What DON'T we want in KSP?

[regex]

EDIT: Maybe a list of all the orbiting bodies with varying objectives that you can do at your own lesure? Preferably with some whacky objectives like crashing a ship into gilly to try and attemp to alter its orbit. Whacky kerbal objectives are the way to go.

Eh, for me I think a good balance between free-form objectives and actual "contracts" (missions, whatnot) would be a good way to go. Clearly there are camps that want both and I think there is room within KSP for both. Neither should be required, but at least one approach has to be used to reach your goals. This allows people like me to go out and explore, do our thing, and maybe run a mission every now and then for some extra cash to be happy with the game, and people like you to have a more structured experience with clearly defined goals, but also have the ability to do "whim" missions. The great thing about that approach, IMO, is that it provides a lot of choice in how to approach your KSP career while maintaining the sandbox feel that makes KSP so awesome. I'm not opposed to missions overall, I'm opposed to them being the only way to advance in the game.

[Kegereneku]

I really can't understand that fear of "railroading".

What the point of a "non-sandbox" gamemode if you refuse anything but a sandbox without objective nor constraint ?

Sandbox will stay and if career mode is going realistic it would follow both :

- The law of market, you can build a rocket and people pay you to do it.

- Government founded program, you get a budget, and objectives so vague you are basically free to do whatever you want.

It's win-win.

So what do you fear ?

Horror ! The first one will give us a purpose for satellites and actual challenges to met ! I may fail and I feel my destructive-creativity sucked away !

Horror ! The second one will ask you to do thing you would do anyway, give you more money than taxpayer will ever see and won't ask how you do it ! The game is ruined ! Ruined Forever !

And imagine the worst ! Adding some Mission-Control to help people who haven't been trained with Orbiter (like me) may deprive you from your right to brag about how good you are ! It may even make KSP likable for newcomer. We can't let KSP become a vulgar mainstream game !

I would not like to see any fantasy addom who does not follow real physsics.

Drat ! Then we have to take out all the engines of the game, nearly all reentry-capable parts, huge-deltaV-EVA, infinite-life-support, latencyless communication, all planet, all moon, all... everything in facts.

And it mean we can't have your totally unrealistic 99,999999% efficient beam-sail that wouldn't be useful anyway because of the gigantic infrastructure required !

Just joking. I don't want gamebreaking magic if it can be avoided.

[boomerdog2000]

There's a difference between the game asking you to do something, and the game telling you to do something. Unless it's a tutorial or incredibly general, the second one is usually bad. I can say no to someone asking me to do something.

[Supernovy]

Last time I heard about missions in Career mode was when the devs were talking about achievements/Progress tracking. One idea that was suggested was that the game could tell when (for example) you landed on the Mun, and then give you the option to take on Mun-related missions in addition to whatever missions you already had unlocked.

It seems to me like that way you could still have the sandboxy nature of the game, depending on how varied the missions actually were. Randomised orbital parameters, or biome-specific objectives and such.

[Bartybum]

Seeing as this thread has come to a squabble about missions/contracts, I'll throw in my two cents.

I would really like to see contracts. However, I would prefer them to appear in limitation, and be optional . If you accept a contract, you are given the payload and build a rocket under it to perform the mission which you have accepted.

[Superfluous J]

I like the idea of missions like those in the Mission Controller mod, where you get money for doing them but only need to do them when you need money. Ideally, you would get far more money than you need to do the mission so you'll end up with a ton of extra money to do the things you want. But I don't think requiring the player to do SOMETHING to earn money (Just like now we have to do SOMETHING to earn science) is a bad thing that will ruin the game.

I personally found the game had new life breathed into it with the simple addition of science to the game. I'm looking forward to more directed play so long as it doesn't turn into GTA where you can only do one of 3 missions to progress through a story. Nothing against GTA, it's a great game

[Dunbaratu]

No, not at all. It's just that part design isn't done by the player, your Kerbal engineers are building launcher parts in that R&D building when you unlock things. They are clearly limited in intelligence though, what comes out is fairly standard.

