A try on Perodic Budget

[Kegereneku]

Hello respected developers and everyone else.

Abstract :

With 0.24 aka "First Contract", KSP have introduced one of the most important features : The ability for the game-logic to keep track of the player actions, reward us following different requirements and the use of money to build the rockets. Those rewards are for now the only means to get money.

SQUAD have explained several time that until they reach "scope complete" all newly implemented features are likely to be just balanced enough to be playable during the alpha part of KSP development, the goal being to implement all core-features before balancing them.

But until then we suggest with what we have.

And I think I can say that we all remarked the following "bug" with First Contracts.

- Reverting can give you a 100% success rate for any mission requiring a single launch or compatible with quicksave.

- A dozen rockets can be launch in less than a in-game day. Making near-Kerbin contract deadline near meaningless.

- Ultimately the player's progression is based on grinding money to afford the science-mission needed to advance in the Tech-tree.

Here is a graph of how I'm seeing the game work right now :

(Here the worst case doesn't mean you can't have FUNds anymore, it just represent the worst plase)

My understanding :

With only Contract as a source of Funds the rewards had to be high and not penalize the player, because even if the "Revert" function allow a safe launch, if your failure are costly (due to not reverting later, costly rocket or multiple-launch) you would risk loosing far more than you spent. So the system don't really encourage you to take risk (which you'll agree is bad in a game with booster and external-seats).

The Suggestion :

This suggestion based on many similar ideas posted before is -I hope- simpler than <insert idea of total-conversion into interstellar-fishing-game> seen sometime.

Here it goes :

- You have a minimum-budget based on your current Reputation, every <period of time> if you are below you get back to it.

- If you fail a contract and loose money, the money-penalty will resorb then, but you'll have lost reputation(thus budget), and time.

- While timewarping, nothing change. No loss, no gain.

- If you gain funds through contract/recovery putting you above budget, you keep it next <time period>.

I can already hear from fellow Kerbal :

"Free Money ? Blasphemous !" or that "Timewarp make time-based budget impossible"

While you are indeed getting free subvention like most Governmental or Private Space Agency the idea is that if you do nothing, nothing change and you would only be loosing opportunity.

This graph should cover the main cases.

Some explanation :

In the graph the "Timewarping forever" line doesn't mean that you do not get budget refill (while underbudget) if timewarping, it was meant to say that your budget will stay at the same level (as your reputation does not increase nor decrease).

Expected results :

- Contract deadline and proper Planning become important but manageable (I'll continue on this if asked).

- Taking risk or using non-revert-able multiple-ship would be encouraged.

- Building "freely" is possible under the limit of your budget as long as you don't lose reputation doing so.

- Timewarping forever, won't get you above-budget, ever.

- Buying parts just to recover them each month is a time-consuming process only worth one bigger rocket next month.

Known issue :

- Price, Reward, Reputation, Penalties will have to be rebalanced.

- If you nearly doubled your Funds by fulfilling contracts, budget will unfairly not reward you for that (equivalent solution by M3t4l-Warrior few posts down).

- If as I suspect you'll later be able to "buy access to part" in the tech-tree, such system can allow you to unlock everything as long as you take your time (but I know it could be fixed).

- Everytime you run out of money you'll want a button to time-warp to the next "payday" automatically.

Potential :

- Compatible with payroll for Kerbonauts, subcontracting and costly service that would as now require you to grind.

- Allow difficulty-setting without changing the part specs or the law of physics. (even if I'm not for the idea)

- Tracking stats can be used to create a "Score".

END

Okay, see any flaws in this ?

For the sake of simplicity I propose we call this P-budget.

Edited August 18, 2014 by Kegereneku
minor modification, clarification, more clarification

[DasValdez]

The better solution would be activities that earn money over time (such as mining resources, providing com networks, etc) AND cost money to maintain (KSC tech Staff to maintain satellites, maintenance costs, etc). If you go through the effort to set up a profitable space program, who cares if you time warp for 5 years and get paid.

[Kegereneku]

I disagree, a lot.

For starter I do not share your interest for "mining resources" in a game that is mostly design and explore. SQUAD cancelled the original resources feature they created because they found out "it was boring", which I can understand since it would ask you to manually pilot each cargo and grind money.

Then, income/expense of money over time in an automated way isn't, in my opinion, a workable design for a game that is intended to be used with Timewarp.

Why ? Because this would be a nightmare to balance (if not impossible)

- Basically once you have income higher than expense, you can timewarp until you get any amount of money you need, without any struggle.

- To make it an interesting struggle for the player you would need "random/complex" fluctuation, but how to decide how much it should fluctuate and how often when the player is expected to timewarp for day, week, month or years ?

- During higher level of timewarp any fluctuation could make you bankrupt in a mere instant without any chance to "invest" in a solution.

In short this wouldn't make an interesting game (plus it isn't in the spirit of KSP).

But a system that doesn't change outside of players actions (like what I'm suggesting) wouldn't have such a problem.

ps : bumping my thread for another try

Edited August 3, 2014 by Kegereneku

[DasValdez]

I'd rather address the reasons "why" it's boring than summarily dismiss the concept. By the same logic, gather "science" on each mission and manually flying the return mission for 100% return is "boring".

Your economy doesn't have to be based on moving resources around... a comm sat network or the Hard Rock Cafe LKO completely could be great ideas for contracts. If you don't like the resource gathering fund earning mechanism, don't use it... go for satellites or tour shuttles or delivery services or space stations instead.

Even resource gathering is an easy fix... If you want to collect/sell resources you can solve the alleged boredom using the transmit model (same as science, already implemented in code but with funds instead)... drive it home yourself for full sale price, or "transmit" it home for a smaller cut.

Your "warp forever" issue is no problem either, it can be limited with a variety of tools... maybe the "Orbital Hilton" is a time-limited contract, which will only pay for 10 months, or only pay during months where you perform a shuttle flight to and from the station. Maybe stuff breaks down on your com satellite and it stops earning until you send a crew to fix it. Just because physics calculations are skipped during time warp doesn't mean the financial events have to be. Besides... like I said above, if you take all the time to set up an infrastructure that earns every month, why not be allowed to warp forever? If that was such a huge concern, there would be no sandbox mode for the game.

