Kegereneku

[Personal & Biased opinions] - I am not the slightest bothered that SQUAD prioritize completing a Feature that was underdelivering for years. - The features itself sound interesting and well balanced for best enjoyments and gameplay (without catering to a vocal minority of masochist hardmod players) - Reacting to other comments : I never wanted RemoteTech stock, I wanted AntennaRange. And I find absolutely stupid the logic that SQUAD should have gone for the "complex one" and dumbed down the game to insult all other players. I now hope SQUAD continue on the logic of "finishing unfinished features" and continue with : * Refiltering Contracts, making them more reliable & enjoyable. * Rebalancing Administration-Strategy into something not pointless. * Reworking the R&D into giving meaningful choices for the players (though at least it is now very easy to OpenTree mods) Basically finishing Career-mode (now that all major feature are in, praying they don't try to add Lifesupport next and just complete the frigging game) Repeating for emphasis : This new feature is all well and nice, but now that KSP is 1.0+, I hope SQUAD complete at least one version into something stable, balanced and playable before adding new features. [/Personal & Biased opinions]

Samstarman5, we really don't have a problem with that because as said above it's neither or ~both. Current KSP-career do not represent one nor the other. It is trying to be whichever a players want, taking liberties with reality. The real market for satellite depend entirely of technology and time, there weren't a market for space-satellite during the cold war (ICBM at best) and Exploitation of space-resources (more than fuel/ISRU) is frankly still far away from us. On top of this, you have 20 communication satellites launched for each science-mission and no private business as any real profit motive to explore Mars (unless you live in a Heinlein's rocketpunk dream). Myself I consider that both Governmental agency/Private space company can be considered equivalent. - Government budget = Private investor/shareholders/subventions - Gov Agency provide launch service = Private company provide launch service - Gov Agency do Moon-landing = Private company is paid to do Moon-landing by government (it was unrealistic in the 70s but possible by the time we get 100% reusable Spaceplane) - Private Contract = Gov Mission So IMHO, in the end you are best blurring the lines and facilitating the means for players to "play pretend", hence the various suggestions to better achieve this. Maybe you thought I couldn't understand "private space company" because I wished to erase around 90% mention to them... this isn't the case, I don't care that much and said shortly : a fancy logo and auto-generated texts make no difference, Next, Tater, This is not much of a semantic problem, more of gameplay abstraction and defining what you are abstracting. One can say "Mission Control" deal with what we ultimately do with any space vehicle (before the mission, during the mission and even after) And the Administration deal with "how" we obtain and build the space vehicle. Filtering "contract" is not "how", it's "why" and "why" is answered by the above. Hence my disagreement with your that idea of yours. As for your other "rescue" idea, I see nothing fundamental to change either. I think the right change would come naturally if SQUAD reconsidered the way they balance the 3 pillar of Career mode. ps : I won't have as much time as before to debate. Expect long silence.

Tater, it's been so long we discuss this we might forget what each other said, still I remember your ideas, I like some but mostly disagree with your overall logic. Our main point of disagreement as I remember it (I won't mind if we don't restart the topic) would be the role of the "Administration building". I wouldn't mind that "Contract Filter" of yours but I consider it utterly insignificant (being dramatic here) compared to what refiltering contract-generation would achieve, cosmetic even, equivalent to (I wish) replacing all industry-logo and generated-text by Clean logo&text telling exactly what the mission is (rescue, survey, exploration, satellite...etc). ...however it replacing strategy would be a downgrade. The Strategy of the Administration building we have now ARE in fact more Strategies than your suggestion. They have just been balanced out into oblivions in the process of making them failsafe, like how you can't possibly fail contracts or get stuck in R&D. The system we have right now allow to consider each contracts as "projects" toward which you choose technological, funding & reputation means. Like how "Manned presence on the surface of Mars" was a "project" toward which NASA and SpaceX choose strategy (which are not based on filtering what contract they get but the means to accomplish any of them) To give an analogy, SpaceX isn't clawing its way by "doing Commercial Service" over "Exploration", all agency/company do both (illustrative link). SpaceX is making itself relevant by its choice of investing in Reusable engine/stage rather than reducing the cost of purpose-built rocket (or say making spaceplane). As for "budget", be it periodic or not, I never believed in market-driven Private-Venture, even SpaceX need backers and subvention and even a "National Space Program" need a job/reason for existence, amounting them to roughly the same thing. In result, to me "Budget" is more of a nondescript balance mechanism to keep a player able to rebound without making Contract impossible to fail (and obviously a lever to play on with reputation/funding). So basically, as I keep saying : - Contracts are not reliable enough, not to make them OP or failsafe. - Administration strategies don't make meaningful difference. - R&D is based on grinding rather than experience-based decision. But otherwise, KSP don't need to change that much (though, balancing a game can be harder than coding the features as demonstrated by the Aero-change) Ps : The above is quite a long answer to a topic that specific. So I don't mind if you don't wish to continue or correct me here.

