How would you improve Career Mode?

[Lightzy]

Career Mode feels a bit lackluster to me. It seems that there is a lot that can be improved, beyond just adding more mission types.

So how would you improve it? It can be anything, even ridiculous stuff that you think would make career mode more interesting. Just list suggestions.

(Just keep in mind that career mode IS NOT "toy mode". It's a whole different mindset. Career mode is all about random events, choice and consequence, management of various factors, the challenge of difficult tasks and suitable rewards, and also losing is fun.)
 

2 suggestions I have:

Reworking the star ratings for missions & adding true "3 star" missions.
It doesn't feel right to get a 3-star mission to rescue a kerbal from minmus after you've done that 4 times already.

3 star missions should be ones that are truly difficult, or ones that represent achievements never gained before (like first time in orbit, first time on the moon, etc).
The idea is that when you take and beat a 3 star mission you should feel like you've really achieved a milestone (like it is at first, with the first flight in orbit, first mun landing, etc). It's all about the feeling the player has.

Either that or have new 5 star missions especially for totally groundbreaking achievements and seriously difficult tasks (like "to eve and back using only solid fuel rockets", "EVA from Duna to Kerbin", "De-orbit Ike and shoot it into the sun" or I dunno what. The truly crazy stuff (I'm of course stealing ideas from youtube).
 

2) Semi-Random management/restriction events

• A kerbal threatens to quit if you don't let him fly the next mission
• Certain parts are unavailable for the next mission due to defects in manufacturing!
• etc

 

 

Dunno. How would you make Career mode a more complete campaign game?

[Rosarium]

My idea will born with a Forum contest where Squad would choose :

the most appropriate crafts (full stock, numbers of parts etc etc...)

suited for each role (Station, spaceship, rovers, base...)

and then:

fit them in game as new kind of missions:

ASAAA space agency Station (example) needs to be refilled with "ore" ( i'd like to have more resources in STOCK game like water/food DAMMIT life support should be THE really FIRST priority as was the docking once upon a time...)

hem hem let's continue... 

As you accept the mission a ASAAA space station appears (the same as you have to save an unlucky kerbal) the where depends.

Refill the station and the ASAAA space station will formulate a "refill contract" with you creating a trading route (that's WHY more resources are needed) you have to satisfy too maintain the contract and the "daily" income. 

Asteroids in full Platinum will increase (as a trading resource in kerbin) the will of drilling and the wallet.

 

1)  STUPID SUGGESTIONS (neurons food)

Ok here the fun... i don't really like ASAAA space agency i really hate them and i dislike the most theirs design.... I ACCEPT THE MISSION and fire a huge UltraHeavy Missile right on top of their station A#¶[@ò*.... unfortunate acting like this will make ASAAA space agency produce missiles against my precious crafts all around the space ( not just rise my killboard ) ... so new interception mission (intercept that missile before reach your station, save ASAAA spaceship from a pass thought the sun...)  or defensive ( probe distorter signals... ECM..) or elusive missions ( change orbit trajectory )... or even boarding actions like old skull pirates... just  to create a real no rules competition over space... just paint the space with green blood. beware from the dark side.

Taking advantage of the actual kebals skills i will add mental and physical insanity (and the kerbals aspect give confirm): Sending Jeb in a 666 days sun orbit inside a can of beans will make him ask for chili... but the same trip with irina "the 30daysmonthmestruate" keman will transform you trip in a "New Horizon" style nightmare... consequences? any use in game? any fun? no of them... read point 1.

Multiplayer.

 

serious P.S.

WE NEED STOCK LIFE SUPPORT!

[Wjolcz]

Monthly or daily budgets, science experiments yielding reputation, tech tree researched with cash and time.

Basically this:

Works way better than the stock career mode and has that time-passing element to it which makes waiting for transfer windows way more bearable.

Edited November 15, 2016 by Veeltch

[razark]

Time needs to matter.  I recently added Kerbal Construction Time to my modlist, and it adds a whole new level of planning.

However, contract deadlines are so long that it doesn't really seem to affect them much.

