Random Part Failures

[Duck McFuddle]

So... In the mission builder, you are able to have a node that makes a part "Fail". Then you can make a Kerbal go on an EVA and fix it, and so on. But what if parts would randomly break normally, and only an engineer could fix it? Right now I find engineers don't have much to do except restock parachutes and stuff like that, so it would be nice to give them something finally.

Certain parts that unlock early in the tech tree would break more, while more advanced parts would break less.

The main idea is something for engineers to do.

[panzer1b]

There is a mod for this already.

As to why i dont believe this is a good idea for bone stock, many KSP missions (for those of us that dont stick purely to mun+minmus and actually send stuff beyond duna/eve) require a major time and engineering investment, and random failures just make the game tedious and in certain situations may lead to catastrophic failure of a mission that you have been flying for hours on end.  Its fine to have random failures for quick missions like mun, but when you just spend half your day's freetime on building and launching something all the way to 2 moons of jool, only to have it break randomly during a landing burn killing your crew and destroying the ship, is both not fun and extremely rage inducing.

Ive tried that mod and i did indeed like it for short missions, but if you have the patience and determination to plan anything long term mods like that just end up ruining all your hard work and imo arent really a fun mechanic since they both limit how long missions can be (at least this one realistically tracks how long a art has been in existence and makes it fall apart eventually, crippling a vessel that you launched and wanted to go do something else, then come back to said vessel in 10+ years when its fallen apart.

The idea isnt inherently flawed, but im pretty sure many people will find it annoying (and even if it has off switch, its still alot of dev time for a rather niche liked feature), and those that dont can just install a mod that does that for them.

[The Aziz]

make it a difficulty option

Well, as long as these failures can be fixed in place, this could work, but it's on the very edge between stock and mod area. That's why I'm not so sure if it should happen.

[Tyko]

I'm with @panzer1b, I've tried several of the failure mods and I've settled on using Kerbal Launch Failure. With KLF failures only happen on launch so I'm only losing minutes of play, but it gives me an excuse to add launch escape systems.

Once a craft is launched and on a mission I don't want to experience a game-ification of what it must feel like to lose years, if not decades, of work....it's just not fun.

Edited February 1, 2019 by Tyko

[Aegolius13]

My game already pretty much has this feature, thanks to my shoddy quality-control practices in the VAB. 

But on a more serious note, to me this seems like the kind of feature that's best suited to a mod.  It would absolutely, positively have to be optional.  And you'd probably want a good deal of customization (what parts can fail, how often, etc) -- which seems to be like to much detail for a setting in the base game.  Personally I'm OK with scripted failures like in MH missions, where in (you'd hope) there's still a way to salvage things, but I really have no interest in random failures that could end a long-planned mission / kill kerbals out of the blue. 

 

 

[Duck McFuddle]

I understand that this could be pretty annoying... However, of course, you could always make an option in settings. I didn't know that there was a mod for launch failures, and I kind of like that - but anyway, I didn't really mean that parts could randomly explode or anything - just every so often an engine would stop working and you would have to send an engineer out to fix it. Also, I did mention that only very low-tech-tree parts would break often, while more advanced ones would break less. If it was coded properly, by the time you got around to huge missions failures would be almost non-existent. 

Another way to make it more bearable is to have it so when you upgrade certain buildings the parts break less. Then even when you use an early part in late game it won't break all the time.