Opinions on "Kerbal Experience"

[Torquemadus]

I'd actually like something NEW rather than just a new way to get science and money. It doesn't HAVE to be what was proposed in the dev notes, but something new and unique would be nice

Agreed. I'm optimistic that with proper planning and testing, Squad will give us a worthwhile new feature. I don't want to see it scrapped before it even sees the light of day.

[AbhChallenger]

I think we can all agree on that, assuming it's logical.

It the game were just about logical. It would be nothing more than an addon to Orbiter. And look at how active that community is.

[Hyomoto]

This thread is popular, huh? The experience system doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It's been mocked in threads suggesting exactly this before so someone out there is happy about the news. Regardless, this is obvious a wait and see thing. For better or worse, I'm interested in what it might mean for modding. Right now Kerbals are very static, and many people have wanted more of a reason to diversify Kerbals beyond putting another body in a seat. So that's fair and it is desired by a large portion of the community. This likely isn't going to affect sandbox, since no other career progression has, so it makes sense to assume that creative will stand static as it ever has.

However, for Career progression I guess it just sounds a bit basic. The question to me is should it just be flat increase. It's not unreasonable to suggest some Kerbals are better suited to be pilots or scientists, it makes fine sense. The counter argument being it should be player skill and not Kerbal skill that determines craft performance. However, I know this is a highly unpopular idea, it would be more interesting to see them cause penalties in bad roles rather than bonuses. Instead of min-maxing, you'd assemble a crew that provided the best experience for the right jobs. At the end of the day you are doing the same thing, but you aren't pushing the numbers up, you are just pushing them to the middle. Typically the player has a strong aversion to penalties, and as such we prefer bonuses. However, keeping with the theme of Kerbals, having those who AREN'T suited for the job make the one that is extra valuable.

At the end of the day this will take the same cycle every new feature has: complaint, experience, acceptance, modding.

[SpenSpaceCorp]

I tend to disagree with the idea that individual Kerbals can affect part performance. I do however agree with for example, more science gains, or say in an alternate future, part repairability etc. In my opinion, changing the part performance transfers some of the piloting skills from the player to the game. Although this may appeal to some, I like the fact that the player controls the Kerbals completely, without a small portion of that being taken out of the players' hands.

[bigbadben]

Seems squad chose simulator vs. game.

Lots of questions on Kerbal exp progression, since we take away the game-y aspects of it. The exp system should follow my personal achievements, since this is more simulator-ish, mirrored onto my kerbals. The badge/flair/costumes system fits in perfectly with the simulator meme.

The other stuff....certification/auto-pilot/perks/roles......

As long as it mirrors my achievements as a player into my kerbals, or things I have to learn, that would be cool. But once that distinction gets blurry, and piloting gets more game-y....I hope squad avoids crossing over too much again.

The biggest strength of ksp is that squad managed to make 'space physics' fun!

I had hoped they would use 'science' to make 'space chemistry' fun! --Because I always hated chemistry....lol

Edited October 22, 2014 by bigbadben
added 'since this is more simulator-ish'

[Trentendegreth]

i think that the OPTION has been taken out of our hands, Due to Peoples OPINIONS, the majority rules and has spoken without consideration of the minority in the end we all loose...I've said my piece on the matter... ill bow out now and go back to lurking...i truly am disappointed...see you on the next hype train

[Wallygator]

Honestly, if kerbal experience only gives bonuses for science, reputation and funds, they might as well scrap the whole experience system. We already have the strategies for that. I wish we could get an actual bonus from an experienced kerbal, but it seems that after all the complaints we won't get anything that adds to the gameplay, since the community seems to be allergic to the whole "gameplay" concept.

I'm sure there is a more advanced view of the experience/training/qualification gameplay dynamic that actually adds even deeper emersion for role-play without denigrating the physics foundation. Now is the opportunity to contribute further ideas. The devs now realise this - the community can help on the requirements definition.

[mhoram]

I also would prefer it if the efficiencies of parts (like thrust or isp of engines) would not be affected by Kerbals.

