KSP2 Science System - The limits of science points

[KSK]

On 9/5/2019 at 12:33 PM, Dragon01 said:

I also think that part unlocking should be made independent of Science, as collected on scientific missions. IRL, everything comes down to money, more or less. That's kind of the point of having such a thing as money, if you think about it. Doing science should be one of the ways to earn money. In the career mode, money should be the primary mechanic of the game. There's no need for a separate currency for part unlocks. Doing science should be tied to contracts, with "science of opportunity" giving small monetary gains and reputation.

Additionally, research takes time. With life support involved, there would be more to time-based mechanics than just "timewarp until done", though early research would inevitably involve that. Indeed, IMO, waiting is better than grinding, because the former can be skipped with warp, and the latter can't. You should have to pay facility maintenance, so timewarping while doing absolutely nothing is not the optimal solution. Building on that, perhaps "Science points" could be equivalent to "lab time" from the Kerbal Academy of Sciences. You give them what they need for their research, and they give you more lab time that you can spend to improve your rocket tech faster. Maybe also discounts, but I'd tie that to reputation.

Ultimately, I don't think we need "Science points" at all, or at least not as a mandatory component of the career. You may want to run a space tourism business, not a scientific program. KSP was originally envisioned as sort of "Rocket Tycoon". KSP2 should take a good, hard look at the economic component, since it's one thing Squad managed to botch completely, and I haven't seen a mod that would truly fix that.

I agree with most of that. On the other hand, earning some kind of unlock points to progress through the tech tree provides a gameplay loop and a sense of having done something tangible to unlock new parts, which isn't a bad thing.

An idea I've had for a long time (and posted elsewhere on this forum) is to use Engineering points (or whatever name for them that you prefer) to progress through the tech tree, in the same way that Science points are used now. Engineering points are earned by building spacecraft using a similar system to calculate build times in the Kerbal Construction Time. Building craft with newly unlocked parts earns you more points, the more often you use a given part, the fewer points it earns. So you can earn a reasonable number of Engineering Points by flying repeat missions using a Mk1 Capsule stuck to a Flea, if that's what you want to do, but eventually you'll start to see diminishing returns and might want to consider branching out a bit.

So the basic progression loop becomes: build craft - earn Engineering Points - unlock new parts - build craft with new parts. Of course, parts cost money and that money can be earned any which way the player likes. Space tourism, research contracts, asteroid mining, or whatever other options there are in-game.

Of course, I would imagine anything this basic to the game has more or less been decided already, so I doubt that player suggestions are going to change much at this stage. 

 

[KSK]

On 9/6/2019 at 10:46 AM, Xd the great said:

This suggestion is logical, but isn't practical.

Remember, many people who download KSP2 will not be hardcore players. They will have no interest in going to Jool, they just want to crash some rockets onto a cheap colony on kerbin for fun science.

In terms of playability, the original system is more noob-friendly. As I say, leave the hardcore parts to the mods. The stock game could be a good bait to get your average Joe/Steve to play the game, arouse their interest in spaceflight, and as they learn to control mods and various aspects of spaceflight, give them the tools to make the game hardcore.

Or implement this as an option, but leave it turned off by default.

Or you could not patronise your new players by assuming they're going to be hapless scrubs that are only interested in lolsplosions, and provide a) an interesting and fully featured game out of the box and b) a decent tutorial system to help new players find their feet in said game. Happily it seems that Star Theory are going to try that approach.

This elitist crap needs to go. Likewise the attitude that the stock game should be dumbed down for the poor noobs, with any interesting gameplay mechanics being provided by the Great Cult of the Mods, only to be enjoyed by the self-appointed Hardcore Players who can properly appreciate such things.

I'm aiming this at the community in general rather than @Xd the great in particular. 

 

[Daniel Prates]

On 9/5/2019 at 4:37 AM, Challyss said:

Well, right now, you can basically have almost everything unlocked before you send your first interplanetary craft. Not so challenging. So it would be more.... less..... well, I don't know. It just doesn't feel right.

Joining in late in the discussion.

I think you have a super valid point. However I wouldn't tie specific parts to specific milestones or experiments. We still need science to be a "currency" of sorts, to use it with some discretion.

However there could be different science points to be used to unlock different parts. Without thinking too much about it, there could be (for instance) three of them, like "physics", "mechanics" and "bio".... or something. Different experiments would yeald different points, and a part like a capsule could require, say, 2 bio + 2 mech, while a truss would require 1 physics..... or something like that.

Edited September 8, 2019 by Daniel Prates

[Xd the great]

4 hours ago, KSK said:

This elitist crap needs to go. Likewise the attitude that the stock game should be dumbed down for the poor noobs, with any interesting gameplay mechanics being provided by the Great Cult of the Mods, only to be enjoyed by the self-appointed Hardcore Players who can properly appreciate such things.

