[0.20.2] Mission Controller v0.10 (06/24/2013) [ALPHA]

[nobody44]

I was writing commercial missions, namely setup geostationary com network, weather satellites, GPS then hit a snag with the GPS satellite network as there's no way to require a specific MNA.

The mean anomaly would not help to build a GPS satellite network. The MNA changes over time... Currently this is not possible. Actually, there is no simple value that represents a position like that...

I have something in mind to fix this, but I am not sure about it, need to test it first .

I just released a new version. It is just a balancing fix.

It still uses the new method for calculating the costs. But:

I am thinking about the balancing and if you don't like the current balance, please let my know and post in this thread. Actually, I like the current method a lot more than the old method, but if you, the users, think that I am wrong then please let me know . But first try the new version.

The problem with the old balancing: Most mods, and I mean really *most* if not all mods, do not balance their costs, because it is difficult and had no purpose. With the old method some overpowered engines were just really cheap. With the current method the addon developers don't need to balance their parts in that regard, because I use a formular to calculate that for them. The downside of the current approach is, that it is not possible to create a part that is expensive because of technology / whatever used in that part. I could fix this by creating a separate list that defines the costs for some parts.

[Viper_607]

I'm curious as to if it would be possible for you to mess with the code that deletes the crafts when they go outside a certain range and are within kerbins atmosphere. If you attach parachutes to them (run a quick calculation to see that if parachute has enough drag to safely land whatever it's attatched to) then it salvages that for 75% cost.

That said, That part of the game might be hard coded and difficult to toy about with.

EDIT:

Also.. is a stock Liquid engine supposed to cost 23120...? Seems... rather excessive given the relative price of other parts.

Not to mention that such high Costs for Rockets means that if you screw up once, and only once for the first few missions, then you lose. Even on medium it requires you to do ultra light designs and you can't fail a mission. Take the first mission for instance, If you build it with the largest small fuel tank and the engine with vectoring, then you cant decouple that engine, or you'll practically lose your entire reward.

Edited June 24, 2013 by Viper_607

[asmi]

Stabilizers are cheap with the current pricing scheme. If you want to stop it from flipping: weight up, drag/lift down -- think of a dart. The little tiltable winglet will give you control when you don't have vectoring, but without FAR to tone it down, it'll be rather extreme for a small rocket, a SAS wheel, or one of the less agressive ASAS type things (like mechjeb or maybe an avionics package) may help in that regard. When I'm using solid boosters I just use tail fins and go straight up.

Yea I know - it's just I haven't yet mastered "semi-auto" ascent (using Smart ASS's Surface mode) as good as I did with liquids - 100+ launches in a row, 100% success, all kinds of payloads from <1t (comsats) to ~130t (fuel depot, did only one launch, but THAT was one hell of a rocket) to all kinds of orbits.

If you have FAR then one of the farings (such as AEIS or KW) will definitely pay for the extra cost/weight in terms of controlability and reduced drag (it merely adds more drag if you don't) also add nosecaps (again worse than useless with stock drag model).

Ofcourse I use fairings.

[Viper_607]

When it comes to balancing, I have the following proposals:

Engine costs are reduced, fuel costs increased. Command pod cost increased. When It comes to pricing, to discourage simply rewinding all the time, or having to complete the repeatable missions a billion times after a single failure, the price of a rocket shouldn't be more than a Third or so of the reward given ( Depending on difficulty level), to compensate for failures, and to encourage getting it right the first time. Experimenting through failures is one of the core concepts of Kerbal space program, and hopefully will continue to be so. If you reduce the cost of the rockets or increase the rewards, then the rewind button should be removed, as unless you're horrible at it, you're succeeding the missions after few enough attempts so that you're still making a profit large enough to continue with the next mission, the amount of failures one should estimate for is up for discussion, but allowing failures as a part of the reward system is a definite must. Otherwise, it does require a rewind button as is currently implemented, which is a bad mechanic in games. It goes from being a space centers adventures success and failure to being a You have to get this perfect the first time or you have to reload sort of thing.

Edited June 24, 2013 by Viper_607

[NannerManCan]

Also I think with the different difficulty settings you should get different budget amount, to me 50k starting seems a little low because since liquid engines cost so much you have to always use solid rocket boosters, maybe 100k for easy, 75k for medium, and 50k for hard

[nobody44]

When it comes to balancing, I have the following proposals:

Engine costs are reduced, fuel costs increased. Command pod cost increased. When It comes to pricing, to discourage simply rewinding all the time, or having to complete the repeatable missions a billion times after a single failure, the price of a rocket shouldn't be more than a third or so of the reward given. Experimenting through failures is one of the core concepts of Kerbal space program, and hopefully will continue to be so.

