What Next?

[DarkHawkGames]

I've been playing Kerbal Space Program for a year or so now, but I've never been an expert at it; after 129 hours, I've just managed to make my first successful manned Minmus landing (I still haven't had a successful manned Mun landing.) My big question is, what should my goal after my manned Mun landing be? Should I look towards building a space station around Kerbin, which I've never done before? Or maybe build a Minmus/Mun base? Or start trying to send a probe to Duna and Ike? I'd call my skill level low, and my math skill even lower.

[KocLobster]

One of the reasons this game is so awesome is because of the answer to this question: you can do whatever sounds the most fun to you! Preference, preference, preference. It'll be up to you to de ide what sounds the most enjoyable. You can even choose to do all three of those things essentia at the same time if you want, although it sounds like you don't dedicate a whole lot of time to KSP, so maybe start with one?

Normally what I do after my first Mun or Minmus landing is more Minmus and Mun landings. I generally try to do all the science experiments I have on the majority of the biomes for both of those moons.

Somewhere during that time, I generally send up a fairly simple space station with a lab and two of my highest level scientists, and let them generate science for me while I do other things.

Once I've done these things, and claimed the thousands of Science available to me by doing that, I typically start sending unmanned probes to other planets when their transfer windows open up.

Again, it's totally up to you though, and whatever sounds the most enjoyable to you.

[Pecan]

A year and 'only' 129 hours?  Spend more time on it, it gets addictive.  No, on second thoughts you're probably still managing to life a human life, so that's bad advice.
Welcome to the forums after a year too *grin*

Actaully, Minmus landing after 129 on-and-off hours isn't too bad and it's nice to see that you did Minmus first - it's harder to get to but a whole lot easier to land on so it is the best first landing choice.

As KocLobster says, the next best thing to do is whatever you think would be most fun.  As an alternative to just 'whatever you like' though I'm going to offer an old book that I wrote about KSP.  The ship designs it details won't work in anything past version 0.90 but the mission-progression will, I hope, give you an understanding of the complexity of the tasks.  Exploring the system is in the tutorials here or you can download it as a .pdf file (link in the thread)

Broadly the campaign this evolves starts with simple stuff you've done, goes on to satellites everywhere, followed by space-stations and landings (except Eve, just fon't mention Eve ^^).  As long as you don't try it with the given ships it provides a good framework in a sensible progression.

Edited May 6, 2016 by Pecan

[DarkHawkGames]

Thank you both for your replies! And tbh I did two landings before this, a probe that landed on the Mun that ended up being propped up by a solar panel on its side that I intended to leave there, and a probe to Minmus that was supposed to bring back buckets of glorious science but unfortunately the two mystery goo containers blew up in atmosphere. I'm thinking about doing a Minmus rover? But the last time I played around with rovers, the wheels were so messed up that I wound up doing donuts on the runway. Not to mention, how would I transport it? I suppose I could do an unmanned mission to drop it there, and follow up with Valentina in a regular lander. I did do a manned Munar landing once that failed, unfortunately I landed with just a speck of fuel, and I decided 'well I'll make the landing more equatorial, make Jeb easier to pick up' and unfortunately the rocket ended up smeared across the Mun, with Jeb only having 5 hours of EVA life support.

[N_Danger]

 The trick to a Mun landing without using a lot of fuel is a suicide burn. Just search the forum and you will see some discussions on it. It takes nerves of steel (plus lots of the F5 for practice) and it helps to have a mod to show a true distance to the ground.

 I think the last time I did a Mun landing I used about 6-700 m/s after the de-orbit burn and I'm sure some of the pros could do it with less. I did do it Apollo style with a CM in orbit and not a direct return to Kerbin from the surface.

With Minmus I can do a direct return to Kerbin from the surface a lot earlier in the tech tree than I can the Mun. 

 

[DarkHawkGames]

13 minutes ago, N_Danger said:

With Minmus I can do a direct return to Kerbin from the surface a lot earlier in the tech tree than I can the Mun. 

