Are resources a better fit than money for KSP2?

[Pthigrivi]

20 hours ago, Skorj said:

The point of this example is that the kind of "mission" you have to do to progress changes at each stage, without the need for a mission generator or specific story line.  Start by figuring out reasonably efficient boosters, and getting to nearby bodies.  Move on to ISRU and initial colonies, where funds are no longer a limit but ore is.  Move on gameplay around searching for relics and landing at interesting and difficult places.  Move on to proving  you can use all the game mechanics in a complex and integrated way, then launch the intersteller ship.

I think this all works except for the inclusion of funds. We're often used to resources in other games just being a set of numbers at the top of the screen. Thats what we've harvested and we can spend them instantly anywhere on the map. Thats not true for resources in KSP. Resources can't be deployed anywhere instantly, they need to be physically moved from place to place to be of use and that process of traversal is integral to the game. Funds don't behave that way. They don't cap, and either they only work on kerbin or they can be magically transported anywhere in your program. If the former then you've created a resource that at first acts as a disincentive for starting colonies because it's only useful at home, and once you have moved on and started living off the land it becomes increasingly useless. If this is how money is going to behave why include it at all? After all it's not just the number, its all of the of the financial gameplay infrastructure earning and completing contracts and solutions for players who go broke and so on. Instead you could just have a resource/fuel farm built-in at KSC that fills over time up to a certain cap and let players get used to the costs and structure out of the gate rather than starting them off on a resource that will soon be meaningless. KSC just acts as its own colony. It's one consistent gameplay logic thats important throughout the game. If instead you can use money to magically conjure resources on other worlds you've kind of side-stepped the central theme of KSP's gameplay as a space traversal game. Instead of looking to cobble together and carefully balance a few different resources many players will just focus on making money and then magically transporting it around. 

21 hours ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

A “government funding” model where success in achieving objectives gets you a funding increase and a dacha whereas failure gets your funding cut and  you sent to the Gulag would have a very different flavour from KSP’s “Commercial Space” model where you make funds to research parts and build out your rockets and KSC.  

I actually think it's important that players can play KSP and imagine themselves to be either a private or public organization. This is one of the advantages of deliberately leaving much of KSP's story undefined. This is another subtle disadvantage to getting into the money piece because however its structured it tells players what kind of organization they are rather than leaving that to their imagination. To me KSP is first and foremost an engineering sim, not a financial sim. I would argue thats the same reason it shouldn't bog players down too much in social management at colonies. A way to think of it is that as the player you are not the director of NASA. The director has a lot of boring jobs cajoling politicians and scrabbling for funding and weighing in on personnel and vendor decisions. You're more like the chief engineer and flight director. Your job is to build and fly. The more gameplay strays into other roles the less focus the game has and more time players are spending scrolling through menus rather than making cool things in the VAB and flying them. Resources do this because the process of scanning for them and flying or driving harvesters to them and processing them into useful products at colonies are all still tasks that fall into the categories of building and flying. You don't really have to worry about payroll or pleasing this or that vendor, all you really care about is that you have the materials and fuel on site to do the mission.

Edited August 5, 2023 by Pthigrivi

[Sea_Kerman]

And also a colony sort of has to be vertically integrated, that’s what makes it a colony and not a forward operating base.

[Infinite Aerospace]

I'd like to see both resources and funding present, with more emphasis on being efficient than the previous game. So, recovering boosters becomes actually economically beneficial.

[Skorj]

On 8/5/2023 at 10:54 AM, Pthigrivi said:

I think this all works except for the inclusion of funds. We're often used to resources in other games just being a set of numbers at the top of the screen. Thats what we've harvested and we can spend them instantly anywhere on the map. Thats not true for resources in KSP. Resources can't be deployed anywhere instantly, they need to be physically moved from place to place to be of use and that process of traversal is integral to the game. Funds don't behave that way. They don't cap, and either they only work on kerbin or they can be magically transported anywhere in your program. If the former then you've created a resource that at first acts as a disincentive for starting colonies because it's only useful at home, and once you have moved on and started living off the land it becomes increasingly useless. If this is how money is going to behave why include it at all? After all it's not just the number, its all of the of the financial gameplay infrastructure earning and completing contracts and solutions for players who go broke and so on. Instead you could just have a resource/fuel farm built-in at KSC that fills over time up to a certain cap and let players get used to the costs and structure out of the gate rather than starting them off on a resource that will soon be meaningless. KSC just acts as its own colony. It's one consistent gameplay logic thats important throughout the game. If instead you can use money to magically conjure resources on other worlds you've kind of side-stepped the central theme of KSP's gameplay as a space traversal game. Instead of looking to cobble together and carefully balance a few different resources many players will just focus on making money and then magically transporting it around.

After writing the below, I realized something, and thus this pre-addendum: it's vital that whatever resource or currency is used, it's not also the score.  There must be a goal separate and distinct from "get more funds/ore/whatever".  Resources should be the obstacle, not the goal.  Perhaps we're talking past each other because of this?

Maybe I can explain my point better.  At each stage in the game something will be the bottleneck resource.  Games with multiple resources generally work out this way - you may need 4 resources to build the thing you want, but you have lots of 3 of them and so you ability to build that thing comes down to the 4th.  The rest almost don't matter (unless you're deliberately doing some odd challenge run or something), except as "color" or world-building.

