DonLorenzo's Forum Campaign: To space, the moon and beyond

[sal_vager]

Okay I\'ll get onto turn 6 today, also....

2 person and extra large hammocks, at the Hammocks.com, Hammock lane, in the Hammock quarter of the Hammockweb, they look a bit pricy but at least now you know they are out there, and you can shop around, here\'s another one.

[Bellaby]

Whilst preempting my turn budgets a bit i was looking at designs for an orbit capable craft and i have one with a single large LFE and 4 LF tanks plus two SRBs and associated decouplers. it can just about make a 70km orbit and return and its 24000 monies. The orbit mission only rewards 18k so i\'d actually make a loss, and ive no idea how to make it cheaper. At the moment i don\'t have lfe researched but even if i did the rocket would still cost more. How do you guys manage it?

[dogon11]

Whilst preempting my turn budgets a bit i was looking at designs for an orbit capable craft and i have one with a single large LFE and 4 LF tanks plus two SRBs and associated decouplers. it can just about make a 70km orbit and return and its 24000 monies. The orbit mission only rewards 18k so i\'d actually make a loss, and ive no idea how to make it cheaper. At the moment i don\'t have lfe researched but even if i did the rocket would still cost more. How do you guys manage it?

May I suggest.... MOAR BOOSTETRS?

I seriously don\'t know how these guys manage this.

Also, nice campaign you\'ve got going here.

[Awaras]

Whilst preempting my turn budgets a bit i was looking at designs for an orbit capable craft and i have one with a single large LFE and 4 LF tanks plus two SRBs and associated decouplers. it can just about make a 70km orbit and return and its 24000 monies. The orbit mission only rewards 18k so i\'d actually make a loss, and ive no idea how to make it cheaper. At the moment i don\'t have lfe researched but even if i did the rocket would still cost more. How do you guys manage it?

My orbit capable craft cost me $10,800. Two key things: a single small LFE goes a long way, and you don\'t need any decouplers at all.

[Bellaby]

hmm a small... I\'ll have to try this thanks

[issarlk]

Whilst preempting my turn budgets a bit i was looking at designs for an orbit capable craft and i have one with a single large LFE and 4 LF tanks plus two SRBs and associated decouplers. it can just about make a 70km orbit and return and its 24000 monies.

I think I see your problem: 4 tanks is way too much in my opinon. Remove one or two and see if the craft fares better, you might be surprised.

Less is better, as I found with this campaign. Also I found that you want to have the craft go fast when the LFE starts so that it\'s thrust is well used, and so a lot of SRBs at the start is a good thing.

[robsr3v3ng3]

Yeah the LFEs are way too expensive without the research. My suggestion is to stick to the earlier missions with SRBs so you can save enough money to get the research done. SRB research is good thing to start with so you can make the early missions mode rewarding.

[DonLorenzo]

just checking in, I am alive and will process the turn today or tomorrow (basically as soon as the hangover permits). In the mean time, what did you think of the week long turn? Too long?

[Bellaby]

welcome back to the land of the living

personally the week long turn seemed a bit too long for me, but then i end up with quite a bit of free time now-and-then. I can\'t remember who posted it but they proposed a turn length where one turn is monday to friday, and another turn saturday & sunday, since people have more time during the weekend (in theory).

I would like the above .

[Bellaby]

For those of you who thought 4 tanks were too many, it is just enough. Less tanks and it wont make it. My current design is the cheapest i can come up with, but im now experimenting with small LFE\'s but they simply do not have the thrust to haul them and enough fuel into space, and MOAR BOOSTERS is well and good (i have both booster and decoupler tech) but in the end it would still cost more :/

Real head scatcher here, but very enjoyable !

[issarlk]

just checking in, I am alive and will process the turn today or tomorrow (basically as soon as the hangover permits). In the mean time, what did you think of the week long turn? Too long?

welcome back

I find one week to be way too long. 4 days would be perfect imho.

