[1.12.x] Kerbal Launch Failure Revived

[linuxgurugamer]

This is a revival of an older mod, original thread here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/111304-102-kerbal-launch-failure-v100-5292015/

 

New Dependencies

• Click Through Blocker
• ToolbarController

CKAN has been updated to install the dependencies, if needed.

 

Kerbal Launch Failure is a lightweight, random launch failure mod for Kerbal Space Program. You might want to start using that Launch Escape System with this installed.

DISCLAIMER - The intention of this mod is to destroy your spacecraft. Use with caution!

Download: http://spacedock.info/mod/989/Kerbal Launch Failure

Github: https://github.com/linuxgurugamer/ksp-KerbalLaunchFailure

License: GPL V2

https://www.patreon.com/linuxgurugamer

About

NASA requires that human-rated spacecraft have a probability of loss on ascent of no more than 1 in 500. The Kerbals of planet Kerbin think of this requirement as silly, so they have instead adopted a less strict policy of a loss on ascent of no more than 1 in 50 for their Kerbal Space Program. In fact, to save funds on safety measures, they have made their spacecraft to fail exactly 1 in 50 times.

This mod is not meant to compete with other part failure mods (I personally enjoy using DangIt! with Entropy), but to be an alternative for those that want that living on the edge feel for launches without having to worry about part failures and repairs beyond the initial launch.

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Sorry for the audio issues above with the explosions. Seems to be some audio FX issue with multiple explosions simultaneously. This was recorded with a pre-release version, but no changes have been made since except for the addition of the settings.

Current Features

 

• Launch has a small chance (1 in 50) of failure with explosions during ascent.
• Original: Failure originates in an engine, which will begin to overheat and have extra thrust applied to cause instability.
• New: Failure can originate in an engine, in a radial decoupler, in a strut, or a control surface.  If an engine, it can either overheat and have extra thrust, or have an underthrust situation
• The abort action group can be set to auto-trigger once the initial failure occurs (custom setting; see below).
• Explosion has a chance to propagate to surrounding parts, varying how catastrophic the failure is.
• Tanks containing fuel are more likely to explode.
• Failure checks end once the spacecraft has reached space (IRL, disasters mostly happen during ascent anyways). This is to prevent frustration for longer missions, to reduce the complexity of the mod, and to lessen the CPU usage for game ticks.
• Custom settings :

For a new game:

1. When creating a new game, go into the Game Difficulty.  
2. Click the button along the left called Kerbal Launch Failure

For an existing game:

1. Get to the Space Center scene
2. Hit the Escape key
3. Click Settings
4. Click Difficulty Options
5. Click Kerbal Launch Failure along the left

Edited March 27, 2018 by linuxgurugamer

[kingosci]

I posted this in the old thread before I noticed the new one:

Thanks for updating this, I always wanted a chance of explosions on ascent to recreate the anxiety I always feel when watching a real launch.

Suggestions:

Make SRBs explode violently if they fail, they tend to do that in reality. Especially the ones derived from missiles (those have actual high explosives in the propellant).

Maybe they could rain still burning chunks of propellant down, too? Like the GPS IIR-1 Delta II failure that almost destroyed the blockhouse:

Spoiler

 

Edit:

Solid rocket motors do this sometimes too (Polaris missile starting at 6:37):

Spoiler

 

 

Edited October 14, 2016 by kingosci

[Nansuchao]

NVM.

Edited October 14, 2016 by Nansuchao

[razark]

Looks good.  Having to build for safety and having a reason to use the LES is nice, but I've had problems with the Test Flight mod that are just annoying.

 

Does control surface failure result in the surface no long operating? If so, does it get stuck in the current position, or does it stick in neutral?

Is the initial failure logged in the flight log? Nevermind, noticed the screenshot.

 

Quote

maxFailureAltitudePercentage - The max height at which the failure will occur as a percentage of atmosphere depth. Default is 65% (for stock Kerbin, about 45.5km up); recommend not going above this amount for right now.

Can you elaborate on the reasoning for this recommendation?

Edited October 14, 2016 by razark

[kingosci]

More ideas:

Accidentally activate the next stage's engines, like the Nedelin disaster (although this happens pretty often when I mess up the staging order)

Rocket engine gimbal hard-over. From what I've read this and other control system failures were relatively common in the earlier days of rocketry.

