DonLorenzo's KSP Campaign; now with Salvage, Milestones, Contracts and more

[DonLorenzo]

Hello people,

As I said a couple of days ago I’ve been working on a campaign structure for KSP. I’m participating in togfox’s campaign, it’s great fun and has made me think about many aspects of running such a thing. I’ve decided to now have a stab at it. Procedurally this one will be very similar to his (ie. You mail me designs, I fly them and report progress) however I’ve shaken up the part cost balance and technology tree and have added contracts as a mission type, I think this will make for a different experience, it wouldn’t be much fun to run the same thing twice after all.

In balancing and designing a tech tree it hasn’t been my focus to make a super duper hardcore difficulty campaign, instead I want to encourage diversity and creativity, while still rewarding efficiency and smarts. The main problem with that is money, how do you give everyone enough to be able to do different things without trivializing it so much that just anything goes? My take to solving that is to have almost all parts available from the get-go, and have technologies reduce them in price and increase the amount that parts are salvageable for. The next thing is mission rewards. There will always be set rewards for missions, so you know what threshold you are designing against. Just increasing the rewards for tougher missions while decreasing the cost of parts (through tech) will inevitably lead to money becoming worthless, which isn’t something I want. Tougher, more advanced missions will have to be rewarded at a similar if not lower level than previous missions. To balance this some, most or all (easier) missions will not be allowed to be re-flown, or possibly for a much reduced pay-out. I’m not yet decided as to applying this rule per player or to whole campaign. That too might vary per mission.

The function of this thread is to expose the core structure of the campaign I’m sketching out. Any and all comments are welcome, just keep in mind that all numbers are basically snatched out of thin air at this point and comments on overall structure will be more useful. Ideas for missions/contracts or cool mods and/or plugins to include are also welcome, although perhaps better suited as PMs.

Inside the spoilertag are more details, presented in the form of a hypothetical FAQ. Attached is an excel file with my preliminary part costings, tech levels and mission/contract ideas. These are complete nor final, just my ideas at this point. Let me know what you think and whether or not you’d like to play!

Cheers

How do we do this?

You will e-mail me with your intentions and .craft file(s) for the turn in question. I will then process everyone’s flights and post here when it’s all ready.

How often do we do this?

We will probably need a couple of days per turn, just to give everyone a chance to design a few ships and me the time to process it all. I will post deadlines, but should all the players submit before the deadline and I have spare time as well things might progress faster. We’ll see what works out, actually please post your preferred turn speed and I’ll try to accommodate everyone.

How many launches per turn?

You will be able to shoot for one milestone and bid on one contract per turn. Milestones and contracts are separate events (explained later). You can use as many launches as you like/can afford for milestone and contract. You will need to be able to afford all launches prior to any reward money pay-outs.

What are milestones?

Milestones are the most straightforward ‘missions’ to undertake. You build a rocket capable of reaching a milestone and if it works you get paid out. There’s a bonus for reaching a milestone first, in case of simultaneous achievement that bonus may either be awarded to all claimants or split between them, I’m not decided on that yet. Milestones will most likely not be repeatable, at least not all of them. Maybe there will be a separate category of ‘repeatable missions’ should they become needed.

What are contracts?

Contracts are like milestones in that they require a specific set of objectives to be met, however these objectives will be more specific than the milestones and more importantly, only one person can perform any one contract. The way they work is as follows; a contract is posted for a given turn and every player is free to then bid on that contract. The lowest bid gets to do the contract and gets paid the amount of their bid. I hope this will make for an interesting design and bidding competition. Contracts will need at least two bids on them to be awarded to anyone. There may not be contracts available every turn. I will have no way to check but price fixing and colluding in bidding will be illegal. Conspicuous bids and exorbitant profit margins will be investigated!

The ZOX system

A Zoxygen system (link) is required on all flights. It houses not only equipment for life-support but also vital instruments for manual engine control. It is allowed to jettison the main module, but only while in atmosphere and after the jettison no more powered flight is allowed.

Use of the ‘O’ button, a sort of ‘nitrous boost’ that increases thrust at the expense of extra fuel and at the risk of exploding is allowed, but due to unpredictable outcomes it’s not recommended.

