Some thoughts on the state of Career Mode.

[Geschosskopf]

Got a link to the relevant part of the discussion? As I said, that result doesn't line up with my testing, I'm curious to see how others tested differently.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/117930-Guide-New-temperature-rules-for-parts-in-1-0-%281-0-2-updates%29

1st post and from then on.

As for the rest of your post, the position "realism must be 100% or else can be completely ignored" is silly. Realism is a spectrum, and different parts of the game mechanics sit at different points on that spectrum, they're more realistic where it matters and less so where it doesn't. Realistic flight mechanics are an important selling point for KSP, so much so that they're mentioned specifically in the game's description. Far fewer players care about planet densities and nuclear forces because the game doesn't advertise itself as a chemistry simulator or build-your-own-particle-accelerator.

Hmm, how is it more realistic to impose impossibly Earth-like phenomena on a place that all the real rules of physics say they can't possibly exist? That is the exact opposite of realism. It is exactly as realistic as magic, perpetual motion, Bigfoot, and all that. It breaks the very laws of physics the realism-mongers claim to worship. There's no getting around that, nor the realization that KSP is now closer to "The Little Prince" and "James and the Giant Peach" than it was before.

Things can be realistic without being "just like Earth". That's the point everybody's missing. Let the KSP universe play by its own rules and leave it at that.

[Wanderfound]

What I think might work well is to give the player two sets of contract preferences to choose from: one is a checklist of what sorts of contracts they want to see, and the other is a checklist of which locations they want to go to. As the game progresses, the player could check/uncheck options appropriate to what they're interested in at the time. I'm unsure of whether it would be best to have these as completely free choices from the beginning, or to have a gameplay mechanic that progressively unlocks them, though.

Perhaps it could add an element of strategy by giving the player a choice of focus in the early game, with contracts initially limited to that focus; maybe even unlock an appropriate tech node or two for free depending upon whether they select "tourism", "exploration", "commercial launch"', etc. Give extra crew pods to the tourists, solar and probe cores to the explorers, bigger initial rockets to the commercial lifters and so on.

As well as adding a bit more replayability to career, it would allow people to do a pseudo-BTSM/SpaceX/NASA style recreation.

[regex]

Perhaps it could add an element of strategy by giving the player a choice of focus in the early game, with contracts initially limited to that focus; maybe even unlock an appropriate tech node or two for free depending upon whether they select "tourism", "exploration", "commercial launch"', etc. Give extra crew pods to the tourists, solar and probe cores to the explorers, bigger initial rockets to the commercial lifters and so on.

As well as adding a bit more replayability to career, it would allow people to do a pseudo-BTSM/SpaceX/NASA style recreation.

Some excellent ideas there, especially if combined with the earlier Program and categorizing thoughts.

[r4pt0r]

I like the idea of programs too, My ideas here sound fun?

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/104368-Mun-Duna-Gilly%28ect-%29-Program

[basic.syntax]

Nice, the general idea must have merit, to have been thought of again and again, over time.

[klesh]

5c. The materials bay is still stupid. Seriously, this is pretty much the one thing left in KSP that can make me incredibly angry for no reason. I've worked my way through and inured myself to tons of little bugs but that one part is just the wrong shape and size for literally every craft I build. It's completely unwieldy and stupid.

I'm not using TweakScale right now, but one of my favorite things to do with it was to make that Materials Bay a 0.625m part. Its far more reasonable like that.

[Geschosskopf]

@Geschosskopf. As far as I recall, KSP is scaled down for convenience and gameplay reasons, so that getting to places doesn't take as long. After that, gravity, atmospheres and other systems are scaled more or less arbitrarily so that they work at least sort of how you'd expect them to from real life. And yes, I'm aware that there are a whole bunch of points where different players will disagree on how close to real life they are.

With that in mind, expecting a fully self-consistent Kerbal universe seems optimistic at best and appealing to that self consistency as the basis of an argument seems futile at best.

Obviously, I find the internal consistency argument quite persuasive, so I shall explain why .

Let us assume you have a reasonably technical backgrouind so have a good enough understanding of realworld physics to earn a paycheck thereby. You are also interested enough in space to have learned something about how the universe as a whole works and evolves, and the mechanics of spaceflight. Then one day you discover KSP, which appeals to all your geekiest interests, so you get it.

Naturally, you start looking around in the game, reading up on the stats of the various bodies, etc., and it immediately becomes apparent that KSP can't possibly work under the laws of physics you're familiar with. The sun doesn't have enough mass for fusion to occur, the planets are impossibly dense, the moons of Jool mysteriously maintain stable orbits, etc., etc., etc. So it jumps out at you that at least 3 of the fundamental forces are radically different in KSP than on Earth, which unavoidably means all sorts of major differences at visible scales.

