[0.22 career] possible to fail? sould it be possible?

[TNM]

Today, while playtesting .22 a bit more in career mode, trying to only build "realistic" rockets, i noticed that, if you skip the sience-techs in the tree for other unlocks on the same level, there comes a point where you seem to run into a wall. You exausted most of the sience around Kerbin and don't have the parts to go to the moon (without streching realism). You don't have the better/additional sience module and cannot get more sience in the existing spheres.

So, this question popped into my mind:

Would you want it to be possible to fail career mode somehow ingame?

or

Sould it be a given that you always can complete career mode no matter how/what you unlock?

[Steamtex]

Right now there isn't really a way AFAIK, after all people are going to the Mun with the very first parts already. Besides, there are a ridiculous number of biomes on the Mun.

[HaoSs]

why skip science techs trees ? its the first tech i go for when i can. from instinct ( i'm a new player )

[Brofessional]

Perhaps not an outright "game-over" but there should be penalties that set you back.

Once the budget/currency system and crew training is in, there will be greater consequences for mission failures and crew losses.

[Sirrobert]

why skip science techs trees ? its the first tech i go for when i can. from instinct ( i'm a new player )

Mind the testing part. It's more a hypothetical situation here. Like a melee character putting his stats in magic in an MMO

While there is no outright fail, it's still possible to get to the Mun, just not very easy, I do think that it should indeed be possible to hit some sort of soft wall, if you spend your points completly wrong.

I always think it's a bad thing if a game makes it TO easy on you

[numerobis]

With a decoupler, which you can research by carefully studying the launch pad, you can get everywhere in the solar system. So you can't get unplayably stuck, which is good.

[lammatt]

going to mun with the first parts is doable.

[sal_vager]

going to mun with the first parts is doable.

Yep, even if just a flyby which is still a major achievement

[Whackjob]

Yep, even if just a flyby which is still a major achievement

I managed to strew over a hundred parts across ~7% of the Munar surface through intentional abrupt disassembly. My rationale being that I could do a spectrograph on the ejecta.

Except I forget there is no ejecta and no spectrograph.

[SkyRender]

The thing about concerns like this is, they tend to be fairly ungrounded. Only fairly experienced players are likely to fall prey to "dead-ending", given how the system works. New players are not idiots; they can tell when something isn't working out for them. They're not going to invest in loads of advanced science parts when their rockets are still not even escaping the atmosphere. It's called Kerbal SPACE Program, after all, so the goal is obviously to get to space. Better rocket parts to do that are going to be the priority for new players.

[Specialist290]

Call me old-fashioned, but I think it should be completely possible to fail (i.e. get a definite "Game Over") if you screw up badly enough. I've never been a huge fan of hand-holding in video games.

[Gritmonger]

Call me old-fashioned, but I think it should be completely possible to fail (i.e. get a definite "Game Over") if you screw up badly enough. I've never been a huge fan of hand-holding in video games.

I don't know if money or discovery should be the criteria - maybe you can only recruit stupider and stupider crew until you cross the threshold of nobody will fly for you and get killed. And if you don't have a robotic probe by that point, you can't really fly any missions.

I'm a new player and I make plenty of mistakes. Even with the tutorials, I have yet to actually intercept Mun except once by accident which sent my probe winging out of the solar system...

[boolybooly]

Yes I think at any difficulty level above easy it should be possible to fail in the final game by going bankrupt.

I don't think that science itself should be too much of a problem, the question will be how much you can do with the funds available and how the parts assist you in earning more as well as doing more science. There should be choices, like do I research something which can help me make more money or do I research something which can help me get more science so I can research a part higher up the tree which makes even more money?

I think that will be interesting and then the game can set difficulty levels by how much money you get for tasks like satellite launches or space tourism as well as how much science you get for a particular experiment in a particular location.

The more I think about it the more awesome it sounds, but I was totally surprised and delighted by science so I am confident HarvesteR will come up with something I will enjoy.

[Specialist290]

I don't think that science itself should be too much of a problem, the question will be how much you can do with the funds available and how the parts assist you in earning more as well as doing more science. There should be choices, like do I research something which can help me make more money or do I research something which can help me get more science so I can research a part higher up the tree which makes even more money?

My thoughts exactly. I've just been looking for a good way to phrase it.

[JumpsterG]

So long as sandbox mode remains unlimited, I very much think a "Game Over" state should be possible in career mode if you manage your space program poorly (overspending, underachieving, etc.) How easy/hard it should be to fail is up for debate but I would approve of losing conditions.

[Spatzimaus]

It's not possible to get stuck, but a part of that is based on knowing the mechanisms. For instance, at first I didn't know that I could re-take measurements from a given biome repeatedly to build up more science. I didn't know Kerbin had so many Biomes, each with its own set of measurements. I didn't know I could just get out of my capsule on the launch pad, take a soil sample and EVA report, and immediately end the mission to get a few starter points. And so on. Even without prioritizing science parts, I had enough research points to unlock a good assortment of basic parts before ever leaving Kerbin's orbit.

