Friendly Rentry

[passinglurker]

Yes I know DRE has difficulty settings they don't do what I want please stop bringing them up as a substitute for the mod being proposed here.

Just throwing an idea out in the open because I'm not a coder and likely won't be one for a very long time, but I do know how to model and get parts into the game so if anyone wants to arrange a parts for code exchange I'm open to negotiations.

Basically I'm looking for a lighter more forgiving version of deadly reentry like how Snacks! is to TAC Life Support, or Antenna Range is to Remote Tech, or Stock Drag Fix is to FAR. Something that doesn't need extra parts, and by default won't kill my kerbals or destroy my ships in the process.

What it would do in game seems simple enough if you're ship reenters to steep, and to fast it will hurt your recovery factor in career mode. Bare minimum that's all it needs. No fussing about orientations or what the ship is made out of. It only does just enough to make reentry a relevant gameplay factor without becoming so complex, and realistic that it becomes the game itself.

Other potential penalties for a bad reentry could be charging the other currency's as well like a science recovery penalty or a reputation hit, and maybe even denying kerbals XP or baking them alive for the hardcore out there though at that point why not use DRE?

And at the risk of feature creep setting in ways to combat reentry effects could include strategies in the admin building aimed towards minimizing the damage to the different currencies, or taking the crafts average crash tolerance across all parts to determine the steepest angle it can take before it starts getting damaged, or even giving you a recovery factor bonus based on the skill of an engineer you are carrying, but like I said before the feature creep sets in bare minimum all it needs is a recovery factor penalty based on how steep and how fast you are going.

Edited January 26, 2015 by passinglurker

[rynak]

I think this might be too "friendly". I completely agree with simplicity here - like not requiring extra parts or part properties. But reentry should be capable of destroying a craft, even if only in very extreme cases (so, it could be very "forgiving" - heck, you could make this a config option). It also would need UI feedback... like a general heat and damage meter... not per part, but just for the entire vessel.

At low damage levels, it could work as you decribed - lower recovery. Once surpassing 100%, parts would start to explode, with the order based on the max temperature rating of the parts.

[passinglurker]

I think this might be too "friendly". I completely agree with simplicity here - like not requiring extra parts or part properties. But reentry should be capable of destroying a craft, even if only in very extreme cases (so, it could be very "forgiving" - heck, you could make this a config option). It also would need UI feedback... like a general heat and damage meter... not per part, but just for the entire vessel.

At low damage levels, it could work as you decribed - lower recovery. Once surpassing 100%, parts would start to explode, with the order based on the max temperature rating of the part.

kerbal is just a game why is destructive reentry essential and if it is why not just use DRE?

It seems to me that what you described is essentially DRE just with the recovery factor penalty on top if not less forgiving as your orientation and ship construction can't save you from burning up and destroying important but fragile parts like parachutes or science(it doesn't matter if most of you survived reentry if you lose your chutes)

I'm not saying it shouldn't be an option that's left off by default but to actually make this a reality I want to keep things as dead simple as possible until an implementation is in the wild so just recovery factor based on angle and speed. That's what I'd make parts in exchange for and what comes after that is up to the modder that codes it.

Edited January 25, 2015 by passinglurker

[RainDreamer]

My 2fund: If we have reentry penalty, it should be destructive. Kind of like how if we crash a rocket to the ground result in explosions. More explosions are nice, imo, and it teaches players things.

[passinglurker]

My 2fund: If we have reentry penalty, it should be destructive. Kind of like how if we crash a rocket to the ground result in explosions. More explosions are nice, imo, and it teaches players things.

my issue with that is that it essentially destroys the mod's niche like how everyone keeps asking the snacks! dev to add a dedicated snack storage part and kerbal starvation like they just want him to make it into a second TAC. In my view a diet version of a big realism mod absolutly needs to be nonlethal by default to differentiate itself.

[rynak]

Well, to put it simple: You want two aspects as the "niche": Simplicity and nonlethality.

I and some others think that simplicity, and configurable difficulty is enough of a reason. And yes, if the difficulty is scalable, it could go from as nonlethal as your proposal, to "harder than DRE". The common theme would be simplicity.

Edited January 25, 2015 by rynak

[Greys]

the only problem with the original proposal is that the mod would only work as intended in full career mode; even in just science mode it would be severely gimped, and in sandbox it would be entirely disabled. I don't think there's a solution to that so it may be something that just has to be put up with.

[Vindaloo]

Deadly Re-entry has a settings options, you can put it on Easy. It does add parts, but the heat-shields are just very thin decouplers, not very complicated.

[Alshain]

Deadly Re-entry has a settings options, you can put it on Easy. It does add parts, but the heat-shields are just very thin decouplers, not very complicated.

