Posted on: October 19, 2023
ErnestoAlvarez
Verified ownerGames: 192 Reviews: 9
Buzz Aldrin's unmanned space program mgr
This game tries to be a successor to BARIS, almost making the grade but not quite. Works reasonably well for unmanned programs but fails badly on crewed missions. The good: introduces the character of the flight controller. Great addition, which highlights the efforts of the ground crew to get things right when the kit goes wrong. The bad: crews are actually a hindrance due to how odds are calculated. Crew stats are included in the computation of the odds of failure (as a multiplication) therefore, an uncrewed capsule is more reliable because the odds of a step failure are the odds of hardware failure. If you introduce the crew, the odds of a step failure appear to be the odds of equipment failure multiplied by the odds of crew failure. One could guess the crew are monkeys that touch things at random... The ugly: step failures usually imply mission failure, and possibly insta-death for everyone. The developers should have taken a hint from BARIS and understand that not every situation is the same. Examples that have happened to me are: 1. Sub orbital test, retro failure means immediate mission failure. No matter that the craft would still perform a reentry on its own. 2. Pad step failure, explosion, everybody dies. Can understand that, but a similar case IRL ended up with the launch escape system pulling the capsule out of danger. 3. Crew EVA transfer, failure during EVA. Catastrophic failure and two full crews die. Can't find a way of explaining that one. Maybe they got depressed when their comrade died during the EVA and committed suicide? So, basically, great for unmanned probes, bad for a moonshot.
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