Career Mode

[DwightLee]

Dear Developers ..

 

I hope that you consider in a future update ( would not be expected before science of course ) the addition of a Career Mode for Kerbal Space Program 2. This is by far my personal favorite way of playing Kerbal, the budget constraints and the consideration of the type of mission adds a depth to the game I personally enjoy.

 

Thanks for at least considering it.

 

[Pthigrivi]

They've mentioned they're working on a revamped system they've called "Adventure mode". We don't know much about it yet, but it sounds like it will include experiments and unlocking parts similar to science mode and a more hand-crafted set of goals that result in "boom events" that have other effects on your program. There's no word on whether there will be generative contracts or money as a separate resource, but since they're planning on making resource harvesting more important it might make sense that you spend resources on parts directly even at KSC. We'll just have to wait and see. 

[magnemoe]

One benefit of carrier is that it gives you clear goals. One downside is that this could slow down gameplay as you keep doing contract inside Kerbin SOI who make it take forever in real time to reach other planets. 

One interesting thing about the new science system is that abnormalities is important for science, they are stuff like say an weird meteorite or an huge crystal so mostly geological but Stromatolites on Laythe was an biological. So scanning for them and landing to take samples will be important. 
Not also that the tech tree in KSP2 will be much deeper. 

[DwightLee]

On 10/26/2022 at 10:00 AM, magnemoe said:

One benefit of carrier is that it gives you clear goals. One downside is that this could slow down gameplay as you keep doing contract inside Kerbin SOI who make it take forever in real time to reach other planets. 

One interesting thing about the new science system is that abnormalities is important for science, they are stuff like say an weird meteorite or an huge crystal so mostly geological but Stromatolites on Laythe was an biological. So scanning for them and landing to take samples will be important. 
Not also that the tech tree in KSP2 will be much deeper. 

Looking forward to seeing all of that and how it all ties in. I know a lot of folks see science and money in the career path as a grind, but I see it as the game itself. I am not from the "push button get cheese" generation, I don't believe in an "end game" . It is the slow advancement, the working to achieve incremental results that is the draw for me. Once the tree is fully fleshed out, and money is no longer much of a concern, that is when I start losing interest in the game.

[Turbo Ben]

The only time I play anything other than career mode is when using sandbox to figure out how a new interstellar extended engine works. I like to progress through the tech discovering new engines etc as I go. Having all the tech available from the start defeats the object of the game for me. It puts me off early access to be honest, I don't want to see the new tech untill I've earned it. I might wait for the science update before playing, assuming EA will still be available at that point.

 

Edit - Just read the PC Gamer article and it's confirmed new career mode is called "exploration mode" and will be coming late in the EA road map, after colonies and interstellar. It's based on resources instead of currency.

Edited November 18, 2022 by Turbo Ben

[Pthigrivi]

25 minutes ago, Laikanaut said:

The latest reveal is that the "career-equivalent mode" will be called exploration mode (source) and seems likely to be added during the exploration update on the roadmap, one of the last.

 

I would say sort of. Science and progression are being added in the first update which may include boom events and other curated goals depending on what the rewards are. So you might get what are essentially contracts tied directly to unlocking things like building upgrades, kerbal skill upgrades, etc. 

A number of us questioned adding resources so late in the process. With things like colonies its a bit chicken and egg because you need resources to build colonies and colonies to process resources. We think the reason is that they’d like to see us stretch our wings as quickly as possible and push vessels and colonies to the limit before adding in complex resource chains. That way they’ll know the fundamentals are all functioning as soon as possible, and can balance resource costs and production to suit. They’ll be able to see for instance how how much in-game time its taking us to get out and colonize Jool and how much fuel the average player is using for interstellar vessels and loosely project what resource availabilities and harvest rates should look like. 

Edited November 18, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[Pthigrivi]

10 hours ago, Laikanaut said:

So why should we sacrifice realism in the game progression system, and in the fact that every space agency in existence has to account for its spending, either to government or a CEO?