I also don't see how you'd stop people from time warping through a budget. Your blue line stays flat when warping, but what does that mean? I can't time warp at all for an entire month, or else I get no budget that month? How many real-time minutes do I have to be active in a month to earn the budget? What if I warp for 29.9 days, then spend 30 minutes flying a mission to earn my budget? It just doesn't seem particularly easy nor intuitive to balance... earning from a com sat (unless it breaks), regardless of time warp is very simple in comparison.

[M3tal_Warrior]

I don't see why it shouldn't work. It has ways to prevent going bankrupt during time warp, as well as possibilities to earn more each month/day/week/whatever. What use are funds if one can not possibly fall down to a minimum during time warp? To be honest: Once you got 3 sats up around Kerbin, Minmus and Mun you can get about 180k per hour, if not more due to the 'gather science from orbit' contracts. You can't go bankrupt without a way to earn money again, unless you're the King of Idiots.

As for breakdown of sats: Sure, why not? If one breaks down, halt time warp with a notification, then one can easily fix up that sat again. In this case most of us will have repair crews in every orbit ready, I guess.

[Kegereneku]

DasValdez

What you are suggesting now is basically a contract in where you get paid gradually. If we assume it can't fail during timewarp it is boring (you are just waiting to be paid entirely), if we assume it can fail, it's random failure and Devs don't want to hear of for good reason : it would be frustrating (just like forced micromanagement)

Then there's your idea of magically transmitting matter across space, it might be an acceptable break from reality for game focused on economy/gestion but here it would make a joke out of rocket-science.

Requiring the player to perform regular flight or action to keep access to money income is also incompatible with higher timewarp. Just as cost-over-timewarp, I will come back on it later. Keep in mind that I, and numerous others players are NOT interested by boring/repetitive tour/delivery just to grind the money needed for any probes.

Saying ... "if you don't like that, don't do that" do not make the problem disappear, it is well known that if a game is designed so one method is an efficient way to win, player will feel frustrated for it not being interesting (player are unfair yes).

All in all, you are missing the reasons that lead me to suggest the Periodic-Budget above.

- Contracts were made nearly fail-proof because they are the only source of income, (so it doesn't matter if you have another contract over-time)

- In less than a few day you can have more money than you need for any rocket making both Funds irrelevant and missing an opportunity to add a planning aspect without Converting the game into another game. (My suggestion in comparison can and will probably be done by a mods in the following months)

- Ultimately it mean grinding money, if its too easy it make Funds meaningless, if it's too boring/hard/frustrating it is counter-productive.

And so grinding/loosing money as weeks per second pass in timewarp when corrective actions take hours of real-time flight is a recipe for catastrophic failure.

I also don't see how you'd stop people from time warping through a budget. Your blue line stays flat when warping, but what does that mean? I can't time warp at all for an entire month, or else I get no budget that month? How many real-time minutes do I have to be active in a month to earn the budget? What if I warp for 29.9 days, then spend 30 minutes flying a mission to earn my budget? It just doesn't seem particularly easy nor intuitive to balance... earning from a com sat (unless it breaks), regardless of time warp is very simple in comparison.

I wouldn't.

But I can understand your incomprehension, my graph can't be perfect, also I couldn't find a way to make discontinuous lines easily.

The idea is the following :

- Say you start with a Reputation of 10, you will have at minimum 10k of funds minimum available for the day/week/month.

- If with 10k you are able to fulfill a contract that pay for a (say) 10k rocket and give you a 2k bonus, you have now 12k of funds

- Now if you timewarp forever you will STAY at 12k

- But 12k is enough for another launch, so you go for it and... You fail.

If it was a complex mission and you used so much money you don't want to grind it back you would be sweating hard hoping you have a quicksave or that you can revert to launch.

With my suggestion, the next day/week/month you would be given back 10k of funds for another try (but if you lost reputation you would loose (say) 10%)

- How does it compensate, so you do not have money too easily ? Well, for example contract could not give you upfront enough money to do the jobs.

- Lastly, if you gain reputation, the budget will increase to (say) 20k the next d/w/m and stay that way during timewarp.

You could say my goal is for the player to have a limit to how much he can spend in a single launch, but no limit in how many rocket he can launch if he did the effort of timewarping (but being encouraged to spend money in order to gain more money naturally)

All the while making sure you can build your rocket in time for the Kerbin-Duna transfer windows.

What use are funds if one can not possibly fall down to a minimum during time warp?

Building rocket following constrain that are entirely due to effect you could foresee.

Let me pose you another question : What use are funds if you can loose or win more than you'll ever need to build a rocket in a matter of seconds of timewarp ?

If you answer me "just make it so it can't win/lose more" you missed the point. Since in the case of KSP time's variation can be extreme, trying to balance it is equivalent of rolling an immense boulder up a hill during an earthquake just to watching it roll down again because the hill is a cone and the boulder a perfect sphere.

To be honest: Once you got 3 sats up around Kerbin, Minmus and Mun you can get about 180k per hour, if not more due to the 'gather science from orbit' contracts. You can't go bankrupt without a way to earn money again, unless you're the King of Idiots.

THAT'S the problem. The kind of problem you are trying to solve by adding news problems.

The whole point of FUNds is to give you a LIMIT to how big/costly your rockets can be. If you can win 180k (more than enough for 3 Mun-landing) in an instant, why have rocket cost anything ?

KSP isn't like any other build game and a x1000 Timewarp is a feature that is certainly outside any model you use as reference.

As for breakdown of sats: Sure, why not? If one breaks down, halt time warp with a notification, then one can easily fix up that sat again. In this case most of us will have repair crews in every orbit ready, I guess.

That's Micromanagement, I (and others certainly) do not want to spend 1 hours per satellite-> per fuel launch to repair satellite->grind money to pay for the resupply launch...etc .... all this, during 3/6 years of timewarp just so I can have funds available waiting for Kerbin-Jool best launch windows.

Even worse case : you might create a template in which the only way to use sats is to make each sat a manned station (sure you can also fix that, but how many thing you'll need to fix before you can play ?).

You must be aware that every single rules you add can drastically change the way the player will be able to play.

[M3tal_Warrior]

Building rocket following constrain that are entirely due to effect you could foresee.

I get that. That's my type of game.

Since in the case of KSP time's variation can be extreme, trying to balance it

I think we're about to say the same, but misunderstand the other guy completely all the time.

ATM there's one way of losing money: Launching rockets.

