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(Or idea to toss at Modders) Litterbug: Hazardous rocket failures are dangerous and expensive


AdmiralTigerclaw

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So the idea comes to me at a thought of an old existing mod, Range Control (Blow up your rockets should something go wrong).

In a game where the entirety of Kerbin is an empty field except for KSC, what's the point of something like Range Control?

Then an idea came to me. If we put the thought that kerbin is a highly populated planet (you just can't see it), what would a government likely do if your half disintegrated rocket crashed down into a continent, or your space debris deorbited into a large city? Fines. Not just fines, but massive, MASSIVE fines. (And of course, jail time for the people in charge, but this is a game.)

So I have the following idea for a mod concept.

I've named it 'Litterbug' as per the title.

Very simple concept, if a rocket or rocket part explodes at/above a certain velocity upon impact with Kerbin, you get fined, big time. Punitively.

From a technical standpoint, the mod works as such:

The mod detects when a part crashes down into Kerbin and performs a biome check. 'Safe' biomes include KSC, Ocean, Polar, Desert (Maybe), and Mountain (Maybe)' Biomes. If the part crashes in that whitelist, nothing happens. If the part crashes down anywhere else on Kerbin, it is considered to have landed in a population area, and thus a massive violation of safety standards and/or caused a minor disaster. The mod then assesses the Fund value of the part, adds a multiplier (starting with say, 10x and balanced from there), and slams you with a safety violation fine that HURTS.

The desired result? The player must now actively be aware not only of exploding rockets, but launch directions, jettisoned stages, and deorbit paths. Or be ready to face HEAVY (but editable as balance is worked out) fines for carelessness.

Stage 1 of said mod would be developing those params.

Stage 2 would be modifying it to detect for differences in vehicle, such as an aircraft launch vs a rocket launch.

An Example and a why:

A disintegrating rocket would only have some of its parts rain down as many of them might explode in the sky. But an aircraft/spaceplane is more likely to crash and burn whole, or at least, most of the parts will survive to impact. Not to mention an attempted surface landing in a random location for a contract might have the aircraft 'bounce' and then roll and disintegrate. Resulting in a 'rocket crash' fine.

Plus, it's been my experience that even small planes easily have double the cost on a rocket, so the fine multiplier would turn a 60,000 fund aircraft into a 600,000 fund career-ending disaster. Stage 2 of this mod would need to distinguish vehicle types, as well as some kind of rudimentary crash 'type' detection.

As a couple of additional details of thought, the mod would need a timer and buffer to start at the first detected crash and part. If the mod detected each part raining down from a crash event as an incident, it would spam the message box with 'mini' fines. A timer feature would simply be one that starts upon the first detected impact, then begin counting down for say, thirty seconds to a minute, tallying up the parts and resetting the timer each time one hits. When it's all done and the countdown reaches zero, it would add up the damages and slap one message down.

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