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

[SchroedingersHat]

I ... balanced the costs... again.

If anyone is willing to test the new version, please let me know, I will send them a new version with a way to configure the factors by yourself. And yes, boosters were really cheap. Were. Sorry guys, but it is impossible to balance this out in a way that resembles the reality.

In reality solid fuel is much cheaper than liquid fuel. In my plugin solid fuel is more expensive, *but* you must take the rocket engines into account as well. And those are expensive. So basically I tried to make solid rocket boosters still cheaper than the combination of liquid fuel and rocket engines, but not by much.

I also rebalanced some rewards, so let me know if you would like to help .

This fits, the solid fuel substance may be cheap to keep and handle, but casting and processing it is a highly involved process (and the engine pretty much _is_ the fuel). The ideal would be if they were substantially cheaper than a liquid rocket of equivalent delta-v (note that they're less efficient so will be heavier) but cost more than you spend if you launch the liquid rocket and recover it.

I'll probably be fiddling with it a lot anyway so I'm in for testing.

Side note: There's a mod development forum which might be more appropriate to start a new thread in? PM me if you start one there.

A recycle button for ships that haven't succeeded on a mission but are still recoverable would be nice (or was there one and the time(s) I decided to try it something odd happened?).

[theSpeare]

So I'm assuming you compensated for the inconsistencies in part costs by scaling up mass?

EDIT: I scaled down Mass to 3000, Solid Fuel to 7.2, mono up to 18.

In my opinion though it's all pretty good - I think you might just need to crank up the starting budget by a bit and raise the mission rewards to fit the new bump in costs.

Edited June 21, 2013 by theSpeare

[nobody44]

So I'm assuming you compensated for the inconsistencies in part costs by scaling up mass?

Everything. Not only the mass. But yes, that was the idea.

Thing is:

First I used stock parts only. And "balanced" for those parts

Then I wanted to try the KW rocketry parts and everything was much cheaper.

So I had to rebalance the factors so that equivalent rockets (stock <---> kw rocketry) would cost the same.

That is why there was so much rebalancing lately . And FYI: I *MUST* take addons into account, I can't balance the factors for the stock parts and ignore everything else.

[theSpeare]

Yeah, I use KW Rocketry as well. Are we allowed to edit all the KW Rocketry config files to scale up the costs and distribute?

Is there some way, when you read the parts in, you can read the developer author for the part? Maybe you can scale part costs for specified mods.

Yeah, the thing with integrating mostly mass into costs is the problem of adding some small part that would be quite expensive to manufacture and install, and yet since its mass is incredibly small it barely affects the cost. An example is mechjeb or kerbal engineering parts. RTGs is another example. In my opinion I don't think you should take mass into account too much - mass should already be affecting your costs a lot via liquid engines and required fuel. Thoughts?

[nobody44]

Yeah, I use KW Rocketry as well. Are we allowed to edit all the KW Rocketry config files to scale up the costs and distribute?

Is there some way, when you read the parts in, you can read the developer author for the part? Maybe you can scale part costs for specified mods.

Yeah, the thing with integrating mostly mass into costs is the problem of adding some small part that would be quite expensive to manufacture and install, and yet since its mass is incredibly small it barely affects the cost. An example is mechjeb or kerbal engineering parts. RTGs is another example. In my opinion I don't think you should take mass into account too much - mass should already be affecting your costs a lot via liquid engines and required fuel. Thoughts?

As I said earlier in this thread: I can't use the cost value specified in the part.cfg, because the stock parts take fuel into account (the big orange tank costs 12k) and *most* mods don't even bother to change the value. So for now, there is no way to handle this properly.

In my opinion though it's all pretty good - I think you might just need to crank up the starting budget by a bit and raise the mission rewards to fit the new bump in costs.

Is there a bump in costs? I will now replay all stock missions to see where I am.

[theSpeare]

Yeah, I understand your dilemma here. Just my side of feedback, the majority of cost by parts would be better than charging by mass. Charging by mass will increase costs rapidly. More mass = more/bigger engines + more fuel = even more cost. Not sure how you would go around fixing the issue of inconsistent part pricing by authors, but that's my side of the coin feedback.

Maybe release an edit package or a modulemanager type deal to scale the prices via cfg.

When I installed the new version with your default values I saw one of my vessels jump by about 20%.

Edited June 21, 2013 by theSpeare

[1001sd]

This. Is. AWESOME!!!

Also, the mission controller button in the VAB is over the most right center of (something) button, if you could move it a few pixels to the right it would be great

I will also say that being able to sell kethane gas and/or fuel would be cool. Or can you? If you recycle a vehicle that has fuel onboard, you get money for it, right? So we can actually kinda sell kethane. Which is cool

But a "native" way would be fantastic too.

