VAB upgrade curve too steep!

[herbal space program]

So as I'm playing through a hard career game in 1.0, I feel like the upgrade curves for the VAB (and the Launchpad too, sort of) are too steep. You go from having only 30 parts, which is not enough to land on the Mun with a crew, all the way to 255, which is enough to do just about anything, for the exorbitant fee of 450k roots, which is really hard to earn with only 30 parts! Why not have an upgrade to say 50 or 75 parts for only150k roots, which requires far less tedious grinding? Similarly the launch pad takes you from an extremely restrictive 18 tons to a very generous 140 tons in the first upgrade. Why not have more intermediate steps for cheaper? I really think this would make the general flow of the game far more enjoyable. As it is now, you have to grind away with very limited missions to get that first upgrade, and then you're basically done. I could go just about anywhere with 140 tons and 255 parts! I think the progression should be more like 30, 75/150k, 150/450k, 450/1M, unlimited/2M for parts and 18, 50/150K, 150/450K, 500/1M, and unlimited/2M for tonnage. Anybody else feel the same way?

[thereaverofdarkness]

I absolutely agree, in fact I feel pretty much all of the upgrades are too steep. I think it is perhaps because Squad didn't want to be bothered to design models for more than four versions of each building. I'd settle for just adding bits in with each upgrade, or even simply changing their size or color--but smoothing out the upgrades would really be great.

[tater]

It's pretty trivial to upgrade everything, and unlock most of the tech tree with no more than Kerbin SoI stuff.

[Alshain]

So as I'm playing through a hard career game in 1.0, I feel like the upgrade curves for the VAB (and the Launchpad too, sort of) are too steep.

So as I'm playing through a hard career game in 1.0

I'm playing through a hard career game

hard career game

hard

[hawk_za]

So as I'm playing through a hard career game in 1.0, I feel like the upgrade curves for the VAB (and the Launchpad too, sort of) are too steep.

So as I'm playing through a hard career game in 1.0

I'm playing through a hard career game

hard career game

hard

LOL funny guy I was thinking the same thing

[thereaverofdarkness]

So as I'm playing through a hard career game in 1.0, I feel like the upgrade curves for the VAB (and the Launchpad too, sort of) are too steep.

So as I'm playing through a hard career game in 1.0

I'm playing through a hard career game

hard career game

hard

Irrelevant. The steepness of the upgrades is the same in any difficulty.

[Cdr_Zeta]

Hello,

I agree with the OP...Science tier levels do not match building upgrade levels. It is why I spend half a day every time they patch this thing now to fix my stock Science parts.

Zetadude

[egoego]

I disagree with the OP. True, in hard mode these steps are hard to take, but you play hard mode for a reason. In normal mode the upgrade steps feel alright to me.

[Kelderek]

The upgrade path is perfectly fine on normal difficulty. If you disagree then I would suggest that you are not managing contracts efficiently enough (i.e. doing too many flights or not combining multiple contracts into one flight). If you don't like the hard difficulty and don't want to do normal, then maybe set up a custom game and set things up the way you prefer.

[MacroNova]

I thought scrounging up the Kerbucks to upgrade the buildings to tier two was pretty achievable, but I think you make a good point about the drasticness of the upgrade. In my previous career games, I only upgraded the VAB to get custom action groups.

[herbal space program]

The upgrade path is perfectly fine on normal difficulty. If you disagree then I would suggest that you are not managing contracts efficiently enough (i.e. doing too many flights or not combining multiple contracts into one flight). If you don't like the hard difficulty and don't want to do normal, then maybe set up a custom game and set things up the way you prefer.

