[1.8.x] Monthly Budgets 5.0.1 (22/12/2019) - UP FOR ADOPTION

[severedsolo]

Monthly Budgets is now deprecated, and no longer maintained. You can either move to Bureaucracy

Or JoeBostic on Github made a mod inspired by Monthly Budgets a while ago called Space Program Funding

If anyone would like to take over Monthly Budgets, ping me a PM and we'll chat.

 

                                                              

This mod does what it says on the tin... it introduces a budget system to Career Mode KSP.

Unlike some other budget mods, which just add money on top of what you already have, this one will cap your "maximum budget" based on your repuation. I'll explain what I mean further below.

Features

• Monthly Budgets: Every 30 days (configurable) a monthly budget will be allocated to you, primarily based on your reputation (although it takes into account a couple of other factors). If your current funds are less than the budget allocation, your funds will be adjusted to match the new budget. (So, if you say have 100k funds on hand, but the mod was going to allocate you 500k, your funds will be topped up to 500k. If you held 600k, your costs would be deducted, but no budget would be awarded this month.
• Contracts will (usually) not have a cash payout/advance. Instead, whatever you would have gotten will be converted into reputation instead (at a conversion rate of 1 rep for every 10,000 funds) when you complete the contract. So you get it in the next budget cycle. The exception to this is tourism contracts, because I think it's weird that tourists wouldn't pay cash.
• Kerbal Deaths are punished. When a kerbal dies, a hefty reputation penalty is applied. The Kerbal government takes the lives of it's astronauts very seriously... so your funding will be slashed if you have many deaths. (reputation is reduced by a quarter, so a high rep program has more to fear from this than a low rep program). Massive thanks to JPLRepo for this bit, as he basically wrote it for me.
• Costs Running a space program is expensive, kerbals need to be paid etc. When calculating your budget, costs for wages and any active vessels will be deducted before the budget is awarded. If no budget is awarded, the costs will be deducted from your available funds.
• Configurable - Most aspects of the mod are configurable. You'll be given the chance to set your options when you first run it, if you need to change them later, the settings are available from the toolbar button. There's a bunch of options in there, way too many to list here.
•  Big Project Funding - So you want to buy the level 3 R&D upgrade? Perhaps you have a massive vessel you want to launch, but your budget is just not high enough? You can "divert" up to 50% of your budget every month to a holding account, ready to withdraw when you need the money.
• Science Funding - Want to go to Mun but just don't have the right parts yet? You can divert some/all of your budget to Science Points (be warned, this is REALLY expensive, the money you spend gets wiped from your budget completely. You need to be out there doing stuff to build your reputation back up to sustain it).

 

Licensing

Licensed under the MIT License

Icon made by Freepik from Flaticon.com

Download

Not mandatory, but I've balanced the default values assuming that Kerbal Construction Time is installed - so would recommend that mod.

https://github.com/severedsolo/MonthlyBudgets/releases

Source

https://github.com/severedsolo/MonthlyBudgets

 

Edited January 25, 2020 by severedsolo

[garwel]

Wow, looks very promising. I've long been wondering if any sort of time-bound economy is possible in KSP and it's an solution. I wonder how it will work alongside KCT with custom settings (where I have just one or two launches per "month").

Edited September 3, 2016 by garwel

[severedsolo]

42 minutes ago, garwel said:

Wow, looks very promising. I've long been wondering if any sort of time-bound economy is possible in KSP and it's an solution. I wonder how it will work alongside KCT with custom settings (where I have just one or two launches per "month").

Funny you say that. The default settings are designed specifically for my playstyle, which is:

On a new save, using KCT (research and upgrade times off, build times on) - if you do the "jumping flea" craft that everyone makes for their first launch, then go suborbital (and do the appropriate contracts) that nets you enough rep to do either one 150k upgrade (tracking station for instance) or a couple of 75k ones (Astronaut Complex/Mission Control).

Hopefully you won't have to tweak it too much, as your style sounds much the same as mine.

Edited September 3, 2016 by severedsolo

[garwel]

Gonna tinker with configs and give it a try.

Besides, does it calculate costs at the end of the month or all the time? E.g., if I launch a kerbal on a mission on day 2 and bring him home on day 29, will I pay him/her only the unassigned wage or will I pay for 27 days of work?

[severedsolo]

38 minutes ago, garwel said:

Gonna tinker with configs and give it a try.

Besides, does it calculate costs at the end of the month or all the time? E.g., if I launch a kerbal on a mission on day 2 and bring him home on day 29, will I pay him/her only the unassigned wage or will I pay for 27 days of work?

It's calculated on payday. If the kerbal is on assignment when the budget runs, you'll pay the assigned price, otherwise you pay the unassigned.

