Mission Roulette

[Khrissetti]

Inspired by Egon's thread, I present the Kerbal Space Program Mission Roulette!

If you're ever short on ideas or want the illusion of an imposed mission, this roulette is for you. Simply get three random numbers from www.random.org (or roll some d10 dice) and find out where in the solar system you'll be going today! For added challenges, simply add more special conditions. Obviously there are some absurd mission possibilities (Landing a base on the Sun.) But remember, part of running a good space agency is knowing how to turn down the crazy requests, so simply ignore these and re-roll!

Happy (random) flying!

If you're told to land and have an equatorial orbit, you should get into an equatorial orbit before you land.

EXAMPLES (Silver):

A:6(6) B:0 C:7

Send any ship to Tylo without using Nuclear engines

A:4(0) B:9 C:4(2)

Send a spaceplane to Duna for less than $20,000

A:3(5) B:3 C:7

Put a ship in orbit of the Mun without using nuclear engines

(Platinum)

A:4(9) B:0 C:6 A2(2) C:0 C:7

Visit Ike and Eve with any non-nuclear ship without a fatality

Edited August 3, 2013 by Khrissetti

[annallia]

Looks interesting... Some of those special conditions are impossible to meet though. Like the time limit. It would be possible for you to only have 10 days to get to Eeloo, pretty sure that is impossible unless there is some super engine mod out there I don't know about. Even if you got lucky and rolled a 9, 90 days is not really enough to go interplanetary even with sitting on the launch pad waiting for your window to open.

[Khrissetti]

True, as I said, you'll sometimes get some absurd missions. These are kerbals, we're talking about, if the guys at KSP are the smartest their species has to offer, imagine what kind of crazy exists in the wider world!

Mission Control: - Hello? This is mission control, oh hello, Mister President! Yes, of course, we're always excited to take on the dreams of kerbal-kind! Uh huh.... yes.... I'm sure we can-- wait, what? Mister President, do you know how far away Eeloo actually is? Well all I'm saying is... no Mister President, I really DON'T think we can land there for your Daughter's birthday!

[Spartwo]

Land an unmanned craft on the sun while being on a polar orbit

[samstarman5]

Drop off a station at Eve orbit and return to Kerbin. Seems easy enough.

[Ralathon]

Okay, I think I got just about the worst combination I could get that's still plausible...

I got 1, 8, 2, 5, 6, 5, 7.

So I need to send a manned rover to Moho, enter in a polar orbit, then go all the way out to Dress and THEN return to Kerbin without nuclear engines for platinum. This'll be fun.

[Khrissetti]

I just tested it and got the following (Bronze) missions:

Send an orbital probe around the sun and Eve

Send any ship into solar orbit

Send an unmanned rover to Dres

Land and return a manned craft from Moho

Send a manned ship into Dres orbit

put any craft into an equatorial orbit of any body

Land a manned ship on Eve

Send a manned rover to Eeloo

Send a manned ship into Tylo orbit and return home

Put a manned ship in equatorial orbit of Gilly

You have 80 days to get any ship to Dres (Don't know how doable that one is)

Ralathon: 0_o Good luck!

[SkyRender]

You have 80 days to get any ship to Dres (Don't know how doable that one is)

Technically it can be done (around 75 days is the shortest without going seriously fuel-overkill), but you would need a LOT of dV. We're talking in the neighborhood of 8,000dV if you want to stand a chance, and that's just to get there, circularize, and land...

[Goldham]

Land a base on Moho with an equatorial orbit... How can it have a orbit if its landed?

[Khrissetti]

Get an equatorial orbit, then land. It's like surveying possible landing sites before you put 'er down.

[Vohjiin]

haha I sorta liked the probe lander on sun and return to kerbin thing . This need's to be heavily expanded and turned into a website or program. More so a website because it seems easier for a lot of users, this could be a very popular real quick .

[Johnno]

Inspired by Egon's thread, I present the Kerbal Space Program Mission Roulette!

I gave the RNG a whirl and got Eeloo, Unmanned Rover, Polar orbit, Cost limit (80k), No debris. Easy enough.

I quite like your roulette design, some constructive criticism though:

Eve has 0-4 Eve and 6-9 Gilly, so 5 is missing.

