Koins! Gather funds from the environment

[ultrasquid]

Right now Funds come from accepting and completing contracts. But, what if they were just sitting around the place waiting to be picked up?

Since the early days of video games, there have been those that involved gathering markers to accumulate points, such as Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros., Sonic The Hedgehog, and many others. Why not on Kerbin too? At the KSC alone the coins or whatever treasure marker you decide upon could be arranged along the service roads and stairwells of the buildings, and other locations could have fields of gold around them too. This would encourage rover and EVA exploration. Some could even be midair targets that must be collided or shot down with a spaceplane.

The coins should individually be of low value (1-100√) so that while being a fun diversion they aren't so valuable they take away form the main game mechanic of accepting contracts. They might respawn, but slowly, say a year of game time after being first collected, for the same reasons.

This idea isn't fully fleshed out. There are lots of adjustments to be made, and I have no idea how to implement it or even if it could be within the constraints of the game engine. Anybody else have any thoughts on this?

[RainDreamer]

Well, if we want to make money from exploration of the environment, we have resource gathering mods for that. Hauling a few hundred ton of karbonite back to kerbin does give us some nice kash.

But the idea is nice as an Easter egg.

Or, we can modify surface survey contract this way, because that is what basically we do - going from place to place to collect data. Now turn that data to koins.

[Slam_Jones]

Maybe instead of coins, you can pick up rocks or something on other bodies, which your Kerbal "sells" upon returning to KSC for whatever small sum they add up to.

Putting physical coins out there sounds too much like Mario for me

[ultrasquid]

Could be gems or crystals or whatever, carefully arranged on trails or distributed in more natural patterns, or both. I figured their value wouldn't add into the total funds until the kerbal who collected them was recovered.

Still very much at the "throwing ideas against the wall" stage.

[longbyte1]

KSP: free to play edition, right?

[ultrasquid]

KSP: free to play edition, right?

Good lord I hope not.

[ultrasquid]

I just would like to give an excuse for Kerbals to get out of their vehicles and run and jump around for a while, rather than just take a surface sample, plant a flag, and go home.

[tater]

First (and required) mod would be to delete this.

[Scientist]

id go with surface samples can make cash, first sample is science, future samples get a cash value, shouldnt be a hard mod to make, check if that science task is complete, if not get science, if done get cash, or some flat cash value regardless, not quite the road of resource mining, but closer to rock gathering to sell to rock collectors

[ultrasquid]

Does the technology for this already exist in a mod, or in the Unity engine ?

I figure the following things need to happen, though I'm sure there is a lot of deeper stuff involved in actually programming it.

1. target objects are spawned at ground level

2. kerbal collides with target object

3. object disappears and other effects

4. points are registered

Seems fairly straightforward to me, but again, I'm no programmer.

[*Aqua*]

@ultrasquid

I'm sorry but it's not that easy.

1) Under what circumstances are the objects spawned? Are there more than one? If yes, how many? Needs there to be a minimum distance between the target objects? Should there be only one target per EVA? Or per mission?

2) Collisions? Not right-clicking it (like everything else in KSP)? Why? Is there a limit how many objects a Kerbal can collect? What should the player do if he hit the limit?

3) Ok. But what effects? A sound? A popup? Explosions? (^^)

4) Immediately? Or at recovery? Or should it be processed somehow to generate cash?

[ultrasquid]

re 1&2: In my vision there would be hundreds of these objects arranged in patterns that facilitate running and jumping. Right-clicking to retrieve each one would be mind-numbingly tedious. They would appear when a kerbal approaches their area, and would respawn after a significant delay from their moment of collection (this interval could be variable, but long enough to keep a player from standing around and waiting for them).

3. A sound, a small particle effect, and a number indicating the object's value, for example.

4. The value of the collected objects would go into a Kerbal's pocket (probably a new custom resource), which would then be converted to Funds upon recovery.

[*Aqua*]

1 & 2)

Play Super Mario, not KSP!

Collecting while running over it doesn't really fit the KSP universe which tends to go the realistic way. You'll have a hard time explaining why collection doesn't need an action. I can even imagine people building rovers with Kerbals attached at the sides. Then they only have to drive around.

Respawning isn't a good idea too. A player would just timewarp any delay.

3)

Sounds more and more like the generic jump'n'run game.

4)

So there is a limit how much a Kerbal can carry? Pockets and command pods usually have limited sizes.

Also what about the value of a "red bean"? 1-100 funds isn't a lot.

What about earlier in the game when every "fund" counts but EVA operations are out of the question (building must be upgraded before, no good lander or rover tech available)? And what about late game when you don't care about a couple thousand funds?

I mean, is there a really a reason, necessity and possibility to collect money? In the early game he can't do a lot of EVA because of tech/building/action limitations, in the late game he don't care about a few bucks.

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea to collect stuff on EVA. But you should think more about it to flesh it out more.

For example instead of hundreds of object at a site I imagine only about 5 to 10. And they are of different kinds which gives different bonuses at recovery (stones -> science; nuggets -> funds; crystals -> reputation or something like that). The Kerbal's pocket and command pods storage should be limited (maybe 10-20 units?) so the player has to think about what he wants to take with him instead of running around like crazy and grabbing everything he can. The value of a collected object should be bound to the player's progression (tech level? building level? something other?). The what kinds of objects he can find should be bound to the location (or biome?).

Edited January 10, 2015 by *Aqua*

[ultrasquid]

I'm thinking more in terms of added play value than realism, but you've raised some good points. The types and values of these treasures could be biome specific, and some might respawn while others would not (mushrooms vs. minerals, for example). But to encourage exploration, perhaps there would be dozens of low value objects and only a few high value ones that offer special bonuses in difficult-to-reach places at the end of these trails.