But that's OK because, from your background, you've at least heard of the theory of parallel universes with different physical laws. So you mentally put KSP into such a universe and go on having fun with the game. When you see something behaving differently in KSP than it does in real life, you just say "different universe, different rules," and go on. You don't expect, demand, or even desire things to be "just like on Earth" because if anything in KSP really was Earth-like, you'd then have to come up with all kinds of special pleading to explain how that could happen given the alien laws of physics. In sum, the very fact that all KSP physics only vaguely resemble Earth's, so that you can do similar things in general but with different details, is exactly what you'd expect given your background. So, without having to sweat the details of KSP physics, you consider that the KSP universe as internally consistent precisely because nothing in it is "just like Earth". As such, you easily maintain that "willing suspension of disbelief" that is so essential to enjoying a game.

Then one day Kerbin's atmosphere morphs into Earth's. Because of your background, you immediately realize that the new atmosphere and the rest of KSP cannot coexist in the same universe under the same set of physical laws. So there goes your suspension of disbelief, and KSP falls on its face. If you accept the atmosphere, you now have to do something about the rest of KSP and the only way to do that with internal consistency is with RSS. If you don't want RSS, then the atmosphere must go back to something unearthly. Having both simultaneously essentially turns KSP into "The Little Prince".

[KSK]

Obviously, I find the internal consistency argument quite persuasive, so I shall explain why .

Let us assume you have a reasonably technical backgrouind so have a good enough understanding of realworld physics to earn a paycheck thereby. You are also interested enough in space to have learned something about how the universe as a whole works and evolves, and the mechanics of spaceflight. Then one day you discover KSP, which appeals to all your geekiest interests, so you get it.

Naturally, you start looking around in the game, reading up on the stats of the various bodies, etc., and it immediately becomes apparent that KSP can't possibly work under the laws of physics you're familiar with. The sun doesn't have enough mass for fusion to occur, the planets are impossibly dense, the moons of Jool mysteriously maintain stable orbits, etc., etc., etc. So it jumps out at you that at least 3 of the fundamental forces are radically different in KSP than on Earth, which unavoidably means all sorts of major differences at visible scales.

But that's OK because, from your background, you've at least heard of the theory of parallel universes with different physical laws. So you mentally put KSP into such a universe and go on having fun with the game. When you see something behaving differently in KSP than it does in real life, you just say "different universe, different rules," and go on. You don't expect, demand, or even desire things to be "just like on Earth" because if anything in KSP really was Earth-like, you'd then have to come up with all kinds of special pleading to explain how that could happen given the alien laws of physics. In sum, the very fact that all KSP physics only vaguely resemble Earth's, so that you can do similar things in general but with different details, is exactly what you'd expect given your background. So, without having to sweat the details of KSP physics, you consider that the KSP universe as internally consistent precisely because nothing in it is "just like Earth". As such, you easily maintain that "willing suspension of disbelief" that is so essential to enjoying a game.

Then one day Kerbin's atmosphere morphs into Earth's. Because of your background, you immediately realize that the new atmosphere and the rest of KSP cannot coexist in the same universe under the same set of physical laws. So there goes your suspension of disbelief, and KSP falls on its face. If you accept the atmosphere, you now have to do something about the rest of KSP and the only way to do that with internal consistency is with RSS. If you don't want RSS, then the atmosphere must go back to something unearthly. Having both simultaneously essentially turns KSP into "The Little Prince".

Fair enough. I can claim a reasonably technical background but in chemistry rather than physics. So my understanding of advanced physics is largely qualitative but yes, I get why KSP has impossible physics without appealing to "different universe, different rules." It's just not a direction I went in personally - I was more 'I'm going to ignore the stupidly high densities of kerbal universe matter' and didn't bother concocting any sort of headcanon to explain it or try and put it into a consistent framework. In fact my own fanfiction scales the Kerbol system back up to Solar system system sizes, partly to avoid having to rationalise any weird physics and partly so I could look up some plausible numbers where required rather than calculating them myself from scratch.

But I appreciate where you're coming from after that post - thanks for the very civilised response. I guess it's a little like my objection to single resource ISRU that lets you make rocket fuel from ore/karbonite/kethane/name-your-magic-resource. I can see why Squad chose to simplify ISRU for gameplay purposes but the chemist in me still thinks it would be pretty straightforward to implement a real chemistry version without making things overly complicated. Of course, the chemist in me is also conveniently ignoring the discrepancy involved in running real world chemistry on KSP physics.

[tater]

^^^Can't escape the Gell-Mann effect

I never rationalized the kerbal universe that way, I assumed it was for technical or "beta" reasons that they made things the way they made them, not because ti was their goal. Generally, game designers tend to forget the good rule for science fiction, "break as few laws of physics as possible." This is useful because we know broadly what to expect, whereas when you do something like arbitrarily make a planet tiny, you don't know what will fall out of that, and everything needs to be "tweaked" arbitrarily.

