About the Tech tree

[jeti140973]

Here is a thought, for manned missions, I propose that your Kerbals have an engineering or science rating that is factored in to how much research they can unlock for you.

My thoughts exactly. I imagine kerbals should have three ratings - piloting, engineering and science. Piloting governs how well they perform maneuvers (it has earlier been stated that they may eventually be able to perform 'tasks'). Engineering should govern their effectiveness at repairing stuff, and science their ability to do experiments. It would make better sense to send three kerbals on a mission when they each serve a specific purpose than sending (risking) only one generic all-purpose jack-of-all-trades. It would also provide better reasons for varied training facilities and make crew management more important.

[Kimberly]

Harv, will science be separated into different branches? I mean, I highly doubt that getting samples from Duna would give you progress towards a new engine or capsule.

Edit: I know there is a tree, I just want to know if there's one "science" value that works with all unlocks or if there is a variety of types that only work with one part of the tree.

I think there will only be one science value (from what I've read), but that works if you think about in the abstract. Collecting rocks from the Moon didn't do anything for our engines or spacecraft design by itself, but we had to make a lot of advances in those fields to start collecting those rocks. You'll be cashing in your science points at the end of your project, instead of with each little advance.

[HeadHunter67]

Collecting rocks from the Moon didn't do anything for our engines or spacecraft design by itself, but we had to make a lot of advances in those fields to start collecting those rocks.

Precisely the point I was trying to make earlier. Let's be honest - in the real life space programs, what technologies did we discover on the Moon or out among the stars? None, honestly. You won't find a new engine on the Moon - but to get there, we had to invent new ones. The exploration drives the technology. So the reward for the mission is in the gear that brought it about.

[Geschosskopf]

Here is a thought, for manned missions, I propose that your Kerbals have an engineering or science rating that is factored in to how much research they can unlock for you.

So you have additional incentive to not kill your Kerbals. The more missions a Kerbal undergoes, the higher this Science rating gets.

But OTOH.... Kerbals, like humans, are a net drag on space exploration. Considered from the pragmatic standpoint of cost-effective, mission-efficient rocketry, they are about the least effective "parts" you can add to a spacecraft. Seriously.

In vanilla, Kerbals can only do a few things that unmanned probes cannot. In decreasing order of importance (in terms of doing Kerbal science any good), these are:

• Fix flat rover tires
  
• Repack parachutes
  
• Plant flags
  

Very few mods add any more Kerbal functionality. KAS lets them pump gas. Kethane lets you convert Kerbals into rocket fuel. I can't think of any more off the top of my head.

But in any case, all of these things are just menial labor. There is thus no reason to pay Kerbals more than minimum wage, nor give them any more training than making sure they know which way to turn rover lug nuts. And given all compartment labels and sticky notes I see in the IVA views, and the fact that Kerbals are measured for stupidity instead of intelligence, makes me think they're incapable of learning any more than this anyway.

Now consider that even without any life support requirements at present, all parts capable of carrying Kerbals weigh more than their corresponding probe cores. Even the lawn chair is a net weight gain because it requires you to have a probe core or crewed pod first. Thus, taking Kerbals along means you need a bigger, more expensive rocket than you would otherwise, and for this you just get a limited amount of menial labor in very special circumstances. And this situation will only get worse if or when life support becomes part of the vanilla game.

And then on top of this, if putting a Kerbal in space imposes a requirement to bring him home eventually (or awards you bonus points if you do), you've got an even worse situation. Now you have to build a return capability into your rocket, making it even bigger, heavier, and thus more expensive to launch than it would be taking Kerbals on a 1-way trip. Combine this with life support requirements and you've now got a severe limitation on mission duration, too.

There's no escaping any of this. So, for a moment, shift your mental focus out of the capsule with Jeb and into the corner office of KSP. After all, your true role in the game is that of the top suit, the CEO/CFO of the whole space program. You're not flying the rockets yourself, you're trying to run a space program efficiently. You now have to cost-justify every design decision and there are no rival superpowers on Kerbin so pure propaganda stunts like planting flags on other worlds are totally valueless. Given the above, there are hardly any grounds upon which you can justify sending Kerbals to space. About the best case you can make for them is if you've got a huge fleet of probe rovers on a world that are continually breaking wheels. Then it might be worthwhile to send 1 Kerbal there permanently as an on-call repairman. But it would probably be more cost-effective to design better rovers or reprogram their probe cores to be more careful.

