Sandbox game - improvements

[Yanx]

Hello guys,

I was so impressed by your game than I decided to trust you and to buy it in order to support your efforts in the developpement

Well, my main question : wouldn't it be better in the sandbox game to let the player to choose his amount of money? Not Easy-Normal-Hard but a slider from the strict minimum to infinite money (or almost). And to suppress the prestige because in a sandbox mode the goal is to manipulate as you wish the full contents of the game.
The challenge is within the campaign mode, according to me the sandbox mode is more like a pleasure with any pressure or objectives.

What do you think?

[Sabratha]

Hello guys,

I was so impressed by your game than I decided to trust you and to buy it in order to support your efforts in the developpement

Well, my main question : wouldn't it be better in the sandbox game to let the player to choose his amount of money? Not Easy-Normal-Hard but a slider from the strict minimum to infinite money (or almost). And to suppress the prestige because in a sandbox mode the goal is to manipulate as you wish the full contents of the game.
The challenge is within the campaign mode, according to me the sandbox mode is more like a pleasure with any pressure or objectives.

What do you think?

Thanks for your comment. Its a pretty intriguing idea, I'll pass it on to the devs.

Choosing money just like taht wouldn't be easy, since every few years the amount changes. But perhaps having a wide range of funds level choices would be feasible.

[nats]

Hello guys,

I was so impressed by your game than I decided to trust you and to buy it in order to support your efforts in the developpement

Well, my main question : wouldn't it be better in the sandbox game to let the player to choose his amount of money? Not Easy-Normal-Hard but a slider from the strict minimum to infinite money (or almost). And to suppress the prestige because in a sandbox mode the goal is to manipulate as you wish the full contents of the game.
The challenge is within the campaign mode, according to me the sandbox mode is more like a pleasure with any pressure or objectives.

What do you think?

Thanks for your comment. Its a pretty intriguing idea, I'll pass it on to the devs.

Choosing money just like taht wouldn't be easy, since every few years the amount changes. But perhaps having a wide range of funds level choices would be feasible.

It could be done very simply by just reflecting the amount of your starting pot.

[Yanx]

Thanks for your comment. Its a pretty intriguing idea, I'll pass it on to the devs.

Choosing money just like taht wouldn't be easy, since every few years the amount changes. But perhaps having a wide range of funds level choices would be feasible.

It could be done very simply by just reflecting the amount of your starting pot.[/quote]

Thank you for your answers!

That's just an idea in order to permit to everyone to start with their own initial sum chosen. After the choice, of course it will be the ability of the player to manage his missions (successes and failures) which will determine his account.

Else, I wanted to ask you if it could be possible to improve another element in the game?

In the Assignment screen, when you arrive at a further stage of the game with a long list of employees, it's a quite boring to search who is available or not. Of course, it's possible to click on the tab "VIEW ASSIGNMENTS" but wouldn't it be easiest and quickest to put a specific color or even a mark for each member of the staff occupied or available?
I have sent you a picture to show you what I mean.

[KyleS]

Here are my observations after a playthrough of the sandbox game.

Prestige is quite generous. I was usually one budget ahead, ie had more than achieved the top prestige in each period. And this was with a slow pace of advancement, I didn't achieve a Gemini Direct Ascent moon landing until 1984. Are the prestige awards less generous in the other campaigns? I was awash in cash. Am I meant to be saving up for a manned Pluto landing in the 2090s?

Some of the programmes could be folded into each-other, or else some more need to be split up. The Gemini Direct Ascent programme includes Lunar Flyby and Lunar Orbital, so when it comes to Lunar Probes, why are Lunar Flyby and Lunar Orbital different programmes? There should be some consistency here. Because of this the "max different programmes" of HQ would of course change; if programmes are split we need as many as in the game, if programmes are merged this max number could drop, for example if all the lunar probes were one programme, and all the venus one, all the mars one - we wouldn't need 10 slots in HQ.

