Acolyte

My first career. Needed 6000 fuel on my new Minimus orbital station for a contract. Used too much getting there, so fell short. Sent a top-up mission - still not enough left. Wow, thought I, these rockets use a lot of fuel just getting into space I got it, and the third mission finally delivered the fuel I needed ;-)

Well then technically I did land there, but since I had no probe-core the landing was hard, to say the least...

Eve is supposed to be difficult to land on, its probably the most challenging planet in the system. I have been out to Jool and landed a crew on a moon there, but I have not even landed a probe on Eve. Of course it did not help that the one probe I did send didn't have a probe-core

I had a satellite orbiting Duna with a pretty eccentric orbit. Then I noticed it is no longer orbiting Duna, its is orbiting Kerbol I had my suspicions but now thanks to this thread I am sure - IKE YOU STOLE MY SATELLITE

I recently started KSP and I found some of the tutorials very useful, but many of them are out of date and very few cover anything useful on career mode. There are some nasty gotcha's wrt the newer version of the game, like maneuver nodes not being available at the start of career mode, but as long as you learn to use the "revert" and "quicksave/quickload" often you'll be fine I'm sure. KSP is NOT and ironman friendly game ;-)

Ouch there goes my re-usable mothership concept then. It got me farther than I had ever gone before... boo hoo Edit: Loaded up the game later, and went to activate that satellite for a science contract, and the placement mission suddenly registered complete - I've no idea whats going on, I guess the original contract customer was temporarily short of cash

Yikes, They didn't pay for the contract - call the lawyers... ;-) I had a contract to send a satellite to Duna, I put in the correct place, then noticed the standard blurb "Must be new, have power and antenna" was not ticked - I thought it was at the start of the mission and it certainly was a satellite built after I took the contract. The satellite was delivered by a mothership that did not launch with the satellite - the two units were rendezvous'ed in LKO. Did this break the contract check ? Its the only thing I can think of that did, since I have used one-vehicle-multiple-satellites before for contracts and gotten paid. I did get paid for an Ike-base on the same ship.

I built my first Mun base a couple of weeks ago, and its basically a big lander. One science lab, a couple of crew quarters on either side, and a command pod gave a total of 7 Kerbal capacity. A couple of science juniors and side mounted engines and it was no harder to land than any other lander. So, a base is just a lander that doesn't need to take off again. You can make it more fancy later if you add a couple of clamp-o-trons when you first build it.

I have started playing this game only a month ago, so I am still a noob, but I can't see anything that needs removing. The admin building doesn't do much, and the one strategy I used (rep->sci) yields hilariously bad results. But I can just ignore it, so it can stay. However it is important that things can be removed from the game by the player to customise the players experience. For example right now I use the mobile science lab quite a bit, as funneling science through it while I do other contracts works ok for me. But one day in another career I might want to go full-biome hopping and ignore the lab, or maybe turn down its multiplier. Compulsory-dev-deletions bad, Optional-player-deletions good.

Easy jobs today. 1. Launch a ore-survey satellite with one of those big scanners for the first time EVAR, see what it can do. 2. Swap some personnel at my little munbase for peeps that have been to minmus too, so I can level up my kerbals. Use a simple satellite mounted on a stock-for-me 5 kerbal transport module on a cheap (1.25m) booster assembly that I have already used before. A light load on a tried and tested lander because I'm not in the mood for hours of troubleshooting today. I don't have a contract to defray the costs, but its only $ K60 (ish) and I have plenty of dough. Main job is the satellite, but I can do both jobs with 1 mission, yeah ! And then the reality begins...... I do NOT release the satellite as soon a I get my Mun orbit and do some of the line-up maneuvers with the mun-base with the extra weight attached - no biggie right ? I separate the satellite and get on with the crew landing. I land and spend rather longer than I want swapping 5 kerbals at base for new personnel, everyone plants flags to make sure the get max XP, although I suspect its only necessary to land on Mun. The old crew take off in the 5-man shuttle, break orbit and.... don't have fuel to make kerbin periapsis 70K - oops maybe that screw up at the beginning where I didn't launch the satellite sooner was a bigger foul-up than I first thought. Oh well, I have a quicksave before the Mun-return launch (ie about 2 minutes ago) so I retry, and retry and keep failing. I look on the forum for how to optimise the flight home - best advice ? get out and push So I try again and burn prograde when I should have burned retrograde - oops, quickload again. This time I am more careful but have to watch the fuel tanks because somehow my twin side boosters have slightly different amounts of fuel in them so I need to stop the burn when either is empty or the other will spin me around. Only this time after the burn I am now intersecting Kerbin (from 8,000,000 m ish)- I have just enough fuel left to re-raise my periapsis to 45k. Well at least I don't have to get out and push after all ! I have never been (intentionally) adventurous with re-entry so this will be a good learning experience for me, although a fully loaded 5-kerbal transport would not be my first choice of test module But I needn't have worried, as after about 5 re-entry loops and my ablator reduce to zero, Valentina brings it home like a boss and all 5 crew are recovered. I even got 10-ish points of science from a surface sample I picked up during the Mun handover - SUCCESS YEAH , albeit after about 4 hours.... I don't forget the satellite I left in orbit, but its has loads of fuel for its size and will be easy to position...... The satellite, where is it ? Check debris, ship, all the different tracking station buttons, but my new satellite is not there ! Did I lose it in the debris ? did I fire it into the Mun when I separated it ? I can't find it - I'll need to send another mission. It will have to be unmanned, I can't take the stress

No heat shields ? No burnup on re-entry ?

Thx for the tips. I was using a 2.5m capsule to shield the recovered pod during re-entry, but it was literally the first rocket I have ever made with the 2.5m pod, all my others so far used the mk1. But 6 probes under a fairing ? I gotta try that

Well I'm in a relatively heavy vehicle (it has an orange tank on the back) that I have already used to deliver a couple of satellite contracts at minimus, and I was including this contract and another basic rescue as well. I think I need the 2.5M vessel to shield the recovered debris during re-entry, but I don't really know what I need for sure. My vessel is too heavy for me to dock with finesse, so I guess I won't be finishing this one. Still, if my other (non-klaw) rescue happens then I'll have 3 successful contracts and one part-failure all on one mission. I can live with that and so can my accountant. I'm sure my new members will too ;-)

Well this is taking place about 6000m over Minimus, so I don't have the room to go playing billiards with this thing. I'll rescue Edlu and leave his junk in orbit, maybe come back with a smaller more agile craft, maybe not, I can afford the rep and cash hit. This is a great game, but some bits of it aren't.

I am trying to recover debris for a contract (Edlu Kerman's , heh heh), I have my claw armed, and I have tried all sorts of impact velocities (0.1-0.4, over 1) and the debris ( a Mk1 command pod) just bumbles all over the claw which refuses to engage. I there something I am missing ? I am about to ditch this contract, its just too much hassle.