Are resources a better fit than money for KSP2?

[K33N]

I really, really don't think so and I'm very concerned that it wont be able to recapture the challenge of KSP career mode.

Despite what an extremely vocal and passionate group feels, career mode is by far the most popular way to play the game and late game career is where the main KSP gameplay loop is.

We need the random mission generation and the constraints imposed by money.

I am keeping an open mind, however.

Edited August 2, 2023 by K33N

[Kerbart]

1 hour ago, K33N said:

We need the random mission generation and the constraints imposed by money.

That is open for discussion. I agree that the game needs challenges. The randomness of the contracts and money constraints certainly created some of those, but the counter arguments is that theytend to turn into repetition/grinding. It doesn’t have to be like that but grinding out twelve tourist missionsto Minmus to gather required money is grindy but easier than a daring mission to Dres.

Resources may be a way to force the player to explore more than could be enforced in natural looking way than with money.

1 hour ago, K33N said:

I am keeping an open mind, however.

The tricky part is that when implemented with vision and boldness, a new system certainly will be better than the grind-inducing monetary reward system used in KSP1. But given the half-hearted implementation we’ve seen so far, it’s hard to imagine the new system being fresh and original, which it needs to be.  My fear is that it’s going to be equal to “money” but now we just call it “resources,” but I hope it will be a pleasant surprise and an improvement over what we’ve come to expect by now.

[regex]

2 hours ago, K33N said:

Despite what an extremely vocal and passionate group feels, career mode is by far the most popular way to play the game and late game career is where the main KSP gameplay loop is.

Career mode may be the most popular way to play but it's also garbage gameplay that could have been so much better. Random missions that take no real cue from the player's goals don't mesh well with a sandbox game at all, not enough missions were generated to provide a decent choice to help line up with player goals, and rolling missions to find something interesting was incredibly painful and often pointless. The weighting system didn't help because there were too few missions rolled and the player might have changed goals, which meant using the terrible rolling mechanism to switch missions. Plus, there were tons of hidden goals that should have been explicitly shown.

Despite being one of the extremely vocal and passionate people against such bad gameplay, I am definitely open to mission-based play so long as it respects player goals OR is entirely optional. I enjoy KSP because it gives me the option to define my own goals and pursue them, and to see whether I can achieve them. I am hoping that the missions in KSP2 provide guidance to those who need it, constraints for those who want them, and are accommodating in some way (whether by adapting or just stepping the hell out of the way) to players who want to try things their own way.

[MechBFP]

2 minutes ago, regex said:

I am definitely open to mission-based play so long as it respects player goals OR is entirely optional.

I assume you mean entirely optional when playing sandbox mode? If so then yes I agree. 
 

However if you are saying it should be entirely optional when you are playing the specific game mode that uses that, then no I don’t agree at all. 

[regex]

10 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

I assume you mean entirely optional when playing sandbox mode?

Missions don't exist in sandbox mode so how can they be "optional"? You'll also notice that we're not getting "career mode" in KSP2.

No, what I'd like to see is a way to set my own goals and have the game respond to that, and their shifting nature, perhaps imposing constraints as we go. The randomness of KSP1 does not do that and constitutes some pretty unimaginative gameplay that is simply "tacked on" to the sandbox. Poorly.

[MechBFP]

7 minutes ago, regex said:

No, what I'd like to see is a way to set my own goals and have the game respond to that,

That is fine, but there are still going to be limitations based on your current progress in the progression mode.

Just like in Factorio you can't build a nuclear power plant 6 seconds after starting the game because you have to build up your factory, the same concept is going to apply to the progression mode they implement.

And obviously this is how it should be, otherwise you don't have any progression mode at all.

Edited August 2, 2023 by MechBFP

[regex]

12 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

And obviously this is how it should be, otherwise you don't have any progression mode at all.

Of course, I'm not opposed to progression or limitations, I'm opposed to static or utterly random gameplay. Let me set my goals and go through the tech tree in my own way, develop the KSC as I want, give me more options, consequential choices, limitations that last longer than a few big missions that give me all the cash I'll ever need.

Cash in KSP1 career mode is a terrible limiter when the only real way to get it is dumb random missions and hidden milestones. Resources will hopefully be better in that regard because they do not require random missions, can be storage limited, require you to possibly shuffle them around, and don't have to hide stuff (beyond maybe scanning, which in itself is decent gameplay).

