have we discussed how bankruptcy is impossible in 0.24 as it is?

[tetryds]

Having "Governamental" and "Private" agency modes would solve that issue.

Gov. would never game over, on private your parts cost more and you are prone to bankruptcy.

[Temeter]

Having "Governamental" and "Private" agency modes would solve that issue.

Gov. would never game over, on private your parts cost more and you are prone to bankruptcy.

Cool, i like that idea. Not sure if it's a good idea to change part costs, though.

[EdFred]

Why is a game over/bankruptcy going to turn people off?

I can't count the number of times I didn't win in Civilization, RR Tycoon, Sim City, or any number of other games. You know what I did in all of those games? On the main screen (even in KSP) there's a Start New game option. I know. Crazy idea. The concept of a new game. Or even multiple concurrent games. It's a revolutionary idea!

It's not like you buy the game, and you get ONE chance to succeed, and if you don't you have to buy it again.

[MiniMatt]

Try and remember how hard you failed when you first played the game and reconsider how difficult it should be to fail. I would love a "hard-mode" with tighter budgets and less tolerance for failure, but I think the devs are right to allow new players to ease into it rather than losing all their progress if they make a few score mistakes.

God that's a really good point.

The other day I was playing around with a single stage to mun-and-back design. Knocked something together, launched, got into orbit, set an intercept, retro burnt into a landing trajectory, landed, took off, set a return burn, entered atmosphere & flew back to KSP. Did it entirely on autopilot (that is, human "muscle memory" autopilot - no mechjeb style mods), forgot to even set an f5 quicksave at any stage. Because, well, landing on the Mun is so easy we can do it in our sleep right?

Yet first time round I recall taking a good dozen, maybe even twenty, launches before even getting into orbit. Another ten or so getting a landing on the Mun (would have gone a lot quicker had I realised quicksave existed and saving just before landing burn would be wise).

[tetryds]

Yes, that is a really good point.

But let me ask, what did you do after you failed?

I suppose the answer is "tried again", and I don't see any problem with that regarding the career.

[NovaSilisko]

Having "Governamental" and "Private" agency modes would solve that issue.

Gov. would never game over, on private your parts cost more and you are prone to bankruptcy.

Government would bail out your space program at the cost of a huge hit to reputation?

Why is a game over/bankruptcy going to turn people off?

I can't count the number of times I didn't win in Civilization, RR Tycoon, Sim City, or any number of other games. You know what I did in all of those games? On the main screen (even in KSP) there's a Start New game option. I know. Crazy idea. The concept of a new game. Or even multiple concurrent games. It's a revolutionary idea!

It's not like you buy the game, and you get ONE chance to succeed, and if you don't you have to buy it again.

Yeah. It seems a lot of games recently are scared of letting the player fail (mostly AAA games). I never understood it, for the reasons you specified.

[EdFred]

Did I miss somewhere that 0.24 is getting rid of sandbox mode?

[KerikBalm]

The advance is not the full value of the contract, correct?

But as others have suggested, the agency can continue you are just "fired" as its director when the reputation gets too bad.

I assume spamming contracts for the advnaces, and then not completing them, will kill your rep.

Didn't they say they'd have a difficulty slider anyway?

[Aragosnat]

Did I miss somewhere that 0.24 is getting rid of sandbox mode?

No. IT will still be in there. Just how career mode is changed to less sandboxy. If I remember right. There will be sandbox, Career with budgets & rep, and Science (which career mode currently is).

[jfull]

Sure you can never run out of money, but if you do badly enough, the game will still punish you because you'll only have a small amount of funds to work with, resulting in much smaller missions than if you were being successful.

[Rusty6899]

Yes, that is a really good point.

But let me ask, what did you do after you failed?

I suppose the answer is "tried again", and I don't see any problem with that regarding the career.

I get that, but it would be really demoralising if you lost all of the parts you had researched up to that point and all history of your achievements were lost. There's a big difference between starting a mission again and starting a career again.

If there is a chance of failure then the first thing every new player will do after they fail is "quick load". Obviously I love the quick save/load functions and have used them more times that I could care to count, but I think that they shouldn't be essential for providing a "reasonable" difficulty level for newer players.

[MiniMatt]

Yes, that is a really good point.

But let me ask, what did you do after you failed?

I suppose the answer is "tried again", and I don't see any problem with that regarding the career.

Fair point. Really fair point.

Suppose the difference was this was all done pre-career mode and hence all parts (such that existed at the time) were available - I was only ever limited by my own skill and not that which the game artificially imposed upon me.

Perhaps better tweaking of the early tech tree will solve some of the issues I have with a game-over scenario. I'd just hate to find myself at the skill level required to stand a good chance of landing on the Mun, but having to regrind to get landing legs and ladders to make that chance worthwhile and more likely because the last twenty failures had scrapped my space agency.

[EvilotionCR2]

What will happen when you will have for example only 25 funds? You will be stuck, you won't be able to complete any contracts right? Wait no, you can still wait for contracts that give you money upfront.

[Sandworm]

It seems that all of the stock contracts give you plenty of money up front.

Now the contract package that I want to write, if Squad allows us to write them the way we want to, will give you practically nothing up front specifically to create a failure state.

[EdFred]

No. IT will still be in there. Just how career mode is changed to less sandboxy. If I remember right. There will be sandbox, Career with budgets & rep, and Science (which career mode currently is).

