A Kerbal Suggestion - The Space Race

[KSPFanatic102]

"You Know Back in the 196.0's we had a race to Mun with the Koviet Union ,and we won"

-Neil Kerman

What a Beautiful day , im back with another Great suggestion

PS: It is always Great 

Spoiler

Spoiler

Nothing

 

Anyways PRESENTING ....

the ULTIMATE 

the NEW!!!! Idea

it is the all new 

Space Race Idea

Wait hold on , before you say anything let me explain breifly

Highlights

1- First of all , A new Gamemode ,( Or the race option could be triggered in custom mode) , Anyways Campaign mode : which is the same as Carrer Mode , But instead of 1 Agency ,you will have other agencies around the planet in a race to Planetary bodies , Like Mun , If you win a race and reach a planetary body first , you Gain Reputation , and Funds , also you dont have to BE in the race , if you dont want to . also , you will get a contract to sign , to join in the action .

2- You can see other's agencies Ongoing Missions on the Map.

3- Other Agencies Vehicles will not be Seen Physically , For many reasons since it will be so hard to achieve a Physical self driving vehicle which auto-decides where to go and what to do. So it would be just a Map tweak

4- Also if other agencies landed on a place , a flag of their lander would be there

5- That's all what i got in my mind, thanks for reading

-Taco Kerman

Year 201.6

 

[tater]

I've proposed such a game mode, myself. Its a good idea, and in fact so good it's implicit in the stock game already:

1. Milestones don't matter if no one cares who does something first, because only one person is doing it.

2. All those stranded astronauts are not from MY space program, so there are others, but apparently all they do is fail.

There is another way to do this short of an AI player you compete against... a sort of pseudo-multiplayer. 

Space Race mode would turn on a sort of save-sharing. Every milestone, etc, would obviously be saved, along with a date/time stamp. There would be limited difficulty options, because all players need to have them identical. Limited reverts, no quick saves. This is to ensure the timelines match. Some stuff would take time that doesn't now, to make time matter. Ideally it also has life support.

You are not actually playing against another player, your game would grab a random player's game, and use their milestones. You are playing against THAT. You will get announcements of their successes, so you'll know if you need to get off your posterior and launch something. It;s using an already played game as the "AI" you are against. The computer is not actually playing, it's just using that saved timeline as a foil.

As you say, rep, funds, etc are related.

[The Space Dino]

This would be fun, because up to a certain point career mode just becomes kinda boring ( although I'm not even close to the boring part yet )

[tater]

Ideally the "rescue" contracts could pull craft files instead of single parts. Then, in this space race, the game would pull the upper stage of any capsule or lander for space rescues, and a lander the other game's play actually landed with (appropriate in the timeline), and use those.

[Wjolcz]

8 hours ago, tater said:

You are not actually playing against another player, your game would grab a random player's game, and use their milestones. You are playing against THAT. You will get announcements of their successes, so you'll know if you need to get off your posterior and launch something. It;s using an already played game as the "AI" you are against. The computer is not actually playing, it's just using that saved timeline as a foil.

I came here to suggest just this.

However, another way of doing this could be a sort of quasi-multiplayer, where people join the in-game agencies and sort of "work" for them. Ideally they would do just what you said, but their achievements would be constantly updated and there would be one or more to race against +could create contracts for others.

So basically, you start as a freelancer and once you accumulate enough rep you are able to join one of the agencies. Once you do that you enter the multiplayer. From now on you can see achievements of other players from other agencies and you can compete against them. You see that it's day 23 and by that time that player achieved LKO only. You decide "I can do better than that!" and go HKO. And now you are in the lead and get some rep for it, or something.

So yeah, basically what you've said. But time needs to matter first. Daily/monthly budgets and research taking time. Otherwise beating someone in going to the Moon is a matter of hours. Another problem is what would happen with the settings. Would players just download presets from others, or something like that? Probably.

Another type of multiplayer I would like to see implemented at some point is Telemachus/Houston-like multiplayer. That one could be fun too.

Edited November 21, 2016 by Veeltch

[Magzimum]

Hmm, a "Space race" could also be an interesting challenge on the forum? (And may have existed in the past too).

Fresh stock career --> What is the earliest date you can get to a particular planet/moon?

Sorry that this comment is a little off topic.

[tater]

Yeah, @Veeltch, time is critical. It has to matter, and it has to take time to do stuff.

[tater]

Wonder if this is possible as a mod...

Have it parse a different save file for milestones, then when one is reached by the alternate save file, it sends a message (like a pop up from Werner, but as a news flash) that says "The Koviets (or whatever random country name) just orbited Kerbin!" Then it treats that milestone as if it had an expired time limit (which they don't, so that needs to be a thing).

[monstah]

7 hours ago, Veeltch said:

From now on you can see achievements of other players from other agencies and you can compete against them. You see that it's day 23 and by that time that player achieved LKO only. You decide "I can do better than that!" and go HKO. And now you are in the lead and get some rep for it, or something.

Have you ever played SpaceChem? The scoreboard consists of a histogram of users by score, with a solid line marking your latest score and a dashed line marking your best. Since there are more than one score, you can try to make optimal runs for each score, or try a perfect one and have your latest score very good in all categories.

