Career Mod Discussion

[MatterBeam]

Hello.

I was wondering about making a career save with a compilation of mods that would allow for a natural progression from Air to Space then Outer Space for the player. The background is that an advanced, modern civilization has gone through a Peak Oil crisis and is now arriving at unsustainable levels of resource scarcity. This pushes them to search for resources outside of the atmosphere.

My idea is to start out in the following situation:

-Aerodynamics tech tree unlocked all the way up to and excluding Rapier engines, right from the start.

-Astronaut Complex, R&D complex, Administration Facility, Mission Control, Runway and Spaceplane Hangar start at Level 3 (max).

-5,000,000 starting budget.

The following mods would be required:

-MKS

-KAS+KIS

-RemoteTech

-USI Life Support

-Nertea's CryoEngines and Near Future Propulsion

-Kerbol Plus 2.0

This mod would adds two restrictions:

-Other than LiquidFuel and Oxidizer, no fuels can be filled in the VAB. This strongly promotes Off-world resource extraction for LiquidHydrogen, Xenon ect.

-Some planets have altered resource availability. To simulate resource scarcity, Kerbin has 0 resources. To push the player further out than the Kerbin system, the Mun and Minmus have diminished resource availability.

Also, there are three major tweaks:

-Pilots cannot gain more than level 1 abilities (prograde/retrograde tracking). This forces the use of Probe Cores on practically every spaceship that wishes to leave low orbit, and therefore the establishment of a RemoteTech constellation for every step of the way.

-Contracts do not provide funds. The only way to gain funds is return vessels filled with resources back at the space center. To compensate, extraplanetary resources have increased value, especially for .

-Nukes use only LiquidHydrogen.

Some tweaks will have to be made in the techtree to allow for easy access to structural and RemoteTech/MKS parts, while putting CryoEngines as end-game parts.

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Hopefully, the objective is that the player builds supersonic planes to explore Kerbin first for Science points. He or she will then spend those points on researching communication technologies and resource extraction parts.

Quickly, the player sets up antennas on the ground, that communicate with the spaceplanes putting satellites in low orbit.

The player uses these as stepping stones for maneuvering their spaceplane-launched rockets to the Mun and Minmus, gathering more science and perhaps an extraplanetary launchpad. Cost and Science restrictions prevent them from making anything more than interplanetary flybys for science points at this stage. Lack of large rockets and fuel tanks further prevents massive extraplanetary missions that will unlock the entire tech tree from the beginning.

Quickly, the player will run out of money setting up these constellations of satellites with spaceplanes, forcing him or her to develop their first extra-Kerbin resource extraction mission. A likely target is Duna.

As the player progresses, he or she will have to establish a regular stream of interplanetary flights that drop resources to the Space Center to be able to fund missions to the faraway Gas Giants and their resource-rich moons. Constant communication with the Space Center is a must for controlling the spacecraft.

Hopefully, this mod will encourage good behavior such as building a space station to dock the resource tankers running on efficient Near Future electric thrusters, then having heavy drop pods return to Kerbin, which punishing bad behavior such as rushing their exploration of the Kerbin system (extremely difficult without Pilot skills) for Science or fast forwarding resource extraction on easy-to-reach, resource-poor bodies (with the Life Support system).

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Please, tell me what you think.

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Updates:

Currently, I'm settled on creating a point system similar to Science and Reputation called Resources.

All ingame resource costs are converted from Funds to Resources.

For example, a 2 million Funds rocket would now cost 1 million Funds and 1 million Resources.

The Resource points start at a high value, and the player budgets them for each launch. Gaining Resource Points can be done by dropping unprocessed Ore onto Kerbin and recovering it for a low Ore-to-Resource conversion ratio, or dropping Ore converted into LiquidFuel/Oxidizer/LqHydrogen ect. for a 1:1 ratio conversion into Resource points.

Things like life support resources would have a very low recovery rate to prevent a player farming greenhouse products on Kerbin and converting them into infinite fuel.

There is no way around it: getting KSP to act the way I want it to requires fiddling with C# and .dll magic.

And I'm no wizard.

I think that's that for now.

I've thought of a possible workaround:

We stick with Funds as the resource.

