A case for adding money to KSP2

[SolarAdmiral]

5 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Personally I wouldn’t have ISRU on Kerbin. The point is consistency and easing new players into the idea of resource costs. Its also important that this process is relatively hassle-free early on. Id just have a resource depot building at KSC that can be upgraded with science to increase production rates, storage, and fancier materials. That way its a strategic choice to invest more on capabilities at KSC or in offworld ISRU. 

See I was thinking kerbin could almost serve as the tutorial for resources. Like hey, we only get this many resources per day. If you want more, you could drive a rover over a few dozen km west and set up a mining route. Or send a cargo ship a few dozen km north up the coast.

It wouldn't be necessary to fly rockets. But it would give the option for players to get introduced to the resource system before even going off world. So then they know what to expect by the time they get to the Moon and have a better idea where they want to establish their colonies.

And it would be a shame if there was no reason to go out driving flying and sailing around the home planet.

Edited January 21, 2023 by SolarAdmiral

[darthgently]

9 minutes ago, SolarAdmiral said:

See I was thinking kerbin could almost serve as the tutorial for resources. Like hey, we only get this many resources per day. If you want more, you could drive a rover over a few dozen km west and set up a mining route. Or send a cargo ship a few dozen km north up the coast.

It wouldn't be necessary to fly rockets. But it would give the option for players to get introduced to the resource system before even going off world. So then they know what to expect by the time they get to the Moon and have a better idea where they want to establish their colonies.

And it would be a shame if there was no reason to go out driving flying and sailing around the home planet.

Once again, I will just say that this range of options can just be in the settings.  The default could be just enough built in resources coming in to maintain a moderate progress rate. If you want to go faster, you can pay more (scarcity and price goes up with demand). 

I could even see an option to merely invest funds into KSC automatic resource production so scarcity, and price, goes down without overt player ISRU kerbinside.

[StopIteration]

20 hours ago, SolarAdmiral said:

And that way, a tank costs 50 iron to build anywhere. Rather than 50 iron anywhere but kerbin and 100 funds on kerbin

It'd still cost 50 iron everywhere, but if you only have 30 iron in your stockpile on Kerbin, you can buy the remaining iron for 40 funds.

20 hours ago, SolarAdmiral said:

This would also give us a reason to drive fly and sail all around kerbin. There could be basic metals all up and down the mountains to the west, oil across the sea, rarer resources in the distant desert or at the frozen poles.

There should maybe be a few resources available to mine on Kerbin, but I think since the goal is mostly to explore space, most resources shouldn't be mineable on Kerbin (too deep maybe).  Kerbin should have interesting stuff to explore, but not much in the way of usable resources.

9 hours ago, SolarAdmiral said:

I'm personally hoping there's a higher teir of manufactured materials that have to be brought from kerbin

Absolutely agree on this.  I think money creates this distinction quite neatly, simply by setting the prices of each resource. 

Raw resources are relatively easy to mine with an early outpost, but certain such resources are expensive to buy on Kerbin.
Manufactured materials require advanced colonies to make yourself, but are relatively cheap to buy on Kerbin.

Edited January 22, 2023 by StopIteration

[StopIteration]

On 1/20/2023 at 3:13 PM, Kerbart said:

Features added “because realism” do not automatically lead to better game play, and we should be careful not to ad features just because “it's more realistic”

I never made that argument, and in fact, while money in KSP 1 is not very realistic, I want to make it even less so (removing the ability to sell resources for money).  I've given specific ways in which I think having money as a restraint would make the early progression system of the game more interesting and fun.

On 1/20/2023 at 3:13 PM, Kerbart said:

it also encourages doing many grinding repetitive missions

Agreed, the way contracts work in KSP 1 is super grindy, and I don't know exactly how to fix it.  But I think it can be implemented in a way that has just the right amount of grindiness to be fun, but not annoying.  Though ultimately as you progress in the game, money would stop mattering so much, and the grind would go away.

On 1/20/2023 at 3:13 PM, Kerbart said:

As a sandbox game, a lot of enjoyment comes out of having the freedom to create whatever you want

I'm assuming you think launching from Kerbin should be free?

