For Science! - My Thoughts (And Yours Too!)

[Wheehaw Kerman]

1 hour ago, Bej Kerman said:

NASA's not going to send a bank with the lunar gateway or the first colonies just cause you find it weird it's possible for people to function without money.

Honestly, we can’t function without money - and we function better with freer markets.  That Lunar Gateway (or for that matter the device you’re reading this on, the electricity grid that powers it, the networks that convey data to it, the grocery store where you bought your last meal) would be impossible to build without an insanely complex supply chain utterly dependent on a developed economy, and that miracle of synchronized collaborative research, engineering, production, integration, testing, training, licensing, flying etc., etc., etc. would be impossible to organize and execute without money.  Money is a *tool* - the financial system is essential to how we organize people, allocate resources, turn them into products, and get them distributed to market (and that is barely scratching the surface of the role of money in a technological society).  

If you want to replace money, you are going to need some system to do all that at least as well, and some way of managing the transition without causing megadeaths.  I’m not saying it’s impossible, but…

[Astroneer08]

Hey @Scarecrow71! You can't do Science with a Kerbal unless they aren't holding a ladder.

So if they are holding a ladder, they can't do Science.

[fragtzack]

 This is a video game.  This video game is mostly modeled after human behaviors, human civilization methods and human understanding of physics.  Money allows civilizations to abstract labor/resources into a tradeable value system. 

What makes video games fun is presenting challenges to the player and then the player can overcome those challenges and feel accomplished. By removing money from any consideration of a space program and building rockets,  that removes a challenge to overcome. 

I for one do not want an easy "I WIN BUTTON" in KSP.

Fact is that the #1 thing preventing humans from currently colonizing moon/mars in real life is money. Humans could do it, but the cost$ are just too huge for humankind to accept at this time. 

Just allowing anything  to be built with NO constraints or care about labor/resources consumed makes this game less fun in a career mode type of play.

Making small tiny satellites are going to be pointless in this game. Making fuel efficient rockets will also be pointless. 

Just build the biggest most inefficient rocket for every small mission because labor costs are 0, resource costs are 0, there is absolutely zero incentive for building efficient rockets in KSP2 at the present time.

This removal from accounting of labor/resource costs in "exploration mode"  is just bad logic on the part of KSP2 design team imho.

 

 

 

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 hour ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

we function better with freer markets

...some people refuse to understand common sense.  Best not to engage.

[Wheehaw Kerman]

1 hour ago, fragtzack said:

 This is a video game.  This video game is mostly modeled after human behaviors, human civilization methods and human understanding of physics.  Money allows civilizations to abstract labor/resources into a tradeable value system. 

What makes video games fun is presenting challenges to the player and then the player can overcome those challenges and feel accomplished. By removing money from any consideration of a space program and building rockets,  that removes a challenge to overcome. 

I for one do not want an easy "I WIN BUTTON" in KSP.

Fact is that the #1 thing preventing humans from currently colonizing moon/mars in real life is money. Humans could do it, but the cost$ are just too huge for humankind to accept at this time. 

Just allowing anything  to be built with NO constraints or care about labor/resources consumed makes this game less fun in a career mode type of play.

Making small tiny satellites are going to be pointless in this game. Making fuel efficient rockets will also be pointless. 

Just build the biggest most inefficient rocket for every small mission because labor costs are 0, resource costs are 0, there is absolutely zero incentive for building efficient rockets in KSP2 at the present time.

This removal from accounting of labor/resource costs in "exploration mode"  is just bad logic on the part of KSP2 design team imho.

 

 

 

 

I’m hoping that Resources is going to introduce this kind of constraint - an abstracted interplanetary/interstellar economy.  Right now For Science! gameplay suffers relative to the original instead of having to refine designs and architecture, all you have to do is spam m04r boosters…

[Pthigrivi]

3 hours ago, fragtzack said:

This removal from accounting of labor/resource costs in "exploration mode"  is just bad logic on the part of KSP2 design team imho.

Resources are a planned feature. They do all the gameplay work money might do in a way thats more continuously useful as players build colonize beyond Kerbin. Money just doesn’t need to exist from a gameplay standpoint. 