[Gilph]

Career mode does need help, but there are many, many mods that change the contracts, tech tree, and game modes.  There are a lot of great ideas already out there.  We should evaluate them first.

[Superfluous J]

Strageia goes a long way toward fixing career, by allowing you to focus on one world at a time and get contracts for that world.

But honestly this isn't a simulator, it's a video game with simulator aspects. I don't mind the contracts so much, really. When they're boring, it's more because I've been playing the game for thousands of hours than anything else.

[Wjolcz]

31 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

Strageia goes a long way toward fixing career, by allowing you to focus on one world at a time and get contracts for that world.

But honestly this isn't a simulator, it's a video game with simulator aspects. I don't mind the contracts so much, really. When they're boring, it's more because I've been playing the game for thousands of hours than anything else.

I agree it should still be a game first, simulator second. But the game doesn't need realism to be enjoyable. The problem with career is it is neither realistic, game-like nor coherenet. It's just not enjoyable because the whole career that had been put together is too abstract. There are too many reward points (funds, rep and science) and getting rid of one of them (guess whuch one I'm talking about) seems to actually fix the game and makes it much more enjoyable (the proof is in my thread).

31 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

 

 

EDIT: Oh, snap! Quotes broke, yo

Edited November 15, 2016 by Veeltch

[Superfluous J]

12 minutes ago, Veeltch said:

There are too many reward points (funds, rep and science) and getting rid of one of them (guess whuch one I'm talking about) seems to actually fix the game and makes it much more enjoyable (the proof is in my thread).

I'm totes down with that, though I'd pick rep myself I don't even pay attention to it.

[HafCoJoe]

I'd run a fund-based career and use 'science' as a scoreboard instead of a means to unlock things. There would be a monthly (or yearly) budget that is given to the player based on their reputation, and higher reputation would make more and better kerbals show up in the astronaut complex. Also, this would add a multiplayer scoreboard controlled by career mode. Let me explain:

 

• There is an in-game 'economy' (A scoreboard) that shows each companies name, and a couple of factors on their 'reputation'. It doesn't effect anything in game, it's just a scoreboard between players.
  • Different scoreboards
    • Market share - a percentage of how often a companies parts are used on a mission
    • Failure percentage - a percentage on how often a companies parts are on a mission that failed
    • Efficiency - a count how much fuel is spent lifting X tonnes in each mission that has a companies parts
    • Average mission length - how long an average mission is that uses a companies parts
  • The more parts you use from a specific company, the better their 'standings' are with you and the lower their prices go.
  • unaffected by the global scoreboard, the more you crash with a specific companies parts, the less they pay you at each monthly/yearly budget.

 

What this scoreboard would do is let people see which companies are the most used and why.

 

With how much I've been playing in sandbox mode I just feel limited by career mode's lack of part unlocks. I'd love to instead have everything unlock-able from the start, but have each part cost funds, and have players capped by funds rather than science. If you want to build something huge you can explore planets and fulfill contracts to gain higher rep and raise your monthly paycheck, or you can bs it and fast forward time for a few decades.

Edited November 15, 2016 by Avera9eJoe

[James Kerman]

I only play in career mode and personally, I am impressed with the progress Squad has made in this area recently.

I know a lot of people here don't like it but my reasoning is this - without career I seem to build the same craft to do the same job and I end up in my "Kerbal Komfort Zone".  Being limited in tech and funds makes me play harder.

In career mode I am constantly trying to perform multiple mission goals in one flight to maximise science, rep and credits.  For me, rep matters - I get more lucrative contracts with higher rep.

 

[tater]

My career ideas are not about "realism," per se, though they happen to be more realistic in most cases. It's about "career" telling a story, and having the feel of a "path" that the player is forging. Current career just doesn't do this.

The worst aspect of the stock career in many ways is that it s most difficult at the very start, then becomes sandbox. The only way to have a chance to lose is to tweak the difficulty---which makes it far more grindy, and not functionally more difficult. In the real world, we get NASA saying "failure is not an option," and in KSP we have "failure is not even possible." Makes career sort of pointless.