You can timewarp forever, it doesn't help you lose money. What you have is what you have. As far as I understood your concept, this wouldn't change.

In your concept there are two ways of earning money:

- Fulfilling contracts

- getting financial help every week if below a certain amount of money

The latter depends on reputation. The more you have, the more you will be given. Timewarp wouldn't change anything here.

You expect one main problem:

Gamers who actually make an effort raising their money aren't financially rewarded. This is easy to solve:

Calculate the reputation change within the last week. You lose reputation, you will have to pay money (unless you are down on your luck, then you're raised to the basic funds again and lose reputation for that). Gain reputation, one is granted money for that.

Example (time: T + 0 weeks):

Basic funds: 10 000 (the bare minimum, you will always get that)

Reputation: 0

Fulfilled 5 contracts, earned net 20k money and 50 reputation.

Given 1 reputation gained/lost makes for 100 funds. Being given 1 000 funds cost 1 reputation, rounded.

Time: T + 1 weeks

Funds: 30 000

Reputation: 50

Reputation change during week: + 50

New basic value: 15 000 (10 000 + 50 rep. * 100 money)

Money given: 5 000 (for making an effort and gaining 50 reputation during the week)

Reputation change: +/- 0 (you were above the basic value)

New funds: 37 500

New reputation: 50

Time warp all the week

Time: T + 2 weeks

Funds: 37 500

Reputation: 50

Reputation change during week: +/- 0

New basic value: 15 000

Money given: 0 (no effort was made)

Reputation change: +/- 0 (you were above the basic value)

New funds value: 37 500 (no change due to time warp)

New reputation value: 50 (no change dure to time warp)

Rocket launched, cost 30k funds, no reputation change

Time: T + 3 weeks

Funds: 7 500

Reputation: 50

Reputation change during week: +/- 0

New basic value: 15 000 (10 000 + 50 rep. * 100 money)

Money given: 7 500 (to raise you up to the basic value)

Reputation change: - 8 (you were below the basic value, lost 7.5 rounded to 8 due to being given money)

New funds value: 15 000

New reputation value: 42

Time warp all the week

Time: T + 4 weeks

Funds: 15 000

Reputation: 42

Reputation change during week: - 8 (for being given money last week)

New basic value: 14 200 (10 000 + 42 rep. * 100 money)

Money given: - 800 (you lost reputation, that's 100 * -8)

Reputation change: +/- 0 (you were above the basic value)

New funds value: 14 200

New reputation value: 42

Time warp all the week

Time: T + 5 weeks

Funds: 14 200

Reputation: 42

Reputation change during week: +/- 0

New basic value: 14 200 (10 000 + 42 rep. * 100 money)

Money given: +/- 0 (you made no effort and were above the basic value)

Reputation change: +/- 0 (you were above the basic value)

New funds value: 14 200

New reputation value: 42

...

This way you lose money for losing reputation, but not below the pure minimum of 10 000, are rewarded for achievements and good financial management without this being affected by time warp. Even negative reputation wouldn't make a difference other than just getting bare minimum funding. You can't go bankrupt, it's a self-stabilizing system. But let the government give you the bare minimum all the time will eat through your reputation constantly, which might pose a problem to you lateron, and more if it's used to hire Kerbals with good traits.

I play a lot of highly complex management games (Patrician 3, Hearts Of Iron, Simutrans, Anno, Immortal Cities... - most of them do employ time warp, although not with such high factors used by KSP), I wouldn't mind being able to come down to zero or even debts, although Squad has already ruled that one out.

That's Micromanagement, I (and others certainly) do not want to spend 1 hours per satellite

Incidentally there's a nice feature already implemented that could be adapted to that: Contracts. Pay another company for supplies, repairs and maintenance for your stuff like sats, bases and stations - either grind money to afford those contracts, or do all yourself - it'd be your decision. That's where periodic budget would work perfectly, even with operation of comsats and other contract based stuff. The amount of micromanagement you want to do yourself would be all up to you. And I wasn't proposing a failure in satellites every second day - but once or twice in 10 years is a pretty good (and realistic) value, I guess.

You must be aware that every single rules you add can drastically change the way the player will be able to play.

I am. I do pretty big bash scripts myself (1k lines of code and more), play - as mentioned above - quite complex games and love using my brain. That's why I am able to come up with those solutions. Give me a couple of hours and you get a code snippet in bash that calculates that.

[DasValdez]

I'm really missing the bus here... above, you said that timewarp would prevent people from getting infinite money, but below you said that you could time warp forward a week to get more money, as long as you had wasted the money you were previously given.

I get where you're going, but it makes no sense from a gameplay nor immersion standpoint... it sounds like a completely boring grind game mechanism that forces the player to timewarp to the future when they fail. I wouldn't play that game.

Good luck with your idea.

[M3tal_Warrior]

it sounds like a completely boring grind game mechanism that forces the player to timewarp to the future when they fail.

I wouldn't call that grinding - it's a failsafe for newbies. Advanced players won't be able to work with 10k bucks - most of my rockets nowadays are 200k per launch (with the ability to recover about 50k, but nevertheless). Of course we can always say bare minimum is 5k or 1k - or, if you please, 0k, having to grind money doing contracts without a failsafe. It could be implemented as difficulty setting.

My opinion is quite in favor of the concept - combining a newbie failsafe into a possible financial management system (like you suggested, earning money over time due to own actions), which could still be expanded with having to pay your staff, supply, maintenance and/or contractors. Come the day of frequent payments draining on your funds this failsafe could even be crucial to meet your obligations during time warp if you haven't planned careful enough. It is by no means something like a magic money grinding machine, more like the funding of NASA by the US Congress.

That is, if I got the OP right...

[Kegereneku]

I get that. That's my type of game.

I think we're about to say the same, but misunderstand the other guy completely all the time.

[............]

You expect one main problem:

Gamers who actually make an effort raising their money aren't financially rewarded. This is easy to solve:

Calculate the reputation change within the last week. You lose reputation, you will have to pay money (unless you are down on your luck, then you're raised to the basic funds again and lose reputation for that). Gain reputation, one is granted money for that.

[............]

...

This way you lose money for losing reputation, but not below the pure minimum of 10 000, are rewarded for achievements and good financial management without this being affected by time warp. Even negative reputation wouldn't make a difference other than just getting bare minimum funding. You can't go bankrupt, it's a self-stabilizing system. But let the government give you the bare minimum all the time will eat through your reputation constantly, which might pose a problem to you lateron, and more if it's used to hire Kerbals with good traits.