[Periple]

6 hours ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

Honestly, we can’t function without money - and we function better with freer markets.

Yes we can and no we don’t!

(Are ideological discussions allowed here by the way?)

Edited December 24, 2023 by Periple

[Wheehaw Kerman]

3 hours ago, Periple said:

Yes we can and no we don’t!

(Are ideological discussions allowed here by the way?)

It’s not an ideological conversation - it’s a technological and organizational one :).

[Periple]

2 minutes ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

It’s not an ideological conversation - it’s a technological and organizational one :).

It is too!

[Wheehaw Kerman]

3 minutes ago, Periple said:

It is too!

I’m going to point out that we’ve seen rockets reach space launched by nations across the ideological spectrum - from literally fascist, a couple of flavours of Communist, various liberal democracies, at least one fundamentalist theocracy, and whatever North Korea is.

They’ve all used money.  From this I conclude that the game needs to emphasize accounting as much as it does life support and advances in financial systems need to be reflected in the tech tree as much as bigger rockets :).

[Periple]

It is true that there hasn’t been an industrial, technological society that doesn’t use money.

That doesn’t mean that such a thing couldn’t exist. It’s especially not true that such a thing couldn’t be imagined, internally consistent, and believable in a work of fiction that isn’t even based on humans.

Fully automated luxury space communism is a utopian ideal of such a society. You could also imagine dystopian ones — for example one where the economic basis was slave labor. There are many other possibilities. See for example the Noon Universe series by the Strugatsky brothers.

My point is that such things can be and have been imagined, and to categorically state that an advanced society without money is inconceivable, or that we are categorically and unquestionably better off with freer markets, is both ideological and false.

 With that I think we are getting too far off topic, so as much as I enjoy these kinds of discussions, I’m going to respectfully bow out.

Edited December 24, 2023 by Periple

[Scarecrow71]

I started this topic as a way to share our thoughts on what the 0.2 enhancement brought with it, and to share our thoughts on the gameplay of For Science.  Please don't turn this thread into an ideological dissertation on economics or what countries do in real life.  Please stay on topic, lest the mods close the thread.

[Wheehaw Kerman]

5 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

I started this topic as a way to share our thoughts on what the 0.2 enhancement brought with it, and to share our thoughts on the gameplay of For Science.  Please don't turn this thread into an ideological dissertation on economics or what countries do in real life.  Please stay on topic, lest the mods close the thread.

I will happily drop the discussion pending the  Resources drop… maybe I’m reading too much into it, but Resources might be an abstracted economics system.  Or it could be merely logistics.  Quite curious…

[Pthigrivi]

1 hour ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

I will happily drop the discussion pending the  Resources drop… maybe I’m reading too much into it, but Resources might be an abstracted economics system.  Or it could be merely logistics.  Quite curious…

Im imagining its more of a resource collection + crafting system using supply routes and processors at colonies to make parts + fuel. That keeps it more tied into physics, transportation, and real world chemistry. It also hugely grows the types of vehicles you have to design and the kinds of engineering and navigation puzzles you have to solve. That to me seems more to the core of KSPs gameplay than getting sidetracked in economic sims. The real question is what happens on kerbin? Are resources free or?

Edited December 24, 2023 by Pthigrivi

[Bej Kerman]

2 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

1 hour ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

I will happily drop the discussion pending the  Resources drop… maybe I’m reading too much into it, but Resources might be an abstracted economics system.  Or it could be merely logistics.  Quite curious…

Im imagining its more of a resource collection + crafting system using supply routes and processors at colonies to make parts + fuel. That keeps it more tied into physics, transportation, and real world chemistry.

Yep. Plus real life colonies would not be paying for resources, or bothering with money at all.

[Pthigrivi]

42 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Yep. Plus real life colonies would not be paying for resources, or bothering with money at all.

Knowing us they probably will, Ive just never imagined KSP would lean deep into the economic sim side of it given its engineering focus. It feels like a distraction from core ‘build and fly’ gameplay. I don’t even dislike money as a method for teaching and encouraging vehicle efficiency, it just seems redundant if we’re already paying for parts with physical resources. 

