Is Kerbal Safety a Top Priority For You?

[TheHockeyPlayer]

I'm curious to see whether or not most people strive to keep their Kerbals safe or let them die. Personally, I try my best to take as many precautions as possible.

[regex]

I'm a stone cold Kerbal killa.

[kodemunkey]

I find it annoying when they die, especially when i've had them piloting something for a long time.

[Kethevin]

They're letting me play in their world. The least I could do is try to keep them safe.

[rodion]

I've never even built an LES for my manned ships, and rarely code the Abort shortcut; the ability to revert and quicksave things with abandon makes it feel a little bit too much like useless extra mass and complexity on my ships. All of the Kerbals I've lost in 0.21 have been for stupid and trivial reasons, like accidentally hitting the Space Center button instead of reverting, thus losing the revert option and stranding them in some hopeless situation/trajectory.

[Tiron]

Not enough options!

I take precautionary measures, but I wouldn't say 'as many as possible'. There's a lot more I could do, including things that would be more effective. I tend to shoot for relatively easy things that are effective the majority of the time: almost all my 'escape provisions' would be considered insufficient in real life.

I care, but I don't care enough to make it 99.999999999% certain they live. 'The Vast Majority of the Time' is good enough for me.

[Dooz]

The only reason i would not return kerbals if they were a base crewmember sometimes i do return them so yes Kerbal i try to keep my kermans safe

[OrbitusII]

What Tiron said. While I try to keep my Kerbals alive, it's not something that I'll beat myself up about (unless the life-saving systems end up killing them).

[DaveofDefeat]

Kerbal what?

[Drunkrobot]

Abso-frickin-lutely!

If I have to put a kerbal into it, it gets an escape tower. What if there is a problem on the pad, and I won't have the time to stage up to the chutes? Action-group 0 is always-without fail-assigned to detaching the tower and deploying chutes. That tower gets tested, on the pad, and during ascent, before anyone is even allowed in the capsule. 10 more parts is a smaller price to pay than three Kerbanauts.

Recently, I took out Obmy...

Aeronautic expert.

...on a trip to orbit with the Aeris spaceplane. After a hairy moment with turning off the jets (flat-spins are horrible), I got up to orbit with the tiniest reserve of fuel left. Landing was the real emotional rollercoaster. At 30 kilometres altitude, Obmy is going at a few thousand m/s, with the a sliver of electric charge AND fuel left, over an ocean. At this point, I'm thinking "My god, I've doomed this innocent soul.". I decide to burn up the rest of the fuel, to get me the charge I need, and to reach the coast. Do bear in mind, I have very little experience in landing planes, and I could only have SAS on during final approach. I pull through, literally running out of power as I brake to a stop. Obmy lives to fly another day. It was one of the most satisfying moments in my time spent on this game.

So, does that answer your question?

[Akinesis]

In my serious campaigns, I've never lost a Kerbal.

Testing and mucking around - that's a different matter

[swiftgates24]

Just want an opinion here - should I make a thread and vote to see what thread you guys want to see copied next? It seems popular, making threads about the same thing pointlessly recently!

Or am I wrong, but doesn't this thread remind you an AWFUL lot about this one?

Edited September 2, 2013 by swiftgates24

[Exposure]

Recently, it has become a top priority. Before I was content with "eh, as long as I can quickly press space enough for them to escape it's fine", but ever since I installed Deadly Reentry and Mission Controller I always tried to do my best to make sure those Kerbals come home safe.

Besides, losing 50000 kredits or more due to life insurance payments is expensive, launch escape systems are like, below 100 kredits. I can certainly afford to bother making sure those are installed and working at the least.

[SargeRho]

Depends on my mood. Most of the time I try to keep them alive*

*Usually without success.

[_Aramchek_]

Not usually, aside from the first three.

I mean if they survive a few missions or "tests" or just joyriding around and seem appropriately epic I'll try to keep them alive.

But for most of them, and unless/until they catch my notice I don't care if they die and may actively kill them for my own amusement.

[regex]

Just want an opinion here - should I make a thread and vote to see what thread you guys want to see copied next?

I endorse this product/service.

[Tiron]

I did forget to mention, that for really dangerous flights, I have a trio of cannon fod-...er... Specialized Test Pilots. The difference being the 'Regular' Pilots are restricted to proven, relatively 'safe' craft and missions.

This absolutely isn't because the Specialized Test Pilots are Dumb as a Box of Rocks and about as Brave, and thus expendable. Not at all.

[Stankleberry]

The ones that have done successful missions are valued. The new ones are worth nothing unless their names is cool. Crummily named Kerbals will sometimes get thrown out of a spaceship a minute after launch.