I play a lot of highly complex management games (Patrician 3, Hearts Of Iron, Simutrans, Anno, Immortal Cities... - most of them do employ time warp, although not with such high factors used by KSP), I wouldn't mind being able to come down to zero or even debts, although Squad has already ruled that one out.

I am. I do pretty big bash scripts myself (1k lines of code and more), play - as mentioned above - quite complex games and love using my brain. That's why I am able to come up with those solutions. Give me a couple of hours and you get a code snippet in bash that calculates that.

If I understood your calculation right :

- equivalent to my suggestion you increase the "basic fund" using your reputation

- While timewarping, nothing change.

- But, this is were it change : the "funds" now ultimately come from your reputation. Requiring you to compensate for the money used. (although not-proportionally)

I have to say it definitely fit my own criteria. It create a form of progression, regulate funds per launch, and above everything else : it's independent from timewarp.

But I fear it might short-circuit the anti-frustration loop I hope to :

- Allow player to accept failed contract.

- Not be forced to grind funds (reputation) back after a failure/catastrophe.

- Have spare money for personal project and infrastructure building.

But I also don't see why I couldn't be just a question of balance. From what I see you could as well decide to refill the budget for 10 launch before needing to do one launch to regain the reputation used.

You would just have to make sure you never gain reputation-per-time too or Timewarp would break the balance again.

As strategy/gestion game goes, are you familiar with "Stars Ruler" ? This game exemplify all the problem you have balancing an galactic-scale economy where production/cost can increase exponentially in an automated way ...plus timewarp. The IAs in this game are easily capable of dealing with such high numbers at any speed but human players are either straining due to weak economy or wasting huge opportunity to grow (and risk being curbstomped by their opponent because of an opportunity missed long ago).

Incidentally there's a nice feature already implemented that could be adapted to that: Contracts. Pay another company for supplies, repairs and maintenance for your stuff like sats, bases and stations - either grind money to afford those contracts, or do all yourself - it'd be your decision. That's where periodic budget would work perfectly, even with operation of comsats and other contract based stuff. The amount of micromanagement you want to do yourself would be all up to you. And I wasn't proposing a failure in satellites every second day - but once or twice in 10 years is a pretty good (and realistic) value, I guess.

I guess, the satellite failure rate could be put well above maximum timewarp, but at that point it is still a meaningful feature anymore ? We might as well start advocating for that "subcontracting" required to lessen micromanagement.... and that's why I suggest we do not talk of it anymore because that's a whole can of self-replicating worm.

I'm really missing the bus here... above, you said that timewarp would prevent people from getting infinite money, but below you said that you could time warp forward a week to get more money, as long as you had wasted the money you were previously given.

I get where you're going, but it makes no sense from a gameplay nor immersion standpoint... it sounds like a completely boring grind game mechanism that forces the player to timewarp to the future when they fail. I wouldn't play that game.

Good luck with your idea.

Maybe my graph is misleading (l33t metal-warrior seem to have understood), timewarp doesn't "prevent". You would just stay at the last "level" reached while playing.

Myself I find my solution (and metal-budget above) more immersive than being able to become rich in one day, timewarp for the next planet, then get rich again, while NEVER at any point being worried to have enough funds to afford the rocket you need. I'm also not fond of grinding.

Thank you.

[M3tal_Warrior]

If I understood your calculation right

You did. I made them to fit all your criteria in a way I see as logical and realistic.

But I fear it might short-circuit the anti-frustration loop I hope to :

- Allow player to accept failed contract.

- Not be forced to grind funds (reputation) back after a failure/catastrophe.

- Have spare money for personal project and infrastructure building.

Hard work. Allowing a player to accept a contract failing (and not revert & try again) depends on the player - some like it the hard way, some will revert even for a couple of thousand bucks. You can't fit everyones desires, that's why the suggestion was a self-defined minimum base value for funds. I reckon I tried to fit the vast majority of players - making them accept a failed contract even if it eats through your small starter budget due to compensation by the government. Failing a contract and losing reputation in later game would just eat little money, and since the reputation loss for compensation money is applied one week later you have plenty of time to fix that until it finally takes that bit of your money.

As for the grinding back - this is the nicest feature of my proposal: You don't have to. You're just rewarded if you succeed. If you're down on your luck, the government will help you. The reputation loss is never that big and most of the time easy to compensate, and even if you don't do that, you lose money only once (next payday), afterwards even a 1 point reputation gain within the week will give you the bonus money (the only way I can imagine this system to be exploited, by small reputation gains even at small stakes, but there's ways to prevent even that).

Money for personal projects: You will have plenty. Trust me on that, I'm atm building a Munar lab base in Kerbin orbit, launch costs at 2.4M, and I still could easily do another one with my current funds. And I'm not even financially rewarded for the 1000 reputation or so. Late game players don't have a funds problem, and with that system even less.

But I also don't see why I couldn't be just a question of balance.

From what I see you could as well decide to refill the budget for 10 launch before needing to do one launch to regain the reputation used.

Right, that was intended. Late game players won't need to refill their budget, as they'll always have enough funds, newbies would do that even without noticing - a successful contract makes up for about 10 failures.

You would just have to make sure you never gain reputation-per-time too or Timewarp would break the balance again.

Not really. One can simply add an equation that rules out reputation per time, by just calculating the reputation gain from those running contracts. Since ATM there is no such thing, I didn't add that. But like I said, it's a piece of cake.

are you familiar with "Stars Ruler" ?

No, I'm not. But I can imagine how it works. Patrician 3 is - even without you using the timewarp - pretty soon the same. Once you produce enough bricks and wood to eat half your transportation capacity (and at later points you have to do that), are supposed to supply 20 cities on the map with 20 types of stuff, half the cities growing steadily, increasing production and need for supply and have to pay your employees (about 2500 atm) and taxes once a week (in my current game this eats ~200k gold, growing by 20k-40k per week, with a ton of beer being worth about 40 straight) - I'm used to one mistake throwing back production/progress of one or all cities for months. Lübeck (my main bricks production site) was besieged in early March, killing all my production and employees (about 500 + 1500 family members - half the population) - I'm in mid July, and still not yet back at 100% production capacity, despite gigantic efforts to shove (SHOVE, not lure, because it's way more effective) people into the city. Playing at lowest speed (which is necessary at this point in game) one day is equal to about 30 RL minutes, IIRC.

