Career Mode

[t_v]

12 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Exactly, I think this kind of simple bartering is probably fine and much harder to abuse and much less problematic. I think that kind of thing is great. Its the fungibility of a central currency that takes it out of simple 1 to 1 barter-like trades and makes hoarding and easy conversion to real-world money possible.

A few things, since I haven’t actually stated my position on currency. First, if resources being converted to real money is a concern with a central resource, then it is also a concern without one. Instead of one rate for the central resource, there would be multiple rates, but the problem would still persist. Second, barter interactions still happen with a central resource; the reason there are more complex interactions today is because we have systems set up to enable seriously complex compound exchanges with conditions, schedules, automation, and more.  Saying “I’ll give you 10 Uranium for completing this task is similar to “I’ll give you 10,000 credits if you complete this task” and the difference really arises through the spirit and systems around the interaction. 
 

And for my thoughts on a central resource itself, I see its utility. The idea is a resource that can be converted to every other resource, or almost every other resource. Some resources like Hydrogen could become a de-facto currency because depending on systems you could convert them into three or four types of fuel, plus life support ingredients. However, we are really talking about something that can be converted to almost everything. The use I see for this is resource balancing. Hopping to a nearby spot where you have the necessary resources would be nice, but sometimes you need to seriously shift the concentration of resources at a base to keep it functioning. Instead of spending a an hour in the BAE placing mining modules in the secondary deposit (we are talking serious shifts), the player can fly big missions to Kerbin to exchange the resource they currently have in excess with the resource that they are lacking. This can reduce the hassle of managing resource rates and encourage players to keep all their colonies as connected as possible so that the balancing effect of the most advanced colonies can spread as far as possible. Lastly, transfer of this convertible resource would make things easy between players, and if it is something digital like currency, then it can be transferred electronically. In essence, I don’t see a problem with a highly convertible resource that isn’t present without one, as long as the rest of the systems are handled the same, and it has uses. 

[Pthigrivi]

No doubt money is useful, but: 

 

[darthgently]

ISRU removing the cost of bringing all fuel out of Kerbin's gravity well (hint: mine Minmus asap) and working contracts makes in-game wealth a fairly simple thing once to that point.

I've never understood paying real money for something in-game that simply playing the game can achieve.  I mean, playing the game is the point of the game, right?

[t_v]

1 minute ago, darthgently said:

ISRU removing the cost of bringing all fuel out of Kerbin's gravity well (hint: mine Minmus asap) and working contracts makes in-game wealth a fairly simple thing once to that point.

The design decision that people (including me) are expecting is that ISRU resources will not always be available everywhere. If you are mining on Minmus, you probably won’t get access to metals since it is a ceramic moon. And, once you need Uranium for nuclear engines, it would be nice to be able to source directly from Kerbin instead of shipping it from Dres. And, although unlock-able resource pools would work (so once you unlock a technology that requires Uranium, you get a regenerating pool of it at Kerbin), I would rather exchange resources that I mined elsewhere to convert it to Uranium, instead of just waiting for the number to go up. 

[darthgently]

1 hour ago, t_v said:

The design decision that people (including me) are expecting is that ISRU resources will not always be available everywhere. If you are mining on Minmus, you probably won’t get access to metals since it is a ceramic moon. And, once you need Uranium for nuclear engines, it would be nice to be able to source directly from Kerbin instead of shipping it from Dres. And, although unlock-able resource pools would work (so once you unlock a technology that requires Uranium, you get a regenerating pool of it at Kerbin), I would rather exchange resources that I mined elsewhere to convert it to Uranium, instead of just waiting for the number to go up. 

Understood.  There will be pain until more game elements are in place via roadmap and mods, but honestly most of the desires expressed in detail in these forums are definitely in the mod territory.  Given what we've learned I'm really anticipating a better integration of mods in KSP2 with better mod performance, mod UI accommodation, and more rapid mod dev

Edited November 12, 2022 by darthgently

[Pthigrivi]

16 minutes ago, Laikanaut said:

Career mode should not be the responsibility of modders to add. Many people only played that and as for myself, I never play any sand box games, my first orbit and all gameplay was in career mode, I only use sandbox occassionaly to check designs and part stats. And I never play science mode.

