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[0.90] Sane Strategies 0.42.1 - Dec 18

Crzyrndm

By Crzyrndm
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Crzyrndm

Crzyrndm

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All my minor mods are going into a single thread post-1.0 release. Please check my signature for the new thread (this one may be obsolete and not return)

Stock strategies do not appear to have any sensible system behind their costs or modifiers. This creates illogical situations such as funds "value" being much greater than their true worth compared to science and reputation, and penalties exceeding bonuses under all but the most specific situations. Sane Strategies uses a simple logical framework to establish balance between the currency conversion strategies, and significantly changes the cost/reward balance across all stock strategies.

6 alternative "conversion" strategies are also included that exchange collection efficiency between currencies (instead of exchanging the currencies themselves). For example, you might get a 15% bonus on all funds earned from a mission, but your science returns are reduced by 20%. This can give some very different results than the stock style of strategies does so make sure you understand the difference and plan accordingly.

Feedback is an essential part of development and all opinions are welcome.

Current values can be viewed here (stock and modified values on seperate tabs)

DzJ2Oxg.jpg

Downloads

Kerbal Stuff - Curse

License: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Changelog:


0.42.1
* Fixed versioning file

0.42
* Resolved memory leak

0.4 release
* An increase in the "value" of funds relative to the other currencies used to calculate conversion rates.
* 6 new strategies that are similar to the originals but with noticeably different gameplay impact. Instead of trading one currency directly for another, you trade on collection efficiency. Increasing science collection efficiency at the cost of funds means the science you bring back is worth more, but funds rewards are reduced (bring back no science and you'll still get penalised, but there will be no reward. Plan carefully).
* A review of startup capital required for each strategy to be more inline with the benefits associated with each option
* Bundling of Mini-AVC and AVC support

0.4 experimental (don't update or delete the *_alt.cfg file if you're only looking for balance)
Added 9 alternative contracts for feedback. Delete the *_alt.cfg file if you don't want to deal with them 
- 6 currency exchange alternatives (instead of exchanging one currency for another, reduced gains in one is rewarded with increased gains in another, eg. -5% funds income, +5% Science income) 
- Flight data recorder strategy - %Increase in launch costs, Flat income bonus on vessel recovery. The intention will be to have companies offer you cash in exchange for launching a vessel with a data recorder or something of the like. This strategy is very WIP and is only included for feedback. Using it will likely result in you recieving a large amount of money for doing nothing
- AVC version checking support and miniAVC bundled

0.3
- Added total currency exchange display to currently selected strategy

0.2
- Changed Currency exchange model to increase value of low level commitment. Efficiency now decreases with increasing commitment (increasing commitment will still always result in increased output)
- Increased buy in factor for Appreciation Campaign and Outsourced Research Strategies
- Removed slider from Recovery Transponders strategy, effect is now constant +5% launch costs with a constant 100% recovery factor.

Github Source

This mod includes version checking using MiniAVC. If you opt-in, it will use the internet to check whether there is a new version available. Data is only read from the internet and no personal information is sent. For a more comprehensive version checking experience, please download the KSP-AVC Plugin.

Edited by Crzyrndm
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Crzyrndm

Crzyrndm

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I wouldn't follow too closely just yet, balancing requires a bit of time to settle down (especially when there is no particular example to work off: Tried using the contracts to establish the funds:science:rep ratio, but it just increased confusion due to wild variations...).

On the subject of expansion, have you thought about tiered (probably the wrong word here. Strategies only only available at certain levels of reputation), and long term reward strategies (high upfront cost with bonus income to the same currency. Maybe even the inverse if the logic of the time constraints can be worked out: Instant currency with long term penalties, would require a minimum active time/number of launches/something of the like).

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tater

tater

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The whole career game issue has made me want to start modding, lol. Do the strategies only interact with funds/rep/science, or could they also constrain or drive specific contracts, or types of contracts?

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Crzyrndm

Crzyrndm

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Do the strategies only interact with funds/rep/science, or could they also constrain or drive specific contracts, or types of contracts?

Currently they seem quite restricted, however the level of exploration of what can be achieved is so far limited to the 8 stock examples plus a few extra little bits and pieces so it is rather difficult to tell how expandable the system may be.

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Olterin

Olterin

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I looked at the numbers really quickly, in particular, only the outsourced R&D bit - it still appears to be rather broken. If you consider that 100% of funds being converted at a rate of 1/3 of what stock does is still well over 200 per contract for some of the more lucrative ones ... well. That doesn't bode well. I've been doing some thinking, and perhaps due to getting more funds converted for each increase in level of commitment, the conversion ratio should go down instead of up to make the overall progression slower and not end up being ridiculous. (The idea being that the strategy should show payoffs at low commitment levels, but the payoffs don't soar into high heaven when you commit 100%).

