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

[JimmyAgent007]

Sim City had money and no fail state. (Dont count the newest one) Im certain there is still a game in there. Thats how i see this current version of Kerbal.

[Sky_walker]

Sim City had money and no fail state. (Dont count the newest one) Im certain there is still a game in there. Thats how i see this current version of Kerbal.

Sim City had a bankruptcy and you could be kicked out of the office.

[JimmyAgent007]

Will Wright specifically stated he didnt believe in fail states. If being in debt got you kicked out of office then explain the US Government. Ive gotten massively in debt in SC 2000 and never got a game over.

[Alshain]

Said by one of the most active people in that entire topic.

I laughed.

Hardly. There's 13 pages here, without counting I've had maybe 10 posts total.

[Temeter]

Well, I'd say they added win64 because the community "feedback" was along the lines of "You said it wasn't possible, but we just did it." I'm not sure we could guilt Squad into including a game over state. They admit it possible and have chosen not to include such a thing.

One of the more respected youtubers out there (NerdCubed) put it plainly: "for a game to be a game it must have a failure state". He was speaking of free-to-play games where realworld money can pull you out of any problem. If KSP wants to be a game, specifically the "tycoon" game Squad advertises, then it needs a failure state. Without a failure state KSP is just a simulator, and not a particularly accurate one. That will confine it to a combination niche of spacesim fans much as train and airplane simulators. I'm not sure that many customers play KSP for the wacky rockets. They can watch that on youtube.

Didn't say squad in the past that 64 bits just weren't to high on their priority list? I have no old quote at hands, but there is no reason why it shouldn't be possible as longa as unity supports it.

Also, it's pretty logical that people don't want to lose their saves. That's not what the failure state nerdcube is speaking about means at all, otherwise we just had roguelikes (which are pretty much in the minority btw) and saves were never invented.

The failure state comes from your projects and missions failing for various reasons. Should be pretty easy to spot, stuff spectuacularly failing is the most obvious element of KSP. As i said, failing and learning is the basis of KSP. Now arguing there wouldn't be failure is absurd. It's literally the reason KSP got succesfull.

And following, you might survive in Career mode, but you want success. Missing the latter one would be a failure state people like Totalbiscuit talked about.

Tbh, the failure state is a very ellusive thing. Everything can be a theoretical failure. Thinking to much about it just limits what you can do with games.

Just to be sure I completely understand what you mean here, are you arguing that a 5 year old being able to play Kerbal Space Program is indicative of just how absurdly difficult the game is?

That does not make sense at all, doesn't it? That's why it also wasn't my argument.

I'd say its being fueled by boredom at not having .24 yet.

Well, that's the reason i'm posting here right now.^^'

Edited July 17, 2014 by Temeter

[tetryds]

Will Wright specifically stated he didnt believe in fail states. If being in debt got you kicked out of office then explain the US Government. Ive gotten massively in debt in SC 2000 and never got a game over.

Yes there is, it's called bankruptcy.

And that's exactly what we are suggesting.

You can't "fail" as an individal, but a business can.

[Alshain]

There has been a failure state in SimCity since at least SC2000. It's not bankruptcy, you just get impeached. The city can be quite a ways into the red but eventually they will end it. But like KSP, it will be really hard to get there.

[Temeter]

There has been a failure state in SimCity since at least SC2000. It's not bankruptcy, you just get impeached. The city can be quite a ways into the red but eventually they will end it. But like KSP, it will be really hard to get there.

And that's the idea behind it. There has to be the threat, the idea that completely screwing up can cause you to fail. But just failing a city and losing all progress isn't really fun, so the game will give you every chance to get back on track.

Still, i think mods or settings will allow some stricter rules regarding complete failing. Squad even added another game mode (purely resulting from 'early access' updates) so you have a more customizable game.

Edited July 17, 2014 by Temeter

[Alshain]

And that's the idea behind it. There has to be the threat, the idea that completely screwing up can cause you to fail. But just failing a city and losing all progress isn't really fun, so the game will give you every chance to get back on track.

