Opinions on "Kerbal Experience"

[Moesly_Armlis]

Here take my $0.02. Just to clear up the idea that an experianced pilot does make a difference on performence. Although, no way should it exceed 100%.

Example:

Ever been in a small fishing boat, with two other buddies. You are totally 100 % experianced at piloting your boat. The other two are landlubbers and will not sit still (rock the boat) while you are cruising over the water. Now there is a penalty to effeciency no matter how good the pilot.

Instead if you would have asked your other two buds, who have piloted before and have experiance, than you would have reached navy island and not went over the falls.

Penalties for inexperiance might be a better implementation. The goal to becoming 100% efficient pilot.

[Red Iron Crown]

Here take my $0.02. Just to clear up the idea that an experianced pilot does make a difference on performence. Although, no way should it exceed 100%.

Example:

Ever been in a small fishing boat, with two other buddies. You are totally 100 % experianced at piloting your boat. The other two are landlubbers and will not sit still (rock the boat) while you are cruising over the water. Now there is a penalty to effeciency no matter how good the pilot.

Instead if you would have asked your other two buds, who have piloted before and have experiance, than you would have reached navy island and not went over the falls.

Penalties for inexperiance might be a better implementation. The goal to becoming 100% efficient pilot.

All these examples, boats and planes and cars. It doesn't work that way with spacecraft.

The dirty little secret about spaceflight: Piloting skill is pretty much irrelevant.

[FITorion]

I'm in the wait and see camp but I'm not overly comfortable with kerbal stats effecting things like engine performance. Geting a bit more or less responsivenes out of reaction wheels/RCS is one thing. a skilled hand on the stick so to speak will be able to control the same system to a greater degree and get more performance than someone touching it for the first time. Possibly have ASAS not wobble so much with a skilled pilot. However no amount of skill is going to make a rocket that provides 500kN of thrust max provide 510kN. Playing around with the fuel flow or whatever to get more thrust is best left to the guys on the ground who actualy know how they work, not the pilot who's flying it.

Personally I'd rather have a limited amount of autopilot options that are tied to kerbal skill. Tell the kerbal to point the ship prograde or at a node and he'll do his best to line up on that orientation and hold it. Better pilots will be more accurate and do a better job. If allowd to auto fly a planed node a better pilot will fly it more accurately and with less wasted fuel. A lesser pilot may be off on the node or spend more fuel correcting for mistakes. The player could of course fly the ship on manual to avoid the issue of a poor pilot .

Choices in trajectory mean more or less efficient use of fuel... A Kerbals skills could offset our own to make a more efficient assent than we would have been able to do.

With solids there would be nothing you can do... but liquid fuel engines could be pushed beyond the "safety" limits and we could have a skilled Kerbal to be able to do that.

There are plenty of ways a skilled pilot can get a little more out of an engine or machine than your average person can. I think those who don't think that... simply lack imagination.

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

Definitely going to wait and see... I see this as Squad getting people's reactions to gauge if what they are doing is right or not, and as with all planned features, they are at liberty to drop it entirely or completely change it - anything can happen between now and release!

The initial idea has pro's and con's to me... I have to agree that I'm not sure how 'magical extra thrust' can be generated... To me, I would like Named Engineers who would add that sort of thing if they worked on the ship to be able to benefit from it - as others have said, Chekov had as much control over the engine room as anyone else sat on the bridge - and remember, the saucer-section of the enterprise could seperate, making them even more removed from main engineering! (hell, it's then 'on another vessel' haha!)

[Jouni]

I am looking forward to how SQUAD will implement better flying with experienced pilots. Any pilot should improve the ships performance over a probe, if only because a well maintained ship would burn fuel better and survive a crash better.

It would be fun to raise experienced kerbals and have a reason to use the experience.

The problem with pilot experience is that pilots don't do anything in KSP. They just sit in the cockpit and watch, as the player does all the flying.