How will you determine success or failure?

Bear in mind that you are roleplaying a corporation that builds spacecraft as an external contractor. You are not going to be flying it yourself. I will fly all submitted craft once, and the results from that flight count. That means it’s smart to design with a slight surplus in fuel budget and make the craft easily controllable. I’m a competent pilot, but designs that need 10 tries to get an ascent angle exactly right will likely not fare very well. Obviously if something dumb happens I will not be a dick and re-fly it anyway.

What if the kerbals die?

All designs should be made with the intent of the crew surviving. That said, should the kerbals die not all is lost. Standard family reimbursement policy dictates that 25% of projected profit should go to the family of any deceased kerbal. That means that in case of a total crew explosion you will be docked 75% of your profit from that mission. You can purchase life insurance (inappropriately listed as a technology) to cut this amount in half.

What about salvage?

Once ‘Salvage Tech I’ has been purchased parts listed as having a salvage percentage above 0 can be salvaged for the listed percentage of their cost. Parts will count as salvaged if they are either landed without exploding or jettisoned with an attached parachute. One parachute will safely descend 4 mass units (one big engine and 4 empty fuel tanks = 3,2).

Purchasing technologies

Almost all parts are available from turn 1, the technologies available for purchase make them cheaper and/or give them better salvage percentages. You are allowed to purchase one technology per turn, so choose wisely.

[sjwt]

Looking it over now, will have a good think for ya!

***

Got a lot of ideas, will make an altered version and post it here when I am happy with it..

[DonLorenzo]

Cool, I\'m abroad now and looking to start it after the weekend. There\'s a couple of things I\'m not decided on. For instance how to handle contracts and regular missions side by side. Cash will be an issue and I don\'t want it to be \'just for the rich\'. An option would be to not require the player to pay for the parts used in a contract (he would be supplying the \'blueprints only\'), however that just makes the person with the most appropriate tech for any given contract almost auto-win.

A seperate \'contracts only\' turn wouldn\'t be much fun either because only one or maybe two people would stand to make money, for the rest the game would stand still.

Currently I\'m considering having the contractor supply certain parts (like the command pod, zox system and maybe an engine or two) themselves, reducing the financial burden on the player allowing them to be run side by side with missions more succesfully. I think that\'s the best way to go.

[sjwt]

A seperate \'contracts only\' turn wouldn\'t be much fun either because only one or maybe two people would stand to make money, for the rest the game would stand still.

Missions should fly twice a week, and contracts once a week.

Missions would be updated each round,

they *could* be permanently closed off, but I would just reduce the payout each round they are successfully flown until your return is only a little bit.

Contracts could become a weekly design challenge, everyone gets a payout based on how cheep their design was.. The more it cost, the lest the return, say paying out from 10k down to 5k, its a little bonus, with a set contract each week(not advertised in advance), and maybe a set list of what parts can and can not be taken.

Say \'To the moon with anything\' or \'To the moon, no large LFE\'s, no boosters\' or \'To the moon, must use 5 Large LFE\'s always working\'

Add small payouts for say, least parts, smallest craft, most original design, most parts, largest ship, judges favourite..

You don\'t pay for the ship, but it would include say a 5% \'design fee\', so you couldn\'t just add piles of stuff to make the largest, you could risk losing money.

[DonLorenzo]

Thanks for your ideas.

I don\'t want to have different kinds of \'turns\' progressing at different rates, that would create unnecessary complexity and issues with getting extra money halfway through a turn etc. Wouldn\'t be nice I don\'t think.

I think I\'ll go with my original plan, allow people to fly a mission and do a contract in a single turn, but have the contracts be either cheap to do or independent of current balance altogether and just a design challenge (basically what you said). I\'d rather not lose the bidding aspect, I like that, but I think it needs a fair amount of players to ensure a robust and fair system that will serve to give small bonuses instead of huge paydays without the need for a lot of game-mastering. If we get a small number of players I\'ll probably re-shape it into something that will give everyone or at least most players a small bonus. Quite possibly the contracts and their rules will vary from turn to turn, could add some diversity.

I think I\'ll update the available missions and their pay-outs every turn, trying to manually retain balance and keep incentives in place for every player.

