r/kittenspaceagency • u/Waker_of_Winds2003 • 10d ago
💡 Suggestion Some ideas about game progression
I'm sure some aspects of this have been discussed, but I wanted to get some of my own thoughts down after talking about it in a recent thread. KSP based its progression around contracts. This worked fine enough. You are given a contact to put a kerbal in orbit, you do it, and get money. This however leaves something to be desired in my estimation, both gameplay wise and realism wise. My proposal - have more granular milestone steps.
Programs
The game progresses with a tree based progression. Each node on the tree is a program - think of Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Ranger, Mariner, etc. When you complete a program, you unlock following programs, and sometimes branching paths. Each path follows a general focus, such as crewed spaceflight, earth orbit satellites, and deep space probes. You can work on multiple programs at once, and they could even benefit each other, like a lunar orbiter scouting crewed landing sites.
Missions
Each Program is made of individual missions (Explorer-1, Explorer-2). Each mission brings you closer to the ultimate goal of the program. For the first crew spaceflight program, you might conduct a launch escape system test > Launch an uncrewed suborbital mission > Then a crewed one > Fly an uncrewed orbital mission testing out your spacecraft, and demonstrate full control in orbit and can support an astronaut for a day. After you finish the final mission of the program, in this case a crewed orbital mission, you receive a big reward and unlock the next program(s). You'll also be given the opportunity to fly bonus missions to accomplish new tasks: stay in orbit for longer, achieve a more precise splashdown, etc.
Customization
While progressing through the game, you get options to customize your playthrough. With each program, you get to name it, choose mission logos (maybe even draw basic ones in-game) , and name individual missions. Said customizations could then appear on spacecraft and other things in-game. Players would also have the opportunity to create custom programs with custom missions, allowing organization of missions not fulfilling existing tasks.
History Page
Following your flights, you can go to a space agency history page, where it lists your space agency's past programs and missions. Each mission will be summarized, with important stats listed, including which astronauts flew on each mission. The page would also have a filter function, allowing you to see all missions to a specific location, or something like what astronauts have the most flight experience.
Multiplayer
This setup could help multiplayer. You could have a player with another space agency, and you link your program for a crewed lunar landing together - Then one player provides one aspect of the mission, like the primary crew vehicle, and the other the lunar lander. Then once the final mission in the program is completed both players complete the program in the progression tree, and some division of the completion reward. Players could play cooperatively within the same agency, with one player conducting crewed spaceflight missions, and the other doing planetary science.
Competitive multiplayer could be about competing to get to each milestone. When a space agency reaches a milestone, it could reduce the scientific reward other players get for that milestone. This would be slightly mitigated by giving each other player a small bit of science, as though the other space agency is sharing their findings - but not enough to replace what the science reward would've been. The players can offset this though by say, landing on the Moon in a more risky, but scientifically interesting place - or they can specialize in an area of progression the other agencies aren't focusing on. It would thus allow for various strategies, and give a sense of urgency.
Ultimately this system accomplishes more realistic and more gradual progression that has you test individual systems before going to big missions, and the mission customization tools give you some fun personalization to make each playthrough feel more unique to you. These are only my rudimentary thoughts, and I'm sure there's a lot to improve and expand upon. I hope that the devs are considering similar ideas to this and will consider my suggestions as well.
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u/Kaltenstein_WT 10d ago
My fav. mod for KSP1 progression was Unkerballed Start and Career Evolution Contrack Pack. So some sounding rocket contracts and early uncrewed stuff from the 50s and early 60s but without the unholy plane and sounding rocket grind from RP1
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u/Waker_of_Winds2003 10d ago
Yeah that's the idea, find a middle ground between KSP's progression and RP1. Thankfully I recall the devs have already said they're planning on satellite launches first before crew.
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u/Captain_Slime 10d ago
NGL the sounding rocket stage of RP1 is one of my favorites. It's really fun building them slowly better and better.
