Better Tech Tree

[GoSlash27]

2 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

I mean, really is this supposed to be a walk around KSP for grindy science game or a launch Jeb into the sky game? IMO it's the latter, and so I play it that way. 

mikegarrison,

 I'd say that the *career* version is supposed to be a "develop the facilities/ tech, get profitable, and not kill kerbals" game. Arguably, the arrangement of the tech tree plays the key defining role in how that is (or is not) done. If walking around KSC and grinding science is necessary (which it's actually not), it is only because driving and/ or flying aren't available early like they ought to be.
 Although... I actually *do* drive around rather than walk. I just do it with an airplane minus the wings instead of a rover. And it wouldn't have to be a grindy proposition if the proper tech was available. After all... it's not actually any more grindy to fly to the desert than it is to fly to the Mun. It just seems that way because the ability to fly to the Mun develops before the ability to fly to the desert and the difference in points devalues the desert flight.

Best,
-Slashy

 

 

[tater]

My dream was that MH would utterly redo the career system in a way that wasn't awful.

*sigh*

[Wjolcz]

11 hours ago, GoSlash27 said:

Agreed, and that's just part of the problem. The most readily available source of science in early career is in and around KSC and the best way to collect it is with a rover. But rover parts don't appear until late in the tech progression, so I'm forced to construct them out of manned capsules or airplane parts instead.
 Efficiently collecting science requires knowing where the biomes are, but the ability to biome scan occurs relatively late in the progression. Result, you have to consult KSPedia to know where the biomes are.

Exactly this is why I don't like career mode. The whole thing is like this because of how science collecting and spending works.

If nodes were bought with money instead of science and periodical funding was introduced this wouldn't be a problem.

Or it could work differently: You have programs that you accept (like contracts) that grant you money upfront. Example:

Pick "Moon Exploration Program". It gives you X money to buy nodes with a vacuum engine, small legs and small wheels. Now you can go there without struggling and gain reputation.

Reputation could be the "progress" meter. The more reputation you have the more programs are available.

That's it. Get rid of science points, split the tree early on with clear branches that don't overlap and rework the contracts system. That's pretty much it. I know how "That's pretty much it" sounds like but they seem to have put a lot more work into what we have now even though they could've put less by making it simpler thus better.

Edited April 25, 2018 by Wjolcz

[GoSlash27]

53 minutes ago, Wjolcz said:

That's it. Get rid of science points, split the tree early on with clear branches that don't overlap and rework the contracts system. That's pretty much it. I know how "That's pretty much it" sounds like but they seem to have put a lot more work into what we have now even though they could've put less by making it simpler thus better.

Wjolcz,
 I guess I don't quite understand what you're getting at here. What's the player's motivation to conduct science experiments? And how would science mode work?

Best,
-Slashy

[Wjolcz]

21 minutes ago, GoSlash27 said:

Wjolcz,
 I guess I don't quite understand what you're getting at here. What's the player's motivation to conduct science experiments? And how would science mode work?

Best,
-Slashy

They would simply grant reputation, or the program would specify they have to be performed in order to finish the program. And before I get "bombarded" by "BUT THERE ARE SO MANY EXPERIMENTS TO PERFORM! IT WOULD BE TOO TEDIOUS TO FINISH THE PRPGRAM!" kind of counter argument: The exploration programs could specify the minimum amount of experiments needed to be performed in order to finish it.

Science mode is not needed IMO. It's the outcome of flawed and backwards design of the career mode. Now, I really don't like it and would never cry if it was removed but I will do my best to come up with something here. So I'm assuming the way to keep it as similar as possible is to make people go up there -> perform experiments -> unlock more parts. My solution would either be:

1. Keep it the way it is (with science points) so people actually liking it still have something to play.

2. Assuming we're getting rid of science points from the game completely just replace it with some other resource. Experiments generate money, spend money to unlock the tree, or: experiments generate reputation, spend reputation to unlock the tree. Simple.

Edited April 25, 2018 by Wjolcz

[Pthigrivi]

22 minutes ago, Wjolcz said:

2. Assuming we're getting rid of science points completely from the game just replace it with some other resource. Experiments generate money, spend money to unlock the tree, or: experiments generate reputation, spend reputation to unlock the tree. Simple.