However, the cost of all Parts becomes a tiny fraction of what they currently are, while the cost of resource is vastly increased.

For example:

The stock KerbalX spacecraft has 6400 vacuum m/s, enough to go to the Mun and back.

It costs 61680 funds, containing 35 monopropellant, 8200 liquid fuel and 10120 oxidizer. These resources cost 8424 funds, or about 13.4% of the launch cost.

What I could do is create an MM patch that vastly decreases the cost of all parts while increasing the cost of all resources.

For example, if I set LF/OX to be 6 times more expensive, they'd cost 50544 funds and form 82% of the launch cost. The parts would cost 4.8 times less, forming 18% of the launch cost.

How does this change things? Well, everything will cost pretty much the same, but fuel costs are much more important.

How does this promote resource gathering? In conjunction with contracts not providing funds, the only way for the player to gain money is to farm resources and land them back at kerbin. The upside is that an orange tank full of LFO would provide (keeping inline with the multipliers in the previous example) 585 funds for the part and 17625 funds for the resources. That's enough to build the entire KerbalX ship and then some... but not refuel it

Okay, now that I think I know how to make a MM patch that reduces all part costs by a fixed amount (I'll check into making specific multipliers for different categories) and raises resource costs, I'll list the other implementations. Also, I think it's time to open a Github.

-Contract and career rewards configuration (Custom Barn Kit)

-Story mode contracts (Contract Configurator)

-Resource availability modifications (?)

-Abandoned extraplanetary bases for the player to discover and refurbish (Kerbal Konstructs)

Edited May 19, 2015 by TruthQuark
Progress Update

[Akira_R]

I would recommend starting with SETI as a base for your game and then making tweaks from there to meet your more specific requirements.

SETI already rearranges tech and parts to start you with air planes and simple rockets that wont make it into orbit. Also it already supports a decent amount of the mods you wish to use, like RT, NFT, and USI stuff (I think it supports USI stuff). It also now supports KSPIE for way way way down the tech tree if you want that.

At the very least it will give you a good starting point and take a whole lot of the tedious work out of the equation (all the re arranging of the tech and part unlocks) it also does some rebalancing in the contract rewards and stuff, may not be exactly what you want but again all the MM patches will already be made for you, you just need to tweak the numbers.

I usually just role play and assign my own goals and restrictions because I am to lazy to try and go in and tweak everything to give me the game play I am looking for lol.

- - - Updated - - -

Or are you wanting to try and make your own SETI like mod pack that does this stuff for you? I kind of assumed you were just wanting to make a personal game set up like this. Either way you could still use SETI as a starting point.

[MatterBeam]

I would recommend starting with SETI as a base for your game and then making tweaks from there to meet your more specific requirements.

SETI already rearranges tech and parts to start you with air planes and simple rockets that wont make it into orbit. Also it already supports a decent amount of the mods you wish to use, like RT, NFT, and USI stuff (I think it supports USI stuff). It also now supports KSPIE for way way way down the tech tree if you want that.

At the very least it will give you a good starting point and take a whole lot of the tedious work out of the equation (all the re arranging of the tech and part unlocks) it also does some rebalancing in the contract rewards and stuff, may not be exactly what you want but again all the MM patches will already be made for you, you just need to tweak the numbers.

I usually just role play and assign my own goals and restrictions because I am to lazy to try and go in and tweak everything to give me the game play I am looking for lol.

- - - Updated - - -

Or are you wanting to try and make your own SETI like mod pack that does this stuff for you? I kind of assumed you were just wanting to make a personal game set up like this. Either way you could still use SETI as a starting point.

Thank you for your suggestion.

I'm currently testing a career with the restrictions stated above. It seems like the prices of some parts have to be rebalanced, and personal rebalancing would have to be done for the various engines from other mods. Once I figure out how to make a module manager patch, I'll get to doing that.

The key step so far is to make an efficient small communications satellite, and a reusable large spaceplane.

The biggest limiting factor for the spaceplane designs so far is that the various air intakes required for high altitude high velocity flight overheat much too easily due to their small thermal mass. Maybe I should make a patch for different parts to unbind their thermal behavior from their thermal mass for easier use.

