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

[MidwestB]

I think it was said you get 100% funds back for parts recovered from the runway. If you're able to land there, "launch" a truck on the runway, refuel and then recover it, you should get all your funds back minus the fuel used.

It would be nice to just have a button that refuels it for you though,.

[cpast]

I think it was said you get 100% funds back for parts recovered from the runway. If you're able to land there, "launch" a truck on the runway, refuel and then recover it, you should get all your funds back minus the fuel used.

It would be nice to just have a button that refuels it for you though,.

Or you could land there, recover, and load the saved craft and relaunch.

[SkyRender]

But this serves pretty much the same end as not having any failure conditions at all. If Squad made it so you couldn't fail until you've proven to be good enough that you're unlikely to fail...

If you've ever seen the average player starting out, they're far from perfect at getting to orbit after attaining it just once. Failure would be entirely possible there. And really, this is another piece of why I was wondering if starting funds and contract payouts would be player-adjustable too. Like it or not, KSP's audience spans all skill levels, and difficulty options are one of the easiest ways to accommodate a large span of potential players.

[Caelib]

There's also a magical balance between "fun" and "stupidly easy".

I see a lot of people make this argument, but as an experienced player ... KSP can be as easy or hard as you make it for yourself. They have added new options in .24 that allow the player to turn off things like quicksave, quickload and revert(s) -- if you couple these options with setting other limits for yourself such as not using fuel lines or struts, the game gets extremely challenging.

[allmhuran]

I don't see a Game Over screen being so much the "scrapping of the Kerbal Space Program" so much as "You're the Director/Head of the program and have failed to meet said goals, you're fired and replaced by some other Kerbal".... and so on.

This. "Game over" is game over for you, just like it is in any other game. Your death in a FPS, for example, does not imply the end of the conflict in which you were participating.

[razark]

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.

...

failure states only really make sense in games that have victory states...

Percentage of Tetris games that end with a losing condition: 100

Percentage of Tetris games that end with a winning condition: 0

And yet, I'll still play it three decades later.

[Levelord]

Percentage of Tetris games that end with a losing condition: 100

Percentage of Tetris games that end with a winning condition: 0

And yet, I'll still play it three decades later.

Tetris is a game that procedurally gets harder until you reach your limit. KSP has a finite number of planets and once you've reached all of them (with or without creative restrictions from the player's imagination) there isn't really much left to do.

[G'th]

Tetris is a game that procedurally gets harder until you reach your limit. KSP has a finite number of planets and once you've reached all of them (with or without creative restrictions from the player's imagination) there isn't really much left to do.

The idea though is that KSP is about creating a successful space program. There really isn't an actual victory condition because successful space programs don't just stop doing what they're doing arbitrarily. But space programs can totally fail, for a variety of reasons.

And even with a lack of things to do in the stock endgame (there really isn't though if you're creative), you still have to remember that KSP is still in the stage of its development where the focus is mechanics, not content.

[MR4Y]

That's a very elaborate descritption for "dumbing down our gameplay. Of course players are capable of launching rockets, but are too dumb to do economics management."

[Sky_walker]

Tetris is a game that procedurally gets harder until you reach your limit. KSP has a finite number of planets and once you've reached all of them (with or without creative restrictions from the player's imagination) there isn't really much left to do.

That's a separate problem KSP got: no clue what to do with the game once player is capable of sending a return mission to any planet in the game. The end-game content just isn't there.

But let's not mix topics

[Sky_walker]

Total failure (as in you can run out of money and never recover) should not be implemented, except maybe as a "hardcore" mode. We spend hours building up a persistent world only to have a mistake mess it all up without even the ability to reload? No, just no. Some people here have saves with hundreds of hours of work and something like this would be a little too extreme.

Noone said it should be a single mistake.

All that was suggested was adding an end game if player repetitevly fails in achieving presented goals. It should be a chain of events that leads to the game over screen, not a single mistake like you suggest.

and if you still can't stand it - play sandbox mode. Seeing that your main interest is in building up a persistent world - you'd be better off toying in a sandbox anyway.

