[WIP] CrewQ(ueue) - Crew Rotation, Variety, and Consequences.

[enneract]

Release Thread -> Here

So, I decided to get off my butt, knock the low-hanging fruit out of my 'todo' list, and started updating my mod RealRoster for the .90 update. However, the primary feature and purpose of the mod (fixing the resetting of crew every time you made a change in editor) was rolled into stock, and me being me, I wasn't going to be satisfied with what was left.

I started drawing up some quick plans, and figured I'd add some more features that I wish were in stock, maybe they'll get rolled in too *coughcough*. And so, I present; CrewQ(ueue)

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If you find a bug:

If you find a bug, please report it on the github issues page. This will help me keep track of things.

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Phase 1 Goals, Replace the List with a Queue (sort of)

1. Replace the 'oldest-first' crew selection criteria
   
2. Make sure that crew roles are well-represented in default crew selections.
   
   • Different pods will want different crew compositions, based on roles.
     
   • Each role in the composition will be represented once, if possible, before selecting duplicates
     
   • Vanilla modules will be supported by default, MM patches will be needed for mod parts (expect MKS\OKS from me at least)
     
   • Command and Atmospheric pods will want Pilots, Engineers, and Scientists
     
   • Orbital modules will want Engineers and Scientists
     
   • Science Labs will want Scientists
     
   • Lander Modules will want Pilots, Engineers, and Scientists
     

[*]Apply a 'vacation period' after each mission for recovered crew.

• Considering 10% of mission duration, or 30 days, whichever is greater. I'm soliciting discussion on this value, though it will be configurable in-game.
  
• This vacation period can either be a hard lock, or a soft lock.
  
  • Hard lock will prevent a Kerbal from going on any mission until this period has expired.
    
  • Soft lock will prevent that Kerbal from being automatically selected, but the user may still select them. (Debating possible negative side-effects of this, such as temporary level reduction, soliciting feedback on this idea)
    
  • Another option may be doable if there is interest in it, where vacationing Kerbals can only be deployed on missions if no other crew is available.
    

[*]Generally vary the faces you see on missions

[*]Additionally, all features can be turned off, which will effectively disable automatic crew selection, requiring the player to consciously select the crew of each mission.

Phase 2 Goals, the Anti-'Spam in a Can' initiative

I really dislike like the game does not punish you for sending a single Kerbal in a 1-man capsule to Eeloo. There are a few mods which attempt to fight this by implementing life-support requirements, and at least one which is trying to do 'fitness'. I want to try a different approach. Everything below is brainstorming!

1. Individual parts will have some sort of 'habitation value'.
   
   • One possible way of doing this would be as a function of the Part's Crew Capacity. For example; Floor( Part.CrewCapacity * .2 * Difficulty ), so a 4-crew part might be able to only support 2 Kerbals for an extended trip, and 4 for a short hop to orbit.
     
   • Another possible way is to manually tag Parts with their capacity for Habitation. I prefer this idea; I don't think that the tiny command pod or cupola module should really 'count' for this, while a Hitchhiker can or MKS Kerbitat definitely should. The downside is that compatibility patches will be needed; though this is both mitigated and exacerbated by the fact that the number of mods that contain proper 'habitat' modules are few in number.
     
   • Both of these approaches will have similar results; you can pack your ship to the gills when it acts as a short-distance commuter, but need more extensive facilities for interplanetary trips.
     

[*] Apply debuffs to crew based on deviation of their living conditions from optimal, increasing in severity as time in this shape increases.

• On-going Reputation penalties while spamcanned crew is in space. (Once per 30 days?)
  
• XP Penalties; Remove XP (and levels!) from Crew, stunt or remove XP gain.
  
• Pilots may refuse to guide the craft, perhaps even sabotaging the controls! (Remove pilot SAS abilities, or even lock the ship's controls for some period of time)
  
• Crew may refuse to go EVA, or refuse to perform actions while on EVA
  
• Crew may refuse to perform Crew Reports, or perform scientific activities.
  
• Crew may refuse to process samples in the Mobile Lab, or transmit results back to Kerbin
  
• (RemoteTech Integration) Crew may refuse to function as a RT command node
  
• Unhappy crew may quit when recovered. Reputation and Funds penalty when this occurs (Lawsuits?) (Random, unlikely with slight unhappiness, very likely with extreme unhappiness; Would like to prevent 'gaming' this by simply never recovering the crew.)
  
