Mercury "Uncrewed Suborbital Flight Test" reliability penalty

[stilicho410]

On the Mercury Program's "Mission Configuration Selection" screen, "Uncrewed Suborbital Flight Test" shows a"Reliability Penalization" of "No".
It was for that very reason I opted to do an uncrewed mission first.
During the mission, I got an "Fail" during step 6, "Suborbital Flight". Afterwards, reliability for the Mercury spacecraft dropped from 71% to 35%.

With this situation, there is no real reason for uncrewed flights, one may as well start with a crewed flight.
This is ahistorical, as the telemetry for unsuccessful unmanned flights was still valuable for resolving problems with the systems.

Thanks,
Stilicho

Edit: Added save file with Mercury Uncrewed Orbital flight already assembled. One may have to load and execute multiple times to get a failure.

[CowboyRonin]

The reliability penalty shows up in Suborbital Flight. That one does show a reliability penalty until Uncrewed Suborbital Flight Test is done. You have to look at the mission which is getting the penalty to see which mission removes the penalty.

[CowboyRonin]

If you want an example of a mission that IS currently unnecessary, the long duration Mercury mission is it. There are no reliability penalties for anything in Gemini, and there are currently no real rewards for goals unless you have a penalty to remove or something to open. This may change in campaign mode.

[stilicho410]

ORIGINAL: CowboyRonin

The reliability penalty shows up in Suborbital Flight. That one does show a reliability penalty until Uncrewed Suborbital Flight Test is done. You have to look at the mission which is getting the penalty to see which mission removes the penalty.

Thanks for the quick reply, but I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean. On the initial Mission Configuration Selection for Mercury (before I flew any flights) Uncrewed Suborbital showed no reliability penalization, as seen in the attached picture. However, I got a 50% reliability hit when that mission failed.

Does the game show a reliability penalty for Uncrewed Suborbital on some other display? In that case, it would contradict this display.

Could you please provide more detail on where to "look at the mission which is getting the penalty to see which mission removes the penalty"? I saw no mention of removing penalties on the "Macro" Diagram or the "Mission Steps" diagram.

Thanks,
Stilicho

[CowboyRonin]

You're confusing two different mechanics - if a component causes a mission failure, you will get a big reduction in the reliability that you can R&D away. The "Reliability Penalty" that is displayed there comes from missing previous missions - R&D won't help that penalty, only flying the missing missions will. I'm surprised you first saw that in Mercury; I usually have at least one failure in the X-15 or satellite world before I can open Mercury.

[CowboyRonin]

If you click on the little "i" for the mission, it will show you a diagram, and at the bottom of the diagram, it will indicate the penalty and which missions need to be flown to remove it.

[stilicho410]

Ah, now I understand. Thanks for the clarification.