So yes, I'm quite used to calculate production rates, progress and need for supplies for months in advance; my calculator is always located next to my keyboard. KSP is easy stuff, even with the proposed changes. I overproduce in every game, if possible.

[subcontracting] I suggest we do not talk of it anymore

yepp, entirely different can of worms.

Edith says: I guess I should do a blog post some time soon about this subject. It adds perfectly to my other suggestions.

Edited August 5, 2014 by M3tal_Warrior

[Kegereneku]

To tell the truth I was nitpicking, the only difference between your suggestion and mine is the use of reputation for each refill (in a way that can be balanced to a negligible loss) which indeed solve the mentioned issue.

But I got to say my hope is to reach a balance where the "p-budget" count for minimum 50% of your income. With contract not giving more than 1.5time your initial invest. An incentive to reduce cost and build a reusable infrastructure.

Middle/Late game is where I would expect the most need for those refill, it's when you'll be launching way bigger rocket, with more complicated part to assemble things in orbit. Basically When you launch the most rocket without nice contracts you can squeeze in to finance them.

No, I'm not. But I can imagine how it works.

With all respect. I doubt it. I would invite you to watch videos but they never show enough.

To give you an idea :

You start on a lone planet that can barely produce one ship per minute -> You can generate galaxy up to 1000 stars with 1-5 planets around each.

Your technology allow to increase production per 100 (you can customize the value)

Ship can have any scale you want, going from any number between 0 and whatever is the limit (one guy made a GALAXY-SIZED SHIP)

Late game you are expected to fight with fleets of thousand gigantic ships backed by MOVING PLANETS (That's no Moon, no silly Death Star either)

The game's selling point is the automation with built in AI to manage automatically each system and macro to ask several solar systems to build you a fleet of fleet of fleet.

All this to say that variation between start and endgame can vary above the million (plus timewarp 0.5 to 4 from memory)

Edith says: I guess I should do a blog post some time soon about this subject. It adds perfectly to my other suggestions.

I did checked your blog post, a bit too complex for a game that is already hard for new player. I always try to keep that in mind since I started myself with the Orbiter Space simulator.

[M3tal_Warrior]

But I got to say my hope is to reach a balance where the "p-budget" count for minimum 50% of your income.

Based on where I am atm and with those suggestions applied 1 additional reputation point per week would reward me with 55k per week. If you think this is too little, multiply the reputation to money and money to reputation exchange rates by 10, or apply a procedual multiplier tied to your reputation (like the square/cubic root of your current reputation be your multiplier on the given values). You'll drown in money.

Middle/Late game is where I would expect the most need for those refill, it's when you'll be launching way bigger rocket, with more complicated part to assemble things in orbit. Basically When you launch the most rocket without nice contracts you can squeeze in to finance them.

That's what I do all the time atm. My periodic budget are two research satellites (the third to Minmus is on its way) around Kerbin and Mun, which I switch to, do a reading and transmit it when the 'get science from orbit around' contract is available again. And like I said, I'm doing a 2.4M Munar Lab Base with orbital assembly, and could easily do another one, even if I'd waste all my Kerbiane 40 A-1L/R-4L rockets.

With all respect. I doubt it.

Watched one half hour video, showed pretty much everything. Do watch one of the

(NuclearBadger8 is a total n00b, the time he finishes his 9th vid he's still trader or so, most of the better players have own productions then and are running for elderman, having won the last mayor elections being patrician in their home town) - there is no automation that you don't create and manage. Or go about

(take a look at the time frames). I'm pretty sure you'll be amazed how complicated games can get - no automatic research and build/upgrade all buildings with only 3 resources at hand. Most people cry about my thoughts on the KSP research system - now that's damn easy compared to HOI, and even there the research is the least complicated part.

So yes, I think I got the point - you're telling a German Economy Simulation Gamer something about complexity. But hey, I might give that game a shot - I don't think I will need a lot of time to work it out.

I did checked your blog post, a bit too complex for a game that is already hard for new player.

R&D post? It's easy. The only reason you find that complicated is because I describe the internal working part - what newbies (and most other players) would see is a couple of buttons in a list with the financial cost, while other buttons are grayed out for you don't have enough knowledge to research them yet. Tell me this is complicated.

[Kegereneku]

Careful, we shouldn't be thinking in money-over-time, more like budget-per-launch (which is what you really meant I think).

Funds were introduced to challenge us in our choice of design and contract, not as a indicator of progression or prestige.

The challenge of building/launching rocket must aim to remain balanced, which mean not having "too much money to worry" (which happen often as of 0.24-2 for fail-safe reason).

However semi-aesthetic/functional project like your 2.4M Munar-base is a definite trait of KSP which wouldn't be as popular if there was only one way worth playing.

Since grinding is something to avoid in game-design, there had to be "easy way to fund our project" without short-circuiting the challenge of designing and launching.

That's what this p-budget suggestion is all about. (plus adding a Planing aspect)

So about your calculation, it is certain that we would have to balance all reward (down) and penalty (way up) to make it exceptional to be above budget, which itself can't rise indefinitely.

/!\ Thinking about it... Do you know how is calculated reputation point when recovering Kerbal ? I think that launching/recovering Kerbal in loop could be the exploit I feared to increase reputation/p-budget easily.

(of course it is be reasonable that being able to launch to orbit and retrieve a few hitchhiker worth of Kerbal give you big reputation buck)

About our little game discussion, there's a misunderstanding.

A game like Star Ruler isn't particularly complex, but I'm giving this as an example of the difficulty related to time/scale variation because the variation of both make it possible to be 3 magnitudes above or below what you were aiming for (they had to make AI opponents dumber to make it playable. Not less efficient, dumb).

That's why I think we have to avoid (for KSP) income/cost based on a variable that can vary continuously between 1 and 100 000.

R&D post? It's easy. The only reason you find that complicated is because I describe the internal working part - what newbies (and most other players) would see is a couple of buttons in a list with the financial cost, while other buttons are grayed out for you don't have enough knowledge to research them yet. Tell me this is complicated.

It's very important to apply Occam's Razor. If I didn't insisted on simplicity because of timewarp, we would be loosing our mind trying to balance a "not as easy as we though" income/cost equation that work at any level time acceleration, the result would be called KSP-Tycoon Only-one-way-of-playing edition.

