New Recovery Feature - How Far?

[rpayne88]

Anywhere on Kerbin obviously shouldn't work. Imagine if an astronaut had landed in the Soviet Union, or a cosmonaut in the US. They'd be treated well enough, sure, but they'd still be prisoners for several years. Still, I should hope that we at least get a safezone of a few kilometres. Targeting the KSC isn't too hard, but accurate parachute landings can be difficult, and I'd rather not have to send out little planes to fetch them every time they land a few kilometres of course or worse, in the ocean.

Legally, they would have to be cared for, treated if they were injured in anyway, and promptly returned to their home country. That's legally, however. I'm sure a ticked off group of anti-(insert country here) with guns wouldn't give a damn, though. As far as KSP, I think you should just have to land somewhere on Kerbin, judging by the fact there are no nations or conflicts there (except KSP versus the Kracken.)

[magnemoe]

While the people suggesting that "recovery" not apply globally have some merit, do we really want to bring in real-world-esque politics into a game that's mainly supposed to be about go-happy rocket science? I don't know about you, but I have enough of politics from the real world already, KSP is a place I can go to and do some science.

As for,

That is assuming there are multiple countries on Kerbin and assuming that some of those countries are antagonistic to each other, which again wheels back to the question of introducing politics into KSP. Also, take a step away from the Cold War-era and look at today's landscape: If a Russian Soyuz needed to make an emergency landing in US territory today, or heck even a Chinese Shenzhou, do you really believe we would treat the astronauts/cosmonauts inside as POWs?

There are plenty of venues to illustrate the Cold War strife regarding the space race or just political animosity, but I would just like to humbly put forth my 2 cents and suggest that KSP is neither the time nor the place for it. If a Kerbal successfully lands anywhere on Kerbin, he should be welcomed home with open arms.

Pretty much this, also astronauts would be returned from soviet union. Multiple incidents with ships and planes and all ended well, astronauts would be far more high profile. Only exceptions might be in the beginning during Stalin.

Now for reusable ships, it might be an cost penalty for landing to far away however not to much as transport is cheap compared with rocket parts.

[ComradeGoat]

Anywhere on Kerbin from my experience.

Thanks! This makes me happy :-)

[0x7be]

Anywhere on Kerbin obviously shouldn't work. Imagine if an astronaut had landed in the Soviet Union, or a cosmonaut in the US. They'd be treated well enough, sure, but they'd still be prisoners for several years. Still, I should hope that we at least get a safezone of a few kilometres. Targeting the KSC isn't too hard, but accurate parachute landings can be difficult, and I'd rather not have to send out little planes to fetch them every time they land a few kilometres of course or worse, in the ocean.

I doubt that mislanded space pilot would be treated as prisoner either in US or in Soviet Union

[Nimaci]

I like the idea of a 'shipping' fee based on distance to KSC and maybe even the weight of the recovered object.

It shouldn't be much, so it wouldn't hurt your bankroll if you had trouble landing within KSCs hemisphere, but enough to incentivise improvement.

[Wheffle]

I really think a simple "the closer you are, the less cost it is to recover the parts" will work find with career mode. That way noobs won't be forced to land in an arbitrary target area, and pros will be rewarded for their precision.

[0x7be]

I like the idea of a 'shipping' fee based on distance to KSC and maybe even the weight of the recovered object.

It shouldn't be much, so it wouldn't hurt your bankroll if you had trouble landing within KSCs hemisphere, but enough to incentivise improvement.

AFAIK, using ships to recover pods and SRBs after splashdown is quite expensive.

That was reason why reusable launch vehicle research focused to designs that returned to runway.

[Kimberly]

AFAIK, using ships to recover pods and SRBs after splashdown is quite expensive.

That was reason why reusable launch vehicle research focused to designs that returned to runway.

I'm all for an increased cost for bad landings, but I would say that any return should be better than none.

[CaptRobau]

Oh. Well, that's a shame, the game really could use some additional difficulty and objectives.

Having the reward in career mode (money most likely) be based on distance to the KSC would add that difficulty and objective, without going into politics.

[satcharna]

AFAIK, using ships to recover pods and SRBs after splashdown is quite expensive.

That was reason why reusable launch vehicle research focused to designs that returned to runway.

In fact, most of the time, the recovered components would be so badly damaged that simply melting them down and remaking them from scratch would be more economical than refurbishing them for another launch. The fact that space shuttles turned out to be even less economical was just a sad result of the "need" for flashiness, which has sadly hindered progress in the SSTO spaceplane field to date.

[Lachned]

Haha I was recently starting to recover landed astronauts by sending a plane to pick them up. Still having a lot of problem building a long distance plane that makes it half around the planet and back.....

[CaptRobau]

The commercial space companies are the ones really making strides in reusability, or they're at least trying the hardest. Using non-toxic RCS fuels so that crews can get working on the capsule a lot quicker, having the rocket stage fly back to base and land on its own power, the capsule landing on Earth on its own power instead of rough impact parachute landings, heat shield tiles being removable in groups instead of seperately. Most of this is still years away, but they're at least making the effort. Makes sense when you have a budget a fraction of NASA's lowest.

[Comrade Jenkens]

In sandbox i'm happy with anywhere on kerbin.

For career I think that ships should be cheaper to recover if they are closer to the KSC.

[draeath]

The historical expense of recovery just might have to do with the fact that they used Navy taskings to do it... which may not even make sense in the context of KSP.

[ASnogarD]

I would imagine a system where the further you were from the KSC the longer it took to get your Kerbalnaut back to duty, and a longer period of time waiting for the ship to be ready for launch again (can select re-use available or re-build from specifications, obviously re-building has a much higher cost).

No need to go political or complicated... assuming in Career mode time will be a resource as well.

[DChurchill]

I'd be fine with "near" if they give us recovery assets. Honestly, I really don't want to have to go fetch Kerbals from wherever with some plane that I had to build for the purpose. And what do you do about water landings?

Give us assets that we can place around the globe with radii of guaranteed safe recovery and with a diminishing chance the farther away the Kerbals land.

Also, I agree with King Arthur. We don't need a simulation of Cold War diplomacy. That's what mods are for.

[tntristan12]

Didn't harvester say at one point that a larger portion of the cost of the parts will be recovered if they land closer to ksc? I thought I heard that on dev tv once. Not sure where that went or even if it still applies.