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Here, I'll be cataloging major developments in my career save in the form of in-world emails, mission reports, radio transcripts, and various other primary sources. I'll also add mundane slice of life bits whenever I get bored in class and decide to write them. We begin now with one of those mundane bits. ------------------------------------------------------------------ {1 New Mail} [Message 1] - Received 1-5, 4:32:46 From: Jebediah Kerman To: Gene Kerman Subject: “I think celebrations are in order.” Hey, Gene! I tried to call you earlier, but the line was busy. Then I tried to call a couple hours later and it was still busy! I’m sure that you boys in administration have your hands full with all the contracts and PR you have to deal with. How lucky I am to be the lowest bidder for a contract like this. I’ve already told you how thankful I am that you would hire such a ragtag company to construct your rocket parts. Speaking of which, the boys over at the junkyard are putting the finishing touches on the second Flea prototype. Tell Wherner I’m confident the new model will explode in a much more orderly and controlled fashion, at least relative to our first test fire. I hope his moustache grows back soon! On to the point, I’d like to hold a little get together to celebrate our first launch. It’s going to be a stressful two weeks for all of us leading up to the big day, and I feel like an after party would be in order. I’ve got a venue picked out already, with drinks and snacks planned. All I need is your go ahead, and to know whether anyone in your department is allergic to nuts. If you have any specific requests, let me know. P.S. I hear you guys are having trouble finding someone to pilot the Flea. As CEO of Jebediah Kerman’s Junkyard and Spaceship Parts Company, and as an old test pilot for the Osean Air Force, I’ll gladly volunteer to be your first kerbonaut if you’ll have me. [End of message] ------- {2 New Mails} [Message 1] - Received 1-5, 5:13:58 From: Gene Kerman To: Jebediah Kerman Subject: “Re: I think celebrations are in order.” Dear Jebediah, It’s good to hear that the Flea is on schedule. I’m sorry for the inconvenience with our telephone lines. We thought we had enough phones installed, but as soon as our little space endeavour went public the call center was overrun. I’m glad that people are so enthusiastic about space, but our secretaries are exhausted. I’m glad you messaged me on my personal email. I already have over 300 messages in my business account, and I just checked it two hours ago. On the subject of an after party, I think that it would be very appropriate. I’ll just leave everything about that up to you, just send me the details so I can tell everyone where to be and at what time. My only request is that there be some good wine. I haven’t had a good drink in months with how busy we’ve been and how much my wife loathes having alcohol in the house. I’ll need to ask around about the peanut allergies. On the subject of your request to pilot the Flea, I believe it can be arranged. None of our current pilots are exactly enthusiastic about riding an exploding metal tube into the sky. You’ll have to go through the standard training and testing procedures, of course, but given your flight record, I think you’ll perform very well. It might be good publicity for the CEO of the company building the rocket to put such faith in his mens’ work (which is especially needed, given the fact that the people know you’re literally working out of a junkyard). Please send in an application, and we can get the ball rolling. Someone will probably need to fill in for you at your company while you’re away. The training is intensive, and you will likely have very little time for much else. Whatever you decide, good luck in the coming weeks. I’ll be looking forward to that drink. Sincerely, Gene Kerman [End of message] [Message 2] - Received 1-6, 1:59:59 To: Jebediah Kerman’s Junkyard and Spaceship Parts Co. From: Kerbol & Mun Insurance Subject: “BILLING FILED” Mr. Jebediah, this message is to inform you of the confirmation of funds paid to the Spatial Observation and Aeronautics Program (SOAP) for damages listed below. Drywall repair - $200 Glass window repair x4 - $500 Soot removal - $100 Medical Expenses for Bob Kerman - $5000 Psychological Treatment for Bill Kerman - $5500 Landscaping repair - $1000 Miscellaneous destruction of property - $5675 Moustache replacement for Wherner von Kerman - $3 Replacement of VAB mini-fridge $55 Replacement of mini fridge snacks - $1000 “Because you’re an idiot” - $24 Total Funds: $19057 If there are any discrepancies in billing, please file a claim with our customer service department. [End of message]

When I play career mode, it always seems like I'm not getting everything I can out of progression contracts. I'm talking about the contracts from Kerbin World-Firsts Record-Keeping Society that only get offered once. Usually they have the most payout for their difficulty. I tend to get past around the "Fly ny Mun" point before it just skips to something far beyond my grasp at that point, like "Explore Ike." What is the best way to make sure that I get these contracts in order, without missing them?

