By gemini to the moon... in 1981 >.<

[Sabratha]

Well, I reached the moon in 1981 no less. Everything went smooth until I got to the moon mission phase. Repeated gemini lander failures (none critical!) forced me to make many attempts over 12 years or so.




So yeah. So far my experience is that its a little bit too difficult at this point.

I think early to mid-70s wouldn't be a streach, but 1981 seems a bit too "Buzz-hard" for a normal difficulty level sandbox game.

[Nacho84]

Good stuff, thanks for sharing. If everything goes well, I'm planning to roll out more personnel management features next week (e.g., sending them to advanced training, decreasing morale if they are not assigned to a project, etc). I think once we have all those elements in we can start adjusting things so that aiming for a Moon landing before 1970 gets challenging, but not impossible.

Cheers,

[Sabratha]

Good stuff, thanks for sharing. If everything goes well, I'm planning to roll out more personnel management features next week (e.g., sending them to advanced training, decreasing morale if they are not assigned to a project, etc). I think once we have all those elements in we can start adjusting things so that aiming for a Moon landing before 1970 gets challenging, but not impossible.

Cheers,

Glad to know what's planned. Looking forward to it!

[N_Molson]

Yeah, I think that advanced training would already help a lot. Currently you have to be very lucky to find properly skilled astronauts in the recruitement pool.

BTW 1981 is really not that bad from my experience !

[Xiaomaoxin]

I took my time and am now in 1996 due to about 25 Gemini Spacecraft and Direct Ascent failures (with reliability maxed pretty much every time) and still without a complete moon landing mission. I am starting to think that maybe each R&D back to the maximum after a failure should result in an increase of the max R&D reliability (maybe .3 or .5). After all you spend several years on fixing a problem every time so after the 10th or 15th time and 20 years of eliminating problems and improvements on the design it should have an improved reliability and not be as likely to fail as 20 years earlier.

Edit: Finally done. Winter 2002 for me.

[woody4077]

that reminds any idea when the apollo project is going to implemented?

[Nacho84]

that reminds any idea when the apollo project is going to implemented?

Before this decade is out

Just kidding, I'm planning to roll the Apollo missions before the end of the year. I'm focusing on the missing gameplay elements at the moment.

Cheers,

[Sabratha]

I am starting to think that maybe each R&D back to the maximum after a failure should result in an increase of the max R&D reliability (maybe .3 or .5). After all you spend several years on fixing a problem every time so after the 10th or 15th time and 20 years of eliminating problems and improvements on the design it should have an improved reliability and not be as likely to fail as 20 years earlier.

Yeah I suggested it before. Incidentally, that's pretty much exactly the way the real life proton and soyuz were developped.
The soyuz in particular started out with a lot of bugs and glitches even in its simpler mechanism. Komarov was killed by something as simple and mundane as a parachute failure. Still, after many launches, the soyuz was gradually updated to become what is probably the most reliable spacecraft used even today.

[N_Molson]

I'm really in a bad luck serie.

I still didn't managed to land on the Moon, always get a catastrophic failure sooner or later, then have to R&D, then have to try again, then I lose my 2 best astronauts again, then I have to re-R&D again, then I try again with less skilled astronauts, then it fails, then...

[Xiaomaoxin]

I'm really in a bad luck serie.

I still didn't managed to land on the Moon, always get a catastrophic failure sooner or later, then have to R&D, then have to try again, then I lose my 2 best astronauts again, then I have to re-R&D again, then I try again with less skilled astronauts, then it fails, then...

Really bad luck. At least my astronauts always survived Probably rescued by superman. Failed ascent from the moon, reentry failure, deorbitburn failure, trajectory to earth failure and so on but they always somehow returned to earth alive

[Arron69]

Did total completion and moon landing in 87, but it can be done faster, onwards!

Andi.

[woody4077]

that reminds any idea when the apollo project is going to implemented?

Before this decade is out

Just kidding, I'm planning to roll the Apollo missions before the end of the year. I'm focusing on the missing gameplay elements at the moment.

Cheers,

ROFL

touche good sir touche

[Sabratha]

By gemini to the moon in 1976!

Well, either I'm getting better, or I had more luck, or the personell management issues helped me out. This time I landed on the moon a good 5 years earlier than in the previous version. I also managed to make more side missions (all earth satellites, circumlunar recon, mariner missions to venus).

Overall the game is getting better, I'll post my possible suggestions to the beta forum.
So far I think what is most pressing at this point is adding the Apollo, Vostok, Voshkod and Soyuz programs (and then balance the difficulty/money/time issue).

The unmanned programs all work well and offer qiute a bit of variety and give the player the ability to take different paths. The manned missions however offer a pretty straight no-other-options linear path mercury-gemini-lunar.
So more manned programs would to me at this point seem as the most obviously "missing" of the important components.