Scientist skills

[KyleS]

This may be too big an overhaul at this stage, but here are my thoughts.

Firstly, the "EVA suits" skill is not really of equal use to the other skills. There are basically only two EVA suits to ever make - Gemini/Voshkod and Lunar. Compare with how many different Space Probes, Rockets and so on there are to research. Logically, this should be rolled into Crewed Spacecraft skill, since the same sorts of things are being dealt with - atmospheric and temperature control, resistance to micrometeroids and radiation, etc.

Of course this may be different in subsequent episodes of the game, since we'd need a different suit for the Shuttle, for Mars, for Venus or Titan or Europa, etc. (I presume this is why the nauts have got a Science skill, which doesn't seem to pop up much in the game so far.) But in the "race to the moon" episode the EVA skill's only used twice compared to 7+ times for other skills. It's different for nauts since EVA skill may actually save their lives at some point.

Secondly, rockets being split into Rocket/Human-rated makes sense. However, that someone could have 30% skill in one and 90% in the other makes no sense. After all, if a rocket is human-rated you can still use it for Space Probes. It's not like all the guys who worked on the Saturn V suddenly drew a blank when preparing the Voyager missions.

So perhaps these skills could be tied together. Human-rated can be lower than Rockets, but not vice versa.

Alternately, you could split them differently. Currently we already have a division of light/medium/heavy rockets for the sake of the VAB. And historically one of the difficulties of building the larger rockets was that they took the single engine of a small one and put several of them together. Co-ordinating the firing and fuel consumption of these was a technical issue, one of the many that doomed the N-1. So perhaps rather than Rockets/Human-rated it could be Light Rockets and Medium/Heavy.

I assume the number of skills is part of the game code rather than the easily-moddable files, ie there must be 5 skills. If EVA were binned and rolled into Crewed Spacecraft that'd free a slot,. So then rocket skills could be Light, Medium and Heavy. Logically these should still be tied together, with Heavy including Medium and Light; it's not like the guys who worked on the Shuttle's main engines would be confused by a Redstone. But perhaps 3 rocket skills is excessive?

[Nacho84]

Hello Kyle,

Thanks for the feedback.

This may be too big an overhaul at this stage, but here are my thoughts.

Firstly, the "EVA suits" skill is not really of equal use to the other skills. There are basically only two EVA suits to ever make - Gemini/Voshkod and Lunar. Compare with how many different Space Probes, Rockets and so on there are to research. Logically, this should be rolled into Crewed Spacecraft skill, since the same sorts of things are being dealt with - atmospheric and temperature control, resistance to micrometeroids and radiation, etc.

Of course this may be different in subsequent episodes of the game, since we'd need a different suit for the Shuttle, for Mars, for Venus or Titan or Europa, etc. (I presume this is why the nauts have got a Science skill, which doesn't seem to pop up much in the game so far.) But in the "race to the moon" episode the EVA skill's only used twice compared to 7+ times for other skills. It's different for nauts since EVA skill may actually save their lives at some point.

Notice that part 1 alone features five space suits (2 american + 3 soviet) plus the lunar rover, which is also considered an "EVA suit". I understand that at some points the skills for the SET guys overlap, but we need to draw the line at some point for gameplay purposes.

Secondly, rockets being split into Rocket/Human-rated makes sense. However, that someone could have 30% skill in one and 90% in the other makes no sense. After all, if a rocket is human-rated you can still use it for Space Probes. It's not like all the guys who worked on the Saturn V suddenly drew a blank when preparing the Voyager missions.

So perhaps these skills could be tied together. Human-rated can be lower than Rockets, but not vice versa.

You need to bear in mind that the skills taxonomy we make in SPM is just for gameplay purposes, otherwise we'd need to drill down to lots of sub-skills and things would become really complex (and possibly boring!) for a computer game quite quickly. Even though I'm not a rocket scientist myself, working on a non-human-rated rocket doesn't necessarily mean is simpler/requires less skills than working on a human-rated one. They have different requirements, that's all.

Alternately, you could split them differently. Currently we already have a division of light/medium/heavy rockets for the sake of the VAB. And historically one of the difficulties of building the larger rockets was that they took the single engine of a small one and put several of them together. Co-ordinating the firing and fuel consumption of these was a technical issue, one of the many that doomed the N-1. So perhaps rather than Rockets/Human-rated it could be Light Rockets and Medium/Heavy.

I assume the number of skills is part of the game code rather than the easily-moddable files, ie there must be 5 skills. If EVA were binned and rolled into Crewed Spacecraft that'd free a slot,. So then rocket skills could be Light, Medium and Heavy. Logically these should still be tied together, with Heavy including Medium and Light; it's not like the guys who worked on the Shuttle's main engines would be confused by a Redstone. But perhaps 3 rocket skills is excessive?

Yes, I'm not a fan of adding more rocket skills to be honest. We'll run into problems in parts 2 and 3 if we want to introduce more exotic types of propulsion and things like that

Cheers,