First I'd like to point out I did look at posting in this thread, but since my suggestion is a sum of several suggestions, where I feel none would be that interesting without the others, I choose to start a new thread. Feel free to move/merge this if this was wrong. I would also like to point out that I have been thinking of posting this for about a year, so these ideas are not something I threw together hastily. Now, I do feel career mode in general is fun, but I miss something in career mode, and that is a Strategy layer. That's why I have some suggestions to make it feel like you are more in charge of a space program. Some of these things have been suggested before, I know, but again, my point is the sum of all these suggestions, not only one or two of them. So, in order to make you feel like more of a manager of a space program I suggest the following (they are in no particular order, with for example point 1 being dependent on point 2 etc). 1. Have a weekly economics summary, where it is shown how many launches you've made, the cost of rockets/planes launched, the income from recovery, the income from contract advances, the income from contracts completed, the weekly income from NAKA (see below), the weekly salary for all kerbonauts, the weekly pension fund for MIA/KIA kerbonauts etc. This summary would probably have to be tweak-able, so it doesn't show up every week of your year long journey to Jool, perhaps by progressing as the game progresses from weekly to monthly to yearly summaries. 2. Have overarching missions from NAKA (National Aeronauts and Kerbonauts Administration) where you are left with a choice of 1 of 2 to begin with - Explore space or -Explore Kerbin. (Later examples would be -Kerbins moons or -Inner planets, and -Space stations or -Outer planets) You would get (like a contract) some roots in advance and then some (diminishing) roots every week until the overarching mission is completed. You would also loose an increasing amount of reputation each week until you've completed the mission (so you get an incentive to hurry up, but it should be so small that you can ignore it for a while if you like. Perhaps starting at -1 the first week and like -5/week after 10 weeks or whatever balance feels right.) You should be able to change mission should you like, but would then get a reputation hit (-100 or whatever) and loose out on the roots advancement. The point would be to make ordinary contracts "side quests" and these mission "main quests". Completing a main quest would give you quite a lot of reputation (but almost no more roots, since for example NASAs missions hardly gives any roots when completed, but a massive boost in reputation.) 3. Only 1 allowed launch per Kerbin day (there already is the "warp to next morning", why not use it for something useful). Maybe airplanes could be launched 2 times a day, if there is a way to prevent "cheating", by launching rockets from the runway (for example the runway being destroyed very easily by rocket engines). This way, a maximum of 7 rocket launches in a week (and perhaps up to 14 plane launches), which is manageable for the summary in point 1. Perhaps this limitation should be upgradeable to 2 or 3 launches later in the game. Would also give a better momentum of the game in conjunction with the regular contracts, especially if their deadlines would be shorter. (And it is after all a bit unrealistic with unlimited launches each day, while the construction time mod feels a bit too limiting. I want to launch my rocket when I've designed it, not wait for a "random" period of time. Warp to next morning is fine I think, and quite intuitive in a gamey sort of way.) 4. An integrated wiki/self-updating encyclopedia, as proposed by me before here where suddenly the whole point of career mode would be to explore the entire Kerbal universe, filling in all the blanks in the encyclopedia/wiki. This could work well in conjuncture with point 2 in acting like an overarching "main quest", something to go back to when you don't know what more you want to do, but at the same time not something you have to do, being free to explore/play as you want. 5. Exponential cost for the tech tree, where you simply can't unlock everything without leaving Kerbin SOI (unless, perhaps, you chose to focus on -Exploring Kerbin and -Space stations when asked by NAKA, and thereby unlocking better bonuses for the science lab enabling you to get much, much more science. So there should be a choice) so you really would have to "struggle" to get to Eeloo to gather the millions of science required to unlock those last big fuel tanks (and then the next mission to Eeloo would become easier. The point being that the tech tree would be balanced so that you are always challenged to find that next science to unlock that next step, but would also be so abundant on worlds farther from Kerbin that it never would be considered grindy; one hard, long mission would be enough to unlock the next tech, you should not have to do 332 kinds of science on Kerbin to be able to unlock it. Unless you chose to, of course.) 6. Delta-vee readout, coupled to science (based on/functioning like KER). Haven't checked the atmosphere disposition in lower and upper Kerbin atmosphere with the Atmospheric Fluid Spectro-Variometer? Then the delta-vee (KER) readout can't show you how the engines are expected to perform at different altitudes. Haven't landed a probe on Mun and done a gravity scan? Then delta-vee can't show you expected TWR on Mun. Etc. That would really (in conjunction with point 4 and 2) encourage exploring and simply be fun in my opinion. Talk about mission planning, where you have to send out "scouts" to learn more of the planet/moon before actually doing your "real" mission. It also gives unmanned exploration with science-gathering by radio a bigger place in the game by paving the way for the more complex but more rewarding manned missions. Of course, such a system would have to have very clear tooltips telling the player what experiment they need to run to unlock the requested feature in the delta-vee. What a long post this turned out to be. Sorry. Well, the point of these suggestions would be to change focus in career: the contracts would no longer be the point of career mode, the contracts would be a stepping stone, a helpful tool to explore the system, something which at the moment aren't encouraged at all. (In sandbox it shouldn't be encouraged, but in career mode, I really feel it should. As an overarching goal.) In my opinion, when you have done all the experiments in all the biomes, completing the in-game wiki/encyclopaedia in point 4, you would actually win the game (with an option to keep playing of course). It feels like I had a couple of more points to suggest, but I can't remember them right now. Well, if anyone is interested in these ideas, a developer or a modmaker, I can expand my ideas more if you want. Otherwise, thank you for reading. (I do realize the chance of these ideas making it into stock or a mod is slim to none, but if they do, I would play the hell out of it).