Edited August 2, 2023 by regex

[DunaManiac]

On 7/24/2023 at 2:21 PM, Scarecrow71 said:

Say you are playing a solo game.  KSP1 proved that funds are meaningless once you reach a certain point in the game.  Oh, that part costs 5000?  Just accept a contract or three, and voila!  You have funds.  Eventually you end up with enough funds and you no longer need to worry about how much anything costs.  I've got multiple career saves right now where the average - AVERAGE - funds I've got available are in the tens of millions.  They mean nothing at this point.

The problem with this standpoint is that having virtually unlimited resources during the endgame is pretty much the norm in most strategy games. At a certain point one is able to expand totally at will, because your city or state or whatnot is already totally self sufficient. I think the idea that having unlimited resources by the endgame isn't solely KSP's issue. Similarly, in KSP2 even if we implement a resource system we will run into that problem by the end. The issue with KSP's fund system is that it's scaled wrong and getting it takes a lot of grind. The only way perhaps you could keep funds or resources relevant all the way into the endgame would be by increasing operational costs to say, launch a rocket or create a new colony, to keep in step with your resource output. This doesn't make a lot of logical sense though, because you'd be wanting to make your operation more profitable over time, not less.

[Superfluous J]

6 hours ago, K33N said:

Despite what an extremely vocal and passionate group feels, career mode is by far the most popular way to play the game and late game career is where the main KSP gameplay loop is.

Late game career is sandbox. You have unlocked all science and have so much money you don't need to take a contract - like - ever again.

I agree though that career is the most fun part of KSP1. It's the only reason I kept playing for so long. That doesn't mean it can't be done better in a different way.

2 hours ago, DunaManiac said:

The only way perhaps you could keep funds or resources relevant all the way into the endgame would be by increasing operational costs to say, launch a rocket or create a new colony, to keep in step with your resource output.

Rimworld tried this, and scaled up enemy raids to match your base's net worth. It backfired, and the best strategy to play became one of limiting your colony's total cash value while making it as strong as possible.

So you'd forego that space marine combat armor because a leather jacket was better against bows and arrows than the combat armor was against rocket launchers. And your colony wants those new fancy beds? Sorry you're sleeping on the ground buddy we don't want to start getting raided by laser robots do we?

[MechBFP]

Excess power/resources at the end really shouldn’t be looked on as a bad thing, it is the reward for playing the game to the end. 
 

It is like when you get to the end game in Factorio and you have the resources and power to build whatever you feel like and take your mighty revenge against the biters as you see fit instead of constantly playing mostly defense. 

[Pthigrivi]

17 hours ago, DunaManiac said:

The problem with this standpoint is that having virtually unlimited resources during the endgame is pretty much the norm in most strategy games. 

I agree, but KSP isn't really a strategy game I think? KSP2 promises gameplay that could plateau more like the way Cities Skylines or Factorio does, in which you can essentially build and build until your computer grinds to a halt. But that's just a layer. Much as I love building sims at its real heart KSP is about exploration--reaching that next planet. Early on Nate spoke about the most important driver being the unknown, and ultimately thats true--the game really shouldn't feel 'beaten' until you've explored every moon and planet in the game, which with interstellar could be years and thousands of hours. So I think having some prominent tally showing which worlds have been visited by probes or footprints or colonies creates a nice benchmark for committed completionists. 

Thats not everyone though. This is just me guessing, but I'd be willing to bet most players are going to treat completing the tech tree as the main goal. I just think the way gaming culture goes folks respond to rewards and once all of the shiny new toys are unlocked they're going to play around with them a bit and then start thinking about starting over. Colonies and deep exploration will stretch this but I think the devs could view completing the tech tree as a mean end state. The way science is distributed and gathered and processed is going to be absolutely critical to scaling that end-game to interstellar exploration. They'd be wise to withhold those last crazy antimater engines and reactors and colony mega-domes out until you'd explored and developed science infrastructure on least a few bodies in another system. At that point resources begin to take a backseat. You're still going to need them especially when setting up shop and growing around Debdeb, but at that point I'd like to see more complex and challenging puzzles around what fuels make the most sense in specific situations. Throughout the progression resources should be critically important, but its not about just heaping up mountains of metals and methalox that you'll never be able to use, but carefully allocating your investment of energy to balance a small suite resources in the proportions that you need. Of course you can overbuild and brute force if you like, but you might be wiser to be efficient and push toward more leaner meaner vessels and better tech. 

