WOW! Any vanilla hard difficulty career mode players get to the mun yet?!

[sedativechunk]

I started a brand new game with zero mods for the update. I see a lot of people here already building massive rockets (probably) in sandbox mode as well as others "complaining" about the latest update, when I don't think they realize how deep squad went with the career mode in the beginning. I wanted to know who on here is playing "legit" in hard with zero mods in the standard career mode??

It took me about 5+ hours of grinding, building simple rockets and mind numbing early contracts. It took me HOURS to get just into Kerbin orbit. Eventually I was able to get to the mun (just for an orbit), and that was after exploiting a free/early SRB upgrade from one of the contracts that gave me, it gave me access to the S1 SRB-KD25k.I used two of those babies and they jolted my ship up to an early 180k high orbit that I used to trek to the mun with.

Then to make it more complicated; no maneuver nodes or intercepts on the orbital map! In fact, it won't even tell you if you have a lunar intercept, making it extremely complicated to get into orbit very early on. Eventually I did, and then when I tried to leave munar orbit it didn't tell me when or where I was in Kerbin's orbit again! Very interesting to say the least... I wanted to know how many others actually got this deep into the new career. I think people may appreciate this update more if they just immediately didn't try to jump straight into the whole picture again.

[Jovus]

It took me about 5+ hours of grinding, building simple rockets and mind numbing early contracts. It took me HOURS to get just into Kerbin orbit.

...and this was fun for you?

[eddiew]

...and this was fun for you?

Sense of reward is generally associated with the work required to get somewhere Like the OP, I enjoy a challenging game, though mine can rumble on for months at an hour or two per day - it doesn't seem like much of a grind to me, just the gentle progress of a simulated space program ^^

[dryer_lint]

Yeah, I really enjoyed the first... half-hour or so of career mode

Don't get me wrong: I love what they've done with it, no more cruising through the tech-tree, no more easy funding. However, there still is a ton of grind. Definitely a step in the right direction though!

[KerikBalm]

I'm only playing on moderate difficulty:

I was going to do the flyby on the 4th mission, but then I opted to just go into high kerbin orbit, get some science, test the re-entry, and then launch a new mission.

IIRC, my career progression so far has been:

1) RT-5 -> a bit of thrust limiter, grab science and records

2) RT-10 -> a bit of thrust limiter, grab some science (goo + crew report) and records

3) SRB+ LF multistage rocket -> attempted orbit with a mat bay and goo, only got the escape atmosphere achievement, ran out of fuel at 75km and 1650 m/s.

4) Early unlock of the LV-909 for an experimental contract (that wanted me to use it between 2km and 11km, so I set its thrust limiter to zero and activated it through staging, and then really activated it much later) -> High orbit, I was going to try for a munshot, but I saw the return from orbit contract, considered my science dry mass, etc, and I brought ti down.

5) With science, unlocked the LV-909 for attempt #2, upgraded launch pad and VAB (probably not needed), with the mass limit increased, I strapped on BACC SRBs (cheap, but heavy), reduced part count/wobble by using the bigger LF tanks I unlocked instead of multiple smaller ones (hence why the VAB upgrade was probably not needed).

Angled my craft on the launch pad straight away(before launch) for a proper gravity turn, got into orbit, did the old "burn prograde when Mun rises over the horizon", and got in the Muns SOI. i haven't finished the flight, I'm going to try and achieve orbit (I assume I'll still complete the flyby contract).

I don't think it would take so much more grinding going from moderate to hard

[theorigin]

Yes OP - did exactly the same. 6h+ so far and not even close to the Mun. Fighting through those first tiers of the tech tree is so much fun - not to speak of the missing "in flight" features as long as you didnt upgrade your facilities! But thats what career is all about right? I am also vlogging everything .. just for the fun. Right now i have 2 similar contracts, 2 tourists want to experience suborbital flight - the Problem: Capsule only holds 1 kerbal at a time .. so i have to build a 3 capsule craft with under 24t and under 30 parts. Now thats what i love about these challenges!

[Cirocco]

I also started 1.0 with career, though I went for a slightly harder normal mode (basically normal mode with permadeath).

And yes, it took me about an hour or so to get to orbit as well. Mostly not due to aerodynamics or anything, but due to the revamped tech tree. I was really hurting for some larger fuel tanks, SAS probes and larger SRB's in the early game. I haven't landed on the mun yet, but thanks to experience with previous versions, I was able to get a Mun flyby (had plenty of fuel for an orbit, but didn't bother) at about 2-3 hours in. After about 4 hours clocked, I feel I have all the parts needed to comfortably and safely send Kerbals on return trips to anywhere in the Kerbin system.