Hi Folks, So I've been a Kerbal player for over 2 years now, really enjoy all the new stuff and extremely excited about the new patch (limited signal ranges, wheel traction updates, etc). My problem with playing Kerbal is, now that I have a family to look after, I can't dedicate hours of playing time needed (at least that I needed) to tinker rocket designs, or fly them to best efficiency once designed. Having also missed a couple of patches, I no longer know instinctively which engines with what fuel amounts will launch a particular sized payload to orbit, etc. Combine all this with my total lack of engineering expertise regarding aerodynamics, and basically none of my old tried and tested rocket designs work any more. I had used Mechjeb long ago in the past to help me get a better understanding of ascent profiles and intercept planning (back before 1.0), and have recently re-installed it with the hope it will help me with my lack of fine-flying skill on Kerbin-ascent to achieve the best out of my rockets (and also let me hit the go switch and go tend to the offspring while my payload & crew achieve orbit under auto-guidance. Problem is, I can't seem to work out how to unlock the requisite parts or technologies to do this at my current point in my career game. So, two questions... 1. How do I get to a career tech and parts level where I can set rockets on auto-launch guidance? 2. Is there a way to tinker with the part.ini files to allow this tech from level 0, or is it hard-wired somewhere in the mod? I don't want to give up on career mode as I enjoy the drive and limitations of contracts etc, I just don't like the limitations of my raw skill and undermined design knowledge. All help welcome, cheers.

HI My new Career in 1.05 is going well, learning from my mistakes, but still showing them! I think I found the correct part of the forum this time? Feel free to comment on the lets play style as well as the kerbaling! Thanks for watching!

Hiya! I've had KSP for many years now,and I LOVE Career mode!.......However it's just...not fun when you're progressing at a snail's pace. Basically,I only have a few things unlocked in R&D,and I don't have enough money to upgrade the VAB so I can make bigger ships. (Plus I'm not that great at making ships in general!) It's just not fun! It's also hard when ALOT of the R&D things that cost like 90 Science only give you three parts when I struggle getting 20 science! It's just not worth it,and it makes things harder when that thing unlocks everything else! So if anyone can give me some advice on what to do in Career mode,i'd be much appreciative! And if anyone also has tips for building basic to semi-basic ships,that would help ALOT too ;D (Again,I am definitely not the best at building working ships,I haven't even gone interplanetery before!)

