we NEED level design

[AlamoVampire]

10 hours ago, Just Jim said:

With respect, what are you asking?  Career mode does give you the option of building and expanding space stations and bases, and with deadlines, so there is some urgency to get them finished if you've accepted the contract.

As for science probes all being the same, I respectfully have to disagree with that as well.  Putting a probe over Kerbin is nothing like sending one to Jool, or Moho.  And given the differences in sunlight and temp, I can't really see using the same kind of probe for Moho that you would use over Eeloo.

 

Career mode currently is utter garbage. It is barely a back of a napkin sketch of an idea. It has no story. It has no linear quality. It hands contracts out that make no logical sense, namely it thinks because you made it to the Mun you can make Duna or eve, which if you just made the Mun the others are well beyond scope. It has no reason to care about your kerbals let alone a reason WHY you do the contracts. Once the novelty fades, which it does faster than a photon of light screaming into a black hole, it becomes a pointless grindy click fest.

Career needs a huge rework, and the op is pointing in the right direction.

[Just Jim]

14 minutes ago, AlamoVampire said:

Career mode currently is utter garbage. It is barely a back of a napkin sketch of an idea.

Career needs a huge rework, and the op is pointing in the right direction.

 

Respectfully, I disagree. 

But it seems this thread is just turning into (another) argument between people who like career vs. those that don't.

So I'm not going to comment any further and just back out of the room slowly and quietly... peace... 

 

Edited July 1, 2016 by Just Jim

[AlamoVampire]

@Just Jim Happy explorations! <friendly wave>

Edited July 1, 2016 by AlamoVampire

[regex]

 

1 hour ago, galactictaco said:

otherwise, you're right, we should all just be playing the free demo and then the game could be exactly like it was in .1. who needs any of these updates. players can patch it themselves.

  If gross exaggeration and deliberate misunderstanding is all you have then you don't really have anything.  Enjoy your "upvotes".

[Pthigrivi]

My opinion remains that things are not quite there but we don't need to start from scratch, just fix what's broke. 

Oh, and tightening up mission deadlines isn't all that difficult. There's some fudge factor there for missions optimized for dV vs speed, but navigating that could be part of the fun. 

Edited July 1, 2016 by Pthigrivi

[Hodari]

On 6/30/2016 at 7:56 PM, AlamoVampire said:

 It hands contracts out that make no logical sense, namely it thinks because you made it to the Mun you can make Duna or eve, which if you just made the Mun the others are well beyond scope.

Hardly.  If you can design something with enough dV to land on the Mun and return, you can easily at least send a probe on a one-way mission to Duna or Eve.  And even you do still think you need a few more parts unlocked in order to go interplanetary, you can certainly get all the science points you need in order to do so from the Mun and Minmus.  And once you've made it to the moons, going to the nearest planets would certainly be logical as a next major step for your space program, even if it is one that might be a little ways off.

[AlamoVampire]

8 hours ago, Hodari said:

Hardly.  If you can design something with enough dV to land on the Mun and return, you can easily at least send a probe on a one-way mission to Duna or Eve.  And even you do still think you need a few more parts unlocked in order to go interplanetary, you can certainly get all the science points you need in order to do so from the Mun and Minmus.  And once you've made it to the moons, going to the nearest planets would certainly be logical as a next major step for your space program, even if it is one that might be a little ways off.

And you proved a point as to why even bother playing anything but sandbox. Career mode needs to be more, needs reason. All of which it lacks now.

[Wjolcz]

9 hours ago, Hodari said:

Hardly.  If you can design something with enough dV to land on the Mun and return, you can easily at least send a probe on a one-way mission to Duna or Eve.  And even you do still think you need a few more parts unlocked in order to go interplanetary, you can certainly get all the science points you need in order to do so from the Mun and Minmus.  And once you've made it to the moons, going to the nearest planets would certainly be logical as a next major step for your space program, even if it is one that might be a little ways off.

The problem with this is all you need is one Mun mission. After that you have to pray to get another sensible Mun contract. I just hate that. All you need to do is land a probe somewhere and then the game offers you to go somewhere else. It's not the problem of not having enough dV. If I'm doing something around the Mun then I want to squeeze as much as possible out of it and have all the missions somehow related to each other. That's why I think that programs should be included. People who want to focus on building an actual infrastructure around some body could easily do it and be rewarded for doing so.