Well, I haven't played 0.24 yet obviously but they FAQ still indicates that it may be possible, but really hard, to fail. It says they are sure some people will manage it. Really, we just need to try it and see, but I think the person who compared it to SimCity will be fairly accurate.

[allmhuran]

That does not make sense at all, doesn't it? That's why it also wasn't my argument.

OK, good, because that seemed weird. So what was that "children are better at learning" bit about, exactly?

[Temeter]

Well, I haven't played 0.24 yet obviously but they FAQ still indicates that it may be possible, but really hard, to fail. It says they are sure some people will manage it.

Not that unrealistic, considering how many rockets you tend to crash at the beginning (as long as you don't spam quicksave/revert). I expect the starting contracts to be really generous.

OK, good, because that seemed weird. So what was that "children are better at learning" bit about, exactly?

Yeah, that'd be rather strange.^^

It was just to say that a 5 year old being able to send a rocket into orbit doesn't mean the game is easy. Especially at the beginning, KSP is about grasping difficult and unusual concepts we normally don't deal with. For example, stuff like the whole navigating in a orbit. Imo that's why the game is hard at the beginning, but get so much easier with experince.

Children are good at grasping new concepts, so that's why they can be suprisingly good early in this kind of game, even when it still might be a challenge to older people. Compared to MP-FPS, which relies on learned motorical abilities and reflexes. 5yo and people working at Nasa can play the game.

It's kinda like saying Demon and Dark Souls are easy. They feel that way if you are experienced, but they really aren't the first time you play them (or have no experience in the genre).

Edited July 17, 2014 by Temeter

[JimmyAgent007]

I must not have ever messed up that badly then. Either way I think my original idea of having a separate game mode for each side of this debate is valid. like they are doing with the science mode and contracts mode. eventually i think they should just have a list of features you select for a new game.

I dont see why everyone needs to get so worked up over other people are not having fun the right way. This is only the first pass, like exchanging sci/rep/money bankruptcy could just be in the next update once a few thousand people have played and the devs figure out how to balance things. If you think you should go bankrupt for now, just quit and delete your game. then start a new one

[Temeter]

It took me a few tries until i reached space and could establish an orbit. Including an internet search finding out about the drag and terminal velocities. Was afair in 0.18.4.

Or the orbital rendezvous and docking. I needed like six hours the first time... But the feeling after managing to stack two ships together.

Now it's like the easiest thing in the world.

[Sky_walker]

Game is by far easier with new navball.

I gave KSP a quick try around the period you did, 0.18, but gave up back then before even reaching 100km flight. Now? With new items and navball? I made it to the orbit in first or second flight with the noob mode on (aka. Sandbox).

edit: ok, after giving it a though: I don't know which version was that. It used to be before nodes and indicators on a nav ball.

Edited July 17, 2014 by Sky_walker

[Shasjas]

We should think of some different ideas for failure states that don't involve starting from scratch, because most games have a death state but that doesn't mean you have to start the entire game again, and strategy games like sim city and civ can make you start over because you can have another stab at the game by taking a different approach and using different tactics.

But ksp you would be climbing the same tech tree each would would get tedious after the second or third time.

[ddavis425]

Game is by far easier with new navball.

I gave KSP a quick try around the period you did, 0.18, but gave up back then before even reaching 100km flight. Now? With new items and navball? I made it to the orbit in first or second flight with the noob mode on (aka. Sandbox).

edit: ok, after giving it a though: I don't know which version was that. It used to be before nodes and indicators on a nav ball.

New Navball?

[Temeter]

I think he means prograde-, and retrograde-indicator?

Tbh, i can't even remember if i had them, or if it was actually 1.7. My first starts did rely on written down angles and terminal velocities, following a set of rules. The marker's wouldn't help at all, and i learned relatively late (after duna and moho missions) how to use the nodes (and homann transfer's even later).

I think the marker and nodes rally add to the game, though. Correct, It makes missions easier to execute, but the base of using them is knowing the gameplay principles. They actually allow to execute your imagined maneuver with full precision and support learning the mechanics by showing the result of your actions.

Again, these features should be pretty easy to disable via mod (or ingame-option at some point), if they aren't desired.

