Penalties for leaving debris in orbit in careermode

[TheCardinal]

Perhaps it has been suggested before, if so, sorry for my shortsightedness.

Every furfilled contract awards a financial reward. My suggestion is to give a penaltie when debris is left in (a stable) orbit. The penalty should depend on the weight of each piece of debris. If a lot of debris is left in orbit, the fine should even be larger than the awarded amount.

[Codraroll]

Conceptually, I agree with the idea, but you need to specify the conditions better. Tying it to contracts could be problematic, since at which point would the contract look for debris? Contracts such as "test engine in orbit around Kerbin" tends to decouple a piece of debris at the same moment the engine is activated, thus generating the penalty at the very moment the contract is fulfilled.

Meanwhile, contracts for building space stations can involve several launches while working on the contract, and you may even do multiple at the same time. Send a station module to the Mun, alongside a lander which nabs a flag-planting contract on the same trip. How would the game know which pieces of debris belong to what contract?

[Van Disaster]

How would it know I'm not going to go and clear up later once I've fulfilled the main objective, too? "left in orbit" needs a really tight definition for this to work. Perhaps what should happen is periodically the game should check for any debris own by me, and if it's older than some threshold *then* give me a fine. You'd have to disable blowing it up from the tracking station then ( or make that cost ).

Also, debris slider -> 0, win \o/

Edited September 30, 2016 by Van Disaster

[evileye.x]

Kinda pointless and unrealistic

[John FX]

Some `debris` I leave behind is my payload.

[Magzimum]

That would make the learning curve even steeper for the newbies. It should not be a part of the stock career game in normal settings. Perhaps an option for experienced players at the "hard" setting.

[pandaman]

I like the concept, but I fear this is one of those ideas that sounds great until you start thinking about the details, then it becomes a lot harder to do...

How does the game 'know' its actually debris and not something you want to keep, but just haven't renamed yet?  You can just terminate it or rename 'debris' to 'ship' and cheat the system anyway.... etc.

Maybe simply having your screen cluttered with debris and the potential (however slim) risk of actually hitting something is penalty enough?

[Hupf]

How about tying the "Terminate" button to a fee, thus encouraging the players to recover the debris themselves?

The motivation to do so at all should be left to the player IMHO

[tater]

You'd also need to add orbital decay on the rails.

[Trann]

36 minutes ago, Hupf said:

How about tying the "Terminate" button to a fee, thus encouraging the players to recover the debris themselves?

The motivation to do so at all should be left to the player IMHO

This is a viable in-game scenario: fee could be based on a calculation of mass, distance, and/or parent body.  I wonder if a mod can be hooked into that Terminate button?

[Wjolcz]

I don't think that's necessary.

[John Cochran]

I generally like this idea, however the game would have to actually run physics on the debris or otherwise take into account that the orbit intersects the atmosphere. Can't tell you the number of times I've had a kerbal perform reentry and perform the last stage separation just before hitting atmosphere. Result? One crew module landed on the ground and some debris in an atmosphere intersecting orbit that never decays. If the debris aren't destroyed before getting about 2.5 kilometers away from the manned craft, then the physics engine stops modeling them and they stay in a nice stable orbit forever. When that happens, I'm left with two choices, either destroy them from the tracking station, or "fly them" by selecting them from the tracking station and simply wait, and wait, and wait some more while the physics engine actually has their orbit decay until they impact the ground. 

[eddiew]

I just set max debris to zero... 

[KSK]

Not a big fan of this idea to be honest. Adding contracts to have the player remove junk from orbit would be cool, although those contracts would probably run into the same problems involved with identfiying genuine junk that others have pointed out already.

But imposing a penalty on players for leaving junk, especially at the beginning of a career game when they have the least number of options for dealing with it - that seems a bit harsh.

[Tyko]

totally brainstorming - and I wouldn't want this for easy or normal levels - but at harder settings you could have a slight chance for debris impacts damaging vessels. That chance would be assessed based on the number of debris objects you had in orbit. You'd suddenly have an in-game reason for reducing debris.

