ghpstage

Will have a go at this on the weekend. If I can get out of the Kerbin SOI I will be aiming for Gilly as theres a good chance of a return mission. I don't want to leave Bob on Duna

Kerbin surface science does at least offer a small compensation in the case of failed launches, though the current version does provide far too much incentive to go gather heaps of it. The best advice I can give on increasing the rate you get science without mods or free starter science points is to use Bob when possible rather than Jeb. The scientists new reset ability makes an immense difference. Abused to its max its technically possible to get a Mun landing on your fourth launch on hard, with only the initial flea launch not going into space (while grabbing only around 30 science from Kerbin).

They allow you to add tanks radially that do not require their own engines and that can be staged upon emptying in a way that vertically stacked tanks can't. At the most extreme this does lead to asparagus staging.The weight savings from staging the fuel tanks (2 empty FL-T400 weigh half a ton) as they empty can lead to some surprisingly large improvements to dV.

The LV-909 Terrier is my major early target, I beeline it immediately after picking up the two 5 science techs. Its the engine that opens up serious Mun and Minmus exploration, including landings which is a critical turning point in funds and science income potential.

Its not too much dV, you can never have too much dV!The problem is with the acceleration. The thrust to weight ratio is too high, right click on the SRB during design and turn it down.. SAS only stabilises using the equipment it has available, if your craft cannot produce enough torque to overcome the torque generated by aerodynamic forces then it won't do squat. More control authority can help prevent unruly rockets form flipping, especially if SAS counters the rotations early, but ultimately theres only so much that it is practical to add and it wouldn't solve the underlying problem.

I've not done any of these, so I don't know how they work, but won't redirecting a flyby into a collision course using radial a burn count for this? Done not long after entering the SOI this would save a great deal of dV.

Kerbal Engineer Redux, a mod that really ought to be stock. As you can see from the screenshot it gives you a lot of useful numbers, the most critical ones being TWR and dV during design in the VAB. EDIT- Ninja'd...

It doesn't make sense from a logistics perspective, just think about it! A craft that carries fuel produced offworld requiring expensive launches from Kerbin in order to refuel itself....

You ideally want it inline with centremass, so on top of the parachute on the pod is one good location, or you could place them in one of the new service bays.

With that tech the best you can do is orbit reaching high space. It is difficult to do without the next rocketry tech however. As sal says, the radial parachute is likely the problem, its introducing a mass and drag imbalance which will cause the rocket to turn over. I suspect having the antenna sticking out to the side is having a similar, albeit smaller effect too.

I don't have much experience using ISRU so I couldn't tell you, will depend on engineer's skill and the areas resource density. A quick test in sandbox is pretty encouraging, a max level engineer (Its meant to be a sandbox, why can't we edit Kerbal's level ) can mine ore out of the launchpad much, much faster than its burnt by the cells.

Theres also fuel cells and the larger fuel cell arrays. Fuel cells output 1.5 EC/sec, and arrays 18EC/sec. A few arrays will fuel anything and are pretty efficient in terms of fuel use, using just 0.02/sec.

Flag planting contracts are, rather bizarrely, a random repeatable contract and not a one off like 'explore X' or the new worlds firsts. It isn't surprising or particularly nonsensical from the perspective of the games career to see it happen in that order. Whether it involved the reputation system or not, this was functionally how these contracts worked in 0.9. You could literally go through all of the one off 'scripted' contracts one after the other without ever touching a random one. They would reliably pop up in succession, which was a whole lot better than the current insanity. Agreed. Reputation unlocking milestone contracts is far too arbitrary, is counter-intuitive, and artificially holds people back from trying to explore further afield on shoestring budgets and at low tech levels.

Even if you ignore how late the come, probes have long been underpowered compared to manned spaceflight, (being overweight, and severely lacking in capabilities) and took a sizeable relative nerf in 1.0. Do either of those mods address this well?

Nevermind....