Sure, you could just say "Screw the contracts, I'm focusing on a Minmus station now, because I want to have one and I'm not spending my whole life in the Mission Control!". But by playing career that way you are going to run out of money eventually. Not like it punishes you in any major way for doing so, but that's not the point here.

[Corona688]

I agree that the contracts seem too narrow.  They ask you build X using Y parts.  They ask you to move tourist Q to plazes R, S, T.  They ask you to build satellite E with F sensor in G orbit.  They ask you to fly to Z, Q, R, where you must Y.

Y, oh Y indeed?  These missions are almost always unrelated to your own goals.  They don't help you explore and they don't point out anything interesting.  They're just noise which happens to earn money.  Once in a while they help you get parts you wouldn't have otherwise, but those are the contracts you actually don't want to fulfill -- the instant you do, they stop helping you!

More interesting and realistic contracts would be about solving problems.  That's what most satellites are for.  With the upcoming communication features, we might hope to see satellites which actually do something and contracts which reflect that.

Other mission ideas:

• Deorbiting space junk.  Can you build a craft which efficiently does this?
• Orbital resupply missions.  Will you send regular shuttles or one big one?  Will you get fuel from kerbin, mun, or a captured asteroid?
• Orbital repair.  Solar panels on our fancy satellite won't deploy, can you send an engineer up to give it a swift kick?
• More interesting survey missions which send you places you might actually WANT to go.  We don't need Kerbin far side missions.  We don't need Duna missions when we've explored 1/937 Mun biomes.
• Orbital work like assembling station parts.
• Part testing.  Sometimes these strange missions can be fun.  They'd be more fun if the parts stayed unlocked after (maybe at some cost penalty, if we haven't unlocked them ourselves yet).
• Diverting asteroids.  (Just how much reputation do you need before you get offered THIS mission?)

In short, it'd be nice if contracts would reward us for doing interesting things and point us towards interesting things, instead of being randomly generated hoops to jump through.  The world records are sort of that, I suppose, but they don't inspire any direction either.

Edited July 2, 2016 by Corona688

[Megadeath]

I feel the thread title doesn't accurately reflect the discussion.

To throw my two cents in, I don't love career. The constraints feel a bit arbitrary, and the progression is a bad combination of too linear, and too vague. I think improving the contracts would help a lot ie; tighter deadlines, success in this contract leads to further development from the same client, NOT being asked to do the same thing 20 times by 4 different groups, etc.

I think it's notable though that the real space race was driven mostly by outside factors. So add in random events or something? Stuff like a presidential promise of a Kerbal on the Mun, a never seen space agency put someone in orbit ahead of you, or this particular parts provider is in favour/disfavour. It could even just be flavor text, though I think linking it to optional career goals would be rewarding.

@regex You know what opens up untold vistas of exploration and goal setting? An understanding of coding, or even personal development of the unity engine. Why not go do that, and be less of a jerk to people looking for a game in this particular glorious sandbox, and discussing it in the appropriate forum?

[Hodari]

14 hours ago, Veeltch said:

Sure, you could just say "Screw the contracts, I'm focusing on a Minmus station now, because I want to have one and I'm not spending my whole life in the Mission Control!". But by playing career that way you are going to run out of money eventually. Not like it punishes you in any major way for doing so, but that's not the point here.

If you completely ignore the contracts, maybe.  And if you do missions ONLY when you have contracts for them, then yeah it will get annoying.  There is plenty of middle ground between those two though.  You can easily do one mission that you have a contract(or preferably two or three contracts at once) for and then use that to pay for several other missions of whatever you want to do.  Just the advance alone on most contracts will pay for the mission needed to complete it.

[Wjolcz]

9 hours ago, Hodari said:

If you completely ignore the contracts, maybe.  And if you do missions ONLY when you have contracts for them, then yeah it will get annoying.  There is plenty of middle ground between those two though.  You can easily do one mission that you have a contract(or preferably two or three contracts at once) for and then use that to pay for several other missions of whatever you want to do.  Just the advance alone on most contracts will pay for the mission needed to complete it.

