General Contracts and Career Discussion

[tater]

Moved this to not derail another thread:

Tater, it's been so long we discuss this we might forget what each other said, still I remember your ideas, I like some but mostly disagree with your overall logic.

Our main point of disagreement as I remember it (I won't mind if we don't restart the topic) would be the role of the "Administration building". I wouldn't mind that "Contract Filter" of yours but I consider it utterly insignificant (being dramatic here) compared to what refiltering contract-generation would achieve, cosmetic even, equivalent to (I wish) replacing all industry-logo and generated-text by Clean logo&text telling exactly what the mission is (rescue, survey, exploration, satellite...etc).

...however it replacing strategy would be a downgrade.

The Strategy of the Administration building we have now ARE in fact more Strategies than your suggestion. They have just been balanced out into oblivions in the process of making them failsafe, like how you can't possibly fail contracts or get stuck in R&D.

The system we have right now allow to consider each contracts as "projects" toward which you choose technological, funding & reputation means.

Like how "Manned presence on the surface of Mars" was a "project" toward which NASA and SpaceX choose strategy (which are not based on filtering what contract they get but the means to accomplish any of them)

To give an analogy, SpaceX isn't clawing its way by "doing Commercial Service" over "Exploration", all agency/company do both (illustrative link).

SpaceX is making itself relevant by its choice of investing in Reusable engine/stage rather than reducing the cost of purpose-built rocket (or say making spaceplane).

This is likely a semantic problem with respect to the use of the word "strategy" in english. A strategy is a plan to achieve an overall aim. Outsourcing R&D is not a strategy, period, it's a tactic that might be part of a strategy. KSP suffers from some misuse of words in general (perhaps for the same reason). Mission Control in KSP is not mission control, it's a contract office of some sort. Mission Control is the part of NASA that tracks missions in flight, period. The tracking station in KSP is actually Mission Control. Again, it might stem from english as a second language for the devs. This is not my opinion, it's just english.

Absolutely companies and agencies both do some of each, but it varies a lot. NASA, for example, builds almost nothing. They contract out companies to build stuff to their specs. Companies like SpaceX might have an exploration goal, but they absolutely launch stuff to pay the bills and fund research. My idea would be that the player would choose a balance as an overall strategy for the administration.

In current game terms my idea would effectively be a filter that presents the player with contracts weighted to their strategy, say: 50% science contracts, 10% tourism, and 40% commercial launches and parts testing. The player would never then see more than 1 in 10 contracts offered be a tourism contract. If he/she picked 0% tourism, they'd never see any tourism contracts at all.

As for "budget", be it periodic or not, I never believed in market-driven Private-Venture, even SpaceX need backers and subvention and even a "National Space Program" need a job/reason for existence, amounting them to roughly the same thing. In result, to me "Budget" is more of a nondescript balance mechanism to keep a player able to rebound without making Contract impossible to fail (and obviously a lever to play on with reputation/funding).

Budget would be hard in KSP as it stands, but not impossible. Player would have to be "NASA" or "ESA," and would be given money up front for specific projects ("contracts"). They'd need good time limits, and have a real chance of failure that would hammer Rep. Bad Rep would reduce the budget next fiscal period. Losing Rep would be the loss mechanism.

So basically, as I keep saying :

- Contracts are not reliable enough, not to make them OP or failsafe.

- Administration strategies don't make meaningful difference.

- R&D is based on grinding rather than experience-based decision.

But otherwise, KSP don't need to change that much (though, balancing a game can be harder than coding the features as demonstrated by the Aero-change)

Ps : The above is quite a long answer to a topic that specific. So I don't mind if you don't wish to continue or correct me here.

I don't actually disagree. I advocate for changes to contracts in semantics because as it is (at least for a native english speaker) the whole "contract" idea kills immersion for me completely.

I sometimes propose career ideas that seem complex because I'm trying to work within the current system---like the idea that perhaps budget gets doled out every 50 Kerbin days, and if you run out, you time warp to the next Minmonth (a minmus month--- 50 days) to get more budget. This would force the player to move time forward (set initial budgets such that you might only launch 1-2 times every Minmonth). Combined with the tech tree that you like (the parallel one), and contracts and missions that actually time out, it might be interesting. Rescues, for example, would all have to be immediately accepted, then done pretty much instantly or you'd fail.