Edited December 24, 2023 by Pthigrivi

[Scarecrow71]

So much for staying on topic.  The mods can close this thread as the economic discussion is not what this thread was to be about.

[cocoscacao]

24 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

teaching and encouraging vehicle efficiency

While I highly doubt this, it would be fun to have limited fuel depots until you get enough sci points and build, bigger better "fuel silos" 

[Pthigrivi]

10 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

So much for staying on topic.  The mods can close this thread as the economic discussion is not what this thread was to be about.

Well its not political conversation. Its a question about discovery mode’s lack of efficiency constraints and what might close that gap. (At least thats the conversation Im hoping to have)

13 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

So much for staying on topic.  The mods can close this thread as the economic discussion is not what this thread was to be about.

Yeah Ive always thought an upgradeable fuel farm/ resource depot would be a great way to make resource part costs work at KSC. 

[Vanamonde]

Please restrict the discussion to game matters. Real world economics and politics are off-topic and divisive. 

[MechBFP]

After playing this update for a fair bit of time, I am not sure if it ran into release deadlines or if this is just the raw result of trying to push out as much content as possible and therefore being unable to do any sort of a polish pass. 
 

Thoughts?

[bcink]

5 hours ago, MechBFP said:

After playing this update for a fair bit of time, I am not sure if it ran into release deadlines or if this is just the raw result of trying to push out as much content as possible and therefore being unable to do any sort of a polish pass. 
 

Thoughts?

We can only guess at what is happening behind closed doors, but I think it is quite disappointing and frankly, a little pathetic that the core functionality of this game is such a broken pile of smegma. So much for having something solid to build upon. This is still nothing but framing on an unfinished house... and then they started building the addition before the house was even complete.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

7 hours ago, MechBFP said:

After playing this update for a fair bit of time, I am not sure if it ran into release deadlines or if this is just the raw result of trying to push out as much content as possible and therefore being unable to do any sort of a polish pass. 
 

Thoughts?

I left, disappointed, back in the late March / early April timeframe.  Just started it back up... and it's a LOT better.

Admittedly, about where I thought it would be (performance wise) back in February, with the content I guessed would come out by June.

Shrug.

That did not happen.

But - it's better.

[EvelynThe Dragon]

I've been absent for some time because quite frankly, sandbox mode is BORING. And there were way too many things broken. And the interval between patches was (and I am sure still is) way too long. Hot fixes should be the rule. Frequent updates when something is fixed, don't wait to get a laundry list together.

This release is what we should have had on day 1 of early access. I will not come off of that stance, 10 months after release, we finally get a relatively functional game. That still has major issues.

Having stuff to do is great. But. It's way too rigid. There should be multiple secondary mission choices, and in the main path, forcing visits to the anomalies is not the way to go here. Secondary missions should be much more plentiful, and there should be branches on the main mission path. All of this also ties into further issues.

The trip planner is still very broken. Please fix it, a roundtrip is not double the delta V of  a one-way trip. It ignores the escape velocities of each unique body. As an experienced KSP1 player, I do not rely on it, but new players are going to be overbuilding their ships.

And WHY is there no funding resource? Part of the fun in KSP1 career mode for me was working hard to earn funds and building optimized rockets that did what I needed. There's no incentive in exploration mode to do anything but use the most capable parts as soon as you unlock them. But that brings me to the awful tech tree. Why are engine plates and other adapters so hard to get to? You have to use a lot of science points to get to some of the things that make for better rocket designs. The tech tree is a mess. It should have more logic to it. And it too, should allow different branches to get to the various levels, the choke points are a pain.

It's better than it was. But there is still room for a LOT of improvement in game play. I will play long enough to see how the missions unfold, but some of it is already bordering on tedious.

[Sea_Kerman]

yeah I definitely felt the lack of adapters and engine plates and interstage fairings and stuff

specifically, the Poodle is way too big for a lot of stuff you'd want to do with a 2.5m upper stage/lander and there's no way to non-jankily use 2 Terriers instead

Edited December 26, 2023 by Sea_Kerman