Kerbals pilot things on their own. Sort of.

[Dagg215]

Scheduling Kerbals from mission control to do their own missions, like repairing solar panels or wheels, doing burns, Launching vehicles, but is heavily dependent on their Stupidity and Courage. should someone laugh at a joke too long, or spill their coffee in their lap, they may become distracted and get into an undesirable orbit, Break something else in the process, etc, fail their tasks. There is also always the chance of doing it right, and possibly doing better than you could. They can roam planets and moons, pick up samples, and do science.

You can always pick back up the controls of any Kerbal you desire, and do everything you can do now, or leave Kerbals to sit and do nothing, as they do now.

[leax256]

this is somewhat a planned feature. a kerbal skill based ato piolt.

[Beeman]

They'd talked about this type of thing before, training kerbals to do certain small tasks(or maneuvers in this case) on their own. I think they're on the fence about it because they don't necessarily want the game doing things for you but they do want you to feel like the owner of a grand space program, like when you get an amazing city in SimCity or an awesome rail network in Railroad Tycoon. A Tycoon game seems to have been Harvester's goal for career mode.

So...I don't know, I guess we'll have to see. Shouldn't be but another couple updates before we find out what crew training actually means to KSP, though. So that shouldn't be that bad.

[Rockhem]

I really don't want a autopilot that just has a different name, and they said they won't add random failures, so that means the autopilot will work all the time.

[JuJuVyez]

They could have a system where, as the Kerbals rack up flight time, experience or whatever, they unlock a special ability, be it docking, repairing solar panels, calculating a rendezvous in space, so eventually you could have a veteran crew each with their own specialty.

[thereaverofdarkness]

but they should not be able to do anything you haven't done, ie. you can't send one to Kerbin orbit if you haven't made Kerbin orbit before, and you can't tell one to dock in space if you haven't successfully docked before.

[mattinoz]

Sorry for the year old revive. Was looking to see if this had been discussed and this thread was the only one that came up.

This is the sort of thing I think would be cool in the game.

Kerbals that can pilot not just be celebrity ballast.

Each Kerbal should be trainable in there own right, so if they fly solo they learn from the player driving.

They should pick up your habits as well so you could train two kerbals in different ways. Or two Kerbals flying on the same mission would pick up skills from each other.

Train up mission specialists so there is a reasons to take 3 Kerbals on a mission.

I know might be a stretch but it just seems odd the Kerbal do none of the work and get all the credit.

[Unabled]

Scheduling Kerbals from mission control to do their own missions, like repairing solar panels or wheels, doing burns, Launching vehicles, but is heavily dependent on their Stupidity and Courage. should someone laugh at a joke too long, or spill their coffee in their lap, they may become distracted and get into an undesirable orbit, Break something else in the process, etc, fail their tasks. There is also always the chance of doing it right, and possibly doing better than you could. They can roam planets and moons, pick up samples, and do science.

You can always pick back up the controls of any Kerbal you desire, and do everything you can do now, or leave Kerbals to sit and do nothing, as they do now.

I can not tell you enough how much I would like for this to be in the game. I wrote a lengthy post in one of the 'how to improve science' suggestion threads that led me to this very idea. I think sooner or later we are going to need some kind of automation from our Kerbals; whether it be piloting or assigning science experiments and such to run. When Squad implements something like this, it'll elevate KSP to levels beyond what anyone thought possible.

If would give some sort of purpose to bases/space stations because now they would be actively working on their own, only requiring maybe an occasional resupply or switching of the crews. Even better?! You never have to do anything you don't want to. Don't want to fly resupply missions? Don't! Let your rookie Kerbals do it for the experience... This way you get to focus on the missions you actually want to do and control them yourself, or not! Just like to design and build ships? Well then that's all you have to do!! No flying required...

Awesome idea.

**I didn't even notice how old this post was! Oh well, still awesome.

Edited September 19, 2014 by Unabled

[arkie87]

Scheduling Kerbals from mission control to do their own missions, like repairing solar panels or wheels, doing burns, Launching vehicles, but is heavily dependent on their Stupidity and Courage. should someone laugh at a joke too long, or spill their coffee in their lap, they may become distracted and get into an undesirable orbit, Break something else in the process, etc, fail their tasks. There is also always the chance of doing it right, and possibly doing better than you could. They can roam planets and moons, pick up samples, and do science.

You can always pick back up the controls of any Kerbal you desire, and do everything you can do now, or leave Kerbals to sit and do nothing, as they do now.

This sounds awesome. and it gives a purpose for the courage-stupidity ratings of kerbals (and maybe, if you manually do the flying for kerbals/complete contracts, kerbals gain experience points and their stats improve).

I think there should be an autopilot system in the game, but i think it should be unlocked via tech tree in modules. New players should be forced to learn how to get a rocket into orbit-- this is one of the reasons why the game is fun and educational. But once you know how to do it, it gets boring to have to do all the tedious tasks. When you become more experienced with the game, the design stage is more fun, and so, an autopilot that lets you sit back and let you manage your space program rather than fly every mission would be cool.

To clarify on the unlocking of autopilot modules, to get autolaunch, you need to perform a successful launch. To perform a targeted landing, you need to perform a targeted landing. These missions could be specified via contracts, and so, the game would know when you completed them.

[dryer_lint]

This sounds really cool, and it makes sense to do it from Mission Control. Although it would have to be small tasks like maybe driving a rover, that way it doesn't get too cheaty.