[BETA] [1.8.x] Bureaucracy - Monthly Budgets, Reimagined (Release Candidate - 22/01/2020)

[severedsolo]

36 minutes ago, vardicd said:

I like the idea of xx% completed and $y still needed. {example: 50% complete and 205,678still needed.} Yeah That'd be great.

Cool, I'll do that later. If I'm going to do a ui pass, I'd like to do it all in one go, so any changes needed for the research scene do you think? I think it's OK, as it already shows the total anyway, but I'm open to suggestions

[vardicd]

44 minutes ago, severedsolo said:

Cool, I'll do that later. If I'm going to do a ui pass, I'd like to do it all in one go, so any changes needed for the research scene do you think? I think it's OK, as it already shows the total anyway, but I'm open to suggestions

I can't really think of any needed changes for research. The only 'flaw' i can think of, if you could call it that, is how all the research results get smashed and unreadable if you get too many at once, but you already said you hadn't figured out how to make it scroll-able. It's not really a big deal, as you mentioned you can see the total available science, and how much max you'll get at the end of the budget cycle at the bottom, so it's not like you have to go and manually add it up in the list, so not a big deal.

Actually it just occurred to me, {and maybe it's just how my brain works} but when i was first starting to learn the interface in that window, It wasn't so clear to me that maximum output was dependent on the budget allocation. Something along the lines of  {Total science and/or Total science to be processed} <-followed by-> [Expected science/lab results/output at current funding/allocation level]? 

A little nod to say this is what you should get, assuming you don't change allocation levels, I think there was one or two times i changed the allocation levels when i was first playing with the mod, and didn't get the science i was expecting because I didn't correctly process the fact that maximum output was dependent on the allocation levels, which i had just changed. After a few times i caught on and realized what i was doing, but having it phrased differently would have made it more clear to me. BUT, my brain doesn't exactly work 'normally' and I get told a lot by my friends that I miss the most obvious stuff, so i freely admit that it might just be a me problem, and no one else might have that confusion.

I mention it because you asked for input, but it's a judgement call for you. 

Edited January 20, 2020 by vardicd

[severedsolo]

2 hours ago, vardicd said:

I mention it because you asked for input, but it's a judgement call for you. 

that's a good point, "maximum" does imply a certain finality, when you can change it. I'll change it to something like "current maximum output" to make it clearer.

More putting this here to remind myself later but feedback is welcomed. (on mobile, so may be a bit brief)

Allocation rates should be shown in the main budget menu.

Construction should show total investment needed, and allocated amounts (this would help the science ui problem too and be more consistent).

QA label should be replaced to make it clear its affecting the chance of a rocket exploding on the pad.

(non ui related thoughts) - bring back the "fire at x facility" events, link it to qa.

Make qa events more appealing, atm I'd never take that event.

 

[Sabrewulf]

Variables are making me confuse, i do not know what variables and how change with "TimeBetweenBudgetsDays" for balance.
Can you explain how happen the budget calculation?

[severedsolo]

14 minutes ago, Sabrewulf said:

Variables are making me confuse, i do not know what variables and how change with "TimeBetweenBudgetsDays" for balance.
Can you explain how happen the budget calculation?

You can leave AutoBalanceSettings on if you want to just balance default costs based on changing the month length - but sure, here's the order of operation:

• Hard Mode fires (if applicable) - this reduces your reputation by 1 rep/10,000 funds still in hand.
• Gross Budget = Reputation * Budget Multiplier
• Kerbals get paid (at 1000 * current kerbals level / a flat $500 if they are level 0)
• Facility Maintenance Costs are paid (at cost set in the cfg*Facility Level)
• Launch Costs get paid.
• Bonuses are paid (for any kerbals who returned home from long term missions in flight)
• If Budget won't cover the costs, debt is taken from your funds in hand. (stops here if that's the case)
• Assuming you have any budget left over, Construction and Research get paid.
• If you have UseItOrLoseIt turned on, your funds are set to 0.
• Whatever is left from the budget is given to you as funding.
• Rep Decay fires.