If you want to know, IMO you are outside the scope of game-design when you started talking of "patent", "specialized development team". You could trim most of it to work on what really matter, but suggestion about the Tech-Tree is a whole other subject.

[M3tal_Warrior]

Careful, we shouldn't be thinking in money-over-time, more like budget-per-launch (which is what you really meant I think).

I was going for 'money per reputation' - wherever that comes from is entirely up to the player.

Funds were introduced to challenge us in our choice of design and contract, not as a indicator of progression or prestige.

That's what funds are in every game, but it all boils down to progress and prestige lateron. I have not played a single game in my whole life (and trust me, I've played quite a lot) where money didn't tick up to infinity at a certain point (if you knew your way around, that is).

So about your calculation, it is certain that we would have to balance all reward (down) and penalty (way up) to make it exceptional to be above budget, which itself can't rise indefinitely.

I see what you did there. It won't work, reason being pro players - we build rockets worth a million bucks, in the future possibly even more. If one can't really go above budget, you tie all people down. This is most stupid.

Do you know how is calculated reputation point when recovering Kerbal ?

Not exactly, but for all I've seen (did 10 rescue contracts until now) reputation for a safe landing diminishes like science gathered from a rocket. Last time I checked I got 0.3 reputation for one Kerbal landed safe in a pod (with small circular fuel tank and the smallest Rocktomax engine).

A game like Star Ruler isn't particularly complex, but I'm giving this as an example of the difficulty related to time/scale variation...

Played it for 3 hours now without a peek into forum or wiki - it's easy. Only the AI is stupid as f*ck, which makes concerted attacks with multiple ships in one fleet a real pain in the ass (up to impossible). Yes, I do want AI to do stupid tasks (like refueling and replenishing), but not to override my commands all the time. If I say attack, I really want my ships to attack, and not fly back to a planet for a goddamn vacation.

Funny though: Exponential growth is the key here, with differing costs. Not time warp. Humans can hardly extrapolate exponential growth, even if they work with it all the time (like me - microbes work the same, and still one is quite astonished how fast the buggers work up to gram or even kilogram scale from a tiny smear on the wall of the flask). It gets worse if the diminishing factors aren't clear and stable (which is always the case with automation and multiple construction sites/scales in Star Ruler). This is why you really suck in the beginning, whether AI sucks in the end (when your resources are way to plentiful for you to exceed them). This has nothing to do with time warp, which uses a predefined, never fluctuating compression of time, much like speed settings in Star Craft or other games. It all boils down to linear thinking, and that's where we're good at. The moment I say you'd be given 2 bucks a day in KSP you already know (or at least have a good idea) how much you will have in 10 months. It doesn't matter if those 10 months last forever or a second with time warp - you have a static set and linear growth, stuff you deal with a hundred times a day, even in situations where you don't think about it (like driving your car).

That's why I think we have to avoid (for KSP) income/cost based on a variable that can vary continuously between 1 and 100 000.

It's very important to apply Occam's Razor.

We're not discussing scientific hypothesis here - Ockhams Razor doesn't apply in this context.

If you want to know, IMO you are outside the scope of game-design when you started talking of "patent", "specialized development team".

Simulating that (implied simulation) isn't out of reach for game design. You start to mix up my concepts with the implied real world background, which I just mentioned for the ones who don't see the logic. But that's a discussion which should take place in the blog and not here, since different topic.

[metl]

I rather like the current economic model. it's simple, easy to understand and works just like real life. Work, get paid. Don't work, don't get paid. Yes, gaining funds is super easy right now, for experienced players and players that revert upon every failure. By disabling reverts and quicksaves, things become considerably more intense, even with the currently weak penalties. Further balancing may reveal a deeper root of flaws, but until then I really don't see the need for a complete rework of the budget system.

[Kegereneku]

I see what you did there. It won't work, reason being pro players - we build rockets worth a million bucks, in the future possibly even more. If one can't really go above budget, you tie all people down. This is most stupid.

I think you are exaggerating the difference "pro player" would (or should) make.

For starter, "hardcore" player who reach millions-buck rocket should know they aren't playing "Career" anymore, but a costly Sandbox. And those who believe KSP should become a new "Simcity" economy/colonization/resources management game, have to admit it would require a Total Conversion.

Even if the game has no proper "ending" (aside completing the Tech-tree) it doesn't mean the Devs have to keep the budget-per-reputation rising indefinitely. Thus it stay a simpler matter of balancing reputation gain and the maximum budget available to a reasonable level.

Reasonable like (say) "being able to launch one 300k rocket per week for an exceptional super project". I respect those who want to build casually one 10M rocket per week but if they want Career-mode to pretend it is economically sound because "it's just tycoon skills", no thank, I'll take a big cup of Developers-choices for a game that stay both challenging and credible for most players.

Now... I would like to remind that the goal of the Periodic Budget suggestion isn't to limit the players. Quite the contrary.

/!\ BEWARE ! There was a big misunderstanding there.

If you WANT to build a 1000tons monster to visit every planet in one go, you would be able to. (Edit : I mean through gradual Orbital assembly) It should even be less grindy and boring. It will just ask to waste timewarp time, not your precious IRL time.(Edit : I mean that you'd spend more time building than grinding the money to build, but this is still not "free" since you need Reputation and Parts.)

If you like designing big -last chance for humanity- mission rather than sending probes, Devs planned that you'll be able to trade your reputation for funds.

Lastly,(Edit : just rambling not necessarily linked to the p-budget suggestion) end-game, after you've completed everything that mattered (science, reputation, contract) in Career-mode, devs or mods can always make sure plenty of generous contracts appear with a description like "Our civilization entered a golden age and we can afford to pay you 1 quadrillion FUNds to launch costly things into orbit".

As stat tracking goes, (Edit : still rambling)you could have a special "set of contract" that appear if at low-tech-level you reach (say) 1 millions funds.

What is important is that the p-budget would allow a more gradual (and failsafe) progression even if it's more challenging.

I'll stop here, the p-budget is like a simple framework that allow as much possibility as possible.

Stars Ruler

"Game experience may differ during online play"

Otherwise you saw the problem of trying to build, refuel, and use complex tactics (game-style) while dealing with vast numbers of custom-made ships. You are either forced to play in a specific way, against simple AI, and it's not "challenging" if your force or the enemies force rarely match.

