Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager: hiring the man himself

[Zombie]

I picked up this game a while back, played it a while until I got to the moon, then quit till now. Decided to revisit this, started a new game and everything was backwards and unknown and I had trouble getting back into the swing of it. Anyhow, you can hire 3 types of people: SET Center (these are basically your R&D folks), Mission Control (these folks keep an eye on the rocket in the control room) and finally Astronauts - the folks that (hopefully) go into space. Each person has a profile with their stats (abilities in percentage points) as well as minor personal information (name and age mostly and a "stock" photo of someone). This can sometimes lead to funny profiles:

 

 

Erik Gomes is 26? Really? He looks like he's in his 60's! It's also really annoying as you can't relate to anyone on a personal level if it's all made up. Another issue is that the breadth of stock photos isn't that large so you'll most likely see someone in your next campaign again (this time with a different age and name). That's about as far as it goes to mix things up. These stock photos aren't of anyone who actually played a role in the space program either, unlike, say, Hearts Of Iron III where they are all real people. (I liked this aspect as you'll be able to recognize a person just by their picture or name and instantly know what their general role and approximate stats are).

 

Imagine my surprise when I was screening potential astronauts and came across the man himself (correct picture and name too, though the age is off):

 

 

So I found that interesting and am wondering if there are more fellow astronauts too? Time will tell. I hired him on the spot though. This particular campaign I really went into the red and ended up painting myself into a corner financially (game ends if you mismanage funds). Sadly, Aldrin never made it back into space. Sorry!

 

I started a new campaign the other day and so far it's going swimmingly good: I beat the Russians with the first satellite in space, the first "man" in space, and the first "man" in orbit. I use the term "man" loosely here as that's what the game's terminology is, but in my run, both humans were female. I love this aspect as NASA never allowed females as astronauts till much later and here I am putting 2 different females in space and orbit. I didn't actually plan this to happen either, the gals just had better stats than the males in the pool I started with. I also was able to beat them with the lunar probe missions as well.

 

Currently, I just finished the Mercury program culminating in a joint orbital flight (2 males this time, saving the gals for the moon and for "gimme" missions that aren't really dangerous). I'm probably going to try for the moon with the Gemini program instead of Apollo. As I found out in an earlier campaign, the Apollo program is safer but requires a metric ton of R&D to get you there. Gemini is inherently more dangerous but allows you lunar access with your current system. Not sure how this will pan out, but with my astronauts on the line I'll have to bring out the expendables until most of the dangerous stuff has passed.

 

I found out a few things in the American campaign: it's a good idea to spread your resources between a couple different projects to start with. X-15 and Earth/lunar satellite launches allow you to gain some prestige while keeping everyone busy and you can schedule one or the other every month until they are finished. Staying ahead of the Soviets is priority-one. Funding and financial considerations need to be scrutinized a bit. For instance, even though your astronaut training center can hold 7 people, you really don't need anymore than 3 to start out with so it's best to delay hiring until your prestige level increases and you have the cash to cherry-pick the good candidates.

 

Another thing to look at is the salary of your hires and their age. If you are hiring someone that's 40+ years old and a salary of $50+ you aren't going to get your money out of them as they will retire before younger employees. I try to hire the cheapest person with some decent stats to start with and hopefully they will be on the younger side. Another stat to look for is their learning capacity. The higher this number, the quicker their stats will increase through training. If you find someone young, with a couple decent stats in the high 50's to low 60's and a decent learning number, you can train up any deficiencies and they will be able to moonlight in a different capacity should something happen. (SET and CAPCOM folks can't die, but they can retire and they may be needed elsewhere depending on what's going on).

 

So, yeah. I've been enjoying this game a little bit more. Will keep you updated and maybe create a AAR if I finish this off.

 

- Zombie

[silencer_pl]

Probably in such game, you can't recreate the famous Apollo-13 mission?