Or you can make difficult stuff into settings. Don't make it into a must. Newcomers already have enough trouble trying to launch a rocket.

[Waxing_Kibbous]

I like abstraction in video games, but I think it'd be neat to have the science be more like real science. The KSP instruments actually give values based on where they are which is cool, so providing multiple data points with an instrument could give more science, having high level scientists operating equipment could give more, etc.  You could have an abstraction where science obtained generates funds (tech/gov't sector) and then funds could pay for R&D for tech. Maybe have different themed companies offer contracts of varying return/degrees of difficulty, allowing the player to choose a contract or hold out. Having missions where you take a company's gear or team, or search for various things on a surface, or recover lost gear, in return for funds or technology would be cool. Getting rare or unique parts from companies could be a fun mechanic to keep players interested.

[KSK]

6 hours ago, Xd the great said:

Or you can make difficult stuff into settings. Don't make it into a must. Newcomers already have enough trouble trying to launch a rocket.

The better solution to that problem is to teach those newcomers how to build and launch a rocket, not to neuter the rest of the game because you're worried that newcomers will fail at the first hurdle.

If your game is all about building and flying rockets, then building and flying a basic rocket should not be some huge insurmountable task. Have a proper series of tutorials, show your players what they need to do and why, and give them the tools and information they need to figure out what they're doing. 

And don't assume that because a newcomer can't figure out how to fly a rocket that they'll be stumped by other parts of the game, such as resource management.

A good example here is BattleTech. Broadly speaking it's got three elements to it: tactical turn based combat, Mech design and resource management. Those three elements combine to make a much deeper and more interesting game than any single element would be on its own.

The tactical combat is the core of the game but  not being very good at the combat has no effect on your ability to figure out the resource management - they're both 'difficult' after a fashion but in completely different ways. Finally, the mech design can be as complicated as you want to make it - but you're also given a good selection of reasonable stock mechs to play with. Sure, they can be optimised to the nth degree but you can play and enjoy the game using the stock versions. In fact, some players regard too much optimisation as cheating because it lets you build mechs that are totally inconsistent with established lore.

Your approach would be akin to stripping out the resource management and mech design elements because they're 'too hard' for a player that is learning the tactical combat element. Not only is that wrong but it leads to much less interesting and less fun game.

 

 

[Xd the great]

54 minutes ago, KSK said:

Your approach would be akin to stripping out the resource management and mech design elements because they're 'too hard' for a player that is learning the tactical combat element. Not only is that wrong but it leads to much less interesting and less fun game.

Or some type of better written tutorials than our current ones.

[theJesuit]

Have a two tiered system:

Science Points - provide a baseline that allows the Engineering Points to be generated.
Engineering Points - replaces the Part test contracts but these are points to unlock tech tree nodes.  Parts types have tests that can be run in different places.

So for:

Crewed parts - pressure test Low atmo, high atmo, vacuum.

Engine parts - isp test Low atmo, high atmo, vacuum.

Structural - strength test Low atmo, high atmo, vacuum, in light, in shadow, or perhaps an acceleration test in each environment.

Run these at different places to unlock the next node up from where they are.  Even remove or nerf the bonus system - you have already completed a structural part test in orbit around kerbin, try around Minmus for some more points!

These allow progression up a branches of the tech tree, ie to better engines, bigger capsules etc.

The science experiments continue to have a role.  The science needs to be done first in order to form a base line for the parts.  In order to unlock the engine engineering tests on the Mun, you need to run the barometer and the materials bay there first.

Therefore science points unlock ability to gain engineering points, giving you new technology.

Biomes would still exist but primarily for ISRU which is more important for colonies.

 

Peace.

[Rejected Spawn]

Something that could be interesting would be to stop treating "science points" as science and as points. Give KSC a proper databank where all scientific data is stored as raw data so that KSC scientists can write numbers on post-it notes and toss them in the air all day until two notes land next to each other and give the scientists an idea to try out something new. Rather than force a grind or force players to get specific data from specific places there is a variant that makes a bunch more sense: Scientists will figure stuff out whether you tell them to or not as long as they have diverse enough data, let's put that into a logical but still game friendly system.

First order of business: "Click to unlock" is not how real science works. Your KSC scientists should always be actually using their peanut brains rather than sit and wait for you to collect a point of data and then instantly turn into geniuses for a split second and solve a giant physics riddle in one go because you told them to - which magically consumes the data. Even if you twist it into whatever it's been called in this thread, "engineering points" and such, this approach is laughably unrealistic.

To figure out something new you don't always need case specific data - but it helps! Rather than having to fire a rocket in vacuum to instantly know how to make a great vacuum rocket or drive a rover with a seismometer to the north pole to figure it out; collecting general data should provide a good base to know how to figure any stuff out over a long enough period of time, then on top of that using a rocket in a vacuum should provide a great boost to how fast another model of vacuum oriented rocket can be developed.