Yes i know there are other threads on this, however they all seem to be dead. For the record, i had this issue back in 0.90, but it was mod-related, while this is a relatively clean install. The only mod i used was FMRS, but the plugin was deactivated for the entire session where the issue occurred, so i doubt it was the cause. The save was made only a few days ago, and nothing i can think of has changed that might have caused this. Basically what it says on the tin. I started 4(3 sets of 2, and 1 set of four) tourist contracts for visits to LKO, and launched several two-kerbal ships, however after landing them all, and heading to the tracking station to recover, i noticed that the contracts had disappeared. The contracts where definitely there when i started. I loaded the quick-save i made before de-orbiting any of the capsules, but the problem was still present. I looked at the save file using a text editor, and all of the contracts are still present, but do not appear in-game. This gives me some hope that i can salvage this situation. Any help would be greatly appreciated, as i sunk a lot of funds into these missions hoping for a big payout My persistent file, with ships still in orbit, and contracts that exist but do not appear: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jalgsyfdhimsf12/persistent.sfs?dl=0 Log file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/fnnv5tkfjb1uvdl/KSP.log?dl=0

I'm in career mode, recently unlocked the Panther. If I make a twin-engine plane, how do I toggle the afterburners simultaneously? In sandbox I just make an action group, but I haven't unlocked that yet. Is there a key combo to toggle the afterburners?

Good news and bad news. The good news is I've gotten in a lot of practice of the finer points of Kerbal. The bad news is it's been all in a massive attempt to rescue Crew A from the surface of the Mun. As I mentioned in my report about Luna 10's mishaps, my next plan was to attempt to land two ships, Lunar 11 and lunar 12, on the Mun at the same time. Unfortunately, upon landing, Lunar 11 came down at a bad angle and lost it's engine. I could have simply reverted, but no, I had to do the macho thing and try to rescue the Jeb, Bob and Bill. First I attempted to land an Emergency Crew Return Vehicle ("ECRV", an automatic version of my direct Assent lunar ship). I was able to drop the ECRV, with some considerable effort, about 12KM away from where Lunar 11 landed. I then spent about three days designing and testing some sort of rover develry system that would be able to get the boys from their stuck command module to the rescue ship. Each and every attempt ended in disaster. Then I decided to just have them walk. When I realized how slow they moved, I had to make plan C. after trial and error, I finally had something that world work. The "ECRV Super Heavy", the same craft with a few tweaks, launched from the bigger and stronger Moho Six booster. All said and done, with a massive amount of mid landing course corrections, my final landing... 1.6 KM from Lunar 11! Walking distance! almost as good as Pete Conrad. Now I just need to get the crew to the other ship and off we go.

This was one of the better contracts that's popped in my Career game. Take a single ship to Duna, Ike, Minmus and the Mun, land everywhere and return. So I made a stock SSTO

Hi. So I've been playing career mode again and as usual I got quite a few tourist contracts. You know, those ones where you have to transport tourists to where they want to go. I let these pile up until they got to about four, and then I just threw them all onto one big ship I call the Commuter Train. Its job was to transport all the kerbals to Minmus, then to the Mun where it would dock with a lander I had there. The kerbals who wanted to land on the Mun would transfer to the lander, go down and come back up again and then redock with Commuter Train which would take all of them back home to Kerbin. Something so perfect sounded really good in my head, but in reality quite hard. I got them all to Minmus alright, but now something's happened to the complicated maneuver nodes I had saved with Kerbal Alarm Clock and I'm not sure what to do. Which is why I came here to ask you guys this: do the boxes I've already ticked in their contracts get saved when I land so I can send them up again? Or do they just disappear and I have to start over again? Any help is appreciated, Max

So I'm starting a new career game, and I was trying to figure out how to complete the high altitude survey missions over a point on Kerbin. I wanted to do a plane, and make it cheap to build, relatively easy to use, and small in shape as well as low in part count. I did not like the look of the fixed landing gear with this aircraft, so I decided to make a Zero Length Launch system as seen in the picture below: Flight Profile Anyway, I know it isn't a single stage to eve and back or anything, but I thought I'd share one of my more unique designs that is simple and functional. There's no excess Dv, control surfaces or other cost multiplying parts. I've also eliminated the landing gear, allowing me to get high enough to complete the mission. A thermometer can also be added for temp contracts. I've done contracts about 130 km away from ksp, but I'm not sure of the exact range and endurance of this thing. It's also fully recoverable, minus the jet and solid fuel of course. The first stage has its own separate parachute that deploys upon the booster getting jettisoned. It's just one of those desgns that turned out nice.

