Let's Rebalance the Tech Tree

[tater]

I think we must be of similar ages.

I map game designs to board or role playing games, often, because I think a computer game should eb able to do things at least as well as my old SPI/Avalon Hill/GDW/SJG games I have in the closet.

KSP career is a jack of all trades, master of none, in fact it stinks at most.

It needs a focus, unfocused play can just as well be the science or sandbox modes.

If it is running a private space program, then the economics need to be fixed such that losing is possible without the game being a grind mode of stupid contracts that require the player to build contraptions, not spacecraft. Current career mode with settings such that there is a non-zero chance of losing, ever, is "contraption mode." The game throws stupid requirements at you, and because you have rewards set so low, you have to take all of them to stay in business. Not a game I play.

So that could be the goal, but the entirety of the economics of the game would need to change.

Likewise, it could be a national program, in which case it earns a budget based upon accomplishments scored in a "nationalistic" sense (firsts, etc, winning the kudos required to get more funds next year). For this, time would need to matter, and you'd get a budget. 

Space Race would be related, but you'd need a foil.

Others are possible, but these are the 3 I would prefer to play. I want it to be possible to lose. Ideally, I'd like it to not always get nothing but easier/more boring as time increases. I'd like time to matter, as well.

EDIT: I added career to KSP, KSP is a great game, career is not.

Edited November 3, 2017 by tater

[Spricigo]

2 hours ago, tater said:

People don;t buy KSP for career mode

So...ignore career, problem solved. Right?

 

[tater]

21 minutes ago, Spricigo said:

So...ignore career, problem solved. Right?

 

I'd actually like to play a decent career mode.

Mods can't do what is really required, however.

I've always said that a good career mode is in fact a far more difficult project than all the rest of KSP combined, I don;t think it's easy at all. I think when they decided to add one, they were not aware of how daunting it was to actually do a good job.

[Spricigo]

26 minutes ago, tater said:

I'd actually like to play a decent career mode.

So you may need to find another game. KSP is a sandbox game, even in its "career" mode

[tater]

10 minutes ago, Spricigo said:

So you may need to find another game. KSP is a sandbox game, even in its "career" mode

Gee, such a useful observation.

This thread is n the suggestions and dev section. By definition, any discussion here is about suggestions to improve the game or for future development.

A decent career system would be a nice thing to see. I think "find another game" probably belongs in some other forum.

[RedPandaz]

On 10/25/2017 at 5:20 AM, Rocket In My Pocket said:

Agreed about about the building upgrades, although I do sort of enjoy the minimalism that a 30 part limit forces in the early game and I get that restricting new players is important so they'll learn instead of just making giant "wabbajackian" monsters. Also, teaching new players to be stingy with parts is important for other reasons like performance and such.

The actual numbers don't even make a lot of sense though; 30, 300, then infinite?! So we go from not enough, to way more than you'll likely ever need, to basically no limit at all.

I've been playing quite a while and I have made very few crafts that even come close to that 300 part limit upon launching. (Thousand part stations built in orbit don't count.) I'd at least like to see the numbers changed to something more reasonable like; 50, 100, infinite. I'd also be alright with them removing the part limits entirely and just basing it off weight/dimensions as suggested by others.

How do you not? I have to build thousand-part monsters to get anywhere out of Kerbin's SOI

On 10/25/2017 at 11:45 AM, KSK said:

Full disclosure - it's not too much of an exaggeration to say that spaceplanes killed the game for me, so I'm not exactly unbiased when it comes to plane parts. With that said, from what I recall of the early plane part nodes, they're a mess. The Aviation node for example- if I remember rightly - gives you Mk1 fuselage parts combined with Mk 0 (Juno sized) engines and air intakes.

Given that working planes are already significantly harder to build than rockets, I would have thought that the first plane part node should include the requisite parts to make a simple 'inline' plane with a Wheesley on the back, fuel tanks to suit, an inline cockpit and an air intake on the front. The neophyte plane builder would then still have to worry about putting wings and other control surfaces in the right place, contend with unneccessarily fiddly undercarriage parts, get the CoM,CoL balance right and, in all probability deal with a runway that appears to have been freshly bombed. However, they could at least reliably put a working fuselage together without having to deal with the added 'fun' of wedging Juno sized engine parts onto an otherwise Wheesley sized fuselage and making sure the off-centre thrust balances nicely so that their lashed together contraption stands a fighting chance of getting down the aforementioned freshly bombed runway without turning donuts, turning turtle or exploding for any number of other 'hilarious' reasons.

