End-Game Suggestions: Post Yours!

[Sirnanigans]

So you have mastered orbits, Mün landings, interplanetary travel, satellite and laboratory designs, etc. Space has become your playground, but what to play in it? Just like a child growing familiar with the world, a player growing familiar with a game finds simply throwing things and gnawing on stuff less fulfilling, and it must be replaced with a progressive, organized, and meaningful kind of entertainment.

What ideas do you have, community, for end-game content? Planetary settlements with resource income? Greater and more distant horizons of exploration? Multi-player universes with a home solar system for each player?

Post your ideas and see what others think. Even if they are outside of the developers' scope, we can always dream...and then mod that shiz in there!

[sal_vager]

I kinda like the idea that floated around a year or so ago, where you'd research and build parts to a hyperdrive, stick it out beyond Eeloo, and find a way to power it.

After that, leave the Kerbol system, possibly to seed generated systems, or the end credits

Though currently I think it'll be Kerbin wide fame and acclaim from making a successful space program, and maxing out the rep bar.

[Red Iron Crown]

Permanent colonies on other bodies would be a good goal to me.

[tater]

Yeah, I'm interested in colonization, and actually building things on other worlds (not landing them there, landing construction equipment, and the kerbals can start building stuff).

[Tuareg]

well, the only worthy endgame i can imagine is building useful planetary and spacestations for resource mining and generating the income from those but i fear, whats more i know, that will not happen to be and endgame function and they will just mess it up.

[Tw1]

Permanent colonies on other bodies would be a good goal to me.

Agreed- I'd like to see not only this, but a situation where shuttling kerbals, and maybe other things between other planets, bases, stations, etc, becomes quite an important thing.

I wouldn't be such a fan of them as money earning mining bases, (I'm not convinced of the economics at the kerbals' technology level for a start,) but instead, places to live in space.

Frontier settlements, with research going on, etc.

Not sure about procedurally added systems- even KSP's scaled down planets have lots of space. If they flesh them out more, there could be a lot to keep you occupied. Entirely random generated planets might not be able to be as sophisticated.

Though, could be interesting.

[sal_vager]

So the only end game you can see is financial Tuareg? There's more to life than money

Space exploration should be for more than just economic reasons I think.

[tater]

So the only end game you can see is financial Tuareg? There's more to life than money

Space exploration should be for more than just economic reasons I think.

I'd argue that economic reasons are the only mechanism for it to happen, period (manned). That or just people so rich they can do it as a hobby.

[sal_vager]

Well there's species survival, national pride and prestige, research (Imagine if we had a warp drive, we'd find a reason to use it), cultural imperative (Egyptians didn't build pyramids for the money), I'm sure there's plenty of other reasons than purely financial

Space exploration can be something Kerbals (and humans) spend money on, not to make money from.

[Geneborg]

My personal end game goal? Creating a fully autonomous colony on planet X (=insert planet here) with a population as large as my computer can handle. Yes, i will use mods to do it, at least for the time beeing. If Squad ever rethinks its stance towards lifes support systems and resources (not only fuel) then also in stock.

In career? Well...depends on the point system, but i will probably unlock everything (tech) and collect points till i get bored if there is no mechanic ala "you collected points-x you win".

If i put in a 3rd goal, basically a "realistic human spaceflight scenario", then i will go mining stuff on other planets and have a fully functioning transportation system back to Kerbin that is "cost effective". Why? Because we humans need more resources to grow out of our planet and do what we du best: colonize/harvest everything

Edited October 24, 2014 by Geneborg

[Tuareg]

So the only end game you can see is financial Tuareg? There's more to life than money

Space exploration should be for more than just economic reasons I think.

its not about money. its about giving a reason why to build things out there. in the current system if you stop doing missions you stop building anything as you will obviously run out of cash. now they can either find out even more crappy random missions or make it the primary reson to build colonies/bases on other planets and on/around asteroids. atm there is no any reason to put anything permanent anywhere are you cant use it, there is no reason for satelites, there is no reason for bases there is no reason for rovers. sure its all possible just there is 0 motivation. the money is not the aim, its the tool...

[tater]

Well there's species survival, national pride and prestige, research (Imagine if we had a warp drive, we'd find a reason to use it), cultural imperative (Egyptians didn't build pyramids for the money), I'm sure there's plenty of other reasons than purely financial

Space exploration can be something Kerbals (and humans) spend money on, not to make money from.

Species survival would likely require a threat too proximate to matter. National pride? Sure, worked in the Cold War… but not since. Research? Absolutely, but that means probes, which are vastly more cost-effective. Some could be modeled, I suppose. Like a planet-killer inbound in XX years, you must colonize or die. National stuff would require an AI competitor (which is implied due to the reduce missions). I'm cool with actually populating the system with another, but AI , space program. Cultural imperative… sure, the Pharaoh wanted his after life, and maybe some workers wanted jobs… but as Mel Brooks said in the History of the World… "It's good to be the king." They can order whatever they like.

The reality is that money drives everything. You need bucks for Buck Rogers. The nice thing is that a marketplace is a self-regulating system, and fairly straightforward from a game design standpoint. How would you model cultural imperative? "The great green sky monster has ordered all kerbals to colonize the stars!"

[sal_vager]

The Kraken drives the Kerbals to the stars, now there's an idea....

