Kerbal Courage Deteriorates Over Time

[Srpadget]

We all know Kerbal Experience is getting implemented for V0.90. So I started wondering if that meant the Kerbal traits of Courage and Stupidity will also start to have some measurable in-game effect (other than determining how often/badly they freak out). And that in turn got me paying attention to those traits in my current game (only selecting brave, smart Kerbals from the pool of applicants, for instance). And THAT caused me to notice...

A Kerbal's Courage degrades during longer missions.

And my "longer", I mean "a handful of weeks". I haven't yet run any controlled "time in orbit" experiments to see exactly how fast it drops, or what can be done to counter it, but I do have a few data points:

The calendar in my current save is in Day 45. I topped out the tech tree on game day 8, and started building long-term reusable infrastructure a bit before that, so nobody could POSSIBLY have been in space for more than about 38 days, most of them quite a bit less.

And I've got a couple guys whose Courage started very high (up around 90%) and is now down around 10%.

At least one has degraded to ZERO Courage (though he started closer to 50%.

The orange-suiters (Bill, Bob, and Jeb) *appear* to be immune to this...though it's possible they just haven't been locked up in a space station long enough to have a noticeable effect at a time when I was paying attention.

Returning to Kerbin and getting recovered resets Courage back to its normal levels. Landing on Mun and spending time on EVA there does not seem to affect Courage loss.

All of which leads inevitably to a few questions:

Is this a bug?

Is it a FEATURE?

Is there some way to prevent/delay/counteract this effect?

Do crew going interplanetary inevitably have ZERO Courage by the time they reach (Duna, Laythe, Moho, Eeloo, whatever)?

Is this Courage loss going to degrade a Kerbal's abilities in 0.90 when they actually have skills and useful roles to play in flying ships/conducting missions?

Yes, I intend to poke around at these questions myself, but I figure there's no point in me "re-inventing the wheel" if this is old news that older hands all understand. So:

Have the rest of you noticed this effect? What (if anything) do you do about it? (Or do you just sit back and enjoy their cabin-fever-induced screaming panic in deep space during their return from Jool?)

[I_Killed_Jeb]

How very intriguing! I haven't noticed it but I haven't looked carefully; time to check!

[von Ziegendorf]

When I sent Philtery to Jupiter in Real Solar System, he was the bravest kerbonaut I had. He returned from this trip with almost no courage

[NecroBones]

Huh, stealth feature, perhaps? I wonder when this was added. I suspect it was with 0.25, intended to be part of the experience system, and hardly anyone noticed until now.

[Vaporo]

Fascinating...

Seriously, I never noticed this. But then again, I never check my Kerbals' stats before sending them up, though.

Edited December 13, 2014 by Vanamonde

[dryer_lint]

Really? Awesome! If this is true though... then the problem is, there's no way to bring it back up...

Maybe 0.90 will add training features, so we can have a "Kerbal Rehabilitation Program"

[Norpo]

"The horrors I've seen up there... The horrors..."

"What, did you see aliens or something?"

"No, our pilot used an ion engine."

"That's not too ba-"

"AT QUARTER THROTTLE. On a 100 ton asteroid tug."

"The horrors, the horrors..."

Ontopic: this is actually pretty nice. Do they get less stupid over time as well?

[Srpadget]

Stupidity stays constant, so far as I've seen.

Quick research project: I started a new sandbox save, tossed a few Kerbal X's into orbit with various combinations of orange- and grey-suit Kerbonauts, and time-warped from the Space Center screen (so I could see if being the Active Vessel made a difference--lots of other things remain constant when a ship is on rails, after all).

My findings:

After just THREE DAYS, Courage of grey-suiters is greatly reduced. Even when they're on rails.

Orange-suiters appear to be unaffected by this "feature" (or at least, any decrease is greatly slowed). This may be why most of us haven't noticed the effect, since the First Three tend to hog all the missions given the opportunity. (This makes me think it's a deliberate feature...)

Orange-suiters do NOT provide a "steadying presence" to keep grey-suiters' courage up. They keep their courage while the peons turn into quivering screaming cowards.

Badass Kerbals (i.e., Jeb) also do NOT help keep their crewmates' spirits up.

Returning to Kerbin resets Courage to its original values. I assume a typical return from a long mission involves the grey-suiters dropping to the ground and kissing the dirt while crying tears of joy, followed by a period of intensive psychotherapy before their next mission...?

