Training Kerbals

[Doozler]

I don't know if this has been suggested before - I can't find anything exactly the same.

There seems to be a reoccurring Autopilot debate - does it remove the grind or remove the fun?

What about training Kerbals to perform routine flight tasks? The idea is that you would have to perform a task like orbital insertion, getting to geosyncronous etc three times while you "train" that Kerbal. Depending on how well you do (fuel used, circularity of orbit), the Kerbal is correspondingly skilled. You would then get to instruct that Kerbal to perform that task (essentially an autopilot). It only performs that task as well as you could (or slightly worse). You could perhaps only unlock training after a particular career stage.

This has a number of advantages:

• It prevents end-stage tedium (putting up 20 parts for a station.)
  
• However, you don't get to "cheat" and use an autopilot to avoid learning how to do something.
  
• Perhaps most importantly: there is then a real value put on Kerbal lives - you don't want to lose you expert launcher/ lander/ geo-synch pilot.
  

Obviously, this is similar to an Autopilot, but I thought this was a way of adding one that allows late-stage convenience but doesn't affect the early stage learning.

Thoughts?

[regex]

I don't know if this has been suggested before - I can't find anything exactly the same.

It's been suggested many times.

There seems to be a reoccurring Autopilot debate - does it remove the grind or remove the fun?

Where are you seeing this? Out in forum land or here in suggestion land? Because I haven't seen such a debate in suggestion land for some time. Autopilot is a terrible idea for the base game and should remain in mod land where people can make their own choice, one way or the other. Considering how much developer time goes into something like MechJeb I'd much rather it didn't take up SQUAD's dev time.

[Red Iron Crown]

There seems to be a reoccurring Autopilot debate - does it remove the grind or remove the fun?

Opinions vary strongly on this. It depends on the individual player.

As for your suggestion, I would just as soon have a proper autopilot rather than backdoor one by training Kerbals.

[Nuke]

i like the idea of leveling up individual kerbals. where they can learn skills after earning mission points. then do kerbal classes, pilot, scientist, engineer, eva expert, rover expert, etc. when you recruit a kerbal you can assign them a class, and then they level up within that class and can earn skills. these skills would eventually be pretty mundane, like being able to fix things, or hold an orientation, or do basic science, and move on to advanced stuff like plotting a course or manage isru operations. obviously this makes keeping your kerbals alive much more important. you loose one and you loose all the skills they have earned.

[coolitic]

This is on the what not to suggest list (auto-pilot)

[Serratus]

I agree with regex. I personally use started using MechJeb back around 0.18 because those "standard" elements of nearly every mission just stopped being fun, and became tedious (after 1K launches, 1K1 just gets boring...) but I still don't think KSP should feature its own "AI". If You did that the main fun of the game for new users - the learning of orbital mechanics - goes out the window :/

Even if You limit it somehow like in Your example, that still means that ppl stop learning. What's 3 landings on Mun? Or 10 for that matter? I probably was well above 100 landings and still had fails and crashes 5 times out of 10.

So let's not introduce auto-pilot, and let the players take on the challenges themselves (tedious as they might be) and once they get the technique to master level, they can choose if they want to cut out the boring parts (I have huge respect for ppl like Scott Manly - I wouldn't have the patience after playing the game for so long).

[Atoning Unifex]

I agree with regex. I personally use started using MechJeb back around 0.18 because those "standard" elements of nearly every mission just stopped being fun, and became tedious (after 1K launches, 1K1 just gets boring...) but I still don't think KSP should feature its own "AI". If You did that the main fun of the game for new users - the learning of orbital mechanics - goes out the window :/

Even if You limit it somehow like in Your example, that still means that ppl stop learning. What's 3 landings on Mun? Or 10 for that matter? I probably was well above 100 landings and still had fails and crashes 5 times out of 10.

So let's not introduce auto-pilot, and let the players take on the challenges themselves (tedious as they might be) and once they get the technique to master level, they can choose if they want to cut out the boring parts (I have huge respect for ppl like Scott Manly - I wouldn't have the patience after playing the game for so long).

Well I do and don't agree with this. I played without mechjeb for ages before discovering it and so I did get used to doing things without help, but mechjeb actually helped me learn better ways to do things. Also even after playing for ages (probably not 100 mun landings but more than 20) I still found it tricky and frankly annoying the amount of times I would still crash on landings, have to reload, repeat, reload, repeat (snores). The latest releases of mechjeb limit access to modules depending on techs researched and I think it works pretty well.

Anyway I think there's (at least) two fundamental groups of players of this game. The 'purists' who feel that flight should consist of flying by eye and desparate button mashing during landings, and the 'realists' who prefer to simply see their craft fly and land efficiently without having to fight with controls. (yes guess, which i am!) I don't think there's any way to please both. I'd love to see a properly developed autopilot but I'm happy to stick with mechjeb if it's all there is.

[Serratus]

The latest releases of mechjeb limit access to modules depending on techs researched and I think it works pretty well.

[...]

I'd love to see a properly developed autopilot but I'm happy to stick with mechjeb if it's all there is.

Yes, incorporating MechJeb to tech-tree was spot-on and I do think it's for the best. As for making everybody happy - why not MechJeb as free but official DLC to KSP? That way it's both stock (of sorts, or maybe not "stock" but at least "official") and optional. After all, there really isn't a mod that has become so universally recognized as part of KSP lore like the MechJeb! (it even made it into the comics )

That said, IMO it's a problem for the far future when we get version 1.0

Edited February 21, 2014 by Serratus

[Doozler]

Well I realised that autopilot was an old idea and I realised that it would break the early game. The idea of "training" was that it would depend on your skill level rather than just tech tree level. So if you only land on the mun 50% of the time then so could your kerbal - and there would be a 50% chance that it wold die and you'd need to train a new one. But if you can get to lko 10 times in a row perfectly then you could train a kerbal to be "nearly as good"

The idea is that this wouldn't remove the fun of learning anything because you'd have to master it before you could train - just like life!

...and I agree that this is v v low priority as mech jeb + pilot's honour performs the same function, essentially.

Edit: I just realised that if the upcoming contracts system gets tied into mech jeb you get pretty much my original suggestion. I still think it would be cool to tie it to individual kerbals though. Imagine a rescue mission for your ace tanker pilot with ten hour training invested...

Edited February 22, 2014 by Doozler
Incomplete

[Whoozy]

I would like to have Kerbals learning to fly the crafts.

Make sure the orange suit Kerbals cannot learn to fly.