In career they have advantages in being very effective on cost and parts count terms, both of which are particularly attractive early in the game. The disadvantages are that they are very poor on weight efficiency and dV values now, while also very difficult to control and there still aren't any larger ones. Since 1.0 I have favoured liquid over solid far more than in 0.9. The cheap cost doesn't even seem to be an issue now in early career, asince 1.0 funds seem to just fall from the sky. The only reason I use them is parts counts, the small fuel tanks and those fins eat up a lot.

Very much agree. The reason the altitude contracts were replaced with records was to reduce grinding and avoid screwing over the players, and yet the exploration contracts, which were already capable of screwing you over and were overly restrictive in order have now been made far, far worse, with the worlds first contracts appearing very unpredictably.

This is my early career orbiter, it needs only the first two 5 science techs and general rocketry (20 science). Its capable of lifting 2 goos and a material lab into space high over Kerbin for the extra science. A low altitude 45 degree turn is neither a gravity turn, nor is it gentle. If you turn off your prograde marker you will spin out.An ideal gravity turn will have you do a small, 5 degree(ish) (pretty much the edge of the starting prograde marker!) turn at 1-3km and not require much, if any input afterwards, the rocket will slowly lean over all by itself.

I've landed on the Mun on my fourth launch on standard hard settings. The main point is the abuse of the scientists new restore ability, and required the ability to fly without SAS, manoeuvre nodes or patched conics. On a separate run I went to Minmus on launch four instead, and came back with enough science to clear the entire T1 R&D centre tech block.The progression is really bizarre, if you know exactly what your doing and are willing to go for it you can advance much, much faster than in 0.9 (0.9 Cash->Science strategy excepted), but if you aren't great at reaching orbit, and don't know how to get to the Mun without nodes then your stuck grinding for ages.....

Correct.

EVA when not on Kerbin surface is unlocked by upgrading the astronaut complex.

The pressure value determines when the chute will part-deploy, when I do this I turn it up to some arbitrary value and lower it after the reentry heat danger has past.

I never used then in 0.9 as everything sucked bar science from funds, which was utterly broken and completely unnecessary. Now the only strategy that looks like it may pay back its investment in a reasonable time is Rep->funds, but with so little rep given in most contracts it would take forever to achieve anything of significance. Bailout is a nice touch and the only thing that has any meaningful purpose, while the two science->funds things are only noteworthy because science eventually becomes useless. Science can be gathered with experiments in very, very large quantities now due to the scientists ability to reset material bays and goo pods. Nope. Still useless on hard.

I think the level of grinding required (of the spam contracts variety) is largely a result of poor tutorials, a severe lack of vital information (TWR, dV, aerodynamic centre) and a lot of contracts that aren't worth bothering with to lure people in. All this does in my opinion is add fake difficulty, slow down learning and build a much larger barrier to entry. If you know exactly what your doing, it is more than possible to land a Kerbal the Mun and come bring them home on your fourth launch on hard, or alternatively go the Minmus and clear the entire T1 R&D tech block. Once you know the rocket designs and methods the only challenge is avoiding crashing some designs that are pushing it a little. The problem is that when you know how to do it then it becomes very formulaic, to the point of becoming a grind in its own right, which comes back to what Tater posted,

I agree with this, currently the only replayability to career is found in trying an entirely new tech or exploration route, or min maxing to push your limits.I'm getting more and more convinced that an option for a randomly generated solar system, preferably with much of the information in the dark at the start (i.e. not knowing if an atmosphere even exists or its altitude till you hit or measure it somehow) would be the best method of both adding replayability and meaningful difficulty (i.e. average gravities and atmospheres weighted by difficulty options), plus it would create a large niche in which to add meaningful interaction between the player and science equipment. With that everything would change, the 'optimal' tech and building upgrade paths wouldn't necessarily be the same between two worlds. I would also like to see the exploration type contracts be treated like record achievements, as in always being accepted. Right now they add an arbitrary restriction on the order you visit planets and moons. Doing this alone would add a little replayability to the current career mode. Well, here's hoping for a random solar system mod anyway.