Part failures & radiation

[Cassel]

In real life anything can fail at any time, while in game this would be stupid idea to implement random failures, we could have fun having radiation that would make parts fail over time. Exposing your craft too long for strong radiation should trigger failures, just like exposing for too high temperature makes parts overheat.

[linuxgurugamer]

At least 4 different mods exist for this

[MinimalMinmus]

It seems fairly punishing for newer players.

[RatchetinSpace]

This would just be mean. Many people's crafts fail due to design errors,  so trying to trouble shoot design problems would be a nightmare with randomly failing parts.

[pandaman]

Personally i'm not in favour of this as stock.

But if it were to be included then toggle options with default set to 'off' is the way to go IMO.

[Cassel]

6 hours ago, RatchetinSpace said:

This would just be mean. Many people's crafts fail due to design errors,  so trying to trouble shoot design problems would be a nightmare with randomly failing parts.

There is no random failures in my idea. Each part would have durability/radiation resistance just like heat tolerance works, once part if exposed for radiation so long its limit is exceeded, this parts have chance of failing. Player using game UI would be able to see how much radiation is absorbed by each part, same as you can check heating.

This would give some design ideas just like lockheed and martin mars space station where they put tanks around areas that needed protection from radiation. Same things can be done in KSP for example tanks would have huge radiation resistance, while other parts like electronics or laboratory would have lower resistance.

Even kerbal sun could occasionally burst cone of radiation to make game more challenging. Radiation should work like in real life and some part of space would make your part absorb radiation faster while other parts slower, depends where you go and for how long you pass radiation belts etc etc.

[Helmetman]

As long as people can still survive a budget Dv mission to Eeloo doing multiple Eve, Kerbin assist and using Jool/Tylo assists on the way back home spanning many decades with all the part being able to survive then 'yes' this is a good idea.

Meaning it isn't a good idea because what's the point in difficulty if you have to wait several decades for the 1st part to fail?

edit: The greatest threat of radiation is that to astronauts. At best/worst it gives them early cancer, where they wouldn't otherwise. Also, if the ISS survives decades, and the longest ksp missions take decades then at what point during the game progression should I worry? I also don't like having littered spent and broken sattelites throughout my system. Now I need a backup commnet just in case one of them fails at the wrong time? Sorry to say but this is a bad idea, when it comes, it should be a optional thing.

Edited November 10, 2017 by Helmetman

[klgraham1013]

I'm a fan of part degradation over time.  This would eliminate the issue of vehicles failing right off the launch pad, but would still give the illusion of old vehicles getting old.  Engineers could repair parts with spares.  The older the part, the faster the degradation, until you simple need to replace the vehicle.

Before anyone says it.  Yes, this would be a toggle.

[Oiff]

Sounds like it would be quite a big overhead for the system to periodically check all parts on all ships as it would have to first load the ship.  If you have some few hundred part ships around you can expect some major gameplay stutters while it checks them.

If it only checked them while loaded you could avoid ever having a relay fail by just never looking at it.  This would have the negative impact of meaning people won’t want to check in on ships or bases in case a part fails. Certainly I wouldn’t accept any satellite moving contracts if there was a chance the satellite could be broken by a random failure while I’m at it.

 

There are mods that deal with Kerbal health so radiation is doable.

At the moment I just work on the assumption that Kerbals are immune to the negative effects of radiation.  They do however poof quite quickly from heat if you EVA them too close to the sun.

 

[Urses]

23 minutes ago, Oiff said:

At the moment I just work on the assumption that Kerbals are immune to the negative effects of radiation.  

Now it is clear for me... kerbals and kerbelines are renamed Hulks and She-Hulks and as evrybody is one that does not concern anyone....

@topic for radiation to implement in game you need to define a occlusuon factor like for heat. If a object is clipping through it is fully exposed to negative aspects. And in the exampled tanks? Have we to build them clipping in each other to provide a radocclusion? Is the load necessery? Is ore or oxidizer better for prolonging the deflective ability? Is a through "vaporised" by radiation material generates heat abd i can get rid of it by radiators?

And as linuxgurugamer mentioned there are many modes that gives concern to additional negative effects. The big problem vor Vanilla is you dont have abilitys to repair something insitu. Wheels, landing legs were mostly enabled due to the cracken physiks and not for a additional play element. For this aspect is only parachute repack ability to enable a reusability for atmosphere landings.

As a tip for testing plausibilty i would insist, try a moded playthrough with "DangIt!" but without KIS/KAS or OSE and you will see how it will work?

Edited November 12, 2017 by Urses

[NSEP]

I have tried a simulair mod called Testflight before, it adds failure to engines and its an extreme pain to deal with. Im just going to say no to this. Part failure is something for hardcore players tbh.