Future feature? Astronaut Complex : Hire and train kerbonauts

[johnpoz]

So I noticed this in the panned future features off the wiki, and was wondering if anyone had an thoughts on what this might include? Sure its down the road a bit.

I also so the stranding your kerbals thread, where someone mentioned that they are just a little less expendable than fuel.. which I thought was pretty funny.

But if they could be trained and gained exp, rank maybe once certain things are accomplished? So many hours in space, so many eva's either on planet surface or space, etc. They might be less expendable Just tracking those variables might be fun.. Will at some point they age? So when you can warp at 1000x and get to the moons a jool in a few minutes doesn't mean days and days are not going by for the kerbals. How many missions like that can you fly before your just too old for the next mission.

Saw the thread about landing on every object you can land on, and plan on that myself once I can place flags.. But doing it with the same Kerbal and seeing how many days he actual spends in space would be nice to track. Maybe the kerbals get mission medals, etc.

Just rambling, any other thoughts on this subject?

[Canopus]

Its already a planned feature:http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Planned_features

Edit: sorry, i was tired and haven't read your whole post:blush:

[Scrogdog]

Well, I think it was Project Space Station which modeled conflicts among science teams on the ISS, and Buzz Aldrin's Race in to Space modeled crew members not liking who they were teamed up with affecting performance.

Might be going a little far with these fun little characters though.

[RawChicken]

Aging is a cool idea, thou I think having a kerbal die mid-flight could be kinda funny ahahha

Yes, time would be measured in "play time" and not in kerbal time I guess.

I read in a update you will be able to improve parts in the future story mode, I guess they should add something like kerbal training or kerbal experience...

Sounds like fun!

[LeonG17]

But if ageing is implemented, then what will happen if Jeb dies from old age? I hope we can invest in cloning facilities. Who doesn't want all of the Kerbalnauts to be Jeb?

[comham]

I think this is one of those planned features that will probably be dropped, as it can't really be done within the current framework of KSP.

Every kerbal is the same as all the others, and the only input is unfiltered player skill. There are no dicerolls and no kerbal stats apart from their emotions, which have no practical effects. Kerbals can't do much right now either.

Unless it was a simple "kerbals cost a million dollars each" kerbal shop to make the unmanned/manned choice a bit more clear, but then the final game might not have money either.

[johnpoz]

Well you can have Jeb Jr and then II, and then III etc..

I didn't think about having say a heart attack in mid flight, shoot who's trained how to land this thing? hehehe (I'm just the payload specialist) -- just figured after so many hours they would forced into retirement at the ripe old age of say 300.. Who is to say how long kerbals life spans are?

[Spatzimaus]

Who doesn't want all of the Kerbalnauts to be Jeb?

All Kerbonauts ARE Jeb. They're his (imperfect) clones. This is why Jeb is so much better than anyone else.

To the original topic: the only way training makes sense is if Kerbonauts have one of two things:

1> The ability to perform basic actions without our intervention. Being able to do a basic docking maneuver, or calculate a good (not perfect) intercept trajectory, or drive a rover to a specified point, or repack parachutes/repair wheels, or keep a station oriented towards/away from the planet's surface. In other words, the things something like MechJeb does now.

OR

2> Passive skills that improve certain statistics of your vehicles. One Kerbonaut might get +10% to the ship's turn rates, one might get a 5% improvement to fuel efficiency, and so on. This'd also give us a tangible reason to use the larger capsules, although you'd probably need to limit this (like having the Captain give his full bonus, and all others give half their normal amounts). Jeb should have a little of every bonus, because he's just all-around awesome, but the others could specialize in various ways.

(You could also do both options, of course.)

The thing is, this'd require us to be able to assign a specific pilot to each mission, instead of the game just auto-assigning whoever is next in the rotation. Between this and the headaches of a training menu, it's a lot of overhead for something that might or might not make a difference. So, it'd NEED to be important enough that we'd want to go out of our way to manage it. That has the potential to really change the game, especially if it makes things possible that previously could not be done.

[EleSigma]

It's hard to say right now since in .20 we will be getting the very first part of this (being able to view a kerbal's stats). From what I understand (might be wrong) some more stats will be added for them in the future. As far as training apparently (again from what I understand) they will gain experience whenever you manually fly a rocket and after a certain point a well experienced Kerbal will have the option to be able to work and fly missions on its own*. There hasn't been any word on aging, aging and retirement would be nice so that you don't have a 200 year old super-experienced kerbalnaut flying around and doing everything for you, breaking the gameplay.

*A way I think they could implement a Kerbin with free will is by recording a player's flight pattern and over time average the flight paths out, which the experienced Kerbal would follow. For instance you send a Kerbal to the mun five times, the game records the flight path and the moments in flight when you decoupled stages or made burns. The game then takes each of those times and chooses the middle ground in-between the best and worst path and that is what the Kerbal will take if you launch a mun landing mission and let the kerbal fly it.

[leax256]

say how long kerbals life spans are?

in my space program...about 5 min

[DarthJazno]

Well, I think it was Project Space Station which modeled conflicts among science teams on the ISS, and Buzz Aldrin's Race in to Space modeled crew members not liking who they were teamed up with affecting performance.)

