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CowboyRonin -> Some thoughts on mission execution (11/8/2013 1:47:32 AM)
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I'm basing some of these thoughts on pieces on both these and the Slitherine forums. If my assumptions are inaccurate, I'm probably misinterpreting something I read.
1) I believe that the player needs feedback when Mission Control or the astronaut ends up saving a mission that would have suffered a hardware failure. It doesn't have to be new graphic panels, but showing "hardware failure, [controller] is able to rectify, mission proceeding", or something along those lines in the text bar would provide a significant improvement in the feedback to the player and give real value to the Mission Control and astronaut ability scores. I would really like to have the audio strings change (there should be plenty of audio recordings showing controllers correcting issues or issuing new instructions).
2) I believe there should be an "Aborted" status for missions. This represents a partial failure that did not result in vehicle destruction and crew death. This would be dependent on the Flight Director passing a Mission Operations check when a hardware failure occurred and Mission Control and the astronaut were unable to rectify the situation. In that case, the flight director would get a chance to abort the mission and save the crew. All flights should be able to be aborted pre-launch-this just represents a pad scrub. Manned flights should be able to be aborted up to re-entry. When a flight is aborted, any remaining objectives/goals are failed, but any previous goals can be considered successful. A manned mission abort should move the mission to the re-entry point; if the mission is Lunar, the spacecraft would still have to make any steps necessary to return to Earth orbit and then reenter. Since the flight crew is out of communication during re-entry, they should not have any impact on a failure during re-entry. An aborted mission should still suffer a prestige loss and loss of reliability of the components that failed, but these losses should both be significantly lower than a current "failed" mission. If the Flight Director fails his check to abort the mission, then the mission fails and the flight crew is killed. At this point, it feels like crew casualties are probabilistic; they should be traceable to failures on the parts of the system.
EVA should follow some similar rules - a failure on an EVA should not destroy the craft and both crewmen (the spacewalker, maybe, but not the commander). A failed EVA should also permit the flight to continue and achieve non-EVA objectives. The mission commander should be able to abort a failing EVA and save the astronaut, with a further check by the Flight Director if the commander fails.
These suggestions are my attempt to increase the tension during mission execution and to provide more feedback on why missions are failing or succeeding than is present in the current interface design. I don't believe I'm arguing for a complete re-design of the application (I had less sticker-shock than others seem to have had). However, the current mission display screen is less than engaging and provides minimal feedback.
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