Do you play board games? There is actually a real reason why its important to have multiple forms of currency in games: it enables multiple paths to progress and creates trade-offs for employing different strategies. The best games are able to capture synergies and efficiencies by cleverly combining these resources and strategies. Without science points you actually end up eliminating a big part of the gameplay. Sure, you can have experiments generate money or reputation, but if there is another more efficient way to gain those resources without doing experiments there is little incentive to do them at all. And vice versa, if conducting science is the best way to get money there's no real reason to accept contracts. In principle, having separate science points forces players to consider the trade offs of going for something thats more monetarily lucrative so they can build a bigger vessel next time, or going for something thats more scientifically valuable that will allow them to build a better vessel next time. Its a subtle but important factor to a good game.

Now, I totally agree that right now the science system remains flat, clicky, and grindy. But the solution to that is to fix the process of science gathering itself, not to eliminate the resources entirely. Its sort if like shooting someone so they wont have cancer anymore.

Edited April 25, 2018 by Pthigrivi

[Wjolcz]

32 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Do you play board games? There is actually a real reason why its important to have multiple forms of currency in games: it enables multiple paths to progress and creates trade-offs for employing different strategies. The best games are able to capture synergies and efficiencies by cleverly combining these resources and strategies.

Then I guess it's a shame KSP doesn't do that.

32 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Without science points you actually end up eliminating a big part of the gameplay.

Doing this ^^^ would fix exactly this vvv

32 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Now, I totally agree that right now the science system remains flat, clicky, and grindy.

---------------------

32 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Sure, you can have experiments generate money or reputation, but if there is another more efficient way to gain those resources without doing experiments there is little incentive to do them at all.

Except you can already do that in the game. It's just that strategies are horribly inefficient at converting resources so nobody uses them. That's why so many people consider them useless.

32 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

In principle, having separate science points forces players to consider the trade offs of going for something thats more monetarily lucrative so they can build a bigger vessel next time, or going for something thats more scientifically valuable that will allow them to build a better vessel next time.

No. The game doesn't do that. I wish it did but it doesn't. Having science points only makes the game either too easy and boring or painful to play. There are no trade-offs. You always end up having too much of one of the resources and too little of some other.

Just use your imagination. There are dozens of ways to improve the game and one of them isn't complicating it more than it already is, neither is keeping it the way it is now.

Edit: Oh, btw that cancer analogy is terrible but if I said it would fix the guy's problem I would look like a monster, wouldn't I? Well played.

Edited April 25, 2018 by Wjolcz

[Pthigrivi]

3 hours ago, Wjolcz said:

No. The game doesn't do that. I wish it did but it doesn't. Having science points only makes the game either too easy and boring or painful to play. There are no trade-offs. You always end up having too much of one of the resources and too little of some other.

I actually totally agree that the system is not well balanced, that it jerks from grindy to too easy, and that the strategies at present don't do much to alleviate that. All Im saying is that those issues aren't inherent to science points in principle, but to the way science is gathered. The experiment storage containers help because you can hotkey almost all of the clicking, the real trouble I think is the essentially featureless nature of the worlds we're exploring. Nothing feels like doing science because you aren't actually exploring or finding anything. Besides the anomalies there are no real surface features to discover, and because the anomaly discovery tools provided are so scant and the anomalies so few and far between they're barely more than easter eggs. Because biomes all have equal value there's no real reason to land in any place in particular first, you're just repetitively harvesting from a visually and scientifically flat landscape. There's nothing about the experience of landing in the Munar midlands thats any different from landing in a crater or on the poles, so there's really almost no need to do precision landing or to bring rovers or do anything but flags and footprints. Thats where the experience of grind comes from, being incentivized to do something repetitively with no gameplay/experiential difference from one task to the next. There are a few very concrete ways to fix that:

- Notify the player on screen when there is ungathered science available.

- Allow level 3 scientists to reset Materials bays and Goo canisters without leaving the pod. (Or, remove the reset mechanic from both, and place an experiment action group button up next to lights, brakes and legs).

- Give different bonuses for different biomes on the same world so players are rewarded for carefully choosing landing locations.

- Provide biome map overlays in map mode similar to the resource overlay so we can see what we're doing when we choose those locations.

