Part Damage mod?

[jofwu]

In stock KSP, your parts are either 100% functional or 100% exploded and gone.

There are a few notable and interesting exceptions to this: things like wheels, landing gears, and parachutes. I think the prospect of parts becoming damaged due to misuse is a fun game mechanic. We have to protect those parts, and when things go wrong we have to send out an Engineer to fix them. I'm not talking about "random part failures", as some mods have set out to do. I don't particularly like the idea of uncontrollable failures that require tedious repairs. But I do like the idea of paying for my own mistakes. And I like the idea of adding a small margin of error where a mistake doesn't result in total failure, but rather something which can be fixed.

I don't fully understand how part destruction works, but I know that the part files come with various impact tolerances and the like. Hit below the limit and you're okay. Hit above the limit and you're toast. So here's what I would propose:

1. Introduce new "damage tolerance" values to every part. You can use Module Manager to add these, based on some percentage of the tolerances related to destruction. (Say 80%?)

2. Just adding the extra possibility of damage would make things hard. So to balance this let's also use Module Manager to increase destruction-causing impact tolerances by some percentage. (Say 10%) This gives a nice window of room between 100% functional and 100% destroyed.

3. When a part falls into this "damage window" it becomes Damaged. The part (and everything attached to it) is still attached to your ship. You receive a warning at the top of the screen: "Part X has been damaged!"

4. Damaged parts no longer function properly. Some examples of what this implies: Engines are locked in a deactivated state. Tanks containing resources cannot be accessed. Reaction Wheels lose all torque. Decouplers cannot decouple. Antennas cannot deploy. Science Labs cannot perform research. Crossfeed is disabled on any part. You get the idea!

5. To be fully realized, such a mod would change the model and texture to appear damaged, but that's incredibly ambitious. More realistic perhaps is a simple adjustment to the texture to indicate that it has been damaged. And in lieu of anything else it would be nice to just have an overlay that highlights any damaged parts. Of course there would also be a "Damaged!" line on the right-click context menu.

6. Damaged parts can be fixed. There are a few ways to approach this. Perhaps the setting is configurable, or perhaps you'd just need to pick one and run with it. My opinion is that an Engineer is required to fix the Damaged part. Just hop out on EVA, right click the part, and choose "Repair". It may also be desirable to include some kind of "Repair Parts" resource. (whatever the random failure mods are using, I figure) In this case, the ship with the Damaged part would have to have this resource available, and the repair would use up some amount of these. Another possibility is to include KIS integration, and require a particular tool in order to repair Damaged parts.

So that's it!

Would anybody else find this as awesome as I do? Does something like this exist and I just don't know about it? Thoughts?

[MaxZhao]

A mod that already exist and partly does what you said above is Kerbal Krash System. It deforms your creations and reduces the efficiency of your crafts instead of just exploding on impact.

[jofwu]

1 hour ago, MaxZhao said:

A mod that already exist and partly does what you said above is Kerbal Krash System. It deforms your creations and reduces the efficiency of your crafts instead of just exploding on impact.

That's perfect, thank you! Looks like people are having some issues with it lately, but also seems like there's interest to keep it going. So I'll keep an eye on it.