Stupidity appears to be unaffected, by trips of up to 20-30 Kerbin days, at least.

We'd better hope that Courage is not used as a modifier to Kerbal Experience skills in V0.90. And that some future upgrade of the experience/skills system includes the Therapist skill...

[Srpadget]

Does anybody have a grey-suiter with the Badass trait, so we can see how they react?

[Spartwo]

Is this what happened to Matt Damon in Interstellar? I never noticed this myself, it could be be an interesting feature if there were other ways of bringing it back up than recovering them.

Edited December 13, 2014 by Spartwo

[LABHOUSE]

That explains a few things.

[Bloody_looser]

Whoa, chill out everyone. Actually, it's an old bug. Astronaut centre displays actual value of courage, while in map view or tracking station it appears as the opposite.

[Jovus]

Aww, here I was excited that it was real - the Kerbals do live in a Lovecraftian world, after all, where going to deep space tempts the Kraken to twist the cosmos beyond the bounds of rationality.

[DuoDex]

Dang it. This would have been a cool "feature".

[Norpo]

Aww, here I was excited that it was real - the Kerbals do live in a Lovecraftian world, after all, where going to deep space tempts the Kraken to twist the cosmos beyond the bounds of rationality.

Why have I never thought of the kerbal world this way?

...An interesting hidden feature would be if, a kerbal spends time around Bop (official home of the Kraken), it's courage decreases.. And it's stupidity rises..

...The kraken madness has SPOKEN.

[Srpadget]

Whoa, chill out everyone. Actually, it's an old bug. Astronaut centre displays actual value of courage, while in map view or tracking station it appears as the opposite.

http://i.imgur.com/vAa74IS.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/TyenTSJ.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/27Fewsd.jpg

Oops, this does appear to be the case. I neglected to check their traits on the pad before launch or immediately after achieving orbit, and simply accepted the Astronaut Complex rating as my "baseline" before timewarping.

Did another quick test, picking the 3 biggest cowards on the roster. Cowards in the Astronaut Center, still cowards in the crew-selection screen at the Launch Pad. But once on the pad, they listed as very brave in Map View, in inverse proportion to their courage ratings in the Astronaut Center or the crew selection screen.

I went back and checked the "current" ratings of everyone in the first set of ships, and yes they all appeared to have Courage ratings in Mpa View exactly the opposite of the rating as seen at the Astro Center.

Though it does kind of beg the question of which score is actually CORRECT. The level of screaming/crying/sadface vs happyface/laughter I'm observing SEEMS to line up with the ratings as listed in Map View rather than the ratings shown at the Astronaut Center. Very little objective data on that as yet, though, so I may be exhibiting Confirmation Bias.

Stupidity appears to be consistent between views, though. Only Courage is buggy.

So the only remaining questions, then, are:

Which "Courage" rating is actually CORRECT: Astro Center, or Map View?

Are Courage and Stupidity going to have any actual gameplay effect when using Kerbal skills/experience?

[Bloody_looser]

Which "Courage" rating is actually CORRECT: Astro Center, or Map View?

According to persistent.sfs file, readings frome Astronaut complex are "true" ones

name = Aldbas Kerman
type = Crew
brave = 0.763757
dumb = 0.8928981
badS = False
state = Assigned
ToD = 0
idx = 0
}
KERBAL
{
name = Theobas Kerman
type = Crew
brave = 0.8952827
dumb = 0.8057985
badS = False
state = Assigned
ToD = 0
idx = 1
}
KERBAL
{
name = Nelbas Kerman
type = Crew
brave = 0.8585634
dumb = 0.8916278
badS = False
state = Assigned
ToD = 0

 		{

IMHO, kerbal behaviour is mostly affected by stupidity factor. Less stupid kerbals, even with decent courage tend to freak out all the time. You know, ignorance is bliss, awareness is dreadful.

Are Courage and Stupidity going to have any actual gameplay effect when using Kerbal skills/experience?

We'll wait and see.

[NecroBones]

Oh well, it would have been interesting if it were a stealth feature.

Although, I like the Matt Damon explanation.

[Mitchz95]

Aww, here I was excited that it was real - the Kerbals do live in a Lovecraftian world, after all, where going to deep space tempts the Kraken to twist the cosmos beyond the bounds of rationality.

This is going into my headcanon.