Greep

Well if it's landed at kerbin and a stack decoupler, if you put it on top of the pod the decoupler doesn't go anywhere :/ Flying over kerbin... well... you still have to account for the fuel cost

Technically speaking unity can do multi-threading.. just, you know, rarely in a useful way :/. Works wonders when doing pathfinding queues, though.

Okay, yeah so the best is hitting the VAB sideways with as much horizontal momentum as possible. So.. anyways... having over 1000 points I think this kind of ends the competition :/ cost ~ 2500 (2 separatrons, 1 srb 1 command pod) points > 1000 Incidentally, this proves it's momentum and not kinetic energy: Trying to do this with half the fuel should theoretically give about the same result but doesn't. It ended with double the end velocity, but about a third of the mass: surprisingly more energy but didn't topple the building.

Further messing around reveals that angle of attack matters considerably... while straight downward attack takes 400 m/s, the last rocket could take it down going only 120 m/s when going straight sideways

This'd be easier to try if I knew how building destruction is calculated :/ is it kinetic energy or momentum or speed + mass or what? - - - Updated - - - Turns out it's mass only. Hilarious entry coming right up. Cost < 6000 (3 srbs, one capsule, fuel taken out of the lopsided srb to get in the point range and have the proper gravity turn) Speed < 100 Kerbal deaths 1 Mass < 75t points = 100 + 61 + 10 + 8 = 179 Fairly certain this could be done with a rockomax as the tipper and thrust limiting the s1 for a lower curve to compensate, pushing cost to <4500 but I don't really care enough xD "Sir... Sir.. why is that SRB hanging on the west side of the rocket?!" "WHO CARES! FOR SCIENCE!!!!" "Well technically we're headed for R&D so that's science right?" "BOOM" Later scientific inquiries have confirmed that yes, mass is the only factor (~180 pointer, eventually used 3 s1-srbs KR-2L and fuel): Even more science shatters the previous assumption, as this ~25 ton whopper smashes that baby to the ground. It appears to be momentum.

I think I was a bit too snarky there. My point is, exactly what could possibly entertain an experienced player better than the forum challenges? If they make harder more interesting procedural contracts, devoted their entire time on this, they'd still suck compared to ones people craft by hand. Edit: Back to the OP, I honestly you can't go too wrong by just picking the lowest tier, then cheapest building in lowest tier every time. It actually works out somewhat that way. Personally I choose launchpad, mission control, tracking, VAB, research, launchpad again, then in credit order.

If you're using s1-srbs, position a single pair of separatrons shooting outward on the highest dark grey mark (so about 1/4 of the way down). I had to do this because they tipped inward without separatrons, but tipping outward made them look cool without killing my rocket. If it kills your rocket because it tips too far, I think any point above the radial decoupler should work, so just go lower. Edit: Or have your rocket held up by the srbs rather than the liquid fuel engine.

Well, SHOULDN'T career mode be made for new players? I mean... experts already have a pretty good contract system: Objective 1: Open web browser Objective 2: Navigate to ksp forum's challenge subforum Behold! Hand-tailored challenging content! A marvel of game design. In all seriousness, it's not like the game is ever going to have anything like the jool-5 challenge. Open ended games are pretty much made for mods and self-imposed challenges.

Yeah but unless life support is official, and it's not, then it's just a waste of space currently :/

Yeah, this should be true of all the "deadline: never" contracts.

Yeah I don't think I've ever gotten jool without actually completing duna, so that's probably it. I'm guessing what you said preventing jool is wrong, though, as you said gilly showed up by visiting eve without eve ever showing up right?

Out of power? If you can't rotate your ship either, that'd be it.

I've played career a few times and Jool always shows up for me and I do Duna, eve, ike, and gilly first usually. But I get jool before actually doing eve/gilly. My guess is reputation. I never touch rep admin and have about 900+ by the time jool shows up, so it's prolly that? Also contracts are weird. You may have to accept reject a bunch first or finish some of your existing contracts for new contracts to generate, or wait a while for existing contracts to expire or something.

Ah okay, I just get super lost when I first start modding, after reading a bit I think I think I've figured out how to get that going. So I'd basically make a module that starts up in the VAB editor and on update check something to enable/disable the launch button or something to that effect? That doesn't sound too hard

Hey, so I've modded some games a while back and I'm just curious how difficult it is to mod ksp before I attempt it. E.g., if I wanted to do something kinda simple, like change the launch button in the VAB to instead check if a condition with the ship is met (like it has a certain part or something), and instead give a popup or grey out if the condition isn't met, how difficult would this be? And if that's pretty easy, what kind of steps would I need to do to accomplish that?