- Automatically and permanently mark anomalies on the overlay as they're spotted by Kerbnet. 

- Add surface features like ice crystals, geysers, volcanoes, etc and give bigger bonuses near these and other anomalies so players are encouraged to precision land and bring rovers (and find something cool when they do).
 

Now, all of these will increase the total value of available science and speed progression through the tech tree, so we'll also need ways to reduce the incentive for repetitive science collection:
 

- Reduce the non-bonus value of science throughout the system.

- Eliminate all of the KSC biomes besides Launchpad, Runway, and KSC.

- Reduce the instances in which different experiments pay out with unique science. For instance, goo canisters would pay out landed, in atmo, and in space, but would not recognize low/high orbit or which biome they're in. That means only 2-3 goo readings per world instead of dozens. 

- Make all experiments collect %100 of the potential value. No more partial collection that incentivizes repeat missions to the same location and chasing diminishing returns.


The point of all of this would be to cause players to think about where they're going and what they're doing, to plan ahead and to make spontaneous decisions based on what they find, to actually explore and be rewarded by the science system for doing it well. Instead of mindlessly poking around KSC in jury-rigged buggy or biohopping from one blank part of the mun to the next you'll be sending specific missions to go to the Munar poles because they're worth more, adjusting on the fly when you spot anomalies, precision landing and scoping the landscape for new discoveries. Each mission is unique, and planning and flexibility translate to better rewards and less repetition. There are other things you could do too, letting scientists conduct unique experiments, tightening the conditions for those experiments so players have to adjust their mission profiles to succeed, etc. The point would be to attack the problem of ubiquity and grind directly, not just abandon the system.

Edited April 25, 2018 by Pthigrivi

[mikegarrison]

5 hours ago, Wjolcz said:

Exactly this is why I don't like career mode. The whole thing is like this because of how science collecting and spending works.

If nodes were bought with money instead of science and periodical funding was introduced this wouldn't be a problem.

Or it could work differently: You have programs that you accept (like contracts) that grant you money upfront. Example:

Pick "Moon Exploration Program". It gives you X money to buy nodes with a vacuum engine, small legs and small wheels. Now you can go there without struggling and gain reputation.

Reputation could be the "progress" meter. The more reputation you have the more programs are available.

That's it. Get rid of science points, split the tree early on with clear branches that don't overlap and rework the contracts system. That's pretty much it. I know how "That's pretty much it" sounds like but they seem to have put a lot more work into what we have now even though they could've put less by making it simpler thus better.

Try the Strategia mod and the Engineering Tech Tree mod. In combination, that's pretty nearly what you are asking for.

Edited April 25, 2018 by mikegarrison

[tater]

The tech tree is supposed to be R&D, but it is also the only reward system in the game, and players will even unconsciously play to rewards systems.

[Dman0829]

The problem is we shouldn't have to add mods to fix an issue with the game, the developers need to sit down and rethink the carrer mode, it is in essence a great idea, sense screwing around in sandbox can only be done for so long. The fact of how quickly this thread has grown proves just that, we all have different ideas but can all agree that it shouldn't stay the same. 

[Wjolcz]

4 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

All Im saying is that those issues aren't inherent to science points in principle, but to the way science is gathered.

I agree. That is part of the problem too.

4 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

The point would be to attack the problem of ubiquity and grind directly, not just abandon the system.

The system is too hopeless to just tweak it by adding some tiny bits and differentiating science rewards.

And I'm not talking about redoing the whole thing from the scratch. I mean, it would probably has to be done since it was so poorly designed but getting rid of science points is a simple and big step to make it much better.

[KSK]

What I would really have liked to see in Career mode is an idea that @tater has posted about on several occasions: procedurally or randomly generated solar systems, combined with a fog-of-war mechanic and science experiments to lift that fog. The existing Kerbol system could be included as a default with the player choosing to start there or in a random system.

I think it would be really cool to open the map screen at the start of a new game and only see Kerbin and its moons in any sort of detail, perhaps a low detail blob for Duna, Jool and Eve and greyed out placeholders for everything else. Maybe the smaller Joolian moons wouldn't even be visible. Click on a planet and you zoom in to an orbital view of the planet (at whatever detail you've unlocked, together with details of atmosphere, gravity,  surface temperature, orbital parameters, all that sort of stuff. Click a button and the Ore overlay appears, assuming you have the scan data. Running experiments near or on a planet fills out the available data in the map screen, turning it from a bare bones set of orbital data to a detailed scientific atlas of the system.