I am fine with Kerbals having an impact on science, money, reputation or resource generation.

[Norcalplanner]

OP should be modified to include Maxmaps' newest information...

[FleetAdmiralJ]

I'm sure there is a more advanced view of the experience/training/qualification gameplay dynamic that actually adds even deeper emersion for role-play without denigrating the physics foundation. Now is the opportunity to contribute further ideas. The devs now realise this - the community can help on the requirements definition.

The best alternate idea I've seen is using experience to limit where Kerbals can go and/or what parts they use (and perhaps spend reputation to train kerbals, as we really do need a way to spend that currency). But even that seems somewhat hollow in the sense that, OK, it adds a speedbump to something a lot of people may not spend much, if any, time thinking about to begin with, which is sticking Kerbals onto a ship. But I think anything beyond that or yet another way to farm money/science/reputation will be met with much the same reaction. Again, a lot of that is driven by the apparent vision that Kerbals aren't actually doing anything when they fly, so upgrading them has little point. in fact, you could use that as an argument as to why even forcing reputation requirements on missions or parts doesn't make sense. After all, if Kerbals aren't doing anything, why does it matter who you send? Such a view on Kerbals pretty much rips out any point to even having reputation at all, pretty much.

[Draemora]

Here is my thing: we got a decent idea of what they had in mind. I think we had enough to be able to form opinions and educated guesses. But it seems like most people don't want anything that disrupts their current game play to any significant amount. Some people have gone out and suggested things like needing experience to go on certain missions, but most people seem to just want more boosts for the 3 currency. I'd actually like something NEW rather than just a new way to get science and money. It doesn't HAVE to be what was proposed in the dev notes, but something new and unique would be nice

Because a generic 5% boost to thrust is SOOO much more exciting, new, and revolutionary.

[Draemora]

Just for the record:

I've seen posts with the suggestion that an increase in SAS/RCS control would be ok to have with Kerbal exp.

I do not agree, and here is why: How do you, as the player, get better sas/rcs control? What steps do you learn to take? How to use wings on the bottom of rockets? Where to position the sas modules to get max performance from them? How to use rcs thrusters to help control, and how to position them to get desired turn performance. To use struts to reduce wobble. Etc, etc, etc...

See, it is YOU who learn to get better, to increase YOUR exp and building and flying. I don't want to watch a youtube video of a ksp'er making an ascent that turns correctly and there is no wobble, but when I try it I cannot turn at all and it wobbles itself apart. I examine the placement of control surfaces, see his technique, sas module location is the same......

But it turns out his pilots are lvl 5.

Therefore his ships works, and mine doesn't.

Suggestions for exp: Flair (glasses/costumes/etc), Certification (based on real-life/unique roles for kerbals), badges (final frontier/reddit challenges), perks (as NO MR BOND posted), or as a last resort, standard money/rep/science bonuses.

And less precise sas/rcs would screw with new players at the start when they need it the most.

[FleetAdmiralJ]

Because a generic 5% boost to thrust is SOOO much more exciting, new, and revolutionary.

Apparently it was so much so that a near riot broke out in the forums and reddit causing squad to gut the feature.

[PDCWolf]

I really hate the experience concept, i just won't repeat what others said. But i hate even more the "Wait and see" option in the pool. People who have chosen this option will wait between 3 months to even one year for update, whose they don't even know (if) they will like it. That update will propably add only (hated) experience system. I thing Squad should focus on making SANDBOX, because carreer is sandbox with funds, and not sandbox is carrer without funds. Meanwhile sandbox havent changed since years (???)!

I agree with this, if the toilet had eyes and a mouth he would definitely know and tell you that when you sit on it, you are going to do your second, he knows about it beforehand both from experience and from your corporal language. "wait and see" is ignoring experience and communication attempts (Mu already said what they had in mind in a not so loose way)

Which, I wonder, leaves what for experience kerbals to do? That was my whole thing.

I wouldn't be shocked if we soon get word that they're basically starting from scratch on the whole kerbal experience thing, because if upgrading kerbals don't actually let you improve performance, then why even bother with the whole exercise to begin with?

