Drill Baby Drill!

[LongbowEOD]

So in 0.24, recovered fuel, oxidizer, and monoprop will now get you money (back).

Know what I'm thinking?

Kethane refineries. Burn that stuff down to fuel or monoprop (oxidizer is waaaaay cheaper from the video) and recover your tanker back for instant fund injections. Oil barons.

[Random Tank]

Pfffft, not bad idea.... Use EPL to mine ore to build the crafts and save money on the tankers too! I'll pass on that one though, I'll earn money the intended way

[Alshain]

I don't think money is going to be as 'valuable' as you think it will be. If your doing contracts, you will likely have more than enough to fund your ships. Look at Science in 23.5 for example. There is way more in the planetary system than you need to finish the tech tree... there is way more in orbit of Kerbin than you need to finish the tech tree.

I don't think drilling and selling fuel will get you much advantage unless you have additional difficulty mods making it harder to get money.

[TimePeriod]

As Random Tank said, I want to at least give stock a try before resorting to mods.

Sandbox mode, ehh not sure yet.

[timsfitz]

Yeah unless they add difficulty settings or toggles we will all be kertrillionairs by the end of the tech tree..... Unless ironman mode or something.

[Streetwind]

That's why I was hoping they'd be going with an actual budget, and not a raw cash balance. I've tried that with Mission Controller Extended already - it basically boils down to "if you know what you're doing, you can completely ignore money as you'll have it coming out of your ears without even trying. If you don't know what you're doing, you'll be bankrupt in four launches." And I've a feeling that Squad really wants to avoid the second case, thus tuning the system on the easy side.

Plus I saw it mentioned in the discussion thread that you're apparently getting monthly cash injections or somesuch to avoid dead ends. In that case, just timewarp for instant cash.

Based on this, I'm expecting that you'll be doing contracts largely for the fun of it and for bonus science, which will still be the most important currency. Second most important will be reputation, because high reputation gives you better contracts, which gives you more interesting goals and more science. And money itself will be a distant third unles you're playing challenge mods like BTSM and RSS.

Of course, should the update roll around and be surprisingly challenging on the cash front, I'll have to eat my words, but I suppose that I'll live

[Scotius]

Maybe. If you are a minimalist recovering every vessel, re-using motherships and landers etc. you will probably be swimming in kash in no time. But take a look at Brotoro's Laythe mission. (Semi)permanent extraplanetary base, fleets of interplanetary tugs hauling huge payloads everytime launch window to Jool opens and continuing exploration of other Jool satellites in the meantime. And he does not use kethane - every drop of fuel must be hauled from Kerbin. It will be a drain - i'm sure of it.

And there is the role-playing I like to play my game as a real manager would be doing - there is an ultimate goal of advancing the civilisation through exploration, scientific discoveries and exploitation of extraplanetary resources. I will be thrilled to deliver first loads of fuel back home, and bask in the glow of rising reputation indicator

[Apollyon]

Extra-Planetary Launchpads used to launch LFO packets from the moon and minmus back to Kerbin for surface recovery?

It would certainly add significance to the kethane deposits, which are limited in size and "richness". I can see it pushing you ever further out into new areas as you deplete them.

Hmm... yes, I can see this becoming a thing!

In fact, why stop there? Why not modify the game so that contracts give you 20% of what they currently give you, and add a new resource (on top of Kethane and ore) that is worth an appropriate amount of money when recovered on Kerbin, thus giving you a grand campaign to build a space program purely for mining IT, in order to fund your space fleet? Type I of this resource could grant a medium amount of money, and could be found on moon and minmus. Type II could be found at Duna and Jool and worth TONS of Money.

[MarcusQ]

Plus I saw it mentioned in the discussion thread that you're apparently getting monthly cash injections or somesuch to avoid dead ends. In that case, just timewarp for instant cash.

That exploit could probably be prevented by slowly decreasing your reputation if you don't do anything for a while.

[Whirligig Girl]

Kerbin Orbit Stations with fuel ferried from Minmus or the Mun would be much more cost-effective. You'd be able to launch cheaper ships using empty fuel tanks that get refueled on orbit. The Delta-V equation is not circumvented by landing fuel back down.

[Majiir]

I've reworked the Kethane converters to make the fuel ratios more natural and to provide economic incentive. Each converter will produce some byproduct, which is stored if you have space for it or vented if you don't. The heavy converter, for example, will produce rocket fuel in the same proportion as engines consume it, and there will be a small amount (under 1% by mass) of XenonGas byproduct. If you plan ahead and bring empty tanks on your mission, you could accumulate quite a bit of wealth.

[magnemoe]

Extra-Planetary Launchpads used to launch LFO packets from the moon and minmus back to Kerbin for surface recovery?

It would certainly add significance to the kethane deposits, which are limited in size and "richness". I can see it pushing you ever further out into new areas as you deplete them.

Hmm... yes, I can see this becoming a thing!

In fact, why stop there? Why not modify the game so that contracts give you 20% of what they currently give you, and add a new resource (on top of Kethane and ore) that is worth an appropriate amount of money when recovered on Kerbin, thus giving you a grand campaign to build a space program purely for mining IT, in order to fund your space fleet? Type I of this resource could grant a medium amount of money, and could be found on moon and minmus. Type II could be found at Duna and Jool and worth TONS of Money.

Already thought about it, build expensive stuff on Minmus, like 600 m/s probes with 100 RTG and send down to recover.

At least Kethane mining combine with launching the interplanetary stages empty will get more focus.