[robsr3v3ng3]

as a few people have said a week long turn is really too long. anything less than 3 days is also too short in my opinion.

to be fair though there was a decent reason for a longer turn this time round.

[sal_vager]

Don undoubtedly has other things he needs to do, such as hunting for his food, fending off sharks (you never know when you\'ll be attacked by sharks, can\'t even go shopping in peace these days), trying to find a bed large enough for his awesomeness and similar.

All while carrying his worldly possessions on his back and wrestling electricity from wild powerlines to keep his phone and laptop charged.

And on top of all this, he has to find time to launch all our rockets, I think once a week is fine.

[DonLorenzo]

Haha, especially the electricity wrestling is such a bother! I do agree a week is too long, thanks for your feedback. Ill start the next turn tomorrow and we\'ll give the week/weekend schedule a go

[DonLorenzo]

It\'s been a while, but here it is, the turn 6 results!

Announcements

-Many different missions were flown, I\'m starting to see some interesting variety in ship design and tech choices. I like this! Both Issarlk and Bellaby opted for the 200km mission, willfully subjecting their crews to hazardous G loading. The crew manning Bellaby\'s capsule were made of sterner stuff than their Issarlkian counterparts, all the bellabians survived where Issarlk\'s captain sadly returned home sans crew. Two kerbals dead and their families have been compensated to the tune of 1300 monies in total.

-Cheaper technology! ZOX Tech I has been purchased twice, the price has now dropped to a low $4500. Booster Tech and Salvage Tech I have been researched a couple more times as well, however they had already reached their final and lowest price points.

-The design contest this turn had two very close leaders, Awaras and Sal_vager clocking in well ahead of the pack with ships sporting just 12 and 15 parts, respectively. Thus Awaras claims the bonus contract money.

-I\'ve seen a fair few of you like to use the Aerospike rocket engine in your contract designs. This is fine, I\'ve not spelled it out as such but in contracts pretty much all stock parts are fair game, except those specifically ruled out in the contract rules of course. The aerospike engine hasn\'t been available for regular missions yet, as of this turn I\'m introducing \'Aerospike Tech\'. It costs just $1000 and makes unlocks the Aerospike engine at the same price and salvage level (and subject to the same reductions through Liquid Tech) as the gimballed regular engine.

-Awaras has completed the \'complete one full kerbin orbit\' mission, which unlocks the joint space station (which will unlock munar missions) as well as a few extra extended space operations missions. See the Turn 7 highlights for these.

-A few of you changed your submissions half-way through the turn. This is fine, especially as it was a really long turn, but I\'m not going to commit to always honouring the changes. Basically if I\'m in the progress of flying the ships it\'ll be too late. There will be no way for you to know when that is. I encourage you to \'sleep a night\' on your submission, especially if it\'s early in the turn.

Financial Overview

Player: Awaras Mission Completed: Complete one full kerbin orbit Tech purchased: Zoxy Tech I Spent: $17850 Income: $42500 New Balance: $95990

Player: Sal_vager Mission Completed: none Tech purchased: none Spent: $1500 Income: $6000 New Balance: $15950

Player: Fireblade Mission Completed: 80km Tech purchased: Zoxy Tech I Spent: $16750 Income: $20000 New Balance: $24100

Player: Robsr3v3ng3 Mission Completed: 25km Tech purchased: Parachute Tech Spent: $10000 Income: $11500 New Balance: $15250

Player: Issarlk Mission Completed: 200km Tech purchased: Salvage Tech IIa Spent: $18050 Income: $23000 New Balance: $25450

Player: Bellaby Mission Completed: 200km Tech purchased: Salvage Tech I Spent: $14100 Income: $42500 New Balance: $23550

Player: DB101 Mission Completed:none Tech purchased: Booster Tech Spent: $4700 Income: $6000 New Balance: $11800

Turn 007 Highlights

-New Tech: Aerospike Tech. $1000, unlocks Aerospike engine at regular gimballed engine price/salvage levels

-New Mission: Establish 100x100km equatorial kerbin orbit, complete two such orbits, then land at either pole.

