Admin strategies off by orders of magnitude?

[Greep]

So it's pretty easy to tell that admin strategies are pretty off by now. But I was pretty amused thinking just what it would take to make me choose something other than outsourced R&D at the beginning of the game.

If I were trying to fund my space mission with funds and R&D, I would need anywhere between 4 and 10 launches and contracts to unlock the launchpad, tracking station and mission buildings, a reasonable starting goal. I think these contract missions give something like an average of 30k funds probably more and about 100 science from the strategy.

Now, let's say I want 30k funds worth of science per launch in the beginning of the game doing a science approach. Let's assume for the moment that you can set commitment to 90%. My first launch I could probably get at most, oh , 20-50 science on hard due to only crew reports being allowed in space. So to get 30k funds from that I would need roughly 800-2000 funds per science. So over one hundred times the current rate. And I would lose the science. And it doesn't really get much better later in the game with the exception of maybe minmus once you get eva and samples, but you need like a million credits to even unlock sampling.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, if any attempt were made to balance these strategies, which is probably pointless, they shouldn't be looking at doubling/halving so much as multiplying/dividing their benefits by dozens to hundreds of times, both for science and rep. The funny thing is, I think other strategies would probably still be worthless, since you can only commit 25%.

So what do you guys think would be a good starting point to balance them? Or just better to right the building off as a fancy science cheat with some gui elements xD

[thereaverofdarkness]

I think the simple balance fix is to multiply the amount of money in it by 100. If you got 100x as much money for selling your science or reputation, it might actually help pay for things. And if buying science or reputation cost a hundred times as uch, it would still be worth doing it when you actually have a shortage.

[Clockwork_werewolf]

I've been playing around with the strategies and adding my own for a hard carrier mode. Firstly I think my funds to science and back are set at 10x the level which is actually OK so far. 20k contract at 25% gives 15K funds and 15 science, which seems about right. The big miss calculation I have at the moment is all around rep. If you don't want it because you need 1,000,000 to upgrade your building to be able to build the larger craft to do a mission then it is a dump stat. When I get back home after Christmas I'm going to try setting rep as worth 1/10th of science and keep rep-money about right. 40 rep at 100% would give about 400 credits, which is nothing and that sounds about right. I've not used any of my custom strategies yet because I'm not at a point to use them yet or they don't suit my play style.

[Kesa]

I've been playing around with the strategies and adding my own for a hard carrier mode. Firstly I think my funds to science and back are set at 10x the level which is actually OK so far. 20k contract at 25% gives 15K funds and 15 science, which seems about right. The big miss calculation I have at the moment is all around rep. If you don't want it because you need 1,000,000 to upgrade your building to be able to build the larger craft to do a mission then it is a dump stat. When I get back home after Christmas I'm going to try setting rep as worth 1/10th of science and keep rep-money about right. 40 rep at 100% would give about 400 credits, which is nothing and that sounds about right. I've not used any of my custom strategies yet because I'm not at a point to use them yet or they don't suit my play style.

10 times stock is also my multiplier. The balance in strategies is made so that if you take looping strategies, you lose a significant but reasonable amount of ressources. So if you want to make the science 10 times worthier compared to funds you also have to make it worthier compared to rep, or make rep worthier compared to funds, or something in between (If you balance just sci/fund, the cycle science -> funds -> rep -> science should create ressources).

I find the balance between rep and science is good, so I'd rather make the rep worthier compared to fund. Maybe 5 times worthier compared to fund, twice less worthy compared to science.

[Clockwork_werewolf]

I probably should have specified all of the exchange rates or that I had loping currencies but long posts make for unread posts.

Present set-up, rep worth too many funds and Sci.

Funds => Rep 0.0041667-0.00520 Rep => Funds 70-90

Sci => Rep 1.1-1.4 Rep => Sci 0.6-0.72

Funds => Sci 0.0027778-0.00347 Sci => Funds 80-100

I'm thinking for the future of

Funds => Rep 0.020833-0.0260 Rep => Funds 14-18

Sci => Rep 11-14 Rep => Sci 0.06-0.072

Funds => Sci 0.0027778-0.00347 Sci => Funds 80-100

[SkyRender]

The science/reputation-to-funds strategies are more in need of adjustment than their counterparts, I find. The imbalance is blatant there, to the point that making them 50 to 100 times more powerful restores the balance nicely. Cutting the funds-to-science/reputation boosts to 1/10th to 1/20th their current level, by contrast, fixes their imbalance. This is all in the current contract system payout frame of reference, of course, so these rate differences could easily change if contract payouts were adjusted.