Edited November 18, 2016 by tater

[razark]

19 minutes ago, tater said:

in KSP we have "failure is not even possible."

This is why I've taken to looking at some of the failure mods.  Having to work to build in safety makes it more interesting to me.  Same for having to figure out if I can salvage a mission and get a decent return on investment when a ship cannot reach its goal after an abort to orbit.

[KSK]

For me, Career mode needs to involve time as a meaningful constraint and needs to involve something more than flying missions.

I tried playing a 1.2 Career (now abandoned due to boredom) and whilst 1.2 is definitely a step forward, I'm still hitting the same roadblock in Career that I always have - that gap between Mun/Minmus missions and interplanetary missions where the game gets very repetitive.

I always seem to get to a certain point where I've unlocked most of the tech tree, the KSC is all updated except for maybe the Admin building and the Spaceplane Hangar, (neither of which I tend to use very much) but I still have several months of game time to get through before any transfer windows start opening. At which point I just get bogged down in endless, not very varied or particularly exciting contracts.

[Lightzy]

I've had the same experience KSK

I play on hard with like 50% science and earnings to make progress more gradual (which I suppose isn't very balanced either or fun, as most rockets have to be made of multiple cheap crap glued together rather than advanced and expensive tech).

But that said, what would you improve and how?

Edited November 16, 2016 by Lightzy

[KSK]

15 minutes ago, Lightzy said:

I've had the same experience KSK

I play on hard with like 50% science and earnings to make progress more gradual (which I suppose isn't very balanced either or fun, as most rockets have to be made of multiple cheap crap glued together rather than advanced and expensive tech).

But that said, what would you improve and how?

Yeah, the problem is that there's really not much progress to do, so making it gradual just makes a pretty thin experience even thinner. I normally find that Tier 2 buildings are fine for all my practical needs - apart from R&D obviously. My craft designs tend towards the boring, minimal but functional which helps keep the part counts low as well. End result - I can do everything I need to do with 1.25m parts, maybe detouring into 2.5m parts for roleplaying or loading up a space station with large quantities of fuel. I never really get to use the high end parts because I've normally lost interest by then.

So what to do?

Building on the current system, I would make Kerbal Construction Time (KCT), or something very like it, stock. When time actually matters then a lot of other decisions suddenly matter as well. Can I actually complete that contract in time? Can I research the necessary technology to get my cluster of Eve comsats on orbit for the next transfer window? That sort of thing. Also KCT adds a whole slew of possible upgrade options for the Space Centre, which makes the base upgrade side of the game a bit deeper. In short, it's a relatively straightforward way of building out the space program (rather than individual mission) planning part of the game, which is what I thought Career mode would be all about.

Yes - I know I could just install the mod. Yes - I need to get round to that sometime.

More speculatively (and I've said this before), take anything @tater has said about the exploration game and just do it. Keep the current Kerbol system as a default option but for the love of Jeb's sweaty socks, give us some variety too. Give us something to actually explore.

In an ideal world, I'd rip up Career mode and rebuild it from scratch. KCT is actually quite a solid foundation (for the reasons outlined above), so I'd start there. For those that haven't used it, KCT lets you earn science by building rockets. I would make that the main progression loop that drives technology progression. Build spacecraft, earn Engineering experience points and use them to unlock better parts for building better spacecraft. Put in a diminishing returns mechanism so you can't cheese your way through the tech tree by churning out endless 'Mk1 pod + Flea' suborbital hoppers.

Next - make life support stock. Doesn't have to be a complicated system but give us some logistics to figure out and manage.

Next - proper kerbonaut training and career logs. Give us a reason to care about them, give us a reason to actually manage them, allocate them to appropriate missions etc. Get rid of the current 'get to level 3 and now I can repair wheels / magically get more science from a thermometer / figure out how to orient my craft antinormal rather than prograde' nonsense. Instead a spacecraft needs a certain level of crew training before you can launch it. Crew accumulate training over time, the more experienced a particular kerbonaut is, the faster he/she accumulates training points.

