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ChaserGrey wrote:Syeriy nods. "I have no doubt I will work well with Comrade Maisner. First-rate programmers are all too rare, incidentally."

He looks puzzled at the Chief Designer's second question- politely, of course. "Kibbutz? I'm not sure what you're talking about, Comrade Chief Designer. I'm as Zenobian as you are, born and raised in Stasbushingrad."

"Sorry. I am... occasionally prone to flights of whimsy these days."

[OOC: that's a fourth-wall-breaking joke, Chaser. "Kibitz" is really the word.

IC, Syrgy was asking if he'd ever visited the country; no suspicion was meant, since Syrgy more or less defaults to assuming that anyone who can make it to Baikonurek past the horde of spies the NKVDVDROM's got around the place belongs there. He does worry about internal rivals and opposition insofar as they threaten his program, but he's not looking for saboteurs in his soup the way some Zenobians do.]

OOC: Aaaaahhhhhhhh. That's actually pretty funny once you say that. And of course, anytime you want me to stop kibitzing I will, don't want to cross the line between "helpful" and "annoying".

And yeah. If I were to try to infiltrate a spy into Baikonurek, I sure wouldn't start by having him walk into the Chief Designer's office. I'm sure the entire place is a "closed city" like the IRL USSR had, so you literally couldn't get within miles of the place without proper documentation, and any violation lands you in the warm, loving, sweaty, hairy arms of the NKVDVDROM. I just wanted to make it clear OOC what was going on.

To make matters worse, sending Mr. Grey as a spy into Zenobia would be pants-on-head retarded, because he doesn't just know the outlines of the Murcan moon landing plan; he wrote it.

ChaserGrey wrote:OOC: Aaaaahhhhhhhh. That's actually pretty funny once you say that. And of course, anytime you want me to stop kibitzing I will, don't want to cross the line between "helpful" and "annoying".

I'm quite happy to have people who know what the hell they're talking about on my team. From my upbringing I'm trained to regard kibitzing as a basically honorable activity in all fields of human endeavor that don't require intense concentration- exceptions include back seat driving, obviously.

I'm trying to rederive things from first principles as I go along; even now I've never played a game of BARIS to completion.

OOC: I just managed a historical landing as the US in November '68 (Commander: David Scott, LM Pilot: Jack Swigert, CM Pilot: Buzz Aldrin) and I am stoked. Plenty of savescumming and an almost wholly inactive player-controlled Soviet side helped (though I did have them fly a Vostok with a woman, plus Soyuz 1 commanded by a woman in 1965. Perhaps not the greatest idea, since I lost the prestige for first 3-man, but it was fun.)

I did a lunar orbital with Gemini XVIII, and flew tons of docking missions. Somehow they were mostly successes and later on I didn't have to savescum at all, by some miracle.

I flew five Apollo missions; the first an Earth orbital LM test, the next two Lunar orbital LM tests, and then one unmanned suborbital before the finally successful Apollo 5.

I'm hoping the Zenobians get female cosmonauts, just for the humor potential of mixed-sex crews.

Also for getting to make fun of the Murcan degenerates.

Also for Comrade Svetmaya... uh... Surnameova, who I would love to see on our team.

OOC - So no Cosmonaut Shroomanskaya? Damn. On downside for senior space program leaders, I doubt the General Secretary would take her death at all well.

Will have to start getting into Digaditch's head, as it appears Nikov is not far from nicking off. I thought each flight needs a backup crew as well as a prime crew, yet we only appear to have the single Voskhod crew.

There is, of course, a decent chance I can't read.

fnord wrote:OOC - So no Cosmonaut Shroomanskaya? Damn. On downside for senior space program leaders, I doubt the General Secretary would take her death at all well.

If we recruit female cosmonauts, we will most likely recruit more than one. Comrade Svetmaya Surnameova will merely be one of them.

Will have to start getting into Digaditch's head, as it appears Nikov is not far from nicking off. I thought each flight needs a backup crew as well as a prime crew, yet we only appear to have the single Voskhod crew.

There is, of course, a decent chance I can't read.

Comrade, I refer you to my posts detailing my plans to assign new crews to Voskhod 1*, with you and Comrade Mametov (or some other man) as the primary crew and with (Karzanovski or Digaditch) and Comrade Yebanov as the backup.

*As in, the first Voskhod manned mission, you know what I mean...

Jesus christ!

This is just my goddamn luck. The computer I was running the LP from just crapped out.

I did have backups of the savegames, but they might be a turn behind.

Gzregorz sneaked through the dark halls of Baikonurek quarters, back to his own room after a late night training session. Irina was very satisfied with his skills, especially his precise manoeuvres at unfavourable angles, and his good control of thrust. Looking out of the window, he let his mind stroll to the strange new worlds that laid out there, waiting for the Zenobians to bring them into the Onion.