[HeadHunter67]

Action-group 0 is always-without fail-assigned to detaching the tower and deploying chutes.

Why not just use the "Abort" action group? It has the added benefit of the Backspace key being about a 50% larger target for a panic button.

[tstehler1]

All of my launch vehicles have abort protocols. Since I'm all stock, I can't put on an escape tower, so six Seperatrons are attached to the command module. I use an action group to decouple all of them as soon as I'm out of the atmosphere. If there's any question of whether something may go wrong, nothing happens until a solution is found. I haven't lost a crewmember ever since I really started taking this game seriously, and I don't want to lose one now.

The only problem with my abort action group is that it's not exactly considerate of things that happen to lie beneath it. When the abort button is pushed, all engines shut down and the command module decouples itself as its Seperatron escape system ignites. This splits the tocket into two parts: The peacefully floating command module, whose parachutes are deployed as soon as it starts to lose altitude; and the entire rest of the rocket, a giant pile of fuel tanks and engines sometimes comprised of around 300 parts, freefalling towards the ground. Where that pile of explosives lands... Well, that's not my problem

[EndOfTheEarth]

Generally yes, but within limits.

For instance, I do:

-Try to save my capsule during failed launches, if possible.

-Equip my deep space vessels with extra docking ports in the event that I run out of fuel

-Quicksave and retry until I get it right, or decide to turn around and go home.

-Avoid one-way manned missions, or missions that I don't have the expertise to return from at the moment, like Eve or Tylo.

-Send probes if I don't think Kerbals could safely pull it off.

-Work to retrieve Kerbals stuck in the Kerbin system.

I do not:

-Develop elaborate escape systems.

-Send manned rescue vehicles outside the Kerbin system.

[Beeman]

I have a tendency to want my kerbonauts to survive missions, but I'm also not clever enough to build any sensible safety or abort precautions in case something goes wrong, so I tend to rely on the revert flight thing. Oddly, I'd LOVE to see the revert flight thing have some limitation on it in career mode so I can't always save my kerbonauts even after they've become a fine, green mist. It'd certainly force me into designing smarter rockets....or at least rockets that're above my current level of kerbal engineering XD

[Kerbol Prime]

Here's my form of safety:

Parachutes

"Who needs them LES doohickys when ya got chutes? They totally idiotproof!"

-Association Director, shortly before 3 pilots died when the rocket fell back on the pad and chutes failed to open.

[AlamoVampire]

I protect them if I can, if I fail, I just go into the persistent save and find the one or more that died and reset them to mode 0 XD <usually only do this for Jeb, Bill and Bob only, unless they have really funny names... does that make me bad?>

[Dave Kerbin]

In the demo kerbal life was cheap because there wasn't many other options.

I my full version main game I don't build escape towers, but I do rigorously test my manned spaceships on remote control before a Kerbal ever steps foot in them. Getting kerbals into orbit is exclusively the domain of my 'fool proof' crew transporter which is over engineered in fuel and lift capacity rather then relying on complex staging or pilot (it has enough fuel to get into orbit flying straight up with the booster and then circularising with the service module).

The closest I've come to losing a kerbal in my current campaign was during my Mun landing. I had a station with a fueled up crew transporter and crew, and I sent up an aux fuel tank and Mun lander module to dock with it (design here). While the orbiter had plenty of extra fuel (I later sent the same ship configuration for an easy Minmus mission) the lander was really tight since this was really the first time it was being used. I used about 49% of the fuel for the landing, and that from a 5km orbit.

I should have had just enough delta V but I screwed up the ascent - the only other Mun return I'd done was with a single stage system so I didn't think twice before just burning straight up for a few seconds until I felt I was clear of the surface. However by then I'd used 12L of my remaining 28L of fuel and sent Bob on a course then went way above 5km with no hope of making a stable orbit on the remaining fuel. I had no intention of leaving Bob in a little can to wait for a rescue mission to be planned and sent from Kerbin so I did the only sensible thing, I applied a course correction to get the lander in line with the orbiter as it fell back to the Mun, waited till they where close and then burned all the remaining fuel to get the velocities as close as possible before Bob jumped out and eye-balled a final orbit with his jetpack (he managed to get an orbit with a PE of 4.5km). Over in the orbiter Lodfel Kerman, knowing that his own fuel situation could be in trouble (it turned out he had lots) managed to do an intercept almost entirely using RCS and getting the orbiter 40m from Bob at nearly zero relative velocity. Bob jetted over and boarded the orbiter even as the lander had crashed back into the Mun a few minutes earlier.