• Possible\Debating\Maybe too dark Crew may go missing. The implication\flavor would imply either something like 'attempted to EVA back home', or 'vehement disagreement about snack distribution'
  

[*]Base rate, albeit a slow one, of unhappiness accumulation. Could be offset by socialization, at a relatively simple formula (like a crew of 10 would nullify this base rate)

[*]Unhappiness very hard to remove while on-mission. Possible to remove by socialization, but need very large population in one vessel (>10) with abundant facilities.

I've made some pretty good progress on Phase 1 in the last... day. Lets see what happens.

Feedback is highly desired. If you are an artsy type, I could really use an AppLauncher icon (I really like THIS, but it would be awesome if it was a Kerbal Head), and I might want to recruit you for this and an upcoming SUPER SEKRIT mod.

Early alpha version is located -> here.

Edited January 24, 2015 by enneract

[sharpspoonful]

I will post when I get home, and I can help with the app icons too.

[Chezburgar7300]

*deleted*

Look forward to trying this out!

Edited January 22, 2015 by Chezburgar7300

[Ed Gauss]

-Snip-

Possible\Debating\Maybe too dark Crew may go missing. The implication\flavor would imply either something like 'attempted to EVA back home', or 'vehement disagreement about snack distribution'

-Snip-

Please do this. Anything less than a mission loss would make the crew accommodation aspect trivial. I suppose you could have the ship become uncontrollable due to mutiny, converting it into a tracked object: that would achieve mission loss as well, without outright killing the crew. It would even give the player a new, exciting objective to pursue as well!

Regardless of what you do, I'm excited for what you come up with.

[enneract]

Just a little edit I whipped up from a public domain google image:

http://i.imgur.com/oFnSMr9.png

Has no background, which can easily be changed. Use it as you wish!

Edit: That's it's full size! (80x80)

Appreciate the effort, but I'm hoping for the monochromatic stylized line-drawn look, similar to the example.

Edit:

Here is a little screenshot. Just the settings window, nothing exciting.

Edited January 22, 2015 by enneract

[nebuchadnezzar]

I loved RealRoster and I'm glad to see it evolve. All the ideas you laid out sound great and I look forward to seeing this mod come together. Also, I threw an icon together, if it's something you like I can send it to you in the right size with on/off color indications.

edit

another icon variant

Edited January 22, 2015 by nebuchadnezzar

[CaptRobau]

Phase 2 Goals, the Anti-'Spam in a Can' initiative

Big fan of this effort. I tried setting something like this up with other mods, but it didn't satisfy me. Hope you can make it work.

On-going Reputation penalties while spamcanned crew is in space. (Once per 30 days?)

XP Penalties; Remove XP (and levels!) from Crew, stunt or remove XP gain.

Do you unlearn anything if you feel bad? By making XP loss only temporary you gain the ability to send support missions. Did a tight budget lead to cramped quarters for your orbital spacestation and as a result grumpy Kerbals that can't do any skills? Once you've got money again, you can send an expansion module which will make them more comfortable and over time they will work at peak performance once more.

Pilots may refuse to guide the craft, perhaps even sabotaging the controls! (Remove pilot SAS abilities, or even lock the ship's controls for some period of time)

Crew may refuse to go EVA, or refuse to perform actions while on EVA

Crew may refuse to perform Crew Reports, or perform scientific activities.

Crew may refuse to process samples in the Mobile Lab, or transmit results back to Kerbin

(RemoteTech Integration) Crew may refuse to function as a RT command node

I like removing the extra skills that experience will add to a Kerbal if they are grumpy due to a lack of living space. That's pretty easy to communicate to the player. All this refusal stuff however is too extreme for my taste. It'll be hard to communicate to the player that this a morale issue and not your ship that's not built properly. Some of these refusals can also lead to players being unable to perform critical maneuvers that are needed to get the grumpy Kerbals home. Miss a insertion burn for Earth due to grumpiness and those grumpy Kerbals would fly off into deep space, never to return. The penalties of cramped quarters should be to make it harder to perform your mission and to get home safe, but it should not make it impossible.

Unhappy crew may quit when recovered. Reputation and Funds penalty when this occurs (Lawsuits?) (Random, unlikely with slight unhappiness, very likely with extreme unhappiness; Would like to prevent 'gaming' this by simply never recovering the crew.)