I'm really not whining about how hard it is to upgrade the buildings, although the 450K for the VAB upgrade does seem out of balance with the others. Mostly I just don't think that the steepness of going from only 30 parts to 255 in one step supports a good flow of gameplay. At 30 parts it's really hard to do anything, and at 255 you have to be going to Jool with multiple landers before it's even an issue. Making everything cost less money in the easier modes doesn't really alleviate this problem at all, it just makes the whole idea of needing to upgrade your buildings pretty much perfunctory. If, as tater commented upthread, it's trivial to upgrade everything, then well, this whole upgrading business is trivial! Is that how the devs want it to be? I don't think so! I think they want it to be a real factor in the strategy of career gameplay, and IMO the way they have it now it's "one and done" for everything but the science facility and the tracking station, for which some essential functions cost (IMO) excessive amounts of money. I think to make it work as intended, the devs need to rebalance this aspect, and that the easiest thing they could implement to do that would be to introduce some smaller steps, especially for the VAB. YMMV.

[tater]

Hard mode is grind mode, nothing more. If you don't like grinding for cash, don't play grinding for cash mode.

[herbal space program]

hard career game

hard

For a skilled player, there is nothing satisfying about having to do the same boring mission over and over again in order to get the ability to do more interesting ones. "HARD" IMO should mean less margin for error, more need to strategize effectively, and a STEEPER progression to more challenging missions, that need to be done with fewer resources. It should not mean getting stuck with very limited options regardless of how well you allocate your money or design your ships. The way they have it now, I believe the VAB is at first too limiting in that regard and then not limiting enough. Moreover I think that while the devs have done a fantastic job of implementing this awesome parts collection, play space, and physics system for spaceflight simulation, they have relatively speaking phoned in some other aspects of campaign-oriented game play. The good news is that fine-tuning these represents far less overall effort than getting the other parts to work right, but that does not make it less important to do so. Anyway, you may feel differently but having played this game for 1200+ hours, I really don't feel like I deserve to be treated with that degree of condescension for making this (I think quite valid) observation.

[thereaverofdarkness]

I found the upgrade options to be severely limiting even in normal difficulty. It was quite a challenge to find ways to actually make every new mission something useful and reasonable, without reusing boring craft for the same boring missions repeatedly. That was on normal. At one point I didn't have any contracts that would pay any significant amount of money that I was properly capable of completing without severe min-maxing just to fit it out of the VAB and on the launchpad. Then 2-3 missions later I have the money to upgrade, and one upgrade later the sky's the limit.

To clarify: the OP is NOT suggesting that the game is too difficult. The OP is suggesting that the game is too CHOPPY.

[herbal space program]

Hard mode is grind mode, nothing more. If you don't like grinding for cash, don't play grinding for cash mode.

Was that ordained by God? I am trying to make a suggestion here about how to improve the game. That's what this sub-forum is for, isn't it? This kind of response by the forum regulars defeats the purpose of having such a place for discussion. If you think what I'm suggesting is not a good idea, then address it on its merits. Don't just tell me to pound sand like you own the place and I have no right to express an opinion. I am certain that is not what the developers intended to have happen here.

[spinomonkey]

I agree with the OP. Even in a normal mode the R&D for instance just jumps into over a million after level 2. That being said- it's pretty much the only level 3 building that gives me much of a reason to upgrade that far. I can still build most craft in under the 250 part count in the VAB- leveling it and other buildings past level 2 is more of a 'meh, I have the cash, why not?'

[herbal space program]

To clarify: the OP is NOT suggesting that the game is too difficult. The OP is suggesting that the game is too CHOPPY.

Precisely. The best (i.e. least boring and repetitive) option I had for getting the money to upgrade the VAB was to take three different Munar survey contracts at the same time. On the plus side, designing a 30-part vessel that could make a low Munar orbit and return was challenging and satisfying, as was figuring out how to get it into the required near-polar Munar orbit directly from LKO without the benefit of patched conics or a maneuver node. On the minus side, grinding through all those temperature scans and crew reports, most of which had to be done from very low altitudes, going around and around and around and around the Mun on excruciatingly slow 10X time warp (or else constantly flipping back and forth between the tracking station and the mission), was really not any fun at all. Then, once I had the money to upgrade the VAB, I immediately got enough parts to do pretty much every other basic exploration mission in the whole game except maybe Eve Rocks, although that would be possible with multiple launches as well. Given that I had not yet even landed on the Mun, that seemed like way too much too fast. It would have been much more satisfying if completing just one of those grindy survey contracts had gotten me just enough of a VAB upgrade to build a Munar landing mission, which in turn would have given me enough funds to go to Duna, etc.