In the early game, and by early game I mean precisely where there is only one place you're launching from, there are no other places to move resources to.  A resource other than funds makes little sense here - it doesn't fit for the early game to be about building iron mines on Kerbin or hitting a coal patch with a pickaxe something, it's not that kind of game.  This isn't Minecraft or Factorio; we should get the resource needed to launch rockets by launching rockets.  And before "near future" tech is unlocked, needing some sort of resource that you can't get on Kerbin in order to launch from Kerbin just seems silly.  So, just for the early game, funds seem ideal.   (Or some other non-resource abstraction, but I think "reputation" has a bad reputation in KSP).  You don't need to explain "funds", or why they're a bottleneck, it's a natural fit for being some kind of space agency, details left unexplained.

But then you're past the early game.  You're launching from somewhere that's not Kerbin.  You've reached the mid game, and now a resource is the bottleneck.  Now that makes sense.  You may still need funds to launch from e.g. Minmus, but you have plenty.  What you don't have is ore on Minmus, and it's ore, ready and usable for the rocket-building-thingie, that you care about.  (Or fuel, or whatever.)  Funds are only even  relevant for verisimilitude, or perhaps as the reason why you have to move to ISRU, instead of launching everything from Kerbin.

In no way am I suggesting that, just because funds exist, you can use them to cause ore to magically appear mined and ready on Minmus.  There's no reason to build the game that way, and plenty of reasons not to.  But to constrain launching early tech rockets from Kerbin?  To give a benefit for building reusable rockets early?  Funds are just the natural fit.

[Pthigrivi]

1 hour ago, Skorj said:

Maybe I can explain my point better.  At each stage in the game something will be the bottleneck resource.  Games with multiple resources generally work out this way - you may need 4 resources to build the thing you want, but you have lots of 3 of them and so you ability to build that thing comes down to the 4th.  The rest almost don't matter (unless you're deliberately doing some odd challenge run or something), except as "color" or world-building.

In the early game, and by early game I mean precisely where there is only one place you're launching from, there are no other places to move resources to.  A resource other than funds makes little sense here - it doesn't fit for the early game to be about building iron mines on Kerbin or hitting a coal patch with a pickaxe something, it's not that kind of game.  This isn't Minecraft or Factorio; we should get the resource needed to launch rockets by launching rockets.  And before "near future" tech is unlocked, needing some sort of resource that you can't get on Kerbin in order to launch from Kerbin just seems silly.  So, just for the early game, funds seem ideal.   (Or some other non-resource abstraction, but I think "reputation" has a bad reputation in KSP).  You don't need to explain "funds", or why they're a bottleneck, it's a natural fit for being some kind of space agency, details left unexplained.

But then you're past the early game.  You're launching from somewhere that's not Kerbin.  You've reached the mid game, and now a resource is the bottleneck.  Now that makes sense.  You may still need funds to launch from e.g. Minmus, but you have plenty.  What you don't have is ore on Minmus, and it's ore, ready and usable for the rocket-building-thingie, that you care about.  (Or fuel, or whatever.)  Funds are only even  relevant for verisimilitude, or perhaps as the reason why you have to move to ISRU, instead of launching everything from Kerbin.

So, absolutely, you could do that. The question I have is if the devs have developed a system to have an evolving set of resources that can be used to build rockets why create a whole separate redundant system of money and contracts that's only relevant early in the game? Just use the same resource cost system at KSC. There's no need to manage mining on Kerbin. The material is just delivered automatically to KSC. If initially those resources are capped by a storage limit at KSC--say starting off with enough methalox, monoprop, and metals to do the first few launches--then players can get going and used to resource costs for different parts that will be applicable throughout the game. If they want to build bigger than their starting storage allows or start producing fancy fuels like Uranium or H2 at KSC then they'll have to invest some of the science they've collected in upgrading KSC's fuel farm. In that way increasing the resources you have available at KSC would be driven by launching rockets and exploring. Nothing about this implies that Uranium doesn't exist on Kerbin, just that as the player you've got to tech up a bit to make it freely available at your launch facility.

As a game designer you're not purposefully creating unavoidable bottlenecks. Bottlenecks are a potential pitfall for players, but they should always be given the tools to avoid them if they play their cards right. The really cool thing about KSP2 is that they've talked about having different resources that are more or less available on different planets, so collecting what you need and making the best of what you find is a dynamic part of the game. It's not inevitable that you'll run into a bottleneck for Uranium. You could either go to a place that has Uranium and transport it to where you need or find some other non-nuclear solution for energy production. You might find that Minmus is high in a resource that can be converted easily into Methalox but the Mun is high in He3 and investing more heavily in bases on one or the other would shape the kind of program you develop. I don't think that kind of resource juggling, leapfrogging, and creatively living off the land should ever really stop, right up to developing late tier antimatter engines (or who knows what) in other star systems.  

Edited August 7, 2023 by Pthigrivi

[Skorj]

When you say

2 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

As a game designer you're not purposefully creating unavoidable bottlenecks. Bottlenecks are a potential pitfall for players, but they should always be given the tools to avoid them if they play their cards right.

... my thought is: that's what the gameplay is in a game with resource management.  At some stage in the game you need X to progress.  And not just a store of X, it's an ongoing supply of X far beyond anything you've seen in the game before.  So, in order to advance the game, you solve the problem of producing X in sufficient quantities that it's no longer the bottleneck.  And at that point you've moved to the next stage of the game.  The bottleneck resource defines the problem to solve, that problem being: get all you need.  If you can avoid them. the whole mechanic is pointless; you overcome them. 

