Biggen

This. It takes about 1500m/s dV to brake and enter Moho orbit doing it from this method. Ive gone to Moho plenty of times and its the only way I do it. I dont mess with Ions. Not enough TWR and Im not patient enough for long burns.

My point is it shouldnt ever be ticked off until the proper orbit is achieved. Its confusing for new people to see partially completed contracts when you are no where near where you need to be. Then when you move it goes back to unchecked. What is the point of this flip flopping from checked and not checked everytime you burn/coast?? Maintaining 10 second stability should only matter once the proper orbit is achieved. Until then it should never be checked. Your right, it is working EXACTLY as it is intended in its current state... As sloppy code writing as that may be...

No, actually you cant. If you coast ANYWHERE you will get the "Maintain for 10 seconds" checked off. It is not tied to the orbit you are trying to achieve. Look at his screen shots above. He is getting "Maintain for 10 seconds" checked off for two contracts above the one he is working on. One if them is for a friggin Minmus base. That is what Im talking about. That is why it needs a "Maintain for 10 seconds WHILE in [insert orbit]"...

The Gigantors should still provide some power even at Jool, right? I still use 1x6 solar panels on all my sats in the Jool system and they work fine. Fuel cells would still be required for night mining id imagine.

Like Bewing says, you are burning after you passed the An/Dn node in that video. You need to burn on or before that node to match inclination with that targeted orbit. No idea why Mechjeb cant do it properly as Ive never used Mechjeb. Id forget about mechjeb and focus on learning some basic orbital maneuvers first so you understand what it is mechjeb is trying to do.

Some of the contracts are poorly worded and the requirements to fulfill them should have been more carefully thought out. The "Maintain stability for 10 seconds" should not be on its own line for contracts like these. It should read something like "Maintain stability for 10 seconds WHILE [insert orbit here]". The way its written now, you are partially completing all contracts that require a "Maintan stability..." by coasting no where near any intended orbit. Anyway, Tex gave some good recommendations above.

Wow, so many responses. Thanks for sharing guys. Really cool to see how we all learn something like this at different paces.

I use relays for all my sat contract antennas so I dont think that is the problem. Is the orbit going the right way? I know its checked but Ive also noticed that the contracts are a bit buggy. Like, you also have "maintain stability for 10 seconds" checked in both contracts above this one even though you arent even working on those contracts. Can you post a picture of the intended orbit and the orbit your sat is currently in?

I picked up a long tourist contract and I need to go to the Joolian, Eve, and Duna system. I thought I'd do Jool 1st since it is the farthest out so that is completed. I'm currently in a large elliptical orbit of Jool trying to figure out where I need to go next. Should I eject straight from Jool into Duna and attempt an aerocapture? Fuel really isn't an issue right now. I think I have around 4000m/s of dV left in the tank. Just trying to figure out the most efficient thing to do. I suppose I could use Eve as a gravity assist to slow me down into a Duna orbit but I don't want to be orbiting the sun for decades waiting for transfer windows as I'm under time limits for the contract.

I'm confused on what it is you are asking. If you are just posting suggestions about improving gameplay, than yes, putting them into a different forum would be more appropriate than the gameplay question forum. If you have a specific question that you can narrow down, I'm sure there are plenty of us that can help. But we really need a specific question asked that we can answer. I really can't tell from the posts above if your asking questions or just wanting to speak your thoughts out loud... As to your question on the draw mode, your path that is drawn depends on the draw mod you have set. Your path for an encounter will be drawn by either your position relative to your SOI entry/exit, the body you are currently orbiting, or even they body's current position. You can choose what draw mode you want by using a mod like Precise Node. I usually use Mode 3. Here is an older post summing up how the paths can be visually effected depending on your draw mode:

See my post above. Bullet number 5.

I used sandbox to learn the game. When I was comfortable I went to career. Once you know what you are doing career is super easy. You will be rolling in money and science in no time...

Im for more clouds personally. Gives the atmosphere more depth and realism. And rain?! That sounds awesome!! Cant wait to see pics of this.

I kinda skimmed your posts a bit but here are a few things: 1. Closest approach land wherever they land. Just depends on your orbit (or your new maneuver orbit) and the targets orbit. They are not tied to any escape SOI. 2. You only get closest approach if you set a target. If you unset it, you lose the closest approach. 3. Your predicted escape path didnt shift, you just werent zoomed in far enough to see it clearly. 4. You are correct, you dont get An/Dn nodes if your are in an objects SOI. You have to use KER to get inclination info if you want it. 5. You need a mod like precise node to change the trajectory paths (conics mode) you see on the screen. Some are more intuitive than others. What I do to to make a rendezvous is to create a maneuver and push out my orbit to the targets orbit until they overlap. Unless inclination is severely off, you will get closest approach markers. Once you have the markers just adjust your maneuver orbit to bring those markers nose to nose until you get the encounter. It shouldnt take more than a couple minutes once you get the markers to show onscreen.