The time limit can be quite prohibitive as already discussed, also the cost limit is in my view questionable since costs aren't properly balanced.

Furthermore, not everyone uses MechJeb, so I think that could be changed to 'no mods' alternatively just added as a footnote extra special condition, ie if you roll for two special conditions you can add 'no MechJeb' as your third instead of rolling once more for a Gold mission.

Additional conditions to consider (I was thinking to swap out time limit and cost limit if I start using this chart myself):

- No docking

- Add second craft (so you might have to bring both a manned lander and orbital probe, for example)

- No fuel lines

Also instead of the zero result (no special conditions) I'd change that to 'Your choice' as well. You get the bonus of choosing but aren't left entirely off the hook, you'd reroll anyway if trying for Gold/Platinum.

Again, well done on the chart. Looks very nice visually as well.

[Khrissetti]

Good constructive criticism, Johnno. Balancing the time limit is tough because what would be excessive for a Mun mission is barely adequate for an outer-planet mission. I can think of a few workarounds but I wanted to keep it as (relatively) simple as possible.

I'm happy enough leaving MJ in, as it's one of the few really game-changing mods out there (apart from hyperedit, which I can't imagine anyone who wanted to use the Roulette would use, anyway. Why deliberately make a challeneg then hyperedit it complete?) and is easy enough to know whether you're using a mod or not.

I like your bronze mission idea.

[TheCanadianVendingMachine]

I am currently working on a third party program with this. So far it just tells you the planet of destination, then the moon if there is one then the task.

If you want to see it, please tell me here and I shall post it with source code

Edit: I forgot to include that it will not have any impossible missions with the program. It is written in C++ so I cannot port it into KSP sadly.

Edited August 4, 2013 by TheCanadianVendingMachine

[SkyRender]

For mission times: why not just have a multiplier based on the planet/moon you roll instead of a fixed multiplier? Since time to destination is exponential based on distance, it makes more sense than a uniform value for all bodies. As you noted, that leads to potentially stupid-easy timing conditions, like 80 days to complete a Mun mission (which is unlikely to even run 1 day).

[The Jedi Master]

Oh, boy, I got a manned Grand Tour with landings and no MJ. Maybe I should roll again...

UPDATE: Manned rover on Moho with return to Kerbin. Oh, this will be fun.

Edited August 4, 2013 by The Jedi Master

[jdsutton]

It is written in C++ so I cannot port it into KSP sadly.

It wouldn't be too hard to change that to C#. I'd be willing to write the code if somebody else knows how to make it a KSP plugin.

[Egon]

Inspired by Egon's thread, I present the Kerbal Space Program Mission Roulette!

Thanks for the call out.

[The Jedi Master]

Thanks for the call out.

Just curious, what was your thread?

[Egon]

Just curious, what was your thread?

This one: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/44210-Would-anyone-be-interested-in-a-website-that-randomly-generates-missions-for-you

[Specialist290]

Hmm... 8,4,5 (Sun + Manned landing + Kerbin return). Wish me luck!

But seriously: It's an intriguing idea, but you might want to tweak it a little to eliminate / work around some of the outright impossible missions.

[The Jedi Master]

Hmm... 8,4,5 (Sun + Manned landing + Kerbin return). Wish me luck!

But seriously: It's an intriguing idea, but you might want to tweak it a little to eliminate / work around some of the outright impossible missions.

He said you can reroll if you get something ridiculous.

[Specialist290]

Fair enough. Still, might be a good idea to add in "alternate conditions" for otherwise impossible missions.

[CoriW]

So I'm supposed to land an Unmanned Probe on the Sun with no Nuclear Engines, No Debris, and No MechJeb. Aha I'm not sure that's going to be easy without the Nuclear Engines... That is a lot of DeltaV.

Hmm, I supposed I could use some gravity assists! Right. Time to start engineering!

EDIT: Aha, I tried it again just for the heck of it, and got a mission to send a Spaceplane to Minmus, and return to Kerbin, within 20 days with a budget of $60,000. That is so easy...

I love this thing, it's awesome! Thankyou so much OP, I'm going to have a really great time playing with this!

(...That's what she said.)

Edited August 4, 2013 by CoriW

[angrysheep]

Go to Moho with a lander probe then to duna in 10 days? Sounds like a challenge.