Gameplay example. 

I start in the default kerbol system. Clicking on Duna in the map screen gives me a 'map' that's not much more than a reddish blob with white blobs at the poles. The information next to the map tells you that there's an atmosphere and provides a general composition of that atmosphere.

I send a probe out to Duna on a fly-by trajectory. The probe doesn't have any instruments to speak of but it does have an antenna. That's enough to let me run a radio occultation experiment as I fly past Duna. Now, when I go back to the Map Screen, clicking on Duna brings up the same information as before - but it also tells me how far the atmosphere extends. 

Using that new information, I plan a more ambitious mission. Using my newfound knowledge of Duna's atmosphere, I aerobrake a much larger probe into Dunan orbit. I use quite a conservative approach and it takes several aerobraking passes to hit the right orbit. On the way down to the surface, my probe has a barometer logging pressure data and it also has a thermometer and a spectrovariometer (or whatever the daft thing was called). I run all the relevant experiments.

Now when I go back to the Map Screen, I have a better map of the equatorial regions of Duna (because I've put a probe into orbit around the place), a full description of the atmosphere (composition and a nice chart of height vs density, for planning more aggressive aerobraking in future missions) and details of the surface temperature at the equator. 

Bit by bit, I'm exploring Duna. In stock, the atmosphere composition data isn't much more than fluff data but it could plug into all sorts of realism or  ISRO mods to let you know what resources you can manufacture on Duna.

 

Now imagine the above scenario unfolding in a completely new solar system that you haven't spent the last couple of years exploring...

[Pthigrivi]

25 minutes ago, KSK said:

I send a probe out to Duna on a fly-by trajectory. The probe doesn't have any instruments to speak of but it does have an antenna. That's enough to let me run a radio occultation experiment as I fly past Duna. Now, when I go back to the Map Screen, clicking on Duna brings up the same information as before - but it also tells me how far the atmosphere extends. 

Using that new information, I plan a more ambitious mission. Using my newfound knowledge of Duna's atmosphere, I aerobrake a much larger probe into Dunan orbit. I use quite a conservative approach and it takes several aerobraking passes to hit the right orbit. On the way down to the surface, my probe has a barometer logging pressure data and it also has a thermometer and a spectrovariometer (or whatever the daft thing was called). I run all the relevant experiments.

Now when I go back to the Map Screen, I have a better map of the equatorial regions of Duna (because I've put a probe into orbit around the place), a full description of the atmosphere (composition and a nice chart of height vs density, for planning more aggressive aerobraking in future missions) and details of the surface temperature at the equator. 

Bit by bit, I'm exploring Duna. In stock, the atmosphere composition data isn't much more than fluff data but it could plug into all sorts of realism or  ISRO mods to let you know what resources you can manufacture on Duna.

Hell, this would be great with or without a procedural system. 

[tater]

1 hour ago, Pthigrivi said:

Hell, this would be great with or without a procedural system. 

A couple points.

1. There is no need for it to be "procedural" in the sense that worlds are randomly generated. They could be hand-made into a library of dozens of worlds (which already exist in many mods), then the hand-crafted worlds can be randomly assigned different orbits, and even be allowed random rescaled within a range where they still look good (under 6X is usually safe).

2. I think that fog of war (for lack of a better term) changes the basic paradigm of play from the unconscious goal of unlocking the tech tree (the ONLY reward right now), to exploration as the "goal" of the game. Tech becomes a means to that end, and since you literally never see the target worlds past what they look like through a telescope until you get there, the excitement of seeing them is a great reward.

[Pthigrivi]

9 minutes ago, tater said:

2. I think that fog of war (for lack of a better term) changes the basic paradigm of play from the unconscious goal of unlocking the tech tree (the ONLY reward right now), to exploration as the "goal" of the game. Tech becomes a means to that end, and since you literally never see the target worlds past what they look like through a telescope until you get there, the excitement of seeing them is a great reward.