I just remembered the Proton launch failure in 2013 where the gyroscopes were installed upside down, so I guess that still happens sometimes.

Video in case someone hasn't seen it:

Spoiler

 

 

Edited October 14, 2016 by kingosci

[Chainsaw Expert]

Excuse me but where is the KLFSettings.cfg referred in the Readme? The pluginData folder is completely empty and the plugin folder has only the .dll

also, Hello, I've made an account just to ask this

[VenomousRequiem]

You're my hero...

[Noname115]

5 hours ago, Chainsaw Expert said:

Excuse me but where is the KLFSettings.cfg referred in the Readme? The pluginData folder is completely empty and the plugin folder has only the .dll

also, Hello, I've made an account just to ask this

I'm having this same issue. Even though I've had the fortune of not running into a launch failure yet, I'm sure the mod works fine otherwise.

[maculator]

15 hours ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Failure originates in an engine, which will begin to overheat and have extra thrust applied to cause instability.

Did you change anything about the mod?

[linuxgurugamer]

10 hours ago, Noname115 said:

I'm having this same issue. Even though I've had the fortune of not running into a launch failure yet, I'm sure the mod works fine otherwise.

Sorry, I'm working on a lot of mods.

The file isn't there anymore.  You now set the options by going into the game settings, either when creating a new game or during a game:

For a new game:

1. When creating a new game, go into the Game Difficulty.  
2. Click the button along the left called Kerbal Launch Failure

For an existing game:

Get to the Space Center scene

1. Hit the Escape key
2. Click Settings
3. Click Difficulty Options
4. Click Kerbal Launch Failure along the left

 

1 hour ago, maculator said:

Did you change anything about the mod?

• Failure can originate in an engine, in a radial decoupler, in a strut, or a control surface.  If an engine, it can either overheat and have extra thrust, or have an underthrust situation

[theSpeare]

You should consider adding automatic upgrade features, where every failure will contribute back to your space program and improve reliability.

[Chainsaw Expert]

Since I'm waiting for other mods to update I decided to do some testing of this mod, mostly with fault chance ramped up to 100%. What I've discovered is that most of the time the failure just means losing 1 elevon or some control surface, maybe a fuel duct falling off. Overall I would suggest players ramping up the failure chance to 10%, maybe 25% to actually have a challenge, even engine failures don't have to end with everything exploding.

However I have not been able to make use of the auto-abort feature, it's seem that (at least for me) it just doesn't fire no matter the settings or failure type. Is anyone else having problems with it?

[linuxgurugamer]

On 10/16/2016 at 6:16 AM, theSpeare said:

You should consider adding automatic upgrade features, where every failure will contribute back to your space program and improve reliability.

There are other mods to do that.

On 10/16/2016 at 10:45 AM, Chainsaw Expert said:

Since I'm waiting for other mods to update I decided to do some testing of this mod, mostly with fault chance ramped up to 100%. What I've discovered is that most of the time the failure just means losing 1 elevon or some control surface, maybe a fuel duct falling off. Overall I would suggest players ramping up the failure chance to 10%, maybe 25% to actually have a challenge, even engine failures don't have to end with everything exploding.

However I have not been able to make use of the auto-abort feature, it's seem that (at least for me) it just doesn't fire no matter the settings or failure type. Is anyone else having problems with it?

Do you have anyting attached to the abort action?

On 10/16/2016 at 10:45 AM, Chainsaw Expert said:

Since I'm waiting for other mods to update I decided to do some testing of this mod, mostly with fault chance ramped up to 100%. What I've discovered is that most of the time the failure just means losing 1 elevon or some control surface, maybe a fuel duct falling off. Overall I would suggest players ramping up the failure chance to 10%, maybe 25% to actually have a challenge, even engine failures don't have to end with everything exploding.

Go into the settings, and you can disallow each of the specific failure types.

I'll take a look at the abort stuff later

[linuxgurugamer]

The abort is broken in the current release.

I have a working version, but need to add a way to cancel the abort, since many failures don't need a full abort to be done.

so, I'm thinking of having a large button to be displayed with a countdown to abort, clicking the button will cancel the abort.

Any other ideas are welcome.

Edited October 27, 2016 by linuxgurugamer

[monstah]

43 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Any other ideas are welcome.

How about a setting for which type of failures trigger an abort (with sensible defaults)?

