Matrix Games Forums

I haven't had a chance to play the game in-depth yet, only a cursory look. But that brief examination results in a question.

On the Soviet side of the lunar campaign, it seems like a lot of the real-life programs and options are included in the game, which is great. However, it seems the NASA side is missing a possibilities that would have offered more strategic options to the player. There doesn't appear to be the choice to do an Apollo direct ascent landing using the Nova rocket, nor the option for an Apollo direct ascent using an EOR approach with multiple Saturn V launches.

Is that indeed the case? And if so, is there any chance that might be added in a future update?


(There were some other real-life lunar landing options suggested at various points but which were not pursued. One of these was a proposal for a scaled-down 2-man Apollo capsule that would have been a direct ascent mission on a single Saturn V launch. A more farfetched proposal was for a lunar surface rendezvous approach, which would have seen the Earth return vehicle landed remotely on the Moon, and its status then be checked out by ground control. If all was good, then the lunar landing portion of the mission would be launched from Earth, set to land close to the already landed Earth return vehicle. The proposal didn't get far, but from a strategic game play perspective it would be an interesting path to consider adding to the game.)

Hello Saturn V,

For the moment there are no plans to include any new manned programs from the Apollo era, but we'll see [;)]

Cheers.

If I may ask, why was the Apollo/Nova direct ascent and Apollo EOR direct ascent options left out of the game? Is it because these plans were dropped relatively early on in real life and thus didn't warrant inclusion on a 'might have been' basis?

Hello Saturn V,

Not really. The problem is that creating the animations is very expensive and we don't have unlimited resources. When I started creating the list of programs available throughout the game based on the articles from Encyclopedia Astronautica there were lots of interesting concepts that I would have loved to be part of the final game but, unfortunately, there's no way for us to make them all, so we had to make some decisions.

Cheers,

Thanks for the reply.

Speaking personally, I'd be happy to have those options even if it meant no animations. For me the strategic options are the thing.

Nova and the direct ascent option were present in the original BARIS, just saying.

jup, i aggee with saturn 5 -add these mission (and mayby even more) with no pic/generic animation at start with chance that related animations will be added later if money permits.

ORIGINAL: czert2

jup, i aggee with saturn 5 -add these mission (and mayby even more) with no pic/generic animation at start with chance that related animations will be added later if money permits.

Once the iOS version is out, I'll try to open up the game a bit more for modding so that someone from the community can add these missions. I'll keep you guys posted!

Cheers,

will that modding support adding of user created aimations ?