Manual Retrieval (as an option)

[iZen]

Hi,

I've not played in some time, and I noticed that now there is a retrieving option for Kerbalnauts on Kerbal.

In my infinite wisdom I came to the conclusion that this is probably in preparation for career mode, where you don't have infinite Kerbals and/or new ones cost a lot of money.

Now I think though that it should be an option wether to have this option or needing to manually recover your kerbals. So you need to say get them into the area of the KSC before retrieval becomes an option.

Before I discovered this option, I wanted to get my Jebediah back and purpose-built a retrieval vehicle.

(Note aside: Bad bug. I once managed to get Jeb on board an crashed on my way back. I rewound to launch and tried again, only to find Jeb still gone/dead. Hes listed as MIA now, but his vehicle is still on spot.)

Nonetheless, this was a fun experienced and the first time I managed to create an awesome plane that actually flies stable and everything.

Maybe another option would be to make retrieval cost money based on pilot distance.

The only problem I see with this atm is sea-retrieval, wich would probably become really tricky...Maybe a part should be implemented similar to the skycrane in that batman movie (like a rope that hangs down and automatically attaches a kerbal close to it).

My idea is I would like the player to be encouraged to keep his kerbal squad small, either because they gain experience, also because they cost money.

[Nobody]

As an optional feature it would be nice for the RP and challenge seeking players to have an area in the KSC to park vehicles that would count them as recovered and end the flights once you go to another flight or operations center.

Naturally if you didn't want to do that you would still have the button to auto retrieve which would send out a NPC team at the speed of light to recover the stuff flawlessly.

[iZen]

Having the option makes people (me) lazy. I like to choose at the start and then having to deal with the consequences...otherwise at the first problem encountered Im gonna use the easy way out

Its like when you start playing skyrim and say to yourself "Im not gonna use fast travel"! You're gonna use it within an hour

[Nobody]

Having the option makes people (me) lazy. I like to choose at the start and then having to deal with the consequences...otherwise at the first problem encountered Im gonna use the easy way out

Its like when you start playing skyrim and say to yourself "Im not gonna use fast travel"! You're gonna use it within an hour

That could be fixed with a modular dificulty setting at the creation of a career mode save file. []Disable automated recovery.

If you completely removed the option of letting the system recover your craft then people who don't want to spend hours traversing Kerbal to collect their stuff would quit the game.

[iZen]

That could be fixed with a modular dificulty setting at the creation of a career mode save file. []Disable automated recovery.

If you completely removed the option of letting the system recover your craft then people who don't want to spend hours traversing Kerbal to collect their stuff would quit the game.

You're absolutely right. That's exactly what I meant! Thats probably why I never said otherwise

Options are the best thing ever, and to be honest, it can't be that hard to include an option that actually disables a feature

[softweir]

Maybe it would work to be forced to retrieve several ship and/or crews from different distances in order to prove you have the capability, and once it gets boring you can let the game do the work for you?

[Van Disaster]

Research & hire SAR crews/vessels, issue solved? if you like manually recovering them, don't hire/research that tree. Seems an option which would suit everyone except people who don't want to bother at all, and then I guess you could have a checkbox somewhere.

[Ghost13]

I don't think that manual retrival is such a good idea, first of all we need to retreve not only the kerbonaut but also any parts, from the landing\crash. As far as I see the how the KSP economical model will work in the future, any recovered part may be used again with no or very low price. And making the special resque operations over the Kerbin will just complicate things. However in the current state of things it is really difficult to make fully recoverable craft since any part of the ship that will be detached and loose focus in the lower atmoshere will be deleted. You also can't switch vessels inside the atmosphere and your only way to do fully recoverable vessesl is SSTO ship, that can barely have any amount of usefull payload exempt the ship itself. So in order to make you care about loosing that booster tanks, devs shuld make it possible to save them first.

[Kerbart]

KSP is a game and it's intention is provide fun, not to provide a mindnumbing boring simulation. Of course there can be a challenge in retrieving Kerbals, but it is safe to assume that if you can put them into orbit you will have the ability to retrieve Kerbals from the ocean. Keep in mind:

• The stock capsules are without any shadow of doubt based on Mercury and Apollo capsules, which means that splash-down landings are preferred over lithocaptures. And yet there's no naval facilities in the game.
  
• The easiest way to get more realism in the game? Stop hitting the warp buttons and play real time. Once you've completed that return mission to Duna I'm more than happy to discuss the virtues of "playing it as real as possible" with you.
  
• I even use the retrieval option to clean up debris. There. I said it. But guess what? If debris has a <70km Kerbin orbit, it's going to degrade. But do I want to baby every piece of debris back to the surface? Nobody ain't got time for that! So just like hitting the accelerator, I have no qualms to remove debris that should be coming down in the first place. For anything with a periapsis above 70km I'll send in my debris scoop, but that's a different story.
  

[Kerbart]

Research & hire SAR crews/vessels, issue solved? if you like manually recovering them, don't hire/research that tree. Seems an option which would suit everyone except people who don't want to bother at all, and then I guess you could have a checkbox somewhere.

That's like the docking computer in Elite. Once you can afford it you no longer need it. Although saving time is nice.

[Van Disaster]

You don't need it, but you most definitely appreciate it by that point.

[S4qFBxkFFg]

There seems to be a suitable compromise to be found here - we could still have "automatic" recovery, by just pressing the button in the tracking station interface, but build in a delay and a monetary cost.

The time taken (and expense, for when that's relevant in the future) would depend on the size of the object recovered, and its location - a splashed-down booster a few km off the KSC coast might take a couple of hours and a moderate cost (representing a tug boat going out to tow it back). Or, recovering a heavy capsule plus its Kerbals from one of Kerbin's poles, or mountain tops might take several days and lots of cash (representing heavy-lift helicopters, mountaineering expeditions, and/or long range transport aircraft flights).

Perhaps further down the line, this could be fleshed out - you could see the tug boats leaving a dock in the Space Centre view, for example; or have pre-positioned recovery boats to get things back quicker.

I'm not suggesting the player should have to build the vehicles involved, you could maybe have stock boats, which are more like moving buildings from a developer's perspective, with tow lines for dragging large floating parts and cranes for lifting valuable smaller parts (i.e. capsules and their contents).

[3_bit]

I would like an incinerator I can drop my kerbals and ships into to retrieve the parts. Notice how I didn't add kerbals to what the device yields. Perhaps automatic retrieval could cost some money and there be a small risk of a case of kerbal error, damaging the craft?