The apoapsis is negative on the contract, and the orbit isn't rendering at all (save for a few misplaced icons).

In career mode, I've noticed that when you bring tourists back to Kerbin, they gain some experience. But once they have seen everything they want to see they disappear along with all the experience. My suggestion is to remember the tourists after completing the missions and that the same tourists will spawn new missions. If you accept the mission, you will get the tourist back at the experience level he was at before. That would give you a reason to keep picking tourist missions. You could progressively "train" your tourists by picking their missions. To make this feature not completely pointless, it would be cool if they received abilities and bonuses like the other kerbonaut classes. An example would be getting additional reputation when visiting new sites, also those that are originally not part of the mission. Higher level tourists receive higher rewards. Higher level tourists will also demand more difficult destinations. This adds to the stakes of tourist missions. Not only are you risking failing the mission, you might also lose Tourfred Kerman, the level 4 tourist.

So full disclosure: never even been to Duna but I've put quite a few hours into this game and love messing around with mods for it. Haven't played in while - since before the game hit 1.0 - and I'm looking to satisfy that KSP itch yet again. This time I'm looking forward to not only streaming my progress but putting together this handy dandy mission journal together. I've been inspired by some of the other threads here as well as some youtube series like HatBat's and MaceyDean's wonderful work. As a result, I'll be putting the journal posts together from the perspective of a Kerbal working in the organization and try to keep things in-character as much as possible. First though, I've got to explain a few things. Like many modders however, I have trouble restraining myself from absolutely bloating the game with a ton of mods. To combat this, I've come up with a system that forces me to make some choices and earn points to "purchase" mods. I call it meta-modding. Here's how it works: KSP Meta-Modding This will involve me playing Career mode in Kerbal Space Program and using a Kredits system to "purchase" mods I want to use in my playthrough. Credits will be earned from views/follows/subscribers/donations I get to my various channels and groups online. The breakdown of which follows: Twitch: 1 view = 1000 credits 1 follow = 10000 credits YouTube: 1 view = 1000 Kredits 1 subscriber = 10000 Kredits KSP Forum: 1 view = 1000 Kredits 1 reply = 10000 Kredits Steam Group: 1 new member = 10000 Kredits Donations: 1 USD = 50000 Kredits The cost of mods will be determined by their current viewcount of their thread in the KSP modding forum. Most mods range from a few hundred thousand views to a couple million for more of the popular ones. This will hopefully result in a fun playthrough and help me limit my modding obsession while creating a fun, interactive experience for all of you. Stay tuned!

I understand there's a limit to where debris disappears. This is not that. I performed a test a moment ago that required low speed and very low altitude, so it was very inexpensive. Because of this, I also tried something for my own amusement. The test was to activate ([run test] worked so I didn't need to do it through staging] the Hammer SRB in a specific altitude and speed bracket. So I went Mk1 command pod, Hammer SRB (removed all fuel in the VAB of course), decoupler, smallest first tier liquid fuel tank, and Reliant engine, and of course topped off with a parachute. Now the EXTRA that I did for my own purposes was to attach a radial chute to the fuel tank + engine assembly, to deploy at the moment of separation. Also I placed the first gen landing struts at the bottom of the SRB so I could recover it intact, because the chute at top of command pod would have just barely not slowed me down enough for the SRB not to wreck on contact with ground. Well everything worked out as I had hoped, being such a small and easy thing. However... The liquid tank + engine assembly, though the chute fired fine and it came to rest on the ground with no damage, was not recoverable when I went back to the space center. There's no way to recover parts that come to rest peacefully, even right at your facility, once they leave your primary vehicle?