-New Mission: Reach 2000km altitude

-Joint space station construction: Put the parts for the joint space station into orbit (200x200km 0 inclination). The parts required are: 25x full LFT, 15x full large ZOX tank, 4x ZOX panel, 5x tri-coupler, 2x LFE (unused in flight), 20x RCS block, 10x RCS tank, 2x sLFE (unused in flight), 4x command pod (these last, as they will build + occupy the station). Orbital Rendez-vous and assembly is implied. The parts that you send up as cargo are free (you do need to have the apropriate tech), the ship that carries it isn\'t, you use your personal launch slot for these. You get a $3000 compensation for each such mission flown.

-New contract: Design an atmospheric hovering platform that can maintain <10m/s horizontal and vertical velocity at the highest possible altitude for at least one and a half minutes and can launch a rocket. See updated OP for details.

The deadline for this turn will be Thursday night, 21-06-2012 @ 23:59 (GMT+2)

[DonLorenzo]

Oh and as an extra goodie, here\'s my persistence file so far. Almost all things in it are this campaign. There are a few projects of myself in there, but not a whole lot. Play in it if you like

Update: Included the contract and rewards on the new missions. I did run into a problem doing the rewards, there will quite inevitably at some point exist a situation where doing less advanced missions with higher tech levels will be more profitable than doing the new missions. If not priced this way, the newer missions will just be outrageously profitable, which isn\'t very nice either. I\'m not outright banning the re-flying of old missions (yet), but please aim high! There are milestones to be conquered after all.

[db101]

Yeesh that\'s laggy on my comp

I did run into a problem doing the rewards, there will quite inevitably at some point exist a situation where doing less advanced missions with higher tech levels will be more profitable than doing the new missions.

Have you considered lowering the reward for repeating flights? Like, if I keep squeaking out the 10k challenge, after a successful mission the reward for me will drop a few percent -- and after more successful flights the reward will keep creeping down. A few drops and the conservative players will be setting their sights on higher challenges quickly.

Granted, this would add a little more work for you Don, as you\'d have to keep track of how many times each player has done each mission.

[Awaras]

-Only aeroplane parts (apart from the rocket to be launched) may be used.

Can we use SAS or ASAS? How about Mechjeb?

Best design is determined by me, stability and ease of use will be the qualities on which the design is judged.

Will you be flying them manually?

[DonLorenzo]

@DB101: I have considered that, and decided against it.. mostly. How I see the missions right now is that those that are repeating the \'simple\' altitude missions are doing so out of (perceived) necessity, the higher missions give increasingly greater reward and thus there\'s no financial incentive to repeat low missions. That\'s how I want it to be.

Because I over rewarded some of the early \'high\' missions, and because of the necesarry tech progression and cost reductions it\'s not really interesting to keep increasing rewards on increasingly difficult missions. This leads only to everyone being super rich. A bit like Awaras, who has been incredibly efficient, much more so even than I projected. I added the joint projects to keep things a little more equal, we\'ll see how that works out in the coming few turns.

One thing I did with the Kubble missions is a bit like the opposite of incrementally reducing rewards, instead the reward remains constant but the mission objective becomes harder each time you complete it. As of now, with the other missions I\'m not going to put in restraints yet, should they show up they will most likely be in the format of \'you can only fly this mission X times\', not keeping track of how often everyone did the mission. It wouldn\'t be that much work, but it would be cumbersome to display for everyone and it would make the whole system weird in my opinion. Better to then lose the option to do a certain mission altogether I think.

