stilicho410
Posts: 65
Joined: 4/16/2012
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I concur with fremen's comments on reliability. The current figures skew the game into taking many more years than the historical progression.
- The "diminishing returns" with R&D does have some validity, I've been in plenty of projects where the "estimated completion" figures increase by less and less from week to week. "We're 70% done... Now were 85%... 92%... 94%... However, since we're dealing with 3 month seasons, I think a minimum of at least 3-5% gain would be more reasonable.
- The reliability improvement from successful flights has been seriously downgraded sometime over the last few builds. When I first started playing with 0.74, it only took a few flights to bridge the gap between "Max R&D Reliability" and "Max Reliability" as you generally got a couple of percentage points each flight. With 0.79, the reliability increase for a successful flight is either 0% or a fraction of 1%, which means one will likely never get Max Reliability. I think the reliability increase back in 0.74 was more realistic; for example there were only 2 unmanned Gemini flights before they started sending up crews.
- Meanwhile the reliability hits for unsuccessful missions are far more severe with the current model. In BARIS, one only got reliability hits when somone got killed, otherwise even a single successful mission step would get some reliability gain. I think BARIS reflected history well in that respect; as telemetry from a problematic mission would provide valuable information for the next flight.
Consider these examples of aborted missions from the same time period:
-- Gemini 8: Near fatal situation with stuck thruster, but crew survived. Gemini 9 launched just 3 months later.
-- Apollo Fire: Can't be reflected in current game mechanics, as it didn't take place during a flight. However, I expect "Random Events" will be added sometime, in which Astronauts can be killed in accidents, and reliability hits (or bonuses) could happen.
-- Apollo 6: Unmanned Saturn V/Apollo test, problems with 1st, 2nd, and 3rd stage caused abort of translunar injection of unmanned Apollo spacecraft. However, the information gained from this flight was invaluable in readying the Saturn V for Apollo 8 eight months later.
-- Apollo 13: Well, that would equate to a moderate reliability hit in-game, with Apollo 14 not being launched until 10 months later. However, no unmanned test flights were required, and with the extra oxygen tank and other improvements, I think the Apollo 14 spacecraft was MORE reliable than Apollo 13. One way to implement this in the game would be that as flight successes increased Reliability beyond past Max R&D reliability, Max R&D could be increased by the same amount, so if you did take a hit, you could make it up with R&D rather than more test flights.
Example:
--- Research a rocket until it reaches Max R&D value of 90%.
--- Successful flights raise reliability up to 95%, Max R&D also rises to 95%
--- Mission failure knocks reliability down to 85%
--- One can now use R&D to get reliability back to 95%, to "get where you were before" without neccessarily needing test flights.
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Thanks,
Stilicho
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