Putting this together we would have a tech tree that gradually unlocks itself and you just tell your scientists what to focus on the most, but if you don't go out there and take measurements and try out parts this progression will take hundreds of years for each part. Each different rocket you test makes the next rocket unlock faster, each rover wheel you drive across a new surface makes the next rover wheel unlock faster, you probably get the picture. As for whether to have the player always dictate what to research or let the kerbals go at it as they desire is a matter of taste, I'd suggest for normal difficulty just let them go at it if the player hasn't told them what to do next and for high difficulty the player needs to keep the kerbals from losing focus by always telling them what to work on next. A queue system for research would pair well with this.

[Geschosskopf]

On 9/5/2019 at 2:37 AM, Challyss said:

You've read so far. I'm flattered. What do you think about it ?

I don't agree with you in the slightest  

My motto is, "Life begins when the tech tree ends."  The whole point of unlocking everything in the tech tree is to USE it to conquer the universe.  Stopping a game when the tech tree is complete, or needlessly prolonging it, is madness IMHO.,  And likewise, it's madness to attempt something which is as big an investment of blood, treasure, and playtime as a major colony WITHOUT having the best stuff you can get.  You're paying for it, so you need to design it for success, not failure.

You seem to think interstellar will by your 1st time to attempt a colony.  Why wouldn't you practice first closer to home, where it's easier to fix problems?  Then, problems solved (IOW, more advanced colony tech unlocked), go interstellar with proven colony tech and the only variable being the interstellar trip.  So yeah, maybe your 1st permanent Munbase, Dunabase, or even Laythebase will leave something to be desired but, by the time you're going to another star, you've got all the kinks worked out.

So basically, I have no problem with the existing system of Science! points and tech tree.  I can see early versions of the new KSP2 stuff slotting into existing nodes and then some new nodes added on the end for the UFO-related speculative stuff.

[Challyss]

3 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

You seem to think interstellar will by your 1st time to attempt a colony.  Why wouldn't you practice first closer to home, where it's easier to fix problems?  Then, problems solved (IOW, more advanced colony tech unlocked), go interstellar with proven colony tech and the only variable being the interstellar trip.  So yeah, maybe your 1st permanent Munbase, Dunabase, or even Laythebase will leave something to be desired but, by the time you're going to another star, you've got all the kinks worked out.

That's kind of why I meant : first get a low efficiency/problematic base close enough. Because you can fix it. Then move far with experience, and proven /upgraded techs.

But I understand your point of testing high tech parts close.

I don't know how it's going to be, but for instance, you can go to Duna with low tech, which is challenging and "frustrating" be cause you would love to have this or that part. Hence the Moar booster motto. Then, when "good stuff" is unlocked, designing a craft to go there becomes smoother and you can make more complex missions like space planes or a base there.

I am not saying my suggestion is the best solution for KSP2. But it's really something I wish could happen. In the core game, or as a mod (I may have more free time next year to invest in KSP, and modding in particular).

[Geschosskopf]

6 hours ago, Challyss said:

I don't know how it's going to be, but for instance, you can go to Duna with low tech, which is challenging and "frustrating" be cause you would love to have this or that part. Hence the Moar booster motto. Then, when "good stuff" is unlocked, designing a craft to go there becomes smoother and you can make more complex missions like space planes or a base there.

I see a major philosophical difference between us    I see the frustration you speak of as the natural and foreseeable result of biting off more than you can chew.  IOW, this isn't a problem with the game that needs fixing, it's totally the result of the decisions the player makes.  If you want to avoid this frustration, don't attempt things before you're equipped to do them properly.  Unless you deliberately WANT to make things difficult for yourself.  But in that case, you know what you're getting into so again, can't blame the game  

[Challyss]

5 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

I see the frustration you speak of as the natural and foreseeable result of biting off more than you can chew. 

We agree on that point. And I advocate a system that encourage you to do incremental progress.

I put brackets on the word because I think the first time you reach something (orbit, flybys, landing, bases, stations) should be done "poorly" and then the next time should work better. Hence the model I propose.

[Geschosskopf]

10 hours ago, Lu K. said:

I hope they overhaul the whole R&D system and get rid of these magical science points altogether.

The KSP Science! point system might not make any sense from a realism perspective but it makes a lot of sense from a sheer gameplay POV.  It creates good mechanic to drive the player further and further afield.  Go somewhere to get the Science! points to unlock the parts you need for the next trip further out, repeat.  Science at all locations is finite but its value increases with distance, but the costs of the higher nodes also increases.  And for those who want to stay in Kerbin's SOI, there's the MPL to squeeze MOAR Science! out of nearby places. 

So all in all, it's a good, workable, flexible system that doesn't lock players into a single way to progress.  If you scrap it, you'll have to replace it with something that's essentially the same thing to maintain the functionality of the existing system.