[1.10.0] Final Frontier - kerbal individual merits 1.10.0-3485

[Nereid]

Does this seem reasonable, Nereid (and anyone else)?

For me it's ok. We can also think about several different sets of rank icons for everyones taste. But we should start with one. And dont expect any implementation soon. I would start with manual promotions at first anyway.

EDIT: Major General should be listet above Lieutnant General in my opinion.

[Raven.]

For me it's ok. We can also think about several different sets of rank icons for everyones taste. But we should start with one. And dont expect any implementation soon. I would start with manual promotions at first anyway.

EDIT: Major General should be listet above Lieutnant General in my opinion.

Lieutenant General, in the US Army, is a higher rank than Major General (weird I know). Even weirder is the Navy ranks, in which Rear Admiral can refer to either pay grade O-7 or O-8.

Me personally, I like the idea of ranks for the Kerbals, but not Army ranks. Me personally, I think the ranks for the UK Royal Air Force would be a good start for Kerbal ranks:

Master Aircrew

Warrant Officer

Flight Sergent/Chief Technician

Sergent

Corporal

Lance Corporal

Senior Aircraftman

Aircraftman

You could change this to:

Master Warrant Officer

Warrant Officer

Flight Sergent

Sergent

Corporal

Lance Corporal

Senior Airman

Junior Airman

EDIT: And just to add an opinion, I would personally want strictly manual promotions, since the player should be the one who determines who qualifies for a rank up.

Edited March 17, 2014 by Raven.

[SmarterThanMe]

Nice but way to militaristic (and serious) for kerbals. Here's my interpretation on this:

At the beginning, kerbals are humoristic characters that see their rockets blow up and always seem to end up surviving to the horrific "miscalculation"

I disagree. I don't think that military titles in this case are too serious. If people want to muck around with the titles, tho, perhaps Nereid could make them editable, like with the Custom Ribbons.

EDIT: Major General should be listet above Lieutnant General in my opinion.

You'd think so, right? But Major General was originally Sergeant-Major General and got shortened at some point in history. If you take a look at a list of insignia, such http://www.defense.gov/about/insignias/officers.aspx, you'll see that Lt. Gen. is above Maj. Gen.

[Starstrider42]

At the beginning, kerbals should get ranks in the spirit of object descriptions and forum user status. Example: "test dummy trainee","unpaid intern","Licensed to ride up front", ...

Agreed. Titles like these are way more in line with the spirit of the original game.

Just make sure to include "FamousConsiderably Less Famous Rocket Scientist" on the list.

EDIT: I realized that von Kerman doesn't seem the type who likes competition.

Edited March 17, 2014 by Starstrider42

[Nepos]

Look like just one of those fun mod I will have to try it out.

Thanks

[Raven.]

At the beginning, kerbals should get ranks in the spirit of object descriptions and forum user status. Example: "test dummy trainee","unpaid intern","Licensed to ride up front", ...

Agreed. Titles like these are way more in line with the spirit of the original game.

Just make sure to include "Famous Rocket Scientist" on the list.

You could do:

Famous Rocket Scientist

Rocket Scientist

Certified Badass

Survivor

Licensed to Crash Rocket

Licensed to Ride up Front

Intern

Unpaid Intern

Test Dummy

[Talisar]

I served in both the US Army and Navy, so this is a subject that I can actually weigh in on!

Lieutenant General, in the US Army, is a higher rank than Major General (weird I know). Even weirder is the Navy ranks, in which Rear Admiral can refer to either pay grade O-7 or O-8.

This is true. More exactly, in the Navy it's Rear Admiral (Lower Half) and Rear Admiral (Upper Half) for those two ranks. It gets even weirder when you realize that you can only have one Captain on a ship, so other service captains get temporarily "promoted" to Major and sometime you get an additional rank of Commodore added in for 0-6's who are not the actual Captain of the ship.

Me personally, I like the idea of ranks for the Kerbals, but not Army ranks. Me personally, I think the ranks for the UK Royal Air Force would be a good start for Kerbal ranks:

The rank designations for the US Air Force are the same as for the US Army, so that's probably where the list came from (I'm guessing)

That being said, I also would agree that a less militarized ranking structure would be more suitable for my personal Kerbals

[Hodo]

The rank designations for the US Air Force are the same as for the US Army, so that's probably where the list came from (I'm guessing)

That being said, I also would agree that a less militarized ranking structure would be more suitable for my personal Kerbals

I grew up with the USAF, and served in the US Army and am also all to aware of the US Rank structure.

