Hypothetical Career Mode Update

[Stelum]

Hello fellow Kerbonauts!

I'm here to suggest a new and improved versions of the Career Mode in this game. I'll get right to it. I'll list off the things which I feel need to be improved/removed/added.

 "-" = Remove                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      "+" = Add                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                "/" = Update

 

• + A monthly fund increase. For example, every month/week whatever, KSC will give you a set amount of funds to you that can be changed in the options menu. Doing this will make the game a little bit more bearable when you're the type of person to build big rockets, or playing on harder difficulties.
• / Change the penalty for asking for a government fund. There are certain instances when the player might run out of money, and will need to use the strategy that grants you an amount of funds based on the percentage bar. However, the penalty for this is extremely high, and if it was toned down by about 15-25%, it wouldn't make it overpowered, but it would make it much less of a pain.
• + Loans. The player can ask for a loan. There can be four different options on the loans; 50,000 Funds, 500,000 Funds, 1Mil Funds, and "Custom" where you can choose an amount of funds between 0 and 5Mil. The player will have to repay the fund before a certain deadline, and will have to pay interest. For example, you take the 50,000 loan, you will have to pay 10% interest every month (5000 a month). If the player fails to pay back the loan, the player will get hit with a massive reputation penalty.
• / Balance the price tags of the different parts. Since the loans feature as well as the monthly fund increase are a thing in this hypothetical update, the price tags for parts may need to be increased/decreased respectively. I'm not gonna pay an absurd amount of money for something I could go to my nearest DIY store and make the same thing myself for much less. I know it's a game, but some things really need to make a little bit more sense.
• + Statistics. A trend graph depicting where funds are going to/where they're coming from. For example, I'd like to know why I just lost about 500,000 in a couple of months. I could go to the statistics graph in the administration building, and notice that 500,000 was spent on snacks. (I'm joking, but I'm assuming you know what I mean :P). I'd also like to know how much money is coming in, and see if in the end my reusable rocket strategy is either making me earn back money, or lose it. Speaking of strategies....
• +/- Strategies. This is a bit of a different from my previous suggestions because I'm implying that the strategies be both improved upon (adding more) balanced, and removed. While I don't have a concrete idea of what could be added here, but I'd like to see some actual strategies involved. I'll expand on this a little bit in my next suggestion.
• + A simplified version of competition and alliances. For example, say WinterOwl is doing better than I am. They're getting most of the funds that are circling around this small economy. Therefore I want them to stop doing so well, and will activate a strategy that will make them lose money, and make me earn more. These strategies work very closely with the strategies that we have now, as if we do this, it'll be seen as an amazing person-ish move on our side, so we will lose reputation for it. In this hypothetical update, let's also assume I'd like to help or collaborate with another company that's doing poorly. I can choose to activate a strategy that will make me lose some funds, but add reputation. It's really simple, but could make the gameplay more interesting.
• - Remove the old strategies. All of them. I will expand on this on my next suggestion.
• + Budgeting. If we go to the administration building, there can be a budgeting tab. In that tab, I can choose to either put more money into R&D, reputation, or invest it into something, with an interest rate. If I put it into R&D, I will lose the set amount of funds that I am putting into it, but will research techs quicker (I am actually gonna suggest something later on to expand on this). If I invest it into Reputation, my money will go to creating propa- *ahem* motivational rallies showing the greatness of our space program, creating reputation. If I choose to invest into some company or the government, I will earn a small amount of interest on the amount I put in, making me slowly earn more funds. This will all be handled in a screen in the administration building, where there will be 3 sliders, and I can divide them equally in percentages (i.e I have 100% I can use, I invest 40% Into R&D, 20% into reputation, and 40% into the investment. I feel this will work well with the statistics feature. Strategies will still be a thing with the competition and alliances features. 
• + Allow you to filter contracts by companies.
• + Researching costs funds. Kerbonaut hiring is a set price along with monthly payments (for every month in action you have to pay them, if you fail to pay them the Kerbonaut will start to become unhappy, and loses XP points temporarily until the player has enough funds to pay them. This shouldn't be a problem.)
• + Recovering costs funds depending how far away something is. It can be set at ____Funds/KM or something. It also takes time. (Will be explained later)

That's all I have for career mode updates, if you'd like to suggest anything, go ahead and do it, I'd welcome them. However before I finish this post I'd like to suggest a little extra something. I'm sure many of you have heard of the Kerbal Construction Time mod. It's a mod where rockets take time to build, buildings take time to upgrade, launchpads need to be refurbished, buildings take time to be repaired, and tech requires time to be researched. I suggest it's implemented into the base game. This will work well with the hypothetical features that have been suggested in this post. If you've got this far, I thank you for reading, and as mentioned suggestions are welcome. If you agree that this should be a thing, please encourage Squad to add it  

Sincerely,

Stelum

Edited December 14, 2016 by Stelum
A couple of new Ideas

[TheEpicSquared]

Nice! I also have a suggestion, which I think ties into both career and science mode. 