I somewhat agree with your point, but there's certainly some satisfaction in creating things that are not only cool, but also useful in furthering your future goals.  Colonies are certainly quite cool and I'd want to make them anyway as I do in KSP 1, but that's all they are if you can just build everything on Kerbin and launch it with some obscenely huge rocket for free.  I think they can be more than that.  The delta-v advantage of launching from an airless moon doesn't matter as much when just adding more boosters is free.  You should be able to get to the point where you can build whatever you want without needing to worry about costs (in money or resources), and there should be a sandbox mode where you can do that from the beginning, but I think overcoming obstacles to get to that point makes it all the more satisfying (and filling out a tech tree isn't all that good of a restraint, certainly not on its own).

[Kerbart]

11 hours ago, StopIteration said:

I never made that argument, and in fact, while money in KSP 1 is not very realistic, I want to make it even less so.

(...)

I'm assuming you think launching from Kerbin should be free?

And yet making claims the money part of KSP doesn't have to be realistic?

I don't think it's free, just not part of the equation. Surely building rockets requires hundreds, thousands, yes perhaps even dozens of staff, and you don't have to manage those either.

[Angelo Kerman]

If the game is as moddable as the devs claim then you could create a mod that adds money to the game. Personally I find not having Funds an intriguing idea. If Science was open ended then I could see trading in Science to unlock your tech nodes. If Science is finite and tech trees are per player then competition is going to be interesting.

[Lowi_Sace]

On 1/4/2023 at 1:22 AM, Ryaja said:

I was sitting around and thinking, they have said that there will probably not be money in KSP2 but this could be a mistake, in real life money is a big restraint and reward for contracts, but I am not focusing on this, I'm focusing on the trade implications on multiplayer, yes you could exchange other resources too but a universal credit is great for trading, and would give a large purpose to contracts and could give you a friendly competition in space race mode(this was confirmed right?).

On kerbin it would be great to have currency. On other planets you can construct colonies, wich can gather recources to build stuff. But how can you get those recources on kerbin? Probably have to buy them there right? I think it would be nice that money only counts for stuff you launch from kerbin

[Ryaja]

7 hours ago, Lowi_Sace said:

On kerbin it would be great to have currency. On other planets you can construct colonies, wich can gather recources to build stuff. But how can you get those recources on kerbin? Probably have to buy them there right? I think it would be nice that money only counts for stuff you launch from kerbin

Or maybe you could build colonies for contracts which the other company then controls and buy stuff there too!

[magnemoe]

On 1/23/2023 at 1:23 PM, Lowi_Sace said:

On kerbin it would be great to have currency. On other planets you can construct colonies, wich can gather recources to build stuff. But how can you get those recources on kerbin? Probably have to buy them there right? I think it would be nice that money only counts for stuff you launch from kerbin

Agree that money is an natural restriction on Kerbin,  it can be budget or contracts. Colonies has resources. It let you select how to do stuff like sending an ship to an colony on Duna or send an fully fueled one from Duna for picking up more kerbals. Now you only need to get them into orbit. 
If might be some resources who is hard to get so you can buy and launch them. 

[StopIteration]

On 1/22/2023 at 6:48 AM, Kerbart said:

I don't think it's free, just not part of the equation. Surely building rockets requires hundreds, thousands, yes perhaps even dozens of staff, and you don't have to manage those either.

By "free" there I wasn't necessarily referring to cost in money, just if you think, gameplay-wise that there should be anything that restricts the player from launching launching whatever they want from Kerbin.  So, save for framerate and physics, should all craft be equally easy to launch from Kerbin?

My response kinda assumed that you thought there should be absolutely no non-physical restrictions whatsoever, but that's maybe an unfair assumption, so that's why I inquired.

This particular question isn't about money at all, just an overall opinion about how gameplay should work.

[Pthigrivi]

12 hours ago, StopIteration said:

By "free" there I wasn't necessarily referring to cost in money, just if you think, gameplay-wise that there should be anything that restricts the player from launching launching whatever they want from Kerbin.  So, save for framerate and physics, should all craft be equally easy to launch from Kerbin?

My response kinda assumed that you thought there should be absolutely no non-physical restrictions whatsoever, but that's maybe an unfair assumption, so that's why I inquired.

This particular question isn't about money at all, just an overall opinion about how gameplay should work.