I mean, this is the basis of every craft-and-explore game, many colony sims, a whole collection of genres. 

Sure, you could go a different direction, but it's hard to have an in-character need for colonies if you don't.  Obviously in sandbox mode you're building things just to build them, and that's great, but in some replacement for career mode you need colonies to be good at something, and it sure seems to fit that that something is resource production.  Yes, in theory you could have multiple paths past a given stage in the game involving a choice of different resources, but that's just a lot more dev work to get to the same place.  One of those resources will be the most efficient path, and most people will do that and ignore the rest: that's just how most people play games these days.  I mean, if the dev team was way ahead of schedule and looking even more stuff to add to an already complete game, go for it.  But that's not the world we live in.

Quote

The question I have is if the devs have developed a system to have an evolving set of resources that can be used to build rockets why create a whole separate redundant system of money and contracts that's only relevant early in the game? Just use the same resource cost system at KSC. There's no need to manage mining on Kerbin. The material is just delivered automatically to KSC.

I can answer that.  First, you don't need to "develop" funds or explain what they are or how they work.  Good game design leverages "prior player knowledge" about the world.  As for your suggestion: it doesn't reward you for launching rockets!  Unless I misunderstand, this sound like a resource you get more of only as game time passes, which sound likes an idle game.  It sure doesn't sound like a resource you get more of by reaching orbit, then reaching the Mun, then landing on the Mun and returning.  All of the tutorial-like steps the early game needs to be about.  With funds, it's trivial to tie rewards to these goals without breaking immersion. 

If I have a tank of something that slowly filled that limited my ability to do the fun part of the game, I would immediately assume my goal was to make that fill up faster, to get an unlimited supply of it.  I'd be looking for a way to build more mines, because in the language of games you just told me that was my goal.  I just don't see how that would make sense to accomplish by getting my first Kerbal out of the atmosphere, or demonstrating my mastery of orbital rendezvous and docking, or any of the key early game "learn to rocket" goals.

Edited August 8, 2023 by Skorj

[Pthigrivi]

2 hours ago, Skorj said:

When you say

... my thought is: that's what the gameplay is in a game with resource management.  At some stage in the game you need X to progress.  And not just a store of X, it's an ongoing supply of X far beyond anything you've seen in the game before.  So, in order to advance the game, you solve the problem of producing X in sufficient quantities that it's no longer the bottleneck.  And at that point you've moved to the next stage of the game.  The bottleneck resource defines the problem to solve, that problem being: get all you need.  If you can avoid them. the whole mechanic is pointless; you overcome them. 

On your last point I agree. I think we're just using different language to describe the same thing. The potential for being bottlenecked is solid motivator for players, and players will look to preempt or overcome it. There's a difference here though in what you're describing. What you don't normally see in games is a part or gamepiece suddenly changing its resource cost midway through the progression. You don't normally have a house cost 10 wood and then later that exact same house costs 12 metal and 15 stone. You might have an upgraded version of a house that cost different resources, but you'd expect better stats for the time and energy that went into producing novel resources.  If the Swivel engine costs X at the beginning of the game it should cost X throughout the game. If later you're spending Y + Z you'd expect be getting a fancy nuclear engine with noticeably different performance. I've never played a game in which when I start everything costs gold, but then half-way through the game suddenly says "just kidding!" and starts charging me a bunch of hard to procure resources for the exact same parts. You've spent the early, onboarding stage of the game miseducating players about the nature of the game to follow. You've also greatly increased the transition difficulty between launching from Kerbin and setting up off-world colonies when you should be making that transition as seamless as possible. 
 

2 hours ago, Skorj said:

I can answer that.  First, you don't need to "develop" funds or explain what they are or how they work.  Good game design leverages "prior player knowledge" about the world. 

But players are pretty used to spending resources on things in games too. In my mind the goal of a good game is to take the simplest possible set of rules to produce the largest possible set of effective, creative solutions. Think of that as like a bang-for-buck ratio. Chess has incredibly simple rules but a nearly infinite possible gamespace. We already know that KSP2 intends to use a resource system from the late-early/ early-mid game on. If you're adding a wildly different set of rules on top of the resource system that only increases total system complexity. If all those finantial-sim rules are only applicable in the early game are they really paying for themselves in terms of actual player experience over the course of play? It seems to me like a very low bang-for-buck proposition.
 

2 hours ago, Skorj said:

Yes, in theory you could have multiple paths past a given stage in the game involving a choice of different resources, but that's just a lot more dev work to get to the same place.  One of those resources will be the most efficient path, and most people will do that and ignore the rest: that's just how most people play games these days. 

...

If I have a tank of something that slowly filled that limited my ability to do the fun part of the game, I would immediately assume my goal was to make that fill up faster, to get an unlimited supply of it.  I'd be looking for a way to build more mines, because in the language of games you just told me that was my goal.  I just don't see how that would make sense to accomplish by getting my first Kerbal out of the atmosphere, or demonstrating my mastery of orbital rendezvous and docking, or any of the key early game "learn to rocket" goals.

