Part Stock

[CodeFantastic]

When looking at parts in the VAB/SPH, it says at the bottom something like "in stock" and shows an infinite stock. Would you want this in KSP or would you not?

 

Edited April 15, 2016 by CodeFantastic

[Frozen_Heart]

Would be an interesting mechanic. Also maybe buying lots at a time would lower the prices for that batch (mass production), but runs the risk of you buying too many and not using them all.

[Violent Jeb]

I think it'd be cool.

Maybe if they didn't overthink it, simple inventory not related to the "decline penalty" or anything else nonsensical.

Simple list of KSC inventory, option to "auto purchase without prompt" if you are out of stock or like buying single parts.

If you order parts, they come immediately (we can use KCT mod for delivery time modification),

Beyond that, If you buy in bulk, you should save more. Buying say 10 engines at a time would/should reduce cost by 50% or so. Have a little slider purchase invoice UI where the price is adjusted based on quantity.

If they did that, they could quickly establish a relationship parameter between part manufacturers, and give a further discount for loyal customers. Buying more from rockomax would improve your relationship with them and so on.

 

It's a great idea.. But I don't think any of this is likely given the state of career mode.

 

Edited April 15, 2016 by Violent Jeb

[pandaman]

I could see this adding a bit extra depth if done well.  Spending funds to buy stocks of common bits at a discount is a neat idea and ofetn used by most industries IRL.

Also, perhaps any recovered parts could then be added to the inventory rather than a straight cash refund, but naturally a cost for recovery and refurbishment should also be implemented.

[Alshain]

I could see this as a neat mod.  I a bit skeptical on it being a stock thing.

[pincushionman]

Does KCT take advantage of this particular feature, or did it have to kludge its own solution?

[Hodari]

Interesting idea, but not sure how practical it would be.  The biggest problem is that early on in a career, you need all the funds you can get for building upgrades and just being able to fly your next mission, so you probably won't have a lot lying around to make bulk purchases for any future missions.  And later on in the career, you have so much cash, you don't know what to do with it anyway, so there's no real benefit to saving a little extra with bulk purchases then either.  There will probably only be a narrow window at best where you do have just enough extra to make it possible but still need to save up for some big future mission.

In any case, it would be a good option to have in a mod, especially if it's used in combination with other mods that alter career mode to fix the above issues.  It definitely is not something that should be a priority for stock.

[Snark]

I'm having trouble seeing the utility of it.  We already buy the parts-- each time we build a ship.

To me, that level of micromanagement (i.e. buy the parts for an "inventory" rather than just buy them when needed when launching a ship) just doesn't seem like it really adds a lot to gameplay, in exchange for the overhead of adding another layer of abstraction in between the player and launching a rocket.

Similarly, with the "bulk discount"-- I have a feeling it would be hard to tune it to the point where it's big enough to be useful, small enough to keep it from being exploited, and significant enough to pay for the added complexity overhead that the player needs to think about.

If you wanted a "plan ahead more" type of mechanic, something that I would find friendlier than "part inventory" would be standard-model ships.  Suppose the very first time you launch a new ship of a given model, it costs a certain price based on the parts in it (like today), but you can then designate that as a "stock vehicle" (for a price), and subsequent copies of that exact ship, unmodified would be cheaper per copy.  (The idea being that it's coming off an assembly line rather than being a hand-crafted one-off.)

Something like that might encourage players to think about "what kind of ships do I need" and build a library of workhorses, rather than custom-designing every one.

Not sure if I'd actually use such a feature, if it were available, but it would be more interesting to me than the parts-inventory would be.

[GluttonyReaper]

7 hours ago, Snark said:

If you wanted a "plan ahead more" type of mechanic, something that I would find friendlier than "part inventory" would be standard-model ships.  Suppose the very first time you launch a new ship of a given model, it costs a certain price based on the parts in it (like today), but you can then designate that as a "stock vehicle" (for a price), and subsequent copies of that exact ship, unmodified would be cheaper per copy.  (The idea being that it's coming off an assembly line rather than being a hand-crafted one-off.)

Yeah, I quite like this method, it's fairly similar to the method that KCT uses for determining how long it takes to build a ship, where the more you use those parts the less time it takes to build a ship using them. I think it would be nice to have some kind of system where you can modify existing "stock vehicles" (like slapping on boosters or changing the science instruments on a satellite), but it, of course, costs extra, perhaps trying to strike some kind of balance where it is often cheaper to modify existing vehicles to extent, but it becomes cheaper to develop a larger, new set of stock vehicles after a point. Not quite sure how you could track that, though, perhaps something to do with subassemblies?

[Red Iron Crown]

Interesting. Might be cool if recovering a craft returned the recovered parts to your inventory rather than just giving you back the cash.

[Kerbart]

5 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Interesting. Might be cool if recovering a craft returned the recovered parts to your inventory rather than just giving you back the cash.

Especially combined with that mod where you get failures. Do you pick a brand new engine for a mission? Or one that went through 5 re-entries (*cough* *splutter*)?