I like OP's idea. If I reach a new milestone/achievment/goal in KSP I should be rewarded with progress in a certain direction. Not generic science points. This would tie well into career mode because if you only do certain mission types then you will only discover technology that is relevant to these missions. At some point you would get stuck and you would have to explore different parts of the game. And you would have to choose wisely what technology path you choose because if a private investor is looking for someone to do something for him and you don't have the technology needed to do that you will loose precious funding, and you will be limited to other mission types. This allows for interesting gameplay and gives your space agency a distinct character. Regarding the things PDCWold said: the best way to resolve the problems would be to make the techtree moddable as soon as possible. SQUAD should then put all of the old and new stuff in Tier 0 and let it stay there! SQUAD should switch their focus to the more important things like the wobble mentioned above and the development of the foundations of the game. That way everything will stay the same regarding science, career and all that stuff, it will be the same sandbox because everything is in Tier 0. The only things changing? SQUAD will (hopefully) add new features and improve/fix existing features and modders will have the ability to experiment with the techtree. When everything else is done and works SQUAD can start to mess with techtrees, career, missions etc. Everything else is a useless waste of time (IMO) because (as PDCWolf said) a techtree during this phase of development would require constant reworking and adjustments, which is a waste of time as long as we have more important problems. If SQUAD doesn't keep up with the techtree tweaking we might as well leave everything in Tier 0, hence my suggestion. If modders start playing with the techtree (and I bet they will) then players can get experience with such a system and provide valuable feedback which comes in handy when SQUAD implements the official techtree. The whole process would be much smoother and faster.