[WIP] Launch Funds - Fixed Per-Launch Budget

[Mr Shifty]

At the moment this is mostly just a conceptual idea. I've built enough code to know it's possible, but nothing close to ready for sharing. It strikes me that the contracts have created a few problems with the flow of career mode:

• Science rewards have made it possible to mostly ignore science in order to fill out the tech tree. This wouldn't necessarily be bad, as it permits more playstyles, but because you must do some contracts in order to secure funds, it privileges a career where science gathering is deprecated.
  
• Having to pay for each launch out of a stockpile means that players are penalized for trial-and-error, or for spreading a mission out into several launches. This restricts player choice for no good reason.
  
• Likewise, paying for part recovery deprecates several previously viable (and perfectly 'realistic') design strategies, particularly expendable boosters.
  

There was a brief discussion a couple weeks ago on the BTSM forum for ways to mitigate these weaknesses in the contract career mode flow. One excellent idea was that instead of players having a stockpile of funds that is depleted in order to buy rockets, they get a per-launch budget. (We considered a per-time-period budget, but this would be easily made useless by time-warp.) I'm throwing this idea out to see if there's enough interest for me to devote any of my quite limited time to development. I envision a mod with the following features:

1. No science rewards for contracts - this is trivial to accomplish. I could release a stand-alone dll that would implement this now.
   
2. Funds displayed on the funds widget will be a budget amount, not a stockpile amount. Building and launching rockets will not deplete the amount, but a rocket that costs more than the budget amount cannot be launched. (I've implemented a rough version of this. It works, but it's slightly buggy still.)
   
3. The fund budget can be increased by increasing reputation and by earning science. (This mechanism is still a bit hazy and will be the most difficult to balance.)
   
4. Part recovery will not earn extra funds. (I've got this implemented and working, but it's buggy and confusing in how it's presented to the user.)
   
5. There will be no reputation reward for recovering kerbals safely, but a large penalty for killing one. This is to encourage the use of non-crewed vessels when possible, and to make science acquisition a bit more difficult.
   

Let me know what you think.

[Rockstar04]

Why would you remove part recovery? I understand you would want to allow the use of cheap disposable boosters, but you are then killing the possibility of more complex recoverable boosters or SSTOs.

[cpottinger]

I like the ideas you presented.

1. No science rewards for contracts - this is trivial to accomplish. I could release a stand-alone dll that would implement this now.
   This makes perfect sense in the context of the full mod. However it is not something I would be interested in as a standalone implementation.
   I admit, I haven't gotten far in the my 0.24.2 campaign (just at the 90-funds teir), but are there really any significant science gains from fulfilling contracts? I haven't seen more that a few science points given for any contract I fulfilled. Is it really worth eliminating?
   
2. Funds displayed on the funds widget will be a budget amount, not a stockpile amount. Building and launching rockets will not deplete the amount, but a rocket that costs more than the budget amount cannot be launched. (I've implemented a rough version of this. It works, but it's slightly buggy still.)
   This also sound good.
   
3. The fund budget can be increased by increasing reputation and by earning science. (This mechanism is still a bit hazy and will be the most difficult to balance.)
   Still sounding good.
   
4. Part recovery will not earn extra funds. (I've got this implemented and working, but it's buggy and confusing in how it's presented to the user.)
   Hmm. I kind of agree with Rockstar04 here. Why remove the game's rewarding people for conservation and reusing?
   Instead, could this be handled by reducing the funds payed for recovering parts? Or restricting the rewards to only certain part types? Or by rewarding the player with reputation rather than funds?
   I just don't like the idea that making recoverable parts counts for nothing.
   
5. There will be no reputation reward for recovering kerbals safely, but a large penalty for killing one. This is to encourage the use of non-crewed vessels when possible, and to make science acquisition a bit more difficult.
   I disagree with this. It smacks of trying to make the user play the way you want them to and not they the way they want.
   If one wants to use only manned craft in one's space program, then one should not be penalized for doing so (beyond the current inherent penalties: cost of parts and weight of ships). Not everyone wants to use unmanned craft - I can even see someone thinking it is boring ("Where's the cute green guy?").
   

Just my 0.02 funds worth.

[SkyHook]

I like number three but disagree with the rest.

1. Not earning contracts for certain contracts would imply that there is no scientific value in exploring new bodies or testing parts in different conditions. This is not true.

2. Not bad, I don't really have a problem with it other than it being easy to exploit. As long as I launch rockets under budget, I could launch an unlimited number of them (from what I understand).

3. I like . The problem of budgets is their association with time, however. Any feature that depends on time could be exploited by mashing the time warp button.

4. Disagree vehemently. This is counter intuitive for me, considering that the main hurdle of rocketry is that you have to scrap the entire rocket every single time. I'm not understanding why you would want to discourage efficiency and reusability.

5. It limits options, with no reward. Limitations without reward aren't fun IMO.

Edited September 16, 2014 by SkyHook