"But what about career mode?" you ask. Well, that depends on whose career you're talking about. As the top executive of KSP, I'm worried about MY career, not Jeb's. Jeb is an expendable workerbee. I however, have a multi-million Kollar mortgage, am going through a divorce, have a pregnant mistress, am putting 3 kids through Ivy League universities at once, and just lost a fortune in a stock market crash. I can't afford to lose my job so I don't want to get fired for bankrupting the KSP. I want my organization to stand up to a Congressional grandstanding witch-hunt when an election year happens to coincide with a recession. If that means no Kerbal ever leaves the ground, that's fine with me

[LameLefty]

But OTOH.... Kerbals, like humans, are a net drag on space exploration. Considered from the pragmatic standpoint of cost-effective, mission-efficient rocketry, they are about the least effective "parts" you can add to a spacecraft. Seriously.

Points all well-taken. I was a spacecraft life support systems engineer in my previous career. You're 100% correct.

I however, have a multi-million Kollar mortgage, am going through a divorce, have a pregnant mistress, am putting 3 kids through Ivy League universities at once,

On Kerbin, I think that would be Kudzu League universities.

[Geschosskopf]

On Kerbin, I think that would be Kudzu League universities.

Only a fellow Southerner would appreciate that joke, and I had to wipe nasally ejected beer off my monitor over it. There is only 1 thing in the world more devastating than the Kraken and that's Kudzu

[lazarus1024]

Points all well-taken. I was a spacecraft life support systems engineer in my previous career. You're 100% correct.

On Kerbin, I think that would be Kudzu League universities.

True-ish. Keep in mind though, that the further from the Earth/Kerbin you get, the more effective a Human/Kerbal is at performing science over an unmanned probe. You need to include a boat load of extra stuff, but look at a Mars mission. 20+ minute lag time, so you need to automate the crap out of stuff. You are still limited to doing a very small number of tasks during a Sol. A human on the other hand in situ doesn't have to wait around 20 minutes to get the feedback on an action performed. They can collect sample, run spectrographic readings, drill a rock core sample, take atmospheric readings, magnetic readings, cosmic radiation readings, decide a sample 2 rocks over looks better than the one he just started drilling, etc.

A human in place on Mars likely could conduct 10-30x as much "scientific" work in a Sol than a robotic rover could and especially could cover a lot more ground. That wouldn't necessarily be true somewhere like the Moon/Mun where lightspeed lag is nice and low (~4s round trip), even then though the bipedal ability of a human and general flexibility makes it easier to perform some tasks than a robotic probe can.

That said, you also have the penalty of all the life support, living space, etc. That makes the mission much more expensive, but there are potentially huge pay offs for boots on the ground. For the Moon the pay offs are much more limited. Mars and especially outer planetary moons/Kuiper belt objects...pays are HUGE compared to a robotic probe. Even simply an orbiter with no boots on the ground. The New Horizon's probe has a 64Gbit solid state data recorder (8GB). It'll take I think around 6 months to stream back all of the data it collects after it passes Pluto and at best Scientists will be able to adjust its course slightly and program in a few tasks as it gets close, then it is purely automated. Have a crewed mission and yes, mass and dV would jump hugely, but the science you could perform would also be orders of magnitude higher. You'd have real time repositioning and retasking instead of a 2-way loop of, what? 8+hrs? 12+hrs? Even the sneaker net aspect that you could acquire a lot more data (IE 6 months to stream back 8GB, or Terabytes upon Terabytes by sneaker net). You could do that with a probe as well, but the command loop would massively slow things down.

Boots on the ground is sometimes about being able to get the data in a shorter period of time. Assuming 3 years out and 3 years back, data is a pretty tiny amount of mass, in 6 years plus 3 months there you could collect easily 1,000x as much data as New Horizons could on a straight outbound mission. If you are paying by the byte...

