Career mode: development of parts as you invest in them and use them in flights

[juvilado]

Hi, just thought about a way to improve available tech and parts, apart from science requirements.

As in real life, the more money you invest in developping a part, the best it gets (less weight, more power in engines, cheaper to produce, better torque, energy efficiency...).

So a part wouldnt get it optimal (and final) form untill some money has been invested in, AND some trials have been conducted.

For instance, the same cockpit could be "lightweighted" from the 1st time it is used to the 5th, meaning that the engineers have found some improvements to make.

Any ideas or opinions?

[Comrade Jenkens]

I'd be up for this. While initially I was against it due to the new 3.75m parts being super lightweight, efficient and powerful it would make sense to be able to improve the smaller engines to be in line with this during career.

[juvilado]

It would nicely fix in the contract system, for witch you would be asked to try an experimental part in some concrete mission (for instance, use the new antenna to transmit from Minmus) before it gets fully available or fully operational and optimal.

[Paul Kingtiger]

It's been asked for before and it's still a brilliant idea.

I hope that the devs or some modders implement this.

[MKI]

I like this idea but it seems like something that would take time to work and balance. We also need the money-contract system first.

There was already flak for the SLS parts for being "to good" so keeping these parts ONLY in career would fix some of that. But then there is the issue of implementing it in sandbox at all, whats sandbox if you don't have all the parts to make what you want?

Its a tough thing to consider. Its a great idea but the devils are in the details this time around. The easiest way to half impliment this is to just impliment worse/better parts that are sheer replacements of what we have now. For instance a better performing engine that replaces the lv-45s completely, but can only be unlocked at the end of the tree. Its been proposed before and feel like the same thing is done with the "upgrading" part idea your suggesting.

[juvilado]

Well, I think in sandbox mode only the ultimate parts should be available, the half developped ones only in career mode.

Note that the science tree should be heavily modified or even removed in favor of a new economic+contract+scientific mode where you must try the prototypes first and/or invest the money you get with the contracts. Science would be needed to be spent for starting a new project (to start creating a new part).

Maybe the parts could have some different improveable attributes (weight,Isp,charge capacity,...) depending of the kind of part, and they get eventually improved as they are used in successfully missions or we could pay (invest) for being "privately tested and improved". The best parts wont be available for research untill more basic ones reach some level of developement.

Or something between all said, this is more or less a brainstorm.

Edited April 18, 2014 by juvilado

[404james]

I made a thread about a related, but distinct, Idea, before I saw this one. the thread is located at http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/77047-Another-take-on-development-of-parts.

I was a bit wordy in my thread, but the basic idea is, instead of having parts level up passively, give the player control over how much to optimize each part, at a cost for each individual part, then make it cheaper as they gain experience/tech/whatever.

[juvilado]

I made a thread about a related, but distinct, Idea, before I saw this one. the thread is located at http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/77047-Another-take-on-development-of-parts.

I was a bit wordy in my thread, but the basic idea is, instead of having parts level up passively, give the player control over how much to optimize each part, at a cost for each individual part, then make it cheaper as they gain experience/tech/whatever.

I like your idea, it has lots of similarities with what i suggest.

I propose not to passively improve, but after succesfully missions (engineers get useful data and experience) as well as with investment.

As you suggest in your thread, each player will specialize in some specific parts (the ones he likes more) as it occurs in reality: i believe NASA, ESA, Japan, China, Russia, etc dont have the same parts, do they? They work on the pieces they actually use in their spacecrafts.

This could lead to very different careers depending of the choices of improvement you make, witch i think is good for the game.

Edited April 18, 2014 by juvilado