aktivb

I appreciate all the responses and suggestions. I wasn't talking about Kerbin specifically, I used planes for the early temp missions there. The post was written after doing a temp mission on Minmus. I had a rover, but since the zones weren't located on perfectly flat ground, my teflon-coated rover slicks weren't up for the job, so I ended up using the landing rig to hop around. I didn't have a flipped control core to locate the marker when landed, which is a good suggestion, but that's a work-around and not really a solution, because: The problem here is that the UI is lacking. If the answer was 'push this button' or 'change this setting' to improve the zone navigation, it would have been fine. As it is, the game does not give you what you need to do the mission it offers in a reasonable manner, which would specifically be a retrograde marker and/or visual flight indicator. Suggestions to install mods or ignoring the missions just verifies this. Is there some official place I can post issues to the devs?

In career mode you get these contracts where you are supposed to land a specific spot and measure the temperature. The spot is indicated with a marker in the orbital map, but there is no marker indicating where this actually is when flying. I can click the marker to 'activate navigation', which will put a temperature icon on the navball. The spot to hit is quite small, probably ~1km in diameter. You can make a perfect landing right on the point of the orbital map maker and still not be inside. So then you need to know in what direction to move. Except your reasonably built ship is sitting on its ass pointing skywards, so you can't actually see the temperature icon on the navball. So what I usually do is make a quicksave, launch the ship straight up, and flop it around till I find the icon and can get a heading. Then load the quicksave. So then I set off in the direction of the icon, without having any notion of the distance I'll need to fly. If I want to check my direction I'll have to suicidally point my ship prograde. This makes me raving mad. I cannot for the life of me understand why the zone cannot be indicated with a marker that can be set as target, so you get target prograde and retrograde icons, and have a visual indicator showing position and distance when flying. From what I can tell, nothing else in the game uses this 'activate navigation', for everything else you set targets. But since I expect this feature to have been playtested, I am sure that there is some method where the navball temperature marker is a useful indicator. So what is that method? How am I intended to do this in a reasonable fashion, that does not include flying blind and flopping the ship around?

I only played one long career session when it was in EA, ~200 hours, but left the game alone to wait for final release. I really like the idea of gradually unlocking, and getting by with what you currently have. Tried out full release KSP just now, started a new career. I thought whatever the pre-beta version I played was stingy with what you start out with and the rate at which things progress, but this .. It is unplayable. After getting a bunch of 'send report from this location on kerbin' contracts, I made a small plane with a sci jr. module and room for a scientist, to fly around and grind out some extra points. I don't have access to lights, so flying in the dark is kinda sketchy. Now since batteries and solar panels is something I have not unlocked yet, in order to transmit my results I have to put on the brakes and run the jet engine at max for a good while to generate enough power to get the transmission off. I am doing commercial space travel, taking tourists into orbit, but have yet to invent lights and batteries? Is this sounding stupid yet? I've seen tips like 'make science vessels', 'make drones', but in order to get the farm running, I'll need batteries and solar panels, for which I need science points in the triple digits to unlock while contracts and research around kerbin gives me returns in the single digits. This is with the 'turn cash into science' strat on max .. I hear you can open some cfg files and switch some things around, which is what I will do. Still, how is this for new players wanting to check out the now finished game? Structured progression or wall of boredom? "Game starts at +20 hours?"