I started a blog detailing my newest KSP Career Mode savefile. It turned into a website similar in some respect to NASA's. I will have mission reports, pics, links to videos on YouTube, and hopefully (eventually) a "story" section which will detail the adventures of various Kerbals. I even made it a bit more interactive by adding a "Requests" section, wherein anyone can offer the Kerbin Administration of Space Missions (KASM) a "contract", which I can accept or decline. Comment here if you have suggestions for the site, or PM me. Here's the site: kerbalnautadventures.wordpress.com. If you enjoy reading my posts, please spread the word! Thanks! Posts: Breaking News: Kafrican Government Officially Organizes the Kerbin Administration of Space Missions! New Capsule to be Tested Tomorrow by Bob Kerman Results of Pad Test Confirmed, Plans for Tomorrow in the Works SRB, Decoupler, and Girder Segment Testing Goes as Planned, Other Tests Postponed SRB 65% Power Test Goes Well SRB 100% Power Test Exceeds Expectations Parachute Test a Spectacular Success!

hi, can anyone give a bit of advice bilding efficient ssto ? i looked in youtube and othed stuff but thats only helps with the same ssto as it buildet in video. i tryed to build a few by myself, and they get to orbit but they totaly non efficient as they can be. the best way i doing this, jus by putting a lot of powefull jet engines with trust/mass ratio over 2 at start and just raming myself into orbit by 45 degrees just like rocket i know that it's way more efficientt ways to do this. whhat kinda engines do i have to use ?, degress at going to orbit ? trust/mass ratio ? something more to know ?

When you get one of those "recover Yadda Kerbin from orbit, and his vessel" contracts, or those "recover object Blarg form orbit", I haven't found a way to plan properly what the mission vessel should look like because I have no idea what the target vessel looks like until I get there and it comes within vessel range to switch to it. You can't see the vessel from the tracking center because the only way to do so is to take over flight control of it, and you're not supposed to be able to do that yet. This is frustrating because I plan for a small capsule, then get there and find it's a big one, and I can't grab it and bring it back with the vessel I showed up with because it's engineered wrongly for it. You need a different configuration (a more expensive one) to recover a large object because of heat shielding issues - you need a very big protective occlusion area behind your heat shield to recover something like a hitchhiker can. The only way I can think of to do this is to save the game and read the saved game file to find the target vessel and see what part(s) it's composed of. Is there a means to do so in-game? There really should be, because if you're accepting the contract, people on the ground would have the tech specs of the vessel and know what it is that you're going to go get.

I know I know, another career mode thread As is stands, the Admin building is kind of useless (for the most part) until late career when it can convert science into money. I'd like it to have a bigger part in the game- to be able to weight what contract types a player gets. The types of contracts for example would be Rescue, Exploration, Commercial, Structural, Testing, and Science. In the Admin there will be sliders that a player can use to set the odds to get specific contract types. L1 Building: Stock, no change. L2 Building: Player can set sliders with a maximum of a 30% chance (or whatever serves as a good balance) to get a certain contract type, and a minimum of 10%. L3 Building: Player can set sliders with up to a 40% chance (see above) to get a certain contract type, and a minimum of 5%. This would allow a player to mold their space program into what they like, and at the same time, unlike the current idea of giving contracts based on past accepted ones, would allow the player to change their career based on how they want to play at that time. For example, you have killed most of your crew, up the rescue contracts. Ready to go interplanetary? Up the exploration ones.

Taking into account the stock starting tech, available milestones and contract rewards, what do you think is the human year equivalent to stock KSP Career Year 0? A number of us contract and tech tree developers want to know your opinion! Personally, I think it's 1906, as aviation has not been researched yet. The command module can be reasoned away as a car chassis. The SRB can be reasoned as just an advanced firework. Now if Squad were to simply allow spawning into Command Seats, make it a starting tech, and moved the current Command Module to a later point in the tree, and give us just a basic wheel, I think this argument would be made even clearer. These two simple changes to the starting techs (making the Command Seat and a small wheel starter techs) would easily have the rest of the tech tree make more sense I think. I think it's just that durned Command Module messing with most people's minds on the matter. Switch out the Command Module with the Command Seat... and you have 1906, which is what i think it should be given the data, what with aviation tech yet to be researched being the primary give away. This is why I include CommandSeat and wheels as starter techs in my Contract Pack: Giving Aircraft a Purpose (link in sig). A very simple change if Squad were to implement it, as it would easily clarify the timeframe at Career start.