Pretty much what vindaloo said. You can adjust DRE to fit your needs. This is an older video but I think it's mostly valid. As far as heat shields go, you do not require them, it is possible to reenter without generating too much heat.

I don't know how true this is, but I've heard it said that NASA only uses heat shield because they don't want our craft entering the atmosphere over foreign air space, but the shuttle could have been made without any heat shield at all if it weren't for that restriction.

Edited January 26, 2015 by Alshain

[passinglurker]

Deadly Re-entry has a settings options, you can put it on Easy. It does add parts, but the heat-shields are just very thin decouplers, not very complicated.

Pretty much what vindaloo said. You can adjust DRE to fit your needs. This is an older video but I think it's mostly valid. As far as heat shields go, you do not require them, it is possible to reenter without generating too much heat.

I don't know how true this is, but I've heard it said that NASA only uses heat shield because they don't want our craft entering the atmosphere over foreign air space, but the shuttle could have been made without any heat shield at all if it weren't for that restriction.

you two don't understand DRE only reprimands you for bad flying with destruction by setting it on easier settings you might as well not even use it. What the proposal does is it leverage changes to ksp that have come about after DRE was first released to find new ways to penalize you for bad flying.

Its for those who want reentry to be a simple factor gameplay wise, but don't want to be realistic, or lethal.

[tater]

Why anyone would want non-lethal reentry is beyond me. People blow up kerbals on takeoff constantly, but whine if they auger in on reentry?

[passinglurker]

Why anyone would want non-lethal reentry is beyond me. People blow up kerbals on takeoff constantly, but whine if they auger in on reentry?

*guilty as charged*

Look some people see the gameplay aspects added by various realism mods (Remote Tech, TAC Life Support, etc...), and want to play a game with those aspects and considerations but don't want the realistic complexity those mods weigh you down with so they seek out simplified versions (Antenna Range, Snacks!, etc...). Clearly there are people who are into this sort of thing whether you can comprehend it or not.

The problem with destructive reentry in my view is you either need DRE's level of complexity to pull off in a way that is fair and fun for the player or it happens in such rare and extreme cases that you can easily avoid any ill effect meaning you might as well just not have it installed and just roleplay. So since a simplified version can't really offer destructive reentry that doesn't cruelly screw you over or that can't be offered by tweaking the difficulty settings of another existing mod one must find another way to penalize the player for a bad reentry at least for the majority of reentry cases in order to differentiate itself. destruction while potentially fun can't be the simplified mods primary feature nor is it needed as a feature because as others point out you can just set DRE on easy to kill you when you slam straight into kerbin at interplanetary speed, and potentially you can just run both at the same time. Hence my focus on the potential nonlethal consequences those being a penalty to your career mode currency when you make a bad reentry.

[hab136]

Since Deadly Re-entry has already done all the hard work (computing re-rentry), it would probably make sense to just add an optional "friendly" mode on it where it just affects recoverability of the craft instead of exploding. Would be a lot easier than starting a new mod from scratch.

Personally I think the idea is really niche.

[tater]

If you don't have DRE, then reentry is friendly. If you have DRE and want it less dangerous (normal is pretty non-dangerous anyway) set DRE to "easy." I'm not seeing the problem.

[Alshain]

I'm just not getting the concept here. You don't want re-entry heating, you reentry pickpocketing? Instead of Deadly Re-entry you could call it Thieving Re-entry. I just don't get it really, I agree this sounds like a mod that a very small amount of people would use, and I wouldn't, so I am going to pass. I have a feeling most modders are going to say this same, something this niche is best done by you. Pick up a beginner C# book and get started.

[RainDreamer]

I think the idea is that, there should be penalties for doing things "wrong", but the penalty should just be a slap on the wrist instead of busting out a chainsaw and slice your hand clean off.

Ok, bad analogy. >.>

But still, I think with stock aerodynamic being fixed and such, at one point reentry will have their own stock interpretation. After all why else they have those temperature stats for? And deadly reentry simply use those stats and provide a method of heat generation.

What is being asked here, however, is different. It will require heat generation, but it will also require a separate kind of heat tracking and convert it to penalty for recovery, because it can't use the stock heat tolerance stat which deadly reentry uses(exceeding it in stock means explosions). It will a bit more complex for the developer than deadly reentry itself for the sake of being easier.

[Starwaster]

I think the OP should fork DRE, strip the parts and hack the crap out of it until he's happy. Slap a new name on it and put it up for download.

Call it 'Mean Reentry' or 'Scolding Reentry' or something.

[lajoswinkler]

Even with hard mode, DRE is very forgiving. You really have to to a lot of mistakes to destroy a vehicle...