In general, experience works better with abstract game mechanics that concentrate on modeling the consequences of an action, as opposed to the action itself. An experienced kerbal might be able to find better surface samples or to squeeze more science points from an experiment in the lab, because those are the kind of activities the kerbals do themselves. They could also be better at repairing the ship, if Squad ever adds more detailed damage mechanisms to the game. On the other hand, kerbal experience should not affect navigation or flying, as the kerbals are only passengers, while the player is the real navigator and pilot.

[Franklin]

Honestly, if kerbal experience only gives bonuses for science, reputation and funds, they might as well scrap the whole experience system. We already have the strategies for that. I wish we could get an actual bonus from an experienced kerbal, but it seems that after all the complaints we won't get anything that adds to the gameplay, since the community seems to be allergic to the whole "gameplay" concept.

If you've been reading along, most are perfectly fine with a gameplay-impacting experience system, just within the realm of logic. pilot-accuracy-based skills are far and beyond preferred to rocket-performance-based skills. That's the key sticking point. Parts shouldn't work better or worse depending on whose using them, the accuracy in which they're used is what's impacted by pilot skill.

If Kerbals are in fact piloting themselves in the future then I'm down with an action accuracy-based skill/experience system, that makes sense. As long as when I decide to take the wheel the ship performs only as well as designed and the accuracy at which it flies is based on my ability as a player, not pilot buffs.

[johnnyhandsome]

I beg to differ. Scott Carpenter almost screwed himself by running out of RCS on (i think) Mercury 4.

Scott Carpenter did NOT almost screw himself on the Mercury-Atlas 7 flight. Part of the automatic flight control system failed, which Carpenter compensated for manually, but that forced a lot of fuel use.

[Ikaneko]

Guys, hasn't Maxmaps said that they won't add the kerbal experience system as described by Mu?

[lincourtl]

Should have phrased that tweet to be about all parts, we're looking at other possibilities regarding piloting skill like control surface reaction speed since they're a bit on the slow side currently. Plenty of other traits that work along with the base mechanics and currencies of career mode, though

I have a lot of respect, indeed awe, at how Squad has developed KSP to be both fun and realistic enough that we have literal 12-year olds on the forums discussing things like TWR, ISP, terminal velocities, or bielliptic transfers. But IMHO that's just as bad. Anything in which experience influences physics or engineering of the craft, even if you rationalize it as "Well, Jeb has flown 350,000,000 kilometers so he's going to have faster reaction speed", is hokey and magical and doesn't make for very good gameplay. It is, in effect, punishing new players while not rewarding experienced players. Restricting it to a tiny effect size just makes it superfluous to gameplay.

Experience should affect Kerbal abilities, such as interplanetary navigation (i.e. you would need a Kerbal with interplanetary navigation skills to go to Duna), or planetary science (i.e. you need a Kerbal with planetary science skills to take surface samples) rather than arbitrarily handicap the player's ability to execute their missions.

[zxczxczbfg]

IMO it doesn't really fit into the mechanics of the game (how would having a really smart pilot affect your engines?) But I like that they're giving Kerbal stats a function, at least.

[bigbadben]

Just for the record:

I've seen posts with the suggestion that an increase in SAS/RCS control would be ok to have with Kerbal exp.

I do not agree, and here is why: How do you, as the player, get better sas/rcs control? What steps do you learn to take? How to use wings on the bottom of rockets? Where to position the sas modules to get max performance from them? How to use rcs thrusters to help control, and how to position them to get desired turn performance. To use struts to reduce wobble. Etc, etc, etc...

See, it is YOU who learn to get better, to increase YOUR exp and building and flying. I don't want to watch a youtube video of a ksp'er making an ascent that turns correctly and there is no wobble, but when I try it I cannot turn at all and it wobbles itself apart. I examine the placement of control surfaces, see his technique, sas module location is the same......

But it turns out his pilots are lvl 5.

Therefore his ships works, and mine doesn't.

Suggestions for exp: Flair (glasses/costumes/etc), Certification (based on real-life/unique roles for kerbals), badges (final frontier/reddit challenges), perks (as NO MR BOND posted), or as a last resort, standard money/rep/science bonuses.

Edited October 22, 2014 by bigbadben
added 'etc' to flair

[FleetAdmiralJ]

OK, so I have gone through the entirety of the thread and come up with this. I would have liked to more fully quoted ideas, but to save space I will try to summarize them.

