Budgets and player skill levels

[kBob]

I was thinking as I keep adding boosters to my ship that budgets will be a good thing overall, I mean really my ship already does what I need but I just can't help and add a little bit more for that extra extra margin of safety.

But it seems like budgets would be a good place to add skill levels. A slider from loose to tight (easy to hard) meaning at loose more income comes in and at tight well less income comes in. This would be a very useful option IMHO.

[Rusty6899]

While I think that budgets will make it interesting, I think that they have to be implemented the right way.

The fact is that there is going to be a massive discrepancy between new coming players and more experienced players. I am sure that I could fly a return trip to almost anywhere in the Kerbol system for the same cost as a newcomer's first Mun landing. That isn't meant to be condescending, it's just that I learnt almost everything I know about space flight from this game and my first attempts were extremely inefficient and would have cost absurd amounts.

That said, a more experienced player shouldn't have to have their budget cut so tightly that they have to fly suborbital for the first 20 missions. Personally, I think that contracts should be the way forward (although not the exclusive method of mission choice). You get given/request a destination (reputation would determine which are available) and are given a budget based on your destination, tech tree progress and game difficulty setting (maybe even given access to one or two parts from further up the tech tree, although that depends on whether you will buy-as-you-build or have a part inventory I doubt it would be possible with the former). You could then either perform the mission directly for less than the budget, or visit the destination as one part of a multi-target mission, supplementing the mission budget with your own funds to cut a bigger profit.

I think that rather than preventing you from adding more boosters, budgets will probably just prevent you from using large numbers of the more expensive parts as the game progresses.

[kBob]

Yes that's why it would be a player controlled slider. It would be very simple to implement. It would simply be a multiplication factor on income. So on the far left (easy) it would be 2x, in the middle it would be 1x (standard game, default) and on the far right it would be 0.25x this would help beginners etc. and for people looking for a new challenge seeing what they could do on a really tight budget might be interesting.

While, of course, the game has the sandbox mode, having an easy budget would be a big help for beginners who want to follow the career track but without it being too difficult, while experienced players can also get a lot out of the career track without it being too easy. The slider could have 10 or 20 increments to allow fine tuning by each player although it might be enough to just have 5 steps beginner, intermediate, average, advanced, expert say...though I'm a big fan of giving the player more control and a range of 0-9 would be better and 0-19 perfect.