[Geschosskopf]

True-ish. Keep in mind though, that the further from the Earth/Kerbin you get, the more effective a Human/Kerbal is at performing science over an unmanned probe. You need to include a boat load of extra stuff, but look at a Mars mission. 20+ minute lag time, so you need to automate the crap out of stuff. You are still limited to doing a very small number of tasks during a Sol. A human on the other hand in situ doesn't have to wait around 20 minutes to get the feedback on an action performed. They can collect sample, run spectrographic readings, drill a rock core sample, take atmospheric readings, magnetic readings, cosmic radiation readings, decide a sample 2 rocks over looks better than the one he just started drilling, etc.

This argument only holds if your vehicle isn't autonomous. If the thing doesn't need to be told every little thing, but can at least handle its basic functions and daily chores all by itself, then there is no time-based benefit to having crew there. Plus, you can cut your staffing expenses at KSC because you don't need to babysit the thing 24/7. All you have to do is give the probe some general orders and a list of priorities and let it go from there.

But this is sort of beside the point. Just talking about gameplay mechanics, there's no real difference from the player's POV in having a probe ship or a crewed ship. The player still navigates it, the player still decides where to land it, the player activates all the moving parts, etc., in exactly the same way whether there are Kerbals aboard or not. So, unless you've built a whole complex, multi-component mission or base around using KAS to move resources between units, the Kerbals and the heavy parts that hold them are just dead weight. Their only purpose is to pose for screenshots beside their flag, and maybe fix the odd flat tire. If you can live without those things, then in vanilla you have no incentive at all to make crewed ships.

Note that I'm not saying I'm happy with this because a great part of MY enjoyment of KSP stems from the antics of Kerbals, the unexpected disasters they can cause on EVA, and the desperate attempts to rescue them from all sorts of predicaments. But that's all in sandbox mode where everything is freely available in unlimited quantities. When you start putting pricetags on parts, fuel, research, Kerbals, whatever, suddenly all this changes. No longer will you be able to shrug it off when a lander crashes and set about mounting a rescue mission. And you might not be able to afford the increased lifter size required by a capsule compared to a probe core anyway. So, putting zero Kerbals in space means smaller, cheaper rockets, no need to ever mount a rescue mission, and no explaining to the press how you managed to kill or maroon Kerbals, without sacrificing any significant mission capability or even changing how you interact with your rockets. This is all good business sense, and if you're paying the bills and generating the revenue, then you're running a business.

Now, I suppose Squad could increase Kerbal functionality by inventing new "science" things that only they can do in vanilla. But how long do you think it would take modders to make parts that can do these same things? So unless there's some "ironman" gameplay option for career mode that locks out mods, there'd still be no functional incentive to send Kerbals anywhere. Another option would be that you get bonus points for sending Kerbals and planting flags, even if they don't actually do anything for you. But this reduces Kerbals to mere propaganda tools, and propaganda requires some sort of adversarial context. On peaceful, unmilitarized Kerbin, however, this context doesn't exist, so such a use of Kerbals would be rather artificial. Now, if KSP was assumed to be a private business, and there was a rival, AI-run business over at the easter egg KSC, and you could have a real space race with them, and you attracted customers by out-doing each other, then propaganda stunts would have a proper context without bringing war into it. I'd really enjoy a game like that, especially if it was like Spore where the AI used uploaded designs from other players .

But until that day comes, I think career mode will be more about the career of the KSP CEO than about the career of an astronaut. And so there will be way more probes than crewed missions, for the same reasons it's this way in real life.

[Seret]

A human in place on Mars likely could conduct 10-30x as much "scientific" work in a Sol than a robotic rover could and especially could cover a lot more ground.

I wouldn't like to put a number on it without seeing some studies. It's plausible to me that a robot could be more productive than a human, as they don't have to get all EVA'd up just to do anything. Getting prepped for EVA takes several hours, and packing up afterwards a similar amount, plus all the workload of routine maintenance and testing on suits and equipment. EVA time itself is constrained by consumables and radiation exposure. So each hour of actual work done in EVA would have a large overhead in terms of support and maintenance. Humans might be able to work fairly quickly and very flexibly, but the actual productive part of their work would be short, with large amounts of time and effort sunk into supporting that productive work. Meanwhile the busy little robot could be methodically working 24/7 if its power source allowed.

