout to the modders who made this possible. They are true heroes. Have fun!

Yes, you can. Or maybe it's the devs' fault. It's broken and won't get fix so no need to blame anyone for that, right? This thread shows exactly everything that's wrong with the idiotic science-to-tech research system. I see two solutions suggested here and it's either "lower the science gains" or "crank up the science gains". It goes from one end to the other all the time. And it's not because people don't know how to set up the science output properly, but because THE SCIENCE IS NOTHING ELSE BUT RESEARCH POINTS WHICH IS ALL WRONG and that's what makes this game so unbalanced in both ways. I believe the only way to fix this is to disconnect tech research from science experiments. I'll make a thread about how to mod the game in such a way it's possible, and believe me it's sooooo much better than the stock game ridiculousness I had to deal with in the past. EDIT: Here it is.

Why does everyone assume that procedurally generated stuff is fun to play with. It always (at least for me) felt like this: "Oh, this a cool procedurally generated thing, but I'm pretty sure I can find something even better *spends a few hours searching* Eh, OK this is good enough, but I've seen better". Look at No Man's Sky. Is it fun? Do procedurally generated planets make up for poor gameplay design? The answer is most likely they don't (never played it but would also never buy it). So, yeah... I'm still waiting for better career experience. And more procedural craters (like the ones on the Mun).

Yeah, there was that one British ace pilot from WW2 that lost his legs and because of that he could endure tighter turns. Makes sense. But to stay on topic: I don't think that's really needed. The experienced Kerbals can already take a lot of gees, so I don't think there's much sense in introducing some sort of super Crysis suit for pilots.

What!? Science system is unbalanced!? How dare you! :0 Can we stop pretending that the science system and the tech tree is fine? Not because the devs didn't calculate it correctly, or something. It's almost impossible to balance a system like the one KSP has. Not because devs didn't want to do it, but because it's so convoluted. Make it simple, because simple ideas work best.

Megnetosphere and ways to detect it? Yes, please.

Awwww... I've been summoned. I'm looking into my magical ball of wisdom and stuff and I see a name... It's @Yakuzi!

That's true, but it's only because of how the science system rewards are scaled. Devs assumed that people would go out there (other planets) pretty quickly anyway, so no point in having more science points than just a few per biome. IMO there's plenty to explore on Kerbin. It's just that we have only one launch site (KSC) and that's why nobody bothers exploring the home planet. It's simply too far to get anywhere. Science points aren't even real science. It's more of achievement points and research points at the same time. The only fact that there's "science" in there is because of quasi-scientific experiments generating the points.

This thing was actually done to real people, but with a bit longer line and from the ground.

Hmmmm... No, it isn't. It would be nice to create your own story. I'd like to do that in career mode, but it's still just sandbox with side quests. What I would like to do is focus on certain actions and be able to happily continue them. For example going aircraft atmospheric exploration. You do that and get more atmospheric parts, or you decide to have a completely plane-free rocketry research program, or both, or even SSTOs and still have fun by doing what you want to do. What it's like now is you get asked to achieve certain orbits or test parts (these ones are the real tragedy and there are a lot of them, also the tech tree is pretty bad), or go full science mode and consider your career done when the tree is finished. Anyway my point is we need a better career, in which you are able to tell your own adventures by simply playing the way you want to play, not some sort of meaningless lore/story mode.

Are they useful though? Apart from setting a comm link (which isn't actually that useful since it has occlusion moments when only KSC is enabled) there aren't many times you can actually use that probe for something meaningful. It would be useful only if cameras and magnetometers were intoduced. Before that happens I will just avoid these tundra and molniya contracts because they aren't worth my time.

Well, yeah. I don't disagree, but as you said: geopolitics. That's non-existent in KSP, but it doesn't mean I wouldn't want to set up such constellations. I do that anyway in 1.2, but they are rather simplistic. What could be cool is maybe having the upkeep cost of these big dishes scattered around Kerbin. That would encourage the players to set up their own communication sats instead of paying for the Deep Space Network. The players would simply be able to select one of them and pick "Close this facility", or something like that and the monthly upkeep would decrease.

What would be great is a contracts creator with adjustable sliders of contract's expiry time. You set the expiry date to be sooner - you get higher rewards. You set it to be much later - the rewards are lower.

Procedural wings (and tanks) would be great to have.

Space agencies do that out of necessity, not because they are paid.

You are a minority. So am I. I want to have a sane science system which the game doesn't offer, but I am not able to change that. Are you not able to do what I suggested?

What's with this whole "I'm the minority" self-victimization approach? You can have everything in one box. Just type anything into the search bar, then delete it and you'll have your all-in-one tab, or make a custom category and put everything in there. There are plenty of options.

Eh. IMO the current categories are way way better than what they used to be. I don't have to switch between tabs back and forth because I'm looking for that one part that interests me and hasn't got it's own defined category. Everything is finally sorted by its function which is great and I don't get so annoyed when looking for anything anymore.

@Sharpy @fourfa @parameciumkid cool stuff! Thanks a lot! I'll try them out.

Sorry, no anti-aliasing. I'm a laptop pleb. I just assembled this thing in the VAB and cheated into orbit around Laythe, because I consider designing a nice space station a kind of art. And I'm lazy. But it's still a station, right!?

: ( Sad to see the torunament end like this. Mad props (hehe) for creating and running the whole thing! o7

I'm really tempted to install this mod, but I know that if I did so I would never leave Kerbin's atmosphere again.

I have a feeling this science transmission "tweak" was made to simply make the science system more meaningful. Except it doesn't (because science points, amirtie?). I'm not against the idea, but if that would become a thing people would simply warp throught the whole transmission time. Maybe the probe could lose control until the whole science was fully trasmitted, or something? So all you would have to do is just put the probe in a stable orbit and make sure it has power until all the science is transmitted. Could be a cool time-based mechanic only if the probes had the ability to collect science automagically. That wouldn't differ much from how the MPL works, except they would run out of science eventually if they were kept in the same orbit.

I don't think cutscenes are necessary. And besides, the shorts where made by danRosas. He's no longer working for SQUAD.

How I understand it from the OP: There's a possibility to disable some of the mechanics. So, if for example all I want to care about is Food and Climate Control, I should be able to edit a few text files and disable the things I don't want to deal with. Is that correct?