I'll look into the numbers some more over the weekend and maybe come back with more feedback.

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Crzyrndm

Crzyrndm

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Will download, Found out you can easaly get upwards of 2000 science on the mid game by going to around 30% on the funds>science and 50% on rep>science and accepting one of the explore x contracts. which reward insane amounts of funds and rep.

Point of discussion related to that: Should strategies impact on the cash advance you get on contracts at all? Being able to accept a large number of contracts and use that to generate science/rep doesn't seem like the most sensible inclusion (especially with most contracts having enourmous completion times so the likelyhood of failure is very low).

I looked at the numbers really quickly, in particular, only the outsourced R&D bit - it still appears to be rather broken. If you consider that 100% of funds being converted at a rate of 1/3 of what stock does is still well over 200 per contract for some of the more lucrative ones ... well. That doesn't bode well. I've been doing some thinking, and perhaps due to getting more funds converted for each increase in level of commitment, the conversion ratio should go down instead of up to make the overall progression slower and not end up being ridiculous. (The idea being that the strategy should show payoffs at low commitment levels, but the payoffs don't soar into high heaven when you commit 100%).

I'll look into the numbers some more over the weekend and maybe come back with more feedback.

Noted. I think the solution there is going to be spiking the buyin cost significantly (200k for full commitment really is too low now I think about it) plus a few other minor changes (such as the possible removal of cashing in on the advance).

The idea of inverting the conversion ratio is certainly an interesting one and does make sense somewhat (basic market demand/supply), however it may be difficult to make that intuitive. Perhaps a constant rate is a better idea.

EDIT

sX47Xyn.png

A demonstration of how the output efficiency changes with each of the proposed/utilised conversion styles. Thoughts?

Now that I'm looking at the right information (Looking only at conversion factors doesn't really give a very good picture in hindsight) a negative slope of about 30-40% strikes me as very attractive. The tradeoff between gains and efficiency means it isn't always better to increase your commitment (@30% falloff: 0->10% = +9.7% income, 45->55% = +7%, 90->100% = +4.3%)

Edited by Crzyrndm
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Starman4308

Starman4308

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My $0.02 is to have diminishing returns based on how long the strategy's gone on, particularly for the really broken ones like the funds -> science outsourcing strategy. The career mode is seriously trivial at the current rate of funds/science exchange: on my current career (hooray for 0.25 bugs!), I've flown one orbital mission to clear the starter contracts, and a second orbital mission to rescue a Kerbal and gather science data from orbit. Despite having that strategy set to only take 10% of funds, I have 843 science from just those two missions, of which just 204 comes from science experiments.

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Crzyrndm

Crzyrndm

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Diminishing returns over time (and other non-stock alike additions) would require custom functionality which I just don't have the time to implement right now. That is assuming the framework is open enough to allow such improvements among other things.

EDIT

The "Explore Eve" contract arrives quite early in the career mode (because logic right...) and has a funds reward of approx 650k if all objectives are completed (+~160 science, +~800 rep).

100% commitment Stock "Outsourced R&D" would give ~22k science for those funds (28:1 conversion ratio)

100% commitment "Outsourced R&D" would give ~1k science for those funds (625:1 conversion ratio) on the current release of this mod

100% commitment "Outsourced R&D" would give ~350 science for those funds (1667:1 conversion ratio) on my testing version which is using the decaying returns curve shown above (and requires 1M funds to activate in the first place, up on 200k from current release)

20% commitment "Outsourced R&D" would give ~100 science for those funds (1150:1 conversion ratio) on my testing version (compared with ~30 in the released version thanks to aforementioned screwup with information)

So my question is: Which of these sounds about right? (For reference, most contracts with science rewards are giving 15-30 each at this point)

Edited by Crzyrndm
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Crzyrndm

Crzyrndm

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v0.2 uploaded

Changelog

- Changed Currency exchange model to increase value of low level commitment. Efficiency now decreases with increasing commitment (increasing commitment will still always result in increased output)
- Increased buy in factor for Appreciation Campaign and Outsourced Research Strategies
- Removed slider from Recovery Transponders strategy, effect is now constant +5% launch costs with a constant 100% recovery factor.

It may not be the most intuitive thing in the world, but the commitment decay model works significantly better for both early and mid game operations from my experience testing today.

Edited by Crzyrndm
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Starman4308

Starman4308

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Diminishing returns over time (and other non-stock alike additions) would require custom functionality which I just don't have the time to implement right now. That is assuming the framework is open enough to allow such improvements among other things.