On a quick review of the remaining aircraft tech nodes, there are a fair few parts in there that I'm not familiar with so I'm not the best person to be commenting on the later nodes. That first one though is dreadful. I would merge Aviation with Aerodynamics and throw in the first lot of retractable undercarriage parts too. Yes, that's a lot of pieces to contend with at one go but at least you've got everything you need to build functioning aircraft from the outset. 

Airplanes are way easier to build than rockets tbh

[KSK]

40 minutes ago, Spricigo said:

So you may need to find another game. KSP is a sandbox game, even in its "career" mode

Done correctly, the sandbox elements of KSP should make for a really compelling career mode. You only need to head on over to the Science and Spaceflight forum to find any number of debates about the future of crewed spaceflight, the rationale (or lack of) for colonising other planets, whether this, that or the other aspect of spaceflight is worthwhile.

KSP career mode could be a sandbox for exploring those kinds of questions. It's baffling how a game that is so chock full of really big themes manages to have such a small career mode.

 

[Rocket In My Pocket]

2 hours ago, RedPandaz said:

How do you not? I have to build thousand-part monsters to get anywhere out of Kerbin's SOI

Well...no offense but you are doing something very wrong then.

Remember that in engineering; the simplest and most elegant solution is often the correct one.

Everyone overbuilds their rockets at first though, I certainly did...although never to that extreme! Try to build smaller and simpler, you'll be surprised how much more effective it is. (Not to mention making things easier on your computer!)

Edited November 3, 2017 by Rocket In My Pocket

[Superfluous J]

2 hours ago, RedPandaz said:

I have to build thousand-part monsters to get anywhere out of Kerbin's SOI

You are the exact target for the part limits. I'm not saying everybody should be able to build a Mun land and return mission with 30 parts, but you should try at each stage of the build process to keep your mass and part count as low as possible.

[Spricigo]

5 hours ago, KSK said:

Done correctly, the sandbox elements of KSP should make for a really compelling career mode.

I'm not questioning that. Rather I'm pointing out that what people put as "compelling career mode" apparently was never in the vision devs had to the game. The whole time the idea was to allow the player to decide how to explore space without being too concerned with losing conditions and/or other arbitrary restrictions.

Also the 'lack of objective and challenge' of career mode (and KSP in general) is easily solved by players setting it themselves, either modding or adding house-rules. 

 

5 hours ago, tater said:

Gee, such a useful observation.

This thread is n the suggestions and dev section. By definition, any discussion here is about suggestions to improve the game or for future development.

A decent career system would be a nice thing to see. I think "find another game" probably belongs in some other forum.

By the way you sound seems inevitable. Why torturing yourself with high expectations to a game that probably will not meet it? Finding a different game to fulfil that expectations at least may improve your personal entertainment and may also make you more open to enjoy KSP for what it is.

 

[Pthigrivi]

11 hours ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

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."

Don't worry, I've long abandoned my crowdsourcing the tech tree idea haha. At any a rate this is a fine debate to have. There are some fundamental questions to answer. 

22 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. 

The obvious answer to this component of the debate is that a good tech tree/career mode would do both. This is entirely possible. All good games do it.

11 hours ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

Everyone overbuilds their rockets at first though, I certainly did...although never to that extreme! Try to build smaller and simpler, you'll be surprised how much more effective it is. (Not to mention making things easier on your computer!)

The next answer is KSP needs in the most desperate, obvious, long, long, long overdue way fracking delta-v readouts for the love of god.

11 hours ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

I'm not questioning that. Rather I'm pointing out that what people put as "compelling career mode" apparently was never in the vision devs had to the game.