I said before that I could see a use for procedural design of parts if tied into a much larger economics system. You could design a specific length of tank or some wings or a fairings with juuuust the right dimensions, but it would take TIME and it would be EXPENSIVE,

As long as you aren't penalized for the FIRST time you build a thing to your own dimensions I'd be okay with this. The problem is that you were implying that somehow MY space program had already designed everything to the specs listed when that's not true. The game was handed to me that way. At no point had my space program ever asked the engineers to use those specs. So implying that by specifying my own diameter for parts I'm somehow deviating from the previous design is simply false. There *was no* previous design yet if I've just started the game. So only charge a redesign fee if it truly is a redesign. It's not a redesign just because it differs from the game's presets. To give an idea of how silly it is to presume I had predesigned the part sizes - consider that in career mode you have zero availible part designs that are the large diameter at the start. Then all of a sudden without my asking, they suddenly appear at that exact fixed size when I had no input into that decision. Therefore if I ask for them to be a bit smaller or a bit bigger, I am in fact NOT asking for a redesign of an existing part. Those parts don't even exist yet at the start of the game. So, yes, sure, penalize me with money for redesign if I keep changing the diameter again and again. But not for the very first one. The very first one isn't a redesign. It's the first design. Just because it's different than SQUAD's settings doesn't make it different from my first design. That first time I build a rockomax tank, the tweaked size I specified for it IS its first prototype initial designed size. Now at this point that's the lowest cost, least-redesigned size and your suggested cost for redesign should be calculating how much I deviate from THAT size, not SQUAD's preset size.

[Dunbaratu]

I feel pretty much the same, the shape of a wing is a complex thing, and it wouldn't be a thing to just change on a whim. Kerbals may not be the type to perform wind tunnel tests and such, but there would at least be some expense and time factors to swapping out a wing. So the same issue applies.

The wing dimensions are so integral to the design of an airplane that there is very little of this imaginary re-usability of pre-shaped wing parts that you're describing. An airplane designer making a new plane does not say "lets bolt the wings from our previous design onto a new fuselage." The redesign is expensive, yes, but not MORE expensive than trying to re-use the wings that were manufactured for a different plane, which is also an engineering mess.

Edited November 12, 2013 by Steven Mading
messed up quote tags

[Dunbaratu]

You misunderstand. I want a career mode where I have to do stuff to get further, I just don't want the game to tell me what to do. If I want to colonize/mine Moho, I don't want the game telling me I have to explore Jool.

I think you're deliberately making a strawman fallacy out of the suggestion here. At no point was anyone suggesting that monetized missions should be set up in such a way that there would only ever be ONE of them active at a given time. There would be a few Moho-based missions on offer alongside the Jool missions.

[AngelLestat]

I really can't understand that fear of "railroading".

What the point of a "non-sandbox" gamemode if you refuse anything but a sandbox without objective nor constraint ?

Sandbox will stay and if career mode is going realistic it would follow both :

- The law of market, you can build a rocket and people pay you to do it.

- Government founded program, you get a budget, and objectives so vague you are basically free to do whatever you want.

It's win-win.

Just joking. I don't want gamebreaking magic if it can be avoided.

Ok, maybe we use different words right there, but is just the same that I want.

[regex]

I think you're deliberately making a strawman fallacy out of the suggestion here. At no point was anyone suggesting that monetized missions should be set up in such a way that there would only ever be ONE of them active at a given time. There would be a few Moho-based missions on offer alongside the Jool missions.

What if I don't want to "do a mission"? What if my interests lie in building a space station around Moho and there aren't any missions that support that gameplay? What if I run out of Moho missions, do I suddenly give up all my hard work? My objection to missions is mainly in having them be the only way to advance career mode. The science implementation is a fine example of sandbox play and is what I'd like to see out of a money system in KSP. As I said above, though, a mix of mission and goal-oriented play would be ideal since everyone is happy and it opens up even more choices.

[Wahgineer]

No Uber realism. I would like to get to the nearest star within the next 12 hours, even if via warp drive. Also, with warp drive, their are plenty of nerfs that balance it out (can't work in atmosphere, need to be far away from the sun to use it, needs to be charged up, can only go so far/fast on a charge). It's a game people, it's ok to be a little unrealistic.

No procedural tanks (procedural fairings/wings make sense/are ok). The whole point of having set tank sizes is to challenge you.