You may want to try higher (old) AI difficulty (It's been a while since I've played it so they might have redone them entirely again).

The moment I say you'd be given 2 bucks a day in KSP you already know (or at least have a good idea) how much you will have in 10 months.

Sure, but large scale/time variation force you to shape a game so it never have a succession of change that can make you loose everything in an instant or instantaneously rich, which in turn force a certain game-style over the player. Since rocket-science if the epitome of high-cost looong-return mission, you either turn rocket-science into something it's not (a fruit market) or you avoid money-per-time altogether.

We're not discussing scientific hypothesis here - Ockhams Razor doesn't apply in this context.

[...]

Simulating that (implied simulation) isn't out of reach for game design. You start to mix up my concepts with the implied real world background, which I just mentioned for the ones who don't see the logic. But that's a discussion which should take place in the blog and not here, since different topic.

Occam's razor is useful everywhere. In engineering (or game-design) you want to create something as simple as possible to minimize failure and unexpected consequences. It's what ward of Murphy's law : if "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong" you might as well have as few feature as needed.

You do not need to simulate every single aspect of reality in a game if it doesn't bring anything meaningful to the gameplay (not even immersion). Especially by adding aspect that are already over-simplification of what they represent. (the (Edit : REAL patent system is IMHO) full of crack and absurdity, and things like "specialized development team" don't take account for technological breakthrough brought by advance outside the specialization)

Anyway, you are right, we shouldn't keep talking of that here.

I rather like the current economic model. it's simple, easy to understand and works just like real life. Work, get paid. Don't work, don't get paid. Yes, gaining funds is super easy right now, for experienced players and players that revert upon every failure. By disabling reverts and quicksaves, things become considerably more intense, even with the currently weak penalties. Further balancing may reveal a deeper root of flaws, but until then I really don't see the need for a complete rework of the budget system.

My suggestion is IMO actually simpler than contract (not saying it make it superior in any way), in theory if one wanted to he could play exclusively with p-budget (even though contract is an very interesting source of reputation).

Contract by themselves were a necessary idea, but them being the only source of funds seriously limit the game possibility IMHO.

Really, it's like a complement.

- Contract for instantaneous high-risk high-reward

- p-budget for lower but safer income (that you still worked to merit)

Edited August 10, 2014 by Kegereneku
correcting Big missunderstanding

[M3tal_Warrior]

For starter, "hardcore" player who reach millions-buck rocket should know they aren't playing "Career" anymore, but a costly Sandbox.

Nope, I still play career - I'm just good at it. As well as I play Tycoon Games and am good at it. Am I playing a sandbox with funny numbers on top when being at 250k gold (rising) in Patrician 3? No, I'm just good at calculations, and I like to see my efforts working out. That's the whole point; no one plays career to be tied down all the time but to be challenged to break those chains of early money shortages. Not being able to rise above those obstacles is wasting time in a game which has no end but the one you set for yourself.

If you WANT to build a 1000tons monster to visit every planet in one go, you would be able to. It should even be less grindy and boring. It will just ask to waste timewarp time, not your precious IRL time.

That is the EXACT opposite of what your premise was at start. It totally screws everything I planned to fit your demands replacing it by

if [ "$TIME_DAY" = "00:00:00" ]
then FUNDS=´"$FUNDS + $DAILY_CHANGE" | bc´
fi

I don't go into this further, because what came after that was totally dumping 'success rewards', 'newbie failsafe', 'no time warp cheating' and 'challenging for players'. Now we're back to warping for infinite money. Scotty, beam me up.

You may want to try higher (old) AI difficulty (It's been a while since I've played it so they might have redone them entirely again).

You're not getting that, right? The AI will always be better, because it has no response time. Try CS:S with ultra bots. They headshot you the moment their gun has no obstacle between it and you, that leaves less than 50 ms time for you to react to the bot running around the corner. It still has nothing to do with time warp. The issue is as I explained. Exponential growth suggestion error rate in humans. Time warp still is linear. If you don't know the difference, use Wiki.

In engineering (or game-design) you want to create something as simple as possible to minimize failure and unexpected consequences.

Right, that's why we still use stones for long range war declarations, live in caves and kill wild beasts with clubs because they can't go blunt like spears can, which in turn is more prone to failure and thus to be avoided, as your interpretation of Ockhams razor determines. See Cpt. Picard above for further comments on your thinking.

By the way: I'm still not responsible for what you read, only for what I write. This applies to everything written by me, be it here or in the blog, where I still neither suggested patents nor specialized research teams. Whatever you smoke or take: Quit it!

I'm outa here, you change your premises as you change your clothes...

[autumnalequinox]

i just found this thread and was nearly about to start my own about the same thing. i haven't had time to read the whole thing, but I was about to start developing my own mod for an annual budget based on reputation score, which also degrades your reputation each year to represent the public's interest waning without exciting missions.

so far I have been doing it manually, by editing my save file. every year I pay my agency 10K for every 100 reputation, while also reducing my reputation after payment by 10%. that's it. it was just a small stipend, but it has been enough in my career game to keep my agency afloat even with the large STS network and com sats I tend to put up to support the program.

[M3tal_Warrior]

i haven't had time to read the whole thing, but I was about to start developing my own mod for an annual budget based on reputation score, which also degrades your reputation each year to represent the public's interest waning without exciting missions.

Give the thread a shot - maybe you'll find some helpful ideas for your mod. And when you're finished, I might install it as the second mod in my atm almost vanilla game.

[Kegereneku]

That is the EXACT opposite of what your premise was at start. It totally screws everything I planned to fit your demands replacing it by

if [ "$TIME_DAY" = "00:00:00" ]
then FUNDS=´"$FUNDS + $DAILY_CHANGE" | bc´
fi

I don't go into this further, because what came after that was totally dumping 'success rewards', 'newbie failsafe', 'no time warp cheating' and 'challenging for players'. Now we're back to warping for infinite money. Scotty, beam me up.

/!\ Woah ! Sorry, big misunderstanding there.

I was talking about ORBITAL construction of a 1000tons ship, not a Single-launch-to-everywhere.

Assembling an giant orbital-ship using a periodic budget is possible within the p-budget. It still ask you to find the reputation to get higher budget (and for refill with your reputation-cost).

