Boss Effect Field

[jjansen]

Why should a 5-star engineer be stuck on the front lines, doing manual labor at the controls of a drilling rig?

This guy's tasted samples of Minmal hills, trod on the Dunar sands, breathed Evian atmospheric residue, extinguished attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, and now he's stuck on the Mun, operating an ISRU, like some nub straight out of the academy?? What madness is this? Whose daughter did he insult?

I therefore humbly suggest a "Boss Effect Field" that lets a high level kerbal "Manage" other kerbals; sufficiently advanced Kerbals should be able to generate an area of effect, allowing nearby Kerbals of similar profession to operate at -1 the manager's rank. The effect should be at most 15 kilometers (without telepresence and teleberating technology), decreasing in effect proportional to distance, and their active radius should increase proportional to their rank.

In this manner, our 5-star engineer could lounge behind a desk in a lander can while the younglings stationed at his base reflect his years of experience, through the delicate art of ore drilling, and a L2 engineer would be able to tell a L0 engineer how to go outside of their pod to repack the parachutes on the craft.

[Wjolcz]

To be honest, the whole experience thing always bothered me. The stars should  represent the number of missions/time spent in space, not give some special powers. An engineer should always be able to operate ISRU no matter if he/she is a rookie or a pro. What kind of agency sends untrained astronauts into space?

I don't hate the idea though. What I think could be better instead is this "Boss/Commander" class kerbal having the ability to manage a base/station he is in more efficiently. Kind of like the engineers do now with ISRU. For example: if a station is in orbit of Laythe and it has solar panels, probe cores and batteries the Commander should be able reroute all the power to the batteries to save EC and the more crew he has the more EC they are able to store for future use, or something like that. Or balance it's CoM to match it's CoT, or maybe even change the way antennae work (lower bandwidth, but less EC per bit/mit/whatever it's called).

But not mess with the fuel that way. No kerbal should be able to buff engine's Isp.

[Sharpy]

While I might agree with the engineer, I really don't think a 0-star rookie pilot should become a 4-star veteran 15km above a base with a master pilot inside.

[jjansen]

10 hours ago, Sharpy said:

While I might agree with the engineer, I really don't think a 0-star rookie pilot should become a 4-star veteran 15km above a base with a master pilot inside.

If the rookie got there in the first place, then maybe he could be, for the 2.5 seconds or however long he's there before he augers in.