The first thing to note is this: It’s hard to see how Kerbal Experience, as envisioned in the dev notes, survives without the ability to improve performance. There just isn’t anything for Kerbals to “do†without it. Pretty much the ONLY suggested “improvement†people seem OK with is improving science. And let’s be real. You can’t have JUST scientist astronauts.

First, let’s get ideas out of the way that appear to suffer the same problems as what people are complaining about:

1) Having electrical engineers that allow kerbals to use/generate power more efficiently

2) Having SAS function better with experienced kerbals

3) Any other alteration that improves performance of pretty much anything [which makes it hard for kerbal experience to really matter in any meaningful way in my opinion]

Next, let’s get into the “we already do that elsewhere, so why add that functionality yet again†category, which seems to be what most people are suggesting, which includes:

4) Experienced kerbals improve science

5) Experienced kerbals bring back more money

6) Experienced kerbals bring in more reputation.

My thoughts on this is this: we already have ways of increasing production of all three currencies: it’s the admin building. In fact, it's possible this would lead to literally duplicating what the admin building already does: trading reputation for money or science. We already have a way to increase money additionally by landing close to the KSC. And people already complain that science is too plentiful in the game. And isn’t part of the point of this to SPEND reputation (or otherwise make it important)? People seem fine increasing the 3 currencies using experience, but we already have multiple ways of doing that already. I’m not sure what doing it AGAIN really adds to the game.

Next, I’ll list some ideas which, well, let’s just say I don’t think they make sense - or at least are incompatible with many of the arguments I see here. Obviously they did to whomever suggested them. I’ll let everyone else decide on their own:

7) Have an EVA specialist who can fix solar panels [my note: really? REALLY? I’ve needed to do that about twice ever. Worst. Skill. Ever.]

8) Make Kerbals black out due to G-LOC. [my note: interesting idea, except most people here have based their entire arguments around the idea that the Kerbals aren’t actually doing anything, so who cares if they black out. I actually don’t mind this idea, but it would mean people having to actually admit that Kerbals are manning the controls.]

9) Have Kerbals automate flying [my note: this would seem to effectively MechJebs the game, which I have a feeling won’t go over very well either)

Now, onto the ideas that I think are intriguing, or at least plausibly workable:

10) Require more experienced kerbels to fly certain level of missions [i actually like this idea]

10a) Restrict certain use of certain parts to kerbals of certain reputation [put this as 10a b/c the concept is similar. Also an interesting idea; edit: there was also a suggestion to spend reputation to train kerbals on the ground. Also interesting idea]

11) Have a Navigator verbal that helps plots better course [i’m not sure how one could scale this to different tech levels, but if someone could flesh out a plausible way to do that, it could have potential]

12) Restrict inexperienced Kerbal’s ability to EVA [relatively minor, but interesting]

13) Changing response time based on experience [interesting, though I could see the same howls about how Bill isn’t actually flying so he shouldn’t affect how quickly the ship responds to commands]

The perhaps most thought out idea is the idea that Kerbals can't fly missions and/or can't fly parts until they reach a certain reputation, which could have interesting implications if you suddenly kill all of your experienced kerbals in the late game on a mission to Jool. (Also: what about probes?). But it would seem that any sort of experience tracking would have to move away from "classes" of Kerbals, which is where it seems to be at now and more toward kerbals uniformly improving (eg. If the same 3 kerbals go on all the exact same missions, their experience stats will be identical)

Edited October 22, 2014 by FleetAdmiralJ

[Torquemadus]

This isn't strange at all if you keep in mind that it's an abstraction. A better pilot might need to make fewer corrections, thus using less fuel to make the same maneuver, and creating what is the functional equivalent of getting better ISP out of the engines. It's only implausible if you assume that it's an attempt to duplicate reality in a literal way.

