"There is no science to be done in sandbox mode"

[DevoidLight]

Money doesn't address the relative ease of unlocking the tech tree. If I can unlock the entire tree "in a few missions" then I certainly don't need a giant rocket of doom.

My guess is that it will be scaled so we dont really have the money to build the science powerhouse ships that the experimental players have breezed through the tree with.

[Specialist290]

Money doesn't address the relative ease of unlocking the tech tree. If I can unlock the entire tree "in a few missions" then I certainly don't need a giant rocket of doom.

It's a delicate balancing act, though. While it might certainly be possible for us to unlock the tech tree "in a few missions" because we're already familiar with how all the parts work, it's probably less so for a completely new player who has nothing to go on except "common knowledge" and his own intuition. Make it too hard for him, and you've probably lost a sale or two (as he'll certainly tell his friends not to buy it even if he already has).

And money does address that if you keep the starting funds low enough, the part costs high enough, and tie income to a mission objectives system. You can unlock as much of the tech tree as you want to in a few missions, but if you don't actually complete your assigned task, all those shiny new parts are worthless if you can't actually buy them because you blew all your money doing other things.

I agree that there should be varying levels of difficulty -- any game gets boring when it's "too easy" -- but I think the career system as a whole is going to need to be more fleshed out before the devs can realistically think about determining how to set the limits for different difficulty settings. Keep in mind that this is the first update with any real Career Mode content at all; if anything ends up being problematic for the player base as a whole, the devs can adjust fire on a future update.

[FITorion]

Money doesn't address the relative ease of unlocking the tech tree. If I can unlock the entire tree "in a few missions" then I certainly don't need a giant rocket of doom.

The lowest number of missions I've heard of was 3. Each of which was a giant rocket of doom.

The addition of money will prevent the construction of such large rockets and thus mean it takes more missions to unlock everything. Even then... unlocking things is supposed to be easy for experienced players and only really serves as a means to get new players (who won't know enough to make efficient science missions) familiar with the parts and the game itself in a gradual manner.

in .22 a fully unlocked tech tree will be just like Sandbox... except you'll still get flavor text where as Sandbox wont.

differences will arise when they add money.

[regex]

in .22 a fully unlocked tech tree will be just like Sandbox... except you'll still get flavor text where as Sandbox wont.

differences will arise when they add money.

So why remove the flavor text from sandbox? Money is what should differentiate career from sandbox, and even then the player should still be able to have a running total spent and even a total of what should have been earned. There is no reason to artificially gimp the sandbox experience.

[dharak1]

There be no Science here

The techline is nowhere

I hope they do make science doable in sandbox.

[Spyritdragon]

I know it'd be more fun in stock, and i agree we should at least be able to activate the science modules in sandbox.

But can't we just.... mod the science parts for sandbox?

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

I disagree w the OP. Letting us do SCIENCE! in sandbox would let us scout out the tech tree unlocks cost and risk free.

I also think this way and what I have seen of Carreer and Sandbox mode fits with my imaginations how it should be.

[Godot]

If it's that easy to unlock the entire tree then what is the point of career mode? "Here's a little progression to make you feel better about playing sandbox mode."

I hope they add a difficulty setting of some sort...

I guess that it won´t be as easy to unlock the tech tree in the version of 0.22 that gets released.

If they do it like other developers in their closed Betas, they will have the requirements for unlocking techs drastically lowered for the closed Beta (so that the Testers can more easily test the things that are in the more advanced parts of the tree)

[Commander Zoom]

I have a sandbox game in progress.

When .22 drops, I want to add science parts to my ships, probes and rovers, and go do science.

Not to unlock stuff, just to go places and do science.

Please don't block that off.

[jcraft]

I have a sandbox game in progress.

When .22 drops, I want to add science parts to my ships, probes and rovers, and go do science.

Not to unlock stuff, just to go places and do science.

Please don't block that off.

Parts will be still there, just you don't get any science points from activating them and flavour text with experiment result is replaced by Immersion Breakingâ„¢: "There is no science to be done in sandbox mode".

[Commander Zoom]

Yes, I know. I want that part too. For practice, for roleplaying, for all of the above. I'll still do it, either way, but...

[Reddragon]

I bet there's going to be a mod which will 'unlock' science for sandbox or vice versa, adding all or at least most of the parts to the first node in tech tree in carreer mode scince it would be the easiest option I guess. If it will be able to be done via config editing Spaceport will be full of alternative tech tree nodes with even mod parts for them.

[Kerbart]

The flavor texts look like fun, and doing scientific experiments on the various planets gives some purpose.

It seems silly that you have to unlock the entire tree to retain "sandbox freedom" while enjoying the flavor texts of the experiments. Especially since about every other version seems to be breaking the saves and is forcing you to start from scratch. Not a big deal the first time but when .23 "OMG we broke your save file LOLZ - da devs" comes along it is surely going to # off a lot of people who will have to go through the entire tech tree again.

[Awaras]

I agree with the original post. Just let science points accumulate as normal in sandbox mode. It's kind of like a high score.