( @pandaman's comments about renaming things noted, but you can almost always cheat in some way. This would be hard mode for people who wanted a challenge and presumably wouldn't be looking to cheat out of something they asked for)

[pandaman]

1 hour ago, tjt said:

totally brainstorming - and I wouldn't want this for easy or normal levels - but at harder settings you could have a slight chance for debris impacts damaging vessels. That chance would be assessed based on the number of debris objects you had in orbit. You'd suddenly have an in-game reason for reducing debris.

If the chance of impact was connected to actual debris being in a position to potentially impact a vessel, as a way of bypassing the fact that stuff on rails just can't, then yes that could be a neat difficulty option. 

[Tyko]

6 minutes ago, pandaman said:

If the chance of impact was connected to actual debris being in a position to potentially impact a vessel, as a way of bypassing the fact that stuff on rails just can't, then yes that could be a neat difficulty option. 

I was actually thinking more in terms of a generalization that wouldn't require tracking each piece. Just run a check of how many pieces of debris are in orbit and use that to calculate a % chance of bad things happening to vessels in orbit. This would be a lot simpler than tracking every single piece and running every possible encounter while still achieving the goal of penalizing players for leaving a lot of trash in orbit. I guess you could even do it by altitude bands (LKO/MKO/HKO) if you wanted some degree of resolution, but I was looking for something relatively simple to implement that would still give a feel for the risks.

[pandaman]

I get your point, but to me that's just 'random failure' by the back door. 

If it took stuff like 'amount of debris at a similar altitude and inclination' and used that as a basis for randomisation then I could possibly think if it as viable. 

[Tyko]

2 minutes ago, pandaman said:

I get your point, but to me that's just 'random failure' by the back door. 

If it took stuff like 'amount of debris at a similar altitude and inclination' and used that as a basis for randomisation then I could possibly think if it as viable. 

Totally fair   once we accept that we're not modeling each piece of debris and each possible collision it's just a matter of deciding what level of orbit resolution is necessary to balance feel and performance/coding effort.

[Vaporized Steel]

Why not fiddle with the general idea a bit and have funds/rep awarded for removing debris once it's there.

Because being penalized for something you might not even want to do anyway is silly. But you can be awarded this way if you choose to accept these missions.

I only recommend these missions get unlocked while already having the Claw as a part. Otherwise bringing debris down can be quite te hassle.

 

[pandaman]

@Vaporized Steel,  not a bad idea, the penalty for leaving it there would be the fact that it's still there.

Contracts to de-orbit it are certainly viable.  Maybe have a 'standard' reward of say 1 reputation for each piece de-orbited (rather than terminated), that way by simply designing your launch stages to de-orbit you get the reward.

[Clockwork13]

This would be a huge waste of money though. You'd spend far more trying to shoot debris out of the sky than actually going places.

[tg626]

I always build my missions to be self cleaning.  

For example, munar missions drop stages in atmosphere.  Final boost into translunar orbit either A) set on a collision course with the mun, with the CSM/LM adjusting to free return after separation, or B) set to free return with a probe core on the booster so I can adjust to impact after separation (like later Apollo missions)

I also do disposal burns of satellite launchers to simulate the natural decay that happens IRL.

I have very few debris in game.  Even LM descent stages have experiments, probe core, and solar panel to act as surface experiments.  Ascent stages can have probe core for disposal burn or be ditched by the CSM burning into a suborbital trajectory, undocking, the boosting back to a stable orbit.

Personal preferences, I hate debris.

Edited October 8, 2016 by tg626

[pandaman]

@tg626, yeah, that my philosophy too, I get a little disappointed in myself when I muck it up and leave a booster stage floating in space with no  fuel or control so I can deorbit.

[Tyko]

My current annoyance is stage separators...they're really useful, but all those little rings floating around...