Now what I'm afraid of is something like what a couple people have suggested, where an experienced kerbal would allow one to go out and, say, fix a solar panel. Or in other words, it does exactly bunk.

Rockets keep following laws of physics and responding to my keypresses as they should, and the feature now has the potential of presenting something new and innovative like letting you keep astronauts around as celebrities, give you more information in hud, better E/IVAs, more options for the now-useless orbital science, and a lot of things never tried before instead of a generic and almost insignificant 3% boost to thrust/isp/tank capacity.

Should have phrased that tweet to be about all parts, we're looking at other possibilities regarding piloting skill like control surface reaction speed since they're a bit on the slow side currently. Plenty of other traits that work along with the base mechanics and currencies of career mode, though

May I suggest you leave piloting fully controlled by the player? Really, we just came out of a fire pit and jumped into another which turns out to look exactly the same: Craft performance.

The best alternate idea I've seen is using experience to limit where Kerbals can go and/or what parts they use (and perhaps spend reputation to train kerbals, as we really do need a way to spend that currency). But even that seems somewhat hollow in the sense that, OK, it adds a speedbump to something a lot of people may not spend much, if any, time thinking about to begin with, which is sticking Kerbals onto a ship. But I think anything beyond that or yet another way to farm money/science/reputation will be met with much the same reaction. Again, a lot of that is driven by the apparent vision that Kerbals aren't actually doing anything when they fly, so upgrading them has little point. in fact, you could use that as an argument as to why even forcing reputation requirements on missions or parts doesn't make sense. After all, if Kerbals aren't doing anything, why does it matter who you send? Such a view on Kerbals pretty much rips out any point to even having reputation at all, pretty much.

How is handicapping more or less hollow than 3% boost to performance? Also, I like how you go into everyone's playing mode assuming they do things in a way or another. As of 0.25 Kerbals matter the same they did since first public release, yet I personally take care of them and carefully choose who goes where, how much time do they spent in space and fully apply safety measures to protect them, and they don't get better or worse because of it. Now take that in mind and look at my stance on this. You may have your opinions and whatnot and that can't be discussed, but the conclusions you seem to come and the reasons for them are completely off.

[Wallygator]

not sure they "gutted" the feature, but they did take a back step on the physics influencing aspects.

[JumpsterG]

Wow, I wanted to chime in on this topic. I've been reading through page by page in one window on my work computer during breaks but couldn't get to the last page! Now devs have already responded; talk about being late to the party!

I said elsewhere that I didn't think Kerbals should affect rocket performance for an additional reason from what's been stated here:

Why bother including an experienced Kerbal?

If you want 5% more dV on your rocket... Add some more fuel, maybe?

If you want 5% more thrust... Use a bigger engine, or two?

If you want 5% more SAS control... Add another SAS unit?

Kerbals performing these fine-tune adjustments is redundant and they just become massless parts that fit inside your capsules (as well as throwing an effectively random statistic into rocket capabilities). I feel that engineering should exclusively affect a rocket's capabilities and that Kerbonauts should continue to be funny little explorers whose only experience is being sent on rollercoaster missions by a player's space program.

I never came up with any really interesting alternatives for useful XP but thankfully this thread is full of neat suggestions for making Kerbals more interesting. Kudos!

[irodrigoz]

the way they presented it doesn't convince me, what I personally think that could work to improve engines performance is a system based on the number of that parts that have been recovered from being in space, modeling some sort of different design iteration and upgrades, in a way kind of what happened with the shuttle main engines which in later versions could work at %111 of what they were designed originally.

[Superfluous J]

Wow 50 pages before I can catch up and post again.

Good job by the Squad team for realizing the problem and addressing it. Looking forward to what they do instead.

And congrats to the community, every single person who participated in this thread and did NOT get heated. It's a rare thing on these Internets to go 50 pages without resorting to spitting bile and lobbing vitriol bombs. We all get +1 to our Internet Discussion skill.

[CalculusWarrior]

We all get +1 to our Internet Discussion skill.