[Sabrewulf]

I changed TimeBetweenBudgetsDays to 5 in save folder but autobalance seems not work

[severedsolo]

11 minutes ago, Sabrewulf said:

I changed TimeBetweenBudgetsDays to 5 in save folder but autobalance seems not work

At first glance that looks like it's working. Your costs are very low (much lower than default) - but difficult to tell just from one screenshot. Send me your save and your settings file please.

[Sabrewulf]

Save Folder
https://mega.nz/#F!YGhVlARS!VDUJvLC1z7Ppi6B2HqABHw

Edited January 20, 2020 by Sabrewulf

[severedsolo]

20 minutes ago, Sabrewulf said:

Save Folder
https://mega.nz/#F!YGhVlARS!VDUJvLC1z7Ppi6B2HqABHw

Yeah it's working. Default costs are around about 40000, + your level 2 RnD (another 8,000) - for a total of 48000 on default settings.

48000/30 = 1600
1600*5 = 8000
Your costs are within $3 of what's expected, taking into account floating point precision that's about right.

Edited January 20, 2020 by severedsolo

[Sabrewulf]

Just now, severedsolo said:

Yeah it's working. Default costs are around about 40000, + your level 2 RnD (another 8,000) - for a total of 48000 on default settings.

48000/30 = 1600
1600*5 = 8000
Your costs are within $3 of what's expected, taking into account floating point precision that's about right.

I changed interval 30 to 5 days, isn't my gross budget, wage and facility cost to be %6 too?
there's 2 images at screenshot

Edited January 20, 2020 by Sabrewulf

[severedsolo]

3 minutes ago, Sabrewulf said:

I changed interval 30 to 5 days, isn't my gross budget, wage and facility cost to be %6 too?

Your gross budget won't change.... AutoBalance only balances costs. (and no I won't change that. There are reasons why the default multiplier is 2227, and changing that breaks contract balance). AFAICT your wage costs look about right too.

Edited January 20, 2020 by severedsolo

[Sabrewulf]

hum, autobalance seems useless since if i change interval from 30 to 1 it give me around 30x money per month instead 1x per month.

Edited January 20, 2020 by Sabrewulf

[severedsolo]

6 minutes ago, Sabrewulf said:

hum, autobalance seems useless since if i change interval from 30 to 1 it give me around 30x money per month instead 1x per month.

I'm going to assume that you are using a ridiculous example on purpose there rather than actually considering setting it to 1 day.

I understand your point, but I can't break the balance for your personal playstyle. Autobalancing the costs makes sense, but the contract/rep system is finely balanced, and changing the multiplier, means changing contacts. Changing contracts means writing MM patches for *every single contract pack* to balance them. Then balancing the stock contracts. You wanna do it for your own game it's dead simple:

Divide 2227/30 to get funds per day (7.566666667)
7.566666667 * whatever period you are choosing to use.

(Wait, is this why you wanted the BPF to be kept? So you could bank cash for short periods?)

Edited January 20, 2020 by severedsolo

[Sabrewulf]

Just now, severedsolo said:

I'm going to assume that you are using a ridiculous example on purpose there rather than actually considering setting it to 1 day.

I understand your point, but I can't break the balance for your personal playstyle. Autobalancing the costs makes sense, but the contract/rep system is finely balanced, and changing the multiplier, means changing contacts. Changing contracts means writing MM patches for *every single contract pack* to balance them. Then balancing the stock contracts. You wanna do it for your own game it's dead simple:

Divide 2227/30 to get funds per day (7.566666667)
7.566666667 * whatever period you are choosing to use.

(Wait, is this why you wanted the BPF to be kept? So you could bank cash for short periods?)

Can't you add autobalance at end of calculation? Instead divide cost it divide net income rounded down , so if a player want to be paid per (day, week, month or year) he can!

[severedsolo]

1 hour ago, Sabrewulf said:

Can't you add autobalance at end of calculation? Instead divide cost it divide net income rounded down , so if a player want to be paid per (day, week, month or year) he can!

Right, I get what you are asking for now.

Good idea - not easily implemented just because of the way the budget is handed out, it's not as simple as just "Oh just round the net budget down to whatever it's set to" - Research and Construction would not take their cuts/adjust them properly - it's just the way the mod is set up, every "department" is modular, and doesn't talk to the other departments at all. (this is on purpose, so I can add features without breaking everything else).

