Lose Condition For Career Mode

[Superfluous J]

I really think a lose condition is a bad idea.

*snip*

We don't want a win condition because this would put an end to the game, why would we want a lose condition ?

I wanted a lose condition but don't want a win condition in this game. Your post caused me to rethink my reasoning and I have changed my mind.

I now agree with you. Well made argument!

Edited December 26, 2013 by 5thHorseman
Typo

[regex]

I don't have problems imagining that. In current KSP, you can freely overengineer. You can build a ship that can go to Mun and back three times and go to Mun once with it.

I was never talking about current KSP.

And there are players which will need all that extra dv to make it happen. With budget constraints you may simply construct a ship which does not have the dv to get there. Or, assuming you're using MechJeb or other mod which provides tech info and all kinds of dv maps, you can make a ship which can make it there, but only if you're Scott Manley. Result is no (or negative) return value.

So you think KSP will end up being "Nintendo Hard"? I don't. Harvester has spoken about trial-and-error and the satisfaction of figuring out what delta-V is for yourself. Having a career mode that is basically a quicksave guided progession through whatever design hell the developers think you should build doesn't gel with that game philosophy. That's why I think that, even if KSP has a lose condition, it will be very hard to reach for 90% of the players.

Of course, someone will probably mod the starting cash and rep or something to make it "Nintendo Hard", but that's not the point of this discussion.

[Champ]

That's why I think that, even if KSP has a lose condition, it will be very hard to reach for 90% of the players.

That's exactly why i think it is a bad idea :

Experimented players : they will never reach that condition => it is exactly like it does not exist => why do we need it ? what challenge does it bring ?

Beginners : it will make the game even harder for them. And they are already playing a difficult game. It may just be discouraging.

[tetryds]

About WHEN you would lose the game, i quote myself:

You won't put your entire budget of 20 gameplay hours into a single ship, instead of you really take the risk of it. (which would bring you close to losing the game)

That is more about if you want to go big and take risk or keep a low profile and be safe, which is basically what every game is about (even more a tycoon game).

New players must be encouraged to keep a low profile, so they would never fear losing.

But if you want to expend all your 5th mission budget on a single low-tech shoot to the Mün, the risk is eminent.

Edited December 26, 2013 by tetryds

[Nurolight]

Imagining career mode beginning with a JFK-style Kerbal speech, and the program beginning in that era, you are given a certain budget to start with. Every 'successful mission' will give you an extended/bonus budget (determined by bringing Kerbals back from space alive, in addition to doing new things at new levels (Level 1: Something in orbit, L2: Kerbal in orbit and back, L3: Lunar mission (and return) ect...). Unsuccessful missions will cut your budget for the next (year?). Meaning the only way to fail would meaning have countless unsuccessful missions and causing your budget to be cut back to 0.

[Clockwork_werewolf]

Imagining career mode beginning with a JFK-style Kerbal speech, and the program beginning in that era, you are given a certain budget to start with. Every 'successful mission' will give you an extended/bonus budget (determined by bringing Kerbals back from space alive, in addition to doing new things at new levels (Level 1: Something in orbit, L2: Kerbal in orbit and back, L3: Lunar mission (and return) ect...). Unsuccessful missions will cut your budget for the next (year?). Meaning the only way to fail would meaning have countless unsuccessful missions and causing your budget to be cut back to 0.

I like this idea except the budget being cut back to 0. I think the lowest it should be cut back to is the starting budget (which would need to be a bit generous for new players). This way a new player can fail 200 times and keep going but a Jool mission can fail and land you back at basic rockets (but with better Tech and personal knowledge) It is a set back, and you weep for Thompbart.

The game is very hard for new players already. Do not ask to up the difficulty by making a perma death just so the old players find it harder. Add hard mods if you want more difficulty. As to the real world, there have been real space deserters but few have ended an entire countries space program.

[tetryds]

Imagining career mode beginning with a JFK-style Kerbal speech, and the program beginning in that era, you are given a certain budget to start with. Every 'successful mission' will give you an extended/bonus budget (determined by bringing Kerbals back from space alive, in addition to doing new things at new levels (Level 1: Something in orbit, L2: Kerbal in orbit and back, L3: Lunar mission (and return) ect...). Unsuccessful missions will cut your budget for the next (year?). Meaning the only way to fail would meaning have countless unsuccessful missions and causing your budget to be cut back to 0.

I belive you will have a set of mission options, and will be abble to assign your own objectives with more freedom than the way you mentioned.

[regex]

Experimented players : they will never reach that condition => it is exactly like it does not exist => why do we need it ? what challenge does it bring ?

Beginners : it will make the game even harder for them. And they are already playing a difficult game. It may just be discouraging.

