Two Mod Ideas: Salaries & Skills and Competing Agencies

[Volt Cruelerz]

For me, the fun of playing KSP (having already done pretty much everything there is to do in the stock game) comes from management mods, particularly things like RT, DRE, and TAC-LS. These mods make the game more than just building rockets and hurling them into space. They force you to concern yourself with more things than just the default when playing the game, but not necessarily in an obsessive numerical sort of way. I've never enjoyed mods that force large volumes of calculations on the player. Some like that, but I don't. As I was perusing the list of mods today, a couple thoughts occurred to me for potential mods. Now, I don't have the knowledge to mod them into the game itself (I'm a programmer, but I have no experience modding KSP or Unity and haven't the time to learn any time in the near future), but nonetheless, I figured sharing them might be a good idea. Who knows, perhaps something such as them already exists and I simply don't know of it. Anyways, without further ado, here are my ideas.

Salaries & Skills

Overview: All hired Kerbals are now paid a salary. This salary depends on their skillset. While in space, this salary increases with longer journeys paying more than shorter ones. Unpaid Colonists can help settle your colonies.

Features

• Kerbals paid a constant rate based on skillset when on Kerbin.
  
• While a Kerbal is not on Kerbin, a multiplier to salary increases logarithmically
  
• While flying untested craft, salary increases
  
• Untested defined as particular craft never flown before. Reusing sub-assemblies from other successful flights reduces the salary increase corresponding to the fact that the craft is untested
  
• Kerbals experiencing particularly high G-loads or nearly out of life support supplies will panic, causing all commands to the crew to be delayed by 0.5 seconds
  
• Skills may be thought of as between 0.00 and 1.00
  
• Skills
  
  • Stupidity: lower stupidity results in higher returns on science experiments
    
  • Bravery: higher bravery corresponds to a lower increase when in an untested craft and more extreme scenarios before panicking occurs
    
  • Sociability: higher sociability corresponds to increased reputation on mission/contract success and improves performance of all other Kerbals
    
  • Engineering: higher engineering corresponds to improved specific impulse, increased crash survival, and improved aerodynamics parts
    
  • Badass: merely launching a mission with a badass Kerbal aboard will result in a reputation boost
    

  [*]Rather than every time you load up the Astronaut Complex getting a new list of candidates, you now get a finite list of applicants per day

  [*]By default, Astronaut applications will usually result in applicants with poor skills.

  [*]A player can improve the skillsets of Astronaut applicants by having a higher reputation and by spending money on recruiting via the Strategies menu

  [*]In addition to Astronaut applicants, after building a base on another planet, a player will receive a daily list of Colonist applicants

  [*]Colonists are unpaid and generally very unskilled

  [*]Both Astronauts and Colonists can be trained to improve skillsets at a cost of funds and the Kerbal being unable to be sent on a mission until training completes.

  [*]Repeated training in a given category costs as much but gives a reduced boost to the skill

  [*]Roles may be assigned to Astronauts at the cost of paying them more

  [*]Roles

  • Commander: all skills averaged to determine boost to contract completion rewards and sociability determines panic resistance boost of crew
    
  • Pilot: bravery and engineering averaged to determine boost to specific impulse
    
  • Engineer: engineering and 1-stupidity averaged to determine boost to joints strength between parts and electrical efficiency
    
  • Scientist: 1-stupidity and sociability averaged to determine boost to data transmission efficiency
    

  [*]There may only be one Commander

  [*]Though there may be multiple pilots, only the pilot with the highest skill's traits are used in calculation (though having multiple pilots could be useful if your ship were to break apart into several smaller ones)

  [*]Higher quantities of scientists or engineers results in increased performance in the category to which that role relates

Competing Agencies

Description: After your reputation reaches 500, other agencies around Kerbin get the idea that maybe they can get in on this space exploration thing, causing them to compete with you for contracts and missions

Features

• After reaching 500 reputation, other agencies will periodically spring up.
  
• Agencies may be divided into two categories: governments and companies
  
• The player may be considered a Government Agency
  
• Governments will have very large budgets and will primarily be concerned with achievements and science
  
• Companies will be primarily concerned with winning contracts and science
  
• Companies will have better profit margins on contracts than governments
  
• The higher the reputation of an Agency, the higher the chance that any incoming contracts will be offered exclusively to that Agency before any other is allowed to bid on it
  
• All existing agencies may choose to bid or not bid on contracts by selecting a minimum monetary payout they would be willing to receive from the contract
  
• Company Agencies may be dissolved if funds hit zero and Government Agencies may be dissolved if reputation remains below 100 for a month (yes, this means the player can actually lose the game)
  
• Reputation passively decays over time
  
• Companies may be bought by other Agencies. If one Agency buys another, the resulting Agency will have the averaged reputation and the summed science and funds
  
• Repeatedly using a sub-assembly makes the use of the sub-assembly cheaper in the future (provided that the sub-assembly is more than some threshold of mass or parts)
  
• Agencies will launch their own craft into space. Objects sent up by other Agencies will show up on the player's map.
  
• Interaction with craft launched by other agencies will be governed by Agreements between Agencies.
  
• Agreements
  
  • Taxi Service: one Agency will provide the lifting capabilities for the other
    
  • Shared Resources: if one Agency sets up a base/station, the other Agency may withdraw resources from it
    
  • Purchased Resources: like shared, but the resources must be paid for in funds. Unless the player's reputation is particularly high, this is far more likely than shared
    
  • Shared Networks: two Agencies agree to use each others' communications networks (only applies if using RemoteTech)
    
  • Rented Networks: one Agency allows another access to its communications network, but at a price (only applies if using RemoteTech)
    
  • Shared Data: two Agencies reduce their personal science generation but gain the science generated by their partner
    

Edited October 29, 2014 by Volt Cruelerz
typos

[Volt Cruelerz]

bumping on account of the fact that kerbals now actually have roles...