[gendalf]

it's the question of balancing contracts with spendings, for more entertaning playthrough and addition of difficulty selection screen (newly added options in the debug menu have some of it)

[Laie]

I like to think of career mode as the tutorial: you're given a few parts to start with and specific tasks to fulfill. As you get better with the game, you not only unlock more parts, but also get enough funds&rep that you can start to pursue your own projects (even in the unlikely case that there's no contracts covering your pet project). At some point, career mode effectively becomes indistinguishable from sandbox.

The upside is that you can't really fail (though you may reach a point where starting over would be easier than rebuilding your rep). The downside is that it's not actually challenging to the experienced player.

[Monger]

I'm sure (read: I hope) they'll change this down the road and contracts are great, but they're kind of hollow if you can never actually lose, right? You fail a contract, you don't have enough for the next contract, you get an advance on said contract, the contracts are bottomless, as I understand it.

I don't see a problem here. You only get proper contracts if you have a certain reputation, and enough money to pay for it. So if you screw up an important contract, all contracts except the very simple ones are locked.

The motivation here is to achieve more and more complex contracts (maybe a bit comparable to the lifetime achievements in Sims 3). It is still an open game, but to see all of it, you need to fulfill Contracts that are more and more difficult.

I don't see how punishing the player more will achieve anything. This is no Perma-Death game, a Game Over screen would most likely result in a quick load, and therefore defeat the purpose of "Game Over". I think the solution that Squad currently has sounds perfectly okay.

[rakutenshi]

From what I gather, the "impossible to run out of funds" concept doesn't mean you'll never be broke. It means if you screw up a big contract and blow all your funds, you'll be forced to go back to rescuing EVAs from LKO or launching commsats to scrimp and save and rebuild your budget. In many ways, that'd be worse than a 'game over' screen to me. If you had to start over after a game over, you fall back on the storyline excuse of 'I dont' have the tech/reputation/achievements to get better contracts yet.' .. but if you break the bank and screw up a mission, being forced to take the 'put a commsat in a 120km orbit' contracts because that's all you can afford to even attempt.. huge mark of shame.

[RidingTheFlow]

Basically if you run out of funds, you will be forced to scale down severely - kind of akin to starting all over again (you will have all new parts you unlocked by science, but you won't be able to afford them). Sounds perfectly good from game design standpoint to me.

[Victus]

Squad should just add 'tutorial contracts' as an option at the loading screen for a brand new save, these would be the things we find boring such as reach 5000km which obviously give you lots of cash.

Our version should be difficult with a much more steeper achievement/contract curve so that it's a win-win for all. I mean Squad needs to do a good tutorial anyway.

[Alshain]

Noone said it should be a single mistake.

All that was suggested was adding an end game if player repetitevly fails in achieving presented goals. It should be a chain of events that leads to the game over screen, not a single mistake like you suggest.

and if you still can't stand it - play sandbox mode. Seeing that your main interest is in building up a persistent world - you'd be better off toying in a sandbox anyway.

Why don't you play in sandbox mode, I want career mode. I want to do contracts and I can do persistence just fine in a career mode game. I just don't want my game that I spent hours on to have the ability to become completely unusable. Better yet, why don't you just go play FTL instead of trying to turn this game into FTL. It doesn't matter because Squad will never implement this anyway, it's all theoretical.

[Laie]

From what I gather, the "impossible to run out of funds" concept doesn't mean you'll never be broke. [...] you'll be forced to go back to rescuing EVAs from LKO or launching commsats to scrimp and save and rebuild your budget. In many ways, that'd be worse than a 'game over' screen to me.

This.

(plus some random filler text)

[Sky_walker]

Why don't you play in sandbox mode, I want career mode.

Career is something that you can fail in.

What you are proposing is a contradiction to that.

[Alshain]

Career is something that you can fail in.

What you are proposing is a contradiction to that.

Apparently it's not. Have you read the FAQ?

[Richy teh space man]

I think that when cities are added, redirecting an asteroid into it should be a game over, due to obvious reasons..

[xcorps]

I think that when cities are added, redirecting an asteroid into it should be a game over, due to obvious reasons..

I would think that's raison de réjouir.

[Aphox]

I've swept up some off-topic banter. Let's stay away from personal attacks and stick to the topic here, folks.

[Benaiah]

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned that, although you get an advance of funds for contracts, there is actually a failure penalty that is more than the advance. If you take a bunch of contracts for the advances and then fail them, you are seriously going to be in the hole.