[linuxgurugamer]

1 minute ago, monstah said:

How about a setting for which type of failures trigger an abort (with sensible defaults)?

First, I don't want to make the settings too complicated.  

Second, even an engine failure can be saved, depending on what's happening.

[Chainsaw Expert]

1 hour ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Go into the settings, and you can disallow each of the specific failure types.

 

oh right, i somehow missed that part of settings completely. Guess I'm actually retarded

 

also the autoabort isn't that much much of an issue, I was planning some dank kOS scripting based an thrust fluctuations to fire up abort sequences anyway

[monstah]

45 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Second, even an engine failure can be saved, depending on what's happening.

True.

That said, I don't like the idea of overriding an auto-abort on a timer. The point of aborting automatically seems to be to get the astronauts to safety faster than you could react and hit abort (otherwise, what's the point? Just hit backspace). If you're waiting for confirmation before aborting, you sort of defeat the purpose.

If you wait longer than the player would take to hit backspace anyway, it's not doing anything too useful, IMO. If you wait less, then it makes it harder to avoid unwanted aborts than it would be to abort manually in time in the first place.

All in all, I got mixed feelings about this. The best way I can think of now is having a toggle (global App launcher button? Tweakable on the part susceptible to failing? no idea  ), and it either auto-aborts on explosions or not depending on that toggle; no clicking required during the action.

[linuxgurugamer]

Just released 0.2.0

Fixes Autoabort

Added dialog to give the ability to do one of the following:

1. Cancel autoabort
2. Reset autoabort timer
3. Abort immediately

Think of what happens in real life.  Actually, think about Apollo 12 (I think), where lightning struck the capsule, and the abort was in the hands of the astronauts

By having the dialog, the player will have a limited amount of time to make a decision.  In the event that it's not a significant failure, for example, a failing fin, the player can cancel it,etc

[linuxgurugamer]

I'm interested in feedback, both as to how it works, and possibly ways to improve it.

Thanks

1 hour ago, Chainsaw Expert said:

also the autoabort isn't that much much of an issue, I was planning some dank kOS scripting based an thrust fluctuations to fire up abort sequences anyway

not everybody uses kOS

[razark]

Would it be possible to get a variable time between failure warning and the actual failure?

[linuxgurugamer]

3 minutes ago, razark said:

Would it be possible to get a variable time between failure warning and the actual failure?

Like, a min and max time?  Or just something totally random?

[Kerbart]

This sounds awesome, can't wait to install it when I get home. Three questions that came to mind:

• Could the chances of failure be set in the config file (if not already)? Useful for testing, or if one finds accidents happening too (in)frequent
• As a reward for the willingness to roll the dice on a launch, perhaps handing out some science when an incident happens ("we learned something!"). If that's even possible?
• While typing in the second bullet, I thought of a third option: is it possible to make the incident appear in the F3 window? That way you know the accident is caused by a "random launch" incident and not because you misrouted a fuel line or pointed an engine towards a tank. They could all start with FAILURE eg: “FAILURE: the turbo pump of the LV-909 engine failed catastrophically!” or something along those lines.

Regards,
Kerbart

[razark]

Just now, linuxgurugamer said:

Like, a min and max time?  Or just something totally random?

I would want a random time somewhere between instant failure and long enough to get above the atmosphere.  If you were to implement it, though, I think minimum and maximum times would be good options.  That way, a failure could be presented as a warning first, or a sudden unexpected failure.

[linuxgurugamer]

1 minute ago, Kerbart said:

This sounds awesome, can't wait to install it when I get home. Three questions that came to mind:

• Could the chances of failure be set in the config file (if not already)? Useful for testing, or if one finds accidents happening too (in)frequent
• As a reward for the willingness to roll the dice on a launch, perhaps handing out some science when an incident happens ("we learned something!"). If that's even possible?
• While typing in the second bullet, I thought of a third option: is it possible to make the incident appear in the F3 window? That way you know the accident is caused by a "random launch" incident and not because you misrouted a fuel line or pointed an engine towards a tank. They could all start with FAILURE eg: “FAILURE: the turbo pump of the LV-909 engine failed catastrophically!” or something along those lines.

Regards,
Kerbart

Chances are set in the settings

Science reward isn't really the aim.  If there's interest, I could add it

Incidents already appear in the F3 window