Okay a couple of things, and this may just be a difference in theory about what makes a game 'good'. I don't think largely linear, rote, grind-for-reward gameplay is good, though yes many, many current games rely on gnawing at players' reward/dopamine response exactly in this way. Thats what's so important about game balance and allowing room for creative solutions. Stardew Valley is in some ways just a cutesy-bootsie farming game, but the specific balance between different crops is incredibly well tuned to ensure that its not the "MAKE BLUEBERRIES" game. In my mind good games aren't about grinding through bottlenecks. It's about creating a dynamic set of strategic forks and potential synergies. Strategic forks are moments in gameplay where players have a choice: "I can pursue this path and get X or I could pursue another path and get Y."  Hold this in your mind as distinct from "I can pursue this path and get X or I can pursue another path and get 10X". That latter methodology is fine in doses, but it doesn't give players real agency or true creative licence because as you point out all players will trend toward 10X. This is the problem with singular, infinitely transferable and therefore reductive resources like money.  It's also kind of what I was getting at about Chess and large gamespaces. If instead of straight min-maxing you can create a number of strategic forks suddenly the possible creative solutions to success starts to multiply and then grow exponentially. In terms of KSP this would mean choices like investing in bigger rockets vs investing in better rockets. Players might choose to invest more in probes or devote more energy to crewed exploration. Those previous choices might sway them to unlock more tech related to Xenon or instead pursue H2 infrastructure. That decision might be guided by what resources they happen to find on Minmus or the Mun. To your point in your last paragraph one of those critical decision points could be to invest more in developing KSC or instead devoting energy toward off-world ISRU*. None of these choices need be exclusive or cut off the chance to change course if you changed your mind, but each tech unlock should really get players thinking about what they're most interested in  doing and exploring next and long term.

The next thing to think about are synergies.  Synergies are potential focal points where cleverly combining a few different efforts results in a whole greater than the sum of parts. What could that mean in KSP2? It could be a simple as investing early in probes, xenon engines, and scanning, allowing a player to rapidly send out probes and assess as many worlds as possible for potential resource opportunities. Or it could mean moving from Methalox to H2 to He3 and skipping nuclear tech entirely to quickly get fleet of highly efficient fusion tugboats moving material around the Kerbolar system. Another player might instead go for Orion style propulsion and then parlay that tech and uranium harvesting investment directly into nuclear salt water engines. None of these solutions would be wrong. They'd just be different, clever paths to efficiently maximize your ability to move through space all based on what you happened to find and what you as a player chose to do with what you found. 

*To this last point there is one very critical thing to understand about the advantage of ISRU vs big-giant launches from Kerbin: gravity wells. If KSP2 could teach players one new thing that they wouldn't get anywhere else it's the power of gravity wells. Getting from the surface of Kerbin to LKO costs 3400dv. But you can get to LKO from the Mun for 1720dv, or from Minmus for just 1260dv and with much more efficient, low-TWR engines and no need for aerodynamic shielding (or instead aerobrake for a fraction even of that).  If you're looking to go from the orbit of Minmus or the Mun to other planets via Kerbin slingshot the advantages become even more distinct. That's why a game that considers part cost and fuel cost in an apples-to-apples way both on Kerbin and off-world could really highlight to players why you really shouldn't want to expend more science than you absolutely have to upgrading KSC, because in the end its stuck at the bottom of a very deep hole locally speaking. 

Edited August 8, 2023 by Pthigrivi

[VlonaldKerman]

12 hours ago, Skorj said:

In the early game, and by early game I mean precisely where there is only one place you're launching from, there are no other places to move resources to.  A resource other than funds makes little sense here

What about the resource being science/tech? In KSP 1, it is relatively easy to gain science and progress quite quickly if you have even a basic sense for the gameplay (I landed on Mun/Minmus and got tons of science even the first time I played). In KSP 2, this early progression experience could be ratcheted up in terms of engineering difficulty to a small extent.

The obvious concern here is that new players will find it frustrating. But I think this is a misunderstanding of the intended KSP audience. In my mind, the core KSP player is one who relishes in an interesting challenge. To reference another forum thread, many KSP players like the Lego philosophy for making fuel tanks as opposed to procedural tanks like those in Juno because it is a way of imposing structural constraints (though they don’t want the fail state to be comical bending of the rocket). When I was an inexperienced player, I enjoyed having to accomplish increasingly difficult mission parameters with primitive Kerbal technology. I often set my sights too high and failed, but every now and then I did something like landing on the Mun with several fewer tech nodes than one might think they need. However, this type of challenge goes away pretty early in the stock science mode with default multipliers. You can easily unlock a huge fraction of the tech tree in the Kerbin system without the use of labs or without my completionist/perfectionist mission designs. KSP 2 can do better in this regard, and I think that available tech is a good constraint in the early game, because it also mirrors humanity’s current state wrt. space exploration, which may one day give way to a resource constraint in real life. KSP 2 could mirror that progression without the tedium of funds and contracts.

[Sea_Kerman]

I definitely agree with the “KSC is at the bottom of a gravity well” thing and think it should be emphasized.

I was thinking, for the KSC, instead of having slowly-filling resource pools, why not have your contracts/science/whatever allow you to buy those resources? Thus it’s “fly rockets to be able to make more rockets” instead of “time warp a bit to be able to make more rockets” and it’s also a lot more in-line with what you’ll be doing in colonies (make rockets out of resources) except in colonies you have to harvest them yourself.

Edited August 8, 2023 by Sea_Kerman

[regex]

12 minutes ago, Sea_Kerman said:

I was thinking, for the KSC, instead of having slowly-filling resource pools, why not have your contracts/science/whatever allow you to buy those resources?

