Failures on a mission step

Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager (SPM) Road to the Moon is the ultimate game of space exploration.

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bz249
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Failures on a mission step

Post by bz249 »

As far as I remember in the old BARIS there were occasions when failure in a mission step meant that the original mission have to be reduced (e.g. failed orbital insertion meant that the mission reduced to a suborbital flight... where something else might still happen). As of now once a mission step is a failure the whole mission is terminated. Is there a plan to include a more advanced failure setting?

I would really like something, where minor glitch would mean a minor issue leading to some prestige loss/loss of reliability for the further mission steps/slight loss of money etc... failure means that the given mission step was unsuccessful, if it is a critical step than the whole mission is a failure, if not the thing goes on and one can get a partial success (e.g. instead of Orbital EVA Duration II, one gets a mighty suborbital flight or instead of a soft landing of a Moon probe it will be a Lunar impactor)... catastrophic failure means fatality and/or loss of spacecraft. (really nice would be that after glitches and failures the user could terminate the mission or reduce the mission profile.)

How will this be in the final game?
Nacho84
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Re: Failures on a mission step

Post by Nacho84 »

Apologies, seems I left this post unanswered. At the moment there are no plans to introduce a more advanced failure setting. Notice that we're working on a list of failures for all missions, so that you can get some more information whenever a problem occurs.

Cheers,
Ignacio Liverotti
Lead Developer of Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager

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Nacho84
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Re: Failures on a mission step

Post by Nacho84 »

Apologies, seems I left this post unanswered. At the moment there are no plans to introduce a more advanced failure setting. Notice that we're working on a list of failures for all missions, so that you can get some more information whenever a problem occurs.

Cheers,
Ignacio Liverotti
Lead Developer of Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager

Polar Motion
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stratochief66
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Re: Failures on a mission step

Post by stratochief66 »

The more simple (non-BARIS) failure more used by Buzz Aldrin Space Program Manager is a little limitting, but seems very functional and ultimately makes it easier to add more missions and programs to the game.

Any new mission added represents a linear flow chart added, which is much more manageable compared to a BARIS flow chart, which would have a branch at each step to cover a failure and each subsequent step back to craft recovery.

I am curious if the system underlying BASPM is flexible enough to output accomplishments when a mission fails after crucial 'first time' steps.

For instance, if I attempt a manned orbit before completing a suborbital, and the mission fails on 'orbital insertion'. Is it possible for BASPM to provide me the partial prestige and accomplishment of the completed suborbital (first man in space) flight?
Nacho84
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Re: Failures on a mission step

Post by Nacho84 »

stratochief66 wrote:For instance, if I attempt a manned orbit before completing a suborbital, and the mission fails on 'orbital insertion'. Is it possible for BASPM to provide me the partial prestige and accomplishment of the completed suborbital (first man in space) flight?
Yes, that can be done. If you are curious, you can take a look at the mission data scripts under SPM-Windows_Data\Scripts\Data Scripts\Mission Simulations Container. They are all defined in text format, so you should be able to read through them very easily. The system is flexible enough to grant you a goal after a mission step has been formed, so granting the suborbital goal after before orbital insertion can definitely be done, it's just adding a line in the script.

What it cannot be done is skipping to another mission step after a failure. To be fair, we did have that functionality in the old C++ codebase, which we threw away in early 2012 when we switched to a different engine. I didn't include that feature in the new codebase because creating the content in such a way that all cases were taken into account was extremely time-consuming, and I didn't have the time to do it properly. Maybe after part 1 gets released we can grow the team a bit and I can find someone to help me with that kind of stuff :)

Cheers,
Ignacio Liverotti
Lead Developer of Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager

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bz249
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Re: Failures on a mission step

Post by bz249 »

Such a system seems fine... if i understood correctly the final version would provide me a result after a failure step. Let's take the example of orbital insertion
- success (straigthforward, go to the next mission step spaceship is in orbit)
- minor glitch (go to the next step, like it was a success, go to next step spaceship is in orbit... or will there be some consequence?)
- failure (orbital insertion failed, the mission is automatically assumed to be a suborbital flight with correct reentry and recovery etc, prestige loss, reliability loss, but the prestige for the suborbital flight recovered)
- catastrophic failure (spaceship lost control, crew stranded to orbit/burn during the reentry... etc)
Nacho84
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Re: Failures on a mission step

Post by Nacho84 »

bz249 wrote: - failure (orbital insertion failed, the mission is automatically assumed to be a suborbital flight with correct reentry and recovery etc, prestige loss, reliability loss, but the prestige for the suborbital flight recovered)
In the current system, a mission is terminated after experiencing a failure. So if you have a failure in the "orbital insertion" step, the game will show a message stating something along the lines of: "The spacecraft couldn't be inserted into orbit, so the flight profile changed into a suborbital flight. The crew was rescued after a successfully splashdown in the ocean". You'll still get an achievement for a suborbital flight, though, but the game won't show you what happened during the re-entry, descent and splashdown steps.

Cheers,
Ignacio Liverotti
Lead Developer of Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager

Polar Motion
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