The only challenge I still have with that is trying to bring back more than just the command pod back down to Kerbin. Whever I put anything under the pod (materials bay or the new circular storage), the whole thing flips over - pod first - and burns up. The only answer I've seen to this is to deploy chutes while high up and with re-entry flames all around. And that just seems silly. Can't wait till I unlock airbrakes.

[andruszkow]

I also started 1.0 with career, though I went for a slightly harder normal mode (basically normal mode with permadeath).

And yes, it took me about an hour or so to get to orbit as well. Mostly not due to aerodynamics or anything, but due to the revamped tech tree. I was really hurting for some larger fuel tanks, SAS probes and larger SRB's in the early game. I haven't landed on the mun yet, but thanks to experience with previous versions, I was able to get a Mun flyby (had plenty of fuel for an orbit, but didn't bother) at about 2-3 hours in. After about 4 hours clocked, I feel I have all the parts needed to comfortably and safely send Kerbals on return trips to anywhere in the Kerbin system.

The only challenge I still have with that is trying to bring back more than just the command pod back down to Kerbin. Whever I put anything under the pod (materials bay or the new circular storage), the whole thing flips over - pod first - and burns up. The only answer I've seen to this is to deploy chutes while high up and with re-entry flames all around. And that just seems silly. Can't wait till I unlock airbrakes.

My experience with the game so far sounds exactly like this. I love it!

Now, I read somewhere that editing the PhysicsSignificance from 1 to 0 in the heatshield configs makes them actually have real mass, and will fix the Pod-tipping-over-during-reentry problem.

[oversoul]

Yup, guess I'm not 'a real player' since I enjoy mods and use a little but of custom settings to ease my anger of throwing away my 0.90 space empire.

[Falkenherz]

I bought the game just some weeks ago. It is kind of hard to throw away my current 0.9 game when faced with too much grind. This is how the new career feels to me after the initial automatic contracts. I constructed a triple "hammer" launch stage (2+1 setup) with a triple command pod and just take those tourist contracts for suborbital. It seems to be the fastest credits/hour rate like this, go up, go down, cash in 20k, but not much fun. I have no idea on how to obtain science, since the marketing strategy of "outsourcing R&D" has been seriously nerfed, so I am currently stuck before the 45-science unlocks. Maybe I need to do separate unpaid science missions with the mystery goo and the jr. science lab. I tried to go into orbit, but figuring this out has become, as opposed to 0.9, a real challenge it seems (i.e. different deltaV, no more simple 45-gravity turn at 10km...). In 0.9 where I was able to launch a laucher consisting entirely of boosters; now, patching together some LFE stage with those small fuel tanks only feels similarly too limiting as option.

t is fine, I take the challenge. I just wish I had access to parts which do not make me having to construct silly constructions like the triple-command-pod-rocket.

[X-SR71]

I started a new career on moderate difficulty. Did a flyby by the mun, didn't land yet though. No solar panels yet and no way to generate electricity (LV-909)! I like having to pay entry costs for new parts, but am too afraid of not having quicksave - quickloading and reverting. I love how you have to progress through the tech tree in career mode. This way the game challenges you so much more than in sandbox, and you have to be creative with your designs.

[Captain H@dock]

The moon? I did 5 flights on RT-5 alone already*. I'm not going there any time soon.

* Including hitting the 450m/s with a RT-5 + command pod + parachute craft. This one requires a flat take-off (barely cleared the VAB)

[Randazzo]

"Hard" just translates into "More grinding"

The actual difficulty curve of the game doesn't really go up. If you know how to send a rocket to the mun, then you know how to send a rocket to the mun. The only difference will be how much boring stuff you have to do beforehand.

[klgraham1013]

If you know how to send a rocket to the mun, then you know how to send a rocket to the mun. The only difference will be how much boring stuff you have to do beforehand.

Career in a nut shell so far.

[Caelib]

I usually play a hard-mode game after every update, but I figured this time I would start with a normal one to learn the new stuff. I am glad I did because it took me several hours of tinkering to figure out the new aero/re-entry. I would suggest learning the new system before trying hard-mode or you'll probably go broke.

[Xavven]

I started a brand new game with zero mods for the update. I see a lot of people here already building massive rockets (probably) in sandbox mode as well as others "complaining" about the latest update, when I don't think they realize how deep squad went with the career mode in the beginning. I wanted to know who on here is playing "legit" in hard with zero mods in the standard career mode??