Next - tie reputation to exploration and science. Boldly going where no kerbal (or probe) has gone before - and beaming back the pictures to prove it - keep the public interested and earns reputation for your program. Repeat missions also earn rep but on a diminishing returns basis. Likewise, gathering science points earns you the approbation of the Kerbin research community and builds your reputation.

Finally - let us choose how we want to earn our funds.

Reputation grants you a 'base salary' to spend on your program. If you have a sufficiently high reputation, that might be all you need.

Running tourist flights will earn you money - build your ship, set your price and see the punters roll in. Or not. Passengers will generally pay more to go to more exotic locations in more spacious spacecraft. Conversely, once the novelty has worn off, passengers won't pay much for the 'privilege' of being cooped up in a Mk1 pod for a month, regardless of how good the view is.

Building infrastructure like space stations and Munbases will also earn you money - building nicer infrastructure will earn you more money. Building infrastructure in far-flung parts of the Kerbol system will earn you even more money. I would probably leave the task of building and maintaining the infrastructure to the player but have passenger transport handled automagically - or at least make that an option.

Building and maintaining commercial comsat networks will earn you money. Alternatively, building networks of Kerbin observation and other science satellites, space telescopes etc. will earn you science and therefore reputation and so (indirectly) money.

Finally, if you really insist, testing parts and accepting contracts from other companies will earn you money. In general though, I'd prefer to ditch the notion of contracts and having the player earn all their money by completing random tasks for faceless companies.

 

Sorry for the wall o' text!

[Lightzy]

I especially like the idea of letting the player decide his space program's financial model.
Specializing in any of those will require a big investment of science and money (for unlocking parts), so at first, you have to make some choices on what you prefer to do with your playthrough. Of course, after a while, you should be able to unlock everything anyway.

I'd also suggest having multiple different reputation bars, one to do with each area of expertise (an agency for example can have very poor reputation with satellites but a high reputation for space tourism)

 

Space Tourism:

• Includes an extended "Tourism" tech line with all manner of 'comfort' rocket/plane parts.
• As your reputation grows, it becomes necessary to unlock those and create rockets that can take more kerbals to more exotic destinations more comfortably, as it becomes more difficult to make money by doing low-profile tours (your facilities cost more to maintain already, your experienced staff require bigger salaries not to move to competing agencies)
   

Space Settlement:

• A focus on off-kerbin bases. A tech tree line to match. Specializing in, of course, creating larger, more comfortable and long-lasting residences in space! Luxury orbital space stations with all the amenities and space restaurants and planetside colonies.
• Ties in to space tourism to an extent, as some tourists might want to relocate to minmus permanently, but you need the kind of facilities that can maintain life there for a year (comfort level requirements vary).

 

etc

With this, the player should have the option of seriously taking his time and, for example, just doing airplane flights of kerbin for a while for money. Just build a luxury airplane company for a while, enjoy the sights, fly around... Whatever a person wants to do.

 

 

 

[KSK]

Thanks!

My thinking was that if you're supporting your program on a single activity then you would have to go all out to make that work. Diversifying is easier financially but requires a bit more juggling from the player.

But yes - you've pretty much nailed it with your last paragraph. Want to build giant aircraft and fly hundreds of tourists around Kerbin? You can. Want to do the stock LKO to Mun to Minmus progression? That works fine. Want to skip the Mun/Minmus, focus on building infrastructure in LKO and lobbing uncrewed probes to explore the rest of the Kerbol system. Knock yourself out. What you should never have to do is be forced (or nearly so) down a particular path to grind enough science points to continue.

[Wjolcz]

On 16/11/2016 at 4:32 PM, KSK said:

I would make that the main progression loop that drives technology progression. Build spacecraft, earn Engineering experience points and use them to unlock better parts for building better spacecraft. Put in a diminishing returns mechanism so you can't cheese your way through the tech tree by churning out endless 'Mk1 pod + Flea' suborbital hoppers.

