Let's Rebalance the Tech Tree

[Helmetman]

2 hours ago, DAL59 said:

I agree.  I think that maybe Squad or some modder should make a visual tech tree editor.  

This I'm all for. It's simple, will satisfy anyone. Aheum, but it's basically only a build in function to do what you do know by editing the parts cfg file. It would atleast make this part easier and many people want such functionality. I got a bottom belly feeling that the TS wouldn't have opened this thread if such a function was present. 

1 hour ago, tater said:

1st flight a hop with flea. 2d flight suborbital/orbital, 3d flight orbital for sure. Somewhere soon after the 4th flight, you land Jeb. You'd have to be intentionally slacking to wait for docking ports to land on the Mun in KSP.

Playing a normal difficulty career mode with a mentality of getting to the end with intentional haste ASAP then generally that is how things go.

Slacking however is what I'm doing now on hardmode. I got myself a collection of new mods and early tech parts and I'm going along at a easy fund/science pace doing surveys, tourism contracts and part testing. Part testing can be fun when you can combine 2 or more part test contracts at once. Can sometimes make very unorthodox contraptions whereby I test a solid rocket motor, parachutes, sepatrons in one mission. 

It's a bit grindy, but the new mod parts really added worthiness. If I had to do hardmode right now in stock I would succumb by boredom.

Sad to say, ksc and Kerbin biome science on hard science mode doesn't deliver the 45 tech nodes I desire for the mun. Unless I intentionally harvest next to everything.
But that is not my intended playstyle. I can get to the moon and back with only 15-20science nodes. But that is just getting a capsule there with one or two science parts and get back home. Not my playstyle.

In stock KSP there is so much wiggle room to do more, sometimes many contracts all at once (like 7 contracts for one craft). That's what my playstyle is. Wait a little longer for that first Mun landing with a few extra nodes, and then do more. Bring a satellite along for a satellite contract. Or/and pack a extra Mk 1 capsule to save a Kerbonaut stranded in orbit (always wondered how they got there in the first place lol) Doing the flea, suborbital, orbital, mun fly by and mun landing sequence is probably what makes stock career extra boring to most people. This is often how the early career is beaten and why I like to make things intentionally difficult for myself to work around that sequence even when that sequence is obvious.

 

 

[tater]

Yeah, I've played all possible ways. I find "Hard" to be "grind" mode. The career system is terrible, honestly. I tend to aim my ideas at replay, since the mechanisms for noob play would be easy additions to a career system that wasn't awful, and the career system is awful.

I agree with the point up thread that doing it well is very non-trivial, it's harder than the spacecraft part of the game, really.

Edited November 1, 2017 by tater

[DAL59]

2 hours ago, tater said:

You'd have to be intentionally slacking to wait for docking ports to land on the Mun in KSP.

True, but not if you want to land and return from the Mun.

I guess few other players take the EOR route, so you're right.  

[tater]

I've never stranded anyone, anywhere. You can get the classic mk1/tank/909/legs there and back again, easy.

[tater]

You're intentionally dragging your feet, then. 

When I first got ksp, version 0.24 I think, I had a mk1 pod and tank

[Superfluous J]

2 hours ago, DAL59 said:

True, but not if you want to land and return from the Mun.

Naaw. You need surprisingly little fuel to get home from the surface of Mun. Less from Minmus. I had a career where the Mun landing was the 2nd launch* I did. I don't even think I'd unlocked the Terrier.

*Though it was the 3rd trip to the launch pad. The first "launch" I never hit the spacebar.

[Temeter]

Yeah, docking on a simple mun mission is actually a bit wasteful.

[Lord Aurelius]

58 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

Though it was the 3rd trip to the launch pad. The first "launch" I never hit the spacebar.

Gotta love that first "launch" to get a crew report and EVA report without actually going anywhere.

Which from a progression standpoint is kind of sad actually. I liked how SETI rebalanced all the science payouts around KSP to be 0 so you actually had to go out and visit new places to get science instead of just puttering around the space center. Although it is kind of entertaining in a sad way that one of the best ways to get a bunch of easy science points in the early game is to build a jet-powered rover with the parts from the first aircraft tier because apparently electric wheels are more complicated than a jet engine...

