The STRUCTURE of the future Career Mode?

[Naten]

I know what you're going to say. "Oh, god, it's another idiot who is posting a thread that suggests career mode..."

If you said that, you're kinda wrong. What this post is about, when Career Mode IS implemented, how should it be structured?

We have some options.

Here is a way to simplify the "cost of rocket" ideas.

To start with, the player is granted some pretty low-quality rocket parts. With these, they can accomplish a mission, such as a sub-orbital flight.

Say they fail once, and are stuck bankrupt with no rocket parts to use, or just a couple SRB's. To combat this, they could take out a loan that they can repay later.

Once they earn some money from the missions they complete, or by loans, they can buy better rocket parts, slowly working up to interplanetary and return missions.

Here is a way that would be similar to the Mission Controller mod:

And for advanced players, a space race using one of the said systems!

Maybe, when starting a Career Mode save, they can choose what system they play in!

Please tell me what you think.

By the way, what happened to the forums? Did vBulletin change something? The emoticon buttons are broken. The buttons aren't there. I have to enter everything in manually in BBcode...

[RickyKSP]

I like this idea +10

[Naten]

Oh, thanks

I'm glad you're not screaming at me...

"HEY CUREEUR MOWD IZ IN NOT TEW SUJJEST DUMBFACE"

I was worried about everyone doing that.

So, which idea do you think should be used? This thread was intended to be a discussion, hence the prefix.

Thanks.

-Naten

[CodatheSpaceFox]

I like the idea for a "loan" safety net, but it kinda breaks some points that I'd appreciate. For one, obviously KSP is not linear, nor is it designed with some end game. Loans make sense here, in the sense of players learning to respect the fact that they have parts, and costs for them. But, with the use of loans, obviously it has to have limits, and if those are spent, then what? wait for some time induced bail out to continue?

Now, I like loans, but there should be an alternative in my opinion. Without reducing players to repeating missions for pay (unless they're dynamic, like rescuing stranded kerbanauts for other space programs/nations.) there needs to be "Chores" to act as a more solid structure of funding.

As I already suggested, dynamic missions like rescues, part scavenging, resource expeditions, and other such tedious activities would go hand in hand with a loan system, for one, there could be set "loan" stock vehicles for these missions you can use to opt out of building your own, and the pay of the mission will be based on fuel consumption, time, vehicular condition, etc.

Then, as for making loans reasonable other than X amount of money. It could be based on varying factors. Reputation, success ratings for missions (what kind of mission as well could be considered), average time it took to pay the loan off, and even could be loaned based on a single vehicle's reputation. Like a commonly used launch sub stage could end up sponsored since said loaner may feel more at ease with investing in the payload.

As for space races, I really like this concept, except it needs to be balanced for ships assembled in orbit, up to the point of an exit burn.

[Naten]

Yes, I agree about the loans. If SQUAD were to add these "loans" in someday, I think it should start of as... say... 1,000 Kerbal Monetary Units, for which I think we should refer to as KM for simplicity's sake, from now on. And for each uncompleted mission that is completed, would that add 500 KM or so to the maximum loan, or maybe should it be based off of reputation with Kerbals getting killed or not?

I think it should be like this...

Starting max. loan: KM 1,000

Then, there should be a time scale. Every time this time scale ticks, say, once every 30 minutes, 25 KM or so should be added to the repay cost. Or maybe it could vary by difficulty.

Scenario:

Starting money: 0 KM

Earns starting rocket parts

Gets to orbit

Earn 1,500 KM

Can't build Mun-capable ship

Takes out 1,000 KM loan

Builds 2,000 KM ship

Takes 1 hour 30 minutes to complete Mun mission

Recovers capsule, gets back 250 KM

Pays 75 KM interest fee. Now has 675 KM.

Earnings from Mun mission: 2,500 KM

Now has 3,175 KM.

Pays back 1,000 KM loan.

Now has 2,175 KM.

There.

[Beeman]

I don't know anything about what they've got planned at the moment, but in the past Harvester has talked about missions being entirely supplemental to your game experience. Basically, you'd be doing whatever you want to do, like flying a bunch of missions to Mun and the game would give you missions that encourage that behavior. Then I think he said there might also be a couple missions that help you advance your technology and understanding of the game mechanics thus encouraging you to widen your experience by traveling to other planets. Not necessarily telling you to go there but certainly giving you incentive to spread your wings a bit.

But there's been a lot of suggestions as to how kerbonauts would make their money aside from missions. Lots of good suggestions like selling tickets for kerbals to view some of your launches(perhaps certain specific/historic missions would feature this ability), mining for rare materials(basically a resource that only exists to be sold, I guess) and shipping it back to KSC or near enough to it to salvage the materials at low cost and high profit, using a progression themed or fully customizable museum to generate positive feedback and public opinion for your space program, thus increasing funding and so on. Just a lot of really good ideas percolating around in the minds of forumgoers everywhere. I like this loan idea, too

[Apollo13]

Well done. You've obviously put a lot of thought into this. Perhaps, Squad might take some of it to heart.