Edited July 17, 2014 by Temeter

[rakutenshi]

I still believe that looking at your available funds, even after taking the advances on a couple of easy contracts and realising "if I don't do this just right, I won't be able to afford to launch anything else" is sort of a proto-fail state.

People seem to believe that having no specific predetermined fail state is tantamount to some sort of god-mode.

I see many many posts in this thread claiming that because of the FAQ's statement that "The best "ekonomists" (rimshot here) in Kerbin have claimed that it’s technically impossible to run out of money," combined with "As you are given advances for contracts and you are constantly offered new contracts..." the whole concept of 'running out of money' is moot.

They're conveniently ignoring the part where it says "it’s technically impossible to run out of money, though I’m sure people will still manage it." and "constantly offered new contracts, you should be pretty safe." - which implies that there is a fail-state built into the game. If there's not a 'game over' screen, then it would imply that it is possible to go into the negative on your funding, at a certain point, accepting contracts for missions that you cannot possibly complete due to limited budget, just for the advances, will drive you so far into the hole that you may not even be able to afford to launch anything.

Well, it doesn't say game over.

But what it does say is I have 10 contracts accepted and due within 2 weeks, and our ekonomists say that we're still 200 funds short of being able to afford to put a mk 1 command pod on the launch pad.

The main driving force behind .24's contract system isn't the ability to fail at KSP. It's because there is a large number of people who are overwhelmed by a free-form sandbox mode with no set goals. You give them KSP And they look at it and go "what am I supposed to do?"

You tell them "Whatever you want!"

and they look back at you and ask. "What am I supposed to do?"

Now you can tell them "do contracts." thus providing a much needed guiding hand that some people cannot p

[Panzerbeard]

Some games benefit from an absolute fail-state, certainly. Hell, I play plenty of roguelikes and rogue-lites, and play many games in a "dead-is-dead" ruleset, the idea of losing hours of progress due to failure is not something that concerns me. But I feel like KSP is not one of those games, it's one of those games in which failure should present new gameplay opportunities to you. Failure should have consequences, but those consequences should be an opportunity, not a game-over.

I don't know if anyone else had a similar idea, but I've been thinking about this. Let's say you go bankrupt- you do not have the funds for a new mission, and contracts no longer offer you advances (perhaps this could be tied in to reputation? if you're shown to be an unreliable space program, they won't trust you with money up-front?). You should retire your space program, and start fresh, BUT in the same save file; everything remains where it is, all existing satellites, stations, bases, etc, are still in orbit where you left them, and everything you've unlocked in the tech tree has already been learned. However, you don't OWN any of it; you can't interact with, or control the stations in any way, and you can't use the tech previously unlocked. Instead, you have the option of buying them when you have the funds. That big refueling depot around Jool is still there, you don't have to spend all that time rebuilding it, but if you want it you need to pay a hefty sum to buy it. And you have to buy the rights to use any of the parts you'd previously unlocked, effectively making the tech-tree finance-based, instead of science-based, until you reach the point you were at before. Just because the initial space program failed, Kerbalkind doesn't have to lose all its scientific knowledge. You don't need to, literally, reinvent the wheel, you just have to buy the rights to use it.

The way I see it, that system provides sufficient incentive NOT to fail, you're forced to work your way up financially, but also makes more sense than being forced to start a new game, both from a gameplay, and in-universe standpoint.

[Shasjas]

Some games benefit from an absolute fail-state, certainly. Hell, I play plenty of roguelikes and rogue-lites, and play many games in a "dead-is-dead" ruleset, the idea of losing hours of progress due to failure is not something that concerns me. But I feel like KSP is not one of those games, it's one of those games in which failure should present new gameplay opportunities to you. Failure should have consequences, but those consequences should be an opportunity, not a game-over.

