StarDestroyer.Net BBS

A great leader dead ; A nation in mourning

Many feel that a great era has ended today, as Dave F. Teddy, the 35th Murcan President, was laid to rest at Lington National Cementery in Washingtoff. Thousands of people gathered in silent vigil on the streets of Washingtoff, lighting candles and praying for the late President which inspired them with his optimism, his dedication and grand visions of Murca's future, on this Earth and beyond it.

While fears of a Commienist invasion turned out to be unfounded, and the gunman was apprehended, many questions still remain, and will only be answered by a thorough investigation by the FBI and Secret Service.

President Teddy accomplished much during his tenure ; But one of his grandest, most electrifying vision remains unfullfilled. We would all do well to remember that while DFT was a great man with great accomplishment on this world, his greatest dream lay out there, in outer space.

We, as a nation, should now strive to honor his memory by fulfilling that dream: the dream of peaceful exploration of space, of landing on the Moon and the planets beyond, and perhaps, one day, exploration of the nearby stars.

Already, MASA has announced the first man will fly to orbit and return safely this fall ; In honor of the late President, the mission would carry DFT's astronaut pin, presented to him by the Mercury Seven in thanks of his support of the space program, and leave it in orbit of the Earth.

fnord wrote:PeZook, from what I've seen, boosters effectively count as an extra launch stage, with the boosted rocket's reliability being product of the native rocket's reliability and the boosters' reliability - at least, I've never had a boosted launch be more reliable than unboosted, ceteris paribus. Unboosted brand-new Saturn V blowing up notwithstanding...

That is true ; I just made an experiment, researching boosters to 72% while keeping the Atlas at 10%, and the boosted Atlas was listed as having 7% total reliability. So it's not an average, but just the two reliabilities multiplied by each other, IOW an effective extra launch stage (only one roll though).

Since 0.72*0.1 = 0.072

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Question for Murcans: you didn't declare any mission plans for Spring 1964. What gives?

Also, I have been wondering: do people have any complaints about the way information is presented in updates?

Crud. I was afraid of that. That could bite us on the ass during boosted rocket launches; it'll certainly bite me on the ass. For some missions this may make a Proton preferable to a boosted A-Series even when that would not normally be true, and even in light of the expense.

On the bright side, all those unmanned Voskhod docking missions will run up my booster reliability!

My one complaint is that the sheer size of the thread has gotten out of hand; if I want to know the reliability of a piece of hardware I haven't researched in two or three turns, I have to go back several pages to find it. We need a link-index thread, like the one in SDNW4. But that's not fundamentally a problem with your reports; it's a problem caused by an embarrassment of riches in terms of the vitality of the game.

EDIT: On a side note, those unmanned suborbital Voskhods will be flown by boosted A-Series. Though I'm nervous about this; the risks of this flight really worry me and the boosters' chance of failure sure isn't helping.

I don't know what I'll do if I get hit by a manned failure in Voskhod.

[shakes head]

"I have therefore decided, and an executive order to this effect has been issued, that MASA Launch Operations Center, including facilities on Merits Island and THE CAPE, shall henceforth be known as the Dave F. Teddy Space Center, MASA.

This executive order will take effect on December 20th, 1963."

Cute note, which I am regretting not including in the LP.

On August 19, 1960, two dogs: Belka and Strelka went to orbit aboard Sputnik 5, and returned to Earth alive and well.

Strelka would later have pups with another dog in the, uh, Canine Space Program the Soviets were running as preparation for sending a human into space, Pushok.

One of the (female) pups was gifted to president Kennedy's daughter by Kruschev, and later had pups with the First Dog, Charlie. Kennedy supposedly called those dogs pupniks.

I just learned of that and found it incredibly cute

Simon,

In the basic game (where hardware stats are identical for each side, just the names are different):

Atlas/A-Series: 3 MB/unit, max R&D/safety 87%/98%, 500 max payload
Titan/Proton: 12 MB/unit, max R&D/safety 91%/98%, 1200 max payload

Boosters: 4 MB/unit, max R&D/safety 85%/98%, 800 max payload

Thus, comparing
Boosted Atlas/A-series: 7 MB/unit, max R&D/safety 74%/96%, 1300 max payload
Unboosted Titan/Proton: 12 MB/unit, max R&D/safety 91%/98%, 1200 max payload

Is saving 5 MB/unit worth the 2-2.9x greater chance of launch cockup?

FaxModem1 wrote:Rex Modem gave a nod to Bob Johnson and offered him a beer.

"How did it go?"

You stupid jerk.

Bob waved the beer away and didn't slow down. "Can't. Stuff to do. Got to go. Sorry," he said in a very neutral tone as he passed.

I am going to space. I will not let anything get in my way. Don't try to trap me.

