failures

[jjknap]

Reading the forum I understand that specific failure reasons are being worked on. I am wondering if once those are in place, you are considering specific graphics that will show the failure such as a rocket explosion or a spacecraft tumbling out of control? Even though you don't use real video footage (I understand why and am ok with the specific drawings which look great), it would be good to see a frame that shows the specific failure. Thanks!

[Nacho84]

We're planning to show a picture along with the failure, although I'm not sure whether we'll be able to have a different picture for each one of them. We'll see, it's certainly on the backlog!

Cheers,

[jjknap]

That is great news....you could use a generic picture for several failures such as a electronic box for system failures or an exploding rocket for launch failures. Thanks!

[nats]

That is great news....you could use a generic picture for several failures such as a electronic box for system failures or an exploding rocket for launch failures. Thanks!

It would certainly help to get more feedback on why failures are happening. Is it a lack of skill of one of your astronauts? Is it a lousy skill or morale issue of your ground crew? Is it overworking or lack of testing time? Or shoddy workmanship due to offsetting some construction to a partner company in India?

I hope these failures wont be just randomised but actually reflect something that is actually really affecting your program. Obviously sometimes it might just be a fluke or being unlucky, or a freak lightning strike etc. But most often than not a failure should be attributable to a lack in your program somewhere. And to reflect this there should perhaps be more areas where player input can create such an issue to start with - such as by making an active decison to rush a projects R&D to make up time, or speeding up construction, cutting costs or reducing testing time, etc.

All these variables should preferably intermingle to make operating the Space Program quite a complex thing (not so automatic) and create plenty of room for player error to creep in! When the player has a lot of things to manage and he starts getting up against time that is when he might start trying to cut corners or forget to assign important tests etc.

I feel there is presently not a great lot of opportunity provided for players to make mistakes/cut corners other than choosing to launch a project without a high degree of reliability. There perhaps needs to be more opportunity for user choice other than just that. At the moment the whole process seems a little too over-simplified perhaps? Maybe there is some scope to make things a bit more complex for gameplay reasons whilst avoiding making things too unwieldy to manage?