Falc

One of the things that has me a bit annoyed is how unwieldy it is to try and get the right tools for a mission on a lander/rover. Allow me to explain by way of example. After my first rover broke down on the way to the Two Impact Craters mission in Victoria, I made a new rover with the same instruments but a High Quality chassis. Launched and did the missions, no sweat. Unlocked tech level 4, cool. Ah, no new missions for my rover? Strange, let's disconnect and look at Victoria. Yes, I see new missions but for some reason, my current rover can't be assigned, a new Tech 4 rover is needed. No clue why, at that point I assume the pictures to be taken really need to be in color and not B/W. My previous issues in mind, I rebuild the Tech 4 rover with a High Quality chassis, launch the rover, complete missions. Again, no new missions available. I go back and now there's a new mission that my T4 rover can't do, but my old T3 one can? Wait what, do we need B/W pictures now? Or is it maybe that the EAS and EMS don't actually do the same things??? So, after this semi-ordeal, here are a few recommendations: 1) The mission detail should list EXACTLY which instruments will be needed for a mission, not just a generic icon and a vague description of needing to 'analyse a target'. 2) When building a rover/lander, you should be able to see a list of missions and their exact instrument requirements. Otherwise, you're just building something and then you need to go the map to see if you actually made something useful... 3) When going to the lab from the map, you can change everything about a rover/lander except the quality of the chassis. This is a pointless obstacle. Allow us to start something from scratch when coming from the map, or allow the chassis quality to be changed at any time in the lab. Preferably the latter, actually, since it means we can take your premade rovers and apply the updates we feel we need to ANY part of it. 4) I keep finding it strange that suddenly, a new mission for my T3 rover appears after I've had to launch the T4 one. I feel that either the mission should have been available before, or it should have been a T4 mission...

I think we should also have a speed governor. On the one hand, some absolute settings like 100%, 75, 50, 25. And then besides that, some settings relative to the current power gain from solar panels, like 150%, 100%, 50%.

A few more options with the wheels should certainly be on the table. See, as far as I can tell, a wheel could either have a faulty drive or have something in it that makes it get stuck. If a wheel has a faulty drive, there should be an option to just disconnect the drive and allow the wheel to 'free-wheel'. This would reduce propulsion but should allow the rover to drive straight. An obstruction in the wheel should be possible to try and remove. Like maybe finding a spot where the wheel in question can be spun up in mid-air to dislodge sand? Of course, this could risk even more damage. Detaching the drive on such a wheel would of course not help at all. Removing the wheel completely... I don't think that would be a viable option. You'd end up with the leg it's attached to creating possibly even more drag than the frozen wheel.

Okay, so I broke my campaign yesterday. I was going along nicely with Victoria Crater and the first rover I'd launched, but the wear on its wheels made the prospect of reaching the two impact craters very unlikely indeed. So I went back to mission control, abandoned my rover, then looked into launching a new rover, then saw I had enough cash to unlock the second crater (Kaiser?). Which I did. At which point I did not have enough money left to launch anything, anywhere. Okay, this was my own stupid fault, but I do feel that some sort of warning about this (or even a complete block) or maybe an undo option should be considered. Like maybe only allow unlocking if you have enough cash for the unlock PLUS the first launch?