Don't forget the "game" part of computer game, the end-game for KSP does not have to be financially motivated, and until mankind does colonize other worlds it won't be certain that will be financially motivated either

[tater]

It's a reason to do things, and I'd add that the end game might be designed to segue into a follow-on game or add-on.

[sal_vager]

True, and I'll add that this thread should be open to a variety of end-game scenarios than the simply economic, it'll be interesting to see what other scenarios people can come up with

[dryer_lint]

I'm with sal_vager. Interstellar spaaaaaaace and ending credits!

[tater]

For stock (which is what we are talking about), the key is KSP scope. It looks to be basically early space program until sort of current (fantasy spaceplanes excepted). Really, a sort of "retro-future" seems more what the KSP scope is… what we thought NASA would have done decades ago.

Given that, the end game is somewhat set on exploration for it's own sake, in a kind of government-sponsored way. So bases on other worlds, with any resource extraction there solely because it is required for the mission, not for the marketplace. So water for fuel, oxidizer, and life support. Farming pods for LS. Those should eb end-game goals for KSP, IMHO. MOstly self-sustaining bases, both planet side and orbital.

The follow-on for Squad would be the colonization of the Kerbol system and beyond (not FTL). This is where the marketplace starts to come into play.

I suppose other add-ons to the basic game could be added (each could make Squad some cash, too, which is great). One might be a sort of "space trader" in the more distant kerbal future where there are colonies here and there, and the player is an asteroid miner, or has a ship that goes back and forth moving cargo, and if he makes more money, he can upgrade, etc. (an entirely different kind of game from KSP, but it would be fun).

[Sirnanigans]

As a long time minecraft player (who was with that game since just before beta as well), I can attest to the appeal of colonization for the sake of grandeur and pride alone. Of course we are comparing apples and pears here (not oranges, minecraft and KSP are more alike than apples and oranges), but the motivational factor transfers well, even if the play style is different.

Totally despite economical gain, if other planets had more convincing and specific biomes which were randomly generated and offered some kind of unique colonization potential, there might be an innate drive to successfully conquer new planets. Each planet could be unique to the player and offer an archetypal but unpredictable challenge.

Suddenly space stations serve a purpose to communicate between planets, especially those with thick atmospheres. More heavily insulated colony structures may be optionally research for the time when you want to conquer a planet with extraordinary temperatures. Maybe even require some kind of contextual building to survive in a particular alien biome, like a "mercury to food" processor in a Mercury rich biome discovered somewhere.

Okay, I am getting ahead of myself. Point is, randomly generated worlds inspire exploration and conquest, because the player knows that their discovery is just that, a discovery, and not just a predicted step in a prepared game.

[Sirnanigans]

Agreed- I'd like to see not only this, but a situation where shuttling kerbals, and maybe other things between other planets, bases, stations, etc, becomes quite an important thing.

I wouldn't be such a fan of them as money earning mining bases, (I'm not convinced of the economics at the kerbals' technology level for a start,) but instead, places to live in space.

Frontier settlements, with research going on, etc.

Not sure about procedurally added systems- even KSP's scaled down planets have lots of space. If they flesh them out more, there could be a lot to keep you occupied. Entirely random generated planets might not be able to be as sophisticated.

Though, could be interesting.

I also agree that colonization is an exceptionally enticing goal in a space exploration game. Just take a look at human kind in reality - despite the obnoxious expense, guaranteed sacrifice, and likely failure of it, we continue to explore the idea of colonizing other planets. We write documentaries on it, create television programs, write novels, and make games about it; surely it's a fitting endgame activity.

As far as procedural generation, I like it. I may be a touch biased for my love of Minecraft, but the majority of my favor for seed generated settings is that discovering a new and interesting world is much more exciting, as well as more inviting to a colonization mindset. If your unique universe has a volcanic planet with an outrageously large and active volcano on it, then you know that it's truly an unlikely discovery. Consequently, you are more likely to spend days trying to fund and execute a mission to colonize this treacherous area than you are to spend a few hours colonizing the same big volcano you saw in everyone else's game on Reddit. It's even better if such terrain comes with resource benefits but that's just icing, the cake is the fact that it's your volcano and you get to figure out how to colonize it.

[tater]

I actually agree about randomized planets being very cool.

[swiftgates24]

Endless new random planets to explore after the original system, and more things to do on them.

[dlrk]

What I see as the end game in KSP at present, and what I think could probably be integrated very well in the final product, is colonization. Setting up independent from Kerbin, or interdependent colonies and space stations is a pretty logical goal for KSP.

Another, more quantitative, end game idea would be very hard to research nodes at the end of the tech tree. For example, a warp drive, something like KSPI's Alcubierre drive could be a massively difficult goal at the end.

[Guest]

Game progress is monitored by hidden remote server, and best players are being snatched from homes and loaded into black helicopters ..... wait!

[sal_vager]

Game progress is monitored by hidden remote server, and best players are being snatched from homes and loaded into black helicopters ..... wait!

Actually the highest scoring players are collected by HarvesteR in his personal KerbalX to fly spacecraft for the Kerbals, who existed all along

[dryer_lint]

Actually the highest scoring players are collected by HarvesteR in his personal KerbalX to fly spacecraft for the Kerbals, who existed all along

Credit to XKCD

Clearly, this is all a scam by NASA to easily train new scientists and then recruit them.

The only problem is that half of the top players end up being people like Danny, and then we know what happens...