[Zombie]

Probably in such game, you can't recreate the famous Apollo-13 mission?

 

Yes and no. Yes in the fact that you can launch missions when your components aren't up to snuff (typically, the game prefers you to launch when everything is 80% or better). Even when you are at 80% there is still the chance that something will go wrong. If your mission control folks are really good, they can probably solve it, but normally the game gives you a popup allowing you to do nothing or hire anywhere from one to four "tiger teams" to help fix it. This only happens at certain critical "set points" within the mission itself, between such points nothing goes wrong. So you can set yourself up for a disaster: man mission control with people having a low stat for the role they are playing, ignore tiger team requests, launch when you are way below 80% etc, etc, etc, but when you boil it down it all comes to chance when the problem happens and whether you can solve it somehow.

 

No in the fact that when a disaster happens you are either able to fix it, or if you aren't, you'll end up losing your crew. I don't think there is a middle ground where you can continue after a problem and hope for the best. The disaster "set points" only happen at certain spots within the mission, so I'm not sure if there is a spot in the Apollo trajectory which would match what happened in real life. And the disaster you'll get is random - I don't think there's a "stir cryo tanks" problem. To top this all off, after you get to the moon, there really isn't a need to continue in that field. You can keep going back with the same mission type, but each time you will not get as many prestige points, which will in turn possibly lower funding.

 

So it's possible in a way, but it's up to chance and economics.

 

- Zombie

[silencer_pl]

I've sort of expected such answer. Such disaster would require a little more complexity unlike for example the sad end of the Challenger.

[Zombie]

Yeah, the Challenger (or even Columbia) disasters are possible as the problems happened at the very start and very end of the missions. Too bad the Shuttle isn't included in the game (far as I can tell at least).

 

Well, I totally messed up my campaign and the Soviets beat me to the moon. Trouble is, there are so many different Gemini mission trees (I have 3 open) that I picked the wrong path. Also, the game kinda wants you to follow the tree instead of jumping around in it and will penalize you for doing so (giving you a negative "bonus" to completion chance). It's not too big, but you better make sure all the components of the mission are at least 90% reliable.

 

I realized I was in the wrong tree when I got "stuck" needing a spacesuit for EVA's. Seeing as none of my R&D folks had nothing better than 60% in that field I suffered a two-fold handicap: It took forever to research the suit with the folks I had, and training up some folks to decent levels (80%) took just as long. I suppose the best course of action would have been to start their training early. Really, I think the best strategy is to initially have a couple R&D folks each having good stats in EVA and something else (maybe rockets or something), put one in EVA training till they are at least 90% and have the other work on rockets. When one is finished training, put the other one in. When time permits, chuck them in one month courses in various fields so they can moonlight in different areas. Once EVA is needed, you can use these specialists and maybe a couple other folks at 60% to slap them out quick. Another similar problem area (which I also encountered) is crewed spacecraft. You don't need specialists for this area right away, but you will later on - especially if you are going the Gemini route to get to the moon as it requires a lot of components.

 

This also brings up space probes: you'll probably want at least 2 people well versed in this field early on as there is a lot of low-hanging fruit in prestige you can get by sending probes to the moon, Sun, and various other planets. In terms of Astronauts (and if you go the route of Gemini), you'll need to have at least 10 available at all times. When you have a successful mission, 5 of them will need to have bed rest till the next month so they will be out of commission. The other 5 can take over and you can leapfrog the crews till you get to the moon. The nice thing about the Gemini program is that once your component reliability is 85-90% there are a lot of missions you can schedule as most of them require the basic parts (just more of them).

 

So yeah, I started out strong, but kinda missed the ball in the end. Did see something strange though, I had a flight controller that didn't have a last name: Not sure why that happened, but maybe he's full of himself and thinks he doesn't need to have a last name (Prince, Madonna, Slash anyone)?