Edited November 2, 2017 by Lord Aurelius

[DAL59]

52 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

Naaw. You need surprisingly little fuel to get home from the surface of Mun. Less from Minmus. I had a career where the Mun landing was the 2nd launch* I did. I don't even think I'd unlocked the Terrier.

*Though it was the 3rd trip to the launch pad. The first "launch" I never hit the spacebar.

I'll amend my statement.  For non expert playersme, a direct ascent is not actually always the best, especially considering 30-part limit.  

[Temeter]

7 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

I'll amend my statement.  For non expert playersme, a direct ascent is not actually always the best, especially considering 30-part limit.  

The 30 part and T1 tonnage limit is indeed a big problem for moon landings. I'm honestly not sure if I even managed to do that with starting parts. But non-expert players should just upgrade the pad at least once and maybe the VAB, and then everything is much easier. I'd say do a (maybe no-return) probe to the moon to get science for 2.5m parts and engines.

A dedicated lander-mission requires a lot more skills beginners probably won't have. Rendeszevous and docking (not necessarily required) are more advanced skills than a simple moon landing, and require upgrades for that radar dish buidling to be comfortable.

Mind, I'm not trying to tell you how to do stuff, just pointing it out.^^

---

Hm, that makes me want to challenge myself to build a rocket that does moon with T1 restrictions and another one doing Luna in 1 go. Maybe even SSTO?

Edited November 2, 2017 by Temeter

[Superfluous J]

43 minutes ago, Temeter said:

Hm, that makes me want to challenge myself to build a rocket that does moon with T1 restrictions and another one doing Luna in 1 go.

You may want to check out the Caveman Challenge, to this day one of my more favorites.

 

[Temeter]

2 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

You may want to check out the Caveman Challenge, to this day one of my more favorites.

 

Thank you, I was thinking of that challenge but couldn't remember the exact name.

[Pthigrivi]

So, fully acknowledging that there are folks out there who can land on the Mun with parts from the first two tiers, but also keeping in mind that this is not a beginner's or even the average players experience, what is the best way to deal with the early-game? I think we've identified the first problem: limiting part-count is both less intuitive and less interesting than limiting size and limiting mass. Cost is another factor, but would seem to shake itself out since the less you spend on rockets, the faster you can upgrade your VAB and launchpad. 

As pointed out by @tater, you can, if you wish, very easily go to the Mun on your fourth flight. I don't actually think that's really a problem on default. Some players prefer to knock those out quickly. The problem, he correctly points out, is with the difficulty settings. Hard mode does not make the game harder, it makes it drag. One solution might be to constrain maximum size and weight based on the difficulty settings. If you shifted the limiting factor to size and weight you could even ease up the constraints on early funds and science payouts. That way, if you were very good, you could get yourself to the Mun and back on minimal tonnage and still progress without grind, but your primary focus would be efficiency, rather than repetitive missions.

Based on that, I think we could make a few suggestions:

1) Scrap limited part count at the VAB, and instead:

2) Constrict maximum size and weight base in the difficulty settings

 

If you did those things, you could shift larger tanks like the T-200 and T-800 up because you wouldn't be relying on the gimmick of part count as your limiting factor. This would, however, probably mean you would not also want to move the the size 0 parts up as they would make it much easier to skate under the overall size and weight limits. The only way to counteract this would be to scale up the rewards for crewed landings over probes.

 

Edited November 2, 2017 by Pthigrivi

[tater]

I think the artificial limits on size/mass at the VAB/pad are bizarre. You'd think size would be limited by materials science. I suppose for fabrication the assembly plant matters (SpaceX can't do bigger than 9m in Hawthorne, for example).

The trouble is the whole later tech = larger is in fact wrong. While Saturn and N-1 were end points of the Space Race that KSP sorta kinda follows, rockets then got smaller, and some 60s designs were in fact huge, even if never built.