I support this. You simply can't have an efficient ISRU without it.

I can't say I have an use for Aerodynamic heatshield but I would like inline Drogue-chute, or anything that let me stack a drogue-chute then a parachute on a capsule to compensate for the news aerodynamics.

Grumman, to me you are only seeing this in a RTS-way where mission are sequential and can't stack. Taking your example (Mun landing) let's imagine the following sub-objective : Put a satellite in orbit around the Mun. - starting from 0, you can add/make a satellite to/of your design easily (unless the reward isn't worth it, making it no different from refusing a mission). - If you already have a satellite in orbit, it's free money. - If you forget to accomplish it FIRST (for example because the timing don't allow multitasking), you are being punished. - If you somehow didn't care about this sub-obj, you are being sucked into doing it for the reward or doomed to know you'll miss something. - Worse : since launching a satellite is a mission by itself. You could just scroll around contract and take one that pay MORE for a Satellite so you get paid 2 times. Because the above make the distinction of sub-obj pointless, let's try one more optional : Add a New rover to the mission. - starting from 0, it is only harder and again if it's not worth it you'll simply abandon it. - You can't already have one since it mush be new, so no preparing infrastructure before the contract. - Ideally the Contract/Mission mustn't be possible to validate accidentally in the wrong order. Else you are being punished for no reason again. - Again, since the rover can be a mission by itself, you can hope to stack another one. So following this logic why make a sub-objective at all ? All this would do is making Objectives worth a full mission into something-lesser that can be failed if done in the wrong order. Why not simply make those sub-objective a different mission to accept or refuse ? (It is the player's space program after all) Meaning what's important is to make Mission-Control suggest this sort of contract at all rather than a tourists to the surface of the Sun or a Part-Test with absurdly precise (and stupid) requirement. This is not because a feature exist in another game that it would work in another one. I see what you mean but I disagree with it being a solution, you can't use RTGs duration or Life-support to (really) prevent milking satellite and (empty) station free-money. Also you forget Solar-satellite. (Honestly I think you are just trying to sell your wishlist, you know there is better solution) We would be better taking Private-satellite out of our control, or Space-station requiring to be mostly manned during the validation.

To reword the problem : It is that while main-objectives won't disappear until accomplished, optional one would if you don't do them first (or change the while paradigm to a Vessel/Players-centric one where we decide to close a mission). And so, if the sub-objective MUST be done while accomplishing the mission you are simply punishing forgetfulness (if it's just one more click) or ... as I said, depriving the player from a full success unless he plan the optional objective since the very start. Your "A+B in high-orbit / C in low-orbit" example is calling for a (new) surface launch for C to be accomplished before A+B rather than moving to a satellite in High-orbit, then one in low-Orbit (assuming you can't use a Molniya orbit). In RTS, optional objectives work because Mission are sequential and separate. You know you will not be able to wait until another mission stack-up over the objective to do everything at once (the very way you can abuse Station-contract right now) In KSP, you can stack many missions and most require so long to do that you can achieve them with near anything. In result a sub-objective must either appear before you did anything here, or be limited to one/new spaceship (docking problem) ... or be a main objective in a separate mission. To this add a problem of consistency : If you planned your 'sub-objective' to encourage a Slingshot around Duna while going to Jool, going to Jool directly and doing the Duna-scan through a probe already here defeat the logic in the Mission... unless you put severe limitation that can feel stupid. Exploit are a sign a game is BROKEN, as if you let an easy pipe-bug that gave you infinite fuel or missions that give you free money in way not intended by the Developers. The very principle of gameplay is that you cannot do certain things and must work within what you can do to accomplish the goals. In short : You are either doing it like KSP do it in stock, or it's a complete rewrite, not an optional mod.