Tortoise and hare situation? Quite possibly. Certainly the current guiding philosophy of space exploration is that robots do produce more science output per unit of resources input, which is why no human has left LEO in decades. We humans like to big ourselves up, but the robots have an impressive head start on us.

[Beeman]

All this real life talk is more or less irrelevant to KSP.

Sending kerbonauts to the surface of, say, mars is going to earn you the most science points, data, progression whatchamadoogits(whatever they call 'em). Especially if you can send those kerbonauts back home safely.

I wouldn't mind it, but I doubt we'll see anything like programming actions or response delays when it comes to controlling distant probes like you see in real life. RemoteTech, however, will probably always be around to fill that niche. What would be interesting, though, would be a kind of packet loss due to excessive distance between KSC and a probe doing science trying to beam that data back via satellite. Even more reason to send manned missions that return relatively safely...which would, of course, wind up requiring more resources to build because manned missions should just be more difficult.

Sure, you could always trickle in science data via probes and satellites, but if you land a few really successful manned science missions on various planets and moons it should really count for something. This is another reason why I'd love to see life support factor into career mode. Sending probes should be the slow but safe and inexpensive way to do science whereas sending kerbonauts should be risky and expensive but give you notable boosts to your tech level.

[Spanier]

What about that:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/entry.php/461-Introducing-Kerbal-Dynamic-s-DrawingBoard%E2%84%A2-Procedural-Parts-Generator!

[Geschosskopf]

All this real life talk is more or less irrelevant to KSP.

Sending kerbonauts to the surface of, say, mars is going to earn you the most science points, data, progression whatchamadoogits(whatever they call 'em). Especially if you can send those kerbonauts back home safely.

I think you miss my point. Just think in terms of KSP's gameplay mechanics from the rocket-designing and rocket-flying perspective. Forget real life, forget any speculation on how KSP's research scoring system may or may not eventually work out. No matter whether you fly Kerbals or probes, what you, the player, do with every rocket is the same thing. You design and build it, then you launch and fly it, using the exact same control interface to do the exact same orbital mechanics. The only difference between probe and crewed, at any point between VAB and landing, is that the crewed rockets have more mass and thus (in vanilla) also higher part counts. And after that point, it's pretty much all the same, too.

Thus, as you sit there in front of your monitor with your beverage of choice, it can't help but occur to you that KSP probes fly just as well as Kerbals because you're doing the exact same things with both and have to make zero allowances one way or the other. And it also can't help but occur to you that if you didn't have to waste time moving Kerbals from lander to rover, risking total destruction every time a Kerbal lets go of a ladder, you could accomplish the mission faster and in greater safety. And furthermore, it becomes impossible to ignore the fact that the only benefits Kerbals provide are fixing the odd flat tire and occasionally being able to flip rovers back right side up if the gravity is low enough.

The result of all this is the realization that your Kerbals are only providing menial labor that is only occasionally useful. Do you need them to design the rocket? No. Do you need them to fly the rocket? No. Do you need them to carry scientific instruments around on some other planet? No. You can do all the above with just probe cores. So why include Kerbals given that the vast bulk of what they do is merely adding unnecessary mass to payloads? How can you justify gaining any more research points for doing this when it goes against all economic sense and there are no rival superpowers to 1-up, and the Kerbal is only capable of menial labor anyway?

Edited August 24, 2013 by Geschosskopf

[Beeman]

That may be the case now, but in the future...even just in the next update, kerbals will be doing a lot more than just the simple tasks they do now. They'll eventually be able to repair things moreso than they can currently, there's probably going to be at least one experiment or science thingeddy that only kerbals can do but probes can't, they're going to return more science data progression stuffs as well. They might even do more than all that, we just don't know yet.

I'm excited for it, either way. Probes or kerbals, I just want career mode stuff already XD

Besides, there's bound to be higher cash payouts, prestige, public opinion, achievements for your museum and other such things for sending kerbals to other planets and stuff. Other than that, do we need more reason than doin' it just 'cause you can?