From a strategy perspective, Kerbal experience has the potential to make Career Mode a lot more interesting. It could provide an incentive to bring a larger crew on a mission, so that each can bring their unique set of skills. For example, you might decide to bring Sulu Kerman for his ace piloting skills, Scotty Kerman for his engineering expertise, and Spock Kerman to do science. Or perhaps you might decide to take only one kerbal in a smaller and cheaper ship. If so, which kerbal do you bring? Which skill matters more to the success of the mission?

Allowing pilot skill to affect performance factors such as ISP adds interesting strategic dilemmas. Players will have to take pilot skill into account when designing their missions. For example, sending Spock Kerman will get me more science, but sending Sulu Kerman means I'll need less fuel and thus can send a smaller and cheaper ship. This will require some use of abstraction to explain the effects of pilot skills, but could also make Career Mode more challenging and interesting.

Conversely, I don't think crew experience should be an active feature in Sandbox, any more than unlocking parts and gathering science is. Sandbox should offer a way to have fun in KSP without the "Space Program Tycoon" features getting in the way.

[lincourtl]

The perhaps most thought out idea is the idea that Kerbals can't fly missions and/or can't fly parts until they reach a certain reputation, which could have interesting implications if you suddenly kill all of your experienced kerbals in the late game on a mission to Jool. (Also: what about probes?).

Easy. Mission controller branch on the experience tree. Mission controller Kerbals don't fly, but they're necessary to complete missions. There could be different mission controller skills on the mission controller branch so that you would have mission controllers who are rated for Kerbal interplanetary missions, Kerbal aeronautic flight, uncrewed probes, etc.

[Franklin]

It’s hard to see how Kerbal Experience, as envisioned in the dev notes, survives without the ability to improve performance. There just isn’t anything for Kerbals to “do†without it. Pretty much the ONLY suggested “improvement†people seem OK with is improving science. And let’s be real. You can’t have JUST scientist astronauts.

I think most of us were suggesting they do scrap the proposed system, but honestly acting as totems that bless our rockets with +% buffs isn't something for the Kerbals to "do", it would just become something they "are".

Squad has plenty of opportunity to give Kerbals something to "do". Like make science more engaging and less click-hunt-y with having to have Kerbals actually interact with science parts and actually do something to obtain science. Give us a reason to go EVA like introducing part malfunctions, give Kerbals some on-going needs like life support and give us a reason to make them collect it like a KAS-pipe system network and established bases.

There are loads of things the Kerbals could be "doing", but buffing what we, the players are doing, isn't one most seem to like. It's not logical, and it falls short of what we've all been sold from the beginning as to what KSP is/was going to be.

Edited October 22, 2014 by Franklin

[RogueMason]

(Bear in mind that this thread has moved fast, so some of this may already have been covered while I was coming up with it. Apologies for potentially repeating ideas )

There are certain things about this experience system that I can see are beneficial. I'm fine with some science buffs, as you do become more capable and knowledgeable as you undertake more work and do more research; this is true of anyone, not just our little green friends. As for the variances in the thrust and ISP, I can see what they are trying to emulate; a new guy may be a little nervous and jittery with the joystick while Jeb is sipping on a brew and handling the ship using just his feet in an epic display of spaceflight aerobatics (astrobatics?), but I don't think implementing differences in how an engine performs is the best way to do that. If you want to emulate Dumbwise Kerman at the helm, introduce a little bit of a jitter on the throttle as you throttle up and a little tiny sway on the heading. Unfortunately, this is also a bad idea as it sort of discounts your own abilities to fly the spacecraft; you personally could be an ace, but you're being held back by the new guy who insisted he fly your mission for you.

Overall, it's sounding rather lacklustre, which is the first bad thing I've had to say about KSP, but as it hasn't even been developed and given to us yet, I'm in no real position to evaluate it. Who knows, it may well turn out to be fine, thus I'm voting 'Wait and see'

Nevertheless, I'm going to go ahead and throw some ideas out for consideration. I think we should split the whole thing into two distinct areas: Experience and Performance.

Experience is along the lines of what we have now but it does nothing to affect how engines operate whatsoever. Instead, we would have Science, Engineering, Navigation, Systems, and perhaps Medicine and Hydroponics/Aeroponics if suitable gameplay effects are ever introduced.