[Dunbaratu]

What if I don't want to "do a mission"? What if my interests lie in building a space station around Moho and there aren't any missions that support that gameplay? What if I run out of Moho missions, do I suddenly give up all my hard work? My objection to missions is mainly in having them be the only way to advance career mode. The science implementation is a fine example of sandbox play and is what I'd like to see out of a money system in KSP. As I said above, though, a mix of mission and goal-oriented play would be ideal since everyone is happy and it opens up even more choices.

Uhm. But the science play *already has* exactly what you're complaining about and you even used it in your example. It doesn't give you any extra science point benefits for successfully making a space station. And yet you appear to have no problem with that but still have a problem with the hypothetical mission system you describe that also gives you no extra money reward for making a space station because it's not part of any mission. WTF is the difference between these two things?

It makes no sense unless you're pretending that the mission system would somehow disallow you from doing anything that isn't mentioned in a mission, and that's just a silly strawman as there have been zero suggestions anywhere along those lines. Thus why I can't understand what you are worried about. You seem to be making up a strawman that not only doesn't exist, but isn't GOING to ever exist as its not even remotely similar to anything that has been suggested.

[regex]

Uhm. But the science play *already has* exactly what you're complaining about and you even used it in your example. It doesn't give you any extra science point benefits for successfully making a space station. And yet you appear to have no problem with that but still have a problem with the hypothetical mission system you describe that also gives you no extra money reward for making a space station because it's not part of any mission. WTF is the difference between these two things?

I would hope a mission/objective system would allow us to earn money/find resources through our normal play, not railroad us through doing "missions" that provide artificial objectives. So if what I really want to do is build a station around Moho I should get rewarded for doing that. I don't want to see a system where everything I do has to fit under some "mission" framework, I want to play in a more free-form fashion with monetary/resource restrictions. The science system is an example of that right now; there's no obligation to go to any place, you can do whatever you want. You may have to spread out a bit in order to get a few more science points, but four landings on the Mun and a Minmus landing can have me in nukes and some other little things that will get me to Moho or Eeloo. Sure, it may not be the best example, but then again people can literally do four-planet "grand tours" with tier 0 parts.

It makes no sense unless you're pretending that the mission system would somehow disallow you from doing anything that isn't mentioned in a mission, and that's just a silly strawman as there have been zero suggestions anywhere along those lines. Thus why I can't understand what you are worried about. You seem to be making up a strawman that not only doesn't exist, but isn't GOING to ever exist as its not even remotely similar to anything that has been suggested.

This entire thread is about building up strawmen to burn down, read the title. A railroadey mission system that compels me to do things I normally wouldn't in order to get more resources is what I DON'T want to see in KSP, thank you very much.

[joykler]

posted something irrelevant and cant delete it , sorry

Edited November 12, 2013 by joykler

[LostElement]

Military parts, Aliens... I wouldn't mind Star systems.

[Killerdude8]

Life support and various other Hyper-realistic features, KSP as it is, stands in the perfect position between realistic and fun. I'd rather the formula not change.

[Deathsoul097]

1) Joykler, click on delete post, It should be right at the bottom where the reply buttons would normally go

2) Just another of my 2c. I personally feel that the career mode should be built around the "tree" system. So we have the tech tree. Done. But what about money? And missions? Well then, we have an OPTIONAL mission system, where you can take on contracts from the government and other organizations to build up your money, then you get to use that money to fund your next missions and personal projects. So it will pretty much be real life. NASA / SpaceX / Copenhagen Sub-orbitals / who-ever, gets a contract, sends up the payload, gets money and uses that to fund development and their own personal projects. The only difference is that kerbals are a little more loose with their cash, and are willing to pay more than their real life counterparts for the same thing. Then you get more money, and you can do what you want for a while, until you need more money. Of course if you hate this idea, and don't like a story/ reality based space program, and you want to go and colonize / mine moho, and not go to jool, I have one word for you: SANDBOX.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, the missions would be based around your technological advancement, and what you have already achieved. So no missions would pop up like: "Oh, you just made orbit? Here's a Butload of cash, now make me a Manned Dres Lander."

EDIT EDIT: Also: yeah, no life support for me please.