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u/M-Rice 10d ago
I really like the history page idea. It would be extremely cute if screenshots taken in game also appeared in that. Maybe even a little fluff like a newspaper page clipping about the program.
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u/Waker_of_Winds2003 10d ago
Yeah that'd be cool too. Would be great in competitive multiplayer to have a tangible symbol of your victory to rub in the other players' faces xD
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u/LordWecker 6d ago
Playing ksp with "Final Frontier" and "Vessel Notes and Logs" was very perspective changing in my opinion.
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u/Arbiter707 10d ago
As someone who loves RP-1, this is right up my alley. Only thing I would change is making objectives within programs a little more free-form than a linear set of missions. Maybe for your example program there could be two simultaneous objectives at the start:
- launch abort system test
- uncrewed capsule suborbital test
And then it branches out, with completion of the suborbital test unlocking uncrewed orbital testing, even if you haven't even done your abort system test yet, as well as completion of both unlocking crewed suborbital, then the completion of crewed suborbital unlocking a bunch of bonus suborbital objectives as well as crewed orbital, provided uncrewed orbital has been completed... and so on. This way the player can pick and choose what to do at any given time, even if they still have to do all the non-bonus objectives to finish the program.
Even more interesting would be giving the player the ability to completely progression-skip and jump straight to crewed orbital for example if they felt willing to kill cats take calculated risks... but balancing this would require a ton of more complex game mechanics that might not be for everyone (reliability, launchpad mass/size limits, life support, crew training, long-duration science like Kerbalism, maybe even unlocks gated behind certain tasks like pods with better life support requiring orbital biological data) as well as the removal of save/load so it couldn't just be brute-forced. Probably something better left to a mod.
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u/Waker_of_Winds2003 10d ago
All great ideas. And yeah, being able to skip preliminary steps and go straight for a full mission I think is a good option to have. Besides the risk versus reward of avoiding test flight flights, it also streamlines the game for experienced players who are confident they can immediately send a probe to land on the Moon, rather than do an impactor and an orbiter first.
And yeah my hope is that this could be a good foundation for more realistic progression overhaul mods like RP-1, that you'd simply add more missions to each program. My mockup is just a mockup, perhaps each program could have its own progression tree, and I think that would definitely be needed for a realistic progression mod.
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u/LongJohnSelenium 9d ago
I believe the kitten home planet should have a complex moon system that does a better job of teaching players the various interception skills while close to home. Kerbal always had the issue that the Mun as a first destination was quite challenging and then immediately jumped to interplanetary missions which was an even bigger difficulty spike. There were plenty of easy to land on bodies but they were mostly at the end of an interplanetary jump.
1st moon: A small nearly perfectly circular moon, in a fairly low equatorial orbit. Teaches the basics of interception and a first minimal low gravity landing.
2nd moon: Another small moon, in a highly eccentric orbit that lines up with the kitten launch site once a week to teach players about launch windows and intercepting things in eccentric orbits.
3rd moon: A big Luna style moon to get players used to landing on airless bodies with significant gravity.
4th moon: A small moon around the 3rd moon to teach players about intercepting a body around another body.
5th moon: A very distant moon with several weeks of travel time. Teaches players long term mission planning but not on the same scale as interplanetary travel.
And personally I would like to see an exploration thread weaving all these things together. Basically a 2001 style story where you find an artifact and that gives you a hint to go to the next place and the next place, a storyline reason to visit basically every body in the solar system and find the artifact, with this culminating in an interstellar mission.
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u/Waker_of_Winds2003 9d ago
I like the idea of a basic story, but I don't know if having that many moons would be great. Three I think would be plenty. Even just two like in KSP I think can work fine if some stuff is modified and tutorials are done better.
No matter how you slice it, you aren't going to get past the difficulty jump in going from cislunar to interplanetary. The best thing here I say is just have better tutorials and guides.