Ha ha! I can now post 5% faster!

[Wallygator]

Ha ha! I can now post 5% faster!

I unticked that on my forum difficulty settings.

[Whirligig Girl]

This is also a pretty good example of the divide between the playerbase between seeing the game as a simulator or a game.

This is just wrong, Max. I am absoulutely 100% an advocate for Gameplay over Realism. Gameplay should ALWAYS come first. However, This wouldn't be very fun from a simulator standpoint OR a gameplay standpoint. The simulator part has already been covered, but for gameplay the implications are perhaps even worse. Okay, maybe not worse, but certainly almost as bad.

If the plan is to make Kerbals passively (as opposed to something that can be activated in-flight or for a short boost) increase thrust and/or efficiency, then you create an incompatibility for ship designs in save files. The ONLY way to do this while still having an ability to boost Isp and Thrust is for the player/kerbanaut to have active involvement with it.

Imagine the scenario. You're barely in Duna Orbit. You drastically underestimated the fuel requirement, and if you could increase the Isp you might be able to salvage the mission. It's going to cost you, but not nearly as much as sending a rescue mission. Among your brave Kerbals, one of them is an engineer. He puts on his EVA suit, gets out of the airlock, and carefully climbs down to the engine. With his wrench, hammer, and screwdriver secured in the Hammerspace pocket on his jetpack, he begins to repair the engine. The modification will decrease the maximum thrust of the engine, but the Isp has been improved by almost 10%. The Engineer Kerbal carefully climbs back into the command pod as the escape burn window approaches. The engine also runs a bit hotter now due to a few removed bits of the engine, but it's efficient enough to almost complete the burn, where the RCS Fuel can be used for fine tuning. The Engine will not be recovered for a very high return value, it's been so heavily modified it may need rebuilding. And it won't be good reputation with the manufacturer of the engine if you had to go out and modify it. But only THAT Kerbal can do it, because he is the only Kerbal who can repair or modify things on that mission.

EDIT: We're not talking about the small vocal minority who won't stop until KSP becomes Orbiter 2; we're tanking about MOST of the KSP community. Almost no one wants a passive buff on Isp and Thrust. Some people don't want the ability to change Isp or Thrust at all; but if it is something that is optional and involves actual skill not just for the Kerbal but the Player as well (Stationkeeping very close the the engine using an RCS pack for 15 seconds while he modifies the engine, for example)

Edited October 22, 2014 by GregroxMun

[Ignath]

Ha ha! I can now post 5% faster!

Oooh, ooh...can my sarcasm be 5% easier to detect?

[Wallygator]

^^^ and then I awoke from the dream...

its both a simulator AND a game therefore it cannot ignore the common denominator. Its needs to be both in balance.

[NBZ]

tl;dr: KSP's formulas often have a realistic final result, but with a model that is fundamentally wrong, and gives unreasonable values for edge cases. Now, the planned implementation of efficiency based on Kerbal experience is threatening us with yet another such system. I suggest Kerbal experience only serves to counteract a negative effect on SAS caused by the stupidity trait, until Kerbals get an active role in automatization.

I think I understand the idea and those in favor. The system would model a real life issue: Good piloting skills can save fuel during rendezvous, landing, and re-orientation maneuvers. However, who is at the controls does not matter during ascent and transfer burns, as they vary only because of chaotic physics like bubbles in fuel lines, turbulence, etc.

The planned implementation gets the right result (increased overall efficiency with increased experience), the wrong way (altering part stats). It is a very KSP thing to do as KSP already has two such systems of performance being affected correctly, but the wrong way:

Atmospheric density affects thrust instead of fuel flow

NathanKell and ferram4 just taught sal_vager about this issue, and ferram4's KIDS mod fixes the issue.