There have been a lot of gripes over the years about the state of things and I don't even disagree that things are not yet optimal, but I don't think this is true. I do think this is what they set out to do, and I really don't think by 1.2 they had landed far off the mark. For my last save I added life support and some graphical mods but otherwise played default stock career, and honestly it was great. The money payouts and science payouts felt fine, I never felt like I was taking contracts I didn't want to or playing faster or slower than I wanted to, it was totally fine. That said, I knew ahead of time a) how the contract probabilities worked, and b) that world firsts were inherently valuable and could fund my whole program by themselves without ever accepting a thing at Mission Control. That mean't that a) I knew not to fw part test and part recovery missions that I (personally) hate because if I do they'll keep coming up, and b) I only need chose contracts that dovetailed into pre-planned missions that go after world-first goals. I never boo-hooed over nonsense contracts, I just ignored them and chose ones I liked and and made me extra cash for doing things I already planned to do. Sometimes they even pushed me to, for instance, bring 6 kerbals along instead of the intended 4 to fulfill a tourism contract, or set up a coms/survey satellite earlier than I might have so I could earn easy money to boost the next mission. I frequently routed busses and landers and shuttles to rescue stranded kerbals because they were free (and then some) members of the team. 

The game isn't perfect. That's why I started this thread. Its also, assuredly, not irrevocably or irredeemably f'd. It could just benefit from some work, that's all.

11 hours ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

Space Race would be related, but you'd need a foil.

I think I've told you before, but I think this is a great idea. It is, however, tough because a specific foil (be it a corporate or national competitor) would hard-define some story-building elements that most players prefer to conjure for themselves. We are informing imagination, not setting it in concrete. This means, I think, that such an idea is best represented on-screen as a race against time. Set the World First contracts to appear and expire on specific calendar dates. Duna missions open up shortly prior to the first transfer window and pay out bonus rewards if you complete them early. For harder difficulty settings you could add construction and research times that would make meeting World First dates to the Mun or Minmus or Jool challenging. The dates could mean beating another kerbal country or competing contractor or whomever to the objective. Leave that to players imaginations.

Edit 1: Some above quotes have been misappropriated. This board, too, could use some work.

Edit 2: I've also, clearly, misread Spricigo's scare quotes in such a way as to disagree with him/her when I actually don't.

Edited November 4, 2017 by Pthigrivi

[tater]

Asking for new parts is just as futile at this point as asking for a better career system.

The point of career should be the sort of things that you cannot really do in Sandbox mode (even though I think science should be a thing in sandbox if you like).

That's why I favor failure modes for career.

In sandbox, you come up with something and just do it. Any constraints are whatever you decide to role-play. It's like playing solo D&D with no dice, and you're your own GM. No surprises, no failures other than doing something stupid to yourself.

I want a career mode where if I make a mistake in running the program, I might have to do something novel to save it from failure. I want a career mode that can result in my having an Apollo 13 moment. Something other than the meaningless, goofy side quests it is.

[Spricigo]

2 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

Edit 2: I've also, clearly, misread Spricigo's scare quotes in such a way as to disagree with him/her when I actually don't.

 

[KSK]

4 hours ago, Spricigo said:

I'm not questioning that. Rather I'm pointing out that what people put as "compelling career mode" apparently was never in the vision devs had to the game. The whole time the idea was to allow the player to decide how to explore space without being too concerned with losing conditions and/or other arbitrary restrictions.

Also the 'lack of objective and challenge' of career mode (and KSP in general) is easily solved by players setting it themselves, either modding or adding house-rules. 

OK then. How does this game sound?

KERBAL SPACE PROGRAM IS A MULTI-GENRE GAME WHERE THE PLAYERS CREATE THEIR OWN SPACE PROGRAM.

• Take your Kerbal crew on expeditions out of the ship with Extra Vehicular Activities gathering data and precious minerals.
• Procedural Terrain delivers detailed terrain at a vast scale. The Kerbal Planet is 600km in radius.
• Dock spacecraft together to build Space Stations, Massive Starships, or even surface bases on other planets.
• Manage your crewmembers, hire them, and send them out into space and make them into heroes.
• Research and Develop new technologies to advance your Space Program
• Take on a variety of complex and engaging Missions to attract interest in your Space Program.
• Discover new worlds and expand the scientific knowledge of Kerbalkind.
• These features just scratch the surface, there is so much more to explore in the game!

