Veteran Astronauts

[stilicho410]

Historically, great value was placed on building a pool of astronauts with space experience. Although all of the Mercury flights by necessity had rookie crews, only 3 of the 10 manned Gemini missions had all-rookie crews. The other 7 Gemini missions, plus all 11 Apollo missions, had at least 1 veteran crew member. Two particularly critical Apollo Missions (10 and 11) had all-veteran crews.

This is already reflected in the game somewhat by a modest skill increase once a mission is completed, but how about making it more dramatic?

- An astronaut returning from a space mission could get the same skill jump gained by a 3 quarter "Advanced Training" course in 2-3 skills. (I phrase it this way so that the skill gain would still be somewhat asymptotic.)

- Veteran astronauts would be marked in the Astronaut Corps display by the number of missions he's flown. I admit space is tight in the current display, perhaps the number could be in a corner of the portrait, or by adding tiny "mission patches" to one side of the portrait. (The patches would proably have to be tiny, so simple generic patches would probably suffice, not fancy individual patches for each mission.)

- Any rookie astronaut(s) flying with a veteran would get a temporary skill increase equivalent to one "Advanced Training" session while the mission is being flown, perhaps to the same skill as the highest rated skill of the veteran. If a rookie is flying with two veterans, he'd get two temporary bumps.
Once the mission is complete, the rookie would get his own "veteran bonus" and be considered a veteran himself.

- To temper this bonus, once a veteran has completed a flight, there will be a random roll to decide whether he's ready to retire from active flight status. The probability will be based on the number of flights. The chance of retirement would be very small after the first flight, then increase with each successive flight. Historically, most astronauts retired after 2-4 flights.

All of this would provide the player with an incentive to "season" rookie pilots by combining them with veterans, and makes veterans most valuable indeed. As it is, the game encourages the player to use the same small pool of pilots over and over, and only training a few backups to replace those who have been killed.

[Nacho84]

Hello Stilicho,

These are very good suggestions. I cannot promise them for release, since some of them require quite a bunch of changes and it's a little bit risky at the moment to introduce them. I need to make sure the game is finished by mid-October so that I can send the Gold Master to Slitherine [:)]

That being said, in the next patch you'll get a new mechanic related to astronauts which is the fact that they need to take a rest season after a mission. This will certainly force players to plan their crews more carefully.

Cheers,