For me, I send kerbals places right now because it's fun to pop them out of the vehicle and hop around on the surface. That's all the reason I really need, though I've honestly only got to do that on mun 'cause I'm trying not to do too much before career mode gets implemented more. Not sure if I"ll play .22 or not...though I probably will >.>

Edited August 24, 2013 by Beeman

[Seret]

Well, we really don't know how the science returns will break down between manned and unmanned missions. But as Geschosskopf correctly points out the system is pretty broken right now, so we can expect some rebalancing in the future that will give the player a payoff for hauling lardy kerbals off their home rock.

[HeadHunter67]

The result of all this is the realization that your Kerbals are only providing menial labor that is only occasionally useful. Do you need them to design the rocket? No. Do you need them to fly the rocket? No. Do you need them to carry scientific instruments around on some other planet? No. You can do all the above with just probe cores. So why include Kerbals given that the vast bulk of what they do is merely adding unnecessary mass to payloads? How can you justify gaining any more research points for doing this when it goes against all economic sense and there are no rival superpowers to 1-up, and the Kerbal is only capable of menial labor anyway?

Sounds to me like you've just provided a good argument in favor of Kerbal manned science missions - if you're right, this gives them a reason to be in the game.

[leax256]

A larger crew capacity would require a larger diameter parts, something they need I wanna be able to build a stock Saturn 5 with proper ratios. But that's a totally different topic.

that or maybe just a longer crew module

[Djolox]

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO i just want a fresh restart

[Rage097]

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO i just want a fresh restart

Ermn...what? Why is this here?

[wminsing]

The result of all this is the realization that your Kerbals are only providing menial labor that is only occasionally useful. Do you need them to design the rocket? No. Do you need them to fly the rocket? No. Do you need them to carry scientific instruments around on some other planet? No. You can do all the above with just probe cores. So why include Kerbals given that the vast bulk of what they do is merely adding unnecessary mass to payloads? How can you justify gaining any more research points for doing this when it goes against all economic sense and there are no rival superpowers to 1-up, and the Kerbal is only capable of menial labor anyway?

But this assumes that Kerbals are not going to gain any additional skills or abilities in future updates. What if they were required to take samples for return missions or other sorts of science-gathering tasks?

Science might not be the only 'currency' either; maybe you also need to gain prestige for more funding, and manned missions are far greater in prestige, or something similar.

I would LOVE an 'opponent' for career mode though, I admit. The Space Race has always fascinated me.

-Will

[Rage097]

I would LOVE an 'opponent' for career mode though, I admit. The Space Race has always fascinated me.

-Will

That would be interesting, but unlikley. And possibly obnoxious and difficult for slower-paced players.

[Holo]

That would be interesting, but unlikley. And possibly obnoxious and difficult for slower-paced players.

The "opponent" could not directly oppose you. It could just be an angry looking Kerbal president telling you "If you don't get a Kerbal in space soon, we're lowering your funding 25%". Enough of this could give a player a push towards advancement,

[Rage097]

The "opponent" could not directly oppose you. It could just be an angry looking Kerbal president telling you "If you don't get a Kerbal in space soon, we're lowering your funding 25%". Enough of this could give a player a push towards advancement,

True, but again, slower paced players would not be amused by this development.

[wminsing]

That would be interesting, but unlikley. And possibly obnoxious and difficult for slower-paced players.

I agree that it would be hard to implement without taking the game in a very different direction (a program-management sim, not a space-flight sim). I think Squad has stated you will NOT have a rival in the career mode in any event, so it's only a pipe-dream. Maybe something to consider modding some day.

-Will

[Holo]

True, but again, slower paced players would not be amused by this development.

Options > Gameplay > Government Deadlines > None, Lax, Medium, Harsh, Unattainable

Nothing can't be solved with some good old difficulty settings

[Aragosnat]

Options > Gameplay > Government Deadlines > None, Lax, Medium, Harsh, Unattainable

Nothing can't be solved with some good old difficulty settings

Something like that with either the budget thrown in or seprate:

None = Unlimited

Lax = x per year with a xy amount where the goverment funds stop coming till you spend it.

Medium = 0.5x per year with a 0.5xy amount where goverment the funds stop coming till you spend it.

Harsh = 0.1x per year with a 0.1xy amount where goverment the funds stop coming till you spend it.

Unattainable = x starting funds, make it count

Other way could be. How deep in debt one can go before the goverment or what ever stops bailing you out and carts you off to prison...