Experimental Tech (full career mode only)

[tater]

Apparently the devs are not keen on random failures. Makes sense… "yeah, finally made it to Jool!" (BOOM in background) "WTF, my fuel tank exploded? Now? #$#@!$#!$"

Bad idea. Got it.

On the other hand, problems can actually be fun to play (some of my best flight sim moments have been flying badly damaged warplanes home). Last night I was trying to move a small science station to munar orbit, and I screwed up my staging order. Long story short, my choice was to revert, or to dock with the now staged away part, and try to finish getting it to munar orbit. The docking ports for this are (stupidly) on the side. It's grossly unbalanced. Pushing it is nontrivial, in other words. I turned on my RCS to aid the gyro, and used low thrust to keep from spinning. Works OK unless you need a long burn at apoapsis. Still, a different problem, non-trivial, but what the heck, my life isn't at stake

It got me thinking of something I posted in another thread.

What if the tech tree would unlock new, "X" tech from one node ahead of the one you unlocked? That would be past the new stuff you just unlocked, but it's the alpha version. Not ready for primetime.

Unlocking a new node in career mode would result in testing contracts for the new parts, or the parts would default to all having the "test" bottom on right click, possibly. You'd use them as usual, and and after X uses or test results (variable by the part), they'd present a message that "Rocketdyne engineers have realized their gross math errors, and have improved their engine!" or whatever. The part is now as advertised.

Failure chances would be random (most will work fine). Random failures would be:

Lowered performance:

Lower Isp, higher fuel use, lower capacity of tank, uses more power than expected, lower ejection force, lower impact resistance, etc. Some minor range. These might be the most common flaws. Results in test data, likely doesn't change mission success at all (unless you spam a new rocket with tons of X tech, maybe).

Wrong performance:

Gimble doesn't work, or locks at some angle., tanks leak fuel, etc. These are bad results that might compromise a mission. Cool graphics (fuel spraying out, etc).

Catastrophic failure:

We'd stay away from "BOOM! ship gone" failures (no fun), but think Apollo 13 as a worst case. Engines stop working, fuel tank pops, etc. Stuff that makes you think of "plan B." If it is hilarious to have the very rare BOOM, by all means, add that as a 1% chance or something

If you don't use the X tech, after some time (or science gained, or a new node unlocked, something, it becomes regular tech anyway. This is a way to preview new tech by choice---at a risk. Worst case, you mount a rescue mission, or have to stage away the rocket, and do a suborbital flight.