Well... Engineering points. Hmmm. Yeah, okay. I guess that could work. As long as they are not earned the way science points are (yuck!). I haven't played with KCT yet, but I think I might give it a try, though don't agree it's actually needed to make the time matter. You can make it matter by tying reputation to daily budgets (which are capped monthly i.e. you can only gather so much money each month and it all depends on your rep).

My experience with the career modlist I use (the one I've linked above) is more or less like this:

Got some cash but not enough to launch a vessel -> warp for a few days -> the money has accumulated -> launch the vessel.

I often also find myself in a situation like this:

Need a certain part in a node I don't have yet (let's say it's the wheels) and don't have enough money to research it -> warp for a few days -> buy the node -> go to the VAB and build the rocket with a rover -> I see I don't have enough cash to launch it -> warp until I have enough cash to launch my rover

That way the time passes nicely and I don't have to launch any half-assed science grinders to research more nodes. I'm halfway through the tree and the Moho transfer window has just opened. Considering that the further nodes take a lot more cash to unlock I still have a long way to go, so I should have visited all the bodies by the time I research the last node. It's also important to note that I'm using the Historical Tech Tree which is awesome because it allows for much more varied research paths (thus playstyles) and makes more sense than the stock tree, which is always welcome. I also hardly ever accept contracts. World's Firsts are enough to keep my space program running.

Edited November 17, 2016 by Veeltch

[nascarlaser1]

I would make it less of a grind.

 

(till they make it less of a grind, anyone know of a mod I can use?)

[Wjolcz]

On 16/11/2016 at 4:32 PM, KSK said:

2 minutes ago, nascarlaser1 said:

I would make it less of a grind.

 

(till they make it less of a grind, anyone know of a mod I can use?)

One mod is not enough. I recommend you using the mod compilation linked in my first post here. It really makes a huge difference.

Also what the hell? I can't get rid of this quote and the only way is to write in it. Curse you, mobile version of the forum!

[KSK]

10 hours ago, Veeltch said:

Well... Engineering points. Hmmm. Yeah, okay. I guess that could work. As long as they are not earned the way science points are (yuck!).

Nope. It's been a while since I played with KCT but if I remember correctly each vessel got a score depending on what parts you used and how many times you'd used them before. In KCT that score translates into research points, although they're more of a bonus than something you'd rely on for all your science needs. In my hypothetical career revamp, vessel score would translate into engineering points which would be the only way of unlocking the tech tree.

As I said - build ships to earn points to unlock parts for better ships. Building bigger ships with newer parts also takes more time so the player needs to take that into account. Conservative designs that you've flown multiple times before can be assembled quite quickly but don't get you many engineering points. More experimental designs take longer to build but let you open up the tech tree faster.

[Codraroll]

Time for me to reiterate my ol', boring speech:

Let us colonize the Kerbol system.

As you start the current Career game, worlds like Duna, Moho and the Joolian moons are far, far away. Your small, experimental rockets barely manage to hop out of the atmosphere. Eventually, you manage to put craft in orbit, land on the Mun, land on Minmus, launch various satellites, and build grand space stations. But for a new player, the step out to the faraway planets is daunting. "What if I don't manage it?" "What if I strand my Kerbals where I can't recover them?" "I've fast-forwarded a few weeks to get to Minmus and back, but now for this mission I have to fast-forward more than three times as long as my accumulated play time until now - this feels wrong!". Leaving the SOI of Kerbin feels at least an order of magnitude more complex than anything you can do inside of it. It takes a lot of play time to design a craft, perform the necessary maneuvers (10+ minute burns with the nuclear engine, for instance), fast-forward, make orbit and land safely. And all the way, you're uncertain if you have enough fuel to make it back home. If you fail at any stage, you've easily lost an hour or more of play-time.

So, getting to the outer planets is a bit of a treshold to overcome. A significant time investment is required. To make the endeavour worth the while, some reward should lie on the other end. It shouldn't be all about taking the same old science experiments to other planets, perform them, get the Science points and be done with it. New players should be enticed by more than just the prospect of planting a flag on a differently textured surface. Perfoming the arduous task should lead to a new stage of gameplay.