It's really gratifying. In case of KSP, there would probably be scoreboards for each achievement (I'm thinking, World First milestones), with score being time, I guess?

There has to be a server for this, tho. And we'll open an ugly can of worms when people start to actually have a point when they talk about cheating in KSP...

 

[tater]

This is why it needs to check for identical mod setups. Quick saves and reverts would also be cheating for this particular play style. No quick saves allowed, and perhaps either limited reverts per kerbal year, or a system that assumes any revert is the result of a "problem" with a vehicle, and "return to flight" is then delayed by X weeks (where X is some number determined randomly (and could be pretty large).

So you can revert because you just barely made orbit due to a bad launch, but you might not be able to relaunch the thing for months. The farther off the pad, the longer the delay, too. Revert from the pad (you forgot to swap bob for bill or something), and "return to flight" is in a week. Revert after launch, and the minimum might be 8 weeks (though the random nature might make it go higher). Revert in another SOI? Months.

Yeah, you have to time warp through it.

Alternately, RTF might be part-specific. In other words, no launches for X weeks with any part that was in the reverted craft. 

 

[Wjolcz]

1 hour ago, monstah said:

Have you ever played SpaceChem?

: O This is amazing! Looks complicated as heck though.

Edited November 21, 2016 by Veeltch

[KSPFanatic102]

On 11/21/2016 at 6:51 AM, tater said:

I've proposed such a game mode, myself. Its a good idea, and in fact so good it's implicit in the stock game already:

1. Milestones don't matter if no one cares who does something first, because only one person is doing it.

2. All those stranded astronauts are not from MY space program, so there are others, but apparently all they do is fail.

There is another way to do this short of an AI player you compete against... a sort of pseudo-multiplayer. 

Space Race mode would turn on a sort of save-sharing. Every milestone, etc, would obviously be saved, along with a date/time stamp. There would be limited difficulty options, because all players need to have them identical. Limited reverts, no quick saves. This is to ensure the timelines match. Some stuff would take time that doesn't now, to make time matter. Ideally it also has life support.

You are not actually playing against another player, your game would grab a random player's game, and use their milestones. You are playing against THAT. You will get announcements of their successes, so you'll know if you need to get off your posterior and launch something. It;s using an already played game as the "AI" you are against. The computer is not actually playing, it's just using that saved timeline as a foil.

As you say, rep, funds, etc are related.

Yeah That type of multiplayer would be nice

On 11/21/2016 at 9:35 PM, tater said:

Wonder if this is possible as a mod...

Have it parse a different save file for milestones, then when one is reached by the alternate save file, it sends a message (like a pop up from Werner, but as a news flash) that says "The Koviets (or whatever random country name) just orbited Kerbin!" Then it treats that milestone as if it had an expired time limit (which they don't, so that needs to be a thing).

Yeah im wondering too

On 11/21/2016 at 6:51 AM, tater said:

I've proposed such a game mode, myself. Its a good idea, and in fact so good it's implicit in the stock game already:

1. Milestones don't matter if no one cares who does something first, because only one person is doing it.

2. All those stranded astronauts are not from MY space program, so there are others, but apparently all they do is fail.

There is another way to do this short of an AI player you compete against... a sort of pseudo-multiplayer. 

Space Race mode would turn on a sort of save-sharing. Every milestone, etc, would obviously be saved, along with a date/time stamp. There would be limited difficulty options, because all players need to have them identical. Limited reverts, no quick saves. This is to ensure the timelines match. Some stuff would take time that doesn't now, to make time matter. Ideally it also has life support.

You are not actually playing against another player, your game would grab a random player's game, and use their milestones. You are playing against THAT. You will get announcements of their successes, so you'll know if you need to get off your posterior and launch something. It;s using an already played game as the "AI" you are against. The computer is not actually playing, it's just using that saved timeline as a foil.

As you say, rep, funds, etc are related.

Yeah , i never thought it could be an AI thought , i thought it would only be a tweak on the map

[tater]

Yeah, AI is a big deal for Squad to add... it's really an entire game under the hood. That's why coopting other players as the pseudo-AI makes some sense. And since it's not really reactive to the actual player, it should be pretty easy. The "competing" player is just doing what they do. Not ideal, because you'd really see a back and forth---one side risking an unsafe, early launch to beat the other guy---but it's better than nothing.

I'd like a wrecked lander rescue to be someone else's real craft, for example.

[monstah]

On 21/11/2016 at 6:41 PM, Veeltch said:

: O This is amazing! Looks complicated as heck though.

Do you mean the scoreboard, or the game itself? The scoreboard simply keeps track of how many people achieved what when, and compares you with the rest (in terms of how many were better or worse than you, and by how much).

The game... well, that's complicated as heck. I've been stumped on a stage for quite some time. It's called 'No Ordinary Headache', that might say a bit  

[tater]

The only trouble with a scorecard, is that it needs to compared identical game setups. Game mode (down to every box and slider checked), and mods.

[StupidAndy]

everything is possible with mods! make a mod for this!

except the naming thing, i think that has some sort of coding lock