Yeah I think this is great, but the real key is for the experiments themselves to reveal more about the world, not just visually, but functionally. If using those experiments unlocked aerobrake and landing predictions, map-view biome maps, anomaly locations, etc it would go do a huge amount to deepen the process of exploration. Having a thermometer on board could show heat-bars in flight, the barometer could allow trajectory prediction factoring drag, the gravoli could unlock anomaly mapping, and so forth.
 

[tater]

3 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Yeah I think this is great, but the real key is for the experiments themselves to reveal more about the world, not just visually, but functionally. If using those experiments unlocked aerobrake and landing predictions, map-view biome maps, anomaly locations, etc it would go do a huge amount to deepen the process of exploration. Having a thermometer on board could show heat-bars in flight, the barometer could allow trajectory prediction factoring drag, the gravoli could unlock anomaly mapping, and so forth.
 

Yeah, all this is true. Tech would be unlocked partially via funds and time (note that time has to matter as well), and could be sped up, or unlocked with certain, specific science.

[tater]

One of my first posts here (maybe actually the first?) suggested breaking science up into Planetary Science (PS), Kerbal Factors (space medicine, etc, KF), and Rocket Science (RS).

The tech tree would then have points for each type required for each node (some types might not be needed for a given node).

Ie: A new capsule that currently is 90 points might require 40 RS, 40 KF, and 10 PS (presumably atmospheric, but it's KSP, so it gets lumped). A new engine type might require 90 points of pure RS. A new science instrument (I'm sticking with 90 point nodes here) might be 45 RS, and 45 PS. Wheels? RS and PS. You get the idea. Alternately certain mission types might unlock tech themselves. Do some atmospheric observations (as "contracts" (a name I still hate)), and you get chutes.

[KSK]

3 hours ago, tater said:

A couple points.

1. There is no need for it to be "procedural" in the sense that worlds are randomly generated. They could be hand-made into a library of dozens of worlds (which already exist in many mods), then the hand-crafted worlds can be randomly assigned different orbits, and even be allowed random rescaled within a range where they still look good (under 6X is usually safe).

2. I think that fog of war (for lack of a better term) changes the basic paradigm of play from the unconscious goal of unlocking the tech tree (the ONLY reward right now), to exploration as the "goal" of the game. Tech becomes a means to that end, and since you literally never see the target worlds past what they look like through a telescope until you get there, the excitement of seeing them is a great reward.

I had a vague idea that you could have a set number of templates, each with a difficulty attached and then place random planets (curated or procedural) into those templates. So you could have a Default template which is basically a Kerbol system analogue, with Kerbin in the habitable zone,  a couple of inward rocky planets, a Duna equivalent and a gas giant, with a nice difficulty progression of distances and orbit inclinations and/or eccentricities. Then you could have a Hot Jool template, with a gas giant orbiting close to the star, a couple of Dres equivalents and then a gas giant further out, which Kerbin is a moon of. It's a relatively resource poor system with its planets on more challenging orbits. Heck you could have a Firefly template with bunch of habitable worlds in within easy distance of Kerbin. You get the idea. 

At game start, you pick a difficulty and end up with a solar system template matching that difficulty.

One thing that I'd also have liked to see is having the Map Screen be an orrery. In other words you can wind it forward or backward in time to help plan your interplanetary trajectories. If exploration is the name of the game, then lets help people explore! And it strikes me that such an orrery would be thematically consistent with the existing Map Screen in that they both provide a visually intuitive, discoverable way to plan your missions, rather than having the player rely on calculations (theirs or third party calculators), or the tried and tested approach of firing something out on an escape trajectory and timewarping until it hits something.

Also, in keeping with this theme of having science as an enabler and driver of exploration, it would be nice to have a bit more resource realism. Not for realism sake but to drive gameplay. Picture the scenario:

Having thoroughly explored Kerbins moons, the KSP turns its sights outwards. The initial wave of probes dispatched to Duna indicates that it has a thin atmosphere of nitrogen and argon but plentiful sub-surface water deposits. Getting a crewed vessel down to the surface isn't so tough as these things go - but how do you bring them home?