If you have a game mode that is for many people the only reason they play a game, and you remove it and expect modders to pick that up and add it back in for you, that's laziness and a bad attitude.

Adding a financial currency as a mod is one thing but career had a lot more than that, there were admin strategies, contracts, reputation, and a lot of mechanics that apparently some players aren't interested in and who think therefore that these things should not be included in the game because it doesn't appeal to them personally. This is selfish.

I mean there is going to be a career mode, its just called "Adventure mode",  and it may even have money. We're all just speculating here. Not a lot of folks seemed all that happy with the generative contract system, so I'd be pretty happy to see a more curated set of goals and a more tailored approach to progression. While I think money poses some tricky problems (failure states, ethical issues with multiplayer) I'm not dead set against it. Mostly I just think its extraneous. I think the best parts of KSP are the engineering and exploration puzzles, and the more time we spend fussing through administrative menus the less time we're doing things that are fun. Of course you're going to have to do some management, unlocking parts and whatnot, but the more streamlined this can be the better. Money might be useful as a way to exchange or obtain rare resources from 'the bank', but by adding a second abstract resource (science being the first) you kind of double the amount of management fuss and slow down the game. It's one of those 'the best part is no part' things. If it's something that rapidly gets phased out as you find your colonies more and more self-sufficient why introduce it all? Just start with buying parts with resources from the beginning so players have a consistent experience. But who knows! It might be worth it. If it were me I'd try first to design the game based on real materials and add money in at the end if it seemed like you absolutely needed it to grease the gears. 

[darthgently]

1 hour ago, Laikanaut said:

Career mode should not be the responsibility of modders to add. Many people only played that and as for myself, I never play any sand box games, my first orbit and all gameplay was in career mode, I only use sandbox occassionaly to check designs and part stats. And I never play science mode.

If you have a game mode that is for many people the only reason they play a game, and you remove it and expect modders to pick that up and add it back in for you, that's laziness and a bad attitude.

Adding a financial currency as a mod is one thing but career had a lot more than that, there were admin strategies, contracts, reputation, and a lot of mechanics that apparently some players aren't interested in and who think therefore that these things should not be included in the game because it doesn't appeal to them personally. This is selfish.

I know I didn't suggest career would or should be a mod.  I don't remember reading that either

Edited November 12, 2022 by darthgently

[jjansen]

Have to admit I hadn't considered multiplayer Career. Would be an interesting improvement, and might even spur competition as well as cooperation (first one to Satellite the orbit wins.)

1 hour ago, Laikanaut said:

I'm not arguing about it any more, if you don't want this kind of experience then there's no benefit to discussing it further. I'm simply going to work on recreating the kind of experience that I enjoyed in KSP and hope that others will help, because clearly a lot of people wanted this.

I feel ya, but the KSP forums tend to attract particularly virulent haters to their targeted topics. There are very few naysayers in this topic, for example, they just happen to be very loud.

 

But, please, don't do KSP2 Career. They literally just want modders to do the actual work, which they will then absorb, just like Career the first time.

[Pthigrivi]

5 hours ago, jjansen said:

I feel ya, but the KSP forums tend to attract particularly virulent haters to their targeted topics. There are very few naysayers in this topic, for example, they just happen to be very loud.

I don’t think thats true. The areas of broad consensus are pretty narrow (no weapons, no warp drives, no random failures.) We’ve had a number of discussions on the money problem and science points and flight automation over the years and most of the regulars don’t agree on these subjects. They’re hard problems! And well worth earnest debate. Everyone is welcome to their opinions and none of us knows what the solution will be in the end. If you think money has to be in the game and its not ‘career mode’ if its absent tell us why! Most of us are actually pretty open to persuasion. 

Edited November 13, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[Xelo]

The OP of the thread linked by laikanaut, was satisfied by the notion of Money 'being' Resources.
That is, the cost in uranium is stopping you from building 800 rtgs in KSP2,
It also prevents 'dumb grind' like selling mono propellant from Kerbin ISRU to afford expensive rockets. No matter no much liquid fuel you extract from the KSC tarmac you aren't gonna build a rtg with it.