Have to say that I think that more focused ISRU would actually be better, not worse for gameplay. I think that any ISRU you want should need to be built to work only at a specific target world, or set of similar worlds based upon the required chemistry. That could be used to force some actually useful science into career mode (collect surface or atmospheric samples (or analysis with the right part) as a requisite to making ISRU that will work in that place). Gives the player more to do.

[regex]

I always thought KSP was pretty much just a game in alpha/beta until 1.0 came out, and had always expected that anything could change, and that adding a relatively realistic atmospheric and heating simulation was always part of the plan (nah, I'm just saying this because it's funny to think KSP always had a "plan"), but it just hadn't happened until now.

Now that it has happened, all the people who expected nothing in an alpha/beta game to change suddenly find their worlds turned upside down. I can't say I didn't expect it. Either way, the new aero system is here to stay and I'm pretty sure the majority of players are quite happy with it. Haven't checked in on Reddit but the KSP forums are pretty awesome right now; haven't seen this level of enthusiasm for the game since 0.20. Despite the obvious bugs that need patching it's pretty clear that the new aero system is a huge success, aside from a loud and vocal, defeatist minority.

Maybe that minority should take up modding...

[passinglurker]

on regex's points

1. I find reentry is off because lander cans can survive reentry despite descriptions otherwise.

2. I haven't played on a scale large enough to need more than rescue-ies yet so I won't comment on hiring cost but in terms of classes pilots become useless after you unlock the octo probe core (extra autopilot beyond sas is pointless to me because of how is wobbles and burns through all my rcs) pilots need to be able to do something probes can not(hate to say it but something like better engine performance out of better pilots might be needed as a case of "gameplay trumps realism").

2a. Scientists are very useful up until you run out of tech tree they to could use some sort of endgame or sandbox mode role.

2b. engineers are chill there are always legs, and wheels to fix, chutes to repack and ISRU's to run. not to mention every mod and their dog gave them a job because they were seen as useless in .90

3. agreed I would love to have separate lists of offered contracts for the different bodies over "go to the mun... no you can't have more kerbin survey contracts go to the mun... I don't care if you spent all you science on aircraft parts you are going to the mun now... well who's fault is it for attaining orbit then? if you were not ready for the mun then you should not have attained orbit and triggered the change in offered contracts!"

4. I'd disagree but all the tech tree issues could fill a whole thread so I will only touch on one gripe with the tree, and that is starting with the smallest fuel tanks. I hate stacking tanks because I find it looks ugly. also a stack of fl-t100's turns things wobbly and with the way fuel drains the center of mass gets pushed to the back of the rocket exacerbating the flipping issues so many have been having. I'd rather start with an unreasonably large tank that makes me clumsily bump into the vabs height and weight limits than bump into the part count limit and be forced to make an ugly rocket that I can't build upon because it's better to throw it away and start over with each new tank unlocked.

5. crew parts are still terribly inconsistent and seem sloppily balanced (despite only having x2 the crew capacity mk2 landercans are x5 the wieght of mk1 lander cans despite identical crash and heat tolerance. Also the mk2 crew cabin has a crash tolerance of 6 I don't know about you guys but I hate having starkly flimsy parts in the middle of my plane doesn't sound like a good time same goes with the low crash tolerance rocket tanks and mat bays for early aircraft)

5a. yup also the mk1 fuselage could use some expanding upon

5b. haven't played with labs much yet actually

5c. I'd just integrate the matbay experiment into all the service bay and cargo bay parts

[regex]

I'd disagree but all the tech tree issues could fill a whole thread

My point has always been that the tech tree, as implemented by KSP, is pretty much a played game mechanic. It's boring. Entire volumes have been written on the suggestion forums over it and how to make it better or change it, there's no need to rehash them. The statement in the OP did have a qualifier (and I'm saying this now because multiple people seem to have missed that), same as the rest of career mode. I'm not blindly praising here, I'm saying that, for the mess it is, career mode is more fun.

[basic.syntax]

I think that any ISRU you want should need to be built to work only at a specific target world, or set of similar worlds based upon the required chemistry. That could be used to force some actually useful science into career mode (collect surface or atmospheric samples (or analysis with the right part) as a requisite to making ISRU that will work in that place). Gives the player more to do.

Surface sample return for ISRU unlock sounds good, but, in real life we can know quite a bit about material composition via various remote analysis. The system already includes a surface scanner. It has three scanner parts in it... more than I was expecting, when they first started showing off the original resurrected planet scanner part.

You've written extensively about splitting science into categories, where only certain types of science could unlock certain parts categories. I like this, but, given how ISRU was abstracted down to "just Ore" from the original proposal, I think the multiple science types idea will stay in player mod territory.