Difficult levels for career mode?

[Daveyploo]

What about a difficulty selection (easy, regular, hard) for career mode? Something that globally alters values of fuel, engine efficiency, etc. etc. so the game can be more challenging, or easier, depending on what the player is comfortable with/wants?

Any thoughts? Is there a mod that does something similar already? Is this technically possible?

[Urban_K]

The simplest way is most likely to start out with different amounts of money. Science and parts value doesn't seem to be organized by saves but globally, so I don't expect that to be a factor in difficultness.

[nhnifong]

Here you will find some modified ScienceDefs.cfg files that make the experiments worth anything from 2x to 100x less.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14567061/science_rescale.zip

[Amram]

Yeah, I would imagine if anything the difficulty options will influence the amount of science and money you get and spend. So on easy a missions might yield more science points and money, R&D and construction might cost less.

As i understand though, flight itself isn't likely to have difficulty settings. Nova's been very clear in the past that re-entry for example will be mandatory, so I don't expect to see optional reality. Besides, the budget can make a HUGE difference on your progress all by itself.

[PDCWolf]

What about real difficulty instead of just increasing and decreasing values like bad games do? You know, like hardest difficulties requiring relays, line of sight, multi-manned missions instead of a single guy, a proper way to manage missions.

Instead of SUPERHARD: NOW YOUR EXPERIMENT GENERATES 100 TIMES AS LESS SCIENCE! THE EXTREME CHALLENGE FOR THOSE PLAYERS who like to spend 50 hours doing the same thing and call that a well made difficulty.

[Specialist290]

What about real difficulty instead of just increasing and decreasing values like bad games do?

Like, say, the Civilization series? Clearly those aren't any good, despite the fact that I enjoy them so much...

But anyway, I'm all in favor of additional and adjustable difficulty levels, whatever form they may take.

[Amram]

What about real difficulty instead of just increasing and decreasing values like bad games do? You know, like hardest difficulties requiring relays, line of sight, a proper way to manage missions.

Real difficulty, I like that phrase.

A quick questionaire, answer for yourself before proceeding, does the following make life harder, or easier for a space egency.

1. Easier or Harder?: Lower wages to hire talented engineers and scientists.
   
2. Easier or Harder?: Too few engineers and Scientists to work on all projects simultaneously.
   
3. Easier or Harder?: Smaller staffing requirements for mission control or research projects.
   
4. Easier or Harder?: Greater funding to accomplish objectives.
   
5. Easier or Harder?: Various delays and cost over-runs in R&D
   
6. Easier or Harder?: Greater operating cost of missions due to less efficient engineering/materials/planning/etc.

All real world factors in how difficult running a space agency is that coincidentally factor into a game about a space agency quite easily. What could NASA have done if they had never suffered a budget cut? What if after the moon they had received a budget increase and kept it to this day? Would they have gotten more done? Would their job have been easier or harder?

Those things you mention PDCWolf, if implemented(which I think is possible/likely) are very likely to be mandatory regardless of difficulty. Look at re-entry, its been made very clear that that will not be optional, and its harder to cope with than those are. Besides that, your trading one grind for another. More missions to earn the same science gaining some per mission, or more missions to place satellites/relays first and then earn the same science earning little/none while placing relays and more later when you can focus on a purely research mission. The end is the same, less science per mission.

TL;DR: Money, cost for R&D, cost/availability of skilled/talented/trained staff. There's your real(istic) difficulty.

[LostElement]

I think it should be this way

Easy = 100% Science earned/Money

Normal = 75% Science earned/Money

Hard = 50% Science earned/Money

[Eric S]

Those things you mention PDCWolf, if implemented(which I think is possible/likely) are very likely to be mandatory regardless of difficulty. Look at re-entry, its been made very clear that that will not be optional, and its harder to cope with than those are.

Actually, from what reading I've done, it sounds like that wasn't a hard answer. They've given three different answers to questions about life support. "We're not doing it." "We're not doing it right now, and when we do, it'll be mandatory" and most recently (less than a week ago) "If we do it, it'll be optional" that I'm aware of. This is probably because they don't have an intricate plan of the final state of KSP, it's more evolving as they see what they can do, how the players react to different things, etc.

