Possible overhaul to building upgrades in Career (or maybe a mod idea)

[dewin]

I'm sitting here in my career game looking at my level 2 VAB and going "Man, I don't really need to go above 255 parts right now, but I'd love to have to have full access to action groups." Along similar lines at my astronaut complex "I don't really need more than 5 Kerbals right now, but EVA would be nice."... and it got me to thinking...

What if -- instead of the current "Pay large sum of money for huge upgrade" setup, buildings had tech trees similar to science but using Funds instead of Science. The existing level-up system could still be used in such a way of "Once you've spent X amount on building upgrades, that building changes to the next tier's model."

This could allow to make building upgrades overall cost more than they do now, but in more manageable chunks. Also, depending on how the UI is presented, it'd make certain 'dependant' upgrades more intuitive (Rather than R&D saying "Astronaut Complex Upgrade required for EVA Surface Sample", I might simply have a "EVA Surface Sample" node that has dependencies on other nodes in both buildings).

It'd also allow certain upgrades to be more incremental, e.g. the current VAB goes from 30->255->unlimited parts; a tree system might have more 'steps' (30->60->120->255->unlimited, for instance)... so something like:

(Costs and such totally made up and not balanced)

Vehicle Assembly I -> Cost: 0; Can assemble spacecraft with up to 30 parts.

. . Vehicle Assembly II -> Cost: 30,000; Can assemble spacecraft with up to 60 parts.

. . . Vehicle Assembly III -> Cost: 60,000; Can assemble spacecraft with up to 120 parts. [and so on]

. . Control Systems -> Cost: 50,000; Basic Action Groups Available

. . . Advanced Control Systems -> Cost: 150,000; Custom Action Groups Available

To still encourage players to fully unlock each building's tech tree, the final node can possibly require all previous upgrades -- i.e. you can't unlock unlimited parts until you've also finished out the action group tree, etc.

Thoughts?

[StrandedonEarth]

Sounds good

[gmiddlemass]

Sounds like a good idea.

[uglyduckling81]

Someone make it and I will use it. Really good idea. Sounds like a fairly easy one to make as well.

[Solarspaceprobe]

The research building could have sample analysis equipment, and the complex could have sample collection gear for surface samples! Yeah, I like this idea if it's possible. But I would hope each upgrade would influence ascetics of the building(except maybe a few peices of internal equipment, but that doesn't make much sense for R&D and such because there could easily be, say, a sample analysis building because the R&D has so many buildings), which would be difficult to implement and model without wasting complexity and space.

[dewin]

The research building could have sample analysis equipment, and the complex could have sample collection gear for surface samples! Yeah, I like this idea if it's possible. But I would hope each upgrade would influence ascetics of the building(except maybe a few peices of internal equipment, but that doesn't make much sense for R&D and such because there could easily be, say, a sample analysis building because the R&D has so many buildings), which would be difficult to implement and model without wasting complexity and space.

My original design calls for the building visual upgrades to simply happen on certain thresholds of total amount spent upgrading; otherwise it requires a lot of additional modelling and other complexities. But yes, it would be neat if your space center looked drastically different from someone else's based on the direction you went with upgrades.

[Starwhip]

The current tech tree is in tiers, correct? Well, what if in this system, once you unlock a certain number of nodes on a tier in the building "tech tree", the building mesh gets upgraded?

I like this idea, it has a lot of potential.