UI/UX Add a warning popup when changing science rewards multiplier to warn players if their science will become negative

[DibzNr]

An issue I've seen brought up quite a few times is that changing the science/mission rewards multipliers in-game after having already spent science points potentially results in your science going negative, due to having spent more science points than earned with the new multiplier setting(s), multiple people have reported this as a bug, however dev comments seem to point to this being intended behaviour:

To clear things up, it'd be nice if the game could give you a warning when changing your science rewards multiplier, to notify you if your science is going to become negative with the new multiplier.

 

Edited January 15 by DibzNr

[Superfluous J]

Weird that it retroactively removes science gained at all.

[steveman0]

If you change the setting back to default, it returns the points, correct? So why is a warning needed? If you're not ready to accept the difficulty adjustment, postpone it by turning it back? Is that so hard that you need the cancel instead?

The way they implemented it makes a ton of sense when considering the balancing they seem to have in mind for later EA patches. Making science points absolute with respect to everything unlocked/completed is a very reliable way of managing it.

[Spicat]

2 hours ago, steveman0 said:

If you change the setting back to default, it returns the points, correct? So why is a warning needed? If you're not ready to accept the difficulty adjustment, postpone it by turning it back? Is that so hard that you need the cancel instead?

Because people think it’s a bug, which it isn’t, So the warning is there to show it’s intentional.

[The Aziz]

I mean... Why are spent points even counted? It should not at any circumstances retroactively take away something you no longer have. It doesn't make any sense.

Would the game kill all your Kerbals if at some point in the game, after multiple catastrophes and lethal accidents (all reverted), you decided to turn off reverts and crew respawns? It's the same thing.

You spent the points, you don't have them but have the technology. Change the difficulty, the only difference should be that your earnings on upcoming missions are lessened. It should not mean that you have to grind back to make up for losses. An RPG game won't make you beat the same boss again after you've decided to ramp up the diff after beating him once. Hell, buying a GPU didn't get me in bigger debt after hardware prices skyrocketed few weeks later in 2020.

Send that to devs if you want because I can't be bothered with discord.

Edited January 16 by The Aziz

[steveman0]

3 hours ago, The Aziz said:

I mean... Why are spent points even counted? It should not at any circumstances retroactively take away something you no longer have. It doesn't make any sense.

I suspect it has to do with the way they plan to do continual EA balance of science as they add missions, new science parts, and expand the tech tree. As they make these changes, they'll be adding more science available and more tech to spend it on. It would be impossible to design for all players at every stage of progression unless they make all tech unlocked and points earned static regardless of where you got to up to that point. This makes sense given their stated goal for all players to keep playing their existing Exploration saves through updates. The difficulty scaling probably works on the same principle for consistency.