But! there's nothing to suggest that science cannot also fulfill the role contracts had in the original career mode. The main issue was that the contracts often weren't very engaging / got repetitive fast and money became meaningless fast. 
If say science/ technologies were locked behind specific 'contracts', then:
1. You'd only need to do them once, eliminating the grind.
2. They can be handcrafted and thus more engaging then procedurally generated ones. You don't have to 'rely on luck' to get a good one. You can at least trust they are reasonable for the tech level. There can be proper settings for the difficulty of these unlock challenges for advanced players.
3. They would never cease to be meaningful even until the late game. New technology is always important.
 
You can also have contacts that give you the old 'science point' but I feel that just falls back into the problems experienced by the original career mode. 

I don't think the devs are removing career mode its entirety, the fact that they name things differently should not be taken as 'they are not touching it with a 10m pole'.  I believe they are aware of the fun provided by both science and career modes and are trying to combine the best of both worlds and learning from the mistakes in the first game. They probably put off adventure mode for a reason from the launch, there's alot of thought that needs to go into this so that career players aren't left out. There's probably a good reason why its named adventure mode and not the 'science' mode people are more familiar with, likely there are more fundamental changes beyond resources coming.

Edited November 13, 2022 by Xelo

[Domonian]

Career mode is out, Exploration mode is in: https://www.pcgamer.com/kerbal-space-program-director-explains-why-colonies-are-going-to-change-everything-lays-out-early-access-plans/ 

Just as most people thought, funds are now replaced with raw resources. I would assume that contracts and scripted missions are also out, but maybe we'll see something  similar that may provide science points or new parts or something. 

[t_v]

I guess that a centralized, convertible resource is out. Definitely not a dealbreaker, but it does inform me a bit about how the rest of the systems might work. When there is a big imbalance of materials, there won’t be a way to re-balance them by converting them, so this makes me believe that increasing or decreasing resource rates drastically will be very easy to do. 

[Vl3d]

9 minutes ago, t_v said:

When there is a big imbalance of materials, there won’t be a way to re-balance them by converting them

I guess that's how the tech tree will work - you unlock items with (hopefully related) science but only use what you have the resources to build. It's great for gameplay variation - it all depends on what resources you discover. So that means that exploration unlocks tech.

Edited November 17, 2022 by Vl3d

[Pthigrivi]

1 hour ago, t_v said:

I guess that a centralized, convertible resource is out. Definitely not a dealbreaker, but it does inform me a bit about how the rest of the systems might work. When there is a big imbalance of materials, there won’t be a way to re-balance them by converting them, so this makes me believe that increasing or decreasing resource rates drastically will be very easy to do. 

It also becomes part of the challenge. You can't just mine one rare resource and magically transform it into anything you want. You'll have to think a bit about how to balance resources as you grow by setting up routes to places where the things you need can be found. Its also cool because there's a lot of chemistry overlap between hydrogen, mopoprop, methalox, and possible LS products that would allow direct conversion if you have the energy. We also got a bit more confirmation that some technologies will require resources to unlock. Its interesting because for the first 10 hours at least you probably wont be harvesting anything, so there could also be a basic science resource collected with experiments that gets you through that early development phase and fills part gaps that aren't specifically resource based. It'll be interesting to see. 

Edited November 17, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[jjansen]

4 hours ago, Domonian said:

Career mode is out, Exploration mode is in: https://www.pcgamer.com/kerbal-space-program-director-explains-why-colonies-are-going-to-change-everything-lays-out-early-access-plans/ 

Just as most people thought, funds are now replaced with raw resources. I would assume that contracts and scripted missions are also out, but maybe we'll see something  similar that may provide science points or new parts or something. 

RIP rescue and repair contracts.

If I wanted minecraft or dyson sphere program, I'd play minecraft or dyson sphere program.

[Acid_Burn9]

This thread got a bit out of hand. I'm not even gonna bother commenting on most of the stuff here since we've already been through most of that in my thread a while ago. Except one thing. 

On 11/11/2022 at 9:47 PM, Pthigrivi said:

purchasing in game items and other players' time could create a series of ethical issues like gold farming, unbalanced power dynamics, contract disputes, etc.

