Slitherine

Hey Guys! After playing BARIS today I have a few questions about SPM. First, in the screenshots it looks like a part can have a "reliability" rating and a " involvement" rating. What precisly do these two terms indicate?

My second question is tied to the first. Are the safety and r&d stats in SPM directly tied together like they are in BARIS?

One thing I find very frustrating in that game is how after every accident your r&d goes down, and if the game slams you with a few failed launches in a row it really cuts into your research. While I get how this makes sense in a game, I think the real world is very different. I'll use Apollo 1 as an example: after the fire the safety rating of the Apollo capsule would lower greatly. Because of the investigation into the fire though, the Apollo r&d rating would have gone up, because they researched what was wrong with it. To model this in a game:

1. A safety value us given to each craft based on the r&d value at the time of construction.
2. Any accidents or failures would then lower the safety rating, but give a small boost to r&d as the engineers learn from their mistakes. All previously built craft could then be retrofitted for a price, or scraped.

This is just an idea I got from playing BARIS. Obviously I don't know how safety and r&d work in SPM, but I would love to find out!

Hello DGastby,

DGatsby wrote:Hey Guys! After playing BARIS today I have a few questions about SPM. First, in the screenshots it looks like a part can have a "reliability" rating and a " involvement" rating. What precisly do these two terms indicate?

The reliability in BASPM has the same meaning than in BARIS. The involvement is basically how much does a certain component's reliability influence the outcome of a mission step. For example, if you are performing a docking mission in the Gemini program, the outcome of the docking step will be influenced by the reliability of the Gemini spacecraft (e.g., 81%) multiplied by its involvement factor (e.g., 61%) and the reliability of the Agena Target Vehicle (e.g., 85%) multiplied by its involvement factor (i.e., 39%). Notice that the sum of the involvement factors for a given mission step must always be 100%.

On top of the reliability and involvement, the astronauts' skills and the relevant Flight Controllers' aptitudes for that particular mission step also influence the outcome of the step.

DGatsby wrote:My second question is tied to the first. Are the safety and r&d stats in SPM directly tied together like they are in BARIS?

Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that the more R&D you apply to a mission component, the better its reliability (until you reach a Max R&D factor, then you need to use the component on a real mission in order to improve its reliability). No, in the sense that we changed the approach used by BARIS: instead of assigning a number of R&D teams to a component during a turn, you assign SET (Scientists, Engineers and Technicians) personnel. The caveat is, if you go crazy and start hiring lots of SET personnel, your maintenance costs go up (they have families to feed!), so you need to plan carefully whether it's a good idea to hire lots of people or not.

DGatsby wrote:One thing I find very frustrating in that game is how after every accident your r&d goes down, and if the game slams you with a few failed launches in a row it really cuts into your research. While I get how this makes sense in a game, I think the real world is very different. I'll use Apollo 1 as an example: after the fire the safety rating of the Apollo capsule would lower greatly. Because of the investigation into the fire though, the Apollo r&d rating would have gone up, because they researched what was wrong with it. To model this in a game:

1. A safety value us given to each craft based on the r&d value at the time of construction.
2. Any accidents or failures would then lower the safety rating, but give a small boost to r&d as the engineers learn from their mistakes. All previously built craft could then be retrofitted for a price, or scraped.

This is just an idea I got from playing BARIS. Obviously I don't know how safety and r&d work in SPM, but I would love to find out!

Yes, I kinda agree with you. In real life, if you test your hardware and experience a failure, you find the problem, you fix it, learn something new and (hopefully!) avoid making the same mistake in the future. In fact, I remember asking myself the same question when I played BARIS. But I believe the model used by BARIS makes sense.

The only thing I don't understand very well about your suggestion is the second point: so if an accident happens the safety rating goes down (the same happens in BAPSM). But then you say that the R&D would get a small boost, so how do we model that? Do you mean that R&D results should be higher during the next turn?

Cheers,

Lots of good information! I especially like how the involvement stats figures in; it's a very good idea. As to your question about my idea vis a vis r&d going up after an accident, that is close to what I had in mind. Putting more thought into it though, that idea presents its own series of challenges, and doesn't quite feel right. Have you ever played Crusader Kings 2? I was think of how stats work in that game: a ruler can have a set stat that can be improved through different actions. On top of that, certain events can give either a temporary boost or hindrance which expires after a certain amount of time. For example, a ruler can have a diplomacy stat of 7, which can be improved up to 8 through research. If the ruler holds a grand feast (something which is not a part of the research to raise diplo), he gets a temporary .40+ boost to diplomacy for the next year. I was thinking of an r&d boost like that; the overall r&d stat is set back after an accident, but there is a slight boost to your r&d rate for a turn or two. Sounds like that might not fit with the rest of the game though. Thanks for ttolerating my rambling! I wasn't seriously suggesting something for SPM; it was just a bit of thought exercise.

Didn't BARIS have a random encounter message saying: "engineers have discovered a potential fault that needs to be corrected. This will either cost $15 million or will set you back 10% of R&D."

Could you have something similar with failures, where your investigation provides answers and improvements but costs both money and turns; during which you cannot use particular hardware or astronauts? You have to decide who to lead the investigation from the SET staff (or you could outsource) and the level of funding they get and therefore what level of benefit you get out of it? Alternatively the player could choose to cover it up or accept it as risk in future.

Hello Nick and DGatsby,

Yes, we're planning to add some random events in order to influence the outcome of the R&D process. I haven't written the code for that yet, but it's on my list.

Cheers,