And what I mean by wasting Timewarp rather than your IRL time to do that, is that you would spend more time building your project rather than grinding to funds those project.

And it's still isn't "free money" since you need reputation to get a good p-budget. And science-point for parts.

As for my later babbling about possibility, I'm talking either of mods, of after-end-game addition that would only influence the global balance if you did significant effort toward an clear goal, or reached a point where you are getting bored anyway.

Doest it clear it out ?

By the way: I'm still not responsible for what you read, only for what I write. This applies to everything written by me, be it here or in the blog, where I still neither suggested patents nor specialized research teams. Whatever you smoke or take: Quit it!

I'm outa here, you change your premises as you change your clothes...

Err, whut ? Let's clear thing out.

I wasn't insulting you. The REAL patent system is full of crack and absurdity (yes, I truly think that), and I was talking of the concept of "specialized dev team" which IMHO I saw as "not essential" over your idea.

However for my "call to simplification" I still insist that overdoing thing can lead to buggy system, but that's just an opinion. I did this suggestion even after being told numerous time it was/is flawed by people who though I wanted "infinite-money-per-time".

i just found this thread and was nearly about to start my own about the same thing. i haven't had time to read the whole thing, but I was about to start developing my own mod for an annual budget based on reputation score, which also degrades your reputation each year to represent the public's interest waning without exciting missions.

Oh great, hope it work.

Let me suggest you to try the mix of what I suggested and M3t3l_warrior addition.

I think I can summarize it this way : Each <period of time> you can be given a "budget refill" up to a sum based on your reputation. But the refill cost reputation (albeit far less). I was thinking of making the refill automatic originally but if it cost reputation (m3t4l_warrior addition) I think you'll want a button to ask/authorize it.

Ideally you would balance the contract, but the system should be able to work with what we have (reputation might be hazardous though)

Edited August 10, 2014 by Kegereneku
adding "Doest it clear it out ?"

[EzinX]

Ok, here's the method of I thought of independently. Your space program has a budget. You get more money every <time interval>, and any unspent funds at the end of a certain <time interval> are returned to the general fund (aka you lose them).

This is more or less how it actually works.

Now, you can take contracts. If you succeed in a contract, you get 2 benefits - "slush" funds that go in a separate pool that can be used whenever you want, and a budget increase.

Whenever you run out of money, you can just timewarp til the next budget allocation. Any unspent funds are lost.

What this system does is it limits how big of a rocket you can launch until you boost your reputation. Also, the timewarping for more money may in some cases kill kerbals on life support or run nuclear reactors out of fuel, etc. (assuming you are running the relevant mods, since the stock game models neither)

It seems fairly simple. So what's the difference between this very basic and obvious idea, one similar to how it actually works in real life, and the walls of text in this thread?

[Wanderfound]

Keep in mind that not everyone uses timewarp heavily; I'll warp forwards an hour or so to get to a manoeuvre node, but I never warp days at a time. My Kerbals would get bored sitting around for all that time, and I like having a bunch of missions running in parallel. If I want to launch a mission to Duna and can't be bothered waiting for an optimum transfer window, I just stick more fuel on it.

[Kegereneku]

It seems fairly simple. So what's the difference between this very basic and obvious idea, one similar to how it actually works in real life, and the walls of text in this thread?

Obvious, obvious... aren't you a little conceited mister ?

You are just using a 2nd pool, the basic idea is not really different from my p-budget suggestion (just phrased in a pretentious way), the "slush" funds distinction is just meant to allow you to not use the "over-budget" when there's periodic-budget available.

In term of gameplay it mean you could save money indefinitely each <period>, but unfortunately this simplify the "recovery exploit" you would know about had you read "wall of text". You might solves this by having recovery return as normal-funds, but then you wouldn't encourage player to recover.

Then, you also have to tell us if contract-advance-money and failure penalty count in the normal or "slush" pool. This is important because it will influence the way anybody play.

Right now I'm doing your job you lazy boy.

Last, as to whether or not it's more like real-life than my idea, I do not think so.

Be it National agency or Private sector receiving budget from investor, both usually try to spend as much of their budget as possible (even if unnecessary) so as to justify asking the same next time.

A successful business isn't given "free money" unless it can justify it as investments (using good result and reputation).

Your turn now to write a "wall of text" justifying why your suggestion would be balanced and failsafe, if it's that good I invite you to create a new thread.

Keep in mind that not everyone uses timewarp heavily; I'll warp forwards an hour or so to get to a manoeuvre node, but I never warp days at a time. My Kerbals would get bored sitting around for all that time, and I like having a bunch of missions running in parallel. If I want to launch a mission to Duna and can't be bothered waiting for an optimum transfer window, I just stick more fuel on it.

Yes, this came to my attention which is why I expect a feature to automatically timewarp to the next "payday".

Regular Timewarp might sound like wasted time, but one of the goals is to avoid "grinding". Exchanging a 2hour mission to get (or regain) funds by a 5-10 seconds Timewarp.

Several player are already doing that by using recurrent Contract to gain free money.

Edited August 11, 2014 by Kegereneku
minor correction

[EzinX]

Ok, maybe I came off a little arrogant. To be honest, I'm quite confused as the methods described here seem to be very very complex.

Let me restate. You represent a large Kerbal space agency, KASA. You receive government funding in the form of a budget per <time interval>. Realistically, this would be once a year, but time warping a whole year is slow in KSP so it might be shorter.

You cannot spend any money in excess of your budget. Any "unspent" money at the end of each year cannot be spent by you. To make this realistic, we can assume that any dollars you don't spend on rockets were spent by KASA on non-rocket launch projects that will not help you as a player. (maybe they spent it all on community outreach programs and science fairs for impractical technology, etc)

If you do a mission for someone else, sometimes mission rewards include "favors" from other government agencies or legislators that translate into "slush money" that is kept in a separate account and will be automatically spent whenever you want to launch that costs more than your available funds.

Recovered resources from other places would count as slush money. Recovered rocket parts would increase your budget for that fiscal year only.

For this to work as a game model, we need a third variable. Just like how science alone encouraged players to throw away ludicrious contraptions for the slightest bit of science (I've launched rockets just to land 50 kilometers from the KSA grounds)

Time used has to be penalized in some way. Perhaps an asteroid will impact Kerbin in X years and wipe out all life unless you beat the tech tree and launch a mission to deflect it.