[biohazard15]

Sorry, wrong game.

[ultrasquid]

We're talking about a mod here. If you don't like it you don't have to use it, but don't go dissing the idea.

[*Aqua*]

Ok, you want to have a jump'n'run mod. That's fine by me. This mod should be easily transformable in a "serious science" mod. Maybe it can serve both kinds of play at the same time too.

There are still some open questions:

You wrote the red beans (that's what I call the collectible stuff for now) are a resource. A resource in the game is always limited. What should be the limit?

Or should there be a new system which allows infinite sized pockets?

What about the respawn delay? A player can just timewarp.

[ultrasquid]

If somebody would rather stand around while their lander crashes into the Mun, that's their business. That's why the red beans have low value. I don't want to take away from the main focus of the game. Just give a fun mini-game aspect to exploring all these open worlds.

Besides, resources are not necessarily limited. There is all the liquid fuel and oxidizer we could ever need so long as the tanks are paid for.

Anyway, I'm tired of arguing the merits of the idea. I seek guidance on how to actually make it happen.

[*Aqua*]

You'll have to write a plugin and create a red bean model.

The plugin will handle spawing, despawning and collecting of the beans.

Have a look at this post which covers a lot about KSP modding.

[hab136]

Running around collecting Koins like Super Mario Brothers sounds ridiculous.. and fun. Not all mods have to be super-serious science!

* BURGER MOD! Now with RADIALLY-ATTACHED BACON!

* Banana For Scale

* NyanCat

* Jack-O-Lanterns

* External Commode Seat

* Pro Props

* X-MAS

* Bargain Rocket Parts

>1. target objects are spawned at ground level

It's possible to spawn new ships, such as a 1-part "Koin" ship.. EPL does that, as does Custom Asteroids. HyperEdit can move ships to being landed somewhere on a planet, so that might be interesting as well.

>2. kerbal collides with target object

>3. object disappears and other effects

>4. points are registered

EPL's Recycle Bin works like 2-4.. when one ship collides into another ship's Recycle Bin part, it despawns one ship and then adds resources to the other.

The idea certainly seems possible. Not easy, but possible.

There's really going to be several parts:

1. Designing a "Koin" part (modeling, texturing, etc)

2. Writing the code to spawn Koins, detect collisions

3. Creating graphics effects, point systems or other reasons to actually bother collecting Koins

You can skip part 1 by just copying any other part and renaming it (for example the Oscar-B fuel tank). If #2 doesn't work, there's no point in doing #1 or #3.

[Engineer of Stuff]

This is awesome!

[ultrasquid]

After doing some research into existing mods and a bit of thought, contract mission waypoints are a form of "red beans" already supported in the game. By using Contract Configurator and In-Flight Waypoints I should be able to build at least a crude proof-of-concept.

[Kalecgros]

This concept sounds really appealing to me. I feel like it could work like Kethan and Karbonite, you could have Scansat search for the "Koins", Although perhaps having them as form of geological surface sample would be more appropriate, Then set out on a mission to go recover this type of "resource" Thus giving more use for rovers or general EVA exploration also making "collect surface sample" less mute. Of course you could also just practice your targeted landing. Just like with other resource mods, you could have specific cargo bins to store the koins, i do like the idea of only having a limited amount to carry as EVA. And then once you recover you must take it back to KSC in order to sell them. This idea could also be incorporated into contract, but might defeat the original purpose, where you are assigned to collect X amount of "koins" from eastern crater of mun.

I think it would be pretty nifty to include some sort of catalog GUI to keep track of where you have collected from and prices and such, make it playable for sandbox. I know the RnD archives does something similar but for some reason I am not a fan of that system. I honestly would not be too concerned with the actual value of the "koins" whether be funds or science, I would be more interested in actually going out and recovering them, I suppose very similar to the survey reports but with a little more added game play. In my opinion, this could extend the game play of setting up bases. Hope all this makes some sense, my thoughts kinda were running way too quickly.

Edited January 17, 2015 by Kalecgros

[ultrasquid]

This concept sounds really appealing to me. … I honestly would not be too concerned with the actual value of the "koins" whether be funds or science, I would be more interested in actually going out and recovering them, I suppose very similar to the survey reports but with a little more added game play. In my opinion, this could extend the game play of setting up bases. Hope all this makes some sense, my thoughts kinda were running way too quickly.

Thanks, that's very much how I feel about it too. I'm also thinking about things like alien artifacts that could be collected to open secret branches of the tech tree that reveal bizarre new parts, but that's for much later.

First thing is just to see if I can make the basic idea work.

[Kalecgros]

What kind of bizarre parts you thinking? What would they do?

Further thinking on the idea, perhaps you could have the "hotspots" be a general location to get you started digging but have two different types. Say dirt and crystal. You have to keep searching for the crystal but end up with more junk you'll have to sift through. So it's not just land click take surface sample and leave. You'll have to maybe take what the kerbal can carry to your vessel process it then clear it out if you failed to find the target sample. Rinse repeat. I admit though if the percentage is far to low it will become rather tedious and too grindy. You could have the regular common dirt be worth for example 1 fund and 1 science so it's not entirely worthless but raise the values for the "rare" sample. If you bring a container than can only hold 20 samples maybe have the rare sample take up more space given it's preciousness. So you choose to bring home 20 mün dirt or 10 mün dirt and 1 mün crystal and have filled the box. Again hope I'm able to convey my idea well enough to make sense.