Another rule I was considering to level the playing field between players that are ahead and behind is a \'tax\'. This would effectively tax the richest player (measured by funds in the bank) by 10% of those funds and maybe even gift those to the lagging player, but ONLY if the taxed player would still be the leader after that tax. I think in this form it\'s quite a bad idea, it simply doesn\'t sounds very fun. However I do want to consider some kind of mechanism to disproportionately tax the richer, better players so it doesn\'t become a slipperly slope type walkover after three turns. I just haven\'t figured it out yet

Perhaps reducing the price of tech every time it\'s been researched by someone? I think that might be interesting

[sjwt]

Thanks for your ideas.

I have a re-write of the tech etc coming soon, once I can put into writing the thoughts behind the changes, but one of the basic ones was to make joiners even cheaper.

[DonLorenzo]

Cool. I now know I\'ll be back home on tuesday. That\'s when I\'ll go over everything again and ecide a final number to start play with. Consider that your deadline for inclusion

[sjwt]

Cool. I now know I\'ll be back home on tuesday. That\'s when I\'ll go over everything again and ecide a final number to start play with. Consider that your deadline for inclusion

hmmm, where is that challenge accepted image when you need it!~

[DonLorenzo]

I did some preliminary playtesting (on ksp 0.13 with an old netbook) and am fairly confident of my new numbers for at least the beginning portion of the campaign. Of some concern to me though, is anyone actually interested in playing?

[Alchemist]

Maybe the salvage % for LFEs should be bigger (maybe base 50%, with upgrade 85%), but for LFT very low (5-20%) - fuel definetely costs much more than the tank, but the engine is the most expensive part. It\'s difficult to salvage the engine, but if you recovered it, the cost of preparing it for a new flight is much lower than making a new engine.

And for SRB it could be something like 40-70% to account both for recovered hardware and refill costs.

[DonLorenzo]

The salvage numbers approach your suggestions when the appropriate techs are researched, boosters can get up to 65% salvage and LFE\'s up to 55% while both have their base costs reduced significantly. I\'ll have another look at it, but I want salvaging to be an addition and it be feasible to design without it. I\'m afraid too high salvage numbers makes it overpowered and will make SSTO + landing ships almost free, which isn\'t something I want.

[sal_vager]

I\'ll give your game a go, It sounds interesting.

[sjwt]

Thoughts and ideas are attached, very rough..

[DonLorenzo]

Thanks, I agree with the spirit of your suggestions and will work the numbers and open the campaign sometime tomorrow. As to turn speed, I plan to set a deadline for the first turn and from then on work with generous deadlines, but with the possibility that as soon as all current players have submitted a turn (and I have the time to process them) the turn can move forward sooner than planned.

Stay tuned

[sal_vager]

I\'m looking forwards to it, but what if you can\'t fly my designs?

[DonLorenzo]

If I\'m totally at a loss as to how to, I\'ll probably ask you how to fly the damn thing. If I mess up because I fall asleep or hit the wrong button or something dumb like that I\'ll re-do it. If I fly it competently but it just doesn\'t succeed the mission, kills a kerbal or lands in an unfortunate spot, the consequences are valid. I tried to design them so as not to be game breaking, where dying kerbals would be \'oh shit\', but not the end of the world. As I said in the OP, designs that need absolute precision-flying might not succeed, although they might, but you\'d better write a nice clear manual. I\'m a good pilot, especially with mechjeb that allows very accurate instructions.

[sal_vager]

I\'ll let you know if there are any issues with my craft, most are fine, it\'s only the spaceplanes that like to cartwheel.

I have yet to really try Mechjeb, the first time I did, it wouldn\'t load, and the second time it seemed to be having fits.

[DonLorenzo]

We\'ll make it work, don\'t worry. I want to encourage designing with a bit of margin, I\'m not aiming to be a nasty sadistic gamemaster.

[DonLorenzo]

I got chartered to be a furniture mover today, so the campaign will kick off tomorrow instead

[sal_vager]

Okay, I should be available to start your game inbetween painting my recumbent trike and procrastinating, don\'t put your back out Don, lift with your knees

[DonLorenzo]

It\'s up! http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=11947.0