[thereaverofdarkness]

Yeah!

One thing that bothered me was that I not only had to save up 550 science for the ore drill, I also had to fully upgrade the R&D center. I was only beginning to play with all of the techs I had unlocked on the previous upgrade, most were still unresearched, but I wanted the drill present when I put my first Minmus base down. Not much point in having the base if it can't drill for fuel.

I think it would make sense not only for there to be more upgrade tiers to the R&D center, but also to either move the drill to a lower tech level or limit tech researched in a different way. Maybe there would be a science spending limit until you upgrade? I don't know, but the current tech tree doesn't feel like a tech tree so much as a tech wall you gradually climb from one end to the other. The choices have only very brief meaning, then before you know it, you've unlocked everything at that level.

[herbal space program]

I think it would make sense not only for there to be more upgrade tiers to the R&D center, but also to either move the drill to a lower tech level or limit tech researched in a different way. Maybe there would be a science spending limit until you upgrade?

I totally agree that the way they limit what techs you can get now allows too few meaningful choices. Rather than having to spend one gigantic lump sum to unlock a whole tier of techs, it would be much more fun if you could pay for each node individually, with higher-tier nodes costing both more money and more science. The total cost of each tier could be more or less the same, but you'd have way more options for how to advance your capabilities. You could even keep the building upgrade as a separate thing, but maybe have it be tied instead to how much science you can get to do different things, what sort of science missions you can do, or what capabilities your scientists have. In fact, it would probably be best if every single upgrade in capability for every building were separately purchasable, or maybe if upgrading things like your tracking station were to cost science as well as money.

[GluttonyReaper]

I suspect this is due to the continuing absence of the barn - it was supposed to be in this update, but I think it got pushed back to 1.1 due to time constraints. Hopefully that'll be able to bridge the gap.

[thereaverofdarkness]

I totally agree that the way they limit what techs you can get now allows too few meaningful choices. Rather than having to spend one gigantic lump sum to unlock a whole tier of techs, it would be much more fun if you could pay for each node individually, with higher-tier nodes costing both more money and more science. The total cost of each tier could be more or less the same, but you'd have way more options for how to advance your capabilities. You could even keep the building upgrade as a separate thing, but maybe have it be tied instead to how much science you can get to do different things, what sort of science missions you can do, or what capabilities your scientists have. In fact, it would probably be best if every single upgrade in capability for every building were separately purchasable, or maybe if upgrading things like your tracking station were to cost science as well as money.

This gives me an idea: what if each building had lots of minor upgrades you could give to it, and you would make a major upgrade every once in a while to unlock more minor upgrade options? For instance, the R&D building could have special boosts that reduce the cost of researching a given node as well as all nodes branching out forward from it, and these bonuses would stack up towards the end of the tree, bringing prohibitively expensive techs down to much more manageable rates. You could still spend less money and more science, or more money and less science, so it's flexible that way. But if there's one tech way up the tree you really want (like the drill for me), then you could save up and go for it specifically (and purchase a few early upgrades that cheapen it) without grabbing everything int he whole tech tree that occurs before it. Then you'd be allowed to jump forward to any techs without researching the prerequisites--instead of being prevented from researching it, it would simply cost more science. The more you research along a specific path, the cheaper the tech get on that path, which makes you more likely to research more things on that path. This gives it more of a power of choice.

Between the science nodes would be efficiency nodes--these you pay a mix of money and science to unlock and it would point to the science nodes it affects, and would list on the node how much of a % reduction you get to all science nodes ahead of it.

You would have a limit to how many efficiency nodes you could unlock before you must upgrade the R&D center.