This goes to my point that more parts would be better. Families of engine types as an example. You start dev work on a certain kind, and you feel a sort of "sunk cost" to moving forward. You keep using kerlox, because that's what you have, and you can make a marginally better kerlox engine cheaper than starting over with another propellant. That would create a sense that the tech tree choices matter. Right now, they DON'T matter, you just unlock everything.

 

[qzgy]

1 hour ago, tater said:

This goes to my point that more parts would be better. Families of engine types as an example. You start dev work on a certain kind, and you feel a sort of "sunk cost" to moving forward. You keep using kerlox, because that's what you have, and you can make a marginally better kerlox engine cheaper than starting over with another propellant. That would create a sense that the tech tree choices matter. Right now, they DON'T matter, you just unlock everything.

So like, for your career game you could unlock a "cryogenics research pack" with a simple LH2/LOX tank and engine, and develop from there (bigger better tanks, with more better engines) or the same for a kerolox tree. Is that what you're suggesting?

Actually, doing it like this would be really interesting - a player in career mode would have to weight things carefully if the say, kerolox and LH2 fuel systems had different advantages/disadvantages (Higher thrust vs higher ISP for instance), making career research choices matter and be a part of game play, instead of be mandatory grinding.

[Superfluous J]

4 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

So, fully acknowledging that there are folks out there who can land on the Mun with parts from the first two tiers, but also keeping in mind that this is not a beginner's or even the average players experience, what is the best way to deal with the early-game?

New players should not play in Career. It's too limiting and punishing if you don't know what you're doing. They should also not play in sandbox. It's too open and they'll drown in the choices. They should play in Science mode. It's the middle ground, and between those two extremes it's a pretty good one.

In Science Mode it doesn't matter if (er, that) it takes a new player 100 launches to get to Mun and back. In fact, it SHOULD take that many launches. This is a game about flying frickin' space ships. It's SUPPOSED to be hard.

The tech tree may (er, does) have problems, but "it's too hard for new players to get to Mun" isn't one of them.

[tater]

1 hour ago, qzgy said:

So like, for your career game you could unlock a "cryogenics research pack" with a simple LH2/LOX tank and engine, and develop from there (bigger better tanks, with more better engines) or the same for a kerolox tree. Is that what you're suggesting?

Actually, doing it like this would be really interesting - a player in career mode would have to weight things carefully if the say, kerolox and LH2 fuel systems had different advantages/disadvantages (Higher thrust vs higher ISP for instance), making career research choices matter and be a part of game play, instead of be mandatory grinding.

There might be infrastructure upgrades as well. New props, require upgrading the pad. The whole point of a tech tree should not be to curate parts for noobs, but to provide a context for design choices. This is why failures matter when there are ways to mitigate them---not by in flight repair, but by making better design choices. If your engine has to restart 100%, use a hypergolic.

[Pthigrivi]

8 hours ago, tater said:

There might be infrastructure upgrades as well. 

One way to handle this would be to enable fuel-switch with a VAB upgrade.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

9 hours ago, tater said:

The whole point of a tech tree should not be to curate parts for noobs, but to provide a context for design choices. 

Don't you think it'd be wiser to leave the stock tree to the noobs, and assume that veteran players are capable and experienced enough to choose and download a Techtree mod that suits them?

You need to understand the game and it's mechanics to make design choices with long term impacts...how do you expect a new player who knows nothing about the game to do this?

Edited November 3, 2017 by Rocket In My Pocket

[tater]

11 minutes ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

Don't you think it'd be wiser to leave the stock tree to the noobs, and assume that veteran players are capable and experienced enough to choose and download a Techtree mod that suits them?

You need to understand the game and it's mechanics to make design choices with long term impacts...how do you expect a new player who knows nothing about the game to do this?

I think that a game designer should design gameplay that works. KSP career gameplay is fundamentally broken. The claim is that it is somehow like "Tycoon" (never played that), and it clearly cannot be, unless tycoon is also awful.

