BGF_Yankee

That's really what I'm talking about Doozler. Right now, there's no real penalty if you kill/lose a Kerbal. If you spend the time and effort to upgrade him so that he's better at his job, it will be much more costly and cause more of a setback to your program in the long run. Anything that extends the gameplay or makes it more interesting/thought provoking is welcome!!

Why not just keep it simple? Require a pilot to fly every craft with a Kerbal onboard. Without a pilot, you can't control the craft at all. That pilot/person can do limited science. By adding additional members of various specialties, it fine tunes or hones the amount/quality of science you receive. Different crew make-ups give you a different total of science. If you only send a pilot to Mun (for example in the beginning), it will require multiple reports/samples to achieve 100% science in that biome. By sending a multi-crew, you can accomplish this in less time/tries. Honestly, with the game in its current state, I bore of so quickly being able to do the science in a particular location. Give it more of a challenge and with that, make it more of a complete game instead of a 1 and done mentality. I also like the ideas listed above. When the crewmember gains experience from missions/flights, they are able to do more things, i.e. pilots would be able to see further into future orbits to plan nodes further out or flight specialists would be able to plan more precise maneuvers or a scientist with experience would get more than one use out of a goo container/science jr. module. I like the tech tree in that it gives you things to work toward, but think that in career mode, this could give more gameplay.