 

For my next run through, I'm thinking of making it a little interesting by only hiring females for all positions. That would put a nasty little twist on the campaign as you might get stuck with hiring a gal when there are other guys who are much better.

 

- Zombie

[silencer_pl]

Would be nice to see AAR out of it. You make this an excellent read.

[Zombie]

Thank you for the kind words silencer.

 

It's too bad I can't mod all my folks into a new game somehow. I have a lot of great folks I trained up.

 

Astronauts

 

 

Joella was the first person in space and her stats are just incredible, 90% or more in almost everything except fitness. Plus everyone else on that screen played some sort of role in the space program. Joseph is always my go-to guy whenever a mission requires 2 astronauts, basically any LEO (Low Earth Orbit) he was a part of. Karen Riddle was the second person in space and the first to orbit the earth, and Karren Nellis was a great test pilot for the X-15 and played backup in case any mission required it. Granted, all of them are getting pretty old but I had a bunch of great prospects in the tubes that were itching to take over should anyone retire or *gasp* get killed.

 

CAPCOM

 

 

Alexander was my fill-in guy, great at just about anything and could handle flight control duties whenever someone else was in training. Alexio was awesome at Trajectory & GNC plus was good in Spacecraft systems and Mission Operations often filling in for trainees. Can't say enough good things about Chasidy, she was my main flight controller - the only thing she was lacking in was crew and payloads, but I had plenty of other folks who were good in that area and I don't think it's necessary for a flight controller to make that their business. Christine was a new prospect, I hired her on the spot for her age, wage and great learning potential. She was an up-and-coming flight controller no doubt. From my previous post there was Francesca another young (and cheap) mission control leader. You really need people like that in CAPCOM, as their youth means they will be with you for a long time, their low cost keeps your coffers full and being good in multiple areas means they are versatile. If their learning potential is decent, even better as they will get out of training faster than others. This is true for astronauts and R&D too, but you could make do with more astronauts only specializing in one or two areas, especially later on.

 

I'll see about starting a AAR of this. Probably will not use my only-female restriction as I want to give a decent overview. Maybe if people want to see it though...

 

- Zombie

[Zombie]

I did a little research into an all-female space program today just to see how viable it is. While it's certainly doable, there are a few things to contend with. Researching is very tricky as you don't know how many women you'll end up getting and their stats might suck as well. If you have to sack all the males there may not be enough females to replace them in the hiring queue which would put you at an immediate disadvantage. Could just "cheat" a little with starting a new game if the cards aren't favorable. What I'm leaning to is a compromise: keep whoever you start with (male or female) but you are only allowed to hire females in the future. You can hold on to the men if they have good stats (or even if they don't) as every iota of research power helps early on.

 

As for astronauts and mission controllers, there really isn't a big problem here as you don't start with anyone and the buildings aren't even built yet. You need 4 in CAPCOM to oversee the X-15 spaceplane program so by the time you have the reliability of the plane at 85-90% you should have enough controllers. And you only need one astronaut early on as the X-15 is a single-seater so you should be able to get one female candidate. But it'll take 5 "seasons" to complete the three missions as astronauts need to recoup after each flight. I much prefer two astronauts so each can take turns and knock it out in only 3 seasons, after that, both can go into long-term training (you can always take them out if you need them). This is probably too confusing for a first-time AAR, so I'll stick to my original thought and just play normally.

 

- Zombie

[silencer_pl]

Looking forward to it.

[Zombie]

Read the strategy guide on Steam by mreed2 and learned quite a few things, he did a good job on it. I realized that I was just flying by the seat of my pants (or "winging it") on research. Guilty as charged, you got me there, but hey, it's my credo. Anyhow, his strategy guide is basically a finely tuned machine: min-maxing R&D, minimizing expenditures, just-in-time project creation etc. I have a much more "organic" approach to strategy, preferring to take things as they come and not plan too far ahead. Life always seems to give me lemons, so I learned early to try to make other things with them besides just lemonade. Hope that makes sense.