And I do agree there should be restrictions, especially early in the game. If they are adding building upgrades they should be even tighter on height and weight restrictions on the first tier, but remove part count from the equation. I think in 2-3 upgrades to the VAB and launchpad you could have vessels even bigger than KS1's VAB. I also agree that parts should have a cost, we just get there different ways. If money then your limitation would be running out of money, at which point you'd need to take on contracts. Since those contracts aren't like free exploration and building they run the risk of being a huge waste of players time, demanding they do things they don't really want to do in order to not go broke. If instead they needed to draw directly from a resource depot that fills until storage is full the total resource stockpile would still limit what they could build and encourage efficient designs, but the consequence of running out would only be time-warping a bit to refill it. Early on thats no big deal, maybe you could run 3-5 missions before the depot ran out and needed to refill. The first planetary launch windows aren't for a few hundred days so spacing things out a bit might even be advantageous for pacing. Later on though if you had things like reactors burning through fuel or kerbals gobbling through snacks time would a bit more important. It would also be nice if the depot itself could be upgraded to produce more quickly and hold more. That way players need to think carefully about whether they want to invest precious science on upgrading the depot or in off-world ISRU and living off the land. I think thats a good way to slowly layer in complexity as the game progresses so early on players can focus on the basics and as they get those down new challenges and mount. 

Edited January 25, 2023 by Pthigrivi

[SolarAdmiral]

I think for me it still comes down to it would be a really strange gameplay design to have two completely different resource systems. Off world, there's all the resource extraction and transport. On kerbin you have to do contracts for money. The result, you do contracts and earn money for the first little tiny bit of the game until you get a couple colonies set up on the mun and duna to the point they can build themselves out. And then never touch the contract and money system again for the rest of the game.

Why spend all that extra time building two systems when you could focus efforts on one system and make it better. They could just use the same resource extraction system on kerbin. Instead of paying someone else unseen to extract the resources with money earned from contracts, you can just extract and refine the resources yourself using the same system built for the rest of the game. I guess my question would be, if I can extract resources off world myself without paying for it, why can't I do the same on kerbin?

Not to mention the contracts in ksp1 weren't really all that good. Don't get me wrong I always play career because I like the challenge and the build up. But I'd ignore 90% of all the different contracts because they were a huge waste of time. Trying to get to an exact altitude and speed and carrying some random part. And almost always I'd earn all my early game money to get to the Moon by flying 50 identical take tourists to orbit or rescue kerbal from orbit missions. It was super tedious. I would not miss it.

 

Edited January 25, 2023 by SolarAdmiral

[Pthigrivi]

5 hours ago, SolarAdmiral said:

I think for me it still comes down to it would be a really strange gameplay design to have two completely different resource systems. Off world, there's all the resource extraction and transport. On kerbin you have to do contracts for money. The result, you do contracts and earn money for the first little tiny bit of the game until you get a couple colonies set up on the mun and duna to the point they can build themselves out. And then never touch the contract and money system again for the rest of the game.

Why spend all that extra time building two systems when you could focus efforts on one system and make it better. They could just use the same resource extraction system on kerbin. Instead of paying someone else unseen to extract the resources with money earned from contracts, you can just extract and refine the resources yourself using the same system built for the rest of the game. I guess my question would be, if I can extract resources off world myself without paying for it, why can't I do the same on kerbin?

Not to mention the contracts in ksp1 weren't really all that good. Don't get me wrong I always play career because I like the challenge and the build up. But I'd ignore 90% of all the different contracts because they were a huge waste of time. Trying to get to an exact altitude and speed and carrying some random part. And almost always I'd earn all my early game money to get to the Moon by flying 50 identical take tourists to orbit or rescue kerbal from orbit missions. It was super tedious. I would not miss it.

 

I mostly agree, and maybe its okay if there are some places where you can extract resources on Kerbin, but you don't want players to be reliant on resource extraction on Kerbin. Just feed them resources directly and automatically at KSC. The reason is you don't want to bog players down with a complex system like that right out of the gate. When players first start all they should really be thinking about is how to steer, how staging works, how engines work, how to get to orbit, land on the Mun, etc. You don't want every game to have to start with setting up a whole refinery chain just to get going. 

On the last bit about contracts I completely agree. 