On 11/11/2022 at 11:23 PM, Pthigrivi said:

purchasing other players' time, which is a stickier wicket than folks might realize on the surface, especially if it spawns a black market and gold farming the in-game currency. You've in some ways turned other players into your employees

What makes you think that giving players an ability to accept contracts from other players and trade between each-other needs to be policed? What black markets? What foul exploitation of other people time? What you're saying makes 0 sense. KSP is not an MMO. Why are you treating it is? This is nothing short of ridiculous. The games where this is happening are games that are about and were built around grind in the first place. The games where the grind is what keeps players hooked. The games where you're playing with or against entire regions of players. The games were players progression is tied to the account or a character that they invest hunders or even thousands of hours in with the sole purpose of upgrading, leveling up, becoming stronger and raising throung the ranks among other players. None of this has anything to do with KSP. In fact i cannot think of any game genre that can possibly be more opposite compared to and different than KSP. The only thing this addition will do (and just to be clear i'm an not arguing in favor nor against it) is provide players with ability to more transparently, conveniently and easily interact with each-other.

Edited November 17, 2022 by Acid_Burn9

[Acid_Burn9]

40 minutes ago, Laikanaut said:

It's hard to see any reason why they wouldn't add currencies to facilitate such transactions

Well i can see one and it's pretty big. This would allow to time-warp through the entire game by mining a single resource, selling it and buying everything you will ever need.

The thing is - one of the major problems with KSP 1 was lack of motivation for the player to go anywhere. Most celestial bodies are just rocks with a couple of different properties like mass and size. There was nothing in the game that would incentivize the player to visit at least majority, not to mention all of them. And the only way to provide player a good enough reason to go somewhere is to put there something the player needs. Not something that would be neat to visit, not some useless cosmetic item, but something actually essential to the players journey. Now if we think of what kind of game KSP 2 is and what sort of objectives it puts in front of the player it is fairly obvious that there is pretty much no other way to address this issue other than to make certain resources obtainable on a limited amount of planets that player would've never even thought to visit otherwise. That is what KSP 2 is doing and it is deeply tied into the core of most gameplay pillars that KSP 2 introduces - colonies, interstellar travel, exploration.

If you allow players to bypass this restriction by brute-forcing their way through the game with an infinite money generator this absolutely cripples the gameplay foundation that the game is built upon. Bartering in this sense would do much less damage to the core gameplay since both players trading between each-other are stuck with whatever resources they have on the spot.

So yeah specifically for trading between players (if it even will be a feature in the first place) i don't see universal currency as a good addition.

Edited November 18, 2022 by Acid_Burn9

[Pthigrivi]

4 hours ago, Acid_Burn9 said:

What makes you think that giving players an ability to accept contracts from other players and trade between each-other needs to be policed? What black markets? What foul exploitation of other people time? What you're saying makes 0 sense. KSP is not an MMO. Why are you treating it is? This is nothing short of ridiculous. The games where this is happening are games that are about and were built around grind in the first place. The games where the grind is what keeps players hooked. The games where you're playing with or against entire regions of players. The games were players progression is tied to the account or a character that they invest hunders or even thousands of hours in with the sole purpose of upgrading, leveling up, becoming stronger and raising throung the ranks among other players. None of this has anything to do with KSP. In fact i cannot think of any game genre that can possibly be more opposite compared to and different than KSP. The only thing this addition will do (and just to be clear i'm an not arguing in favor nor against it) is provide players with ability to more transparently, conveniently and easily interact with each-other.

You might be right that this is a total non-issue. I think we just don’t know enough about the structure of the game or multiplayer to know. We probably don’t even need to worry about it, but the devs might. Rule of thumb is if there’s money and there’s rarity humans will find a way to exploit it. It doesn’t require an MMO. Hell there are black markets for furniture in Animal Crossing. Players become very personally invested in their saves and it can take thousands of hours to get them to that point. All it would take is the ability to transfer multiplayer saves with all your vessels and currency to another server to create some holes. Add a dash of cliqueiness and competition and you’re off to the races. Lets say Player A is a spoiled kid from a rich country, and player B is his poorer neighbor down the street. Both have joined a competitive server with agencies racing to Debdeb. Player A, desperately wanting that crucible engine, goes online and purchases a zillion Kerbucks from player C in the Philippines using bitcoin, and then hires player B to do a bunch of gruntwork using these in/game contracts. Its still worth it for players B and C to accept these contracts, but their play experience is the worse for it, and we’ve injected some all-too-real layers of exploitation and leverage into the game. 
 