I don't know if anyone else had a similar idea, but I've been thinking about this. Let's say you go bankrupt- you do not have the funds for a new mission, and contracts no longer offer you advances (perhaps this could be tied in to reputation? if you're shown to be an unreliable space program, they won't trust you with money up-front?). You should retire your space program, and start fresh, BUT in the same save file; everything remains where it is, all existing satellites, stations, bases, etc, are still in orbit where you left them, and everything you've unlocked in the tech tree has already been learned. However, you don't OWN any of it; you can't interact with, or control the stations in any way, and you can't use the tech previously unlocked. Instead, you have the option of buying them when you have the funds. That big refueling depot around Jool is still there, you don't have to spend all that time rebuilding it, but if you want it you need to pay a hefty sum to buy it. And you have to buy the rights to use any of the parts you'd previously unlocked, effectively making the tech-tree finance-based, instead of science-based, until you reach the point you were at before. Just because the initial space program failed, Kerbalkind doesn't have to lose all its scientific knowledge. You don't need to, literally, reinvent the wheel, you just have to buy the rights to use it.

The way I see it, that system provides sufficient incentive NOT to fail, you're forced to work your way up financially, but also makes more sense than being forced to start a new game, both from a gameplay, and in-universe standpoint.

I like this idea.

[undercoveryankee]

Some games benefit from an absolute fail-state, certainly. Hell, I play plenty of roguelikes and rogue-lites, and play many games in a "dead-is-dead" ruleset, the idea of losing hours of progress due to failure is not something that concerns me. But I feel like KSP is not one of those games, it's one of those games in which failure should present new gameplay opportunities to you. Failure should have consequences, but those consequences should be an opportunity, not a game-over.

I don't know if anyone else had a similar idea, but I've been thinking about this. Let's say you go bankrupt- you do not have the funds for a new mission, and contracts no longer offer you advances (perhaps this could be tied in to reputation? if you're shown to be an unreliable space program, they won't trust you with money up-front?). You should retire your space program, and start fresh, BUT in the same save file; everything remains where it is, all existing satellites, stations, bases, etc, are still in orbit where you left them, and everything you've unlocked in the tech tree has already been learned. However, you don't OWN any of it; you can't interact with, or control the stations in any way, and you can't use the tech previously unlocked. Instead, you have the option of buying them when you have the funds. That big refueling depot around Jool is still there, you don't have to spend all that time rebuilding it, but if you want it you need to pay a hefty sum to buy it. And you have to buy the rights to use any of the parts you'd previously unlocked, effectively making the tech-tree finance-based, instead of science-based, until you reach the point you were at before. Just because the initial space program failed, Kerbalkind doesn't have to lose all its scientific knowledge. You don't need to, literally, reinvent the wheel, you just have to buy the rights to use it.

The way I see it, that system provides sufficient incentive NOT to fail, you're forced to work your way up financially, but also makes more sense than being forced to start a new game, both from a gameplay, and in-universe standpoint.

I had the same idea, where "failure" would be a reset to starting funds and reputation to represent "You are now playing as new management." I would have kept unlocked techs available (since the manufacturers haven't forgotten how to build anything, the more they can get you to buy, the better) and just penalized unspent science (new boffins don't really understand where their predecessors were going with some of those files).

All random kerbals that aren't in space should be laid off at the same time.

I like the idea of having to pay for access to anything that was in space after a transition. You might even require science to unlock unmanned probes to represent the work that has to be done to figure out the controls.

I would leave manned ships controllable so a crew doesn't miss an encounter, because letting an uncontrolled encounter gravity assist a crew into "stranded" is cruel and unusual for the kerbals. You would just have to pay for the manned ship before you earned any funds, reputation, or science from it.

[KandoKris]

I like the idea of going broke but I'm sure unless you tried to fail it would take some time. Enough ( for me at least )to have unlocked and launched a debris recovery ship to get extra funds even if these funds were small they would still be enough to continue. Then you ofcourse you also have new contracts that turn up so I'm sure it would be hard to fail. Dont get me wrong I'd love to test out a "game over" screen if squad put one in there. I'd also like some angry contract fail letters as well from the agencies involved

eg. Your incompetance astounds us. We gave you 6 months & 2000 roots (snigger) to just reach x orbit, more then enough and you Failed. Now we have to re-mogadge our lab to offer another contract To Someone Else.