It would be good if the system kept track of and displayed the number of missions, both successful and failed, that a particular mission controller or astronaut had been involved in. From my first manned suborbital flight to Gemini landing on the moon, probably half the missions were done by two astronauts, and almost all by 6 or so. It was not surprising that some of them started quitting while the 57yo veteran of a dozen manned missions stayed on happily from 1959 and ended up walking on the moon in 1983 If on their roster sheet we had a "missions - succeeded/total" that'd help.

Further on astronaut experience, just as equipment reliability improves after missions, so too should astronaut skills. If you've actually done an EVA your EVA skill should improve, yes? This ties into the above, in that if putting them in space improves their skills, we have a reason to use more than the 2-3 best astronauts all the time.

I understand you are still looking at giving people choices of what equipment to use for missions, or at least boosters? I was a bit confused when I did a Mariner orbital mission to Venus and already had the Saturn V pushing big Gemini into space, then when I wanted to do a Venera lander needed a different (Proton) booster starting at 5% reliability.

Overall it looks very good.

[Nacho84]

Hello KyleS,

Thanks for your feedback.

Prestige is quite generous. I was usually one budget ahead, ie had more than achieved the top prestige in each period. And this was with a slow pace of advancement, I didn't achieve a Gemini Direct Ascent moon landing until 1984. Are the prestige awards less generous in the other campaigns? I was awash in cash. Am I meant to be saving up for a manned Pluto landing in the 2090s?

Ah, don't worry. In the next build all the prestige system will suffer a major change: now prestige will be mostly tied to the achievement of goals and a very small amount of extra prestige will be granted by completing the mission itself.

Some of the programmes could be folded into each-other, or else some more need to be split up. The Gemini Direct Ascent programme includes Lunar Flyby and Lunar Orbital, so when it comes to Lunar Probes, why are Lunar Flyby and Lunar Orbital different programmes? There should be some consistency here. Because of this the "max different programmes" of HQ would of course change; if programmes are split we need as many as in the game, if programmes are merged this max number could drop, for example if all the lunar probes were one programme, and all the venus one, all the mars one - we wouldn't need 10 slots in HQ.

The reason programs are individual entities it's due to the fact that, when you open a program, you need to pay the program's opening cost along with the cost of all its associated components. If we were to fold, say, all lunar programs into a single one, you'd need to pay a big sum of money in order to open it. Moreover, you might not be interested in getting all the mission components. For example, you might be interested in launching a lunar lander, but not a lunar sample return, so it would be unfair to make you pay the cost for the latter when you're not even interested in it.

It would be good if the system kept track of and displayed the number of missions, both successful and failed, that a particular mission controller or astronaut had been involved in. From my first manned suborbital flight to Gemini landing on the moon, probably half the missions were done by two astronauts, and almost all by 6 or so. It was not surprising that some of them started quitting while the 57yo veteran of a dozen manned missions stayed on happily from 1959 and ended up walking on the moon in 1983 If on their roster sheet we had a "missions - succeeded/total" that'd help.

Further on astronaut experience, just as equipment reliability improves after missions, so too should astronaut skills. If you've actually done an EVA your EVA skill should improve, yes? This ties into the above, in that if putting them in space improves their skills, we have a reason to use more than the 2-3 best astronauts all the time.

Indeed, yes, we're planning to tweak this screen in order to display some extra info. We also have plans to make experience go up after performing a mission.

I understand you are still looking at giving people choices of what equipment to use for missions, or at least boosters? I was a bit confused when I did a Mariner orbital mission to Venus and already had the Saturn V pushing big Gemini into space, then when I wanted to do a Venera lander needed a different (Proton) booster starting at 5% reliability.

Yes, the idea is that now when you open a program you'll only get its payloads (i.e., satellites, manned spacecrafts, space suits, etc). The rockets need to be purchased separately and, when assembling a mission, you'll be able to decide which rocket to use during the launch.

Overall it looks very good.

Thanks! Hope to get more feedback from you once the next update gets released.

Cheers,