Sort of my point. If players suck badly enough (either through intelligence issues or noob issues) they can go play in the sandbox until they have the ability of getting to orbit without failing.

[tetryds]

Actually, I believe that science mode fits a new player better, since it introduces the parts little by little.

Having no way to fail in career takes off a bit of it's point.

[cpast]

Actually, I believe that science mode fits a new player better, since it introduces the parts little by little.

Having no way to fail in career takes off a bit of it's point.

Not really -- there is a consequence to doing poorly, because then you find yourself unable to afford anything but the simplest most boring contracts.

[MiniMatt]

I can't count the number of times I didn't win in Civilization, RR Tycoon, Sim City, or any number of other games. You know what I did in all of those games? On the main screen (even in KSP) there's a Start New game option. I know. Crazy idea. The concept of a new game. Or even multiple concurrent games. It's a revolutionary idea!

Speaking as someone who likely has a good two to three thousand hours in Civ 2-5 and Sim City 1-4 I'd say they're different games, suited to different victory conditions and failure states.

Victory conditions is a good point actually - Kerbal doesn't (and I can't envisage it ever having) a victory state. You can't win Kerbal. You can win Civ. And hence you can lose Civ. But not being able to win at Kerbal kinda precludes being able to lose at Kerbal.

Sim City is a much closer comparison, and one that - like you - I've failed at multiple times yet happily ground through the tech or funds once more so I can implement subways for the thousandth time. I'd say the difference here is systems. Essentially in Sim City the systems are unknown to the player - the replay value, and happiness at failure, comes from trying to figure out just how quickly you can push commercial & hi-tech industry, when will the middle classes get grumpy at lack of mass transit, how much can I let crime rise in the poor housing areas before my dirty industry employees get grumpy and move out? There are a huge number of variables which are infinitely complex, placing a park a tile to the left will set up a chain reaction affecting the rest of your city.

In Kerbal however, the systems are actually fairly simple. And well known. There exists a handful of planets and a handful of moons. You can orbit these bodies. You can land on these bodies. You can return from these bodies. The replay value comes from the Lego factor - you can do this in a thousand different ways but none of them will be necessarily better or worse.

Further, with Sim City there exists a point where you've got everything, where a city is bustling and the map is full, where enjoyment comes from restarting. Kerbal is somehow different. You can have a satellite, a space station, a base, around and upon every body in the system and yet still the enjoyment comes from doing essentially silly stuff.

The Civ comparison is fairly straightforward - failure states only really make sense in games that have victory states - and KSP doesn't have a victory state.

Sim City (and by extension RR Tycoon) is a bit harder if I'm honest, but I think I've made a good stab of it above

[EdFred]

but if we are going to have the ability to fail at contracts, maybe even to the point where contracts aren't even offered to us anymore, KSP 1.0 could very well have a failure condition. There need not be a victory condition to have a failure condition. And if one is afraid to fail, sandbox is right there. Actually most of the goof off stuff in KSP, I do in sandbox.

[MiniMatt]

but if we are going to have the ability to fail at contracts, maybe even to the point where contracts aren't even offered to us anymore, KSP 1.0 could very well have a failure condition. There need not be a victory condition to have a failure condition. And if one is afraid to fail, sandbox is right there. Actually most of the goof off stuff in KSP, I do in sandbox.

I'm not sure that sandbox is the answer to folks struggling to make progress in career. Rather I see sandbox as the thing to do after you've learnt the systems and exhausted enjoyment from career.

[tetryds]

But again, the game could explicitly tell you that there is a game over, and that there is a science mode where you don't need to care about that.

Or have the difficulty settings.

Or both.

[LethalDose]

[PREVIOUS POST REDACTED]

Misread OP

Yes, I agree it'd be nice to see some real consequence to failure.

Edited July 16, 2014 by LethalDose

[cpast]

But again, the game could explicitly tell you that there is a game over, and that there is a science mode where you don't need to care about that.

Or have the difficulty settings.

Or both.

Saying "You failed! Here's a mode where you can't fail!" is just one step up from the game telling you "You kinda suck at this; here's a mode even you can't fail in".

Career mode seems like it's the main focus of the game (it's certainly a major part of the advertising) - it should not be the hard mode, with new players expected to probably play sandbox until they get good at the game. It should be a mode which a brand-new player can start as their very first game, and not be made to put them off.

Difficulty options relating to financial rewards would work well for that.

[tetryds]

Yes, what I am trying to mean is that "taking risks" should be what it stands for.

If you have almost nothing and are too ambitious, and fail, you should be severely punished for that.

New players will go for easier missions, the star system makes clear how hard a mission is.

So, if I start a game, pick something with three stars rather than something with one star and the game trows a "GAME OVER" at me, I will just retry and try an easier contract.

[EdFred]

I'm not sure that sandbox is the answer to folks struggling to make progress in career. Rather I see sandbox as the thing to do after you've learnt the systems and exhausted enjoyment from career.

We have two different opinions about that. A sandbox is where little kids play - you know ones that haven't developed the mental or physical capability to play Chess or Go, or golf, base jump, cliff diving, etc... It's a place where you don't get hurt. It's for beginners. In every game I've ever played it's been for beginners...hence the name sandbox.