Suggestion: Possibility of Malfunctioning Parts?

[Stevenator1]

Though it is interesting, I like the idea that Skunky had brought up a few days ago, of a 'campaign' style game.

By doing more mining, researching, production, you can come up with more efficient, more reliable parts.

Of course the sandbox phase of the game, giving perfect stats and perfectly reliable parts, would remain available.

[Max Grant]

Yes, but we want them to break SOME MORE!!!!!!! ;P ;P ;P ;P

MOAR EXPLOSHUNS!

[Ted]

Though it is interesting, I like the idea that Skunky had brought up a few days ago, of a 'campaign' style game.

By doing more mining, researching, production, you can come up with more efficient, more reliable parts.

Of course the sandbox phase of the game, giving perfect stats and perfectly reliable parts, would remain available.

I think that style of game was always going to be the end result for KSP, although the tech tree he suggest was original.

I really do like the idea of reliability improving with research, maybe not even reducing random events but allowing the player to utilise struts etc.

[Awaras]

i dunno about youse guise, but I cause PLEN-TEE of my own failures all the time, and they are plenty exciting and usually with violent explosions. I sort of endorse this notion, but between the slapdash Wile E. Coyote engineering that this game explicitly encourages, and the Buzz Lightyear vibe of the characters themselves, this game has all of the slapstick of those old film reels of wacky (and unworkable) airplane designs that they always play when someone\'s doing a documentary on the Wright Brothers. I was looking at some sequence of screenshots, and I thought it would be a blast to put some of that rinky-dinky piano stuff to a clip of Kerbal creations blowing up, flying off in unexpected directions, falling over flat on the pad, and so forth.

I mean, I\'ve had launches where one of my boosters just falls off, FALLS THE F**K OFF, leaving me in a world of hurt and etcetera. I have also done launches where my main liquid engine is inexplicably left behind on the pad. And now that I\'ve played with the fixed camera mod, it is really enjoyable to switch to one of those views and watch my whole rocket shake like a three-day drunk. One recent launch I did, I re-launched about six times with various canards and strakes tried out because inevitably, the moment I detached my SRBs my ship would enter a near-perfect axial spin, which I\'ve never seen happen before, and I COULD NOT get rid of it. I got it with three boosters. I got it with four boosters. I got it with strakes, canards . . . I eventually settled on a four-way symmetry with the canards mounted lower on the final stage, and that finally killed it.

So, I\'m not sure we need to request additional programmed failures.

Interestingly enough I just spent about 3 days going through every Wiki article I could find on the space program. Invariably the explosions and disasters in the real space program turn out to be because some doofus forgot to close a switch, remove a tool, or in some of the more painfully (and unnecessary) events, people routinely ignored a known, dangerous problem because it didn\'t hit them the first 8-10 times they let it slide -- until it literally blew up in their (and their poor pilot and crews\') faces. So most of the time, problems with rocket equipment are due to technician error or engineering boondoggle.

Yes, but see, the kind of failures we have right now are design failures: The same kind of thing that you see in those old videos of flight pioneers trying to fly their ridiculous 100-wing airplanes or wildly spinning sombrero helicopters, the first V2 launch failures and the first american vanguard rocket explosions. Our rockets will fail spectacularly until we LEARN how to build them, but after that, we will get an occasional glitch but otherwise we will know how to build a ship to do what we want it to.

What this thread is about is simulating the myriad of half-assed kerbals that are actually assembling the rocket, accidentally dropping their chewing gum into the main fuel line during final systems check and that sort of thing... It is about being encouraged to think about contingencies and backups. About the sense of accomplishment that would follow from recovering from an unplanned systems failure and getting your crew back home anyway Apollo 13 style (or failing miserably, as the case may be).

[malcheus]

I would like the idea, because it would add a chalenge, and it would force us to sometimes deviate from the plan and adapt to a new situation.

Sure, you are not going to make it to the mun, because your orbital maneuvring stage just broke in half, but are you going to get those poor little kerbals back alive? This may be an even tougher challenge then the planned mission.

