Don't you know that in reality we (i mean heart) achived les than 50% successfull landing on mars ? i think the game is prety realistic in that way.

Landing on the red sister of hearth is and will always be a hard and unpredictable task.

@FredyC & cky2250 as mars have an atmosphere using parachutes is relevant (it is even used for real mars landing) but as mentioned by cky2250 mars atmosphere is too thin to allow the use of parachutes alone this is why skycranes are used.

I agree whith the "no landing failures" Loophole suggested for those how prefer fun over realisme but i would not use it at all.

but less failure wouldn't be realistic at all so i voted no ...

i agree with Dahunn ...
Actually comunication with mars take 2 min up to 30 min (depending of how far mars is from hearth at this time) so controling by hand a landing prob is just not fesable (but this is the same for rover, in reality you would not be able to directly control the rover unless you have precognition or are in orbit but no human being have been that far away from hearth yet) in reality when the prob/rover start hes descent this is like "press the button and cross finger hope for it to succeed".

In my opinion the landing phase of the game is great as it is and should not be redone. as a side note i would say that having the control of it also make you more potent to screw it all as computer are less likely to fail than humans in regular and predictable circumstances.

I would rather like to see a "take control" button, letting the IA do hes job and take over it if there is a problem. (letting people that want to land themselves take control at the begining of the landing and alowing others to play it with realisme as it is now)

finally if the problem is linked to radial or hover trusters, the skycrane lifting cables or the module inflatables, taking direct control of it wouldn't help at all.

I don't think it should be "low priority" as it would affect not only cameras but also solar panels that are a key module of the rover.

i guess this topic would be great to merge with the Dust: strorms and devils one (0000045)

I agree it would be good,
but keep in mind that dust storm are not as "bad" as you think actually opportunity rover went through a dust storm and survived it (even if 99% of the direct light was obstructed by the dust he went to sleep mode until the exposure went back)
The weather or mars even cleanded solar panel from the dust deposit he previously had (NASA call it the cleaning event, martian wind remove the dust on solar panel. for instance The power output of Spirit's solar arrays increased from 223 watt hours per day on March 31, 2009 to 372 watt hours per day on April 29, 2009 due to this cleaning event) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleaning_event)
I guess dust should work that way:
-solar panel power supply goes down as time passes. even more if moving.
-sometimes (with a random chance, i think modeling mars's weather would be a too big project and retrieving info from NASA would make the game online forbidding it to no internet connection peoples) wind would lift the dust out of the solar panels. making solar panel power goes up.
-for dust storm (as rover sent are made to be able to survive those rude condition) they would rather block direct exposure but also clean de solar panels so it would be temporaly bad but good afterward.
aside from that it would be great to have a "no mars weather" to disable those feature option to allow people who prefer fun over realism (even if i would never us it)

anyway i'm supporting this idea.

good idea but i agree with Thetobby and Zalifer on this one.

I here agreed with dahunn, as for the other stuff i stand for realisme and now we are decades away form sending someone to mars.

Even if i would gladly wait 6 month in a spacecraft to step on mars the danger it represent with our actual technologie is too big to take the risk (remember that more than half the missions to mars up to his day failed)

And for the game purpose, i think they should be focussing on the main aspect of the game which is exploration of mars. and tere is no need to have human onboard to explore mars.

I'll say it could be fun but i'd rather see it as a dlc or a community mod in fact i just want the devs not to spread out and focus on making this game the greatest ever.

I'll not vote against or for those as it is still a good idea.

I here stand for realisme and then would say that there are only specific time to launch a prob tu mars called "Launch windows" night/day i don't care as my rover and probs always have chem batteries if using solar panels (and it is not really "more" expensive) and you can use light and/or night vision.

The minimum-energy launch windows for a Martian expedition occur at intervals of approximately two years and two months, i.e. 780 days (the planet's synodic period with respect to Earth). In addition, the lowest available transfer energy varies on a roughly 16-year cycle.
source : (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_of_Mars)