 

I'll be honest, I got very lucky on my return from Minmus, the Mun assisted me (not sure of the correct term) by giving me a return that, with a little help, got me to about 30 kilometers above Kerbin. I've gotten burned by bad landings enough times that I always try to aerobreak when I can. On my unmanned Minmus return, I ran out of fuel at about 55k and it took forEVER to actually get captured completely.

[Foxster]

I don't know if it would suit you but when I started using MechJeb it really opened the game up for me. 

Before MJ I was pulling my hair out trying to make the simple missions and Duna was the absolute limit of what I was capable of at the time. With MechJeb I could concentrate on the the bits that interested me, like building spaceships and the missions for them, without having to worry about the tedious orbital mechanics. 

MJ taught me how to make maneuver nodes, how to make Hohmann transfers, etc and I now use a mixture of manually piloting and MJ still for the tedious stuff. 

It just means you can get to the more interesting places.  

[Wemb]

9 hours ago, DarkHawkGames said:

Thank you both for your replies! And tbh I did two landings before this, a probe that landed on the Mun that ended up being propped up by a solar panel on its side that I intended to leave there, and a probe to Minmus that was supposed to bring back buckets of glorious science but unfortunately the two mystery goo containers blew up in atmosphere. I'm thinking about doing a Minmus rover? But the last time I played around with rovers, the wheels were so messed up that I wound up doing donuts on the runway. Not to mention, how would I transport it? I suppose I could do an unmanned mission to drop it there, and follow up with Valentina in a regular lander. I did do a manned Munar landing once that failed, unfortunately I landed with just a speck of fuel, and I decided 'well I'll make the landing more equatorial, make Jeb easier to pick up' and unfortunately the rocket ended up smeared across the Mun, with Jeb only having 5 hours of EVA life support.

My view? Same as Chris Kraft's mostly...  See this clip from 'From the Earth to the Moon' - you're yet to do docking and rendevouz, get to grips with the dV maps and build your rockets to requirements so you don't run out of fuel after landing, and keep on doing it over and over till it's easy.  Then head for the planets :-)  Good luck, and godspeed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZVe8N5uICI

Wemb

[N_Danger]

11 hours ago, DarkHawkGames said:

I'll be honest, I got very lucky on my return from Minmus, the Mun assisted me (not sure of the correct term) by giving me a return that, with a little help, got me to about 30 kilometers above Kerbin. I've gotten burned by bad landings enough times that I always try to aerobreak when I can. On my unmanned Minmus return, I ran out of fuel at about 55k and it took forEVER to actually get captured completely.

Hey that counts as a success lucky or not. Just learn from the failures and the success will come. 

The first time I successfully landed on the Mun I was shouting and jumping up out of my chair doing fist pumps. It had people knocking on my door asking if I was ok. 

[Frank327]

This is the sequence I usually have:

1. Orbit around kerbin

2. Fly by mun/minmus

3. Land + return mun/minmus and do it a few times. It's a good idea to practice landing by quicksaving just before it and just try different methods and check your fuel afterwards. It's fun to do and you learn more about the game.

4. Orbital rendezvous and docking. Start with doing the saving of kerbals from orbit, then try and build a very basic space station meant for refueling.

5. Send probes to Eve and gilly. They don't need to return so you don't need lots of dV. Look up transfer windows for KSP and you'll see how the planets need to be aligned to get there.

6. Explore Duna/Ike with kerbals and return. Surprisingly it doesn't take a lot more dV than mun/minmus to do a Duna return mission. The fact that you can use parachutes to land on duna compensates for the increased dV needed to get there and the increased dV needed to get back. If you want to be ambitious you can do it apollo style where the lander is quite a bit smaller than the main modules (science and habitation). It's a heavy craft but you can use it to land on both Ike and Duna and still take a research lab with you. You need to know how to dock to be successful with such a design though. If you complete such a mission you can pretty much fill out the tech tree.

