Astronauts abilities

[Italianfan88]

With the new patch, I found out that more abilities are needed for astronauts to successfully fly a mission. For example, in Mercury you have leadership - piloting - fitness. And that's great.

The problem is, you have to pick the astronaut yourself, because hitting the "assign best candidate" button only gives you the astronaut with the best leadership stats, disregarding all the others. And it's tricky to send someone up with 92 of piloting and horrible values for piloting and fitness.

Also, perhaps I should mention that whenever I fly a manned suborbital mission, the first mission step is considered on the sequence screen as 2. It doesn't affect anything, yet it throws me off somewhat.

[Nacho84]

What you say makes sense and it's definitely a bug. We'll add it to the list and we'll sort it in a future update.

Cheers,

[Nacho84]

Also, perhaps I should mention that whenever I fly a manned suborbital mission, the first mission step is considered on the sequence screen as 2. It doesn't affect anything, yet it throws me off somewhat.

This one has been fixed in the interim build I've uploaded yesterday. Thanks for reporting it!

Cheers,

[N_Molson]

Some things are still a bit odd in that area. Here are a few thoughts about it :

- Leadership : should be used only in multiple crew capsules, and reflect the astronaut ability to command a crew and get it to work together as a team efficiently, to keep everyone steady, calm & professional in failure situations (see the great movie Apollo 13, also Neil Armstrong very calm attitude when he landed the LM with only a few seconds of fuel left, I guess it helped Buzz to concentrate on his own tasks at this moment)... Hence Piloting/Fitness should be enough for the X-15 or the Mercury capsule. In the Gemini and other multiple crew capsules, should be useful to the commander only.

- Fitness : should be related to the type of spacecraft and to the mission profile. A one-week duration mission on Gemini should require more fitness than a test flight with the X-15.

- Science : not used yet, again could be useful in duration missions, which were historically the opportunity for astronauts to carry experiments, notably on the human body reaction (the best scientists they are, the better they can describe and understand their own reactions & feelings in microgravity).

- A "skill involvment" system, like it works for hardware and flight controllers could be interesting. Now of course the display in the mission screen begins to be a little crowded, so some modifications of the interface could be required (I think it will be necessary at some point anyway).

[Italianfan88]

What you say makes sense and it's definitely a bug. We'll add it to the list and we'll sort it in a future update.

Cheers,

Thanks; it was not very serious, but it could throw me off sometimes.