One option (which is *always* available) is the brute-force 'launch a humungous rocket from Kerbin and bring all your propellant with you' school of mission planning. But you do have alternatives. Without carbon dioxide, you can't make liquid fuel in-situ but with nitrogen and water available you can make monopropellant, ammonia, liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. So what do you want to do? Design an ultra-lightweight lander that get down to the surface and back using monoprop engines? Rely on hydrolox engines but have to contend with the very expensive ISRU system needed to generate and store liquid hydrogen? How about liquid ammonia and LOX? Or take the Go Big or Go Home approach and have an LV-N powered lander that uses either liquid ammonia (storable but less efficient) or liquid hydrogen (efficient but a pain to store) as propellant. 

Or another scenario, building on the above:

With Duna thoroughly explored, it's time to take on the ultimate challenge and explore Gas Giant 2. Refuelling at Duna is possible but its still an awful long way to GG2. Then the probe data from Jool comes in and it turns out that that outermost moon with the unclear (from Kerbin) spectral signature is actually a Titan analogue. Well *now* we're talking. We've got ourselves a moon on which it literally *rains* Liquid Fuel. Suddenly all, eyes turn towards the Jool system and the creation of a refuelling base on Kitan...

 

Edited April 26, 2018 by KSK

[KSK]

Oh - and I agree with the idea of getting rid of science points. As described above, have science be something you do as an integral part of exploration. Maybe have it grant you rep as well. Instead have Engineering points which are earned by building spacecraft. Kerbal Construction Time has (or had?) a nice system for working out the time your vessel takes to build but a similar system could be used for working out how many Engineering Points it earns you. Engineering points are then spent on tech tree unlocks. So the basic progression loop becomes 'build spaceships to research better spaceships', with a secondary loop of sorts being 'do science to explore new worlds, thus allowing you to do more science.'

[tater]

Or science unlocks useful data about worlds. Certain probes allow you plan for EDL, or indeed unlock that world for something like the atmospheric trajectory mod that shows where you'll actually land. In this example, that functionality would be stock, but it is only unlocked for a world when certain specific measurements are all taken.

I'd always add a stock life support for career, as well, because it makes a huge difference for success.

[VaPaL]

6 hours ago, KSK said:

What I would really have liked to see in Career mode is an idea that @tater has posted about on several occasions: procedurally or randomly generated solar systems, combined with a fog-of-war mechanic and science experiments to lift that fog. The existing Kerbol system could be included as a default with the player choosing to start there or in a random system.

I think it would be really cool to open the map screen at the start of a new game and only see Kerbin and its moons in any sort of detail, perhaps a low detail blob for Duna, Jool and Eve and greyed out placeholders for everything else. Maybe the smaller Joolian moons wouldn't even be visible. Click on a planet and you zoom in to an orbital view of the planet (at whatever detail you've unlocked, together with details of atmosphere, gravity,  surface temperature, orbital parameters, all that sort of stuff. Click a button and the Ore overlay appears, assuming you have the scan data. Running experiments near or on a planet fills out the available data in the map screen, turning it from a bare bones set of orbital data to a detailed scientific atlas of the system.

Gameplay example. 

I start in the default kerbol system. Clicking on Duna in the map screen gives me a 'map' that's not much more than a reddish blob with white blobs at the poles. The information next to the map tells you that there's an atmosphere and provides a general composition of that atmosphere.

I send a probe out to Duna on a fly-by trajectory. The probe doesn't have any instruments to speak of but it does have an antenna. That's enough to let me run a radio occultation experiment as I fly past Duna. Now, when I go back to the Map Screen, clicking on Duna brings up the same information as before - but it also tells me how far the atmosphere extends. 

Using that new information, I plan a more ambitious mission. Using my newfound knowledge of Duna's atmosphere, I aerobrake a much larger probe into Dunan orbit. I use quite a conservative approach and it takes several aerobraking passes to hit the right orbit. On the way down to the surface, my probe has a barometer logging pressure data and it also has a thermometer and a spectrovariometer (or whatever the daft thing was called). I run all the relevant experiments.

Now when I go back to the Map Screen, I have a better map of the equatorial regions of Duna (because I've put a probe into orbit around the place), a full description of the atmosphere (composition and a nice chart of height vs density, for planning more aggressive aerobraking in future missions) and details of the surface temperature at the equator. 