Currently all engines (and RCS thrusters) in KSP have constant thrust, and fuel flow varies with external pressure. However, in real life, a turbopump provides constant (or throttleable) fuel flow, but as the rocket rises, it is able to generate more thrust with the fed fuel:

[TABLE=width: 500]

[TR]

[TD]ASCENT[/TD]

[TD=align: center]Atmosphere[/TD]

[TD=align: center]I_sp[/TD]

[TD=align: center]Thrust[/TD]

[TD=align: center]Fuel flow[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]KSP[/TD]

[TD=align: center]decreasing[/TD]

[TD=align: center]increasing[/TD]

[TD=align: center]constant[/TD]

[TD=align: center]decreasing[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]IRL[/TD]

[TD=align: center]decreasing[/TD]

[TD=align: center]increasing[/TD]

[TD=align: center]increasing[/TD]

[TD=align: center]constant[/TD]

[/TR]

[/TABLE]

In KSP, only the rockets decreasing mass (by burning fuel) increases TWR during ascent

In real life, both decreasing weight and pressure (by increasing thrust) increase TWR.

E.g. from launch to cut-off, Saturn V's F-1s had a 360% increase in TWR due to lower mass and a 19% increase in TWR due to lower pressure: TWR was 1.16 at launch, and would have increased to 5 at cut-off, but the inboard engine was cut off to stay below 4. (In KSP it would only have increased to a tolerable 4.2, with all engines on full throttle.) Source: NASA

Drag is affected by mass instead of shape

This topic has been discussed extensively. ferram4's mod NEAR fixes the issue (and FAR adds the sound barrier too).

E.g. with KSP's current model, Commander David Scott could have done

on Kerbin (.craft file). IRL a feather of cause falls much slower than a hammer while in the atmosphere.

Next: Piloting experience affects thrust and I_sp instead of maneuver efficiency

The KSP way to implement this would of course be by altering thrust and I_sp of the RCS thrusters only. Being that the amount of monopropellant needed for a mission is not easily determined beforehand, a slight decrease in efficiency would not significantly overall craft performance.

However, it would be better to have Kerbals do some automatization, and be better at it with increased experience. Being it that such a feature is not implemented (yet), we can instead imagine that SAS is the Kerbonaut taking partial control.

Sometimes SAS uses the RCS wastefully by applying thrust in two opposite directions simultaneously, or oscillating needlessly. I could see room for Kerbal experience increasing the efficiency of the SAS stabilization method, but I assume the P.I.D. system is already optimized.

Therefore I suggest that Kerbal stupidity should affect SAS efficiency negatively. Experience could then either simply decrease stupidity or counteract it in some new system. 0 stupidity would be equivalent to the SAS performance of probe cores.

Oh, and move the Stayputnik Mk. 1 to the Start tech node. Sputnik 1 was years before Vostok 1!

[I_Killed_Jeb]

This is just wrong, Max. I am absoulutely 100% an advocate for Gameplay over Realism. Gameplay should ALWAYS come first. However, This wouldn't be very fun from a simulator standpoint OR a gameplay standpoint. The simulator part has already been covered, but for gameplay the implications are perhaps even worse. Okay, maybe not worse, but certainly almost as bad.

If the plan is to make Kerbals passively (as opposed to something that can be activated in-flight or for a short boost) increase thrust and/or efficiency, then you create an incompatibility for ship designs in save files. The ONLY way to do this while still having an ability to boost Isp and Thrust is for the player/kerbanaut to have active involvement with it.

Imagine the scenario. You're barely in Duna Orbit. You drastically underestimated the fuel requirement, and if you could increase the Isp you might be able to salvage the mission. It's going to cost you, but not nearly as much as sending a rescue mission. Among your brave Kerbals, one of them is an engineer. He puts on his EVA suit, gets out of the airlock, and carefully climbs down to the engine. With his wrench, hammer, and screwdriver secured in the Hammerspace pocket on his jetpack, he begins to repair the engine. The modification will decrease the maximum thrust of the engine, but the Isp has been improved by almost 10%. The Engineer Kerbal carefully climbs back into the command pod as the escape burn window approaches. The engine also runs a bit hotter now due to a few removed bits of the engine, but it's efficient enough to almost complete the burn, where the RCS Fuel can be used for fine tuning.

I am on board this train