Perhaps some contracts could be obligatory after a fashion? Say rescues are made far more rare than they are right now. You might get a rescue---all would be reasonable, you'd only get rescues for SoIs where you actually have crew already assigned---and the guy needs rescue in 15 days (I'm thinking of Roverdude's LS mod right now and default LS per pod). The mission is there for you, like it or not. Failure loses no funds at all, but results in a small rep hit (your program was not on the ball enough to be able to rescue those idiots). Success has possibly no funds reward, but a huge rep gain. So if you have guys at the Mun, you could get Mun orbit/landed rescues. If you have astronauts at Duna, then you might be asked to rescue guys there. Perhaps when such a mission is taken there is a special ability to add 1 crew to an existing craft. I like the idea of having to think through a sort of Apollo 13 scenario. With KIS/KAS I might add parts to a ship landed at a base

[samstarman5]

I think I see what you are having difficulty wrapping your head around, is that space program in KSP is not a government entity but is instead a business entity. And you would rather see it as a government entity. The trouble with a government-budgeted system is there is going to be a lot less feeling of choice for the player. 'Either do A, B, and C or your program gets handed to another lackey.' That doesn't feel to me like such a good trade-off. I like the business model with the contracts. I can pick and choose what ones to do without feeling like skipping the others will end my game. I can launch a mission of my own willy-nilly for some extra science or to give a kerbal some flight time without feeling like that will end my program.

Contracts do need some work, especially ones that get offered at the weirdest times, but that is hardly reason to just wipe them off the table for a new model. Bear in mind that most of those contracts are actually community-made or influenced. What Squad made alone was a lot, lot smaller. Asking or expecting those to just get tossed to the wayside for a different model is way too one-sided, especially this far into the game's development.

Maybe a lot of rescue missions get offered, but none of them are obligatory. If you don't like the current set, just move forward a 'minmonth' for a new offering. That actually seems to fit within what you are proposing. I guess all it really requires is just looking at the whole thing from a different perspective. I would rather not have KSC under a government-budgeted model, myself, but as it is, it is actually not hard for you to look at it that way yourself. Instead of business contracts, they can instead be seen as government-budgeted contracts that you can take on for funding.

[tater]

It's neither, and both.

Why would Acme Corp ask for a pure science mission? If it was like SpaceX, then you'd get contracts from the Kerbin Space Agency to do science (that would at least make sense). That's in effect what NASA does (they supply the astronauts and missions, contractors build the stuff).

If my own commercial program wants to do science because that's why we started, then why are all the science contracts coming from 3d parties?

Note that as I suggested, you can have both versions possible by moving a slider of what kinds of missions you want.

[Kegereneku]

Samstarman5, we really don't have a problem with that because as said above it's neither or ~both.

Current KSP-career do not represent one nor the other. It is trying to be whichever a players want, taking liberties with reality.

The real market for satellite depend entirely of technology and time, there weren't a market for space-satellite during the cold war (ICBM at best) and Exploitation of space-resources (more than fuel/ISRU) is frankly still far away from us. On top of this, you have 20 communication satellites launched for each science-mission and no private business as any real profit motive to explore Mars (unless you live in a Heinlein's rocketpunk dream).

Myself I consider that both Governmental agency/Private space company can be considered equivalent.

- Government budget = Private investor/shareholders/subventions

- Gov Agency provide launch service = Private company provide launch service

- Gov Agency do Moon-landing = Private company is paid to do Moon-landing by government (it was unrealistic in the 70s but possible by the time we get 100% reusable Spaceplane)

- Private Contract = Gov Mission

So IMHO, in the end you are best blurring the lines and facilitating the means for players to "play pretend", hence the various suggestions to better achieve this.

Maybe you thought I couldn't understand "private space company" because I wished to erase around 90% mention to them... this isn't the case, I don't care that much and said shortly : a fancy logo and auto-generated texts make no difference,

Next, Tater,

This is not much of a semantic problem, more of gameplay abstraction and defining what you are abstracting.

One can say "Mission Control" deal with what we ultimately do with any space vehicle (before the mission, during the mission and even after)

And the Administration deal with "how" we obtain and build the space vehicle. Filtering "contract" is not "how", it's "why" and "why" is answered by the above.

Hence my disagreement with your that idea of yours.

As for your other "rescue" idea, I see nothing fundamental to change either. I think the right change would come naturally if SQUAD reconsidered the way they balance the 3 pillar of Career mode.

ps : I won't have as much time as before to debate. Expect long silence.

[tater]

Hope all is well and you are just busy.