[suggestion] - Fake Münshot strategy in Campaign Mode

[softweir]

Instead of using VABs to build ships and training centres to prepare Kerbanauts, there could be an alternative for the impatient - fake it, using actors, studios and props.

The VAB would be replaced by a model-maker\'s workshop. Cardboard, glue, aluminium paint and transparent puppeteer\'s string would be the order of the day. Forget functionality, it has to look the part! This is the area of construction where the biggest savings are made - but don\'t forget to fit and wire-up the pyrotechnics!

Flight would be very different. Instead of physics, you pull on the strings. In one small area of the screen you see the 'launchpad' and 'ship', in the rest you have various pulleys to lift the model and switches to fire the pyrotechnics. The more convincingly you pull on the strings, the better the illusion.

And how good are your drawing and airbrushing skills? Producing a convincing, animated Orbital Map with paper, pen, a couple of telephotoes of Kerbin and Mün and an airbrush takes real skill.

Actors can be a pain, but at least they don\'t need thousands of hours in a simulator to do their job, unlike real Kerbanauts. They do need a lot of dialogue coaching so the geeks out there don\'t pick up on their inability to get technical details right and consistent. Casting is easy: despite his ambition and good looks Jeb has never managed to turn up for a casting session in his life. Bill and Bob are aged child stars who specialised in being 'that screaming little kid in cheap alien invasion movies' who haven\'t done a day\'s work since their voices broke. They are desperate, and will do anything to get in front of a camera again... they\'ll even scream. The main problem is keeping Jeb\'s ego and libido under control. he will need to earn a lot of cash to give up the idea of another starring role ever, and a lot of 'bodyguards' to make sure he doesn\'t sneak off-base during 'mission time' to impress the chicks with his new-found stardom.

Filming 'capsule interiors', especially during launches, will be surprisingly easy. Jeb is a hard-core petrol-head who owns a very fast offroader. Black out the windows and get him to drive hard-and-fast down a dirt track and you will have all the effects in one - vibration, exhilaration, screams... It\'s all there. And the zero-G stuff is even easier, just wait until Jeb has flipped the offroader, leave the 'crew' strapped-in and get them to film their lines up-side-down.

The Mün itself is the hardest part. Nowhere on Kerbin looks right (it\'s all so very green) and what with the lack of roads there is a serious deficiency in gravel-quarries to use as stand-ins. (In some ways Kerbin is depresingly backward.) You could use a model set and puppets, but unless you are a VERY good puppeteer then it will look so very wrong. There\'s nothing for it - you\'re going to have to accidentally drop a nuke on some desert island and build a set there. You probably can\'t get the real actors to hop around on irradiated wasteland, but you can use stuntmen and get the actors to do voiceovers convincingly enough, once they\'ve recovered from the 'launch' and 'zero-G' sequences.

All-in-all, even with all the minders needed to keep mouths shut, you will be able to divert magnificent amounts of cash from research, development, training and construction; and put them into 'entertainment': in other words, your private little retreat in the tropics.

But don\'t invite Jeb. He\'ll steal all the girls and park an offroader in your swimming pool.

[Plymouth]

that\'s just too complicated. It should be another game, called Kerbal Puppet Program.

[NovaSilisko]

Eh. It\'s much more kerbal to actually launch for the moon and fail than fake it.

[Alchemist]

The Kerbal way wold be:

1) Launch to the Mun, but explode on the pad.

2) Launch another rocket, that falls back on Kerbin.

3) Shoot the third rocket somewhere on interplanetary trajectory

4) Shoot the last rocket to the Mun

5) Crash land without the ability to return.

6) But film that scene on the Mun!

7) Film fake return scene

8) Profit!

[Newe6000]

The Kerbal way wold be:

1) Launch to the Mun, but explode on the pad.

2) Launch another rocket, that falls back on Kerbin.

3) Shoot the third rocket somewhere on interplanetary trajectory

4) Shoot the last rocket to the Mun

5) Crash land without the ability to return.

6) But film that scene on the Mun!

7) Film fake return scene

8) Profit!

You forgot hiring prostotutes and giving them face surgery to mach the missing astronaughts and paying them the rest of their life to pretend they went to the mun.