• Science is one of the more obvious experience traits. A Kerbal who specialises in Science will be able to collect more science points from the field and analyse data more effectively in the lab. Perhaps they could also provide more detailed descriptions in the sample details and reports instead of just saying 'Definitely not mint ice cream'. Such simple descriptions can be reserved for non-scientists or wannabes. They also utilise in-field equipment more effectively, should any of that ever appear (I suppose the Goo pods and Materials Bays count, but I mean things like hammers and core drills).
  
• Engineering is probably the most detailed aspect of this whole thing, simply for the fact that there is a lot of stuff that can be done here. Engineers will be able to improve their experience and abilities through the repair of various items on EVA. Wheels and landing legs are all that can be fixed for now, as far as I can recall (repacking parachutes doesn't count; you don't need a doctorate to fold a tent back up), but this system would be much expanded to include practically every part in the game, and some parts would yield more experience from their repair than others would (a truss vs. an LV-N, for instance). As an engineer accumulates more time working on fixing things, they'll eventually find that they can start successfully tinkering with parts to make upgrades, which is where I think this whole 'boost your thrust and ISP' thing should really come from; you'd have to have components aboard your ship, in a pod somewhere, and you'd need to go on EVA, head to the part you want to upgrade, and upgrade it, so long as such an upgrade is within reason; no expanding fuel tanks, but maybe just an adjustment to the De Laval nozzle on that engine over there to improve the ISP in that manner, or possibly a tweak to the reaction wheels to improve their ability to stop a ship from overshooting an orientation as well as keeping you pointing the right way better. This would undoubtedly have to come with an element of risk; if your upgrade goes wrong, it can either just kill the boost you made or damage the part, requiring it to be fixed before it will operate again. Also, new engineers who apply upgrades will not have their upgrades prove to be very successful most of the time, nor will upgrades be as effective as those applied by a pro. In fact, non-professional upgrades could risk damage to surrounding parts if the upgraded part has explosive potential.
  
  
• Navigators will focus on improving how orbital trajectories are displayed in the map view, and provide much more detail on manoeuvre nodes than any newbies would be able to. Planetary intercepts could be shown much more accurately by a pro than by a new guy. An experienced navigator may also provide additional information on the navball.
  
• Systems techs will, in the most general sense, make things go much more smoothly. Solar panels not tracking the sun quickly enough? Now they'll go a bit faster thanks to our pro techie. Transferring fuel from one ship to another? Let's just speed that up a bit, says the epic technician. Are we wasting electricity anywhere? Not any more, thanks to the glorious work of our technician (electricity use goes down slightly for everything bar ion engines). Systems guys could also look after the hydroponics/aeroponics skill set, which would be the least important aspect until life support measures are implemented, in which case it rapidly becomes a top priority as not only do plants provide food, but they provide oxygen. A skilled biologist/systems tech should be able to keep the non-mobile green organisms in good condition for the mobile green organisms to use, while an amateur green thumb will likely do more harm than good to any greenhouses.
  
• Medics can operate within the ship and, perhaps to a less effective extent, out in the field. Any Kerbal that is injured on EVA can be treated and nurtured back to health; they would be unable to do anything in the time it takes to heal, but that length of time is dependent on the competence of your medical officer. A guy who carelessly waves around scalpels will probably take forever to get someone back on their feet, but a proper doctor can get a someone back to health in comparatively little time. Any Kerbal who is unable to move after being injured on EVA will need treatment in the field and then some further work back in a base or ship. Injuries can be sustained from crash-landings, tumbles, high G force, and perhaps scalding from a rocket plume should anyone be foolish enough to have such a thing happen to them.
  

Obviously, I'd also like to see a Kerbal's history, but as that's being implemented, I've no need to express that. Now then...

Performance affects Experience, but is not dependent on how much work a Kerbal does, instead depending on the conditions which they are currently experiencing. Performance will be dictated by things such as how much space is aboard a ship/station/base (i.e. how much personal space they have), how many supplies are available for each crew member, how many crew are actually part of a mission, mission duration, and natural environment.