I played both of those games and it wasn't my favorite part. Hope they make it optional. Stats on them could be interesting but I'm plenty busy building & flying without the added task of, oh, Jeb hates Bob so I gotta swap them around. Maybe one Kerbal landers will be standard in my world.

[patrickcanttype]

I think this is one of those planned features that will probably be dropped, as it can't really be done within the current framework of KSP.

Every kerbal is the same as all the others, and the only input is unfiltered player skill. There are no dicerolls and no kerbal stats apart from their emotions, which have no practical effects. Kerbals can't do much right now either.

Yes, there aren't many skills that kerbals have that can be improved with experience. And the only skills that could be implimented (walk speed, resource gathering bonuses, or perhaps depleting less resources of lifesupport [in future updates]) would not really be worth the effort required to add an entire experience system to the game.

That being said the planned feature would still be pretty cool.

[rodion_herrera]

Anyone remember EA/Interstel's old "Starflight"? I like the personnel, training, and crew implementation on that one. Scott Manley did an "old school" review of that one yesterday, I think. Oh here:

I almost didn't graduate from college because of this and its sequel (Trade Routes of the Cloud Nebula) back in the early 90's hehehe really great game series. I was thinking that the love-child of Starflight and Kerbal Space Program would create something that would destroy what's left of my social life completely, guaranteed.

-RODION

Edited May 22, 2013 by rodion_herrera

[Horn Brain]

I really hope that the mission planning and automation feature gets added. Being able to perform routine missions (resupplying bases/stations and harvesting resources from known deposits, mostly) automatically without player involvement would really open the game up for enjoyment. Imagine not having to fly those four refueling missions to your station yourself after topping off a big spacecraft for a mission to Moho or out past Jool! It would save so much time and tedium, and you could still do the missions yourself whenever you felt like getting back to your roots, of course.

I feel like this is exactly what was missing from the Spore space stage, and it's what led me to give up the game once my empire got so big that I spent most of my time performing tedious tasks like repelling the exact same Grox invasion for the 50th time and flying loads of spice all over the place instead of exploring.

Please, O devs, hear my prayers and do not forsake this aspect of the game. Everything else is gravy as long as I get to do mostly exploring and tinkering instead of running the same refueling mission over and over. I'm even fine with the Kerbals screwing up once in a while, so long as I can just activate one of my saved replacement missions to re-establish the lost assets and keep going on with my exploring. That's the reason you train them, after all, so they won't screw up.

Also, hoses. But I digress...

[bsalis]

It's a planned feature. Hard to say how it will pan out.

The way I see it is that there will not be any stats. Just training that unlocks features. So to begin with, a Kerbonaut can only be a passenger on a craft. Then you need to pay for training...

* Pilot training to take control of a craft

* Navigation training to use maneuver nodes

* Advanced pilot training to use ASAS, maybe features seen in MechJeb as well

* EVA training

* Repair training

* Repack chute traning

Edited May 22, 2013 by bsalis

[Tw1]

As long as we're responsible, and don't take 20 years per flight, they should'nt die of old age that fast. Though I'd prefer them not suffering from aging at all.

I would enjoy seeing them have skills from before they became an astronaut, or specific training, so one kerbal can be a mission's geologist, or medical scientist, or engineer, etc.

I already imagine them having such characteristics, so may do some file editing when something like this comes about.

As long as all kerbals receive a basic training in all fields, so none of them are totally useless at doing a particular thing.

[Scotius]

I think three main specialities would be enough: Pilot, Engineer and Scientist. Each main speciality could have variants: Plane pilot, Lander Pilot. Propulsion Engineer, Structural Engineer. Geologist, Biologist, Astrophysicist. Each kerbonaut could have three slots for specialisation - primary (adding bonus to performed actions), secondary (no bonuses and penalties), tertiary (Kerbal can perform the action, but with penalties). Every specialisation can be trained, but higher tiers require actual experience to be reached. Let's take a look at Newb Kerman. He's a good Lander Pilot (he can land anything, anywhere, anytime), mediocre Geologist (he can pick samples all right, won't mistake piece of copper for gold nugget, but he will miss a breakthrough discovery unless he'll faceplant into it), and bad Structural Engineer (he can inflate popped tire on a rover, but tell him to replace batteries and something will explode). He can upgrade his primary rating to Excellent only through missions, secondary and tertiary can be trained in Space Training Camp, and during the mission. What do you think?

[Sathurn]

It's a planned feature. Hard to say how it will pan out.

The way I see it is that there will not be any stats. Just training that unlocks features. So to begin with, a Kerbonaut can only be a passenger on a craft. Then you need to pay for training...

* Pilot training to take control of a craft

* Navigation training to use maneuver nodes

* Advanced pilot training to use ASAS, maybe features seen in MechJeb as well

* EVA training

* Repair training

* Repack chute traning

* Kerbalologist, to work the green houses so the base doesn't need constant resupply.

* Other sciences to discover stuff.

I like the ability to train to skill 1, and earn skill levels 2,3. But let my kerbonauts become expert in multiple fields.

Edited May 22, 2013 by Sathurn