Currency ; Payload contractors & Achievements

[Rdivine]

Currently, career mode is just no different from sandbox mode. The materials and parts are free, although a "cost" unit has been implemented. If currency were to be added, a player would start off a career mode with its starting fund, of about 5 million dollars.

Through missions organized by the "government", such as sending payloads or astronauts into specific orbits,

cash can be obtained. Cash can be used to purchase parts, or hire kerbals.

Methods of obtaining funds:

1. Sending pre-built payloads from governments or third-party organisations, into specific orbits.

-A 70-100km orbit would reap $50,000.

-A 100-500km orbit would reap $100,000.

-A 500-1500km orbit would reap $150,000.

-An orbit above 1500km would reap $200,000+

-A geostationary orbit would reap $500,000.

-Munar insertion orbits would reap $1,200,000

-Minmal insertion orbits would reap $5,000,000

2. Setting up communication links.

Several new probe parts would be added, with the ability to "transmit" information from one place to another. It is not for use for the player, but instead for other companies who wishes to use your satellites to transmit data, such as telecomms, television, internet and etc.

A transmition-able satellite must be put into space for companies to make requests.

-1 unit of space would reap $20.

A small transmitter would carry 500 units of space, be 0.5m wide, and has 0.1 mass.

A normal transmitter would carry 2750 units of space, be 1m wide, and has 1 mass.

A large transmitter would carry 5520 units of space, be 2m wide, and has 3 mass.

3. Commercial space tourism

A new building would be set up called the "tourism center". There, kerbals can sign up for flights around the globe, or just a suborbital flight into space. However, you must design your own rockets, spaceplanes or planes that can carry passengers.

-A 100km plane trip would cost $6,000.

-A planned suborbital flight would cost $120,000.

-A planned orbital trip from space would cost $600,000.

-A round trip to the moon would cost $1,500,000.

4. Multiplayer competitions

Multiplayer competitions can be held by players, which then the 2 teams must build a suitable and desirable vehicle that fits the criteria set by the player. The player then awards the winning team a sum of cash in exchange for the vehicle.

How money will be spent

1. Fuel

Money earned will be used to purchase fuel. Fuel will be stored in resevoirs, and then used for missions.

-Liquid fuel costs $5 per unit

-Oxidixer fuel costs $7 per unit

-Monopropellant RCS fuel costs $2 per unit

2. Parts

Parts require money to be purchased.

-Small fuel tanks costs $1,000 - $5,000

-Normal fuel tanks costs $5,000 - $13,500

-Large fuel tanks costs $13,500 - $75,000

Probe cores costs $500-$5,000

Cockpits costs $10,000.

Pure rocket engines costs $20,000 - $150,000

SABRE engines costs $175,000

Jet engines costs $30,000 - $170,000

Wing parts costs $3,000

Solar panels costs $1,000 to $190,000.

When parts are recovered, they are stored in the inventory of a player so that it can be reused for next missions.

3. Research

Money must be spent so that research can be done.

Research involves new scientific communication parts.

Research will continuously gather data from probes or rovers all over the solar system for a maximum period of 3 years. Data gathering may vary from 1 to 10 units per day. Time warp will just pause the researching, and continues when it is under 10x. When 50 units of data is gathered, money must be spent on it to convert it to either science, or new parts(which are very rare). 50 units of data will cost about $15,000 and reap 50 science.

[cpast]

First off, contracts and budget are already planned for the next version of KSP. Contracts are already implemented, actually, and I suspect budget is too by this point (i.e. basic implementation down, subject to change). I'm assuming, then, that this is a suggestion for a specific budget/contract system. With that, some points to keep in mind:

* First, a budgetary system can require heavy tweaking. Every single thing incentivizes some playstyles over others. It's not always clear what effects they'll have, so they need tweaking after the fact.

* Second, because this requires experimentation, Squad isn't likely to (and shouldn't) just take numbers from anywhere for it. My point is, you should explain why you came up with the numbers you did; just saying "this is how much money you get for doing thing Y" isn't very useful, but saying "The budgetary system should encourage players to do X by providing Y contract" is potentially useful.

Now:

The system you propose seem seriously flawed. First, it makes interplanetary missions effectively impossible in career, and makes anything impossible for people who like to play a whole mission through at once (instead of switching between many missions at a time). If you want to run a whole mission at once, tough luck - the timewarping to get even to the Mun will kill a bunch of science output. Interplanetary? You literally won't be able to get to Eeloo if you launch the day 0.24 is released and want to arrive before 0.25, and waiting for launch windows means you'll get at most a couple interplanetary missions off in that time.

Second: Recovery of parts as parts means that past a certain point, money becomes far less relevant. A player who builds an SSTO spaceplane never even has to *look* at a budget again; all the budget constrains is fuel costs ($5/unit, which is kinda low) and simultaneous missions. Since the no-timewarp-if-you-want-to-get-anything means you have to run simultaneous missions, that means you have two features fighting each other, one requiring multitasking and the other setting a hard cap on it. Even then, all you have to do is have a massively overbuilt SSTO, use a cheap high-ISP engine and the very cheap fuel, and deploy the upper stage from the SSTO. Boom, lifter budgets cease to matter.

Third: The contracts you propose are "Do X, earn Y" in perpetuity. There's no variation; it's not really much deeper than "Press X for money". This is a problem any proposed contract system has to deal with; one way Squad's doing it, for instance, is experimental parts. There, accepting a contract gives you a part you haven't unlocked yet that you're supposed to test; even if the actual test is "Do X in Y orbit around Z", you have a serious choice: you can use the experimental part in other craft, but have to recover it if you want to do so, as losing all of your finite supply will make you fail the contract; the question then is "Do I feel comfortable risking the part in this unrelated mission, or should I save it?" and "Hm, when should I actually do the contract, after which I'll lose access to the part?" Those contracts are interesting because they introduce choices for the player. "Put payload X in orbit Y" doesn't, really - the player might pick his launch infrastructure, but there's no meaningful difference between any 2 such contracts.

[mstrfalco]

I agree with cpast. Since it will be in the next update I am sure better suggestions will come once people get an understanding of how squad is able to implement these features. I do like your idea of space tourism, I never thought of that and hope there will be contracts for that in future versions. I can see it now... Space planes full of little tourist Kerbals wearing button down Hawaiian shirts