• Personal Space, because let's face it, no-one wants to be cooped up in a pod for too long. This ties into the mission duration aspect, as short missions will not need much space and thus the crew will be fine with a command pod and maybe a lander cabin for a week before things start going downhill, but interplanetary cruisers or stations/bases with lots of space will likely not see any penalties for a long time. A Kerbal who has plenty of space to themselves will likely be in a better mood than one who doesn't have quite so much space. Let's say... 3 seats per Kerbal worth of space (3/4 a hitchhiker).
  
• Supplies are another obvious one; if you run out of snacks, you are having a bad time and you will not (want) to go to space today. Hungry Kerbals won't work as hard, but those who are satisfied will be at their peak. I believe the Snacks Life Support Mod does something along these lines, by reducing how a ship will perform if you run out of snacks. Obviously, I'm talking about snacks affecting performance in the Experience areas I suggested above, but it could also affect piloting; no thrust or ISP variances, but slight jitters in the throttle, heading, and RCS will be expected. Supplies would be dictated by the amount of space aboard a spacecraft, and their usage depends on what they're needed for; food obviously goes down gradually, but engineers will need nuts and bolts from time to time.
  
• Crew Count. No-one will want to spend a few years alone in space with nothing but the beeping of a computer to keep them company, but no-one wants to feel crowded either. This ties in with Personal Space, and any Kerbal that is unsatisfied will not perform to their highest ability; you need a good balance of space and crew numbers to maximise this.
  
• Mission Duration is obvious. Some of your Kerbals might get homesick. Other may enjoy some of the lengthy voyage, but no matter what, the longer they're out in the great inky black, the worse off they'll be unless you can balance the other Performance areas. Crew will also not necessarily like being out on a rover mission for too long.
  
• Natural Environment. Eve getting you down both figuratively and literally? You might find it hard to move, perform science, stay in good health, or even control a ship if the environment is unforgiving. Also, zero-g is bad for your bones and you muscles; you'll need good medicinal supplies and/or a source of artificial gravity, so crew rotations for stations may well become mandatory if you don't have any such things available. Medics will mitigate this to an extent.
  

Out of those, only Supplies remains questionable as not everyone wants life support mechanics to be introduced to the game, or we'd all have downloaded TAC by now. The rest, however, really should be there, if not implemented in the same update as Experience then in the update immediately afterwards.

Just my thoughts

[Pecan]

I think most of us were suggesting they do scrap the proposed system, but honestly acting as totems that bless our rockets with +% buffs isn't something for the Kerbals to "do", it would just become something they "are"....

This.

The trouble with FleetAdmiral's analysis:

...The perhaps most thought out idea is the idea that Kerbals can't fly missions and/or can't fly parts until they reach a certain reputation, which could have interesting implications if you suddenly kill all of your experienced kerbals in the late game on a mission to Jool. (Also: what about probes?).

Is exactly that 'what about probes?' If the Kerbals AREN'T flying the damn things they don't have any influence. If it's JUST the player flying then engine buffs are as good as it gets, which means the Kerbals are magic passengers until it comes time to take a soil sample or plant a flag; and what relevant flight experience would they get from that? That's exactly why I and others perfer the MechJeb route - the Kerbals DO the flying, when you want them to. If you don't want, don't use them as 'autopilot' and they don't get experience (but you don't care because you aren't using them anyway).

[AbhChallenger]

I can only hope that the developers keep newer players in mind with this system. And less of those who think MechJeb is the great evil in the universe.

Engine modifications are a bit much. But only because it would end up breaking the same designs if other Kerbals are used later. Not because "OMG ItZ NOT RealisTIcs enough!!11" There are PLENTY of mods to make KSP "Hardcore" So it is sad to see people here against things that could encourage newer players to stick with it rather than say "KSP oh that game for people with calculators.. Nah ill go back to minecraft."

Lets say a Kerbal develops the ability to "see" Biomes. People will howl that it is not realistic. But tell me. What is so unrealistic about a Kerbal learning how to read a map?

[Pecan]

Should have phrased that tweet to be about all parts, we're looking at other possibilities regarding piloting skill like control surface reaction speed since they're a bit on the slow side currently. Plenty of other traits that work along with the base mechanics and currencies of career mode, though

And much thanks to you and everyone for responding so quickly and positively Maxmaps.