It wouldn't be a problem with annual funding though. If programs could raise the annual funding, there would be no need for contracts that reward you with money. It doesn't matter if we call them 'missions' or 'contracts'. It's just semantics anyway. There could be simply commercial programs that would focus on missions based around space tourism or mining, or something like that.

Edited July 3, 2016 by Veeltch

[Vaporized Steel]

I was career addicted a little bit once career came out. What I liked about stock career especially was the restrictions to play with to finish a mission. As soon as you upgraded the VAB/SPH and Launchpad/Runway to level 2 everything became a grind, and you begin to think that everything you've been doing was also a grind.
I never got close to unlocking everything in career because I get fed up with career to soon, right after the restriction challenge which is mostly part of the early career game. Once I got over the restrictions by upgrading buildings I got the, I've been there done attitude, and I just want to launch the stuff I really want to get up there, not the X amount of liquid fuel to wherever, whenever wernher Kerman wants it.

After those early career games I got into career modding, I went into tech tree mods for different part mods and was into better then starting manned for a while. Since more then a year I only play Sandbox.
I'm totally done with career. So much that I consider any idea in the comments above a good one and a enrichment.

Personally I want you to be able to have complete freedom in what missions are available to you, and I mean complete freedom. Even the "Grand Tour" missions right from the start. Yet it would obviously be unwise to accept that one at the very start and you will be able to access every mission by browsing the mission catalog. And only the more capable missions will be visible in the default mission screen depending on your progress and reputation.

But if you want that Grand tour mission right from the start, you should be able to be the brave Kerbal warrior and be able to browse it, click it and accept it, and the consequences are yours.

Edited July 3, 2016 by Vaporized Steel

[Corona688]

2 hours ago, Vaporized Steel said:

I was career addicted a little bit once career came out. What I liked about stock career especially was the restrictions to play with to finish a mission. As soon as you upgraded the VAB/SPH and Launchpad/Runway to level 2 everything became a grind, and you begin to think that everything you've been doing was also a grind.

I've only just realized how completely the space lab module transforms career mode.  Suddenly you can get tons more science for your buck, if you're willing to wait.  Suddenly you've got a good reason to set up infrastructure, train your pilots and scientists, and timewarp instead of grind.

Edited July 3, 2016 by Corona688

[Blaarkies]

10 hours ago, Vaporized Steel said:

I never got close to unlocking everything in career because I get fed up with career to soon, right after the restriction challenge which is mostly part of the early career game. Once I got over the restrictions by upgrading buildings I got the, I've been there done attitude, and I just want to launch the stuff I really want to get up there, not the X amount of liquid fuel to wherever, whenever wernher Kerman wants it.

I reached that state once. What saved career mode for me was challenging myself to complete it at 30% Hard difficulty(funds,sci,rep income). Since I started using SSTO launchers, funds is no longer a problem I get payloads into LKO for about 700funds/ton. A mining base on Minmus makes interplanetary transfers way cheaper as well. I know this sounds like just adding to the grind, but I learned so much more in this mode just by being forced to devise new and cheaper methods of getting stuff where it should go. The science income makes Mun/Minmus farming somewhat useless, they only got me through the first few nodes...suddenly Dres and Eeloo has a purpose(Eeloo has insane science returns), this makes one try to send probes as soon as you get decent solar panels.

Think about it, if career gave you any mission type you wanted to do, like "Grand Tour", then you could just pick it, get money and do the mission...so money becomes irrelevant? So what about, it doesn't give you enough money upfront for an interplanetary ship...then it is back to grinding lesser missions for the money. Doing Sandbox with limitations in place could be cool, but I guess that is basically doing the reddit/forum challenges

[Warzouz]

I agree that the contract system is off and don't serve the game well. The problem is that IRL space programe aren't that way. If you look at some probe wiki page, you nearly always find the grouped by "programs" which as primary objectives (is they aren't fulfilled, the mission is a failure), secondary objectives and opportunism objectives. Those program objectives are split onto several "missions".

KSP doesn't reflect that at all. The contract system is totally the other way around.

There should be some kind of "contract building" feature which would be as important as building the rocket or flying it.