[greenville]

The roadmap cites resource gathering after Debdeb is released. I'll imagine the colonies run on money until they make the switch, Seeing as this would be basically bricking colonies, they'll keep the antiquated system around, This will also probably be the case until e.g. you get a moon colony running.

[Ashandalar]

2 hours ago, greenville said:

The roadmap cites resource gathering after Debdeb is released. I'll imagine the colonies run on money until they make the switch, Seeing as this would be basically bricking colonies, they'll keep the antiquated system around, This will also probably be the case until e.g. you get a moon colony running.

Colonies should function just fine in sandbox, without any resources or money. You'll still be able to found colonies, get used to the colony building system and physics, and launch rockets from the colonies. That's more than enough to include in the update without having to design a stopgap economy system that you intend to remove later anyway.

[Snafu225]

2 hours ago, greenville said:

they'll keep the antiquated system around

since KSP 2 is supposed to be build from scratch I doubt there's an antiquated system in the first place.

[greenville]

Just now, Ashandalar said:

Colonies should function just fine in sandbox, without any resources or money. You'll still be able to found colonies, get used to the colony building system and physics, and launch rockets from the colonies. That's more than enough to include in the update without having to design a stopgap economy system that you intend to remove later anyway.

They won't remove it most likely. Plus, science mode released. Exploration/story will need some form of resource. The stopgap isn't a stopgap if it stays. This serves a purpose for colonies. Before you get your resources imported from the Mun or something, or when you're in orbit only, you can not gain resources. Then you build rockets ect on the Mun. Anything launched from kerbin or the colony with the most colonists in that system will automatically use money with ability to use resources mid-late game. If it launches from somewhere like Dres or Eeloo with few people it uses resources. Also, if the Mun doesn't have x resource but Duna does, then it'll take a really long time for the shipment to come, so the money system makes sense in certain places. but resources others.

[greenville]

Just now, Snafu225 said:

since KSP 2 is supposed to be build from scratch I doubt there's an antiquated system in the first place.

This is just money added in at the start. Also, what about BEFORE colonies come around? You can't get hyperdodecahedronjebjccordingtoallknownlawsofaviationbeesshouldnotbeabletoflydatonium on Kerbin in large amounts. And massively nerfing as soon as you can get it from Moho just... won't work.

[Snafu225]

9 minutes ago, greenville said:

This is just money added in at the start. Also, what about BEFORE colonies come around? You can't get hyperdodecahedronjebjccordingtoallknownlawsofaviationbeesshouldnotbeabletoflydatonium on Kerbin in large amounts. And massively nerfing as soon as you can get it from Moho just... won't work.

I doubt that there will be money added at the start, everything will be most likely ressource based, but this was discussed enough already.

[Ashandalar]

26 minutes ago, greenville said:

They won't remove it most likely.

My point was there is no reason to expect they will add money in the first place, because the colony mechanics should work fine without it, even before resources are in the game. The issue you claim money fixes doesn't seem like an issue at all to me, so what other reasons do you have to "imagine" money will be added? All information, not speculation, so far indicates it won't be.

26 minutes ago, greenville said:

Exploration/story will need some form of resource.

And why do you think there will be an exploration mode at the point in the roadmap where colonies are introduced? It's safe to assume we'll have a form of science mode, and a sandbox mode, but it would be perfectly coherent for the exploration mode to arrive along with the resource system. That part of the roadmap is literally titled "exploration", after all.

Edited February 4, 2023 by Ashandalar

[adamfrog]

18 hours ago, Ashandalar said:

My point was there is no reason to expect they will add money in the first place, because the colony mechanics should work fine without it, even before resources are in the game. The issue you claim money fixes doesn't seem like an issue at all to me, so what other reasons do you have to "imagine" money will be added? All information, not speculation, so far indicates it won't be.

You need some way to incentivize smaller more effecient rockets since without it designing rockets becomes very unrewarding to most people. Late game I could imagine fuel being the limiting factor and setting up a mining colony and scanning minmus for the ideal locations for a colony etc could be fun, early game straight up money is just a better way to limit the game I think.

Also late game if they make more advanced engines that run on rare rescources that need to be mined on eeloo etc, i think thats a great idea, but early game I cant imagine it being fun to get rescources unless they also want to design Kerbal Train Network engineer too to run a kerbin transport network