Experienced kerbals piloting their ships & keeping them steady.

[Overfloater]

Like most people here I don't like the idea of experienced kerbals simply improving their rocket's stats.

But I do want a valid reason to invest in a karbal, keep it alive and always retrieve it.

So here's my idea on how it would work:

Zero experience kerbal - you fly the rocket yourself, like in current version. It's pilot needs to watch & learn.

Some experience - your ship can fly straight and steady, and you don't need to keep "babysitting" through your 20 min' long burn. (the more experienced, the steadier) just hit the gas, lean back & watch.

More experienced - you would have the option to have the pilot perform the maneuver himself, by the maneuver node which you have set. The more experienced, the more accurately the maneuver is performed.

And of course you should have the option to "override control", for those who refuse to have their ships flying themselves :]

...

And please, ditch the idea of kerbals improving rocket stats... I don't wanna have to pick my least favorite kerbal each time I want to prove my crafts' capabilities 8-[

[Nahim]

Thats a great suggestion for new gamers, since Jeb got some experience by default, and whould try to manouvre a vessel in minor stalling scennarios. Saving the ship!

[Alshain]

Where would reaction wheels fit into all of this. With a reaction wheel I already start long burns and walk away. Why do I need a pilot?

The last one sounds too much like an autopilot to me, so that's a "no" vote on that from me and as this has been discussed before I doubt it will ever happen.

[Nahim]

Where would reaction wheels fit into all of this. With a reaction wheel I already start long burns and walk away. Why do I need a pilot?

The last one sounds too much like an autopilot to me, so that's a "no" vote on that from me and as this has been discussed before I doubt it will ever happen.

Well... Is because of this that i never flew on mechjeb!

[Overfloater]

Where would reaction wheels fit into all of this.

Ship can't orientate without it. (or RCS thrusters...)

The last one sounds too much like an autopilot to me

Well... Is because of this that i never flew on mechjeb!

Only it shouldn't do anything more complex than a player can. You still would have to set the maneuver, you can't tell it to "go to Duna" so it will plot a maneuver plan to Duna.

You're still the one who has to use his head.

[Wavechaser]

What about the badass Kerbals? Would them crash the rocket everytime them get control? (Yeah Jeb, that's you)

Or what would happen is this system is associated with their courage and stupidity?

[Overfloater]

What about the badass Kerbals? Would them crash the rocket everytime them get control? (Yeah Jeb, that's you)

If the kerbal is "experienced" and you would set a maneuver node which leads to a collision trajectory, then yes!

Or what would happen is this system is associated with their courage and stupidity?

I'm guessing stupidity should play a role in all this.

[Wavechaser]

If the kerbal is "experienced" and you would set a maneuver node which leads to a collision trajectory, then yes!

I'm guessing stupidity should play a role in all this.

Well... ...then nobody will use Bob anymore... ...

Still, it would be cool if the BadS value would do something.

[zxczxczbfg]

I think that an auto-executing maneuver feature would be nice (especially for us ADHD folks who tab out and forget to turn the throttle off when we're supposed to) but it does smack a bit of autopilot. Not that I'm against autopilot, mind you (I'm a big MechJeb fan) but it's not really in the spirit of the stock game. I'd support it, but many others probably won't.

[tater]

Great ideas. This is not "autopilot," BTW. There is a pilot aboard, and that is the kerbal.

[Laie]

Great ideas. This is not "autopilot," BTW. There is a pilot aboard, and that is the kerbal.

From the player's point of view, that makes no difference.

But I like the idea. Excecuting maneuvers, big or small, is getting old pretty quick. I'd not be playing KSP anymore if I had to do it myself all the time. Setting up the node and then tell my Kerbal to "make it so" would be something I'd like very much. Provided it also takes care of the timewarp leading up to the maneuver -- otherwise I'd consider it mostly useless. Splitting the burn could be something for the more seasoned Kerbals.

I'm undecided on auto-ascent and I'm pretty much opposed to auto-landing, though.

[tater]

Assuming there is a chance of mishap, I'm even fine with those. It's not like you'd be forced to let them land. I'd like to be able to have some scheduled service at some point though, entirely piloted by AI astronauts (even out of focus).

[canam01]

What about if a Kerbal could follow a marker on the nav ball, or reorient the ship to a specific marker. For example, a kerbal could reorient the ship to the prograde marker and then stay on the prograde marker during the orbit. This could be useful for docking, staying on a marker during a longer burn, or any other application. Could be a little op for landing though. Although this would give a reason to sent kerbals on missions as compared to probes.

[Darnok]

Yes, please Devs implement this one. I do agree it is not autopilot, because flying by one or two nodes created by player is not game breaking at any point. And repeating few 20 minutes burns can be boring.

Of course this idea would add something very huge to single player game for every mode, even to sandbox... we would be able to design Falcon 9 like rocket, where 1st stage is returning to KSC and player can pilot 1st stage during landing, but meanwhile Kerbal would make burn to orbit with 2nd stage and payload

That would IMO add lots of new ideas for rockets and strato launches, right now in carrier mode you have to rely on SSTOs, because multistage rockets won't ever give you even 90% recovery costs.

[Kerbart]

The experience level of the Kerbal would have some relation to how accurate a task is executed. Your maneuver requires, say 120 dV. A highly experienced pilot will get within 1 m/s. A moderate experienced pilot maybe somehwere inside a 5 m/s range, and so on. This would obviously be a sliding range based on the experience percentage (but not necessarily a linear relation). In similar fashion it would relate to how accurate the navball is kept on point.