Further more, on a different level, the game has no "story mode". I understand @NovaSilisko was trying to implement some of it into an eastern eggs chase. There could have been a much more driven game mode for new players (maybe plugging together those tutorials and scenarios and stitch them with some background story) . I would have much appreciate that when I started the game...

EDIT : As I said several times. the current contract system feels ths game should be calle "Kerbal Space Flight" not "Kerbal Space Program". Also with the lack of KAC-like feature.

Edited July 4, 2016 by Warzouz

[Wjolcz]

3 hours ago, Warzouz said:

As I said several times. the current contract system feels ths game should be calle "Kerbal Space Flight" not "Kerbal Space Program". Also with the lack of KAC-like feature.

Not even that. It's more of a "Kerbal Space Grind With a Limiting Tech Tree and Random Contracts".

[luizopiloto]

Carrer mode was made for ppl with no imagination...
I play my own carrer... I manage my own space program... I play Sandbox...

[tater]

Is "level design" a "campaign editor?" If so, this would be a great tool to have, actually. It would allow people to more easily experiment with alternate career schemes, and perhaps someone could come up with one that is not awful. I'm pretty down on KSP career, and think that it's basically luck that any of it is good at all, since I don;t think they had a goal/plan when they slapped it together. I don't think it's easy to design, OTOH, the balance between the right level of constraint, and freedom is non-trivial.

[Waxing_Kibbous]

I know this doesn't solve the issue totally, and some people will poo-poo the idea of mods, but the stock settings plus

and

will allow you to define a career path in a pretty powerful way.

[KSK]

On 3 July 2016 at 2:40 AM, Megadeath said:

I feel the thread title doesn't accurately reflect the discussion.

To throw my two cents in, I don't love career. The constraints feel a bit arbitrary, and the progression is a bad combination of too linear, and too vague.

I think that's probably one of the best summaries of Career mode that I've read. 

To me, Career mode is Sandbox with a couple of not very interesting constraints. We have a science point grind which drives a very basic tech tree mechanic and a mini-quest generator which lets you grind for funds. Then we have an almost entirely pointless crew experience mechanism with some not very logical rewards and a bare bones base-upgrade mechanic. The way the tech tree is set up doesn't give you a great many options for gathering science and most of those options are dependent on building upgrades or are sufficiently far down the tech tree to be essentially irrelevant. Combine those two factors and you end up with very linear gameplay that you have to try really hard to break away from.

There's been a lot of effort put into simplifying the game mechanics because complex game mechanics were deemed not to be fun. The problem is that now the game mechanics are too simple to allow for many interesting decisions, trade-offs or choices.

Career mode doesn't really know what it wants to be and therefore fails at being anything in particular.

• It's not an exploration game (which would play really well with the underlying concept of a peaceful species going to space for the sheer fun of it) because you know pretty much all there is to know about the Kerbol system right from the start.
• It's not any kind of story driven game - and I don't mean a tightly scripted set of missions and cutscenes because that would a) be too limiting and b) most likely be way beyond Squad's budget to do well. I'm thinking more of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri which has story elements and distinct characters woven through it whilst still remaining a pretty open ended strategy game. The kerbals on the other hand are just the same old green, googly eyed rocket fodder that they've always been. We know nothing about them, we're given no reason to care about them, either collectively or individually, there's no worldbuilding at all to speak of. We don't even know why the kerbals have a space program, which is a fairly major flaw in a game called Kerbal Space Program.
• It's not a character driven game or crew management game - see above.
• It's definitely not a tycoon or resource management game. Not when the answer to most of your problems can be boiled down to 'grind more satellite missions (or whatever your personal flavour of cheese may be)' or 'visit another Mun / Minmus biome'.

Nope, Career Mode is just a sandbox (albeit a brilliant one) with constraints that feel a bit arbitrary, and progression which manages to be a bad combination of too linear, and too vague. Some folks clearly like it and that's great but for me it just falls flat.

 

 

Edited July 5, 2016 by KSK

[tater]

1 hour ago, KSK said:

I think that's probably one of the best summaries of Career mode that I've read. 