Aha, I see: in 0.4.6, which I've been playing on my Mac, the rocket and booster reliability is averaged, not multiplied. Too bad, for our purposes, but a bit more realistic.

Of course, this would be the sort of world in which that would somehow work. "Behind in rocket research? No problem - just slap a booster on there and she'll go up just fine! Boosters are the Band-Aids of rocket science, after all."

Given the elements of this game which are unrealistically difficult, I think we could use a damn break on something...

Sorry. I'm in a bad mood for real life reasons, and this game has started to become very frustrating. I can deal with things not working, but for my side of the game it's been a continuous, ongoing process of things not workinig ever since the day after I did my suborbital shot, and it's just driving me up the wall.

I hear you, man. Some advice, if you want it, feel free to ignore it if you don't:

- The only thing you really need done with Voskhod is an Earth orbital, so do that and then wind down the program. Maybe do an EVA if you're feeling adventurous- fun fact, adding an EVA to your first manned orbital mission doesn't incur an additional penalty. Then use it for unmanned docking tests.

- Meanwhile, move ahead with unmanned probes, which are a good way to grub for prestige on things like planetary flybys.

- In almost every BARIS game I've played there's been a gap in my astronaut recruiting, where existing members quit and you just don't have a reason to recruit the corps up again. No shame in it. There are decent enough 'nauts in every batch- the later ones tend to have lower skills, so you can't pull them out of training early, but if they go all the way through the mill they're more than up to the challenge.

What bugs me with that strategy is the risk of getting beaten to the punch on all the orbital stuff- there are a looot of milestones here in the midfield, though I guess exploiting an edge for flybys gets me part of the way there at reasonably low extra cost, especially since I've got Cosmos half-finished.

But then, the race to fly a minishuttle is worth a lot, I guess.

Still, aaaaargh.

Well, I'm not going to give you any strategic advice, since it would be unfair to the Murcan team (it's already weird Mr. Gray is a consultant for the Chief Designer more than he is for the Murcans ), but from where I'm standing it looks that while Zenobians will almost certainly lose the race to orbit, they are well-poised to grab all those nice, juicy, low-risk planetary flybys, and should be able to kickoff the lunar photography program. They also have the Voshkhod, which will most likely snag the "first two manned orbital ship" trophy and is poised to nab first duration flights that the Mercury just plain cannot do.

Yes indeed. What could be this mysterious man's story?

(OOC, I felt kinda compelled to share some ideas because I could tell Simon was getting frustrated, and anyone who's ever played BARIS knows all too well how that feels. I think the game probably rivals Daikatana for amounts of sheer concentrated nerdrage produced.)

It's not so much nerdrage as it is a sense of pointlessness.

Doesn't help that I've been way more stressed and depressed than usual over the last few weeks for real life reasons, as I said; when the light-hearted wacky fun activity becomes a depressing Litany of Fail I start reacting poorly under conditions like this.

Honestly, I almost know enough to plan all this out from my own research into how the game works. What I do not and cannot provide is the kind of insight that comes from having played through the game a dozen times to see what works and what doesn't. No one else on the Zenobian team has that either, whereas we already had at least one experienced-ish BARIS player on the Murcan side with Barnest1 (though his inability to budget seems to limit his ability ).

I know what missions I need to fly; I just can't figure out a safe way to beat the horrible "everything craps out and explodes" problems. What worries me about Voskhod is its performance in the "craps out and explodes" department, which does not inspire me with confidence.

I know what I should be trying to do- as 'Zook says, I should be trying to grab the first two-manned flight, the flybys, and the duration flights. But Voskhod is such a dangerous piece of hardware that I'm getting gun-shy and exasperated because everything I try fails, usually due to random events like the Great A-Series Crapout.

Then again, if I can't secure orbital spaceflight first, which I know damn well I can't at this point barring horrible bad luck for the Murcans, maybe I can at least fly more unmanned Voskhod shots to bring the reliability up... [sorry, Comrade Nikov]

EDIT: Hmm. I know what this Zenobian space program needs. More wackiness!

[thinks about ways to make things wacky again]

fnord wrote:Simon,

In the basic game (where hardware stats are identical for each side, just the names are different):

Atlas/A-Series: 3 MB/unit, max R&D/safety 87%/98%, 500 max payload
Titan/Proton: 12 MB/unit, max R&D/safety 91%/98%, 1200 max payload

Boosters: 4 MB/unit, max R&D/safety 85%/98%, 800 max payload

Thus, comparing
Boosted Atlas/A-series: 7 MB/unit, max R&D/safety 74%/96%, 1300 max payload
Unboosted Titan/Proton: 12 MB/unit, max R&D/safety 91%/98%, 1200 max payload

Is saving 5 MB/unit worth the 2-2.9x greater chance of launch cockup?