The end goal is a sort of roleplay mod with one single download and install. I'll explose SETI and see what how I can use it.

[Yemo]

Hm, the easiest way would be to just configure a savegame for the supposed career start point.

Add funds/science/reputation with alt+F12 and unlock the buildings and nodes you want to have unlocked (I recommend using the CTT as a base, maybe the SETI-CTT although that should make little difference in the late game for the +1 required mods/downloads). Though SETI-CTT puts many structural parts in "few early nodes". You could then just change the parents using MM statements as CTT and SETI-CTT do anyway. The stock tech tree is just bad, especially when you want to use "high end" mods.

You can probably change the resource abundance using MM contigs, though I do not know how to put the restrictions on the "fillable in VAB". Maybe just increase the prices for some to discourage buying and encourage selling them when recovering vehicles?

Probe core encouragement would suggest SETI-CTT as well, though not sure how to restrict pilots.

Stock contracts can be deactivated using ContractConfigurator, which can also be used to easily make your own contract progression, it has a great wiki and lots of contract packs to learn from.

The nuke changes are also easy using MM configs.

I suggest a mod folder name alphabetically after CTT/SETI-CTT to ease the requirement of :AFTER statements (do not use :FINAL, it is a compatibility nightmare, it looks like the easy way in the beginning, until you get compatiblity requests and have to redo them, retracing the MM hierarchy...), since MM goes through GameData alphabetically (if no :AFTER statements are used).

Edited May 10, 2015 by Yemo

[Sigma88]

I would love something like that, I was looking for some techtree variation that would force me to use probes instead of kerbals for the early game.

kinda like BTSM but with less compatibility issues so I can put in my favourite mods

[MatterBeam]

I would love something like that, I was looking for some techtree variation that would force me to use probes instead of kerbals for the early game.

kinda like BTSM but with less compatibility issues so I can put in my favourite mods

The problem is that you can't have early game probes AND RemoteTech at the same time, unless you go to unusal lengths to set up a communications constellation with low tier parts *shudder*

[Yemo]

The problem is that you can't have early game probes AND RemoteTech at the same time, unless you go to unusal lengths to set up a communications constellation with low tier parts *shudder*

Quite the contrary, it works very well. As long as you have the right parts at the start.

The SETI-BalanceMod required you to do so for months now, and its spin-off, the SETI-CTT, continues with that.

Probe start + RemoteTech is imho much more enjoyable than manned start, where you can just launch up a kerbal for everything.

[MatterBeam]

Quite the contrary, it works very well. As long as you have the right parts at the start.

The SETI-BalanceMod required you to do so for months now, and its spin-off, the SETI-CTT, continues with that.

Probe start + RemoteTech is imho much more enjoyable than manned start, where you can just launch up a kerbal for everything.

One of the key points of my mod would be to prevent the 'kerbal past anything difficult' by limiting pilot skills.

[MatterBeam]

Currently, I'm settled on creating a point system similar to Science and Reputation called Resources.

All ingame resource costs are converted from Funds to Resources.

For example, a 2 million Funds rocket would now cost 1 million Funds and 1 million Resources.

The Resource points start at a high value, and the player budgets them for each launch. Gaining Resource Points can be done by dropping unprocessed Ore onto Kerbin and recovering it for a low Ore-to-Resource conversion ratio, or dropping Ore converted into LiquidFuel/Oxidizer/LqHydrogen ect. for a 1:1 ratio conversion into Resource points.

Things like life support resources would have a very low recovery rate to prevent a player farming greenhouse products on Kerbin and converting them into infinite fuel.[

[Yemo]

I would suggest development in phases.

Get a small playable version together for publishing, either in dev forum or in release forum and then build upon it.

The advantage is, that people can already try it out and give feedback. Also you will notice issues for every phase/step, instead of all at once when you have already built a lot of interdependencies.

[MatterBeam]

I would suggest development in phases.

Get a small playable version together for publishing, either in dev forum or in release forum and then build upon it.

The advantage is, that people can already try it out and give feedback. Also you will notice issues for every phase/step, instead of all at once when you have already built a lot of interdependencies.

Agreed.