It wasn't long before I reached the Mun. But once I'd done that, I got more science points than I knew what to do with simply by sending missions to each crater (biome) with whatever science tools were available at the time. I didn't need some big advanced design to reach Mun; my ship was mostly starter parts but had no problems doing a quick round trip. Once the other bodies get biomes, Minmus will be a similar source of easy science points, too, to say nothing of Duna (which isn't at all hard to reach once you've unlocked LV-Ns).

And this also depends on what science points they'll add in the future. We've discussed the need for space stations to generate science points somehow (either from a new, larger lab or something that gives a trickle of points as it orbits), which'll make it even easier to accumulate science points before ever leaving Kerbin's SOI. So right now you might feel like you hit a wall at certain technologies, but in the future that barrier might disappear.

[magnemoe]

Today, while playtesting .22 a bit more in career mode, trying to only build "realistic" rockets, i noticed that, if you skip the sience-techs in the tree for other unlocks on the same level, there comes a point where you seem to run into a wall. You exausted most of the sience around Kerbin and don't have the parts to go to the moon (without streching realism). You don't have the better/additional sience module and cannot get more sience in the existing spheres.

So, this question popped into my mind:

Would you want it to be possible to fail career mode somehow ingame?

or

Sould it be a given that you always can complete career mode no matter how/what you unlock?

No as you have no idea that next on the tree.

However some selections are obviously better than other, this also depend on playstyle.

[HeadHunter67]

Even if you don't get the other scientific instruments early on, you're not losing any science points! They are still there, waiting to be collected, in all those locations you have previously visited. I seriously doubt that one could spend so much science elsewhere that those nodes would be locked off. There's always somewhere to get more science, just by flying to it, around it, or landing on it.

Some play styled will gain science earlier than others, but it all comes down to how you get it and when - the total turns out pretty much the same.

[FlamedSteak]

I don't think you should be able to fail with the tech tree. It's impossible to fail at science so badly to the point where nobody can ever do science again.

When the financial side of the game comes into play is where I think you should be able to fail. If you don't meet targets (scientific and financial) you get your funding cut on your next mission. To the point where Kongress decides that the Kerbal Space Program in an inefficient beast run by lunatics who could probably crash a toilet and shuts the whole lot down.

[Spatzimaus]

I was thinking about this a bit more. No, I still don't feel it's possible to get completely stuck, per se, but the current system has a few awkward consequences that this discussion brought to mind. The way I see it, the current setup has three problems:

1> With only one "currency", all techs on the same tier are equally hard to acquire. That means that if one tech is just plain better than its contemporaries, it'd be a bad choice to take anything else first; experienced players might have a good eye for this, but a new player might take a tech full of gear he doesn't need without realizing how much more difficult he's making things. This is most noticeable when a tech simply adds a refinement of the previous tech's items, like adding a fuel tank twice as large as the previous one; sure, it's nice to have the bigger tank, but it doesn't help you do anything the previous tech couldn't accomplish.

2> The multiple-biome system encourages a brute-force playstyle, where you go out of your way to land a full suite of instruments at each biome's location even if the experience is completely the same as your previous ten flights. (Most notable on the Mun, where most of the biomes correspond to nearly identical craters.) This also forces you to continually return to old locations as you unlock new science instruments.

3> It really hurts spaceplanes. Right now there's nothing you can do with a spaceplane that a rocket can't accomplish, or at least nothing that the game awards science points for. So, spending ANY points on techs providing wings, jet engines, intakes, etc. is a waste of points since you could instead be using those points to increase the capabilities of your rockets.

So I tried to think up a possible solution. Basically, they need to add a second "currency" that ties into the tech tree; it wouldn't be enough to just make us pay for the parts we use in cash (which has its own severe drawbacks), I think they need to split up the research points into multiple categories. For instance, imagine splitting everything into Science Points (from experiments, crew reports, EVAs), Engineering Points (points for mission types and for using new parts for the first time), or Achievement Points (one-time awards for doing notable things like in-space dockings or your first sample return). Then make each tech cost different numbers of SP and EP depending on its content, with techs providing refinements of previous parts requiring mostly EP while techs adding entirely new types of things mostly SP. (AP could be a "wild card" currency that can be spent as either type.) With that sort of thing, you wouldn't fall into the traps we're seeing in the current system.

Just my opinion, of course.

[Drunken Hobo]

I've not tested it thoroughly, although I did notice that when I pressed "stop transmission" on the Communotron dish, it seemed to reduce the amount of science I got from when I next ran the experiment.

If that is the case (I may have misread in-game) then it'd be possible to completely bork up the science by going to every Kerbin, Mun & Minmus biome with every experiment available, starting a transmission then stopping it several times until the science value reaches 0. It'd be a long & tedious process to intentionally break the game, but it might be possible.

[HeadHunter67]

The reason you get less science after stopping a transmission is that the next transmission is finishing the previous one. You can queue several transmissions, in fact, and they will all send the next time an antenna is activated.

So no, that's not going to lose you any science.

[boomerdog2000]

I feel like the success or failure won't be based on the tech-tree but on the economics of career mode. If you run out of money odds are your space program will shut down.