Can I add it to Construction/Research? Sure, but it's a layer of complexity on an already complex system, which would have to be bolted on. The entire point of this mod was to get away from those bolted on user requests/additions that Monthly Budgets had. I'm pushing for a release here, and beta is not the time to start changing core gameplay systems.

In short: I'm not saying no, I'm saying not right now - by all means raise a request on Github, and if/when I revisit a system I'll look to add it properly.

Edited January 20, 2020 by severedsolo

[severedsolo]

Bureaucracy Beta 6 (0.6) Now Available

• Allocation rates are now shown on the main screen.
• Construction screen now shows % completed, and investment remaining for each building.
• Construction screen now shows total investment needed at the bottom.
• Mysterious "QA" label changed to reflect what it's actually meant to be
• "Maximum Output" on Research tab relabelled to be clearer.

[vardicd]

5 hours ago, severedsolo said:

Bureaucracy Beta 6 (0.6) Now Available

• Allocation rates are now shown on the main screen.
• Construction screen now shows % completed, and investment remaining for each building.
• Construction screen now shows total investment needed at the bottom.
• Mysterious "QA" label changed to reflect what it's actually meant to be
• "Maximum Output" on Research tab relabelled to be clearer.

Testing new version, looking good, one question though, I'm assuming this [value in the orange circle] is the total funds need for all constructions, correct?

I did notice that in the screenshot above I was working on the R+D [already in progress] when I upgraded versions, and had just added the launchpad, runway, SPH and VAB. For some reason it prioritized the launchpad over the R+D facility, even though I hadn't chose to prioritize the launchpad. It hasn't done it again since, as far as I have noticed, so maybe it was just a fluke of upgrading versions? Thought I'd mention it anyway though. 

EDIT: Upon completion of the R+D facility, the overflow funds went to the Runway, at the next budget cycle funds were instead applied to the Administration facility, should the overflow from one cycle and the target of the next cycle's construction funds be different? I don't know how that choice is made, so I'm not sure if the overflow funds [past what a facility needs] are just randomly applied somewhere, or if what it's applied to should be the next facility in line?

EDIT 2: I just discovered another interaction with KCT that strikes me as odd, but don't know if there's anything that can be done about it. KCT provides the ability to construct additional launchpads at KSC so you can launch more rockets faster. With KCT facility build times off, and building upgrades handled by Bureaucracy, additional launchpads are completed instantly. It's sort of jarring that It's taken me months and months to upgrade my main launchpad from level 1 to level 3 but if i have the funds and ask the construction crew for a new level 3 pad, they just snap their fingers and poof there it is instantly. Just mentioning it, as I said, don't know if there's any thing that can be done about it, or if its a quirk we're just going to have to live with.

Edited January 21, 2020 by vardicd

[severedsolo]

3 hours ago, vardicd said:

Testing new version, looking good, one question though, I'm assuming this [value in the orange circle] is the total funds need for all constructions, correct?

Correct, I know the label isn't very clear, I didn't have much screen real estate and the words I wanted to use were causing the UI to look strange

3 hours ago, vardicd said:

EDIT: Upon completion of the R+D facility, the overflow funds went to the Runway, at the next budget cycle funds were instead applied to the Administration facility, should the overflow from one cycle and the target of the next cycle's construction funds be different? I don't know how that choice is made, so I'm not sure if the overflow funds [past what a facility needs] are just randomly applied somewhere, or if what it's applied to should be the next facility in line?

They aren't done in any particular order, they just loop through the list. The list may not be initialised in the same order every time. It's not a bug, it's just how it works, you can't guarantee the order unless you specifically put something on priority.