Edited August 3, 2023 by Pthigrivi

[DunaManiac]

39 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

I agree, but KSP isn't really a strategy game I think?

I think that KSP2 could very much be a strategy game once one reaches the colony stage, or at least perhaps I am just biased because I enjoy strategy games a lot. But it all depends on what exactly KSP2 devs have in mind, (which I am not convinced they actually have anything in mind but that's not the point). If we involve some sort of resource system with scarcity involved, then managing all your colonies may be like managing a state, making sure that each colony is trading with the others for maximal benefit, while each individual colony must also be built up and can be specialized for different outputs. I imagine that a close analogy to that idea would be Stellaris: you have an empire to manage, but each planet you colonize also has to be managed and given time to grow, which specialized buidings to increase its contributions to the empire. You would also likely see "wide" versus "tall" builds, namely buidling numerous small colonies versus a smaller number but very well developed colonies.

City skylines in this case I think isn't a good example because CS doesn't take resource scarcity into account (aside from the fact that one can build ore/oil facillities that do extract oil). One isn't particularly restricted in how many buildings one can actually build since you don't have to pay a cost to construct a building, you can just build a road, hit the proper zone, and watch buildings construct themselves for free. In KSP2 I would expect that resources would drive people to place colonies strategically rather than building mostly without constraints after you hit positive revenue.

Edited August 3, 2023 by DunaManiac

[PicoSpace]

19 hours ago, regex said:

Despite being one of the extremely vocal and passionate people against such bad gameplay, I am definitely open to mission-based play so long as it respects player goals OR is entirely optional. I enjoy KSP because it gives me the option to define my own goals and pursue them, and to see whether I can achieve them. I am hoping that the missions in KSP2 provide guidance to those who need it, constraints for those who want them, and are accommodating in some way (whether by adapting or just stepping the hell out of the way) to players who want to try things their own way.

What might be a solution is something like "World First" Goals instead of specific missions. When you do a "first" you get some resources from Kerbal. So it pushes you to explore new places/biomes etc. But not require you to do so at particular time.

Then missions can be set-up as a "bonus" structure if you want to do them or not, but are not required because you can always mine science/resources to meet your gameplay needs.

Also as for "end-game" in KSP2, its not quite the same as you'll be heading out to new worlds & systems which will require a huge amount of resources to send a science study, let alone a colony ship to another star system. Where once you arrive you'll have to build that remote colony. The fun starts all over again

[Pthigrivi]

17 minutes ago, DunaManiac said:

I think that KSP2 could very much be a strategy game once one reaches the colony stage, or at least perhaps I am just biased because I enjoy strategy games a lot. But it all depends on what exactly KSP2 devs have in mind, (which I am not convinced they actually have anything in mind but that's not the point). If we involve some sort of resource system with scarcity involved, then managing all your colonies may be like managing a state, making sure that each colony is trading with the others for maximal benefit, while each individual colony must also be built up and can be specialized for different outputs. I imagine that a close analogy to that idea would be Stellaris: you have an empire to manage, but each planet you colonize also has to be managed and given time to grow, which specialized buidings to increase its contributions to the empire. You would also likely see "wide" versus "tall" builds, namely buidling numerous small colonies versus a smaller number but very well developed colonies.

City skylines in this case I think isn't a good example because CS doesn't take resource scarcity into account (aside from the fact that one can build ore/oil facillities that do extract oil). One isn't particularly restricted in how many buildings one can actually build since you don't have to pay a cost to construct a building, you can just build a road, hit the proper zone, and watch buildings construct themselves for free. In KSP2 I would expect that resources would drive people to place colonies strategically rather than building mostly without constraints after you hit positive revenue.

Here I would just make a distinction between scarcity (how common or uncommon different basic resources are) vs depletion. In KSP 1 resources deplete for asteroids but not on major bodies, where you can pump infinitely without ever running dry. I sort of suspect this to be the same in KSP2 mainly because different players will chose to timewarp over very different scales and to make it so a colony dries up suddenly for one playstyle vs another seems unnecessarily restrictive. I also expect the focus to me more on the actual engineering of colonies (like vessels making sure your inputs and outputs are all nicely balanced) than on a complex economic sim. Sure, you'll be able to ship resources from one colony or mining site to another, but its still just resource inputs and outputs. I that case it doesn't really matter if one player wants to putter around the inner planets and another player wants to warp all the way on a standalone Jool mission. Resources will top off whatever tanks you have available. You could of course keep building more, but but if you have plenty to do your next mission why would you? I suspect over time most players will either grow to serve their needs or just grow for aesthetic reasons. If the thing they're really chasing is buying new parts on the tech tree or better yet reaching the next horizon resources become just a tool to that end, not an end to itself. 