I am not sure if I understand you correctly... *should* I reduce the engine costs or have they already been reduced (I have reduced them...)? Currently, the reward for one mission is 2.5 times the price of a simple (yet beautiful rocket using KW rocketry and fairings) rocket using liquid fuel + engines (and *not* solid rocket boosters, which are cheaper).

And if I should reduced the costs of engines and increate the fuel costs: Should the sum stay they same?

Thanks for your feedback

[Viper_607]

Using stock parts and liquid fuel engines, the first craft for the first mission costs 32249 K, whilst the mission reward is 25000K. Perhaps it's just the formula is off for stock parts vs mod parts. Only way I managed to make a profit was landing it safely on the ground with the engine still attached.

[itsme86]

I think it would be great if the prices were geared toward stock parts. I personally don't use KW rocketry and am not really interested in starting to use a parts mod. I've found that I need to use the 909 engine for most of the beginning missions because the LV-T30 and LV-T45 are simply too expensive. Keep in mind that this was in 0.9. I'm at work right now and won't be able to test the new version with the reduced prices until I get home.

I may be alone in the "geared for stock parts" opinion, in which case that's fine. Alternatively, maybe a discussion could start up about these popular parts mods balancing their prices to work well with your mod.

[nobody44]

You have to consider this:

1. The engines cost basically the same (KW Rocketry and stock engines)

2. Fuel and containers cost the same

3. I use fairing (+ mass) in KW rocketry, stock does not have any fairings

@viper_607:

Use the new version please.

[Viper_607]

I Updated (thought I had the newest since I downloaded today)

Price went down by 10k for the engine, which is rather decent, though I discovered something that appears buggy:

The craft without the engine costs 7528k.

The craft with the engine costs 21448k.

The Engine is specified to cost 8670k.

Other resource cost went from 4637k to 9887k.

That's 5250k cost that is coming from no where.

If 21448 is an acceptable cost for the first vessel, then the reward needs to be adjusted upwards.

Edited June 24, 2013 by Viper_607

[nobody44]

Because one kilogram mass costs 3.5 krones. It is not a bug .

Rewards are higher... my first rocket costs about 22k. Reward is 50k or something about that... just update the mpkg file .

FYI: Here is a spreadsheet for my first rockets: Libre Office calc file on Mediafire (just use the factors at the bottom of the page)

Edited June 24, 2013 by nobody44

[veryinky]

Using stock parts and liquid fuel engines, the first craft for the first mission costs 32249 K, whilst the mission reward is 25000K. Perhaps it's just the formula is off for stock parts vs mod parts. Only way I managed to make a profit was landing it safely on the ground with the engine still attached.

I think you're using a design that's overkill for the mission profile; get 100kg of mass up 70,000m, not orbit or anything.

LV-909 + FL-T200, octo-core, 3 antenna, 1 z-100 battery, 4 sensors, small parachute. Does the job very easily and the entire craft is re-usable. The next mission can be done by putting the first ship, adding 2 flat panel solars, and either 4 round tordial tanks or strapping the thing on top of a small booster. Either sollution is about 13k under .9 and probably a lot cheaper in .10.

What are you trying to launch that requires a LV-T45?

Made an even cheaper one.

3306 in 0.9, used a FL-T100 and 2 radial rocko 24-77

Edited June 24, 2013 by veryinky
made a cheaper ship

[nobody44]

I think you're using a design that's overkill for the mission profile; get 100kg of mass up 70,000m, not orbit or anything.

LV-909 + FL-T200, octo-core, 3 antenna, 1 z-100 battery, 4 sensors, small parachute. Does the job very easily and the entire craft is re-usable. The next mission can be done by putting the first ship, adding 2 flat panel solars, and either 4 round tordial tanks or strapping the thing on top of a small booster. Either sollution is about 13k under .9 and probably a lot cheaper in .10.

What are you trying to launch that requires a LV-T45?

Made an even cheaper one.

3306 in 0.9, used a FL-T100 and 2 radial rocko 24-77

Wel... you are quite efficient... the reward for that mission is 50k in 0.10. I guess you earned it for doing math and stuff .

[theSpeare]

Staying with the stance that you should make it configurable to choose between the two methods of balancing. We can even just use ModuleManager to support unbalanced pack costs.

[veryinky]

Wel... you are quite efficient...

Makes it difficult to figure out what rewards to give for my commercial mission pack. I can get 2 hitchhiker cans and a 1 kerbal crew pod into a 125km circular orbit and back to KSC with a ship that cost 42,000 in 0.9. Probably will need some people to play test these missions to get a good sample size.