3 hours ago, vardicd said:

With KCT facility build times off, and building upgrades handled by Bureaucracy, additional launchpads are completed instantly

Right now there is nothing that can be done about it, I might be able to do something about it going forward, but it would need a change to KCT before I could, so that's a "stretch goal" (if you could put an issue on Github to remind me that would be great)

Edited January 21, 2020 by severedsolo

[vardicd]

2 minutes ago, severedsolo said:

Correct, I know the label isn't very clear, I didn't have much screen real estate and the words I wanted to use were causing the UI to look strange

They aren't done in any particular order, they just loop through the list. The list may not be initialised in the same order every time. It's not a bug, it's just how it works, you can't guarantee the order unless you specifically put something on priority.

Right now there is nothing that can be done about it, but I might be able to do something about it going forward, but it would need a change to KCT before I could, so that's a "stretch goal" (if you could put an issue on Github to remind me that would be great)

1] no problem just wanted to be sure I was understanding what i was seeing.

2] understood, just wasn't clear on how that worked exactly

3] I'll try and figure out how to add that to github, not really familiar with it, so that may take me some doing.

4] Random events appear to still be firing too often. I had one fire while I was building a plane, which while the plane was about 5~ish days away from launch. launched the plane and did a flight to the north pole for science collection, and upon recovery of the plane had another random event fire. I don't know the exact time frame between events, but it was within 5-13 game days.

[severedsolo]

1 minute ago, vardicd said:

4] Random events appear to still be firing too often. I had one fire while I was building a plane, which while the plane was about 5~ish days away from launch. launched the plane and did a flight to the north pole for science collection, and upon recovery of the plane had another random event fire. I don't know the exact time frame between events, but it was within 5-13 game days.

A Random Event pass is next on my list, so I'll look at that at the same time

[vardicd]

8 minutes ago, severedsolo said:

A Random Event pass is next on my list, so I'll look at that at the same time

Okay, Also think I got a reminder set up for you, under issues on Github. I hope thats what you meant, anyway.

[severedsolo]

35 minutes ago, vardicd said:

Okay, Also think I got a reminder set up for you, under issues on Github. I hope thats what you meant, anyway.

Just checked this and can confirm the cooldown is working fine,

[vardicd]

47 minutes ago, severedsolo said:

Just checked this and can confirm the cooldown is working fine,

huh, strange maybe I miss remembered the times between events, but I swear it was only a few days. I'll double check it on my end, and record the times they fire. If I see it again, I'll shoot you the log and record, see if I've got something strange going on local.

[severedsolo]

Bureaucracy Beta 7 is now available

• Changed the Construction UI to reflect that the value being shown at the bottom is the amount of investment needed
• QA Event reworked, will no longer explode rockets on the pad, instead will give you a choice between increasing your maintenance costs, or risking one of your buildings catching on fire.
• Added "Fire Safety" event to reduce risk of fire.
• Added "Fire!" event that will destroy a building if it makes a successful roll against your chance of fire (shouldn't happen often as it's mixed in with the other events)
• Added "Chance of Fire" label to Construction UI
• Fixed some typos in the events

A note on feature requests

I just want to address the fact that I'm flat out saying no to some feature requests (and the fact that I feel a little bad for doing so).

It's not that I'm not open to feature requests, I love new ideas, and if I like them, they will be incorporated where possible. The problem is that Monthly Budgets became a sinking pit of bolted on features, on top of already badly written code, which made the whole thing unmaintainable. I am determined to not make the same mistakes here.

You guys only see the final product, the (just over) a week it's been available. What you don't see is the months and months of planning, writing code that was never going to make it in just to test if the idea was feasible, building and coding the systems, and fixing bugs that has gone on before I even made it available to the private testing group, let alone making it public. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to rip up months of hard work to refactor a core system, no matter how nicely you ask.

Edit: To be clear, I'm not saying "Don't make feature requests" - I'm saying "by all means ask, but if I say no, raise an enhancement request on Github, under the understanding that it may/may not happen if/when I refactor that system which might/might not be in 2 years time"

Edited January 21, 2020 by severedsolo

[severedsolo]

Bureaucracy Release Candidate 1 is now available!

Changes from Beta 7

• Tweaked DSN ranges - will now allow you to get to Minmus with Lv2, but you'll need Lv3 if you want to leave the Kerbin system
• Added DSN patch for JNSQ
• Added toolbar icon (icon by Freepik at www.flaticon.com)
• Reduced Random Event chance to 5%