The US Airforce (USAF) doesn't share the same ranks as the US Army for enlisted, only the officer ranks are shared to an extent. The US Army has Warrent Officer (WO) ranks but the USAF no longer has those. But it is KSP and you could use any rank structure you really wanted.

[jpkerman]

From an earlier post on page twenty...

(lowest to highest)

Kerbalnaut Junior Grade

Kerbalnaut

Kerbalnaut Senior Grade

Kerbalnaut Command Grade

Kerbalnaut Captain

or...

Kerbalnaut

Kerbalnaut Assistant

Kerbalnaut Supervisor

Kerbalnaut Leader

Kerbalnaut Superintendent

or maybe...

Kerbalnaut

Kerbalnaut 3rd Class

Kerbalnaut 2nd Class

Kerbalnaut 1st Class

Kerbalnaut Chief

Also...

posted by Nereid

"The ordering isn't quite right (the most important should be centered), but this is only a minor annoyance I think."

Most 'order of precedence' for ribbons on some far away world called Earth places the 'highest' or most senior ribbon at the first or beginning location. In a centered location one would beleive the less senior would be on the outside edges and that begs the question which goes left and which right? There was an older Earth system where 'mission' type ribbons went on the top rows and individual 'I did that' ribbons were on the bottom rows.

[SmarterThanMe]

I served in both the US Army and Navy, so this is a subject that I can actually weigh in on!

Just out of tangential interest (I need to know so that I can continue my team's ass-kickery at Pub Trivia Quizzes), do you know what the story is regarding Major General? I know that there was a rank for Sergeant-Major General that became Major General, but is there more detail than that?

That being said, I also would agree that a less militarized ranking structure would be more suitable for my personal Kerbals

While I personally don't like the frivolous titles, I see your and others' point (but, yeah, I also use mods like B9... which look far too technically adept to fit in such a universe). Perhaps the rank titles could be set in "Settings"?

If you want and Nereid decides to go down that path, I can even come up with custom sets of rank images that could work for whatever you want.

[SmarterThanMe]

The rank designations for the US Air Force are the same as for the US Army, so that's probably where the list came from (I'm guessing)

I actually sort of mostly relied on the British Commonwealth system... Brigadier instead of Brigadier General and so on. But it's a bit meshed together based on the USAF approach (no Air Commodore, no Flight Lieutenants, etc., just because I felt that the words were too long).

[Raptor831]

I'll throw in my two bits about the ranks. I like at least a pseudo-military style of naming. I mean, Kerbals are crazy, but they certainly aren't incompetent. Anyone who can make a spaceship from garbage and space-tape has to be pretty amazing! And giving them ribbons already reminds me of a military-ish system anyway. Even if you toss in some kerbal humor.

But, I think that this could be something that can be edited by the player. Start with a basic something, and then allow edits to be made, just like with the custom ribbons. Seems like something that would be useful for enhancing the role playing aspects.

[razark]

But, I think that this could be something that can be edited by the player. Start with a basic something, and then allow edits to be made, just like with the custom ribbons. Seems like something that would be useful for enhancing the role playing aspects.

I like the idea of ranks being editable.

I do see a problem, however, in handling both my Air Force/Army/Marine Kerbals and my Navy Kerbals (not to mention civilian Kerbals), since the ranks are different. Perhaps allow a user to edit the list of ranks, and also allow for free entry into the rank field in-game.

[Sabor]

Pretty sweet mod that adds more persistence and attachment to parts of the game, and that's always a good thing. I was looking through the ribbons and noticed they all look great, but when zoomed out or viewed at a certain size, they become jagged edgy, or look a bit cartoonish because of the pronounced scanlines. I've made my fair share of ribbons in the past, and if you'd like I could perhaps give them all a makeover in this style as an optional contribution to your mod. Just an offer, feel free to PM

I'll be using this from now on. I *never* used the Astronaut complex, or cared who was flying a mission. Now I will

Edited March 18, 2014 by Sabor

[CalculusWarrior]

I agree with those who believe that the kerbal ranking system shouldn't be based off the military's. The devs have stated that KSP is about peaceful space exploration.

My 2 cents in the debate: why don't we take a leaf out of NASA's book? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronaut_ranks_and_positions

While there isn't such a set hierarchy of promotions there, I do like the idea of making an kerbal a Science Officer or Payload Specialist based on which ribbons they've achieved (so a kerbal who has done plenty of EVAs is promoted differently than a kerbal who has done a lot of docking, etc)

[drtedastro]

I tend to go along with CalculusWarrior. The Nasa setup would be a good starting position to try things. out....