Edited November 12, 2013 by Deathsoul097

[betaking]

Edit: sorry I had to rant about how proceedural parts are not as bad as some think, and how mods haven't really shown the best example.

I would not want to see things like "warp drives" or really anything "FTL".

I would not like to see manditory tutorials, rather optional ones.

I would not like to see a static "kerbol"-system, especially in career mode, a proceedurally generated "kerbol"-system would do just fine,

I would not like to see the same R&D/science + build system, both are far too inflexible currently.

I would not like to see there being only one difficulty (rather than easy-normal-hard or something) being used as an excuse to keep elements out of the game that would otherwise allow for it to get more interesting (relays being needed, or heatsheileds))

I would not want to see poltics being ignored, in reading the history of space programs it has become incredibly apparent to me that politics is and has been closely linked to all the good and bad decisions in all the various space programs that nations have sponsored. To ignore it seems kinda misleading in how it portrays space exploration. Yes I know, it does not sound fun to be basically bullied into making bad decisions under the threat of having your entire space program defunded, or too discover only too late that the system you had been researching wasn't as good as it seemed when first conceived. But those are risks and challenges.

Edited November 13, 2013 by betaking

[AngelLestat]

Edit: sorry I had to rant about how proceedural parts are not as bad as some think, and how mods haven't really shown the best example.

I would not want to see things like "warp drives" or really anything "FTL".

I would not like to see manditory tutorials, rather optional ones.

I would not like to see a static "kerbol"-system, especially in career mode, a proceedurally generated "kerbol"-system would do just fine,

I would not like to see the same R&D/science + build system, both are far too inflexible currently.

I would not like to see there being only one difficulty (rather than easy-normal-hard or something) being used as an excuse to keep elements out of the game that would otherwise allow for it to get more interesting (relays being needed, or heatsheileds))

I would not want to see poltics being ignored, in reading the history of space programs it has become incredibly apparent to me that politics is and has been closely linked to all the good and bad decisions in all the various space programs that nations have sponsored. To ignore it seems kinda misleading in how it portrays space exploration. Yes I know, it does not sound fun to be basically bullied into making bad decisions under the threat of having your entire space program defunded, or too discover only too late that the system you had been researching wasn't as good as it seemed when first conceived. But those are risks and challenges.

+1

All that plus:

i would not want to see a future KSP game without procedural parts, becouse this mean that the part bottle neck (ogly rockets) and game performance issue it will continue.

[Dunbaratu]

I would hope a mission/objective system would allow us to earn money/find resources through our normal play, not railroad us through doing "missions" that provide artificial objectives. So if what I really want to do is build a station around Moho I should get rewarded for doing that. I don't want to see a system where everything I do has to fit under some "mission" framework, I want to play in a more free-form fashion with monetary/resource restrictions. The science system is an example of that right now; there's no obligation to go to any place, you can do whatever you want. You may have to spread out a bit in order to get a few more science points, but four landings on the Mun and a Minmus landing can have me in nukes and some other little things that will get me to Moho or Eeloo. Sure, it may not be the best example, but then again people can literally do four-planet "grand tours" with tier 0 parts.

You are contradicting yourself when you claim you have a problem with the idea of not being rewarded for making a space station and also claiming you prefer things to work the way they do for science (where you don't get rewarded for making a space station).

It is *already* true with the way science works *now* that not everything you could possibly want to do will give you points. And you state you *like* the way it works now, but don't want missions to work in a way that, when you describe it and give specific examples, is exactly what science does now (which you did say you're okay with).

You're just not making sense.

This entire thread is about building up strawmen to burn down, read the title.

Fair point, but I still have no idea what it is you don't want because you contradict your own statements. Some of the time you say you don't want to be compelled to do things you normally wouldn't but then say the way science works now (which does precisely that) is fine.

[regex]

You are contradicting yourself when you claim you have a problem with the idea of not being rewarded for making a space station and also claiming you prefer things to work the way they do for science (where you don't get rewarded for making a space station).