I like this, although it will require a good communication with the player that the reason for them quitting is the lack of space on the last mission.

Possible\Debating\Maybe too dark Crew may go missing. The implication\flavor would imply either something like 'attempted to EVA back home', or 'vehement disagreement about snack distribution'

Grumpy Kerbals okay. Suicidal Kerbals no. This is not Space Madness Simulator 2014.

[Malah]

WOW this will be awesome! Thanks.

[enneract]

Lots of interest in 'phase 2', apparently I should note that I have another large project on my plate that I want to get basically functional before I start on those features.

I loved RealRoster and I'm glad to see it evolve. All the ideas you laid out sound great and I look forward to seeing this mod come together. Also, I threw an icon together, if it's something you like I can send it to you in the right size with on/off color indications.

http://i.imgur.com/jXVQNz2.png http://i.imgur.com/oJQXKhJ.png

edit

another icon variant

http://i.imgur.com/sENfgsm.png

Both of these are awesome

Only one thing: Background should be transparent. KSP handles that part, so no need to match the grey tone.

Big fan of this effort. I tried setting something like this up with other mods, but it didn't satisfy me. Hope you can make it work.

Do you unlearn anything if you feel bad? By making XP loss only temporary you gain the ability to send support missions. Did a tight budget lead to cramped quarters for your orbital spacestation and as a result grumpy Kerbals that can't do any skills? Once you've got money again, you can send an expansion module which will make them more comfortable and over time they will work at peak performance once more.

I like removing the extra skills that experience will add to a Kerbal if they are grumpy due to a lack of living space. That's pretty easy to communicate to the player. All this refusal stuff however is too extreme for my taste. It'll be hard to communicate to the player that this a morale issue and not your ship that's not built properly. Some of these refusals can also lead to players being unable to perform critical maneuvers that are needed to get the grumpy Kerbals home. Miss a insertion burn for Earth due to grumpiness and those grumpy Kerbals would fly off into deep space, never to return. The penalties of cramped quarters should be to make it harder to perform your mission and to get home safe, but it should not make it impossible.

I like this, although it will require a good communication with the player that the reason for them quitting is the lack of space on the last mission.

Grumpy Kerbals okay. Suicidal Kerbals no. This is not Space Madness Simulator 2014.

I generally agree with everything you've said, with the following caveats; I want the consequences of spamcanning to actually be worth avoiding. Making a non-spamcan is a serious design effort, and if the 'stick' or 'carrot' is inadequate, there is no point.

I'm definitely open to additional ideas for consequences; The diversity above is a 'kitchen sink' approach so as to avoid simply proposing MASSIVE funds and reputation hits.

Edited January 22, 2015 by enneract

[Agathorn]

This looks interesting.

One thing I would love to see, if possible, is crews & backup crews. I envision this as something that would really probably work better with something like KCT or some other method of enforcing a period of time passing between assigning a crew to a mission and the mission launching. But the idea being you would assign a primary crew and a backup crew, and then allow illness (or other things?) to happen that force you to go with the backup crew.

Or maybe I'm just blue skying here

[enneract]

This looks interesting.

One thing I would love to see, if possible, is crews & backup crews. I envision this as something that would really probably work better with something like KCT or some other method of enforcing a period of time passing between assigning a crew to a mission and the mission launching. But the idea being you would assign a primary crew and a backup crew, and then allow illness (or other things?) to happen that force you to go with the backup crew.

Or maybe I'm just blue skying here

*cough*

If I can make this happen, this is going to happen.

[Niemand303]

Sounds very impressive and promising! Let's see how this will turn out!

[moronwrocket]

How about a new resource, Air Fresheners (or just Air Freshness, although I imagine a drawer full of pine air fresheners as the Kerbal Way!)?

Similar to Snacks!, each pod has a quantity of AFs, and a chance of using 1 per "tick".

My thoughts are that if a habitat is running at < 1/2 capacity, AFs increases quickly. At 1/2 capacity, it is constant. At full capacity, it decreases slowly. The actual amount of time a full habitat lasts before smelling like a Kerbal's backside can be tuned by the space to store fresheners. The Mk 1 can last 1 week with 1 kerbal, the mk 1-2 lasts 6 month with 3, HH is 2 years, etc. It could also be extended to EVA suits, allowing Kerbonauts a chance to get some fresh air to relieve stress by taking an EVA for a few hours (give a suit enough to last a day or two), and it would also allow the capsule freshness to increase.