Just saying : I don't consider it bad to be able to Max-out science from one or two fully explored planets. It give the choice of focusing on a planet and a high-return even if you are a not-yet-veteran player with less-than-efficient probes. However I do have a problem with the simplistic Cost-increase curve of the Tech-tree. It's because of it that you are forced to make further planet extremely rewarding. I'm pretty sure you could flatten the curve, increase science reward for Kerbin and achieve a balanced technological evolution. (Not that I play with the horrible Stock-Tree, I use Open-Tree, much more intuitive and fulfilling)

English isn't my first langage either but there's no need to be overly defensive. What you said (up to now, because yes I read) simply don't change what I wrote. By adding potentially limitless duration to a mission you risk depriving the players from the satisfaction of having achieved a token mission, no matter if he got the money/science. It is basic Game design and it trump reality. Also I would have proposed an alternative anyway. The Open-ended Mission proposal/rewording by Sybersmoke is... interesting. But it can fail on some points, docking allow for powerfully modular design which can be hard to track, leading to either potential Exploit or I imagine dead-end where the players can't get mission for new things because they are included or would be achieved by Extra optional sub-objective. I do think Career's contract could be heavily refiltered, made intelligent, and ditch the cartooney fake-industry. But not everything would be better.

The problem I see with this suggestion is that adding EXTRA objective (to a current contract) would be forceful on the players. Like, you achieved the job, and suddenly it's not good enough ? Even if it is justifiable to pursue exploration further, the choice to continue or to do something else must be left to the Players. Still I have an equivalent idea. If the Contract ever get re-filtered, they could propose mission without unnecessary fine-print generated in the intent of helping the player. Example : - A player sent a Manned mission to the surface of the Mun. - A contract appear to pay you (or give science/rep) to landing a "rover" anywhere (optionally on the Mun, as long as it's not a Specific Survey) - You are now encouraged to send a rover to your (next?) mun mission. another : - A player sent a spaceplane to orbit with cargo. (I pretty think they can track this, reliably) - A contract appear for roughly for a dozen of tourists (1/2 flights worth) Last (assuming there is ever an stock AntennaRange) : - Player don't have a satellite relay - Mission appear to put a satellite at the right place with the right equipment.

On one side landing on water is a possibility of space exploration. On the other side I don't want water landing to be as deadly than reentry and aerobraking became, giving you one more thing to worry about than the speed at which you can open your Parachute. And even if I can imagine awesome idea to improve it, it is mostly not worth the trouble and the time it will take for devs to get anywhere close them. So I'll pass.

Nope, they do Not regularly get people asking and capable of paying to go at any place NASA sent one unmanned probes. NASA didn't bring tourists on the Mun during the Apollo program and the only way for a Private Investor to land on Mars is if Elon Musk became an astronaut long after founding the world first most extraordinary mission of the century. (Those who read "The man who sold the Mun" should get what I'm coming at) This is a big distinction because KSP's tourists are somehow fully capable of funding any damn missions even in non-reusable vehicle when they should actually not exist except for : - that ONE tourist paying for a seat in an mission already planned. - those dozen other tourists investing a lot of money for a mere suborbital hop in a cheap vehicle. It's all about dosage and verisimilitude. If you treat 90% of stupid contract as if they were valid, your program will feel like 90% stupid. To quote myself : I would like to stop feeling like I'm a Tour Operator in the game 'Kerbal Tourism Program'. And as said numerous time now, the tourist aren't the source of the problem, they are only a symptom. A symptoms of SQUAD not having put the time (yet) to balance and fully integrate several disparate features into a veritable cohesive Gameplay. Which is sad since most of the work must have been in the ability to track users action and generate specific contracts. There's nothing bad in random generation of contents but by itself it don't necessarily mean random generation of goods contents, you need to filter thing. And talking of filter, I don't think the game do (because no dV-reader) but I think it would improve to keep track of the mass/drymass of spacecraft sent anywhere. Because it's one thing to send a 4 tons in orbit, it's something else to send 100 tons on Eeloo.