[Periple]

23 hours ago, K33N said:

Despite what an extremely vocal and passionate group feels, career mode is by far the most popular way to play the game and late game career is where the main KSP gameplay loop is.

We need the random mission generation and the constraints imposed by money.

I played almost exclusively career mode… and I think it was barely functional. I just need constraints and a sense of progression to enjoy it!

The random missions were the simplest thing that could possibly keep the game going but it would be possible to do SO much better.

As to the late game, I think career mode didn’t actually support that at all! You will unlock the entire tech tree and have an infinite money machine going with just a couple of well-planned interplanetary missions, and from there on out you might as well be playing sandbox mode.

I really hope KSP2 will be able to keep the rewards loop going far beyond the point career mode ran out of steam!

[Mikki]

I think ressources in various locations will give the game a continous constraint of exploring and need for new solutions. 

Funding and just buying rocketparts is too simple as mentioned above and done in KSP1.

I look forward for a true new unique experience as the devs promise.

[BowlerHatGuy3]

One thing I really hope is that in multiplayer you can create markets where you can buy other people’s rocket designs using resources.

With everyone being in there own multiverse timelines there’s gotta be a way for people to interact you what I mean?

Edited August 3, 2023 by BowlerHatGuy3

[K33N]

23 hours ago, regex said:

The randomness of KSP1 does not do that and constitutes some pretty unimaginative gameplay that is simply "tacked on" to the sandbox. Poorly.

Nope. 

[regex]

32 minutes ago, K33N said:

Nope. 

Nothing else, just "nope"? Look, I know KSP1's career mode is indefensibly bad but you're not exactly doing yourself any favors by reinforcing that point.

[Periple]

It wouldn’t be too difficult to make career-like missions make more sense, if they wanted to keep the same general feel. That alone would make them more engaging. 

For example, have each of the clients have a specific purpose and its own progression. One client would do communication, for example, and would request launches that serve a clear purpose, progressing from low-power relays in Kerbin orbit to complex constellations with a mix of powers around other bodies. Like eventually, “Build a relay network around Duna consisting of at least three 2G relays in equatorial orbit and one 15G relay in polar orbit.”

Other clients could have similar objectives in other areas. Resource extraction and logistics in particular have loads of possibilities because you could also impose a cost on them — get paid up front to set up a mining outpost with a delivery route, but you wouldn’t get any of the resources (as they go to the client).

This kind of thing would also help nudge the player to do new interesting things that they can then incorporate into their self-directed goals, without railroading them into a predefined progression.

The random missions with no rhyme or reason are just an excuse to do something and quickly become irrelevant.

[regex]

44 minutes ago, Periple said:

It wouldn’t be too difficult to make career-like missions make more sense, if they wanted to keep the same general feel. That alone would make them more engaging. 

<snip>

In general it's a much more compelling idea than what KSP1 had but I also think it's not really the direction Intercept is going to take. They've already said that missions will be completely optional so I'm of the opinion that they will be there to provide guidance (and perhaps even a reward) for players who need it, but would otherwise be completely skippable. If we don't have reputation or money (why would you need rep without a system to dole out missions) but instead use resources maybe a mission reward consists of a science point bump or a few extra resources. Which is great, some people can play a directed campaign and get rewarded for it while others can go full sandbox and set their own goals without getting outside help (or maybe getting milestone rewards instead?) with both being able to benefit from the progression gameplay (the ideal, IMO; progression doesn't have to be directed).

Either way, I don't see missions being entirely relevant outside of providing direction with Intercept admitting they'd be optional and resources as "currency". Unless they're going to tie the science system into missions, which I suppose could work so long as the missions are random, but that also would imply you could get the science parts without accepting a mission, so I'm not entirely sure...