And all the hot alien girls that must be out there, waiting for him. Wasn't that the true reason all men wanted to fly to space?
Spoiler

*wipes sweat off brow*

Whew. That was close: we're not rolling back anything, I got the data back

Turns out I had ALL the saves backed up, anyway. Crisis averted, comrades! Comrade Murcanskis, present your plans for world domination please!

Fox Modem finished some paperwork in the control room. He wasn't used to this posting yet, and he hoped it wasn't permanent. He wanted to fly, not work a computer in an office building.

FaxModem1 wrote:Fox Modem finished some paperwork in the control room. He wasn't used to this posting yet, and he hoped it wasn't permanent. He wanted to fly, not work a computer in an office building.

Don't worry, CAPCOMs were actual flying astronauts, often from backup of support crews. Working in the role did not mean you wouldn't fly, as Fox's recent selection for the orbital mission shows. Flashheart is going to be your CAPCOM, for example.

Mr. Grey knocks on the Director's door.

"Sir, I've completed the analysis you requested. Obviously, as we have an EVA mission scheduled we should give first priority to getting the suits ready. I believe that beginning the XMS-2 program would be premature at this time- it would take too much of our budget to R&D when we already have several programs under development. I believe we should concentrate on the Titan and Ranger programs for the present to begin mapping the Moon for possible landing sites. Earth-based telescopes are clearly insufficient, and we estimate that it will take five or six successful missions to yield the necessary data. The sooner we begin the better.

"We can also begin planning a biomedical research flight of Duration Step B for sometime next year, assuming we can find suitable candidates among the astronauts. Assuming that the upcoming Mercury mission goes well, it should yield a great deal of useful data."
Spoiler

There's still a penalty for donwgrading missions, which I find really weird: what, there's no shame in not flying at all, but cutting out an EVA means embarassment on the level of a failed satellite launch? Whut?

Dude, it's BARIS. The first thing you learn about the game is that it's set in a universe where the frakking laws of physics have been rewritten from the ground up specifically to fuck with you. On the seventh day, the Bible tells us, God rested- and in this universe, we can safely assume that He spent the entire day tweaking his newly made Creation specifically to cause the maximum amount of sheer maddening frustration for any mortals who might someday try to reach the Moon.

I like to imagine Him as that guy leaning over the computer consoles on the Soviet mission screen, chuckling at all of us as we try to run on His little demented hamster wheel to the heavens.

I think it's because of the boasting that comes along when they announce the mission plans, and then they have to admit that their toys aren't ready, yet. Politicians hate to have stuff they announced not happen... After all, it's prestige with the guys signing your budget.

LaCroix wrote:I think it's because of the boasting that comes along when they announce the mission plans, and then they have to admit that their toys aren't ready, yet. Politicians hate to have stuff they announced not happen... After all, it's prestige with the guys signing your budget.

Yes, but downgrading the mission means most stuff does happen: scrubbing it should be worse, logically speaking

-3 for a downgrade is really damn excessive.

LaCroix wrote:I think it's because of the boasting that comes along when they announce the mission plans, and then they have to admit that their toys aren't ready, yet. Politicians hate to have stuff they announced not happen... After all, it's prestige with the guys signing your budget.

Which is ahistorical for the Soviets, at least- I'm not saying they lost cosmonauts and didn't admit it, but they certainly didn't hesitate to avoid trumpeting failed launches in advance as propaganda.

Though a case like Ivanov's, yes that would create such an effect- really a terrible one, given the circumstances.

Yeah, Soviets could just hide a failed launch and pretend nothing happened, as long as nobody died, only releasing the information fifty years later

That doesn't mean the politburo wouldn't be pissed, though.

Absolutely.

Which I suppose is quite adequately covered by the prestige mechanic, though I still don't entirely understand why every satellite launch failure is a prestige hit... no, wait, it makes sense, they're trying to discourage the player from trying to do what Doomy did by spamming satellite launches in hopes of getting one of them into orbit in a hurry. Come to think of it, we barely broke even on satellite launch prestige in the opening seasons of the game, even though we got the milestone first.

Yeah.

OOC: Oh my god.



"I didn't do anything. I was just lying there! It just blew! I mean the hatch - just blew!"


For those of you who don't get it - this.

You want irony? The accident investigation comittee did not initially believe Grissom didn't do anything ; They were convinced he accidentally activated the mechanism which blew the hatch.

He was eventually proven right, and thus the comittee recommended the Apollo Command Module was to be equipped with a hatch without explosive bolts.

Fast forward to Apollo 1...

Even more bitter irony- when the launch vehicle director for the Apollo One plugs-out test was interviewed years later, he said even if the hatch had been equipped with explosive bolts he probably would not have allowed them to be armed for a ground test.

"The Right Stuff" notwithstanding I believe Grissom was cleared relatively quickly. The hatch jettison button on Mercury capsules was on a very strong spring, to the point where everyone who had hit one during tests ended up with a bruise on their hand from smacking it hard enough to depress the button. Grissom's post-flight physical showed no bruising on his hands, so it's unlikely he accidentally hit the button.