Why have them slowly filling? Why not just have the resources be limited at KSC but effectively infinite? You can only use so many at one given time and your decision to upgrade KSC still leaves it at the bottom of a gravity well under atmosphere. Under that system KSC would never have specialty resources which places some real constraints on any supply routes (atmosphere, re-use) to bring those in. You could also prevent shipping resources out from KSC or just make it extremely painful to do so (turnover times for shipping routes, practical limits on the resources available at any given time). Or just let players who build a solid SSTO have their fun at Kerbin, reward them.

[Pthigrivi]

18 minutes ago, regex said:

Why have them slowly filling? Why not just have the resources be limited at KSC but effectively infinite? You can only use so many at one given time and your decision to upgrade KSC still leaves it at the bottom of a gravity well under atmosphere. Under that system KSC would never have specialty resources which places some real constraints on any supply routes (atmosphere, re-use) to bring those in. You could also prevent shipping resources out from KSC or just make it extremely painful to do so (turnover times for shipping routes, practical limits on the resources available at any given time). Or just let players who build a solid SSTO have their fun at Kerbin, reward them.

Yeah I think the thick atmo and deep gravity well does most of the work here. If you can set up shop harvesting raw materials on Minmus and/or the Mun you can move things around much more efficiently and focus your Kerbin launches just on lifting equipment that you can't yet produce elsewhere. Like maybe you can harvest Methalox and Metals but don't yet have a source for Uranium. You'd have a choice then to spend science on uranium storage at KSC and then either ship the reactors or the fuel to your Munar outposts, or you could invest in developing uranium mining off-world. If balanced well this is exactly the kind of strategic trade-off that gives players multiple paths to success. 

Edited August 8, 2023 by Pthigrivi

[VlonaldKerman]

Ok I was just thinking about this: with supply rout automation but without funds, why would someone care about Kerbins gravity well? In terms of shipping supplies, why wouldn’t you just use the new automation system to send tons of launches from Kerbin?

Will they limit the number of auto launches from KSC? So basically you could do infinite supply missions from KSC, but you would have to fly them all manually? That kind of ruins immersion/continuity for me.

Or will they make time a more important feature? Like, rockets taking time to build, and it taking time to refurbish a launchpad after each launch, and roll out a new rocket?

Essentially, without funds, I’m looking for a constraint that prevents players from simply launching many, many supply missions from KSC, even though it’s “inefficient.” If not funds, what is it not using efficiently? Time? Launching capacity?

[regex]

16 minutes ago, VlonaldKerman said:

Ok I was just thinking about this: with supply rout automation but without funds, why would someone care about Kerbins gravity well? In terms of shipping supplies, why wouldn’t you just use the new automation system to send tons of launches from Kerbin?

We have no idea if they'll allow non-reusable craft to do resource shuffling. Assuming "limited but infinite" resources, if they do then that severely limits how much you could move at any one given time since you'd have to build the rocket and load it with resources before shipping, and you would only be able to use so many resources at any one given time. If you built an SSTO to do it then the game should reward your good engineering and allow you to take off with resources and move them where needed.

Even if you successfully set up an SSTO route from Kerbin to a space station you're still limited by the station's storage and you still wouldn't have specialty resources, which would be sourced from elsewhere. Further, why ship all the way to Jool when you can set up a colony there to mine base and specialty resources, and have them available much quicker? Alternatively, if you have an orbital platform in Kerbin orbit with basically unlimited resources from KSC due to supply routes, who cares? Good on you for building a great SSTO fleet, you've found a good solution to that problem! You still need to ship in specialty resources mined from elsewhere. Would it be easier to have an orbital platform out where those resources are, and mine base resources there, or would it be easier to ship specialty resources from out there to Kerbin, where you've created some good SSTO supply lines so you don't have to worry about base resources?

Time will always be a limiting factor under this because travel takes time. Even if you time-limit building and turnaround that would still pale in comparison to travel time outside Kerbin SOI (and hopefully certain resources are only available outside Kerbin SOI, certainly you should only be able to gather science past a certain point out there...)

Quote

Essentially, without funds, I’m looking for a constraint that prevents players from simply launching many, many supply missions from KSC, even though it’s “inefficient.” If not funds, what is it not using efficiently? Time? Launching capacity?

Why worry about that? You would still (ideally) need specialty resources from elsewhere in the system to do more interesting things than basic chemical rocketry. Why shouldn't players be able to create unlimited basic chemical rocketry (naturally limited by how much you've upgraded KSC)? Time will always be a constraint, how much time do you want to spend time-warping versus how much time do you want to spend in the VAB and watching your special missions do their thing?

KSC doesn't have to be limited here, it already presents a great inefficiency and if you can overcome that with smart engineering you should be rewarded. Other resources should absolutely be limited to outside Kerbin SOI, and you should never be able to collect science beyond a certain point without leaving Kerbin SOI (and for that matter, leaving Kerbol SOI!).

[Pthigrivi]

On 8/8/2023 at 12:33 PM, VlonaldKerman said:

Or will they make time a more important feature? Like, rockets taking time to build, and it taking time to refurbish a launchpad after each launch, and roll out a new rocket?

 

On 8/8/2023 at 1:07 PM, regex said:

Time will always be a limiting factor under this because travel takes time. Even if you time-limit building and turnaround that would still pale in comparison to travel time outside Kerbin SOI (and hopefully certain resources are only available outside Kerbin SOI, certainly you should only be able to gather science past a certain point out there...)