But! Yes, this all speculation. It may be that the way multiplayer works this would be impossible anyway. 

Edited November 18, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[t_v]

I like you example, except for the fact that it doesn’t point out the problem. And also this:

3 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

goes online and purchases a zillion Kerbucks from player C in the Philippines

Player C must have hacked those coins into the server, because remember, this isn’t an MMO situation. The reason Animal Crossing has a black market is because once someone has an item or other store of value, they can transfer it to anyone else, thus making a sizable market. If you can only trade within your server, as is the case with non-MMOs, then no one has a zillion Kerbucks because the total value of all of the players on the server hasn’t even reached a billion. 
 

The second issue is that this doesn’t really highlight the problem. Replace Kerbucks with Hydrogen, or Metal, and you have the same problem. Just because a resource isn’t central or convertible doesn’t mean it can’t be used for trade; take Minecraft diamonds for example, people want them even though you can’t convert them easily; emeralds would be a better currency but both of those resources can be used for the exploitation you mentioned. The issue with a central currency isn’t that you can exploit people in a big market, it is that it is easy. Paying people in Hydrogen can be effective, but eventually they’ll need to have metal for colonies and suddenly your rates get complicated and no one wants to deal with that. However, if you offer them something that they can turn into whatever they want, then it always has the maximum value, since whatever they need you can provide with one simple transaction. 

Edited November 18, 2022 by t_v

[regex]

9 hours ago, Domonian said:

Career mode is out, Exploration mode is in: https://www.pcgamer.com/kerbal-space-program-director-explains-why-colonies-are-going-to-change-everything-lays-out-early-access-plans/ 

Just as most people thought, funds are now replaced with raw resources. I would assume that contracts and scripted missions are also out, but maybe we'll see something  similar that may provide science points or new parts or something. 

Holy crap, if this kills those ridiculous missions while leaving progression in place? And I only ever have to drill a given resource deposit once to set up a repeating mission?

*chef's kiss*

Edited November 18, 2022 by regex

[Pthigrivi]

9 hours ago, t_v said:

I like you example, except for the fact that it doesn’t point out the problem. And also this:

Player C must have hacked those coins into the server, because remember, this isn’t an MMO situation. The reason Animal Crossing has a black market is because once someone has an item or other store of value, they can transfer it to anyone else, thus making a sizable market. If you can only trade within your server, as is the case with non-MMOs, then no one has a zillion Kerbucks because the total value of all of the players on the server hasn’t even reached a billion. 
 

The second issue is that this doesn’t really highlight the problem. Replace Kerbucks with Hydrogen, or Metal, and you have the same problem. Just because a resource isn’t central or convertible doesn’t mean it can’t be used for trade; take Minecraft diamonds for example, people want them even though you can’t convert them easily; emeralds would be a better currency but both of those resources can be used for the exploitation you mentioned. The issue with a central currency isn’t that you can exploit people in a big market, it is that it is easy. Paying people in Hydrogen can be effective, but eventually they’ll need to have metal for colonies and suddenly your rates get complicated and no one wants to deal with that. However, if you offer them something that they can turn into whatever they want, then it always has the maximum value, since whatever they need you can provide with one simple transaction. 

Thats why I mentioned the option to port a save from one server to another rather than starting from scratch every time you joined a new group. It might be handy especially if things work more like your multiplayer model where your personal clock doesn’t matter so much. If that’s possible however player C could just run a small server where they do nothing but harvest high-value resources, convert to cash, and time warp, inviting customers to join and trade out of their mountain of gold before they join a new server. They could do the same without currency, just run a resource candy shop, but players who bought it would still need to get it to where they need it for it to be useful which takes away a big part of the motivation to hoard. It means trading makes much more sense in the specific situational context of the game (I’ll send uranium to your base on Duna if you send Hydrogen to my base on the Mun) than in an abstract global sense. 

Edited November 18, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[The Aziz]

Funnily enough, the "currency is out" doesn't seem like Nate's words. It sounds more like creative freedom.

But it could be out. Especially when resource trading is already there.