I'm not against the concept but for now I simply can't stand being asked to carry stupid tourist everywhere I just went, as if I was a Tour Operator in the game "Kerbal Space Tourism". Similar yet Different than Tater above, career mods simply need a complete rebalance. You don't need to change fundamentally Administration & Contract but they need to have a point other than random challenge.

Going into the setting file and checking "Texture Quality = 1" once solved that problem for me.

I would like to distinguish myself from Tater (with which I certainly already had this sort of argument) and other gut&remake-the-Contract. The current Administration/Contract would be good if it was actually balanced/filtered, and the worst I would do to Contract except the above is abandon the "Companies-flag" to replace them by mission-type icon indicating the job done. (and purge ALL SILLY TEXTS, seriously who read them ?) Late answer is late, I don't want a reward system, unless you consider a reward having a Career-themed Gameplay that feel like an Career and not random nonsensical missions leading strictly nowhere and discourage building infrastructure (Extract Ore from Eve ! What the point ?!). If I only wanted excuse to build stuff, I would simply play in Sandbox. If you don't see what I mean, imagine if a game like "Tomb Raider" played like a Gun-Game, "STALKER" asked to deliver pizza and "Arma 3" made you an One-man-Army. Right now, Contracts, as well as Administration-Strategy, Building-Upgrade and R&D-Tech-tree (which are all linked) are extremely lacking in Synergy. In a normal game, you'd have to use strategy and chose your missions and your technology carefully to progress in the game. Alas here the use of Strategy is pointless, contract are either impossible to FAIL or impossible to WIN (as in achieve a profit). You aren't building a Space Program you are simply avoiding stupid contract and GRINDING through the Tech-tree (which seemingly follow the logic that if your choices don't matter you can't fail). BTW : I don't ask to filter-out all "simply difficult" mission, I just want them to not appear over illogical progress. Even if you lived in a Heinlein's Rockpunk wet dream, you wouldn't have Tourist asking for flight to the Mun or Duna minutes after you did it with a probes. Someone said "you can just refuse". True, but (1) it mean I wont have anytime soon intelligently-made Kerbin-suborbital tourists I can actually build an economy on, (2) It do horrible things to our Immersion and self-esteem. (like "Why do I keep having suicidal tourists and useless satellite ?! Is my Space Program that pointless ?! Am I considered a Firework-factory ?") Ps : while we are all at "describe your own KSP" : My dream KSP is mostly current contract & administration, except you can fail and depend at 50% on a Periodic-nonstackable-Budget to do anything. You are NOT guided, the contract/mission adapt to what you DO or NEED. You put a lander on X ? A Mission appear to finance a rover 'anywhere'. You have reusable vehicle with lot of seats ? One Contract is for tourist. You need science ? One contract is a science Mission to place you haven't done before. You don't have a specific launch vehicle ? a Contract ask for a launcher capable of putting [fixed-subassembly] at X place. (based on Data from SQUAD beta-tester & difficulty)

I feel offended to be told that Mech-jeb is "easy mode" as if we were less worthy for using it. I use Mechjeb : - When I want to automatize dumb task that require no skills. - When I'm bored to do manually stuff I already know how to do better (I coerce MechJeb into doing interplanetary plane change). - When I want tools so I can pilot with more skills than possible with a simplistic interface. - When I'm looking for some real efficiency, not some unworthy stock-level ....ty overengineering (sarcasm), to do more using less. - When I want to snack while admiring my rocket working at peak efficiency. - Between the parts where I really want to pilot myself. Not to say that Mechjeb should become stock (except obviously all the dV/TWR information) but there is no differences between using it or challenging yourself to play with primitive control interface. It was my totally unbiased opinion.