If a sufficient loss of money and reputation doesn't prevent you from attempting any mission at all then there is no reason to include those mechanics. They become meaningless and provide no additional challenge to the game; you might as well just play sandbox. There are other games that operate in that way, where you cannot possibly advance within the game after a sufficient loss but have no real "win" condition.

[Clockwork_werewolf]

I think it might be worth noting the present (they might change) cost of parts. You can build a ship that gets to orbit for less than 15k (if you are experienced) but one orange tank alone costs 12.5K. If you were dropped down to a 20K budget you could send small efficient probes into space but couldn't even afford 2 orange tanks and a mainsail let alone any cargo or command or power or science.

[Kilmeister]

2 Points in my wall of text.

In career mode there should be a lose condition, but it should be rather difficult to achieve. In any game, the complete inability to lose takes away from it. If there is no way for me to bankrupt my space program, what's the point of adding money to begin with? But it should be forgiving and allow avenues to get out of it. Something like loans, low hanging fruit, extensions, budget increases if your reputation is good, and even one time events like forgiveness or charity donations. As long as you can see there is a negative trend and you have an opportunity to correct it.

I will use another game as an example of how a loss should occur. I have been playing the Civ series for many years, and only once have I managed to irrecoverably tank my economy.

I had a large deal of gold on hand (like 6000+ and was running +300 gold per turn)and decided to switch my economy into full wartime production and wipe out a few of my enemies. So I started to build up my army at the expense of improving my cities, therefore my positive income began to decline into a deficit. By the peak of my deficit I was running at around -250 gold per turn. So at that point I had around 3000 gold left. Leaving me 14 turns( A fairly good amount of time for people who don't know) to do something about it.

Now at this point I could've pulled a full halt on my military, and been able to arrest my declining income and gone on, leaving one of my targeted enemies still standing. But instead I chose to try and defeat him as well. This decision proved costly as he put up more resistance than anticipated, and although I defeated him It was too late to save my economy. Even disbanding my entire army would not have been enough because of the time spent neglecting growth in favor of military production. I was forced to retire my game.

Notice that I had all the warning signs, and ample opportunity to react in game to avoid this situation. This is how a losing scenario should be possible. Could be an economic adviser that warns you of "Hey, you're running in the red and we're gonna have to make budget cuts soon if something doesn't change.

And secondly, a concept that applies to all things, not just computer games. If there is no chance of failure, then the reward of success is diminished.

[Clockwork_werewolf]

In Civ games you have a difficulty selection at the start. I think I remember squad saying there would not be one. In this case you may have know what to do to save yourself (but did it too late) but a new player would not. The new player also can't set it to easy to learn how to do things.

An experienced player might have to restart their game one or two times before getting all the Tech but a new player might have to reset 100 times. Is this fun? Well it depends on the person but no one here has ever had to learn that way. If you look at the number of new career players struggling to get to the Mun you realise they do not need more challenges.

[Stargate525]

You know what? I don't care about what's fun for a newbie. I care about what's fun for me and experienced players. Because newbies will eventually become experienced players, and I would rather see some players get hundreds of hours of satisfaction after conquering a learning curve than everyone only playing five, and putting it away after the novelty of blowing stuff up and 'winning' career mode wears off.

There is no sense of accomplishment if failure isn't an option. Right now career feels shallow. I posit that the lack of a real failure position is a big part of that.

[Dunbaratu]

Career mode should have a loss condition (and if you don't like that why are you playing career mode? Sandbox mode is what you want if you want the "pure toy" not the "game" style of KSP play.)

But that being said, one absolutely crucial aspect of having a loss condition is that there MUST BE NO MORE DISASTER-CAUSING BUGS before such a thing is fair. I still get (even with no mods installed) the occasional case of a space station exploding the moment I switch to it from the tracking center. Because that still happens, I still have to constantly save off a copy of my persistence file just before I boot up the game each time, which is a cheat if you're trying to play it like a game, but is necessary when the game itself is cheating against you (which is an accurate way to describe what it feels like when the space Kraken eats your space station - that wasn't a "legit" case of me making an error that broke my space station. A bug that incorrectly deletes expensive hard work and thus sets back a 'game' mode of play or even sets up a loss of it is not the player's fault.)

As long as such bugs continue existing, then players will still be well within their rights to copy the persistent file off and manipulate saves that way, and once they do that the "game" aspect of the play suffers. Permadeath is vital to making such a game meaningful, but permadeath is broken when game bugs cause the death instead of the player causing it.

(To explain, "permadeath" is the word I use for what most people incorrectly call "rouge like". If there's no dungeon crawl, no fighting monsters and looting treasure, then it's nothing like rouge at all. Just sharing the one aspect that it has permadeath is insufficient for me to consider it being like rogue.)