I'm still conflicted on this question: should KSP2 take time seriously. There's a go-to argument against, and I think it's a good argument. Some players are going to want to play each mission all the way through to its destination sequentially and other players are going to want to send out a dozen or more missions simultaneously and juggle in between them. Depending on how you structure your time-based rewards and costs you're very likely to put a finger on the scale toward one or the other tendency because sequential missions are going to gobble up way, way more global clock time than running lots of things concurrently. I think this is part of the reason Chris Adderley is vehemently against stock LS, though maybe his opposition is more about punishing gameplay than time based mechanics. If he does an AMA I'd love to know his thoughts on this. (I think he's wrong about LS in this instance, but that's a topic for another day.) The argument for time-based mechanics is more complicated because you have to sketch out a paradigm in which there are both rewards and costs to time-warping that balance themselves out in a way that allows for a broad swath of playstyles. I think this is tricky but not impossible, and the rewards in terms of depth of gameplay could absolutely be worth it if done well (and yes I think LS could be a key tool in this pursuit and omitting it would be a mistake.)

I'll probably double back on LS so we'll put a pin in that. In regards to how resources are handled at KSC my feeling is that resources should refill at a steady rate and then cap, and both the rate and the cap could be upgraded together. Or maybe it's just the cap that's upgradeable? Regex is right that a refresh/turnaround time that that's sensible for KSOI is going to be way too fast compared to interplanetary missions. There's a real gameplay risk here that players will naturally get bogged down building and building in KSOI rather than expand to other planets because not maximizing every minute and every kg of generated fuel is going to induce FOMO. I'd be tempted to carefully scale Kerbin's resource generation rate to let players meet some of those key early launch windows to Duna, Moho, + Jool, but I think the Sequential vs Simultaneous problem is going to make this untenable long term. Maybe it's still a good metric for the early game though? At some point I think you want players to get pretty comfortable just ensuring that their colony products are in the black and will rapidly cap and not worry so much about time warping for long stretches with full tanks. As a player you should have superseding drivers like science, tech unlocks, and boom events driving higher populations that push you to explore further and further and not sweat topped-off tanks. 

Edited August 9, 2023 by Pthigrivi

[Periple]

10 hours ago, VlonaldKerman said:

Essentially, without funds, I’m looking for a constraint that prevents players from simply launching many, many supply missions from KSC, even though it’s “inefficient.” If not funds, what is it not using efficiently? Time? Launching capacity?

My solution would be the one you named earlier —  only allow automated supply runs from off-world colonies.

Yes, it’s an artificial constraint, but in practice players get over such immersion-breakers really quickly (usually without even noticing them) if the resulting gameplay keeps them engaged. In this case, it would be a powerful incentive to establish colonies, which is just the kind of engaging gameplay that would do it. It would also be easy to introduce the mechanic as a feature of a colony, which helps sell it to the player. 

If funds were involved I’m worried it would just become a distraction or grind. Your missions would halt when you run dry, which would force you to grind for money rather than grinding for supply. If there was a way to make funds auto-generate, then it’d push you to do that rather than explore the universe. And if they auto-generated as a side effect of exploring the universe, they might as well not be there.

(In a game with time warp, time based constraints are meaningless, they’ll just make the player hold the warp button until whatever they want has regenerated.)

Ultimately though it’s not possible to stop players from grinding or exploiting systems. They’ll play the game like they want to. The best you can do is try to align the incentives so that they encourage varied and engaging gameplay. Sometimes this means artificial “immersion-breaking” constraints. 

[dr.phees]

I posted this before, but I think it is more fitting in this thread. I have a suggestion, to make money really working and better than pure resources limitations - it would work well together with that and, most important, it would remove grinding.

 

 

I always thought it would be nice to be able to play these missions if you wanted, but not to gather money for further playing.

A good way would be for specific mission types to act as proof-of-concept milestones for other such contracts. You could decide to set each unlocked mission type to "automatic" and it would unlock that level of cost for later rockets, in the sense of: You were able to run a profitable mission with a rocket that cost [this much], so we will fund any future rockets of that cost, no question asked. The idea behind this is, that we are the designers of new vehicles and try the new stuff. Someone else is running similar missions with the craft we provided without us having to know, producing these vehicles for profit and we only have to fund further development. One could even opt for some monthly income to our budget, but that might collide with fast-forwarding. I would be fine for money/earnings to just expand our mission cost envelope.

Every mission type could have escalation steps: (rescue from Kerbin orbit, Mun orbit, Minmus, Eve...)

Another way to expand your budget could be to set a mission type, that you would be willing to do:

Landing & return operation on Eve would give you a couple of generated missions: A rescue mission, a sample return mission etc., while orbital mapping operations on gas giants would give you exactly that. Maybe including some high-profit/high-risk mission like a low orbit mapping while within a planet's athmosphere or very low down, pushing you into dipping into a gas giant's athmosphere if just for a very short moment, etc.

So, to make it short:

You have a vehicle budget and you play missions to expand that budget. If your mission is successful, your approved budget is raised. If you mission is profitable, your budget is raised even more. From then on you may repeat that kind of mission to get more profitable in that mission profile/type. You can simply browse mission by type and set them to not bother you anymore.

Why?