The devs have stated that they're not interested in generic difficulty levels (this has been misquoted as meaning that they're not interested in difficulty levels at all). What they do seem open minded about are "realism options" and the like, where you could turn life support on or off. Not one setting, but several, each with specific consequences. And they have said that they plan on making relay satellites a thing to enable science a long way from Kerbin, though they didn't say if that was going to be an optional setting.

[PDCWolf]

Real difficulty, I like that phrase.

Real != realistic.

Real is an opposition to "artificial difficulty" which is, as it has been said, fakingly inflating difficulty by altering numbers instead of making the challenge tougher. A good example is your average dungeon crawler:

-Play easy

-You enter a dungeon where there's a fire imp

-Fire imp has 100hp and 2 attacks, one always hits, and the other one is AoE, which allows you to avoid it.

-Fire imp uses "stand ground" ai, so it remains stationary during combat.

-The technique to defeat it is to carry potions for the unavoidable attack and hide behind a wall for the AoE and remaining at a distance to hit. It takes 2 minutes to kill it.

-Play hard

-The fire imp has 400hp and the same 2 attacks

-Uses the same AI

-To defeat it, you do the same but instead of 2 minutes, for 8.

Game is now boring and all the difficulty is based on increasing attributes instead of making the AI better or even different. Game becomes a grind. That is artificial difficulty. Now game 2, your non-average dungeon crawler.

-Play easy

-Fire imp is the same (what a ripoff)

-He uses "stand ground" AI

-Technique to kill it is the same

-Play hard

-Fire imp is the same

-He uses "Follow and attack" AI

-You know have to change your playstile to defeat it, opening new paths.

If you play Game 2 multiple times with different difficulties its always different and gets more replay value instead of artificially extending the playtime by making grind more time requiring.

I hope you understand now.

Those things you mention PDCWolf, if implemented(which I think is possible/likely) are very likely to be mandatory regardless of difficulty. Look at re-entry, its been made very clear that that will not be optional, and its harder to cope with than those are. Besides that, your trading one grind for another. More missions to earn the same science gaining some per mission, or more missions to place satellites/relays first and then earn the same science earning little/none while placing relays and more later when you can focus on a purely research mission. The end is the same, less science per mission.

TL;DR: Money, cost for R&D, cost/availability of skilled/talented/trained staff. There's your real(istic) difficulty.

Those things being mandatory is your own assumption. There's no word on anything.

I mentioned relays which yeah, require more missions. But I also mentioned L.O.S., mandatory multi-kerbal missions instead of one man pods, and I can mention more like reentry heat, space program reputation, KSC outside of the equator, etc.

[Amram]

Real != realistic.

Real is an opposition to "artificial difficulty" which is, as it has been said, fakingly inflating difficulty by altering numbers instead of making the challenge tougher. A good example is your average dungeon crawler:

~snip~

Those things being mandatory is your own assumption. There's no word on anything.

Yeah, no worries, I knew where you were coming from, I just think the economics alone have a huge amount of room to provide a very wide range of difficulty, without them even having to get complex with it, and it has the side benefit of mimicing reality True enough on the assumption part, its about all any of us can claim with respect to KSP's future. Though I wasn't aware their stance had also softened in the last few months on that, last i remember was a furor over re-entry and the hardline stance that was given in response. That basically being "it'll be there, so suck it up and enjoy it", so i stand corrected there. More options, even if to disable realism features to alter the difficulty are always a plus. Options are optional and choice is nearly always a good thing.

Actually, from what reading I've done, it sounds like that wasn't a hard answer. They've given three different answers to questions about life support. "We're not doing it." "We're not doing it right now, and when we do, it'll be mandatory" and most recently (less than a week ago) "If we do it, it'll be optional" that I'm aware of. This is probably because they don't have an intricate plan of the final state of KSP, it's more evolving as they see what they can do, how the players react to different things, etc.

I stand corrected then. I've been less than thorough in combing the forum lately.

[Geckgo]

Just as a point of interest. Adding TAC life support to the tree causes an immediate conflict because it depends on battery power to work. Really made the first few decisions about which science to unlock a non-issue. And it reduces spamming of the science stuff early on. I'm sure Squad will run into some of these conflicts as they impliment more stuff. We probably have another structure change before KSP goes beta. That would be my guess.