Hodari

Looks like a fun challenge, but will take me some time to build everything I need for it. So far, I've built: The Musk Reusable Atmospheric Transporter(aka MuskRAT), a spaceplane capable of flying 3 crew and 16 passengers(might try to expand this to 32 or 48 later) into LKO, docking with the target, and then returning. Interplanetary Transfer Vehicle, single stage rocket capable of either reaching LKO OR one round trip from LKO to Duna orbit and back while carrying 3 crew and 128 passengers. Still need to build the Duna shuttle and something capable of refueling the Transfer Vehicle within a reasonable number of trips. The mission plan is to launch the transfer vehicle first. Once it is safely in orbit, bring the passengers into orbit on the MuskRAT, dock, and transfer them. While the transfer ship is being refueled, they can remain there in LKO for a while to get used to living in space and give them one last chance to realize how insane all of this is and back out before they begin the long journey to Duna.

If anything, the problem wouldn't be when one person has a level 3 upgrade in their mod and the other person doesn't. The problem would be when one person has a mod that gives a level 3 upgrade, but someone else has a DIFFERENT mod which also gives a level 3 upgrade, but that other mod's level 3 upgrade does something different. Still, I'm sure there are ways to handle that sort of thing.

Sounds like a good idea for realism to me. As far as actual gameplay goes, I'm not sure it would really have a huge impact since a well designed re-entry craft should naturally hold retrograde on its own anyway and a lot of probes won't be intended to return at all in the first place. It would at least force players to make sure they DO design any returning probes properly though.

Not to mention being able to be built almost instantly. I always pictured them as having something similar to the replicators on Star Trek. General-purpose ones capable of making any item require a facility the size of the VAB or SPH, though a smaller "portable" version capable only of recycling waste matter into snacks is built into all crewed pods. Once the part pattern is perfected(through researching the appropriate tech node), that part can be replicated instantly and perfectly every time, so the only difficult part of rocket design is figuring out how to put those parts together in the right way. In fact, a whole semester in the engineering program is devoted solely to "Which way is up?", despite which they STILL occasionally get this wrong when placing decouplers or docking ports.

In that case, you basically just launch into an orbit first and then follow the same instructions. Ideally, wait until the target's orbit is directly above you and then follow a launch trajectory that will put you on the same inclination as the target. If you're launching from the equator and the target is on an equatorial orbit(which is often the case when using the stock KSC), you can launch at any time and be in the correct inclination, so you can then try to time it so when you do reach orbit, you're already as close to the target as possible.

Also good points, though I think the contracts, strategies, and tech tree progression are the main parts of career mode that people seem to have issues with. But yes, all of those things will make career more interesting.

I highly doubt that they have IGNORED them. If anything, the problem could be partly just the fact that there ARE so many different ideas. Even among the people who are unhappy with the current career system(which certainly isn't everyone), there are dozens of different mutually exclusive ideas on how it SHOULD be done. So how do they choose which one to go with? They could pick one and spend a lot of time implementing it and STILL find out that most of the people are unhappy with the new system. Maybe they're just focusing on other issues first and hoping that a more clear consensus will emerge, not only on IF it should be fixed in the first place, but HOW.

Slightly off-topic, but after a few attempts, I managed to get this communications satellite into LKO for under 2k funds. m

Yeah, definitely impressive. I had figured the cost could easily be cut to something like 12k, but not quite THAT low.

Need to fix that link there

Why choose one or the other? The true Kerbal way is to send a rescue mission, then send a refuel mission since the rescue craft also ran out of fuel, then send a second refuel mission since the first refueler also didn't have enough fuel and had to take some of the fuel that it was originally bringing to refuel the other vessels with and use that fuel instead just to get there...and finally send another rescue mission to bring back the crews of the refuelers.

I'd say flyby/orbit Mun first, then flyby/orbit Minmus, then land on Minmus, then land on Mun would make the most sense as far as difficulty is concerned. Of course, if you have any contracts available for either of them, you might want to change the order to complete them. Also worth noting that you don't necessarily HAVE to match Minmus' inclination in order to get an intercept(though it certainly does help). As long as your ascending/descending node is reasonably close to the spot where you need to perform your injection burn, you can probably get close enough for an encounter even if you're starting in an equatorial orbit. Might take a bit more playing around with maneuver nodes in order to find just the right spot though. You'll definitely want to learn how to match inclinations eventually anyway before you try to do interplanetary missions or orbital rendezvous, so might as well get some practice on it now.

Either MechJeb or KER would be the only absolute "must have" mod for a new player. KJR might be a good idea as well, especially if you're planning to build anything particularly large. After that, a lot of it depends on what exactly you're planning to do or what parts of the stock game you don't like. Various contract packs, mods that add more planets, and rescaled solar systems are good options to look at eventually, but I'd say start with the stock game first and only move on to those after you've mastered the basics.