It removes grinding, but still incentivizes you for profitable missions and cost saving. And it adds a new thing: Competing with yourself for more profitable mission setups.

Why at all?

Not having money/budget in a Space Program game simply does not make sense! Budget makes you go for efficiency, which can be a very driving factor behind designing good ships. Just slapping many tanks on and adding power is boring once you can build huge rockets. Science and budget are the way to go, but not in KSP1 style.

[VlonaldKerman]

16 hours ago, regex said:

We have no idea if they'll allow non-reusable craft to do resource shuffling. Assuming "limited but infinite" resources, if they do then that severely limits how much you could move at any one given time since you'd have to build the rocket and load it with resources before shipping, and you would only be able to use so many resources at any one given time.

If they allow automation with non-reusable ships, then presumably they would have a system whereby the player automatically commissions a rocket and fills it with supplies and launches it. Not having this sort of violates immersion to me in the same way that not allowing automated launches from the KSC does- it’s an arbitrary inability of the system. That could be just fine, or it could be a problem- I’m sure there would be lots of opinions about that.

6 hours ago, Periple said:

My solution would be the one you named earlier —  only allow automated supply runs from off-world colonies.

Yes, it’s an artificial constraint, but in practice players get over such immersion-breakers really quickly

One issue with this may be that there is a phase of the progression when you are starting colonies on Mun/Minmus and it makes a lot of sense to be able to automate launches from KSC. However, as others have noted, this problem might be solvable by making the automation system such that it works by taking off and landing at the same place, and you have to fly that mission once before automating it, meaning you have to have a craft capable of at least going both ways- if not an SSTO. Although, this would introduce more limitations. For instance what if I wanted to: 

Deliver supplies from Mun —> Duna, pick up rare material at Duna —> deposit rare material at Minmus —> Wait at Minmus to be reassigned a new route.

17 hours ago, regex said:

Why shouldn't players be able to create unlimited basic chemical rocketry (naturally limited by how much you've upgraded KSC)? Time will always be a constraint, how much time do you want to spend time-warping versus how much time do you want to spend in the VAB and watching your special missions do their thing?

I think there should be an incentive against creating a rocket to do a supply run, and retiring it once said run is over, rinse and repeat. Either by decommissioning it when it gets to its destination, or by arbitrarily forcing a return journey, only to allow for the rocket to come back with only a capsule left.

17 hours ago, regex said:

KSC doesn't have to be limited here, it already presents a great inefficiency and if you can overcome that with smart engineering you should be rewarded.

What inefficiency? If I have infinite fuel and resources to build rockets, then I can make a supply mission that takes off from KSC, supplies Mun, comes back and lands as a capsule, and then automate that. While there’s technically inefficiency there, it’s inefficiency with an unlimited resource, so who cares?

[Periple]

As an afterthought, if they should decide to introduce an artificial limitation like no supply line automation from Kerbin, then I'm sure it would take about 5 min for somebody to mod it out, so players who want to play without the limitation can do so!

[regex]

4 hours ago, VlonaldKerman said:

If I have infinite fuel and resources to build rockets, then I can make a supply mission that takes off from KSC, supplies Mun, comes back and lands as a capsule, and then automate that.

Yeah, this is why I argue that needed resources should be outside Kerbin SOI. If you have to get your advanced resources from beyond then you're constrained by transfer windows and travel time. Unlimited (base) resources at Kerbin don't mean much in that case.

4 hours ago, dr.phees said:

Not having money/budget in a Space Program game simply does not make sense!

Sure it does. My Kerbals don't needed capitalism to get to space, just the will to do it.

[VlonaldKerman]

22 minutes ago, regex said:

Sure it does. My Kerbals don't needed capitalism to get to space, just the will to do it.

YES COMRADE!!!

[PDCWolf]

I think this discussion has grossly derailed from the reality we know was promised for the game. Apparently designing ships (SSTO, reusable or disposable) is at no point a confirmed part of the logistics gameplay, and shipping lanes being abstract means limitations on KSC/Colonies' ability to produce this or that will be arbitrary and not physical (i.e. a gravity well/atmosphere). We also know they're using the same vessel structure and proto-vessel handling, so reusable stages being recovered are so far not a thing nor will they be.

What we do know is what already exists, so they may take inspiration from KSP1's career adding simple and arbitrary Mass/Part number/Area limitations on launchpads, which may or may not be upgradable to infinity.

Sources from 3/24 AMA:

[Pthigrivi]

2 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Totally. What Nate said previously was that the credits and deductions would be based on proof-runs. So you could build a mining rover at a colony, drive it out to a rich deposit, collect the resource, drive it back, and then that run could be repeated virtually, as just automatic credits and and debits of resources based on the duration of your initial run.  It sounds like second phase would be taking dV costs into account as they relate to launch windows, so you could only schedule repeat missions when you had a similar dV to destination. If thats all we got I think thats completely fine and probably much easier on performance than physically modeling vessels.
 

8 hours ago, VlonaldKerman said:

What inefficiency? If I have infinite fuel and resources to build rockets, then I can make a supply mission that takes off from KSC, supplies Mun, comes back and lands as a capsule, and then automate that. While there’s technically inefficiency there, it’s inefficiency with an unlimited resource, so who cares?