As a side note, one of the things I wanted for this campaign was for the early missions to be attractive to complete using SRBs, and then moving to LFE with SRBs being cheap enough to still be used. I\'m seeing this in the crafts you guys submit, so I\'m happy with that. One of the things I\'m less happy about is how the current pricing scheme still heavily encourages single stage, small liquid fueled rockets. This morning I came up with a system that might change this, I\'m not going to implement it this time round but keep it in mind for any future rounds.. Basically all LFE\'s would have the same price (so you can actually pick and choose based on what suits the mission best), but the price for each subsequent engine increases. So say the first LFE would cost 5k, the second 7,5K, the third 10K and so on. Tech levels could modify this or even allow more engines on a rocket in the first place. I\'m liking this system in my head, but as I said I feel it\'s too much of a change to introduce this time around.

@Awaras; SAS, ASAS and Mechjeb are all allowed. In fact all parts are allowed except Rocket fuel tanks and rocket engines (also the Aerospike). Except those that make up the starter rocket, ofcourse. I will be flying the thing with mechjeb aid, but will fool around with it a bit to see how it handles. This also means that this contract is an exception to the \'I\'ll only fly it once\' rule in that it\'s more the design I look at than a snapshot of performance. I want to see some engineering!

[robsr3v3ng3]

I think the problem is that to do the higher up missions you need to use LFEs. Which is fine if you have the research done, but if you don\'t it is way too expensive to try and do them even with fundraising projects etc I\'m making about $7,000 before research. And so I have to wait until I have done enough research to make them viable.

[issarlk]

One of the things I\'m less happy about is how the current pricing scheme still heavily encourages single stage, small liquid fueled rockets. This morning I came up with a system that might change this, I\'m not going to implement it this time round but keep it in mind for any future rounds.. Basically all LFE\'s would have the same price (so you can actually pick and choose based on what suits the mission best), but the price for each subsequent engine increases.

I fail to see the reasoning here. If LFE cost more after the first, won\'t that encourage exactly the single stage liquid rockets you are not happy about?

[DonLorenzo]

Yeah, I suppose that\'s right. The problem with SSTO ships is just that they are very efficient. I can\'t really imagine a pricing scheme that encourages multistage rockets, with current parts that is. That incremental pricing scheme was just a brainfart to encourage large engines a bit more. Cheaper fuel would too I\'d think. That\'s all for later anyway. If I end up doing a second campaign sometime I think I\'ll use a differently balanced parts pack, something like Silisko Edition perhaps.

Cheers

[Awaras]

The best way to go (but very difficult to balance) would be to allow cfg editing of engines. You make a set of engines much less efficient than stock and then allow cry editing according to a tech tree - for example Engine thrust tech I increases the thrust of all engines by X%.

[issarlk]

To encourage multistage rockets, making them weigh more might be a solution. Something like requiring RCS for any control of the craft outside the atmosphere. Disallow blowing up SRBs to separate stages, decouplers weight does add up... Making the payloads larger too. There\'s only so much a Large fuel engine can lift alone.

[DonLorenzo]

Some good thoughts there guys. I\'m fairly sure I\'ll disallow explosive staging in a hypothetical future campaign. It\'s been fun, and whoever thought of it first back in togfoxes campaign sure was creative, but every space program needs to stop actually depending on explosions at some point I had considered .cfg editing the engines and compiling some part.rars for each tech level, but then I went for a nonlinear tech tree and that would\'ve been a lot of work and also hassle for the players.

The game will change a lot over the remaining weeks of this campaing (update .16 coming up), now with Nova on the actual dev team perhaps there will be stock balance changes (he\'s been adamant about them in the past). For now I\'m leaning to using his set of parts, I don\'t know if you guys have played with them, but they\'re a bit weaker than stock and feature very light decouplers, heavily favouring multistage designs. In fact I almost did this campaign with them, but I opted to keep it as much stock as possible to lower the barrier of entry.

Another thought I had, which is basically the same as Issarlks \'make em weigh more\' is to ditch the standard \'capsule\' and instead design a small plane/spacecraft and just say that that needs to go on every mission. I don\'t really like that though since it reduces design freedom, which is one of the funnest bits of the game. All in all I think we\'re doing pretty well in this campaign, I\'m getting a lot of variation in design and approaches which is a good sign to me.