Is it me... or is the Admin facility ridiculously OP?

[Mulbin]

Just started a new game, put the outsourced R+D perk on the lowest setting. Two missions in, just got a capsule into low orbit.... 400 Science in the bank already! Is this going to be tuned down in the next release? At present the Admin facility just makes the entire science and money system pointless.

[Epthelyn]

Is the administration facility overpowered? No.

Is Outsourced R&D ridiculously overpowered? That's an understatement.

The others are far more reasonable, as far as I can tell; I've been using rep -> science on Hard.

[EladDv]

Just started a new game, put the outsourced R+D perk on the lowest setting. Two missions in, just got a capsule into low orbit.... 400 Science in the bank already! Is this going to be tuned down in the next release? At present the Admin facility just makes the entire science and money system pointless.

it is OP but you can manage it if you would turn the difficulty up. then even with the facility it would be not that easy to complete the tree( even more so if you crank the settings up even more ) when getting to hard and above it can be necessary to have the admin and strategies

[SunChaser]

3rd or 4th thread on this topic so far...while I agree a couple of the strategies are very OP, nobody is forcing you to use them. Just turn up the difficulty.

[prophet_01]

Outsourced R & D is still not balanced on hard. It will give you huge amounts if science for test contracts, even in advance (cause you get funds when accepting). Also you can use aggressive negotiation to get funds if you recover on the launchpad. You pay a reduced price and get the regular recovery level.

Those need some balancing and I don't think that it is possible to balance the game for experienced players if you reduce all the incomings by the same percentages. The first couple of missions on high difficulty settings are imo balanced enough. They leave little room for failure (if you are not doing that stacked booster seperation without decoupler stuff and alike). Even the strategies aren't that overpowered at this point. But once you get the overpayed part testing and the landing contracts funds are more or less not important.

It's not just the strategies. The well payed contracts are just not a challenge for the people who already figured out most aspects of the game.

[Blind Dead McJones]

It can be if you know how to game the system. I'm waiting for someone to figure out a way to max out the tech tree without launching a single mission.

[SkyRender]

Step 1: Open /GameData/Squad/Strategies/Strategies.cfg

Step 2: Change Outsourced R&D's minRate to 0.0027778 and maxRate to 0.00347

Step 3: Change Patents Licensing's minRate to 80 and maxRate to 100

Step 4: Change Fundrasing Campaign's minRate to 70 and maxRate to 90

Step 5: Change Appreciation Campaign's minrate to 0.0041667 and maxRate to 0.00520

All balanced.

[CaptRobau]

I think it wouldn't be a bad thing if Outsourced (and maybe the others converter strategies too) had their effects removed from advances. Advances already made the game very easy: no need to make those any more powerful. And the effects of the strategy would still be felt when their applied to all those other situation (launch, contract reward, etc.)

[KerbMav]

Is it me or did I read this somewhere else already?

[Javster]

Also you can use aggressive negotiation to get funds if you recover on the launchpad. You pay a reduced price and get the regular recovery level.

Would work in real life if you got a good bargain and sold the parts every time you recovered them. Not ideal and certainly OP.

[LethalDose]

3rd or 4th thread on this topic so far...while I agree a couple of the strategies are very OP, nobody is forcing you to use them. Just turn up the difficulty.

Increasing difficulty is a poor solution and actually will make players more dependent on these over-powered options. A better option is re-balance the modifiers and "de-OP" those options. This is what I did. You just need to change the values in the strategies.cfg file.

But yes, there are a number of threads on this already.

[Tangle]

Oh no, a small amount of people don't like the Admin facility. Yknow... If you don't want it, just fire a rocket at it.

[GusTurbo]

Oh no, a small amount of people don't like the Admin facility. Yknow... If you don't want it, just fire a rocket at it.

It isn't a matter of not liking it, it's that it doesn't function in a way that creates balanced gameplay.

[Tangle]

It isn't a matter of not liking it, it's that it doesn't function in a way that creates balanced gameplay.

Then you fire TWO rockets at it.

[Mulbin]

3rd or 4th thread on this topic so far...while I agree a couple of the strategies are very OP, nobody is forcing you to use them. Just turn up the difficulty.

Is it me or did I read this somewhere else already?

Oh no, a small amount of people don't like the Admin facility. Yknow... If you don't want it, just fire a rocket at it.

Wow.. a lot of people really don't seem to understand how alpha - player feedback works. By reporting things like this you help the devs balance the game, and if there is more than one post it just confirms there is an issue. Please only post if you have constructive/intelligent input guys. Many thanks.

[bitbucket]

I finished the tech tree in five launches without leaving low Kerbin orbit thanks to fulfilling about 16 part test contracts with Outsourcing R&D active. Yeah, I can see how the masochists are going to have issues with this. But me, it just means post-science-grind fun comes all that much sooner.

[acerola]

At first I read "1 science for every 35 thousand funds". But then I realized it is "1 science for every 35 funds". Yes, it is overpowered.

If I set it to 100% (it costs like 100K funds), then "Kerbin" contracts yield thousands of science each.

I personally think that rewarding science for contracts unbalances the game. You can grind science infinitely without leaving Kerbin orbit. Outsourced R&D makes it much much faster.

There should be an option on the difficulty setup to turn off science rewards from contracts.

[AmpsterMan]

Meh. I kinda like the Outsourced R&D. Ofcourse, I am not particularly a fan of the way science progression happens so I like getting the big numbers to breeze through the science tree . Still, I can see why some people would think it is OP. Science is in too low a supply and money in too high a supply so converting one for the other seems like a no brainer. By increasing the exchange rate, I think we can get a better balance of money-to-science.

[SkyRender]

I honestly think that the scale factor on values for science and reputation to/from funds got reversed somehow, because their defaults are 10 times too strong for funds-to and 10 times too weak for funds-from as compared to science-to-rep and vice-versa. Once I adjusted them as I outlined above, they were far more in line with the other strategies and no longer overpowered or useless.

Edited October 19, 2014 by SkyRender

[SunChaser]

Your first launch at the start of career mode is likely a manned capsule on top of an SRB with no decouplers...and overpowered Admin Facility strategies are the problem?

[S1gmoid]

Actually, for me, outsourced R&D fixed the game.

While I enjoy the progression and mission-driven feel of the career mode, I don't care much about the way science is implemented in the game. It's slow, tedious, and not fun one bit.

With outsourced R&D and the soon-to-be-integrated Fine Print mod, I can now advance through completing meaningful contracts like setting altitude records, putting sattelites on given orbits, etc. Progress comes from advancing as a space program, as opposed to clicking on everything lots of times.

There's a lot to be rebalanced in the game, from the tech tree to, yes, outsourced R&D. It could be less efficient. But for a change, I'm actually enjoying career mode again. Before trying this, I was about to move to Sandbox indefinitely.