Part Reliability

[LaserJock]

Looked around a bit and didn't see this suggestion, so thought I'd throw it out there: adding part reliability to the game (at least as a career mode toggle-able option).

As a systems engineer myself and having worked closely during my career with several space launch system and satellite development teams, building reliability into space and launch systems is a first order consideration, and sometimes the overwhelming consideration during the design process. The longer the mission and more complex the satellite/probe, the greater cost premium we're willing to pay for high reliability parts or designed-in redundancy in order to improve our chances of a successful mission. Not only could this make the game more fun by increasing the "pucker factor" on complex missions and launchers, it'd be a great educational experience teaching folks the value of the KISS (keep it simple stupid) principle of spacecraft design. Could also create fun rescue mission scenarios when your Kerbals are stranded in Jool orbit with a dead main engine.

This would be a simple addition I think. Assign a failure rate and a couple or few failure modes (from the part just stops working all the way to the part explodes damaging other parts) to every part in the game. Each part has a cost range instead of a single cost - cheap parts only have 1/10 the reliability of the premium parts.

[vexx32]

The devs have previously stated that adding random failures to the game is pretty much just not on the cards. While there are ways around it, making a mission to Jool (for example) fail just because you didn't bring six spare engines or suddenly sprang a leak out of nowhere is generally only going to frustrate players no end. While KSP is to a point a simulation, it is also a game, and should be fun instead of frustrating. Any mistakes made by the player are fixable and can be avoided as the player gets better at the game. Totally random things, while to a point realistic, are probably best just avoided.

As random failure of parts is also on the [thread=36863]What Not to Suggest List[/thread], I'm going to have to close this for now. I recommend you read the list over at least once before making further suggestions. If you wish to discuss the merits of random failures and associated content, I recommend you open a [Discussion] topic instead.