Let me say it again. THIS MOD IS AAWEEEEESOOOOME!!!

[Lammbo]

Hey

At first: I really like the mod, but I encounterd one problem. When I played with the mod installed, my asas doesnt work. I tried mechjeb as well, it doesnt work neither. I can manually move the craft, but asas and mechjeb just do nothing. Is it possible, that it is connected to the mod?

[SchroedingersHat]

@theSpeare you don't need to redistribute, look up ModuleManager. It requires maintaining a list of parts and costs whenever KW updates, but you don't need to overwrite or get them to do anything.

Latest rebalance thoughts. I'm assuming you want to balance around stock and testing only those parts so far, also it's a little unfair to make some things only viable if you have a certain mod:

The stock solid rockets seem to be worse than they should be now. There's no clear winner between them in terms of performance/cost for smallish payloads, but for a liquid engine you still have your ship afterwards. There are probably still some cases where you'd want them (high TWR and thrust cost ratio seems to be the cases).

With the cost in the 4-6K range they'd be a clear choice for boosting your lower atmosphere stages which gels well with reality.

The xenon cost is lower than real world ratios, but you are already penalized significantly by the heavy xenon tank. Also you have to have a lot of patience or a really big probe to use a full tank. If there were smaller tanks it might be okay but even then I think I'd reduce it to 10-15 range. That being said, I think the engine itself is a fair deal cheap -- maybe increase the exponent and lower the coefficient on your engine cost calculation*? Ideally you'd be able to put up a comparatively heavy, extremely slow ship that costs a pittance to refuel.

Monopropellant is way too expensive. Hydrazine is a similar price to rocket fuel and you're already paying a great deal to bring it up there in terms of launch mass.

Wings have gone from being a bank breaker to almost free. Perhaps you could add something for low drag materials (divide by the drag? would make wings cost about 10x as much by weight so makes sense) -- may have to check that FAR doesn't mess this up.

High price for objects that add nothing but mass is a bit of a double whammy. Pay for the mass, then pay for the launch mass to get it up. Kinda drives people away from doing anything other than using the bare minimum of boring ugly rockets .

This also completely breaks in-atmosphere planes that carry stuff around (you often need a bit of dead weight here and there) as well as trucks and such -- a few tonnes of whatever is cheapest in order to stop my forklift/crane from falling over should not cost more than a rocket engine.

No longer paying for all the gubbins and doodads doesn't seem quite right, but I can think of no way to fix this, and it encourages placing them so it can probably stay.

Maybe add a cost for things that store or produce energy.

A way to make an RTG more expensive would be interesting but is probably unnecessary complexity as mass will tend to hold you back.

Adding a (high) cost for kerbal capacity would work well. Also adding a cost for things that can control a ship.

*This would have the side-effect of making main stage engines cheaper, and I think there's already too much difference there as the trade-off is usually vacuum to atmosphere Isp rather than cost to vacuum Isp. An alternative would be a small multiplier for exotic fuels. This should cover the LV-N but actually wouldn't as it uses LiquidFuel and Oxidizer instead of H2 and NuclearFuel

-----------------------

Final thoughts:

Decrease mass cost significantly and up liquidengine cost to compensate. This should fix the mass issue as well as the solid motor vs liquid.

Make cost scale sub-linearly with engine power (sqrt is a good first guess). This will make main stage engines a little cheaper and ion drives comparatively far more expensive. You will then be able to decrease (or maybe remove?) the exponent on Isp to bring the costs of different liquidengines back to their current ratios. This will encourage finding the right engine for your stage rather than a bajillion tiny ones (cost of parts and labour ). The LV-N may wind up being the black sheep again.

Addendum: Maybe some non-mass cost for fuel tanks too based on capacity?

Edited June 21, 2013 by SchroedingersHat

[UAL002]

Past tense?

Yes, my MC window was not working in the builder or on the pad before launch. Only after launch or in the space center did any info show. Also, when launching, it does not subtract costs of any type. I was on my ascent with 50k. My funds just kept climbing if I completed mission and stayed static if I failed them. I either installed it wrong or its conflicting with something. Any ideas?

[SchroedingersHat]

Yes, my MC window was not working in the builder or on the pad before launch. Only after launch or in the space center did any info show. Also, when launching, it does not subtract costs of any type. I was on my ascent with 50k. My funds just kept climbing if I completed mission and stayed static if I failed them. I either installed it wrong or its conflicting with something. Any ideas?