[Lucius]

Hey!

I actually have considered implementing something similar to a feature or two mentioned here, so let me chip in my 2 cents worth. It may sort of be an amalgamation of your ideas already, but i felt it was a small detail that would really add weight to things as they are now.

Essentially, crew have a "time in orbit" counter. Within their time-in-orbit counter, they are "refreshed" and ready or whatever you want to call it. They are well prepared for their mission, they give 100% of themselves. But once their time-in-orbit counter runs down, your kerbals suffer progressively-more-negative effects. I think i can best explain it in an example:

3 star Scientist Scott Kerman is sent to work at an orbital lab (for whatever your purpose may be). He has an orbital timer of a month. For that month, he is benefitting your science at full power. After that month, we begin to apply an equation that reduces his benefit. Each kerbal day, he is giving 1% fewer science benefit, until (in this case) 15 days later, he has hit zero. Now he is REALLY tired of being in orbit. Now he begins to have a NEGATIVE impact. Our science gains are reduced (clumsy?). Our pilots lose features. Our engineers ... remain useless. But you can begin to see the idea: The longer above your "time-in-orbit" plan your crew members stay, the more you DESPERATELY need to get them home as they are COSTING you (perhaps even more negative effects: reputation?)

How does Time-in-Orbit scale? Along the tech tree is my first thought. As players unlock higher level command pods, the amount of "time" kerbals can spend increases from 1 kerbal day, to a kerbal week, to a month, to a year, to maybe even 10 years? And after return, with a suitable "vacation time" given to your crew, they are refreshed and ready to Space again!

A simple little "debuff" icon per kerbal could potentially be displayed somewhere, even over their IVA camera view perhaps? To give you a quick and effective understanding of which kerbals need to be taken care of and when.

This system is incredibly useful as a "prodding stick" to the player, and in my opinion also replaces the following:

Life support: LS essentially encourages bringing supplies and not just staying in space forever. Some more harshly than others. But this is a very Life-Support-Lite! Now you have a reason to bring those kerbals home, akin to "snacks!" but without the extra bases/etc.

Crew transfer: Finally, a reason to CHANGE crews on your "station science" outpost or mun base! No more 23 year banishments for poor little Scott!

[Drew Kerman]

I'd just like a way to tell the game what interior seat the kerbal should go in without editing the cfg file, now that I've figured out how to do it.

[enneract]

How about a new resource, Air Fresheners (or just Air Freshness, although I imagine a drawer full of pine air fresheners as the Kerbal Way!)?

Similar to Snacks!, each pod has a quantity of AFs, and a chance of using 1 per "tick".

My thoughts are that if a habitat is running at < 1/2 capacity, AFs increases quickly. At 1/2 capacity, it is constant. At full capacity, it decreases slowly. The actual amount of time a full habitat lasts before smelling like a Kerbal's backside can be tuned by the space to store fresheners. The Mk 1 can last 1 week with 1 kerbal, the mk 1-2 lasts 6 month with 3, HH is 2 years, etc. It could also be extended to EVA suits, allowing Kerbonauts a chance to get some fresh air to relieve stress by taking an EVA for a few hours (give a suit enough to last a day or two), and it would also allow the capsule freshness to increase.

I considered this method, but there are several problems.

1. This would be a fact about the vessel, not a fact about the crew. I want 'Unhappiness' to *stay with the Kerbal*, even if you move them to a new ship.
   
2. If this resources is transferable, then it would be easy to work-around and 'cheat' the system. Either by having parts which give a large resoviour of the resource, or by stockpiling the resource at a well-socalized station and transferring it to a less well-socalized vessel. Actually... not totally sure that last part is a disadvantage. Hrm.
   
3. If the resource is not transferable, then most craft will have a maximum lifetime that cannot be replenished.
   

of these, #1 is the most damning, it can be worked around and might make a more intuitive display for the player, but will obfuscate which kerbals are unhappy.

- - - Updated - - -

Hey!

I actually have considered implementing something similar to a feature or two mentioned here, so let me chip in my 2 cents worth. It may sort of be an amalgamation of your ideas already, but i felt it was a small detail that would really add weight to things as they are now.