Besides, going to Duna, Moho, Jool or the other planets doesn't get any less tedious as the game progresses. You can do things quickly and easily in Kerbin SOI, or spend a lot of time doing trivial things on other worlds.

These problems are all addressed by colonization.

Imagine, if you will, a contract appearing after you've first landed on the Mun and unlocked some late-mid-game satellite equipment - the surface scanner, or something like it. "Survey the Mun for potential sites for a permanent base". You take the satellite to a low polar orbit, and after months of mapping the Munar topography, a new contract appears: "Ground survey of potential Mun base sites". You send your rovers or Kerbals to a few pre-programmed, flat sites scattered across the Mun, taking surface samples and writing their reports of the site. Once the contract is completed, a new one appears: "Establish a base on the Mun". In the VAB, a new part appears temporarily, like "parts test" contract parts: Base Supplies, a fairly large, heavy and cumbersome container. You are tasked to bring it to either of the sites you've surveyed with surface equipment. You build the biggest, most powerful rocket your space program has seen thus far, and send it roaring in the direction of the Mun. Your proficiency of landing spacecraft is put to the test as the multi-ton container is carefully maneuvered towards your chosen site. "You are now entering Site Gamma" appears in yellow text as the lander is metres from the ground. Finally, touchdown, and the craft comes to rest. You hover your mouse over the altimeter, where a new button appears below the blue "Space Center", in the place of the "Recover Craft" option you get after landing on Kerbin: "Establish base". You click it, the screen goes black, and you're taken back to the KSC view, overlooking the VAB, the Astronaut complex, the Launch pad, the Tracking station and all the other buildings - except, this is not on Kerbin, but a full-fledged Mun Space Center, with appropriately-modelled buildings. From this day on, you can build and launch craft from this site as well as the KSC - but all parts are ten times more expensive, neither the VAB nor the Launch pad can handle very big rockets, there is no Runway, and craft recovery is only available in a limited distance from the base. All of those aspects would of course be upgrade-able.

 

The prospect of establishing permanent bases on other worlds may be the encouragement the game needs to take players out of Kerbin SOI more frequently, and lead to a more varied play style. No longer will you have to wait years for the planets to align before going to Jool - just launch from your base on Duna or Dres. If you want to just mess around with boats on Laythe, you won't have to invest an hour or more of gameplay to bring your boats there - just launch them out of the LSC. Want a true late-game challenge? Take this ten-ton crate of cargo from your Eve base to the one on Tylo. The act of establishing the base would be hard work, but the convenience they give you for the effort would be a big reward.

The extraplanetary bases would outperform Kerbin in convenience, but KSC would remain the base with the cheapest rocket parts, and - if that is ever put in Stock - the shortest construction time. The justification being that the parts you use to build rockets on other bases are shipped there by the other space agencies - you know, the same ones who put all the stranded Kerbals in their various locations. If they can bring a Mk I cockpit to Laythe by themselves, they could bring an orange tank to the Mun if you show them the way.

 

 

Ooh, as usual this became very wall-of-text-y. Hope I didn't bore you, and thanks for reading!

[Wjolcz]

1 hour ago, Codraroll said:

Time for me to reiterate my ol', boring speech:

Let us colonize the Kerbol system.As you start the current Career game, worlds like Duna, Moho and the Joolian moons are far, far away. Your small, experimental rockets barely manage to hop out of the atmosphere. Eventually, you manage to put craft in orbit, land on the Mun, land on Minmus, launch various satellites, and build grand space stations. But for a new player, the step out to the faraway planets is daunting. "What if I don't manage it?" "What if I strand my Kerbals where I can't recover them?" "I've fast-forwarded a few weeks to get to Minmus and back, but now for this mission I have to fast-forward more than three times as long as my accumulated play time until now - this feels wrong!". Leaving the SOI of Kerbin feels at least an order of magnitude more complex than anything you can do inside of it. It takes a lot of play time to design a craft, perform the necessary maneuvers (10+ minute burns with the nuclear engine, for instance), fast-forward, make orbit and land safely. And all the way, you're uncertain if you have enough fuel to make it back home. If you fail at any stage, you've easily lost an hour or more of play-time.