I'm just wedging this here in hopes it may be helpful for the rare new player lost in early career mode. I'm actually doing these for a couple of co-workers who have bought KSP following my endless boring stories about delta-V and blowing up a small green guy named Jeb. So yeah, now I feel like a cult recruiter. Anyway, I'll post them here as I finish them this weekend. Kerbal Space Program 1.05 Career Tutorial - Part 1 Kerbal Space Program 1.05 Career Tutorial - Part 2 KSP1.05 Career Tutorial Part 3 - Tourists and Satellites Tutorial 4: KSP 1.05 Career Mode - Rendezvous, rescues and more at the Mun KSP 1.05 Career Tutorial - How to not crash on the Mun for fun and profit Tutorial 6 - Going to Duna - Interplanetary transfer And at last: Tutorial 7 - ISRU and you're done These are NOT an exhaustive array of tutorials explaining the finer points of specific activities (docking, orbital rendezvous, SSTO design etc). They are intended to simply make sure those unfamiliar with KSP can get a reasonable start in career mode, and be in a position to fulfill their in-system contracts fairly quickly, and set the stage for exploring other planets. Also, I've discovered I'm terrible at tutorials, but they're excellent if you have insomnia! As of #3 I've also learned editing is your friend. Live tutorials are very much not.

Disclaimer: I am assuming there are mods for some of these ideas (I don't use mods just because i'm lazy, although I think modding improves games), I think it would be good to see them in game as part of the game in career mode to improve the career environment and story line. My ideas revolve around trying to make career mode more enjoyable rather than a grind and to improve the inclusion of engineers, scientist and pilots to some extent: Scientist could be used to map vectors to planets that have already been orbited by a scientist. the higher level the scientist the quicker he/she can plan a trajectory to that planet. the higher level the scientist the more efficient and accurate the trajectory will be. if the scientist is only given a small amount of time to plan the trajectory it will come with potential errors even though it looks good on the map. Being KSP there will always be a small chance for error in the scientist calculations so it may end in a fireball. The base needs to be upgraded for trajectory planning with consecutive upgrades adding more slots for scientist. The Kerbal base will only get so far, an expeditionary base on Minmus will allow for trajectories onto neighbouring planets in the system. Expeditionary bases can be built by dropping off certain supplies to a targeted location. Bases can be upgraded with things like: radar array for trajectory plots labs from different private enterprises for research into upgrades that can only be unlocked this way. generates a small amount of PR whilst researching even after the items has been unlocked. rover pod for rover construction (it will need to be supplied with materials to build rovers) rover docking for resupply a taxi craft to ferry tourist to and from a nearby orbiting space station (needs to have fuel) bases could be preplanned in one location by the devs, or it could be where the player wants depending on how easy it is to code I guess? base location planning could be researched by engineers or scientist on Kerbal from the upgraded mission command? if the base is not supplied appropriately then safety may fall and accident may happen in the taxis, rover construction, docking or trajectory calcs. Automation for endgame: I find the constant launching or fuel/tourist ships and modules gets tedious, that is why i think there should be a base module addon on Kerbal that can be upgraded to run supply ships it could be manned with engineers and must have trajectory support from the scientist. the more supply ships the more the scientist will have to spend on providing support to the supply module and this increases trajectory calculations for your other ships. if there is not enough support from the science trajectory division then this increases the chances of accidental fireballs and accidents. supply ships would come pre designed and could launch, dock, resupply and re-enter the atmosphere and anomalously. Pilots with a high enough level can be used to run autonomous supply lines between planets as long as that planet has been explored by an orbit with a pilot or scientist. the ship can be custom built and also needs scientist trajectory support. Competition (a very far fetched idea): Other space agencies also start at the same time as you so it becomes a race to explore and research. other agencies may get ahead of you in research so you may want to try corporate espionage strategy which is very risky and will reduce your PR by a considerable amount Other agencies may try corporate espionage on you to get your research so you can implement a secure network strategy to try safeguard your valuable research but it comes at a hefty price. These ideas try to keep exploration an unknown with manual input whilst it reduces the repetition of supply. The expeditionary base would also make it possible to put rovers on planets without having to put them atop of a rocket and hope for the best. Lastly, weather balloons for rovers; I think they would be great for having to get X data at X altitude at the north/south pole of the planet with atmosphere.