The economics of career are absurd and broken (it's nearly impossible to lose, even with no reverts, etc, and only gets easier after the first few launches, never harder). The tech tree makes no sense. The link between "science" and tech makes no sense. I could (and have) go on.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

21 minutes ago, tater said:

I think that a game designer should design gameplay that works. KSP career gameplay is fundamentally broken. The claim is that it is somehow like "Tycoon" (never played that), and it clearly cannot be, unless tycoon is also awful.

The economics of career are absurd and broken (it's nearly impossible to lose, even with no reverts, etc, and only gets easier after the first few launches, never harder). The tech tree makes no sense. The link between "science" and tech makes no sense. I could (and have) go on.

Those sound mainly like opinions, not facts? I mean, the game must be doing something right as it pays SQUAD's bills. (Well... T2 does that now, but you get my point lol.)

Although I agree with some of what you are saying, I understand that you and I are the minority. The average person who plays this game isn't looking for any of those things, he's looking for a fun game about rockets and explosions. You want to make the game more "complete" but by doing so you may end up making it more "inclusive" and impenetrable by outsiders/new players. Fresh blood keeps this game (any game really) alive, with no new players making purchases, development stops. You have to appeal to the lowest common denominator to survive. (Yes, even in a game about rocket-science.) Is the game perfect even from that perspective? No, it still needs plenty of tweaking, but you're talking about basically rebuilding it from the ground up as something only veteran players like us would enjoy.

I stand by my general assertion that the stock game should be as simple and approachable as possible for new players. Mods are more than capable of adding further complexity for invested veteran players who end up sticking with the game, and by the point they've made that decision they are well equipped to choose, download, and install mods that suit them.

Edited November 3, 2017 by Rocket In My Pocket

[tater]

A fun game about rockets and explosions doesn't need career mode. "Career" implies a career. Whose career is it, exactly? Not the owner of a space company a la SpaceX, because the player is also the astronauts who literally cannot take a single step without the player doing it. If it was the career of a program/leader, then it would have autonomous characters (hence skill types and levels) that he would then manage, and set to tasks---set your best pilot for the first Mun landing, etc).

People don;t buy KSP for career mode, they get the crappy career mode as part of the package.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

7 minutes ago, tater said:

A fun game about rockets and explosions doesn't need career mode. "Career" implies a career. Whose career is it, exactly? Not the owner of a space company a la SpaceX, because the player is also the astronauts who literally cannot take a single step without the player doing it. If it was the career of a program/leader, then it would have autonomous characters (hence skill types and levels) that he would then manage, and set to tasks---set your best pilot for the first Mun landing, etc).

People don;t buy KSP for career mode, they get the crappy career mode as part of the package.

KSP Career mode is just that: "KSP Career mode" It is it's own thing, it isn't obligated to conform to expectations someone may have from playing other games.

Well, I'll agree there; people don't buy KSP for Career mode, it pretty much is just a "tack-on." Which is how the dev's treat it. I'm fine with that, I enjoy Career mode for what it is.

Maybe we're getting off topic here, I don't want to derail the thread or anything. I just feel like you guys are trying to make a tech tree for "us", not for "them."

[tater]

The word "career" sets an expectation that it involves a career, does it not?

[Rocket In My Pocket]

9 minutes ago, tater said:

The word "career" sets an expectation that it involves a career, does it not?

Yes, and it does.

It's KSP's own "flavor" of what a Career mode is. Every game is free to put it's own spin or "take" on what it's game rules will be, and what a "mode" will entail. Ie. In one game the "Endless mode" could be very different from the "Endless mode" in another despite sharing a name. I assume you know this as well and you are just asking the question rhetorically?

I've been playing video games since the original Atari, rarely does any game have any consistency in terms with another. KSP career mode has plenty of features one would associate with a career, like funds, management strategies, hiring and firing, contracts, time frames, building upgrades, etc... Just because you can't set the price of a engineers lunch, or something equally fiddly doesn't make it not a career mode. (Admittedly it does make it a pretty shallow career mode, which I think is the gist of your complaint, and with which I agree. Too many fiddly mechanics drives new players away; which was the gist of my point.)

Edited November 3, 2017 by Rocket In My Pocket