This is a good question. Let's look at this under the assumption that either KSP2 doesn't apply time-based costs or that the costs are manageable by the player (*cough*cough*LS*cough*). If players can time-warp at will the overall game clock doesn't really matter so much. The exception to a certain degree would be launch windows but players might want to just fast-forward to those too. If thats the case all that really matters is player time--how long are you physically looking at the screen to accomplish the things you want. Given that many if not most KSP1 players never get further than the Mun I think its okay to make growth pretty easy, and I don't think there's any reason to artificially prevent KSC being a hub for supply routes. If KSC is generating its own resources then it's really just another colony, but its one that you have to spend your very valuable science to expand. Thats probably enough incentive to focus on off-world mining all by itself because the the science you devote to upgrading KSC gives you a fixed rate of resources buried under 3400dv while unlocking off-world mining lets you grow at will and offers much higher payload ratios when moving things around.  So thats a big piece of the efficiency--better bang for your buck when spending science. You can do a lot more earlier in the progression if you build colonies. 


As far as how the supply runs would deal with one-way trips with spent stages vs SSTO round trips I don't think its actually that complicated. When you do a supply run the game knows where you started and where you ended, and it knows what resources you started with and what resources you ended with. Any resources lost along the way, either fuel spent or stages dropped would just become part of the cost each time the supply route was re-run. So for instance I've built a rocket with 2 expendable stages to deliver 2 tons of Uranium to the surface of the Mun. At KSC the vessel costs 60t of methalox, 20t of metals, and 2t of Uranium. Your start the run, drop your stages, and arrive at your Mun Colony. Here you could have a choice: save the run as a one-way delivery or refuel your vessel, fly it back to kerbin and recover it. If you chose the first option any repeat run would cost 60t of methalox, 20t of metals, and 2t of Uranium at KSC and deposit 2t of Uranium at your Mun colony. You could also probably recover the scrapped value of your delivery stage--say 75% of 6t or an additional 4.5t of metals at the destination. If instead you refuel and fly your delivery stage back to Kerbin the cost at KSC will be 60t of methalox, 14 tons of metals, and 2t of Uranium. At your Mun colony you'd receive the 2t of Uranium but be deducted the 8t of fuel you added to fly the stage back to Kerbin. If on the other hand you made a fancy SSTO that flys all the way from KSC to your colony on the Mun and back on repeat supply runs you'd only be charged for the fuel you spent, not for the metals that went into building it. 

It would be a little more complicated but I think you could even make this work for stage recovery. I think you could do a demonstration run of just your first stage: fly it up to 30km, turn it around and land it near KSC. Then that subcomponent would be rated up to 30km and when you re-used it on future missions it would be considered recovered if you dropped it anywhere below its max altitude. Players could game this a bit probably but I think it could still be a nice mechanic. Maybe something for phase 2. 

Edited August 9, 2023 by Pthigrivi

[PDCWolf]

6 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

Totally. What Nate said previously was that the credits and deductions would be based on proof-runs.

Source on this?

[Pthigrivi]

16 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

Source on this?

He's said it a few times, last I recall was sometime in post release interviews but I can't remember which. He also talked about it in the PC gamer interview last November (at 1:02:50): 
https://cdn.jwplayer.com/previews/ne21k8f1

[VlonaldKerman]

14 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

As far as how the supply runs would deal with one-way trips with spent stages vs SSTO round trips I don't think its actually that complicated. When you do a supply run the game knows where you started and where you ended, and it knows what resources you started with and what resources you ended with. Any resources lost along the way, either fuel spent or stages dropped would just become part of the cost each time the supply route was re-run. So for instance I've built a rocket with 2 expendable stages to deliver 2 tons of Uranium to the surface of the Mun. At KSC the vessel costs 60t of methalox, 20t of metals, and 2t of Uranium. Your start the run, drop your stages, and arrive at your Mun Colony. Here you could have a choice: save the run as a one-way delivery or refuel your vessel, fly it back to kerbin and recover it. If you chose the first option any repeat run would cost 60t of methalox, 20t of metals, and 2t of Uranium at KSC and deposit 2t of Uranium at your Mun colony. You could also probably recover the scrapped value of your delivery stage--say 75% of 6t or an additional 4.5t of metals at the destination. If instead you refuel and fly your delivery stage back to Kerbin the cost at KSC will be 60t of methalox, 14 tons of metals, and 2t of Uranium. At your Mun colony you'd receive the 2t of Uranium but be deducted the 8t of fuel you added to fly the stage back to Kerbin. If on the other hand you made a fancy SSTO that flys all the way from KSC to your colony on the Mun and back on repeat supply runs you'd only be charged for the fuel you spent, not for the metals that went into building it

I think this is a good idea, but there is one issue in my mind, and it boils down to launching ships and using resources to build them.

The KSP 2 devs said that they intend the game to play most similarly to science mode. If it requires metal, methalox to build/fuel rockets, then you could reach a fail state where you run out of those. Or, maybe there’s automatic resource collection on kerbin, but then the player would just be timewarping until their reserves are full. Either way, it’s either not a very rewarding gameplay loop or an outright fail state which I would be okay with, but many others, including the devs, are not.

This issue of whether or not the player can build unlimited rockets is a fundamental one. It is especially important when it comes to automation, because with no restrictions imposed the player could automate 1000 supply launches a day from KSC. It’s also an issue that the playerbase doesn’t really know how to solve, I think, as you still see some people saying that rocket parts and fuel should be unlimited on Kerbin. So I’m interested in brainstorming, for sure. Maybe it warrants its own thread.