Furthermore, it would add to the stories that this game generates. Sure, you landed on the mun without mechjeb, join the 1000\'s of other people who did that. But its a way cooler story if your rocket malfunctioned halfway through the flight and you managed to save the day.

I think nowadays players only think about success, and the only good story is a success story. Illustrative for this: starting to loose an RTS game, quickload to 3 minutes back, send your forces to the side where the surprise atack will come from in 2 minutes.

[what-the]

I would only really like to see malfunctioning parts on unmanned flights. The unmanned flights are controlled by the computer (path and everything that happens chosen by the player) and they happen in real time with other flights and manned flights. When a part fails it will alert you and you could see the problems that arise because of the failed part. You will be able to select any other possible alternatives for the flight like abort transfer and wait for docking or just watch it blow into smithereens.

[Vostok]

Malfunctioning parts would have to be deteriorative.

I.E. a part would malfunction, you would be notified. The part\'s functionality would decrease slowly over time, until it finally ceases. During the functionality deterioration, you could send some EVA-ing Kerbals to fix it, or just jettison it. For some parts, a full deterioration would result in an explosion, for others it would just stop working. Once it stops working, you can no longer repair it.

I.E. engines, RCS thrusters would explode

Fuel tanks might explode, or just vent fuel.

Landing legs, Life support, fins, SAS would just stop working.

For a malfunctioning ASAS it would begin to stop correcting heading correctly, correct to a random heading, not allow SAS to be turned on, etc. Just become an annoyance.

When an explosive part is repaired, it stays at the level of damage it was when it was repaired (for things like leaking fuel tanks, broken engines, damaged life support, SAS modules, Lander legs), but some cases would return to full functionality (Like ASAS, parachutes)

[trbinsc]

I think that under normal circumstances the chances of a malfunction should be extremely, extremely low, but if you use your parts beyond what they were designed to handle, like letting engines stay overheating for long periods of time, using the ASAS to correct crazy spinning, or giving pretty much anything a strong enough whack, then their chances of malfunctioning would go up tremendously. Also, you should be able to repair thing by doing an EVA if they aren\'t damaged enough, but some things just can\'t be fixed. Also, the crew should have a fixed amount of 'duct tape' or something, so if a whole lot of things are broken, then you would only be able to fix the things vital to the survival of the crew.

I also think that we need to get some sort of a list of ways parts could malfunction, like RCS ports getting stuck open and fuel tanks venting.

[Endeavour]

I think that under normal circumstances the chances of a malfunction should be extremely, extremely low, but if you use your parts beyond what they were designed to handle, like letting engines stay overheating for long periods of time, using the ASAS to correct crazy spinning, or giving pretty much anything a strong enough whack, then their chances of malfunctioning would go up tremendously. Also, you should be able to repair thing by doing an EVA if they aren\'t damaged enough, but some things just can\'t be fixed. Also, the crew should have a fixed amount of 'duct tape' or something, so if a whole lot of things are broken, then you would only be able to fix the things vital to the survival of the crew.

I also think that we need to get some sort of a list of ways parts could malfunction, like RCS ports getting stuck open and fuel tanks venting.

This. That\'s a great idea. I especially like how some things can be repaired while others can\'t.

[naloxone]

1) i\'m pretty sure they already do this. I have struts randomly pop, decouplers stick, etc off on designs I\'ve flown successfully dozens of times.

2) there would need to be a better way to incorporate redundancy to marginalize any failures. In the example of the parachute, say you have 3 instead of 1.

[GoodGuy]

I think we are killing them so fast that part malfunctions may not make a noticeable impact

[DomAzaris1996]

1) i\'m pretty sure they already do this. I have struts randomly pop, decouplers stick, etc off on designs I\'ve flown successfully dozens of times.

2) there would need to be a better way to incorporate redundancy to marginalize any failures. In the example of the parachute, say you have 3 instead of 1.

1) But they arent of poor quality parts, they are of design flaws, or game glitches... I want these failures for perfect, tested rockets when the game coding is better :]

2) And yeah i was thinking somthing like that :]