Hi,
the game gets better and better which is nice and offer quite an amount of possibilities... however while SET and flight controllers are absolutely necessary (to have a lot of them) for a smooth campaign the astronaut corps is pretty useless. If none of them dies at the mission 7 astronaut is all one needs for a continuous manned exploration (1 at capcom, and 3 Gemini crews so there will be no standstill after the joint launch) but in my last game I used only 5 of them.
Is there a plan to make the astronauts some more precious resource in the upcoming patches (e.g. backup crews, they go to retirement early, longer rest period etc.)?
Astronauts number
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IainMcNeil
- Site Admin
- Posts: 13558
- Joined: Fri Apr 01, 2005 10:19 am
Re: Astronauts number
I think longer rest periods or regular required training could be a good way to boost your astronaut requirements.
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kokubokan25
- SPM Contributor
- Posts: 32
- Joined: Tue Feb 01, 2011 9:01 pm
Re: Astronauts number
Or simply make the backup crew a must in a future patch. With this you need double astronauts by mission.
Re: Astronauts number
Well, the more you have, the more you can train while the others are flying. Flying gives experience, but not that much, and does not allow to improve an astronaut/cosmonaut skill in one specific area. Having 7 of them and launching Apollo / Soyuz 7K-OK mission every turn is possible (2 crews of 3 + 1 CAPCOM) is possible but you're in trouble at the slightlest problem (one astronaut has an accident, retires...) without mentioning the fact that a catastrophic failure will be a terrible blow if it leaves you with only 3 competent crewmembers and 1 CAPCOM.
Nicolas Escats
Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager Contributor
Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager Contributor
Re: Astronauts number
You only need 3 for the one-person capsule programme, or 5 for the two, or 7 for the three.
BUT if you have more then - provided you also have lots of MC guys - you can do 2 manned launches in a season. You might be taking a long time to research a new rocket/capsule pairing, and you might be behind the other guy or be short of time for a goal. Finally you've got the reliability up to 80+% but you're still in a hurry. So you do unmanned suborbital and unmanned orbital in one season (needs no nauts), manned suborbital and manned orbital in the next (needs 3, 5 or 7 nauts). Now if those were successful you're up past 90% reliability and can get serious with the missions.
What I like to do is have a few more than I need. The first bunch of guys get trained up and start flying the one-person capsule, then I hire a second lot - they're training to be on the second capsule, the 2-3 years it'll take me to get that ready, those guys can do a lot of training and get pretty good, they'll only be a bit behind the veterans. The one-person capsule veterans will be the commanders, and the newbies will be their seconds in the two-person capsules. And so on.
Historically a lot of the guys recruited never got to fly... the programme managers had plans for more flights than ever happened, if all the plans had come good they'd definitely have used all those guys.
BUT if you have more then - provided you also have lots of MC guys - you can do 2 manned launches in a season. You might be taking a long time to research a new rocket/capsule pairing, and you might be behind the other guy or be short of time for a goal. Finally you've got the reliability up to 80+% but you're still in a hurry. So you do unmanned suborbital and unmanned orbital in one season (needs no nauts), manned suborbital and manned orbital in the next (needs 3, 5 or 7 nauts). Now if those were successful you're up past 90% reliability and can get serious with the missions.
What I like to do is have a few more than I need. The first bunch of guys get trained up and start flying the one-person capsule, then I hire a second lot - they're training to be on the second capsule, the 2-3 years it'll take me to get that ready, those guys can do a lot of training and get pretty good, they'll only be a bit behind the veterans. The one-person capsule veterans will be the commanders, and the newbies will be their seconds in the two-person capsules. And so on.
Historically a lot of the guys recruited never got to fly... the programme managers had plans for more flights than ever happened, if all the plans had come good they'd definitely have used all those guys.
Re: Astronauts number
This is related to one of the biggest issues I have with the game. We should be planning missions seasons in advance and not for immediate execution. If this was done then needing duplicate flight crews and mission control crews would be important. Training for some of the later missions shouldn't be trivialized like it is in this game. In the beginning a X15 flight doesn't need much lead time but an Apollo flight would definitely take more than 3 months to train, prepare and execute.
An easy way to do this would be to use the multi-season mission system that already exists and the first x number of seasons are for training/preparing only. There obviously would be a low percentage of failure (astronauts gets sick, etc).
An easy way to do this would be to use the multi-season mission system that already exists and the first x number of seasons are for training/preparing only. There obviously would be a low percentage of failure (astronauts gets sick, etc).
Re: Astronauts number
I think multi-season training is assumed as part of the cost of Apollo, or Vostok, etc. You pay to start the programme up and get your first prototype and mockups for your nauts to train on.