Depends on what you're launching.

For a manned capsule shot, maybe, but maybe not. It depends on how great the other risks of the mission are, and how great the absolute magnitude of the booster costs are.

For unmanned tests it can be worth it simply because you lose very little beyond the cost of the hardware if something goes wrong. For programs where you need many such tests, hell yes it's worth saving 5 MB per launch over the course of 5 to 10 launches when there's no prestige cost at stake. Unmanned docking being the obvious candidate (edit: if you're playing as the Soviets who can actually launch a docking module test on a boosted A-Series, which the Americans cannot do on a boosted Atlas due to the inferior biceptitude of their puny limp Atlas missiles )

If you're committed to a joint orbit rendevous strategy for the Moon landing, it can be worth it because it frees you from the obligation to research the Saturn V/N-1 rocket, which will otherwise cost you something like 150-250 MB to research and develop to max R&D. Not having to develop a superheavy-lift booster is one of the big arguments for doing joint launches in the first place; there are countervailing arguments and some of them are damned good ones, but that's one of the big arguments for doing it.

Most applicable in our case, since the minishuttle/kicker/(docking module?) stack is heavier than an Apollo or Soyuz capsule, and it requires a boosted Saturn V/N-1 to do a historical lunar landing with the minishuttles, it's definitely worth it to take the chance on (long-tested by then) booster rockets rather than have to develop Nova/Vulkan to send the mission to the Moon.

E_F, I suggest that we schedule an orbital EVA mission for Spring 64. Assuming all goes well with our manned orbital flight it should help us stick it to the Commie dogs show the superiority of Murcan engineering. MURCA!

Hmm. I need to playtest a few ideas...

Good call Mr Grey.

PeZook, please schedule a Mercury/Atlas orbital flight with EVA plan using....shite, I can't find the astroanut list. Can I tell you the astronauts when you post the Fall 1963 update?

Also, please schedule another pair of Mercury/Explorer launches. We need to keep the filthy Zenobians distracted with our bitching rock and roll at all times.

As Fox Modem worked, trying to get ready for his inevitable flight, Rex followed Johnson around, trying make amends.

"Listen buddy, I'm sorry you got caught. If its not beer you want, what is it? Come on, I'm trying to make it up to you."

Eternal_Freedom wrote:Good call Mr Grey.

PeZook, please schedule a Mercury/Atlas orbital flight with EVA plan using....shite, I can't find the astroanut list. Can I tell you the astronauts when you post the Fall 1963 update?

Also, please schedule another pair of Mercury/Explorer launches. We need to keep the filthy Zenobians distracted with our bitching rock and roll at all times.

I already posted Fall 1963, you will find the available astronauts and their assignments there, it should allow you to select the crew for the next Mercury flight.

Ah, thanks for the link. Simon was right this is getting unwieldy.

right, with Kelly/Cuntser assigned to the manned orbital i have little choice but to assign the Spring 64 to ModemJR and Flasheart.

And now the dilemna. Modem has the higher Cap rating but the lower EVA rating. How dangerous is it to fly a manned orbital with a capsule rating of 1? And how safe is it to run an EVA with an EVA rating of 2?

Mr. Grey looks up from his mission plans.

"Sir, the decision is yours but my opinion is that sending up a Capsule Rating 1 astronaut on a solo mission would be...inadvisable. An EVA rating of 2 should be satisfactory for a fully developed suit. I recommend ModemJR for prime crew...and with all due respect to Astronaut Flasheart, if we have to go with the backup crew I would seriously consider scrubbing the mission. We have the lead for now, but one disaster could cost us the advantage over the filthy Commienists."

Very well then, ModemJR is the prime crew, Flasheart is secondary, but only because we actually NEED a backup.

PeZook, Modem is prime crew and Flasheart is backup, but as Mr Grey said, if we ahve to use backup crew for any reason scrub the flight.

Capsule's a big deal because a) it's the most used skill by far and b) it gets used for fun things like de-orbit burns and reentry where failed rolls usually mean dead nauts. Unfortunately, Cap 1 guys in the first group are next to useless, because IMO a single-person capsule might as well be a suicide booth for them.

Edit: A quick, user-friendly guide to skills in any given area when it comes to assigning a naut to carry out a task:

4- Excellent
3- Good
2- Acceptable
1- No
0- Hell, no!

Suborbital shots are a bit different, mind, since they only have two capsule steps- but you only want to do a suborbital flight once.

I used Comrade Faaabio for my milestone suborbital Vostok launch precisely because he was one of the less skilled cosmonauts and he was originally chosen during the low-reliability von Evilstein days. If I couldn't get the idiot to listen about reliability and the need to wait to fully man-rate the capsule, I didn't want to lose a CAP 4 pilot on a mission where his skill would make relatively little difference.