You're taking my statements way too literally. I don't have to do science in any structured form, I can do it at my own leisure, and I can choose where and when I do science. There is nothing preventing me from launching a mission to Eeloo or Moho for my first science points. No talking head is there suggesting I do science on Kerbin first, or go to the Mun or Minmus. Similarly, I'd prefer to get monetary rewards in the same fashion: by doing things that I want to do, in the order that I want to do them, when I want to do them. I don't ever want to end up in a situation where the only way I can advance monetarily is by doing some set-piece mission where I put some arbitrary payload in some arbitrary place for some arbitrary Kerbal. Everything I do in my KSP career should be focused towards my own personal goals and the game should be flexible enough to allow me to play that way.

But, as I've said, I don't have an objection to "missions" just because they're "missions". I think there is room in the KSP sandbox for both styles of play and I think people who enjoy one style of play might find it refreshing or challenging to try the other way of playing on occasion.

[allmhuran]

I get what regex is saying and I agree completely. I think most people aren't quite grokking the distinction between "rewarding accomplishments" and "objective progression".

A set of progressive objectives would mean the game gives a task to perform, and holds you to that before you can progress onto something else. Even if there are several possible options in parallel, this is still unnecessarily limiting. This is akin to your regular closed world game.

Rewarding accomplishments means recognizing when the player has done something neat, like landing on the Mun, or returning from Jool, and having a set of appropriate rewards, but without any specific order or prerequisites imposed upon the player. Yes, it might be very hard to get to Jool and back on your first mission. But let the player try if they want to. If they fail, well, their space program is going to be hurting. If they succeed, glory and riches shall be theirs.

I do not believe KSP needs a specific list of tasks which you progress through in a linear or branching manner. All it needs is a way to recognize when a player has accomplished something, and a system that appropriately rewards that accomplishment, no matter when in their career the player decides to go for it. The list of accomplishments can be very long, as can the list of rewards, making the game extremely deep and endlessly playable.

Take a game like Starcraft. What's your opening build as Protoss? Forge fast expand? Cannon rush? Gate core expand? 2 gate pressure? Pure macro for 15 minutes and hope you're not attacked? The player gets to choose, and deals with the consequences of their choice. There's always a *persistent, ongoing* goal - beat your opponent(s). But they are not forced to do anything in particular, in any particular order.

In KSP the persistent, ongoing goal need only be "remain profitable".

Edited November 13, 2013 by allmhuran

[z26]

what? having missions wouldn't restrict liberty in the slighest, Take super mario 64 for example (sorry for taking a specific example many people might not have played). The game is semi linear with nearly two times more objectives to do than needed to complete the game. Locked doors somewhat limit the number of different orders to play the "missions", but they could easily be removed from the game and it would still be perfectly playable (with a couple of slight changes). This would allow you to do any of the 120 missions in any order, giving a number of different combinations possible with a couple hundred zeroes.

As long as (like for achievements) you don't need to "select" a mission before doing it, you aren't forced to do the missions in any order AND there's significantly more missions than necessary (meaning you you can exclude any mission you don't care about) there isn't any single way a system like that would be more restrictive than science is right now. Basically an achievement system with missions instead.

[allmhuran]

What you're describing as a "mission" is almost the same kind of thing that I am describing as an accomplishment. The terminology is irrelevant. The key point is that you not be forced to do specific things in any specific order.

But this means there's no need to actually have a list of available missions, not least because the list would have to be incredibly long. The difference in terms of the player experience is that putting a list of a thousand missions (or more) in front of players creates a few impressions:

1) Grindiness (complete all the missions!)

2) An end goal (complete all the missions!)

3) Non-repeatability. (unless you intend to recycle missions over and over... but why?)

4) It's not YOUR space program to run as you wish.

I don't see why any of those should be a part of KSP. If I want to play a career focused entirely around Duna, setting up surveyor satellites, and then a ground exploration mission, then a permanent base, and ultimately a whole colony, then as long as there is some kind of game mechanic that makes this useful with respect to the challenges of career mode (budgets, tech tree, whatever else Squad adds) then that should be a viable way to play. Another good analogy would be a game like Sim City. Build whatever kind of city you like, in whatever shape, with whatever roads, and whatever buildings. As long as you are meeting your persistent objectives, you won't "fail" (whatever that might mean in KSP).

Edited November 13, 2013 by allmhuran