I'm playing Career mode and just unlocked Aviation. I went to the hangar to build my first aircraft, and I can't figure out how to attach the air intakes. Looking at the connection points on the intakes, they seem to want to be mounted on the front of something else (a wing?), but the only plane-style parts I can find are fuselage components (which don't help me because they need to attach to the cockpit and tail) and wings (which seem to have no connection points at all). I see a similar issue with the first jet engine, but it looks like at least in theory I could put it in place of the tail, even though it would look like ass. These are the J-20 and Small Circular Intake I'm trying to work with. I am confused. I spent a bunch of time googling, but all the tutorials I can find assume that you have more advanced parts; I can't find any that even bother trying to use the first set of parts that become available.

So this is somewhat in response to a thread in the general section discussing the state of career mode. While I don't agree with everything said (certainly not the tone), there are enough people with similar concerns that I wonder if there isn't some relatively easy way to accommodate more players without losing the elements of the game that are working. This also ties into some concerns that game progression relies overmuch on the tech tree and not enough focus is placed on exploration. My general diagnosis is that most contracts feel like side quests because it isn't clear what the main quest is. I can see people being rightly worried that any fixed objective might limit freedom of play, but I think a middle ground can be found that lets players direct their own exploration while still offering constraints and rewards. Fortunately, this doesn't require scrapping anything, merely reorganizing the way it's presented in Mission Control. In broad strokes, my suggestion is that contracts could be categorized by body, and perhaps also by type. When opening Mission Control instead of seeing a random list of contracts, there would be a list of headings: Kerbin, Mun, Minmus, etc. There might also be categories for rescue, collect science, etc. At first only Kerbin would be available, and listed at the top would be the prominent World First contracts. Other more optional contracts would appear below as rep increased, but the Mun and Minmus categories would not appear until a player had completed the Reach Orbit contract. Once unlocked those categories would also have important world firsts listed on top, though some may have their advances greyed out if the player didn't have enough rep. A player could of course go straight to the Mun or complete any World First contract as they reached it, they simply would not be eligible for the advance. At this point their contract window might look like this: Kerbin: - Rescue Sambell from Kerbin orbit - Collect readings around X - Test Skipper on suborbital trajectory Mun: - Explore the Mun - Perform Flyby - Achieve Orbit - Land on the Mun (Advance after X Reputation) - Plant a Flag on the Mun (Advance after X Reputation) - Collect readings around X - Place satellite in stable orbit Minmus: - Explore Minmus - Perform Flyby - Achieve Orbit - Land on Minmus (Advance after X Reputation) - Plant a Flag on Minmus (Advance after X Reputation) - Collect readings around X - Rescue Barbella from the surface of Minmus After planting a flag on one of the moons headings would open for other planets. The important thing is that if you were ambitious and good the World Firsts could feasibly pay well enough to advance and unlock facilities by themselves. The other missions are more easily thought of as optional ways to increase the profitability of your program. Importantly this isn't radically different from the way things are now. Its mainly a question of visual clarity and emphasis. You can decide to explore any body you like and be rewarded for it. Earning rep and operating within the contract system is really only necessary to receive advances. What this would do is make clear that players could explore and grow their program however they liked. Launching satellites and building stations are in effect side-quests to earn money and reputation toward the World First main-quests. They could be dovetailed into larger missions or completed separately. Additionally many more contracts could be generated, 5 or 10 per body, without waiting at a very limited slot machine for the one you really want or feeling like you had to break warp and return to Mission Control every 4 days. Once completed, World Firsts (which could also include hidden Easter-egg finds) should really be given a more prominent home, possibly with special rewards, so players would see clearly how far they had progressed. I think this would help a lot and covers a big enough swath of play to satisfy people who want more autonomy while still rewarding players and offering unexpected constraints for those who like them. This does however clearly posit exploring each world as the goal of Career mode. It's harder for me to see how all the plane enthusiasts out there could get very far, but maybe they are more content in sandbox anyway. This is Kerbal Space Program after all.