7. Explore more planets/moons and try and capture a satellite in kerbin orbit.

8. Build a refueling station near mun/minmus that is self sustaining with mining equipment.

[DarkHawkGames]

I've kind of got my eye on a Duna probe. Usually when I get to a new place, either my first or second orbit is a science satellite that maps out the planet using the SCANSat mod. I've already done it for Kerbin, the Mun, and Minmus, and the biggest problem I've had so far is getting a polar orbit. At the same time, once I launch the Duna probe, I think I'm going to start exploring Minmus and gather science so I can unlock a decent-sized set of rover wheels. Thank you so much for your help, guys!

[KocLobster]

You may want to dampen your expectations just a little. In 1.1.x, Rover wheels are basically broken (according to everyone on the forums). I haven't bothered trying them because I don't enjoy making rover's unless I have to, but that's the general consensus.

[N_Danger]

1 hour ago, KocLobster said:

You may want to dampen your expectations just a little. In 1.1.x, Rover wheels are basically broken (according to everyone on the forums). I haven't bothered trying them because I don't enjoy making rover's unless I have to, but that's the general consensus.

I have done rovers in 1.1 . It is a little trickier to drive these days I'll admit but it can be done. I've sent 2 unkerbaled rovers to Duna on the science play through I started after 1.1 was released.

[DarkHawkGames]

I tried doing a small rover on the runway, but it barely turned left (and stayed) and was almost impossible to turn right. How are you supposed to set the wheels up?

[Hodari]

For the most part, something that can make it to Minmus and return should be able to do the same for the Mun.  Delta-V requirements are about the same, so it's just a matter of the landings being a bit trickier.  Gravity is stronger on the Mun and it's harder to find a nice flat place to land.  But that should definitely be your next target.  Practice on Minmus until you're comfortable landing there(and try to grab a few different biomes for science while you're at it), then move on to the Mun.

And the other good news is once you can land on both of those, the game really starts to open up from there, giving you a LOT more options.  The delta-v needed to get to either of the moons and back will also probably be enough to send a probe on at least a one-way journey almost anywhere else, so you can get science from a lot of different places and easily fill out the rest of the tech tree, unlocking all the parts you need to make it even easier to get to the rest of the planets.

I'd say once you've mastered landing on both Minmus and the Mun, the next step(and one of the tougher ones in the game, but also one of the most valuable skills) will be learning to do orbital rendezvous and docking.  Start by taking all that science you got from the moons and use it to unlock the Actuators node so you get the Klaw.  Then try all of the orbital rescue missions you can get.  Not only do they give decent amounts of money and reputation, but you get free Kerbals, which you'll need a lot of if you're going to be building stations everywhere later on.  Docking will also mean that you can refuel your spacecrafts.  Rather than just throwing away that big Rockomax tank as soon as you get to orbit, if you can send another ship up to refuel, you can then have another 3-4k delta-V from that stage again to do your transfer burn to another planet.  Or you can even build a larger ship in orbit instead of launching all at once.

And meanwhile, start sending probes to Duna, Eve, and their moons and fill out the rest of your tech tree.  Priorities should probably be the nuclear engines and the Gravioli detector.  Fom there, head to Jool and all of its moons and finish off your tech tree if you haven't already.  And then don't forget about Dres.  And spaceplanes.  And if you're really ambitious, go for Moho.  And then whatever else you can think of.

[N_Danger]

1 hour ago, DarkHawkGames said:

I tried doing a small rover on the runway, but it barely turned left (and stayed) and was almost impossible to turn right. How are you supposed to set the wheels up?

You may have to experiment. Try locking the steering on the rear wheels, just use the front ones to steer.

This is a pretty basic design I used recently. I think I also turned off traction control while in the VAB to get it to work right.

  

This is also a good resource

 

Edited May 6, 2016 by N_Danger