pertrep

Early mission to land some huge lab and habitat on the Mun, with bizarre amounts of electricity. Succeeded getting it down on a slope, to find I am 78 volts short, and Stupidly put the docking port near the top. Much money and time to send movable, top heavy attachment with one battery and manoeuvre it into position. Loads of my craft don't have bits that I forgot to re-attach when I was building them. Why the battery?

I think, without doubt, it is discovering the science, maths and three dimensional geometry behind the missions. Some really brainy Kerbonauts have posted enough information for mere mortals, who have enough High School maths, to get a SOLID grip on the mechanics of gameplay and appreciate the breadth of KSP. Discoveries seem endless. I feel like a one man NASA.

Erudite and thorough explanation. Still a lot of work by the look of things so no spoiler there.

Agree. I started a new Career Mode at hardest level and had to drop some nasty habits I had developed from .9 and learned more of the science in two day than the previous five months. A lot more skill is needed to control things and I've had to think more before building, take more care with each step, get to grips with the finer details of parts and so on. Absolutely fantastic. Before, it was like learning to sail a 50 foot yacht without ever having sailed a skiff. Now I sailing the skiff, getting a wet bum and loving it.

1: Upgrade to unlimited contracts as early possible, accept them all, use the up front cash to do the fast-turn around contracts. 2: Try to complete as many contracts as possible with each flight. Test flights can complete 5 or 6 in one go. 3: Get patched conics as early as you can. You can really get economical with transfers to other bodies. 4: Wait to execute your satellite contracts until you have three or four and build a satellite that will do them all progressively. Fuel is the problem so have plenty and work outwards to the moons and planets. 5: Unmanned outposts and orbiters make good temporary satellites on the way there. 6: A single tank single delta winged aircraft will land almost anywhere at under 40m/s, even uphill and will take off under 35 m/s. Light, not fast, very maneuverable. It will float and travel to close-by beacons at around 3 to 6 m/s (parachute splashdown first). 7: Kerbal Alarm Clock is a must. Helps run dozens of flights at the same time. Run as many as you can so that you don't miss any contracts due to elapsed time. 8: If you can manipulate the maths, http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/40053-Estimate-the-duration-of-a-burn has the method to calculate your own burns. Deadly accurate and far better than KSP or MechJeb. Saves loads of fuel, reduces number of nodes used and very satisfying. Put it on your own spreadsheet. Will even give you fuel required. 9: Leave a few Kerbals out in the provinces with some well fueled small ships capable of getting down and up a few times on low gravity bodies. Then pick off the "flight over" and "EVA" and climatic checks as they come along. Very rewarding financially (no lift-off costs). 10: Strategy: trade prestige for cash, prestige for science and take hard negotiations. Seems to keep money and science flowing in at about the right rate. 11: Upgrade buildings only when your have to, not because you can. The hard way is more fun, when you only just have enough of anything to make it work. 12: Knowing the science doesn't seem to matter. Learning the science makes it much more interesting.

Couldn't agree more. The jump is huge and the challenge diminished. The early game is the most rewarding. I don't know how fast you are supposed to be able to reach maximum KSC site upgrades but on second run through did it in under 50 flights for 114 contracts. Seems a tad early to me. There are plenty of challenges to go but not as rewarding as that early, "seat of the pants", "just enough to get there" and "have to get it just right" regime. Still a very rewarding, thoroughly enjoyable and almost addictive game.

The game as it is is very rich, so at this stage more is not better. Polish what is there for 1.0 and start introducing new features after that. The tutorials could use an overhaul for 1.0.

I joined KSP when .9 was released and rate this game for the challenge it provides. You start knowing sod all, get a contract, bumble your way through it and learn something. Then go back and exploit that learning. Yawn, then get to do it again and again - no learning, no confirmation of skill, just another probe around Kerbin. I have a rover at the South Pole of the Mun doing slalems up and down mountains in low sunlight to take temp readings. I have been at it for weeks and have one to go. Will be really sad when it gets there, but will not rush to do it that way again. Would it be possible to matrix task (take temp reading on Mun at X) against method (using a rover, landing a can, with or without a Kerbal, without something that makes it easy, or on a really limited budget)? I wouldn't mind throwing up another satellite if it was more difficult that the last one (needs to refuel to get there, must then move it to a fiendishly difficult place when done, or drop someone somewhere on the way). Too much stuff seems disposable. Could it not be used again in some future mission? I am too mean to throw stuff away, so my map view looks like a spider web. Adds to the challenge. sorry if this post pops up twice - lost it trying to send it. Anyway, don't mean to come across as a whiner; I still love this game and do not envy the development team trying to stay ahead of bright people who learn fast.

Firstly, this is the best game I have played and am sure it can only get better, so thanks. My issue is keeping track of contracts. Specifically: - since unlimited contracts was unlocked, I have tried to get as much metal as I can in space as economically as possible so try to complete two, three and even four contracts with a single launch. I now have a lot of contracts active and a lot of flights in space and each time I come to the game I have trouble remembering which contracts I have committed flights to and which flights line up with which contracts. A possible solution might be a fourth tab in the Mission Control window that I can put Activated Contracts into (maybe even log vehicle name). Secondly, if contracts had a contract number (say 2 digit alpha numeric) I could put the contract number in the ship info and the alarm clock. When I say I, I mean We.

I have had this problem for two days then after much searching found this post. Worked a treat. Thank you very much.

When is a car polished? No matter how long you rub away, you will always find some little spot somewhere that that needs that little extra bit of rubbing. I joined this game at 0.9 and think it is very professional, hours of fun, mentally challenging and thoughtfully put together. This looks like a game created by a team that is passionate about the subject and therefore willing to grow it. Some of the addons are spectacular, demonstrating what a draw card it is. Reviewers may be harsh, but are they spending the time that dedicated players are spending to reap pleasure, or are they checklisting for some imagined gestalt audience that they believe hangs on their every word? Don't worry about egos, just get the next bunch of Kerbals off the bench and into space where they belong. The future is out there, not in heads of fantasists. Just like real-life risky space exploration, there is something appealing about a game that has to find its way with the help of its players.

For unimaginative goal oriented achievers who get off on working out how to do fiendishly difficult things with some elegance, Career Mode is a must. It is however, as suggested, a simple construct trying to meet the needs of complicated minds and needs an overhaul along the lines suggested. One additional area, trivial though it seems (I thought I had posted on this but it seems to have gone astray), is how to keep track of all those contracts once you have unlocked Unlimited Contracts, especially when you are trying to use a single launch to fulfill two or three contracts over a long period of time, while other flights are in progress and other vehicles are being built. A two character alphanumeric Contract Number would be handy, as in: log it in the alarm clock, put it in the vehicle name etc. It would also be useful to be able to flag contracts (yellow perhaps) that you have already committed resources to, instead of searching each craft each time to find out what contracts already have a launch.

In Career Mode, a contract number would be handy. Once I got over 10 active launches with multi-year duration, keeping track of the alarm clock actions and tying them back to contracts became difficult, especially when one trip was fulfilling two or three contracts. Posting an inactive node reminder like "remember to get some science around X this time" still didn't help tell me which contract to look for on what was now a very long list and so many of them have very similar wording. I missed so much in the end I went back 15 launches. Trivial I realise. Great game BTW.