[SmarterThanMe]

The NASA thing isn't really about "ranks" as such, it's just about people's roles within particular missions. That's already accounted for by some of the custom ribbons I did a while ago.

[CalculusWarrior]

The NASA thing isn't really about "ranks" as such, it's just about people's roles within particular missions. That's already accounted for by some of the custom ribbons I did a while ago.

I must say, I utilize those ribbons quite a bit, thanks!

I suppose in the end, I want a system which is more professional than the 'crash test dummy', 'professional rocket crasher' type names, yet less militaristic and structured. I shall contribute more ideas as they come to me!

[anarkhon]

+1 for NASA ranks-roles and you maybe put some prefix for it like "Level 1 Pilot" "Level 3 Scientist"

[Aknar]

Specialization, logical and gives even more personality to kerbals to make you want to make complex team missions, I like it I would like to differentiate my aviators and kerbaunauts.

This means there would be conditions (having this and that ribbon) to obtain these ranks.

It goes along with the idea of adding icons to ribbons to limit their number and increase visibility and easy reading. About those, this idea comes from ribbon generator that most of us have. It might be a nice idea to put up accomplishments and ranks of the kerbal along with this the mission control accomplishments we already have. In any case, kerbal accomplishments shouldn't be organized on planet ribbons but around the types of achievements and the extent of those achievements. These specialized ribbons would justify a promotion.

They wouldn't be focused on the planets but the kerbal. Their greatest achievements remain landing and exploring other planets, each planet would only one ribbon to sum it up so that other achievements on more general aspects can showcased (how high/fast, how many g's, time on EVA, amount of reports done, ...).

Edited March 18, 2014 by Aknar

[Sabor]

Specialization, logical and gives even more personality to kerbals to make you want to make complex team missions, I like it I would like to differentiate my aviators and kerbaunauts.

This means there would be conditions (having this and that ribbon) to obtain these ranks.

It goes along with the idea of adding icons to ribbons to limit their number and increase visibility and easy reading. About those, this idea comes from ribbon generator that most of us have. It might be a nice idea to put up accomplishments and ranks of the kerbal along with this the mission control accomplishments we already have. In any case, kerbal accomplishments shouldn't be organized on planet ribbons but around the types of achievements and the extent of those achievements. These specialized ribbons would justify a promotion.

They wouldn't be focused on the planets but the kerbal. Their greatest achievements remain landing and exploring other planets, each planet would only one ribbon to sum it up so that other achievements on more general aspects can showcased (how high/fast, how many g's, time on EVA, amount of reports done, ...).

To expand on that, Perhaps where it says the number of flights completed for the Kerbal, you make that a button to pull up another menu that lists the flights in a little more detail: Such as Time/Distance, with an editable title. So you could take one flight he's made, rename it from Flight 1 to say, STS-121: Delivered Such and Such to Such and Such. And at the bottom of the list of flights, it shows the Sum of all the time spent in space, distance traveled, fastest speed, number landings, so on and so forth

[jpkerman]

I like the current 'many ribbons' approach but to address the 'less ribbons' argument:

Many ribbon multiple award devices consist of a roman numeral being added. Each planet could have it's own ribbon and each mission that enters it's SOi (or achieves an orbit) would add a number which increases. A docking, landing, EVA ribbon would also be involved with a numeral device to show how many of these activities were achieved.

These devices would most likely graphically be an applied alpha graphic that overlays the ribbon however and may involve redesign of the mod.

[Nereid]

Now that the custom ribbon bug seems solved, I have been wondering if a small science value should also be given when ribbons are awarded.

Unfortunately I failed to find a way to give out science points yet. Any idea? Is there any mod out there thats generates science points?

[Aknar]

Unfortunately I failed to find a way to give out science points yet. Any idea? Is there any mod out there thats generates science points?

ScanSat. I don't know if you can do much with the system but it's worth checking out. It has a "ScienceDefs.cfg" in the ressources folder

[Nereid]

ScanSat. I don't know if you can do much with the system but it's worth checking out. It has a "ScienceDefs.cfg" in the ressources folder

Thank you. I will see if I can get something to learn out of this.

Version 0.3.8 is in the queue. Permadeath comes back (optional, it's off by default) and there are four new ribbons for sustained g-force.