I don't feel connected to my stations and outposts (from Reddit)

[BudgetHedgehog]

Quoted verbatum from /u/d4rch0n on Reddit. I do agree with it entirely and I would love for contracts to be related to each other rather than being "do this! Now do this completely unrelated thing!" and seeing as they're the only source of income in career, it'd be nice if they actually added to the gameplay, rather than being just a requirement for it. Even if you just add on to crew ferrying contracts, it becomes a whole lot more immersive. "Do a crew swap on Station [stationname]" or "a VIP wants to visit [stationname] for a few days. Take him there and bring him back in 5 days time" or [kerbal] has gotten sick/bored in [stationname]. Bring them back home safely" or whatever... I mean, I get the satellite contracts, a company wants to have one there and it's none of my business afterwards, I'm ok with that. But I'd like for their to be satellite contracts that I, as a runner of space program, can use - bring in map scanning, or orbital science parts, or some kind of communication relay needed etc. Anyway, this is the reddit post:

"I love the new missions, like create a surface outpost on Minmus, but I definitely think there's a ton of room for improvement here.

My main criticism is that you drop them and forget about them... and even by the mission goals, it has to be "a new outpost developed for the agency". It's sort of depressing. I put a lot of heart and soul into building something that looks pretty, and then I drop it on the Mun and I never hear from them again, apart from maybe the "Place a flag on the Mun" missions that I can complete for free. Anything else I want to do with the outpost is akin to sandbox mode, and thus a waste of money that could be spent upgrading buildings.

Why can't we have a continual progression of things we build? Why do we send satellites and stations in orbit, then forget about them? Imagine an ISS that you initially place a cupola module, power, antennae and 4 kerbal living spaces. Suddenly, that opens up a tree of missions where you can deploy the science module with a lab, or the power module, that has can provide X electricity per second with solar panels, or the habitat module that can house 16 kerbals. Maybe I need to first get adequate satellite coverage before I can build the station.

And the new modules must go towards the station you just created. Missions are linked together. That means you need to rendezvous and think about things from the very beginning. Any oversight from a previous mission (docking port placed strangely) means that you have just that much more difficulty in placing the rest of the modules together.

After you place the power module, maybe that opens up the science module with all the science parts. Maybe finally you need to attach a rocket module and send the thing into Mun orbit! And if you do, that creates a whole tree of things to do there. You could choose the Mun, or Minmus, or Duna and the missions related to that space station change appropriately. I'd like a mission that says I need to get a rover to the station, pick up the pilot of the station, then bring him down to the Mun and ride around. I want a connection between my missions and the kerbals that completed them.

I think that is what I feel is mostly missing from career mode right now. There's no story. Missions which continuously evolve depending on decisions you make would create a story. Instead of a story, it's literally a checklist.

Maybe the entire framework of career mode isn't best suited to continuous progression and linking to specific ships that you've built and kerbals that piloted them, but this is how I'd want to play the game. I want to complete the ISS tree of missions and be able to look at this huge lopsided thing that took me days to finish. I want to be able to tell a story about a string of missions I've finished, rather than check a bunch of checkboxes and say "Okay, I just got 5 kerbals on wheels on the Mun, now I'm going to send a new satellite in a polar orbit of Duna." It's more like a scavenger hunt than a space program, and sometimes they can be extremely tedious (get a crew report from point MOL-X2 on the surface, ADR-04 flying above 10,200 meters...).

I have to say it again: I love the new changes that were brought in. I just think that a lot more could be done with it."

Edited December 30, 2014 by ObsessedWithKSP