Yeah, it has a few issues with changing resolution, esp on lower resolutions (like most laptops). Also the menus are nearly impossible to use on windowed mode..

[blspblackdeath]

Awesome mod. Need more mission packs... ;-)

It's great to bridge the time until 0.21. And I think its hard to beat by the devs.

[nobody44]

Hey

At first: I really like the mod, but I encounterd one problem. When I played with the mod installed, my asas doesnt work. I tried mechjeb as well, it doesnt work neither. I can manually move the craft, but asas and mechjeb just do nothing. Is it possible, that it is connected to the mod?

I just tried using ASAS. Works fine... Did you try my plugin with a clean KSP installation, just to be sure?

Final thoughts:

Decrease mass cost significantly and up liquidengine cost to compensate. This should fix the mass issue as well as the solid motor vs liquid.

Make cost scale sub-linearly with engine power (sqrt is a good first guess). This will make main stage engines a little cheaper and ion drives comparatively far more expensive. You will then be able to decrease (or maybe remove?) the exponent on Isp to bring the costs of different liquidengines back to their current ratios. This will encourage finding the right engine for your stage rather than a bajillion tiny ones (cost of parts and labour ). The LV-N may wind up being the black sheep again.

Addendum: Maybe some non-mass cost for fuel tanks too based on capacity?

The capactiy is already covered by fuel and mass, isn't it?

About the balancing, I adjusted some values, and highered some rewards. I think it is "fair", but that is always disputable. I will need a spreadsheet with some basic rocket designs, the rewards for the missions they were built for, and the rockets characteristica (basically the amout of liquid fuel, mass, engines, etc.), so that I can rebalance the factors more quickly. With a nice spreadsheet. Unfortunately I won't be able to do anything (well, I will write some missions) on the weekend .

Yes, my MC window was not working in the builder or on the pad before launch. Only after launch or in the space center did any info show. Also, when launching, it does not subtract costs of any type. I was on my ascent with 50k. My funds just kept climbing if I completed mission and stayed static if I failed them. I either installed it wrong or its conflicting with something. Any ideas?

Hey, that does not sound good. Could you give me more infos about your PC setup?

About the launching: You *must* press the space bar to launch. Otherwise KSP does not fire the onLaunch event.

[SchroedingersHat]

The capactiy is already covered by fuel and mass, isn't it?

Fuel tanks are very light compared to other parts, they're also more complex than a girder. In reality this lightness comes at high cost (expensive alloys, state of the art welding methods). In terms of game balance I was trying to think of ways that you could make rockets cost more than just the engine and fuel without making a decent truck cost as much as something that could go to the Mun.

About the balancing, I adjusted some values, and highered some rewards. I think it is "fair", but that is always disputable. I will need a spreadsheet with some basic rocket designs, the rewards for the missions they were built for, and the rockets characteristica (basically the amout of liquid fuel, mass, engines, etc.), so that I can rebalance the factors more quickly. With a nice spreadsheet. Unfortunately I won't be able to do anything (well, I will write some missions) on the weekend .

I was thinking less along the lines of feeling fair (it's pretty good with regards to this) and more along the lines of what the path of least resistance seemed to be -- and what designs I wanted to build in response. At the dev revision I made those comments on my general feeling was mostly re-landable liquid rockets only using solid boosters when their power/weight/burn rate was close to perfect (lower the price a little and they'd be perfect as boosters and not useful otherwise which is exactly right) and not stressing overly about discarding liquid stages rather than switching to solid if you don't need the TWR (playing with KW rocketry re-enabled may change this, longer burning solid boosters may be good). Wholly reusable space-planes also looked incredibly good, but offset suitably by difficulty in building them and tedium in flying.

The mass thing, however, adds insult to injury if one is trying the already tedious task of refueling and reusing a space plane as service vehicles will be pricy.

About the launching: You *must* press the space bar to launch. Otherwise KSP does not fire the onLaunch event.

Many of my designs don't use this, esp space planes and I don't think it'll be intuitive. Perhaps an alternate would be to subtract at spacecraft load and offer a 100% recycle value if it hasn't moved outside the launchpad bounds?

Edited June 21, 2013 by SchroedingersHat

[Scarecrow88]

Downloaded this today, but having a problem. I also downloaded the mission pack, and it says to install it in the bottom subfolder where the stock.mpkg file is, but I haven't got a stock.mpkg file. Is there something else I should be doing, or have I misunderstood the installation instructions?

At the bottom of the mission list in game, I have the following options; icon, Nt Space Program and Space program but they are all greyed out and not selectable, or am I supposed to complete the missions above those before they become available?