 

So I think I will be trying to follow his guide a little bit on this AAR. There are going to be some differences though as his guide basically spells out a strategy starting with an excellent random number roll which seems to me a little bit unrealistic. For example he recommends to upgrade the SET Center (R&D) then hire a second batch of 8 scientists with learning > 80. What happens if you only have 4-5 in that range? Well, you have to wait 2 quarters to hire again and that'll push everything back 2 quarters. Also, his strategy is to put 3 of your first group of 5 scientists in advanced training for human rockets and the other 2 in probes. Great! But what if their learning is only in the 60's? You'll be training up a group of dim-witted scientists and their stats will be much lower for the same time allotment. I'd think you would be better off looking at potential hires as there will probably be at least 3-4 in there with learning in the 90's and a couple in the 80's, which would force you to sack the junk and wait a couple quarters till they pass basic training.

 

To expand on this a bit: if you are selectively hiring your second group of scientists to have a learning of >80, then that would mean that you would want your first group to be above 80 also. And that too is unrealistic.

 

Nah, I'm going to have to employ a little bit of cheese and do some reload scumming to come up with a usable group of initial R&D folks just to make the playing field at least level. I think I have a decent save already so maybe tomorrow I'll start the AAR if I have the time.

 

- Zombie

[Zombie]

I was just fooling around with the GSA campaign mode (there's 3: USA, Russia and GSA which is the Global Space Agency - a UN of space... sorta). Anyhow, ran across a SET researcher without a stock photo:

 

 

How hard is it to get a photo of a person in there? Sloppy programming.

 

When I went to hire astronauts, look who was available:

 

 

That's right, Yuri Gagarin! And he's awesome: 50's in everything except piloting, $35 for a wage which is dirt cheap and 94 for learning capacity so he can be trained up to be even better. Saved this game and might have a go at it sometime in the future.

 

- Zombie

[silencer_pl]

That's a bit odd to have Yuri himself if you are not playing as Soviet Union. But remember: "Be one with Yuri".

[Zombie]

The thing with the GSA is that it really isn't a true-to-life space agency. And it doesn't have the "you have to beat the other side to the moon because they are bad" deal either. The GSA campaign is basically about pretending neither side exists and everyone is working together to get to space (or the moon), There aren't any penalties like when Russia beats the USA to the moon. With the GSA campaign, you are required to meet certain objectives by the agency (or countries, or shareholders or whoever is running the show) by a certain date. If you miss that, you get a penalty. And from what I gather, you recruit from a pool that contains both Russian and American candidates. I suspect you could hire both Buzz Aldrin and Yuri Gagarin in a GSA campaign, though I haven't checked as Buzz comes up rarely. Side note: I really wish there were more real astronauts you could hire besides just Yuri or Buzz.

 

Funny thing about the Russian campaign is that the normal stock photos are still in the game but the names have been changed to Russian instead.

 

- Zombie

[silencer_pl]

Side note: I really wish there were more real astronauts you could hire besides just Yuri or Buzz.

- Zombie

 

 

Is it only those 2? Could per chance in Russian campaign be found Mirosław Hermaszewski. Probably not if only those 2 are in the game.

[Zombie]

Is it only those 2? Could per chance in Russian campaign be found Mirosław Hermaszewski. Probably not if only those 2 are in the game.

 

Haven't seen that name to be honest, but I only checked out the Russian campaign a little bit. If anyone should be in there, it's Neil Armstrong, but as far as I can tell he's not (don't think there was any bad blood between Neil and Buzz but maybe he wanted to make himself look more important as it's his game). And Alan B Shepard would be another good candidate (first American in space), or John Glenn (first American to orbit Earth). The list goes on and on but it doesn't appear anyone recognizable is in there besides Buzz Aldrin or Yuri Gagarin. (Or if they are, maybe they are super-rare spawns).

 

- Zombie