Essentially, crew have a "time in orbit" counter. Within their time-in-orbit counter, they are "refreshed" and ready or whatever you want to call it. They are well prepared for their mission, they give 100% of themselves. But once their time-in-orbit counter runs down, your kerbals suffer progressively-more-negative effects. I think i can best explain it in an example:

3 star Scientist Scott Kerman is sent to work at an orbital lab (for whatever your purpose may be). He has an orbital timer of a month. For that month, he is benefitting your science at full power. After that month, we begin to apply an equation that reduces his benefit. Each kerbal day, he is giving 1% fewer science benefit, until (in this case) 15 days later, he has hit zero. Now he is REALLY tired of being in orbit. Now he begins to have a NEGATIVE impact. Our science gains are reduced (clumsy?). Our pilots lose features. Our engineers ... remain useless. But you can begin to see the idea: The longer above your "time-in-orbit" plan your crew members stay, the more you DESPERATELY need to get them home as they are COSTING you (perhaps even more negative effects: reputation?)

How does Time-in-Orbit scale? Along the tech tree is my first thought. As players unlock higher level command pods, the amount of "time" kerbals can spend increases from 1 kerbal day, to a kerbal week, to a month, to a year, to maybe even 10 years? And after return, with a suitable "vacation time" given to your crew, they are refreshed and ready to Space again!

A simple little "debuff" icon per kerbal could potentially be displayed somewhere, even over their IVA camera view perhaps? To give you a quick and effective understanding of which kerbals need to be taken care of and when.

This system is incredibly useful as a "prodding stick" to the player, and in my opinion also replaces the following:

Life support: LS essentially encourages bringing supplies and not just staying in space forever. Some more harshly than others. But this is a very Life-Support-Lite! Now you have a reason to bring those kerbals home, akin to "snacks!" but without the extra bases/etc.

Crew transfer: Finally, a reason to CHANGE crews on your "station science" outpost or mun base! No more 23 year banishments for poor little Scott!

Thanks for the feedback

I'm leery of imposing a global 'time in space' counter, simply because I personally like to play with colonization mods. That said, this is worth considering, and I'll give it some thought.

Phase 2 features are a long way out, even if they seem to be generating the most interest. I'm planning on having Phase 1 done in the next couple of days, then get enough work done on my 'super sekrit' project to feel comfortable announcing it, get 'Phase 1' of that out the door, then come back and address Phase 2 of this mod.

So... plenty of time to hash out implementation details.

- - - Updated - - -

I'd just like a way to tell the game what interior seat the kerbal should go in without editing the cfg file, now that I've figured out how to do it.

Can you explain what you mean?

The game assigns kerbals based on the seat index, using an object called a PartCrewManifest. Each PartCrewManifest corresponds to a Part in the ShipConstruct, and is wrapped in an object called a VesselCrewManifest.

PartCrewManifest has a method AddCrewToSeat(ProtoCrewMember crew, int seatIndex). The Kerbal->Seat relationship is established on the Editor Crew Tab or the Launch GUI.

[Drew Kerman]

Can you explain what you mean?

Nevermind. I'm talking about in-flight. Should probably bug the Ship Manifest mod author instead

[enneract]

Another development screenshot. This one was pretty tricky!

[magico13]

an upcoming SUPER SEKRIT mod.

I should note that I have another large project on my plate that I want to get basically functional before I start on those features.

Sounds exciting! Wonder what that could be?

*cough*

If I can make this happen, this is going to happen.

I don't know, that's a pretty big if!

I'd just like a way to tell the game what interior seat the kerbal should go in without editing the cfg file, now that I've figured out how to do it.

I actually think there's a way to do that. Older KCT had kerbals be put specifically in the seat you tell them (though you couldn't easily tell which seat was which). 0.90 messed that up for KCT, but there's still functions in the KSP API to define precisely which slot to put a kerbal in, I just don't know if they work properly.

I'll probably throw this mod into my mix when it gets going. If I can turn things off then I definitely will. Phase 1 is nice features without major gameplay changes but phase 2 might be too much for me if I'm feeling like playing casually some day, but most of the time I'd probably enjoy the extra challenge as long as it's a planning challenge (like life support) and not a babysit all the kerbals because they need to go on EVA every day or else go crazy kind of "challenge".