Bit by bit, I'm exploring Duna. In stock, the atmosphere composition data isn't much more than fluff data but it could plug into all sorts of realism or  ISRO mods to let you know what resources you can manufacture on Duna.

 

Now imagine the above scenario unfolding in a completely new solar system that you haven't spent the last couple of years exploring...

Man, this is SO good! Is there a way to mod it? Please, say that there is!   

18 minutes ago, KSK said:

Oh - and I agree with the idea of getting rid of science points. As described above, have science be something you do as an integral part of exploration. Maybe have it grant you rep as well. Instead have Engineering points which are earned by building spacecraft. Kerbal Construction Time has (or had?) a nice system for working out the time your vessel takes to build but a similar system could be used for working out how many Engineering Points it earns you. Engineering points are then spent on tech tree unlocks. So the basic progression loop becomes 'build spaceships to research better spaceships', with a secondary loop of sorts being 'do science to explore new worlds, thus allowing you to do more science.'

I always hoped for an use to those "Test part" contracts. Lets say that for you to unlock something, you have to buy it and test it via a contract. Also, you can improve something with said contracts. One could have some different types of points as @tater said. If you earn Rocket or enginnering points every time you use something (as you get a better understanding of it) but with diminishing returns for every time of part (tanks, engines, capsules, etc), you can use them only for certain parts. Better rocketry knowledge doesn't imply a need for a seismic instrument.

Edited April 26, 2018 by VaPaL

[Pthigrivi]

4 hours ago, tater said:

One of my first posts here (maybe actually the first?) suggested breaking science up into Planetary Science (PS), Kerbal Factors (space medicine, etc, KF), and Rocket Science (RS).

The tech tree would then have points for each type required for each node (some types might not be needed for a given node).

Ie: A new capsule that currently is 90 points might require 40 RS, 40 KF, and 10 PS (presumably atmospheric, but it's KSP, so it gets lumped). A new engine type might require 90 points of pure RS. A new science instrument (I'm sticking with 90 point nodes here) might be 45 RS, and 45 PS. Wheels? RS and PS. You get the idea. Alternately certain mission types might unlock tech themselves. Do some atmospheric observations (as "contracts" (a name I still hate)), and you get chutes.

This is interesting. What would you imagine being the difference in the way those kinds of points are collected? One of the key features of science points is they at least require you to go places to get rewards. Are the different science values a product of experiment or the environment you use them in?

Edited April 26, 2018 by Pthigrivi

[tater]

13 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

This is interesting. What would you imagine being the difference in the way those kinds of points are collected? One of the key features of science points is they at least require you to go places to get rewards. Are the different science values a product of experiment or the environment you use them in? 

The usual KSP science (that we have now) is nearly all Planetary. Space science (orbital) could be Kerbal Factors if done by a kerbal (spacewalks, etc), orbital labs would also exclusively generate KF science. Milestones could also award some science points for RS and KF. Part testing? RS points. You could envision new kinds of missions, or alternate rewards. Rendezvous 2 spacecraft and dock? RS points as the reward. You get the idea. MIssions become the only good way to get some kinds of points (build a station, and keep crew aboard for XX ays, then YYY days, etc (with LS, this is meaningful). Reward is not funds, but KF science.

[KSK]

12 hours ago, VaPaL said:

Man, this is SO good! Is there a way to mod it? Please, say that there is!   

I always hoped for an use to those "Test part" contracts. Lets say that for you to unlock something, you have to buy it and test it via a contract. Also, you can improve something with said contracts. One could have some different types of points as @tater said. If you earn Rocket or enginnering points every time you use something (as you get a better understanding of it) but with diminishing returns for every time of part (tanks, engines, capsules, etc), you can use them only for certain parts. Better rocketry knowledge doesn't imply a need for a seismic instrument.

If there is it's far, far beyond my programming competence.  

But yeah, what you're talking about is more or less how KCT worked. A spacecraft built out of newly unlocked parts would take ages to build compared to one using parts that you'd used (not necessarily recovered and reused, just included in a previous craft) before. Each part was on a diminishing return sliding scale. Swap 'time' for 'engineering points' and I think that's what you had in mind if I'm reading you correctly?

And yes absolutely - test contracts would give you Engineering points. You could probably buy them with funds too for those Apollo-style 'waste everything but time' moments!