It's always funny to see comments like this; as if somehow SQUAD is going to lock down career mode from mods and OP parts despite all the information to the contrary. It's like people are completely oblivious to the fact that KSP keeps its parts data in easily editable text files.

And all the science descriptions are probably in another editable text file and you can just dig around the game files and find them... Isn't that basically the same as using OP parts to progress in the campaign? My point was that those funny little texts should be considered as a reward for something you did while under the constraints of the campaign mode.

Edited October 14, 2013 by Awaras

[Whirligig Girl]

Maybe it's an incentive to use career mode, when you have to use money later to get results.

[PwnedDuck]

Maybe it's an incentive to use career mode, when you have to use money later to get results.

Any game mechanic limiting player choice for reasons other than balance or a well crafted plot is a bad game mechanic, and should be, within the furthest bounds of reason, removed.

[KerbMav]

I am in favour of at least letting the science-parts work an building up an unlimited counter of science points - just for show.

Especially since noone knows yet if and how modders will be able to integrate their parts into the techtree.

Having to decide between a stock-only "story mode" and moddable sandbox ... why?

[Corw]

Any game mechanic limiting player choice for reasons other than balance or a well crafted plot is a bad game mechanic, and should be, within the furthest bounds of reason, removed.

Even though my personal opinion is that it might be better idea to display proper science results in sandbox, I disagree with you.

This is not a limiting game mechanic. It does not limit you in any way. It just displays different text and does not add numbers that you can't do anything with anyway.

So it is more cosmetics than an real issue.

I can understand the line of thinking that made them make this call: "This thing does nothing in sandbox, replace it with generic text".

[paleorob]

What I really am hearing from most people who say they want science in Sandbox is, "I like Sandbox and I don't want to play Career to get the science results!" Sandbox is where people can go and screw around. As a scientist I can tell you that you don't get experimental results when you are just screwing around. I haven't heard a counterpoint (good or otherwise) to the idea that Sandbox is like the simulations that IRL space agencies do - therefore you can't know the actual results until you send the mission.

Anyway, for those that use Sandbox for role playing, doesn't this open up more options? I mean, you won't be limited to just what the flavor text outputs. You could have any sort of result you want if you are RPing.

[jcraft]

Especially since noone knows yet if and how modders will be able to integrate their parts into the techtree.

Having to decide between a stock-only "story mode" and moddable sandbox ... why?

We already know that modders can add their parts to existing tech nodes, and there is also few hidden unused by stock parts nodes that can be used by mods. Only editing the tech tree directly (adding nodes, moving them around, removing, etc) is not possible right now (but I hope this will change in the future).

Anyway, for those that use Sandbox for role playing, doesn't this open up more options? I mean, you won't be limited to just what the flavor text outputs. You could have any sort of result you want if you are RPing.

In this case it would just better to remove experiment result screen completely in sandbox - this way you could just activate a part, and RP whatever you imagine. But with the big text "There is no science to be done in sandbox mode" is kinda hard to RP when you are reminded constantly that: "Hey! You just playing a game! Stop being immersed so much!" .

Edited October 14, 2013 by jcraft

[Sean Mirrsen]

In this case it would just better to remove experiment result screen completely in sandbox - this way you could just activate a part, a RP whatever you imagine - but with big text "There is no science to be done in sandbox mode" is kinda harder to RP when you are reminded constantly that: "hey you just playing a game!".

Or like I said, leave the generic results in. "The crew record their observations", etc. Career is more of a story mode, so it would make sense that you'd only get special flavor content there.

[Mystic]

I expect to play Career more often than not in order to really experience the tangible benefits of doing science, but I agree with those that say the science experiments should at least function in Sandbox mode. I'd have no problem with the tech tree not being available in Sandbox mode to avoid people "cheating/scoping out" the tree without earning it, but if I decide to do some missions in the Sandbox, I can almost guarantee that I will still want to take along and do some science on most such missions in order to provide myself with that feeling of "having gone there for a reason" ... even when the science afterwards is nothing but a point total I can point to and say "I did that!"

[Tw1]

Maybe it's an incentive to use career mode, when you have to use money later to get results.

This was my thought too. Do the harder challenge, get the bigger reward.

Not sure I completely agree with it though.

One of the things that's great fun about KSP is you can go send huge rockets anywhere, without worrying about cost. I can just roleplay that that was what we had funds for.

We choose to go to the Mun, and do all those other things, not because our governments are throwing money at us, but because we just want to.

But we'll see. KSP's pretty hard already, and will be even more so once things like re-entry heating are in. So I hope they go easy on the economic side, so it's more interesting, than challenging.

[SteevyT]

I'm thinking that maybe there should be a generic "Kerbal/container/part collected data" text when science is done in sandbox. Perhaps have it also give a random science value too so you can even spend the energy beaming it back to Kerbin.

However, I don't believe that it should give an actual text result like career mode does, and that it should also give a random value so you can't scout out the best science in sandbox mode just to transfer that over to career.

[Karriz]

This is still about the science text, not the tech tree. We just want to see the experiment result, not science points or tech tree, in the sandbox mode. It's about immersion as someone said.