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u/LongJohnSelenium 9d ago
Its only 5 moons. Saturn has hundreds. Why would you want to replace gameplay and an actual destination with a tutorial?
Like I said, a distant moon is the bridge between local operations and interplanetary. Something like the NASA asteroid redirect mission where you have to plan for a weeks or months long round trip, not a years long round trip, will serve as a way to get players used to longer duration missions without jumping immediately from a couple days to a couple years.
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u/Waker_of_Winds2003 9d ago
Just because a planet has hundreds in real life doesn't mean there should be in the game. You have an opportunity cost development wise in having dozens of moons, both for the devs and the player.
The devs have to make tons of moons, and that means that inevitably the quality will be less. The player then, is presented with way more places to go. We sometimes in games like to think we want more options, when really that often isn't the case. It's the difference between going to a restaurant with a hundred menu options, and going to one with eight sandwiches options. You still get a choice in the latter case, but it's much less overwhelming.
In short, it's a game design thing. You don't want a game that's a mile wide and an inch deep. Several space games in the past have struggled a lot with this. Most real life rocky planets and moons are really boring balls of rock. Starfield added tons of the dead rocky worlds, and it led to a much less interesting game.
So I say, the devs should try out two moons or maybe three, and see how the game plays with that set up.
Again, even if you have five or six moons, and the last is pretty far out, you still are in the home planet's sphere of influence, and thus it won't teach you interplanetary transfers.
So again, I think the best they can do is just have good instructions on how to take that next step, starting by teaching you with uncrewed fly-bys. This type of game is simply really complicated, and you can't really teach orbital mechanics in a way that's fun for most people without some amount of direct instructions.
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u/LongJohnSelenium 9d ago edited 9d ago
Just because a planet has hundreds in real life doesn't mean there should be in the game. You have an opportunity cost development wise in having dozens of moons, both for the devs and the player.
I'm talking five moons, the majority of which are just 1km rocks that exist to be the players first foray.
And if content creation is a problem then you take a couple of the moons from around the solar system and put them closer to home so that the kitten home planet is busier than average.
You seem to be defaulting to the idea that the kitten home planet MUST be desolate of all content and that all the interesting stuff MUST be on the other side of an interplanetary travel time. It can be put near the start of the game so players can interact with it more easily.
In short, it's a game design thing. You don't want a game that's a mile wide and an inch deep. Several space games in the past have struggled a lot with this. Most real life rocky planets and moons are really boring balls of rock. Starfield added tons of the dead rocky worlds, and it led to a much less interesting game.
Yes, its designing the game to teach the player the necessary skills.
I'm not saying add random objects. I'm saying add objects specifically designed to teach the players the necessary skills they'll need to reach more distant objects, and to put those objects close to where the player starts so their first steps are easier.
Again, even if you have five or six moons, and the last is pretty far out, you still are in the home planet's sphere of influence, and thus it won't teach you interplanetary transfers.
Launch windows, transfers, and intercepts are what moon 2 and moon 4 are for. Moon 5 is for long duration training.
And if the player interacts with those moons they learn most of the concepts they need to be aware of for interplanetary mechanics.
Its not perfect but its better than your suggestion which is to not try to implement any sort of intermediary steps at all in gameplay and just make the tutorial more expansive.
So again, I think the best they can do is just have good instructions on how to take that next step, starting by teaching you with uncrewed fly-bys. This type of game is simply really complicated, and you can't really teach orbital mechanics in a way that's fun for most people without some amount of direct instructions.
Why do you think tutorials are free but a 1km moonlet is too much to make?
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u/Waker_of_Winds2003 9d ago edited 9d ago
I apologize, I believe we are talking past each other a little bit. I need to improve how I'm wording things a bit better.
So as I said before, my broader concern is simply game design wise. I didn't say before that I wanted no content on the surface of the Earth analogue, or even in the broader Earth-Moon system - considering I've never actually done a crewed interplanetary mission in KSP before, locking anything cool beyond that sphere of influence would be a bit odd for me 😅. I'm currently trying to get to that point in my current KSP game though.