It makes no sense to have resources out in Jool that would be required to develop some engine that has already been engineered by humans, when we haven't been to Jupiter, or anywhere further a few lunar soil samples, and so we aren't reliant on elements from other celestial bodies to produce anything (and as far as we know, all elements there are known and available here anyway).

And if your response is to tell me that they will be using invasive DRM that monitors exactly what I'm doing in game, I won't even buy the game.

I don’t see why DRM would be part of it. Its just a game mechanic like fulfilling a contract.  
 

I hear what you’re saying and to some degree I wonder if people would like science more if you just renamed it “money”, that folks feel somewhat dependent on this idea. For some reason “Hey I did an experiment and got a magic currency called “science” makes less sense to people than “Hey I did an experiment and I got a magic currency called “Funds”. For me it doesn’t really matter what you call it so long as it doesn’t make the game Kerbal Bookkeeping Simulator. There are lots of very real things NASA administrators do that I don’t have much interest in. For me the simpler these reward mechanics can be and the less time I spend fiddling with them the better. 
 

You may not need to go to Jool to work out the specific physics of an engine, but you do need to understand the environment so that radiation doesn’t fry your equipment, that a specific wheel design will work on the moon, or to know that there’s enough water on this or that surface and how best to harvest and process it. Rather than bog the game down with a stupendously boring set of part tests Science just abstracts this process, giving direct boosts to your knowledge base which you need to develop new technologies. Its just a way to assign value and keep track of something that’s generally unquantifiable (Note, if this sounds like BS, thats exactly what money does in our world.) And Yes, its a bit gamified, but some things that are real are just way too fussy and boring to be fun. 

Edited November 18, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[Guest]

19 hours ago, DwightLee said:

I am not from the "push button get cheese" generation, I don't believe in an "end game" . It is the slow advancement, the working to achieve incremental results that is the draw for me.

I'm not of a generation that needs "cheese" to play at all.

The gameplay it's either fun or it isn't, KSP1 progression is in of the second kind.

It's just gating stuff for the sake of it and then sell it back to you in exchange for mindless grind that doesn't even make sense in the context of the game (mine ore from Eve and deliver it to Minmus).

[Pthigrivi]

12 hours ago, Master39 said:

I'm not of a generation that needs "cheese" to play at all.

The gameplay it's either fun or it isn't, KSP1 progression is in of the second kind.

It's just gating stuff for the sake of it and then sell it back to you in exchange for mindless grind that doesn't even make sense in the context of the game (mine ore from Eve and deliver it to Minmus).

I can't be so harsh on Squad. They were trying to do something that had never been done before and hindsight is always easy. The biggest headscratcher was that the main, headline quests--the exploration/world first/milestone contracts to explore new planets and moons--existed but were invisible in Mission Control instead of having giant blinking lights pointing at them. Thats what everyone was here for--traveling to planets and moons for the first time. And yeah, science collection, reputation, repetition and balance problems offered a second death by a million cuts. Still! I played more career mode than any other and for longer than I played most other games, so there was a real achievement there. 

Edited November 19, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[regex]

2 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

The biggest headscratcher was that the main, headline quests--the exploration/world first/milestone contracts to explore new planets and moons--existed but were invisible in Mission Control instead of having giant blinking lights pointing at them. Thats what everyone was here for--traveling to planets and moons for the first time.

I feel like you really couldn't rely on those "organic" missions to get all your space center upgrades and launch missions past a certain point. The big problem with career mode IMO is that you were pretty much required and incentivized to engage with the procedural missions, many of which were extremely ... random and just made zero sense for those of us playing the game for the "going places" self-directed fun. That really sucked because those missions were generally not fun and the ones that were remotely fun got extremely routine and/or flooded out by the literal trash of "tEsT thIs GroUnD cLamP aT ThReE tHoUsanD mEtErs". Career had cool things like construction limits and some dumb things like SAS unlocks, but at least there was some progression beyond simply gathering "science". Missions completely ruined it.