Hey! Your rep seems low for a dev ...

[FleetAdmiralJ]

This.

The trouble with FleetAdmiral's analysis:

Is exactly that 'what about probes?' If the Kerbals AREN'T flying the damn things they don't have any influence. If it's JUST the player flying then engine buffs are as good as it gets, which means the Kerbals are magic passengers until it comes time to take a soil sample or plant a flag; and what relevant flight experience would they get from that? That's exactly why I and others perfer the MechJeb route - the Kerbals DO the flying, when you want them to. If you don't want, don't use them as 'autopilot' and they don't get experience (but you don't care because you aren't using them anyway).

So because NASA has probes, then people who flew on the shuttle or live in the ISS don't actually gain experience from doing so because automation? This whole line of argument that one could have stuck Joe Smith into Apollo 11 and everything would have turned out OK because who the astronaut is doesn't really matter is driving me nuts.

[Torquemadus]

I think most of us were suggesting they do scrap the proposed system

That would seem to be an effective summary of this thread so far. Kerbal Experience has the potential to be a significant feature of Career Mode. Yet, many players are calling for it to be scrapped completely before we've even had a chance to see it.

[merendel]

Choices in trajectory mean more or less efficient use of fuel... A Kerbals skills could offset our own to make a more efficient assent than we would have been able to do.

With solids there would be nothing you can do... but liquid fuel engines could be pushed beyond the "safety" limits and we could have a skilled Kerbal to be able to do that.

There are plenty of ways a skilled pilot can get a little more out of an engine or machine than your average person can. I think those who don't think that... simply lack imagination.

I agree that better trajectory can = more effecient with fuel. However I object to reality bending where 2 identical ships fly exactly the same trajectory (pretend its possible) and yet ship A has 5% more fuel because of "Skill". Ship fliying differently because of skill = valid, ship geting magic modifiers based on who's in the hotseat = silly.

Also on the subject of overriding safetys, yes it can be done. Theres buffers built into those safety margins in most things to account for slight variances in manufacture changing the exact fail point. In an emergency overrideing the safetys is a calculated risk where the increased chance of catastrophic failure is worth it when the "Safe" option wont get the job done and it needs to get done. On the other hand overiding safeties all the time just because your a BadS is just asking for something to explode, not a good thing when your flying a controlled explosion already. I wouldnt mind if there was an option to tell your kerbal to "Punch it" and they override the maximum fuel flow. A kerbal skilled with that procedure might get more out of the engiens without explodifying them while an unskilled either plays it too safe or overdoes it and blows up. Thats a logical use of skill tweeking that. a flat 5% or whatever boost to max fuel flow however? thats the kind of thing that should be on the engineers to setup and be accross the board, not on the pilot.

Where you see imagination I see a lack of logic and little grounding in reality.

[Las-pen]

Kinda Mixed feelings

On the other hand it gives you that Star Trek feeling, when you have Captain, Pilot, Medical officer, Chief engineer, and other staff on the ship each assigned to job they fit best.

And that XCOM feeling when your most trusted and highly trained Kerbal accidentally slips and falls to his doom.

But

On the other hand it would depend on the Kerbal you assign to your vessel whether it explodes or not and not the vessel itself.

Edited October 22, 2014 by Las-pen

[FleetAdmiralJ]

That would seem to be an effective summary of this thread so far. Kerbal Experience has the potential to be a significant feature of Career Mode. Yet, many players are calling for it to be scrapped completely before we've even had a chance to see it.

Here is my thing: we got a decent idea of what they had in mind. I think we had enough to be able to form opinions and educated guesses. But it seems like most people don't want anything that disrupts their current game play to any significant amount. Some people have gone out and suggested things like needing experience to go on certain missions, but most people seem to just want more boosts for the 3 currency. I'd actually like something NEW rather than just a new way to get science and money. It doesn't HAVE to be what was proposed in the dev notes, but something new and unique would be nice

[Franklin]

I think we can all agree on that, assuming it's logical.