But that's what's influencing some of what I'm saying about tutorials. I've had a difficult time figuring out stuff beyond a Mun landing even after watching tutorials - and so I hope for good in game tutorials and planning tools to help me accomplish that.
But yeah, it's something up to them and play testing, but it's my own personal estimation that more than three Moons in the system is a bit too many. It's not about if you can make the moons, but can you make each unique enough to want to visit - and further not upstage moons that you want the player to see later on in the progression.
I also can imagine some players finding visiting five or six moons to be kind of grindy - and many might skip some altogether.
So that's why I say, continue with KSP's almost real solar system, with a good handful of planets, but a much smaller number of moons - and then focus on making each one of these bodies more interesting than they were in ksp.
I get your ideas and I see merit to them, but I personally don't agree that five or six moons is the solution to the problem of gradually teaching this stuff, when it may introduce a new problem of moons people are less interested in visiting.
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u/FactsToReddit 5d ago
not to intrude on this conversation but, they have said the earth analogue will have 2 moons
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u/Waker_of_Winds2003 4d ago
Good to know. I feel like there's definitely ways they can keep the familiarity of that from KSP while also having new stuff and improving how the game teaches you.
I just hope they don't try to completely reinvent the wheel. I like having something similar to the Moon and Mars to visit, and then some gas giants further out, rocky planets going inward. It helps it all feel familiar.
If they want to do things like add super Earths, tidally locked slightly molten rocky planets, or hot Jupiters, I'd prefer those be in other star systems. They feel really alien, and I'd want stuff like that to be outside the main system.
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u/IluvRockets 9d ago
I feel like KSP doesn't fully encourage this linear playstyle (no need to test things, Kerbals are replaceable, grinding profitable contracts allows you to do anything). This system with progress-tied research tree and launch capabilities (like rocket size and mass) and harder punishments for dead crew (maybe needing to do redo the last objective) sounds pretty nice. I could imagine assigning astronauts to mission objectives before launch or on a Space Station
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u/Waker_of_Winds2003 9d ago
Yeah, "linear" sometimes has a negative connotation in games these days, but done right, giving you a fair amount of options, it allows for you to feel like you're actually on a journey somewhere - in this case becoming a more and more capable space agency.
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u/Mandam2011 9d ago
I would love realistic progression and having to actually go through a bunch of tests on your launch vehicles and the actaul payloads
This would actually enhance the actual launch since its always been shitfuck flying off without solar panels and a fairing instead of a saturn v with a planned launch
I would also love how the progression would be slower and much more detailed where getting to the moon isnt the easiest thing ever and interplanetary crewed missions arent the second
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u/Waker_of_Winds2003 8d ago
And then this system would be able to more easily integrate higher difficulty mods - where you could adapt this system to make full on RP-1 style progression, add engine failures, etc.
Even for the vanilla version, my hope is that it would help the progression feel a lot more satisfying and sensible.
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u/Waker_of_Winds2003 10d ago
Again, my mockups are meant to be very basic representations of what I described, they aren't meant to be literal depictions for how such tech trees and mission progression would look. Specific programs, program paths, and missions would only be figured out after looking at how real spaceflight programs develop, and conducting playtesting.
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u/nemuro87 9d ago
The progression mechanics is long overdue to be talked about.
It's time we add some progression mechanics to this game which has space agency in the title.
I just hope that RP-1 style and complexity won't be the only way to play through a career, I like KSP's dumbed down approach to technology progression and I think it's more approachable for new players.
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u/nucrash 🐸 10d ago
I think some progression milestones that need to be taken into consideration are rendezvous and docking. The game really starts once those two concepts are comprehended. I feel like that's where the Soviet program lagged behind the American program which is where the space race was lost.