As an Aussie I still cant get over the roots thing, makes me giggle everytime so glad SQUAD picked funds instead or the game might have gotten an M rating here

Edited July 17, 2014 by KandoKris

[Franklin]

I mean, the thing is with having no real failure punishment is that the failure punishment then becomes the player's patience. If they're never told, 'Okay, you did really bad. Here's how. Maybe go brush up in Sandbox for a while,' then they're just going to keep doing poorly until they get bored or frustrated and quit the game, possibly disliking the game entirely. Which in turn is bad for word-of-mouth PR, etc, etc. Sometimes failure punishments are good, assuming they're educational and try to steer you in the right direction next time.

But to never let someone fail makes it so they then don't know how to cope with failure, and coping with failure is required when dealing with the mechanics in KSP. Just not its intended gameplay. At least so far.

You're coddled by the gameplay, and frustrated by the mechanics, so you never lose, but eventually quit out of frustration. Which I guess is losing.

[Specialist290]

Dropping this in Suggestions and Development Discussion. Carry on

[Seio]

KSP is a space simulation game with some RPG elements, it's not a hardcore roguelike game. I don't know of any RPGs or simulation games that has a "game over" in the basic modes, and so I really don't see why KSP should have it.

The difference with KSP, and other RPGs, is that it takes hours and hours to play through (though there's no strict ending), so you can't just have a game over and lose the last 40 hours you spent in the game getting to the point you were, where as in action roguelikes the game is usually 30 minutes or a couple of hours long, so to get a game over in such a game isn't a big deal as you can simply start over again.

KSP is also different than RPGs and really almost all games, it's a simulation game, you need to understand the physical mechanics irl, it's not simply about learning game mechanics. Getting your first rocket into orbit can take hours, if you're really new to everything about this it could maybe even take 8 hours. And after that you have to figure out how to get to the mun, and so on, it's has a very big and long learning curve for people who are new to physics and orbital mechanics.

Also whoever said a 5 year old managed to put something in orbit... There's a very big difference about doing something yourself and being guided to something. That 5 year old would never manage to get anything into orbit if it played by itself, the reason it managed to put something into orbit was because it has a parent or a sibling guiding it to it. A 16-20 year old who plays alone is going to need to learn the mechanics from playing and come to an understanding, he or she won't have somebody guiding them to this (unless they decide to look it up, on youtube for example).

Somebody mentioned earlier "government" and "private" space program game modes, which I think is a great idea, except with some differences

• Government space program mode would be like a campaign or almost like a tutorial. You get a set amount of funds to complete a specific mission, very corridorish progression, you get unlocks as you complete the mission, but maybe throw in some minor things the player can choose for themselves. The goal with the mode would be to teach the player to play the game, not in a sandbox environment where they can build ridiculously huge rockets, but instead a controlled environment with the possibility of hints, where the player is introduced to the orbital/space mechanics and the tolls and parts of the game (including tutorials for things like the nav ball, how to make maneuver nodes etc).
  
• Private space program mode would be like the normal game, or where you play in a restricted sandbox, or an open campaign, this would use the existing contracts (with it's improvements) and science mechanics. It would also have different difficulties, Easy (what it is now), medium, hard (much less profit, and generally harder, can get into a "you lost" state and need to load an older save), potentially where you can change the difficulty at any time, and then special game modes like "hardcore" (no quick saves, no revert flight (or like anything past 10 seconds), hard settings, but normal saves possible) and "ironman" (no quick saves, no revert, one save, permanent game over possible).
  

Then you'd obviously still have the sandbox, for those who really just want to build things, have fun, and don't feel like the game challenges are worth playing anymore.

One big issue with the current game though, and something that would be needed to be fixed for this contract+science system, is automatic saves... The game has to save every now and then so that in case you really get into a ty situation you can go back to where you were previously and attempt to not get into the "lost" situation you were in (although I don't think there should be a strict game over).

-snip-

This is a pretty good idea, though I'm not sure if it's just better to have a better system to prevent you from bankruptcy (save/load). I think this might be something that just sounds really cool, but when put into the game it's something everyone will just avoid, because it's simpler to load an old save file and not screw up again.