[Periple]

2 hours ago, regex said:

In general it's a much more compelling idea than what KSP1 had but I also think it's not really the direction Intercept is going to take. They've already said that missions will be completely optional so I'm of the opinion that they will be there to provide guidance (and perhaps even a reward) for players who need it, but would otherwise be completely skippable.

Yes I think it's likely they'll do something quite different, I posted that just to illustrate why I think KSP1 career mode is really pretty bad and could be improved a lot relatively easily!

[Wheehaw Kerman]

On 7/22/2023 at 9:46 PM, Pthigrivi said:

 What do you think?

I think that both a funds model and a resources model could be either great to play, awful, or something middling, like KSP Career Mode.  When you get right down to it, both are the same thing - the difference is in flavour, nothing more.  You do [things] in game to earn points which can be [spent] to advance your game.  I’m not sure there’s any real difference between a contract requiring you to mine x units of ore on the Mün and returning it to Kerbin, earning you funds to unlock parts, or simply flying the same mission but using that ore to build parts.  Dream, build, fly, spend, progress.  It’s just the flavour or vibe that’s different, and getting the flavour right.  And having an enjoyable flavour with the right feel (“Cartoony Verisimilitude(tm)”) is going be critical.

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.  

My big worry about using resources alone is that it could feel very game-y: NASA doesn’t mine its own aluminum, and having aluminum doesn’t translate directly into scientists doing research.  Having a completely vertically integrated space program that does everything from mining the raw resources to smelting to manufacturing parts to building and flying the rockets would lack verisimilitude.

[Skorj]

I think a proper understanding of the word "currency" would help here.  In both finance and games, a currency is simply an easily tradable resource at a given time and place.  "Currency" includes but it not limited to "funds" or "money" as people usually think of it.  In games, there are often multiple currency tiers as one progresses, and those currencies are often resources. E.g. in the early game the currency might be iron, then gold in the midgame, then unobtainium in the endgame.  I think that would be a great model for KSP2.

As many have said upthread, funds make a lot of sense for the early game, but then you get to a point where they stop mattering.  This is a feature not a bug.  It makes gameplay change in interesting ways as you progress.  Once you're building stuff off Kerbin, something will inevitably be the bottleneck, and thus effectively the currency for that part of the game.  Designing that in deliberately will give better results than otherwise.

As an example, without worrying about whether these specifics are any good:

• Early game, funds are the limiting factor that makes reusablity good and keeps rockets from being too huge.
• Mid-game, ore (mined and ready) on nearby planets is the currency (the bottleneck resource) for building early colonies.
• Late-game, archeological relics of the interstellar civilization that visited Kerbin from one of the other systems are the bottleneck to progress, which have to be sought out in specific interesting places across the Kerbol system.
• End-game, helium-3 is the bottleneck for building the interstellar ship, requiring a complex toolchain of surface and orbiting colonies around many planets to make in quantity.

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.

This is just a solid game design approach that gets used often in "explore and craft" games for good reason.

 

[MechBFP]

8 minutes ago, Skorj said:

I think a proper understanding of the word "currency" would help here.  In both finance and games, a currency is simply an easily tradable resource at a given time and place.  "Currency" includes but it not limited to "funds" or "money" as people usually think of it.  In games, there are often multiple currency tiers as one progresses, and those currencies are often resources. E.g. in the early game the currency might be iron, then gold in the midgame, then unobtainium in the endgame.  I think that would be a great model for KSP2.

As many have said upthread, funds make a lot of sense for the early game, but then you get to a point where they stop mattering.  This is a feature not a bug.  It makes gameplay change in interesting ways as you progress.  Once you're building stuff off Kerbin, something will inevitably be the bottleneck, and thus effectively the currency for that part of the game.  Designing that in deliberately will give better results than otherwise.

As an example, without worrying about whether these specifics are any good:

• Early game, funds are the limiting factor that makes reusablity good and keeps rockets from being too huge.
• Mid-game, ore (mined and ready) on nearby planets is the currency (the bottleneck resource) for building early colonies.
• Late-game, archeological relics of the interstellar civilization that visited Kerbin from one of the other systems are the bottleneck to progress, which have to be sought out in specific interesting places across the Kerbol system.
• End-game, helium-3 is the bottleneck for building the interstellar ship, requiring a complex toolchain of surface and orbiting colonies around many planets to make in quantity.

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.

This is just a solid game design approach that gets used often in "explore and craft" games for good reason.

 

Yup, 100% this. Great post.