[dryer_lint]

This sounds like a pretty cool idea. Perhaps we could implement Courage and Stupidity like this:

Stupidity affects how accurate the maneuver is (more stupid = less accurate) and alters the Kerbal's chance of "bailing out" by refusing to do the maneuver (more stupid = lower chance). Bailing out is also affected by the direction of the maneuver (are you trying to crash them into the ground or increase speed?) and the altitude or something.

Courage just affects the chance of bailing out. Pretty obvious how that would work.

[Kulebron]

I would be happy to leave a ship to a Kerbal to land somewhere, with good precision and minimum dV. But before that you must land on that body within some distance yourself, or inside a biome.

In this maneuver high courage means closer to suicide burn, and less courage makes kerbal do a conservative brake and hover landing.

Better if this is calculated in background, so you can just leave the ship and see from tracking station.

[arkie87]

My vote is for the courage-stupidity system to integrate into a kerbal-linked autopilot.

Stupidity is how accurately kerbals fly ships i.e. if you tell them to execute a maneuver, how accurately they burn dV as well as timing is effected.

Courage is how well kerbals do under pressure in dangerous situations such as landing ships, aerobreaking, lifting off, etc... if the kerbal is too stressed out for too long, his (auto)piloting skills will suffer, and he will crash, and xplode into a million peices.

I dont have a problem with autopilot, since it quickly becomes tedious for experienced players to do repeated missions. however, i think players should have to unlock autopiloting abilities such as transferring, landing, targeted landing, aerobreaking etc... by performing these maneuvers manually (perhaps in a contract). In addition, if the autopilot's skills were directly linked with the kerbals flying them, this would help tie the game together as well as make intuitive sense.

[zeel]

The experience level of the Kerbal would have some relation to how accurate a task is executed. Your maneuver requires, say 120 dV. A highly experienced pilot will get within 1 m/s. A moderate experienced pilot maybe somehwere inside a 5 m/s range, and so on. This would obviously be a sliding range based on the experience percentage (but not necessarily a linear relation). In similar fashion it would relate to how accurate the navball is kept on point.

Now here is a thought: Instead of the accuracy of the burn being affected, make it the efficiency. What I mean is that your kerbal would always stay right on the maneuver marker, as long as the ship is stable enough, but by telling a kerbal to do it instead of yourself you would lose fuel efficiency - the maneuver would be perfect, but you would pay for it in dV. Highly experienced Kerbals may even increase efficiency.\

As for the abilities, I would say that the first tier of piloting should be the minor performance boost the devs are already considering; the second tier would allow the kerbal to point the ship at a node/prograde/target/normal (we also need a way to create a marker at an arbitrary point, perhaps by clicking a point on the navbal) on command; the third tier would allow them to also control a burn, which would be split at a user defined point. They should never be able to land, set up maneuvers, or dock on their own.

As to the courage/stupidity, I don't think that stupidity should have any direct effect, it should just affect the rate at which a kerbal gains experience. I have no idea how courage would come into play, it probably shouldn't really do anything as far as piloting goes.

[Peregrine1987]

I like the idea of having the crew do something.

I mean, even though they're Kerbals... They're still trained astronauts. What is the point of taking them anywhere if they can't do anything?

Using the asteroid capture bonus of 70 science PER ROCK, and a probe to do that with a few tugs and grapples.... You don't even need a crewed mission to do that.

I like the OP's idea of having them be able to do basic nodes, and with skill, you hit the buttons to start it, and they can get a stage up to orbit, but not final docking or landing. I also agree about the 20 minute burns really getting old.

On the note of landing..... why is it that there is no transponder at KSP for us to aim at? We more or less have to know where it is from the get go or plant a flag and aim at that. It's a curiosity of mine.

[SorryDave]

Would a 20 minute burn being executed by autopilots go faster? I think that I f an experienced Kerbal could burn under warp, this would be a nice addition.

I never really maneuver at all when I burn through a node after I first point the nose on the blue marker. I just hold shift until the bar goes down.

Mostly my destination is different because I required a longer burn than expected and the maneuver node is for a hypothetical impulse burn.

[tater]

A "kerbal-linked" autopilot is not an "autopilot," it's the kerbal flying… doing his job. An autopilot is his computer flying instead of him.

The Kerbals should be AI guys capable of doing missions at some level, and their skill would be a factor if the player choses to hand off to them.

[EdFred]

Or better yet maneuvers can ONLY be accomplished by Kerbals, and you get what you get. Maaaaaaybe something good. Maaaaaaybe something bad. You have to set up another maneuver node to fix the one they just screwed up.

[tater]

Or better yet maneuvers can ONLY be accomplished by Kerbals, and you get what you get. Maaaaaaybe something good. Maaaaaaybe something bad. You have to set up another maneuver node to fix the one they just screwed up.

This could certainly be a mode of play vs the player as pilot. In that case you are player as Space Program Manager, stuck as you are with some possibly braze, but quite possibly stupid astronauts. I't totally have a save like that, and another where I do the piloting.

[EdFred]

This could certainly be a mode of play vs the player as pilot. In that case you are player as Space Program Manager, stuck as you are with some possibly braze, but quite possibly stupid astronauts. I't totally have a save like that, and another where I do the piloting.

Agreed. Another mode. The hilarity alone would be worth it.