To me, that sounds pretty compelling. And yes, most of those points are technically correct (which is always the best kind of correct). But at the same time the way they're implemented in-game is pretty minimalist. The precious minerals seem to have been lost somewhere in space for example. And whilst I certainly wouldn't dispute the vast scale of KSP's terrain, I would raise a Spock-like eyebrow at anyone calling it detailed. Likewise 'managing your crew members...and make them into heroes' sounds a lot more interesting than it actually is in game. And you could perfectly truthfully add 'from the safety of your tracking station - without actually going there' to that ''discover new worlds' bullet point.

I think the devs do (or had) a vision for a compelling career mode. I'd be astonished if they didn't - the sheer length of time that KSP has been in development points to the passion that the various dev teams have had for the game and I sincerely doubt that  'cobble some stuff together and throw it out the door' was ever in their gameplan. 

Unfortunately, I would say the execution of that vision hasn't been quite as compelling. That's understandable - good game design is hard. But that's no reason to airbrush the problem away as 'something the devs never intended' or to disparage discussions about how to make the game better.

[The_Rocketeer]

I'm just rediscovering stock career KSP at the moment (I've played modded career a bit and stock sandbox a LOT), and for the first time ever neither of my two biggest bugbears with stock career, the tech tree and the absurd contracts, are bothering me much. I think the difference is that my playstyle has adapted to cope better with what's available, whereas development KSP (here since 0.17) and Sandbox KSP had trained me to have unrealistic expectations for my fledgling space program - this in terms of sophistication of available parts and my far greater experience with multi-goal missions and associated multi-purpose craft. This time around I'm focussing much more on single-goals, or just a few really similar goals at once, and I'm really getting some work out of my different Kerbal skills.

I'm only just getting outside Kerbin's SOI, so it's fair to say I can't comment on the tech-tree as a whole, but so far so good...

[Rocket In My Pocket]

10 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

Edit 1: Some above quotes have been misappropriated. This board, too, could use some work.

All your quote are belong to us!

Spoiler

 

Edited November 4, 2017 by Rocket In My Pocket

[Spricigo]

12 hours ago, KSK said:

And yes, most of those points are technically correct (which is always the best kind of correct)

You know, from a certain point of view...Any product is marketed as something a tad more attractive than it really is. I'm sure you did took that with a grain of salt.

In any case I really think was a development choice that resulted is this minimalist approach. In part because of the work needed to implement a deeper career mode. But mostly to preserve the open-ended nature of KSP.

 

[DAL59]

17 hours ago, KSK said:

Take on a variety of complex and engaging Missions

Testing launch clamps landed at the moon is certainly "complex"... 

17 hours ago, KSK said:

Massive Starships

Wait... there are no other stars in ksp!

[RedPandaz]

On 11/3/2017 at 4:17 PM, 5thHorseman said:

You are the exact target for the part limits. I'm not saying everybody should be able to build a Mun land and return mission with 30 parts, but you should try at each stage of the build process to keep your mass and part count as low as possible.

30? That is definately not possible. you wouldn't be able to circularize orbit

[tater]

37 minutes ago, RedPandaz said:

30? That is definately not possible. you wouldn't be able to circularize orbit

This is a joke, right?

Home waiting on repair guy, so I just did it. Exactly 30 parts.

Haven't built anything in stock in a LONG time. Could likely do better.

[RedPandaz]

3 minutes ago, tater said:

This is a joke, right?

Home waiting on repair guy, so I just did it. Exactly 30 parts.

Haven't built anything in stock in a LONG time. Could likely do better.

I never really have enough fuel. My best rocket has 50 parts to send a telcom satilite into anywhere in Kerbin's SOI, but that's not landing

 

[tater]

Just now, RedPandaz said:

I never really have enough fuel. My best rocket has 50 parts to send a telcom satilite into anywhere in Kerbin's SOI, but that's not landing

 

Well, now you have a Mun rocket ^^^^  

[RedPandaz]

Just now, tater said:

Well, now you have a Mun rocket ^^^^  

but any lander would move it to like 80 parts

[tater]

I was a little sloppy, but it had ~100 m/s left over before I dumped the SM. Used about 50 ablator I think.

Just now, RedPandaz said:

but any lander would move it to like 80 parts

I just flew that thing to the Mun and back. It's 30.

[RedPandaz]

Just now, tater said:

I was a little sloppy, but it had ~100 m/s left over before I dumped the SM. Used about 50 ablator I think.

There should be a challenge for the lowest-part Minmus lander + rocket