Edited September 3, 2016 by severedsolo

[ssd21345]

Will reverting flight will revert rep reduction caused by Kerbal Deaths?

[severedsolo]

38 minutes ago, ssd21345 said:

Will reverting flight will revert rep reduction caused by Kerbal Deaths?

Not tested, but it should do.

I use the same method to remove rep as the game would to allocate it to you (say on contract completion), I'm just allocating a negative amount of rep so reverting should put you back to the same position, just like if you reverted after you completed a contract.

Edited September 4, 2016 by severedsolo

[klgraham1013]

Looks great.  I'll try this out when 1.2 drops.

[Fobok]

This is a great idea. I was just thinking the other day that I felt like I was a commercial space program rather than the NASA-styled government program I like to imagine, as I scrambled to complete contracts just so I could afford to do the exploration I wanted to do. This looks like a good alternative. I'll still be doing contracts, but it seems if you get your reputation up, you can take a month or two off from contracts to do your own thing without going broke. I really like that.

I'm going to follow the post for now, and give this a try when I start my 1.2 campaign. 

[Daelkyr]

An odd question. Does this mod support a fraction of a day? I want to add

Budget Interval (Kerbin Days) = 47.3

because my Kerbin calendar is based on Minmus orbit and that gives me 9 47~48 day months.

[severedsolo]

1 minute ago, Daelkyr said:

An odd question. Does this mod support a fraction of a day? I want to add

Budget Interval (Kerbin Days) = 47.3

because my Kerbin calendar is based on Minmus orbit and that gives me 9 47~48 day months.

No, but it can do. Leave it with me and I'll do an update when I get home from work tonight.

[garwel]

What happens if your reputation becomes negative? Is it a game over or are there still ways to survive

[severedsolo]

2 hours ago, garwel said:

What happens if your reputation becomes negative? Is it a game over or are there still ways to survive

Potential game over, depending on your fund situation. Existing funds can be kept if the budget is less than the funds in hand (but costs will still be deducted).

Contracts pay enhanced rep, so if you can do enough of those to save yourself before you run out of money, that's the way out.

[Wallygator]

I like where this is going.  On my next non-RO/RSS career game I will use this mod.

This adds a long needed mechanic and realistic-ish element to game play.

IMHO Squad should hire you based on this mod alone ;-)

Edited September 5, 2016 by Wallygator

[garwel]

2 hours ago, severedsolo said:

Potential game over, depending on your fund situation. Existing funds can be kept if the budget is less than the funds in hand (but costs will still be deducted).

Contracts pay enhanced rep, so if you can do enough of those to save yourself before you run out of money, that's the way out.

But it doesn't subtract funds with negative rep, does it?

[severedsolo]

1 hour ago, garwel said:

But it doesn't subtract funds with negative rep, does it?

Only the costs. If current funds > calculated budget, it just deducts costs. Any budget calculated with negative rep will be < 0 so won't fire.

[severedsolo]

Monthly Budgets 1.1 Released!

• Budget Interval will now accept decimals.

Edited September 5, 2016 by severedsolo

[Azamorn]

I was playing with this mod yesterday on a new career with construction time and a whole lot of other mods.
I love the idea of this mod, the only problem I have with it is that I have no way of checking my monthly budget, it only pops up once a month for nearly less than a second, there is no way to check it after you have done a contract and want to see how much your budget has been increased by.

I feel that what this mod really needs is a window where you can see your monthly budget and a costs breakdown, maybe accessible by the toolbar mod?

[garwel]

I agree with @Azamorn. I'd like to be able to see a breakdown of my incomes and expenses and also when the next payment is due. If it's difficult/time-consuming to do, at least a standard message with this information would be very useful.

[severedsolo]

Yup, agree with both of you. It's on the list, Ideally I wanna do something like KSPCashers window, just haven't got round to it yet.

[severedsolo]

@Azamorn @garwel how's this? - turns out writing a GUI in Unity is really easy.... so if you wanna see more info let me know.

Edited September 10, 2016 by severedsolo

[Fobok]

That looks very useful.

[garwel]

Looks good! Just the icon looks a bit similar to KCT's

[severedsolo]

1 hour ago, garwel said:

Looks good! Just the icon looks a bit similar to KCT's

It is KCT The icon for this, is the blank one on the stock toolbar. I hadn't added an icon yet.

[severedsolo]

Monthly Budgets 1.2 Released!

• Added Applauncher button
• Added GUI to show next budget date/amount/costs.

Icon made by Freepik from Flaticon.com

Edit:

Make that 1.2.1. I may have accidentally forgotten to package the right DLL in 1.2.

Edited September 10, 2016 by severedsolo