[cpast]

For vacation time: How about if deploying a crewmember before their R&R is done affects unhappiness? Say, make it so that unhappiness doesn't immediately go to zero when they return, but rather decreases over their vacation? You could also add some unhappiness when they return based on how long their vacation will be (because no one likes being pulled back to work early), and not take it smoothly to zero (have a jump between "day before vacation ends" and "day after vacation ends" to encourage actually waiting for the vacation to end).

I'd sort of like it if missions under 1 hour long (or some other short time) didn't count as requiring vacation. And for unhappiness, a quick Mun or Minmus mission with one Kerbal in a Mk 1 would be nice if it didn't make me need to worry about happiness; those missions often appear in early game, and that's also the time larger crews are hardest.

Lastly: maybe difficulty could also affect the offsets? So on lower difficulty, I could make it so that five Kerbals with enough facilities could be sustained indefinitely, while at higher difficulty I'd need both facilities and a bunch of Kerbals to socialize with.

[enneract]

For vacation time: How about if deploying a crewmember before their R&R is done affects unhappiness? Say, make it so that unhappiness doesn't immediately go to zero when they return, but rather decreases over their vacation? You could also add some unhappiness when they return based on how long their vacation will be (because no one likes being pulled back to work early), and not take it smoothly to zero (have a jump between "day before vacation ends" and "day after vacation ends" to encourage actually waiting for the vacation to end).

I'd sort of like it if missions under 1 hour long (or some other short time) didn't count as requiring vacation. And for unhappiness, a quick Mun or Minmus mission with one Kerbal in a Mk 1 would be nice if it didn't make me need to worry about happiness; those missions often appear in early game, and that's also the time larger crews are hardest.

Lastly: maybe difficulty could also affect the offsets? So on lower difficulty, I could make it so that five Kerbals with enough facilities could be sustained indefinitely, while at higher difficulty I'd need both facilities and a bunch of Kerbals to socialize with.

Yes. All of it.

[enneract]

Hi.

I've got an initial version ready.

Crew Vacations are implemented, as well as removing default crews, but replacing them is not. Settings for those features are in place. If anyone wants to try it out, it is located -> here.

If you want to use bleeding-edge snapshots, those are also in the repository.

Edited January 23, 2015 by enneract

[nebuchadnezzar]

Both of these are awesome

Only one thing: Background should be transparent. KSP handles that part, so no need to match the grey tone.

Yeah, I'm aware of that, but you wouldn't be able to see them if I posted the transparent ones One thing I wasn't sure about was the size of icon pngs. What size would you like?

[Kerbas_ad_astra]

Something I heard from a real astronaut: Michael Collins (Gemini 10, Apollo 11) said (to some Shuttle astronauts at an aerospace symposium) that when NASA was holding the pre-Gemini-10 press conference, they were asked if crew compatibility was a concern. His response was that "[he] wanted to go to space so bad, [he]'d fly with a baboon!" For three day mission, he could put up with a fair amount. Apollo 11 was only 8 days long, and even the "long duration" Apollo 15-17 missions were only 12 days long. (He concluded by complimenting the Shuttle astronauts for their work in long-duration spaceflight.)

Based on this, I think it's reasonable to have very low happiness penalties (or none at all) for short-ish term missions (say, a trip to Minmus and back), especially when facilities are limited (when there's only twelve Kerbals in the whole Center, they all know each other and everybody at KSC knows them as well). This could be linked to parameters like orbital period (if they know they're going to be back on Kerbin within a week, why be down?). People like to be kept busy, so doing EVAs, science experiments, docking, KAS assembly, etc. may give happiness bonuses, more so if they've never been done before, but with some cooldown or rate-based diminishing return (since people like having a little downtime as well). If Kerbals should find themselves in a vehicle which, by some accident (or design failure) lacks engines, fuel, parachutes, or docking ports (required equipment possibly depending on location -- they won't care about having parachutes or not in the Mun's SOI), they will probably become very unhappy very quickly!

Also, I heard about some NASA data on a sort of curve relating the amount of space that humans need vs. the amount of time they will be staying in it. Again, we can put up with a lot for a day, or even a week, but for a trip to Mars, we're going to need more space. Unfortunately, a web search isn't scaring up that chart I saw...bother!

[cpast]

Parachutes shouldn't be considered required equipment, as not all craft need them (spaceplanes, normal planes, powered landers, all possible on Kerbin). Engines aren't needed in orbit (like on a station); neither is fuel. I think having happiness penalties for missing critical equipment isn't so needed, and it's complicated to tell what's critical and what's not.