[Guest]

6 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

I can't be so harsh on Squad.

I'm not harsh on Squad, it's an indie studio at their first game, I understand where the problems come from.

KSP2 is different, it has an insanely bigger budget with a completely different talent pool. Even the devs from Squad now can befefit from hindsight, experience and data they have gathered with KSP1.

I just have higher expectations from Intercept, if they don't have game designers that have experience with management games and game economies they can totally afford to hire some.

[tstein]

On 11/17/2022 at 3:50 PM, DwightLee said:

Looking forward to seeing all of that and how it all ties in. I know a lot of folks see science and money in the career path as a grind, but I see it as the game itself. I am not from the "push button get cheese" generation, I don't believe in an "end game" . It is the slow advancement, the working to achieve incremental results that is the draw for me. Once the tree is fully fleshed out, and money is no longer much of a concern, that is when I start losing interest in the game.

Oo I agree so much.  The game for me IS the unlocking and the working to unlock. I get zero sense of achievement and therefore zero fun on  other game modes. The career mode had although a problem with a quite dumb designed tech tree. Landign gear? no no that is quite advanced.. a  ladder? noo that is far far more advanced than the engine and the capsule.  Also you send humans into space before probes.. everything seems backwards.

 

All i hoped for KSP 2 was a career mode with a sane tech tree. Kerbal is non existant for me outside career.

[stephensmat]

10 hours ago, tstein said:

All i hoped for KSP 2 was a career mode with a sane tech tree. Kerbal is non existant for me outside career.

When I sat down and learned this game, I started with Science Mode. Sandbox was too much too soon, and Career was hard to master. I bankrupted myself the first two times.

Science mode gave me a progression where I could unlock parts, learn the differences, and save some 'early' ships. When I started Career again, I had low-tech craft to start with, and now my career save has thirty million in the bank and 86% reputation as I move to exploring Jool.

[zulu354]

For a career mode I'd wish an option to start unkerbaled before kerbaled.

[Vl3d]

On 11/20/2022 at 2:40 AM, stephensmat said:

When I sat down and learned this game, I started with Science Mode. Sandbox was too much too soon, and Career was hard to master. I bankrupted myself the first two times.

Science mode gave me a progression where I could unlock parts, learn the differences, and save some 'early' ships. When I started Career again, I had low-tech craft to start with, and now my career save has thirty million in the bank and 86% reputation as I move to exploring Jool.

AngleCan Progression is the closest thing to Adventure mode.

 

[Firemetal]

I really hope the contract system is at least optional. I really enjoy the challenge that contracts add to the game. I understand that this may be an unpopular opinion within the community (I've heard of more people who dislike this component of the game and consider it grindy, and I disagree with them there) but there are some of us who enjoy career mode. I hope the developers at least take this into consideration.

[regex]

20 minutes ago, Firemetal said:

I really hope the contract system is at least optional.

It would be ideal if it were entirely optional, if it exists at all. I found the system in KSP1 to be, in as many words, garbage. It was far too random, it generated far too few missions, and it had zero considerations or manual tuning RE: my own goals in what is largely a sandbox game. A new system should be driven by player choice and tuning, allowing the player to set goals rather than having the system give entirely random goal options.

[Superfluous J]

3 minutes ago, regex said:

It would be ideal if it were entirely optional, if it exists at all. I found the system in KSP1 to be, in as many words, garbage. It was far too random, it generated far too few missions, and it had zero considerations or manual tuning RE: my own goals in what is largely a sandbox game. A new system should be driven by player choice and tuning, allowing the player to set goals rather than having the system give entirely random goal options.

To be fair it had at LEAST 0.0001 considerations for tuning to what you want.

Viewing and not accepting a contract has a minuscule affect on if that type of contract, or contracts for the world mentioned, will show up in the future. Declining a contract has a similar and slightly less minuscule affect.

EDIT: Hmm grammar is escaping me here. Less minuscule or more minuscule? Which one is bigger? That's what I mean. Declining a contract has a bigger - albeit still way too small IMO - affect.

