Purchase staff

[Noname115]

Hi. I though of this a while ago and really wanted to help this game out.

My idea would coincide with currency when it is implemented. As you know, you can hire new kerbonauts to replace the ones that you kille- I MEAN sacrificed to the improvement of "SCIENCE!!". I thought it would be really cool if you could have another "tab" of sorts to switch between kerbonauts and engineers to build you're fantastic rockets.

To make this easier to understand. You have just started a new career mode. You go into the VAB and see that it is empty (no cars transporting items, etc.). You go into the Astronaut Complex to see what's up. In it, you see you're normal kerbal astronaut selection. But next to it is a tab that has a wrench icon. You select it and multiple kerbals show up holding various building tools. One is holding a wrench, another holding a blowtorch, etc. You buy one and head back to the VAB. Once inside, he is now walking around lonely in the VAB. At that point you can proceed to build you're first rocket.

Sounds neat, but it seems a bit bland to just be able to buy new engineers. That is why I came up with some interesting features about buying new engineers.

• Each individual engineer has various amounts of "kerbal dollars" you need to purchase them.
  
• Each one has thier own purpose. As in each engineer works on their own select area of the rocket to work on.
  

I know SQUAD is the only one who decides what goes into KSP and what doesn't but I just wanted to pay tribute to this beautiful game they have created. If you actually liked my ideas. try spreading them to convince SQUAD to test this feature out! Come up with some features of you're own! -Fly safe, Noname115

Edited March 20, 2014 by Noname115
Better title

[jwenting]

no. There's no point whatsoever in making it take time to build things. Been suggested before, and shot down for very good reasons.

[Noname115]

The way I thought of it was to make it more realistic. After all, building rockets takes time. But if it didn't work before, I can accept it not working here. Thanks anyway for letting me know that.

[Kasuha]

Every time someone needs to advertise their brainchild as "cool", "epic", or "superb", it's probably not up the hype. It's much better to place simple description of the idea in the thread name to give the reader an idea what he's up to read about when he enters. Surprise packages attract mixed emotions.

We're going to have money in some form in the game sooner rather than later and these will likely put certain limits on ships we will be able to build and use at given time. That's enough realism in my opinion.

[Sirrobert]

The way I thought of it was to make it more realistic. After all, building rockets takes time. But if it didn't work before, I can accept it not working here. Thanks anyway for letting me know that.

It may be realistic, but this is a game. So gameplay takes priority over realism.

There is NOTHING to do while you wait for a rocket to build. So all it would result in is you clicking lauch, waiting 2 minutes for the rocket to 'be build', and only THAN can you start flying it.

And before you say, no you can't go fly something else while you wait. If I had something else to fly while I wait for another rocket to be build, I'd be flying that instead of designing another rocket

[Mazon Del]

While I agree that making it take time to build rockets is not exactly very useful as far as changing the game, I think he might have stumbled onto a mechanic that could be expanded into something useful.

Perhaps the use of the engineers can be a secondary way of controlling the development of the player during a campaign. While money and science will do a certain amount of work in controlling the size of a rocket for a particular mission, if SQUAD wanted a way to limit the size of the rockets you can build at a given stage of the game in some absolute way (such as mass of the system) this could be implemented by the hiring of ground crew. In simplistic terms, if 10 kerbals can make a 100 ton rocket, then maybe you need 15 to make a 150 ton rocket. Of course to get more ground crew you would have to hire them, bringing about an expenditure of funds (costs money). Depending on how other mechanics work (like the telescope we will need to find the asteroids in the upcomming NASA pack), the space program staffing system could extend to other mechanics as well. More astronomers means faster sky-searching. More scientists means cheaper/faster research, etc.

I get the inevitable hatred that will be visited on the idea of a method on forcefully limiting the size of rockets during the campaign, but depending on how SQUAD envisions the campaign actually operating, maybe they want to force players to have to find more efficient ways to package their missions. The campaign mode is not sandbox, it (best my understanding) is not meant to be sandbox with missions. It is a limited sandbox with objectives and goals beyond simply the whim of the player, you can still decide HOW you do a thing within constraints, but not necessarily what you do or when. This manpower system also somewhat helps provide a non-roleplay reason for doing a probe vs a manned mission, which is something people have been complaining about not existing. The probe could carry more science equipment, but it cannot do all the things a manned mission could do.

[Tex]

Please do not get me wrong, I do approve of the idea, but I also have to agree with what else has been posted on here. I have already actually suggested something along these lines, but while the immersion and realism is a very good thing, a good idea, it must unfortunately give way to fast and enticing gameplay.

[Noname115]

That makes sense too. You're not gonna have all of you're staff when you first start a career. You need to buy them. Thanks for looking into this for me, it is a priority to try and help the community as much as possible.