I'll stop you right here.

Firstly, the problem of fast-forwarding: time needs to matter. It doesn't right now. If you warp through the tech research because it needs time then the ships arrive at other planets in no time.

Secondly, the "oh, but do I have enough fuel?" is simply the case of the lack of information in stock. Colonization won't fix that. You shouldn't be able to go all "oh, oops! I guess I'm stuck here with this one-man capsule! Time to colonize! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯"

Colonization would not improve the career. It would extend it. I'm not against it, but to fix the career we don't need more nodes or more parts, or even life support (though I support the notion of having it in stock). We need a fix first, more stuff later.

[tater]

Many mechanics that fit within the paradigm I am sure we are stuck with are suggested to make time meaningful.

The typical response of naysayers is "then the player will just time warp through the 2 months it takes for X to happen." My response? Good! That's the point. To feel like a "career" of, well, anyone, time needs to pass. Going from "what is a rocket?" to "The next tourist flight for 30 passengers leaves for Jool in 2 hours!" in a few hundred 6 hour days kills any suspension of disbelief anyone might have, anyway. Yet somehow warping to the next fiscal quarter because you are out of funds is anathema.

Career has other, fundamental problems.

1. The lack of failures is a glaring one. Failures, and mechanisms to correct them (using the new "upgrade" mechanic, perhaps?) force design choices on the player when done properly. Rating parts by "safety" would be a kerbal sort of stat. Upgrades make parts safer, and also might improve other stats. Some parts might be fundamentally safer from the start. Safety would not be "risk of explosion" as much as "risk of failing to function fully, or at all." Monoprop or hypergolic would be a nice addition for upper stages---when you absolutely, positively want your munar lander to be able to take off. Yeah, squad hates "random." Get over it for career mode, because that makes things interesting.

2. Scale. The mini scale is sort of crippling because it removes interesting design branches. There is no need to think about Kerbin Orbit Rendezvous vs Munar Orbit Rendezvous, or Direct Ascent, etc in KSP. You can send a kerbal in a mk1 pod, alone, easily a few days after you realize which end to point up. Challenges make the game interesting. We know that what was it, rounding errors, resulted in the mini scale? Really, the size should be such that landing on the Mun---the primary body outside of kerbin that most players visit, apparently---is interesting/challenging.

3. Difficulty over time. KSP career gets easier as the game progresses. The only possible way to ever lose is set on maximum grind mode ("Hard"), and only then fairly early in the game. Basically, if you can get to LKO, all you need to do to go literally everywhere else is upgrade facilities so you can build bigger stuff with the same parts. Life Support, kerbal wellbeing included, makes distant missions harder as you need to build considerably larger craft. Add in failure as an option, and perhaps you need spares.

4. No, well, point. KSP includes an implicit Space Race, for example. It would be more compelling if it was made explicit. Real pressures to beat a foil. If you don't like that, perhaps a colonization mode (perhaps a world will destroy Kerbin in XX years or something. 

I could sketch out ideas, but I've written dozens of pages of this stuff over the last few years to no avail, all we see are "double down" updates, adding more thoughtless, random side quests instead of fundamental changes.

Edited November 18, 2016 by tater

[paul23]

Failures is not a fun mechanic. - So you carefully planned a mission to duna which took 20+ hours to plan/develop. And then a random factor causes you to "fail", since spacecraft is always "living on the edge" you can't overdesign rockets: even in reality overdesigning like is common in cars is not feasible. Also parts don't fail in reality "often": the only thing is, parts aren't "100% accurate", and lifting off and misaligning by just a tenth of a degree is considered a failed launch in reality. 

I know only of a single accident in space, where people died.

 

 

What I think is that more "time factors" should be included in ksp: add life support (time which influences mass) - make contracts tighter on time (ie for some contracts a hohman transfer simply won't work due to time constraints) - and finally add a "tax"/"salery" to ksp so you don't want to "idle around", and you are rewarded for having many missions at the same time.