[WIP] MOAB Tech Tree

[IC-Adel]

Background

I've tried some of the general purpose tech trees before, CTT, SIMPLEX, Unkerballed Start, Probes Before Crew. They're all great but there's a few things that bother me:

• If you use a lot of parts mods, you'll end up unlocking waaay too many parts on each node, cluttering your editor, though this can be minimized with the categorization mods. For a noob like me doing their first run with mods, it's overwhelming.
• Unlocking parts too early that you don't have an use for yet, like a rover skid when the rover is unlocked 2 tiers later. This also means you'll be dragging useless parts until you go further in the tree.
• Spreading non-essential parts among several tiers. Like come on, why can I build a medium girder and I have to go do science to be able to build a slightly longer one.
• Mixing parts with different purposes that are marginally related. UKS was guilty of this, landing wheels were in the plane nodes and then the heavier ones were suddenly unlocked in the lander legs nodes.
• Focusing on unlocking dV and science parts. Some mods are better with this than others, but why spend 60 science on connectors why you can spend 60 science on more science-making parts.

Now sure, I could just fork whichever tree mod I liked the most and fix what I wanted, but I found them hard to work with, partially due to the aforementioned reasons.

There's also other tech trees that focus on gameplay balance or challenge, like RP-1 I think, but I just wanted to play my way. 

Either the tech trees are one-size-fits-all, or they have a strict gameplay objective. And so, I went to the drawing board and began working.

Objectives

1. Minimize unlocking of tech I don't intend to use yet
2. Organize the parts in categories similar to how they're seen in the parts list
3. Assign exclusive nodes for mods that add parts that are meant to be used together.
4. Balance science unlocks following unmanned first parts.

Technical Notes

This isn't compatible with the stock tech tree, and will not support any other mod that isn't manually added. (all the unsupported parts are placed in the starting node and unlocked by default)

Luckily, since I'm really lazy, I made a little python script that takes names from a CSV file and generates a tree from them, which means I can just edit it on Excel. It'll just generate placeholders with IDs and positioning, so node details still need to be manually added, but that means anyone can rearrange the tree VERY easily without having to edit node positions, which is bound to happen with such a large tree. Parents still need to be manually modified, but since it's category grouped, I hope I don't have to modify those as much.

With this layout, I have a 35x66 grid to work with. Currently, I have slightly over 430 science nodes, the vast majority already populated with parts.

 I also toyed with the actual RD grid size, but the way KSP handles the zoom makes it snap back to the center everytime you zoom and I couldn't figure out how to override or disable that.

Since parts are grouped by type, all the science parts are in a line, which I find little sense of unlocking with science. There are two ways around this:

1. Tie science part unlocks to building levels (funds in a way).  I already found how to do this, but I didn't want to deal with informing the player the various building levels things would get unlocked at.
2. Tie science part unlocks to achievements (contracts). This is how it's currently implemented. Contracts can unlock tech, the way this works is that if you achieve a kerbin orbit, for example, a contract would get enabled in Mission Control. Completing the contract has no requirements and is completed in 1 second, unlocking the tech node.

Help

There are a few things I haven't yet decided how to implement and need ideas or advice on:

1. There are a few mods like Feline Rover that have hybrid parts, like a drill attachment. I was thinking of simply making a small tree out of them and adding individual parent requirements, but I'm not sure if I even have the space to do so. Currently I have the "basic" parts in one node, and the hybrid parts in another one, I'm thinking they could be science tier-gated slightly higher than its equivalent components.
2. What about support Bluedog Design Bureau? I considered it, but there are so many parts that are intended to use together, that I may need to bundle them up into a whole vessel node similar to rover systems and I'm still unsure about it. Same goes for Probes Plus, but feel free to suggest.
3. MOAB is a tentative name, just because it's something big, feel free to suggest any alternate names.

Pending work

• Add support for Universal Storage
• Compress Aero Tech nodes to save space
• Require Komplexity for more R&D building tiers
• Balance science unlocks
• Upload to a public repository
• Hide overlapping parent lines
• Remove placeholder icons
• Add descriptions

 Mod Support:
(some may still require additional reorganization)

Spoiler

<MAIN>
Airplanes Plus
Cryogenic Engines
Cryo Tanks
Feline Rover
Infernal Robotics
Kerbal Atomics
Malemute Rover
MarkIV Spaceplane
MOIST
NF Aeronautics
NF Construction
NF Electrical
NF Exploration
NF Launch Vehicles
NF Propulsion
NF Solar
NF Spacecraft
OrbitalScience
Planetary Base Systems
RealChute
Restock Plus
SCANsat
Station Parts Redux
TAC Life Support
USI Life Support
Vanilla DLC

<MISC>
Procedural Wings
Structural Tubing
Kerbal Actuators

Pending mods:

Spoiler

<MAIN>
Universal Storage

<MISC>
HullCam VDS
Kerbal NRAP

PICS

Spoiler

I paid for the whole grid, so I'm going to use the whole grid.

 

Edited March 22, 2023 by IC-Adel
Update pic

[theJesuit]

Big job and good luck!  I look forward to see how you make it work.

[IC-Adel]

On 12/17/2022 at 3:31 AM, theJesuit said:

Big job and good luck!  I look forward to see how you make it work.

Thank you.

And will you look at that, I just realized your Achievement Tree would make my science unlocks more approachable, I might try it out.

[Morphisor]

I like the concept!

I'd suggest to be careful with how many nodes you might end up with, considering how many mods are out there. It might be an idea to group certain modsets together in some nodes, as long as they serve a similar purpose. Leave it up to the user how crowded they want their game to be...

As for BDB, best I can come up with for integration is to have its progress oriented by the historical (alternate where applicable) timeline: it already comes with a natural progression in its parts in terms of science and power available. If you then split the spacecraft parts up into small sats / probes / crewed / station parts, you should get a pretty good progression out of it.