Edited June 21, 2013 by Scarecrow88

[nobody44]

Downloaded this today, but having a problem. I also downloaded the mission pack, and it says to install it in the bottom subfolder where the stock.mpkg file is, but I haven't got a stock.mpkg file. Is there something else I should be doing, or have I misunderstood the installation instructions?

At the bottom of the mission list in game, I have the following options; icon, Nt Space Program and Space program but they are all greyed out and not selectable, or am I supposed to complete the missions above those before they become available?

I honestly have no clue, how this happens. So I make a wild guess here: You are using a Mac.

I just downloaded the zip from Mediafire and the Stock.mpkg is in "MissionController/Plugins/PluginData/MissionController".

I guess you use a Mac because the file ending is mpkg which is used by Mac for their packages. The mission package file *has nothing to do with Mac packges*. It is a simple text file.

So please tell me *exactly* what you did .

[theSpeare]

I really much preferred the older method of using part costs, even if it was inconsistent. Is there some way you can leave this configurable?

[malkuth]

I really much preferred the older method of using part costs, even if it was inconsistent. Is there some way you can leave this configurable?

Ya Ive been conveting my youtube series from using my excell spreadsheet to this program.. Still writing all the missions myself at this moment as I go along. But the mission payouts are hard to figure out.. In the old system a vessel like the moonshine V cost about 250,000 just under the Kerbal Engineering Plugin.. With the Mission Controller with all the different cost it jumped to almost 600,000. No big deal.. I adjusted mission payouts to be more in line with MC. Now this new system.. Which again I don't mind because modders are not making good choices with part cost.. The same vessel is almost 1,000,000 To launch.. I was like DAM!! Had to adjust the amounts again in my missions to correct for the new cost.

And yes eventually I will release the missions. Might release them as betas once I start using them in series fulltime. But for now I have no idea if the payouts are balanced correctly. Its hard to tell. LOL.

[Punk]

Awesome plugin. Is there a minimal window view in the works? I know you can toggle the thing off but it would be good to have a smaller UI to use.

In my opinion I would just balance for stock parts and when this mod reaches a high enough saturation other mod makers will have to pay more attention to part values. Or suggest a stat weighting (1 mN of thrust = 5 krones and 1 sec of ISP = 5 krones, 1 unit of fuel = 50 krones, tank mass = something and ASAS functionality = 1000 krones or something) that way any part can be used but there is a scaled framework. At the moment it just seems like people use their own relative values which leads to difficulties.

Also where can I get more mission packs?

[Scarecrow88]

I honestly have no clue, how this happens. So I make a wild guess here: You are using a Mac.

I just downloaded the zip from Mediafire and the Stock.mpkg is in "MissionController/Plugins/PluginData/MissionController".

I guess you use a Mac because the file ending is mpkg which is used by Mac for their packages. The mission package file *has nothing to do with Mac packges*. It is a simple text file.

So please tell me *exactly* what you did .

I'm using a desktop PC running Windows 7. I downloaded the Mission Controller mod, and unzipped it to the Game Data folder. A also downloaded the NT Space Program mission pack, and unzipped the file to GameData/MissionController/Plugins/PluginData/MissionController folder, where it sits with the Comsat, Mun, Sputnik etc mission files, but it isn't accessible when in game.

I downloaded both from the Space Port site.

[nobody44]

I'm using a desktop PC running Windows 7. I downloaded the Mission Controller mod, and unzipped it to the Game Data folder. A also downloaded the NT Space Program mission pack, and unzipped the file to GameData/MissionController/Plugins/PluginData/MissionController folder, where it sits with the Comsat, Mun, Sputnik etc mission files, but it isn't accessible when in game.

I downloaded both from the Space Port site.

Now I see the problem. I don't update the version on kerbl space port. Download the newest version from mediafire. The link is in the first post.

[UAL002]

Hey, that does not sound good. Could you give me more infos about your PC setup?

About the launching: You *must* press the space bar to launch. Otherwise KSP does not fire the onLaunch event.

Win 7 x64 16 gig ram, core I5, Dual 560gt SLI.

I did hit space-bar.

Could alt tabbing out during KSPs initial load still cause problems?

[nobody44]

Win 7 x64 16 gig ram, core I5, Dual 560gt SLI.

I did hit space-bar.

Could alt tabbing out during KSPs initial load still cause problems?

Might be the case. Never had the problem on linux though, and I always tab out.

[UAL002]

Might be the case. Never had the problem on linux though, and I always tab out.

Ill play with it more tonight and report back. At least I know this was not intentional.

[NannerManCan]

What is the different between difficulty settings?