Edited November 27, 2022 by Superfluous J

[regex]

Just now, Superfluous J said:

To be fair it had at LEAST 0.0001 considerations for tuning to what you want.

Viewing and not accepting a contract has a minuscule affect on if that type of contract, or contracts for the world mentioned, will show up in the future. Canceling a contract has a similar and slightly less minuscule affect.

And after twenty minutes of not accepting contracts maybe, just maybe, I'll get something slightly interesting. It was just really, really bad gameplay.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

8 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

Which one is bigger

Isn't something slightly less minuscule than something else bigger than the something else? 

[Firemetal]

14 hours ago, regex said:

It would be ideal if it were entirely optional, if it exists at all. I found the system in KSP1 to be, in as many words, garbage. It was far too random, it generated far too few missions, and it had zero considerations or manual tuning RE: my own goals in what is largely a sandbox game. A new system should be driven by player choice and tuning, allowing the player to set goals rather than having the system give entirely random goal options.

More options is never bad, but I do disagree with you. I like contracts because of how they simulate the engineering process - you are presented with a variety of different problems that you have to solve with a variety of constraints. In my opinion, this leads to more gameplay opportunities. I do agree that the system can be optimized,  in my current save,, I rarely get a contract that takes me outside of the Kerbin system, and having more interplanetary contracts in the early game might be nice, but otherwise, I do like the element of randomness. If anything, the contracts should be *more varied* and *more random*, and should maybe even vary based on difficulty of the save.

 

Edited November 27, 2022 by Firemetal

[regex]

1 hour ago, Firemetal said:

More options is never bad, but I do disagree with you. I like contracts because of how they simulate the engineering process - you are presented with a variety of different problems that you have to solve with a variety of constraints. In my opinion, this leads to more gameplay opportunities. I do agree that the system can be optimized,  in my current save,, I rarely get a contract that takes me outside of the Kerbin system, and having more interplanetary contracts in the early game might be nice, but otherwise, I do like the element of randomness. If anything, the contracts should be *more varied* and *more random*, and should maybe even vary based on difficulty of the save.

 

The system in KSP1 should be shelved, end of story. It's nothing but bad gameplay. Contracts should be offered on request based on where the player wants to go and should be user-filterable; I am never going to do those dumb part testing contracts or put yet another useless satellite into a weird orbit for no reason. The system should generate a ton of contracts too so I don't have to reject them, or allow me to blanket reject them. The career system has some decent constraints but tieing it to that silly contract system killed it.

Alternatively, if the system from KSP1 is preferred, engineer it in such a way that I never have to take a contract. I'm here to fly spaceships and do cool spaceship things within a progression system that is fun and allows me to set my own goals, not test parts under dumb procedural constraints that make zero sense.

[Vl3d]

3 minutes ago, regex said:

Alternatively, if the system from KSP1 is preferred, engineer it in such a way that I never have to take a contract. I'm here to fly spaceships and do cool spaceship things within a progression system that is fun and allows me to set my own goals, not test parts under dumb procedural constraints that make zero sense.

I don't want to be spamming, but the Career mode does have the buildings progression going for it, even though contracts are annoying.

Edited November 27, 2022 by Vl3d

[regex]

27 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

I don't want to be spamming, but the Career mode does have the buildings progression going for it, even though contracts are annoying.

I thought I had made that clear, I guess not. I like that about Career mode over Science mode, having the space center progression; it's really cool and introduces some constraints that actually make sense. I want that. What I don't want is to have to roll contracts in order to find something remotely interesting or aligned to what I want to do. (and while I'm sure that's a very fine mod I really don't care to play KSP1 anymore, I'm here for the next iteration)

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

30 minutes ago, regex said:

dumb part testing contracts

I think the reason behind those was to give the players access to things earlier than they could unlock them.  Sadly I would always get something useless like testing an extra large decoupler while in flight at 80,000m while flying between 125 and 210 m/s when my biggest engine is the Swivel and all my tanks are small.