Space Buisness

[PLB]

PLB-Industries has been looking into how to build a system to make money in KSP without contracts. It has looked into Kethane, but is too busy with contracts to make any progress in the area. So, PLB-I has decided to challenge the community to profit off of missions, economically, without the use of contracts. This would need to be done with mods, of course.

The basic idea is that, using either Kethane or Karbonite, you set up mining operations on the Mun, refine the Hydro-karbon substance into some resource (Like Fuel), and recover a craft with that resource near KSC. You don't need to use these mods, but the mods you do use can't be very over-powered, and must be found on the forums, and listed. (You don't technically need to use mods, but without them, you can't really make money from missions alone.)

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The rules are as follows:

1. You may only use mods which aren't overpowered, and are found on the forums. (Be reasonable.)
   
2. You can't use any mining mod (Kethane, Karbonite, etc) features while having a ship on Kerbin. (Otherwise people could make a mining operation next to KSC, defeating the purpose of the challenge)
   
3. You can't use any Strategies.
   
4. You mustn't use the debug menu.
   
5. A video and/or album is to be provided showing all sources of your score.
   

You may use multiple missions to achieve this. If you do, you must list the number of missions needed to pay back ALL of the equipment used.

Scoring System:

1. Every unit of money gained in total adds two points.
   
2. Every mission counted subtracts 50 points.
   
3. Every Kerbal not recovered home subtracts 75 points.
   
4. Every mission with the same ship as another adds 50 points.
   
5. Every mission without another using the same ship subtracts 30 points.
   
6. Every technology, other than the first one you have (Getting Started), that you have while doing any part of any of the missions which you count towards this challenge subtracts 10 points.
   

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For example:

I send 12 ships to the Mun, (A mining base, a transport, and 10 fuel tanks) costing a total of 10000 units of money.

There were 7 technologies (Other than Getting Started) at most when any ship was counted in the challenge.

The income was 10634 unit of money.

I left 1 kerbal on the Mun in the mining ship.

The number of points I would have would be...

+634*2 =1268 (Money gained total times 2.)

+12*-50 =-600 (Missions counted times -50)

+1*-75 =-75 (Kerbals not recovered times -75)

+10*50 =500 (Identical ships times 50)

+2*-30 =-60 (Non-Identical ships times -30)

+7*-10 =-70 (Technologies Ever Active times -10)

+___________

963 points.

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Don't judge these points to be what you'll get if you try this challenge, it's just an example.

To acquire a positive score, you'll need get 25 units of money's worth of resources (fuel, RCS, etc) more than your ship cost, on average, back to KSC, at least.

Have fun refining designs and figuring out how to get that much fuel back to Kerbin!

Edited October 20, 2014 by PLB

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

Could we see your attempt at this? It is kind-of required when setting challenges, it makes things much plainer for people

Also, this would make an awesome sandbox challenge, as you then don't have to worry about science or funds, and you can concentrate purely on the challenge itself - as you have a seperate scoring in place that doesn't take into account any science or funds, it seems pointless to try this in career, as you can work out how much fuel has been brough back fairly easily if you launch with empty tanks...

[Jovus]

You might want to think this over a bit more, since it's disgustingly easy to make absolutely huge amounts of money by just stringing together orange tanks and extracting/refining Karbonite on the launchpad without going anywhere.

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

You might want to think this over a bit more, since it's disgustingly easy to make absolutely huge amounts of money by just stringing together orange tanks and extracting/refining Karbonite on the launchpad without going anywhere.

(2) - You can't use any mining mod (Kethane, Karbonite, etc) features while having a ship on Kerbin. (Otherwise people could make a mining operation next to KSC, defeating the purpose of the challenge)

He's got that covered...

[PLB]

Could we see your attempt at this? It is kind-of required when setting challenges, it makes things much plainer for people

Also, this would make an awesome sandbox challenge, as you then don't have to worry about science or funds, and you can concentrate purely on the challenge itself - as you have a seperate scoring in place that doesn't take into account any science or funds, it seems pointless to try this in career, as you can work out how much fuel has been brough back fairly easily if you launch with empty tanks...

At the beginning of the post I mentioned

It (PLB-I) has looked into Kethane, but is too busy with contracts to make any progress in the area.

By this I really meant I was too busy with other things to even play KSP. (I still haven't updated to 0.25) I did create an example to show both a way of doing it and the numbers.

It's necessary to do this challenge in Career mode so that you can look at how many funds (I forgot the name so I just said "Units of Money" in the post) it takes to assemble your rockets. You could calculate it and do sandbox, but that defeats the whole purpose. Right now, you will have to worry about science, but I didn't say anything about cheating in science or funds to simulate an end-game scenario. It's just that those funds won't count towards your score.

Edited October 20, 2014 by PLB

[PLB]

I've decided to add a part about technology, because it's clearly easier to make a rocket with more advanced parts, and especially easy to do it when you have technology involving kethane or karbonite and such.