To me, Career mode is Sandbox with a couple of not very interesting constraints. We have a science point grind which drives a very basic tech tree mechanic and a mini-quest generator which lets you grind for funds. Then we have an almost entirely pointless crew experience mechanism with some not very logical rewards and a bare bones base-upgrade mechanic. The way the tech tree is set up doesn't give you a great many options for gathering science and most of those options are dependent on building upgrades or are sufficiently far down the tech tree to be essentially irrelevant. Combine those two factors and you end up with very linear gameplay that you have to try really hard to break away from.

There's been a lot of effort put into simplifying the game mechanics because complex game mechanics were deemed not to be fun. The problem is that now the game mechanics are too simple to allow for many interesting decisions, trade-offs or choices.

Career mode doesn't really know what it wants to be and therefore fails at being anything in particular.

• It's not an exploration game (which would play really well with the underlying concept of a peaceful species going to space for the sheer fun of it) because you know pretty much all there is to know about the Kerbol system right from the start.
• It's not any kind of story driven game - and I don't mean a tightly scripted set of missions and cutscenes because that would a) be too limiting and b) most likely be way beyond Squad's budget to do well. I'm thinking more of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri which has story elements and distinct characters woven through it whilst still remaining a pretty open ended strategy game. The kerbals on the other hand are just the same old green, googly eyed rocket fodder that they've always been. We know nothing about them, we're given no reason to care about them, either collectively or individually, there's no worldbuilding at all to speak of. We don't even know why the kerbals have a space program, which is a fairly major flaw in a game called Kerbal Space Program.
• It's not a character driven game or crew management game - see above.
• It's definitely not a tycoon or resource management game. Not when the answer to most of your problems can be boiled down to 'grind more satellite missions (or whatever your personal flavour of cheese may be)' or 'visit another Mun / Minmus biome'.

Nope, Career Mode is just a sandbox (albeit a brilliant one) with constraints that feel a bit arbitrary, and progression which manages to be a bad combination of too linear, and too vague. Some folks clearly like it and that's great but for me it just falls flat.

 

 

I'd instead say that your post (quoted above) is perhaps the best summary of Career Mode that I've read. I could not possibly agree with every line of this more than I do.

I'll not break your post up to comment, people need to read it again so it sinks in as written .Your bullet points are telling, and point to what should be done, IMO. I've addressed your first one many times, with my dream of "fog of war" and a true exploration game. 

Your second and third points, the story driven hits at something I had not really considered much, but would be a great game I think people would like to play. Something, anything, that gives the characters life so that you care about them. I'm at a loss as to how, but man that would be cool. Management? Yeah, it fails at multiple levels.

I suppose the reason I harp about a randomized, explore option is that I see "explore" as the easiest to actually accomplish. A better program management game pretty much requires some sort of AI kerbals, plus a robust economic model so that it feels like it makes sense.

 

Edited July 5, 2016 by tater

[Mister Dilsby]

I filled in the tech tree a year ago, I haven't looked at a contract in months, and I'm still enjoying every minute I spend playing KSP. The challenge for me, which never ends, is in being able to design and fly missions that live up to the very high 'coolness factor' that my imagination demands.

That said, I do agree with the comments that the game is missing a backstory--a reason for the Kerbals to have a space program, a narrative for why they want to explore, etc.--none of which Career Mode or the contract system comes close to providing. But for me this is a good thing, I'd hate for a 'stock' backstory to deny me the opportunity to make up my own stuff just as much as I'd hate losing the ability to design my own planes and rockets.

[Wjolcz]

2 hours ago, Kuzzter said:

I filled in the tech tree a year ago, I haven't looked at a contract in months, and I'm still enjoying every minute I spend playing KSP. The challenge for me, which never ends, is in being able to design and fly missions that live up to the very high 'coolness factor' that my imagination demands.

I've got to say you're pretty brave then. I've never gone beyond the 550 Sci points nodes. I think the tree is the main reason I don't want to go back to the career mode. I could deal with the contracts. I would probably find some patience to decline through the ridiculous ones, but the tree is unbareable.

[The_Rocketeer]

I've found that many of my more recent indy purchases have great design in the 'small' single-serving quickplay game experience (KSP is a game about building and flying rockets in space) and really struggle with meaningful and equally-entertaining 'large' long-term strategy/campaign game experience (KSP is a game about Space Program operation).

Methinks Squad are not alone among indy devs in having a much better handle on the former than the latter.