I've been playing KSP for about two months now. I think I bought it on a Steam sale during Christmas. I've got a bit over 200 hours in now and I finally feel like I "get" what it is I'm supposed to be doing. I can finally dock, build rockets, build stations, go interplanetary, etc... I'm no expert by any sense but I finally feel comfortable doing most things and no longer abuse the search tool on this forum for every minor detail like I once did. I've never put this many hours into a single game. It is an amazing piece of software that really is limitless in what you can accomplish. Look forward to the next 200 hours and beyond! Just curious on how long it took others to finally feel like they were accomplishing their goals and not just floundering about.

I would say it's not worth it to send the MPL outside of Kerbin's SOI. If you packed it full of data just from orbiting Kerbin proper, than that alone will give you thousands of science points and will unlock 3/4 or more of the tech tree by itself. No need to ferry an MPL out beyond Minimus. I setup my MPL at Minimus, biome hopped, and filled it up. I was able to unlock the entire tech tree doing it this way. I don't enjoy biome hopping so I wanted to get that out of the way pronto and get my hands on the cooler tech toys deeper in the tree before sending crafts interplanetary.

Go here: This will tell you what range you can expect to get out of every antenna in the game.

If you didnt time warp then why even use the MPL? Might as well recover the science on Kerbin and skip using the MPL so you can get instant science gains with new unlocks. You HAVE to time warp to play the game. No one here is playing realtime missions I assume, right? We could argue all day what is OP or not I guess. What I find tedious is something someone else may find fun. Snark does a good job explaining the phenomenon of balancing fun vs challenging gameplay for a sandbox game.

This was the 1st time ive used the MPL but I didnt have Gigantors unlocked so I was limited to the smaller retractable panels and the smaller batteries. No fuel cells either... Allowing partial does work, but takes a loooong time. If I did it again Id load up on more batteries/panels. Also, there appears no way to choose what antenna the MPL uses to transmit if you have multiple ships docked to it with different antennas. One tranmission would use a Communitron on a docked ship while another would use the relay attached to the MPL itself. The MPL is definitely OP. I biome hopped Minmus and had a ton of science. I then stuffed all of that into the Minmus orbiting MPL and it unlocked the entire tree after a couple years of warping. But, I find biome hopping teadious so Im glad I dont have to mess with this again in my career. Id rather be building stuff and doing contracts for funds.

The Kraken summoner? I dont have the Klaw unlocked. Although i dont consider this cheating. If you can partially transmit science then the same should hold true for the MPL.

Im fairly confident it doesnt work as i tried it. But ill try it again in case i misclicked the button. This sucks if this is the case. Its basically worthless now if i cant transmit. I guess ill turn on infinite electricity to transmit it back.

Hmmm. I tried this and it didnt work. Said something like "Out of power, reverting transmission" or something like that. Im not at my computer now to check but Ill try it again this evening. Perhaps I didnt click it. Thanks guys.

So i guess you live and learn. I jam packed my MPL full of data (maxed it out), put a scientist in there, hit research, and time warped to fill up the science buffer. Im thinking, "Man, thats a crap ton of science i just earned. Just gotta transmit". I go to hit the transmit button and I see my power steadily decreasing until its at zero but the science is only 50% transmitted. I try it again after the batteries are recharged, and the tranmission starts over at 0%. WTH? It wont partially transmit and just pick up where it left off once the batteries are recharged!? So now Im stuck. I cant research because the science buffer is full and I cant transmit since it needs a nuclear reactor worth of power to push it to Kerbin. Ideas?

I think the problem holding it up was that it required it to be an "unmanned sat". It wasnt unmanned until I finally decoupled. I had a pilot flying the ferry and carrying the sats. At least, that is my guess.

So i figured out the issue. After i placed them in orbit (again!) the contract still wasnt completing even though it had green checks for "put it in this orbit" and "maintain for 10 seconds". Frustrated, I hit the [ ] keys to switch to each sat to make sure they were charged and all of a sudden the contact was completed. So just dropping them in the orbit was not enough. I needed to physically switch to each sat after placing them in the correct orbit. Good to know if i ever deliver sats with no engines to orbit again.