Zen (and anyone else interested),
Well, so far here is what I have done. May not seem like much but I did have a son graduate from college this week, and both my son and daughter had housing moves involved with the end of the semester (my son to his new apartment for his new job, and my daughter to the house she'll be renting with some friends for her last year at MSU). Forgive my ramble, lol.
Anyway, I printed extra copies of pages 35 and 36 (the pages in the manual with the panel layout diagrams - and yup I printed the entire manuals and put 'em in a binder for reading away from the computer) and then the downloadable checklists and put all of them into document protectors to keep them in good shape after repeated use. I am going to switch to using the Michael Swannick compressed checklists after yesterday's session. So those are now printed out and in document protectors as well.
It goes without saying that the real astronauts would practice procedures/train much more than I did, that being said I figured at least one run in each commom mission phase for familiarization purposes and then a second run for a full "mock" rehearsal should be the minimum amount of sim "training".
For the record, I found no difference whatsoever (difficulty-wise) between using the sim on "medium" difficulty with printed checklists and using the game on "hard" difficulty with printed checklists. Basically found myself running off the checklists and panel layout diagrams period. Perhaps this is just a learned habit from days as an instrument rated private pilot, but to me the process was easy and intuitive and the learning curve not that steep at all.
In short,
All training sessions conducted as follows:
-No use of drop down panel selection menu (only 3d cockpit view and manual panel selection with mouse)
-Timeskip feature used as often as preferred (would rather spend simulation training time actually training rather than waiting for the next comm/procedure)
1) Using STS-1, completed a familiarization run of Prelaunch sequence on medium difficulty.
2) Using STS-1, completed a second "mock" rehearsal of the Prelaunch sequence on hard difficulty.
3) Using STS-1, completed a familiarization run of the Ascent sequence on medium difficulty.
4) Using STS-1, completed a second "mock" rehearsal of the Ascent sequence on hard difficulty.
5) Using STS-1, completed a "mock" rehearsal of both the Prelaunch and Ascent sequences on hard difficulty.
I think you get the drift, I will continue training in this fashion until I have completed all the basic mission sequences of STS-1 and have completed a "mock" rehearsal of the entire STS-1 mission. Further, I will probably require at least 5 good consecutive landings in order to consider the Deorbit and Landing sequence "passed".
In subsequent missions, I'll do familiarization and mock rehearsal runs as necessary to become competent with any new mission goals being introduced, then do a mock rehearsal of the entire mission before actually conducting the mission for "real".
To help differentiate between training runs and actually conducting a mission, I have created two users, one with my name only (for use when doing the missions with "everything on the line"), and another with my name followed by a TRNG designator (for use when conducting any "training" scenarios).
Of course, there will be no use of the save feature except to temporarily end a game session for later resumption (and right now I'm thinking of foregoing the use of the Timeskip feature as well) when conducting missions "for real".
We'll see, again, I will come back with an abbreviated schedule/list of what I have done after I have finished with STS-1 and then again after subsequent missions. Will start another thread so that all the information can/will be found in one place.
Anyway, there you have it, my finalized "method" for completing all the missions. Details will follow down the road.
Take care and best regards all!
"Greyhawke"