I've already started creating dev/help-me threads for the first, essential steps of the mod:

-The Resource-point system.

-The Funds-to-Resource costs for the fuels.

The first can either be done by creating a new point system (Funds/Reputation/Science-alike) or repurposing an existing point system (Reputation to Resources) and disabling the regular point gains for it.

The latter can be accomplished by creating a 0x multiplier for the gains, either through a savegame manipulation, a change in career menu settings or some sort of post-career creation patch.

Apparently, some modders have been able to add a Reputation cost for using certain parts, roleplaying damage to the environment. If I could get my hands on the same mechanic, I might be able to study it for switching Funds to Resources cost.

[sumghai]

I would suggest development in phases.

Get a small playable version together for publishing, either in dev forum or in release forum and then build upon it.

The advantage is, that people can already try it out and give feedback. Also you will notice issues for every phase/step, instead of all at once when you have already built a lot of interdependencies.

Agreed.

I've already started creating dev/help-me threads for the first, essential steps of the mod:

-The Resource-point system.

-The Funds-to-Resource costs for the fuels.

The first can either be done by creating a new point system (Funds/Reputation/Science-alike) or repurposing an existing point system (Reputation to Resources) and disabling the regular point gains for it.

The latter can be accomplished by creating a 0x multiplier for the gains, either through a savegame manipulation, a change in career menu settings or some sort of post-career creation patch.

Apparently, some modders have been able to add a Reputation cost for using certain parts, roleplaying damage to the environment. If I could get my hands on the same mechanic, I might be able to study it for switching Funds to Resources cost.

I strongly recommend GitHub for this purpose, as this will allow you to push individual edits/updates to an online repository, where users can download your WIP at any point in time to test things out. Much more convenient than manually bundling and uploading entire updates.

GitHub also allows you to receive bug/feature reports, have them as independent discussion threads and organize them into milestones to be dealt with.

[MatterBeam]

I strongly recommend GitHub for this purpose, as this will allow you to push individual edits/updates to an online repository, where users can download your WIP at any point in time to test things out. Much more convenient than manually bundling and uploading entire updates.

GitHub also allows you to receive bug/feature reports, have them as independent discussion threads and organize them into milestones to be dealt with.

Problem is, I have zero content right now. No solid responses to the threads I posted on Plugin help or add-on development.

I'm currently just defining my objectives and the steps to accomplish them more and more accurately, while selectong the easiest ways to accomplish them by gathering onformation on similar, related, work

[MatterBeam]

Update on front page.

[MatterBeam]

Update on front page.

I've thought of a possible workaround:

We stick with Funds as the resource.

However, the cost of all Parts becomes a tiny fraction of what they currently are, while the cost of resource is vastly increased.

For example:

The stock KerbalX spacecraft has 6400 vacuum m/s, enough to go to the Mun and back.

It costs 61680 funds, containing 35 monopropellant, 8200 liquid fuel and 10120 oxidizer. These resources cost 8424 funds, or about 13.4% of the launch cost.

What I could do is create an MM patch that vastly decreases the cost of all parts while increasing the cost of all resources.

For example, if I set LF/OX to be 6 times more expensive, they'd cost 50544 funds and form 82% of the launch cost. The parts would cost 4.8 times less, forming 18% of the launch cost.

How does this change things? Well, everything will cost pretty much the same, but fuel costs are much more important.

How does this promote resource gathering? In conjunction with contracts not providing funds, the only way for the player to gain money is to farm resources and land them back at kerbin. The upside is that an orange tank full of LFO would provide (keeping inline with the multipliers in the previous example) 585 funds for the part and 17625 funds for the resources. That's enough to build the entire KerbalX ship and then some... but not refuel it

[MatterBeam]

See front page for update.

Okay, now that I think I know how to make a MM patch that reduces all part costs by a fixed amount (I'll check into making specific multipliers for different categories) and raises resource costs, I'll list the other implementations. Also, I think it's time to open a Github.

-Contract and career rewards configuration (Custom Barn Kit)

-Story mode contracts (Contract Configurator)

-Resource availability modifications (?)

-Abandoned extraplanetary bases for the player to discover and refurbish (Kerbal Konstructs)