The tech tree should be made sensible. 

So the tech tree would start off with low-performance SRBs, winglets, cameras and simple science experiments like thermometers, before moving on to parachutes, enabling recoverable vehicles. At this point, there would not be any probe-core like system, so the actions (like parachute firing, for instance) would have to be programmed in before launch. After that comes a rudimentary guidance system, better winglets, and LFO systems. The next tiers would improve on this tech and introduce new systems like the RAPIERs and nuke engines.

Oh, and some airplane parts should be available from the start of the game, since in real life planes existed way before rockets did. 

 

[Stelum]

1 hour ago, TheEpicSquared said:

Nice! I also have a suggestion, which I think ties into both career and science mode. 

The tech tree should be made sensible. 

So the tech tree would start off with low-performance SRBs, winglets, cameras and simple science experiments like thermometers, before moving on to parachutes, enabling recoverable vehicles. At this point, there would not be any probe-core like system, so the actions (like parachute firing, for instance) would have to be programmed in before launch. After that comes a rudimentary guidance system, better winglets, and LFO systems. The next tiers would improve on this tech and introduce new systems like the RAPIERs and nuke engines.

Oh, and some airplane parts should be available from the start of the game, since in real life planes existed way before rockets did. 

 

I agree this should be part of the main game, although it should be an optional start. I'd love to play if for when I'd be finished with everything else.

[Wjolcz]

I pretty much agree with this.

About strategies: IMO they should be completely replaced by something called "Programs". The easy way to put it is they would basically be mission filters (Want to focus on the Mun? Pick the Mun Program. Want to go out and orbit something like Jool? Go get that one). They could also serve as funds boosts. If you were running low on funds you could pick one of these (instead of that dumb stock loan "strategy"), but the demands would be higher (Now we've given you that extra cash go plant a flag on the Mun!). And stuff like that.

About the upkeep cost: In my modded career I have it simulated by having monthly upkeep cost of active satellites (each probe/station/ship costs 1K per month iirc). I sometimes cheat and simply turn some of them (the least useful ones) into debris to avoid the bills, but it's still fun. These guys from administration have too much paperwork anyway. I'm sure they would be thankful if they found out about it. Let's not tell them for now though.

Oh, and forgot about the most important thing which is the R&D of course: a great way to make the time pass is making the tree nodes cost funds and time.

How it works in my modded career: I've set science yield to 10% (the lowest possible). I have a widget with which I buy science points. Since I get a certain amount of money each day (rep influences money) I have to warp for a few days to accumulate enough cash to "buy" a node (I buy science points and then use them to unlock the nodes). That way the time passes and I spend my money on the research. Thanks to that I actually spend more time exploring the solar system and reading the science flavour text instead of grinding for science from every possible biome.

Edited December 14, 2016 by Veeltch

[Stelum]

8 hours ago, Veeltch said:

I pretty much agree with this.

About strategies: IMO they should be completely replaced by something called "Programs". The easy way to put it is they would basically be mission filters (Want to focus on the Mun? Pick the Mun Program. Want to go out and orbit something like Jool? Go get that one). They could also serve as funds boosts. If you were running low on funds you could pick one of these (instead of that dumb stock loan "strategy"), but the demands would be higher (Now we've given you that extra cash go plant a flag on the Mun!). And stuff like that.

About the upkeep cost: In my modded career I have it simulated by having monthly upkeep cost of active satellites (each probe/station/ship costs 1K per month iirc). I sometimes cheat and simply turn some of them (the least useful ones) into debris to avoid the bills, but it's still fun. These guys from administration have too much paperwork anyway. I'm sure they would be thankful if they found out about it. Let's not tell them for now though.

Oh, and forgot about the most important thing which is the R&D of course: a great way to make the time pass is making the tree nodes cost funds and time.

How it works in my modded career: I've set science yield to 10% (the lowest possible). I have a widget with which I buy science points. Since I get a certain amount of money each day (rep influences money) I have to warp for a few days to accumulate enough cash to "buy" a node (I buy science points and then use them to unlock the nodes). That way the time passes and I spend my money on the research. Thanks to that I actually spend more time exploring the solar system and reading the science flavour text instead of grinding for science from every possible biome.

That's a smart way, I might try it out before squad hopefully maybe might add my hypothetical changes