[Snillum101]

Staying with the stance that you should make it configurable to choose between the two methods of balancing. We can even just use ModuleManager to support unbalanced pack costs.

Yes I like the sound of that! It would be easy to rebalance the KW rocketry stuff with module manager. I think this is a really good idea.

[asmi]

I've found a bug - insurance cost doesn't get saved across reboots. Nobody uses it?

[Viper_607]

I try to go for well.. more.. traditional designs.. and I had no idea you could get that much out of so little... I thought the LV had too bad a thrust to weight to be used to get stuff up into that altitude.. guess I was wrong. However, what you're doing there is pretty much maximization, the perfect answer. Then again, it shouldn't cost your arm shirt and foot to get something up to 70k without having to min max.

[Artophwar]

You dont have to min-max to make money. I think most people are just building WAY OVERPOWERED rockets. You dont need an lv-45 for pretty much most of the missions. Use solid rocket boosters and lv-909. Solid rocket boosters are cheap. I like to make visually pleasing and more traditional looking rockets as well and I can do so within the early mission reward limits even allowing for a few failures. There is already an easy difficulty setting AND the ability to rewind after every launch, so I think the mod is already forgiving enough.

I really prefer the current method for part balancing.

[Letum]

Edit: Solution to this issue thanks to Snillum101

The whole mission controller folder from the download needs to be unpacked in the GameData folder inside your KSP directory. So you should have /Kerbal Space Program/GameData/MissionController/

I finally got round to trying this, but I can't get it to work.

I have tried installing it via JGSME and manually.

I have tried completely reinstalling KSP 0.20.2 into a new directory with no other mods.

I have double and triple checked the installation (icons are in root/icons DLLs are in root/Plugins along with the PluginData folder)

I can't think what else might be causing this.

Edited June 25, 2013 by Letum

[Snillum101]

You dont have to min-max to make money. I think most people are just building WAY OVERPOWERED rockets. You dont need an lv-45 for pretty much most of the missions. Use solid rocket boosters and lv-909. Solid rocket boosters are cheap. I like to make visually pleasing and more traditional looking rockets as well and I can do so within the early mission reward limits even allowing for a few failures. There is already an easy difficulty setting AND the ability to rewind after every launch, so I think the mod is already forgiving enough.

I really prefer the current method for part balancing.

My beef isn't with the current method being too difficult. I have been able to design rockets that complete the stock missions within budget no problem. My issue is that the removal of individual pricing of components means that putting a few metal panels into orbit costs as much extra as putting up a large satellite. This is because the new model does not take into account if the object is a solid hunk of metal or a flight computer, it just charges for the mass of the object rather than for the object itself. In my mind it's obvious that a ASAS module should be many times the cost of a girder or metal panel due to all the electronics and whatnot.

An idea that could work is reducing the cost per unit of mass and introducing a new cost similar to what was done with liquid engines. For every piece of tech you put on your spacecraft (ASAS, solar panels, probe bodies, etc) you pay an amount based on the complexity of the unit. So a ASAS module goes from a foregone conclusion because it costs virtually nothing to being an actual decision.

Edited June 25, 2013 by Snillum101

[Snillum101]

I finally got round to trying this, but I can't get it to work.

I have tried installing it via JGSME and manually.

I have tried completely reinstalling KSP 0.20.2 into a new directory with no other mods.

I have double and triple checked the installation (icons are in root/icons DLLs are in root/Plugins along with the PluginData folder)

I can't think what else might be causing this.

The whole mission controller folder from the download needs to be unpacked in the GameData folder inside your KSP directory. So you should have /Kerbal Space Program/GameData/MissionController/

[theSpeare]

I agree with with Snillum101 (although I don't really like the idea of module pricing simply because that would be too complicated to implement).

My other reasoning was simply: you pay for mass by delta-v already, slapping on extra cost on mass kinda warps that cost.

[Snillum101]

Exactly, you pay for the cost for a more massive payload by having to build a bigger rocket.

[SchroedingersHat]

An idea that could work is reducing the cost per unit of mass and introducing a new cost similar to what was done with liquid engines. For every piece of tech you put on your spacecraft (ASAS, solar panels, probe bodies, etc) you pay an amount based on the complexity of the unit. So a ASAS module goes from a foregone conclusion because it costs virtually nothing to being an actual decision.

That is a good idea, but without something to differentiate the parts, someone would have to curate every mod (hence my suggestion of overridable auto-generating costs). You could go by category, but many categories have both cheap stuff (ie. an rcs block) and expensive (asas).