EDIT

The "Explore Eve" contract arrives quite early in the career mode (because logic right...) and has a funds reward of approx 650k if all objectives are completed (+~160 science, +~800 rep).

100% commitment Stock "Outsourced R&D" would give ~22k science for those funds (28:1 conversion ratio)

100% commitment "Outsourced R&D" would give ~1k science for those funds (625:1 conversion ratio) on the current release of this mod

100% commitment "Outsourced R&D" would give ~350 science for those funds (1667:1 conversion ratio) on my testing version which is using the decaying returns curve shown above (and requires 1M funds to activate in the first place, up on 200k from current release)

20% commitment "Outsourced R&D" would give ~100 science for those funds (1150:1 conversion ratio) on my testing version (compared with ~30 in the released version thanks to aforementioned screwup with information)

So my question is: Which of these sounds about right? (For reference, most contracts with science rewards are giving 15-30 each at this point)

I'd have to test it out to be sure, but somewhere between your original and where you have it now seems appropriate. While in theory it shouldn't be hard for people to figure this out themselves, I think it might be worthwhile to have instructions on the front page on how to edit the .cfg file to taste.

It might be worthwhile to eventually implement a debug menu, a bit like Deadly Reentry's, to do that from in-game. I suspect you have other priorities though, like this "personal life" thing I hear so much about. I do like the decaying rewards, though.

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Olterin

Olterin

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The new numbers seem a lot more sane, though I'd probably still cut it a bit (maybe reducing final result by another 30% or so) - but at least 350 science from such an exploration contract isn't quite as broken as 22k, since that's about the ballpark of science you'll get from all the experiments sent - I feel like that's a good ballpark to aim for with 100% commitment, doubling up the science potentially gained from experiments.

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Crzyrndm

Crzyrndm

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0.3 Released

No balance changes this time, just a little extra information added to the GUI for the strategies which exchange currencies (aiming to improve understanding of the scaling and the returns you get from each strategy). This functionality is entirely independent of the balance changes (will work with stock or any other mod which alters the strategies if the .cfg is removed)

DzJ2Oxg.jpg

Edited by Crzyrndm
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Hyomoto

Hyomoto

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It's going to be difficult to balance strategies without touching the contract generator. If we break the game down into early/late/mid tiers, it seems like early on the player should be focused on maxing out a resource. Granted, using strategies should effectively allow you to do a sort of substitution into the mid game. Once you max out one, you are most likely going to funnel it into the other two which would represent the mid game. The late game is inevitably going to be once the player has maxed all three resources.

Right now reputation doesn't do anything important. It's not easy to lose and you get plenty of big payouts regardless of its position. Also, science can always be earned whether you take contracts or not. Thanks for what you've done regardless, this is a big improvement over the stock implementation. Just some food for thought to go along with it.

Edited by Hyomoto
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Crzyrndm

Crzyrndm

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It's going to be difficult to balance strategies without touching the contract generator.

Already worked that one out. My initial intention was to base the currency ratios off the contract rewards, but the contract rewards are so inconsistent that doing so was largely an exercise in futility. Needless to say, that bugs me to no end...

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Jim Meillente

Jim Meillente

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Hello,

I look forward to this mods progression! The current stock system is ridiculous even on 'hard' mode so anything that adjusts it is more than welcome. If I may make a suggestion could you integrate KSP-KVC? http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/79745-0-25-0-KSP-AVC-Add-on-Version-Checker-Plugin-1-1-4-3-MiniAVC-KSP-AVC-Online

Thank You

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Crzyrndm

Crzyrndm

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0.4 experimental release (either don't update or delete the *_alt.cfg file if you're only looking for balance)

- Added 9 alternative contracts for feedback. Delete the *_alt.cfg file if you don't want to deal with them 
    - 8 currency exchange alternatives (instead of exchanging one currency for another, reduced gains in one is rewarded with increased gains in another, eg. -5% funds income, +5% Science income) 
    - Flight data recorder strategy - %Increase in launch costs, Flat income bonus on vessel recovery. The intention will be to have companies offer you cash in exchange for launching a vessel with a data recorder or something of the         like. This strategy is very WIP and is only included for feedback. Using it will likely result in you recieving a large amount of money for doing nothing
- AVC version checking support and miniAVC bundled

I would suggest not using the flight data recorder strategy as it will currently trigger on every individual recovered part and the vessel doesn't have to do anything to be elegible. The intention is that it only works for command parts and will probably require the part to have reached space to trigger the reward. It will be a replacement for the essentially useless "Recovery Transponders" Strategy (which is capped at 100% returns) once I add some plugin support for it.

Why include it now? Because I have no idea what sort of numbers to give it and feedback on the idea would be much appreciated.

Edited by Crzyrndm
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