Not necessarily. In the simplest case, you could have no extra parts at all required and simply say each command pod has a certain number of kerbal-days of life support built in to them. A more likely option would be having a small amount built in to each pod and then adding 1.25, 2.5, and 3.75 meter generic "Life support modules" which would allow for more more extended missions. Maybe a small radial module as well. So that would only be 3 or 4 parts. Now if they wanted to have separate resources for food, water, oxygen etc. and separate parts for each one at each size AND parts for recycling or extracting them from other resources, THEN it would end up being a lot of parts, but they don't need to go into THAT much detail

That used to be what I used as well, but in the last couple patches I've had problems coming in that slowly. Seems like it doesn't grab it and just bounces off at that speed and I've had better luck at 0.3m/s lately, so might try that instead.

Unless you're being FAR too picky about which missions you take, I don't think this should be a problem. Early on, I usually have no trouble finding at least a few contracts that can be completed on the missions I wanted/needed to do next anyway. And even if I don't get a contract for the next place I wanted to go, the World First bonuses will probably cover the cost. Later on, it's easy to save up so much extra money that you don't really have to worry about it. Either way, just check what contracts are available before each mission, take the ones you like or the ones you can complete without having to go too far out of your way, and then do your mission and check back again after that to see what new ones are available. Not to mention that there are tons of mods which provide their own sets of contracts and allow you to disable certain types of stock contracts.

I'd say there's nothing wrong with having them, but fi they're going to have something that obviously constructed, it should come with some sort of backstory. Who constructed them and why? Was it some ancient pre-Kerbal civilization or even aliens? What happened to them? They don't even necessarily have to ANSWER all of these questions, but at least address them in some way. This could even be the reason why the KSC was constructed where it was, in order to study the first monolith more closely, and then once they realized that there were more monoliths like it on other worlds, that could be one of the main motives for developing their own space program.

This. I'd say basically, assume that whoever built the KSC chose that location precisely because it was particularly flat. Therefore, you can make the surrounding areas as flat as possible for a realistic NATURAL environment, but not absolutely perfect. The level 1 runway should represent a dirt runway and even it should clearly be better to land on than the surrounding areas. Rely on size/weight limitations and the size of the runway itself to give us a reason to upgrade it ir maybe even add in something like ILS for the level 3 runway.

And that's the problem. They SHOULD be. Doesn't need to be perfect, but if the balance is so off that no one wants to use a part at all, then it needs to be adjusted a bit. Especially since the fix in this case seems pretty obvious and easy to do. Just drop the mass to something more reasonable.

No need to stack them. You just need to make sure your reentry is done at the right angle. For a normal rocket, somewhere around 30km periapsis is probably good. Don't try to bring back TOO much stuff, only the parts you actually need. If you're trying to bring back parts that stick out to the sides(especially things like mystery goo containers or radial parachutes), placing them further up might help. And finally, especially when coming back from the Mun or further away, if you have any fuel left over in your final stage, do a burn just before reentering the atmosphere somewhere in between retrograde and radial out so that you're lowering your apoapsis as much as possible while still keeping your periapsis at the desired altitude. Burn off the last of your fuel before dumping that stage. If you're still talking about a spaceplane instead, then you'll want to keep your Pe MUCH higher for reentry(probably starting somewhere around 50-60km instead) and keep your craft pointing at Radial Out for as long as possible so you're bleeding off as much speed as you can before dropping lower down into the atmosphere. And yeah, the Mk2 is probably the worst one for that now. I like either the inline Mk1 or Mk3 with a shielded docking port on the front since the port has a very high heat tolerance AND is useful for its intended purpose as well.

KER is the only mod I'd say is absolutely essential(or you can use Mechjeb instead if you prefer) for the deltaV and TWR readouts. For anything beyond that, it's really up to you and what you're looking for in the game. I don't think ANY mods will improve your FPS(most will probably make it worse if anything). If you're a new player, I'd say just start with one of those two mods and an otherwise stock game. Once you know how the stock game works and have done everything you can there, then try some other mods to change things up. By that point, you'll probably have a better idea of what you're looking for and what parts of the game you'd like to see changed.

I wouldn't say the timing is quite THAT critical, unless of course you're using some sort of life support mod or something else which is imposing a time limit. Otherwise, timing the burn correctly so that you get a close approach right away is obviously still better, but even if your timing is completely off and you wind up on the opposite side of the planet from your target, as long as your orbital periods are different and not in some sort of resonance with each other, you will eventually get a reasonably close encounter. I've had times where I spent a few days timewarping around and gaining 1-200km per orbit on the target until I was finally close enough to make my final adjustments for the actual intercept(mostly because I didn't even bother to check the position of the target vessel before launching the other one). It's not really challenging or impossible, just means a lot of extra waiting. Either way though, congrats on learning to dock.

Well, there's your problem. If the mods aren't compatible, it's very likely to cause problems at some point.

I don't think the problem is that they took the adventure or excitement out of the game. The problem is that no matter how exciting something is the first time you do it, after you've done it enough times, it becomes routine and eventually even boring. You can still play the game by experimenting and seeing what works...until you've done everything enough times to already KNOW what you need to do. And even the real space program had this issue. The first moon landing was exciting and people were willing to throw almost any amount of resources into it. By the third attempt, Apollo 13 barely even got any news coverage at all until the explosion. And soon after that, the remaining missions started getting cancelled and no one's really bothered to try and go back since then.

Thanks, I've been looking for a good mod that offered an alternative method for leveling up...looks like this might be exactly what I wanted.