Contract don't even need a Story to be improved, They need to actually FILTER what is generated and STOP FILLING ALL FINE PRINT out of idiotic-automation ! See, the game is already generating contract automatically, this is not a list. All filter need to do is : - Never ask for stability-Enhancer test anywhere else - Never have Booster test outside Kerbin Atmosphere (and only starting landed, not in flight at 50km and 400m/s) - No engine test outside their capability (jet engine at speed they can't reach) - No pointless altitude-range and speed-range unless it serve a gameplay purpose. - Forbid tourist-contract from asking for stuff you never did with a manned-mission of professional. Next, the above is just to AVOID stupid contract. But you could also use said filter to make the progression more intelligent. ex : - tailored survey and science contract from place you didn't get said science already. - have engine-test that hint at their most efficient use. - Design-development (ex : reaching orbit with a vehicle that have a cargo bay and back). - suggest IRSU base at place that are good for Infrastructure. - new contracts that encourage to visit coolest relief of the various planet. - barely-paid contract the players can choose to accomplish everywhere (ex : Land a manned rover anywhere except Kerbin) That's all. I don't know if working with those filters are an hassle, but that's needed for Contract to stop looking like half-done. As much as I appreciate the new heat-system and radiator, we wish we could count on a finished game.

I would recommend the "Open Tree" mods next time you play. That aside, I can't help you.

Not playing KSP is cheating. Playing KSP with Mechjeb, is not. Myself I use it when I get bored to fly mission myself. Though, its first use is the dV-reader which should be stock.

I support this idea. Better get more place of interest than copypasted planet. If several of those place happened to be relatively close to each other you would also solve one of KSP's Conundrum : What to build rover for. Remember how you explore the KSC looking for all science. Imagine doing the same anywhere else. Eventually you could rebalance science to make sure those place are slightly more interesting (yet only fully explorable in EVA/rover)

There's a simpler explanation : SQUAD can only do so much in a given time. There like a dozen features or corrections that we are waiting for before clouds. to name a few of mines : - dV reader (supposed to get done through Engineer) - Contract overhaul into something that don't give you random mission that are pointless or stupid 90% of the times. (testing parts encourage you to never test them, satellite have barely any importance since Antenna don't have range, survey make you go place you already went, tourist are asking the damnest things and you can't plan multipart missions over contract...etc...etc) - R&D Tech-tree not being built to make choice as inconsequential and grindy as possible. - Administration building having any kind of balance whatsoever in the career, and a true periodic budget wouldn't hurt either, in fact it would allow real contract penalty. And we waited for those before 1.0. So, cloud it's all well and nice, I want them too, but it can wait. My hope is that SQUAD have been holding back in prevision of U5, but I wouldn't bet on it.

The problem is that the Tech-Tree seem to be built to be as independent as possible from user choices. Hypothetically it make it fail-safe, you can't fail if you don't have the choice. In practice it mean you'll be grinding forever to get ensemble of parts you should have logically developed 50 launch ago. Someone could say that it "encourage creative design", except that this is Career mode in a quiet Complex game, that's not where you are supposed to exploit the FLAW in the physic engine to compensate for the lack of a Hyper-technologically-Advanced-Super-science-Static-Mobility-Enhancer aka : L.A.D.D.E.R Until it get addressed (if ever) I recommend OpenTree.

As I said in earlier topic : It would be pointless to add clone-planet or ridiculously specific hat-planet with only one new challenge, when you could retroactively give new challenge to every other planets at once. As example, take the case of heat radiators : Now heat transfer rate between the inside and the outside matter, which mean we can actually have planet/biome that require special heat consideration, making temperature scan matter ! More stuff to design for WITHOUT adding more planet. And lastly whatever feature a new planet/moon could have, can be added to old planets the same (Geyser, spiked-mountain, plateau, cave, floor is lave, rings...etc)

Plenty of potential, never fully implanted. Ex about Career : - Contract are idiotically random, impossible to fail and follow no logic - Administration building don't give any advantage whatsoever and is best avoided entirely - The Tech-tree is built as to make user choice as inconsequential as possible, you can't fail, but you can't win either, just grind. And that's baring what would count as suggestion (like what my signature hint at). As a sandbox it's fine, but if you got over the whole "I'm flying a spacecraft I built with a non-ridiculous physic" aspect of KSP the career mode is disappointing in comparison.

Nice catch.