It took me about 5+ hours of grinding, building simple rockets and mind numbing early contracts. It took me HOURS to get just into Kerbin orbit. Eventually I was able to get to the mun (just for an orbit), and that was after exploiting a free/early SRB upgrade from one of the contracts that gave me, it gave me access to the S1 SRB-KD25k.I used two of those babies and they jolted my ship up to an early 180k high orbit that I used to trek to the mun with.

Then to make it more complicated; no maneuver nodes or intercepts on the orbital map! In fact, it won't even tell you if you have a lunar intercept, making it extremely complicated to get into orbit very early on. Eventually I did, and then when I tried to leave munar orbit it didn't tell me when or where I was in Kerbin's orbit again! Very interesting to say the least... I wanted to know how many others actually got this deep into the new career. I think people may appreciate this update more if they just immediately didn't try to jump straight into the whole picture again.

Hi there, fellow Vanilla Hard player! I think you may have run into the exact same two difficulty spikes that I encountered. It's a long read, but I wonder if you would agree with my thread on the game progression here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/117160-Career-Mode-Progression-and-Game-Design-Analysis?p=1872805#post1872805

Hard difficulty should be challenging to experienced players, but ... I think it should be hard in a different way than it is now. Lacking maneuver nodes and patched conics might be the wrong way to do it. Can you think of any ways in which your career could have stayed challenging, but fun (i.e. without grinding as it seems you had to resort to)?

[arq]

Hard difficulty should be challenging to experienced players, but ... I think it should be hard in a different way than it is now. Lacking maneuver nodes and patched conics might be the wrong way to do it. Can you think of any ways in which your career could have stayed challenging, but fun (i.e. without grinding as it seems you had to resort to)?

The maneuver nodes/conics are a function of the tracking station, regardless of the difficulty setting. The only meaningful way that 'hard' is harder is that there are no quicksaves or reverts. Now, I most definitely agree that 'hard' should be hard in a different way. Reduced income doesn't actually make the gameplay 'harder' (who has ever gone bankrupt?), just 'grindier.' What I would prefer for higher difficulties is that the rewards stay the same but the cost of failure is higher - perhaps by making ships more expensive (or especially kerbals)? 'Hard' should make the game riskier, not grindier.

[MacroNova]

Having played career mode in the past, I knew that Hard would be very grindy and so I picked Normal instead. I was glad I did, as the progression so far seems reasonable. It sounds like Hard is not the right mode for you OP. You don't have to play every game on the hardest difficulty to feel like a playa!

[Fel]

I generally consider the hard difficulty career mode too easy.

Maybe getting extremely rich while firing off a few progressively bigger SRBs attached to a capsule and getting obscene amounts of cash isn't exactly my idea of hard... so I'm tinkering and seeing how I can make it harderish. Something like 0.05% funds might be better. Getting to the moon without guidance systems isn't terribly difficult

Basically, you fire the rocket at mun rise, when you see the mun start to "rise" from the other end of kerbin while in orbit. I don't keep track of the dV's required, but the method has worked for the last couple hundred times I've used it rather than maneuver nodes.

[Doctor Axel]

I've been playing on Moderate so far and TBH I feel like it's EXACTLY right. Science is definitely harder to come by now, which I appreciate, because in previous versions contracts gave out so much science that one could very easily advance without ever using the experiment modules.

I did appreciate that fix to the heatshield physics though. =P The stock aero is good enough that I don't feel like I need to go back to FAR, but little things like that are important.

[herbal space program]

I wanted to know who on here is playing "legit" in hard with zero mods in the standard career mode??

It took me about 5+ hours of grinding, building simple rockets and mind numbing early contracts. It took me HOURS to get just into Kerbin orbit.

I played in hard mode except I allowed quicksaving, and I had a similar experience last night. It took me like 2-3 hours to get a ship that could make orbit and land again, and I wasn't able to do it with both goo and Science Jr. at the same time. I only had to do one test contract to get there though, and I had about 300k roots in the bank, so money did not seem like a big bottleneck for me. Science OTOH felt pretty hard to come by. After orbiting successfully all I got was grindy test contracts, which I can't say seemed like a lot of fun to work though.

...I should add that I guess allowing quicksave largely defeats the purpose of hard mode, but even without any mulligans I think I still would have had at least half as much money in the bank as I had allowing them. None of my failures would have actually killed my Kerbals, I just would have had about 8 10k-root suborbital flights for no particular reward before making orbit.

Edited April 28, 2015 by herbal space program

[Cirocco]

"Hard" just translates into "More grinding"

The actual difficulty curve of the game doesn't really go up. If you know how to send a rocket to the mun, then you know how to send a rocket to the mun. The only difference will be how much boring stuff you have to do beforehand.

Career in a nut shell so far.

Not entirely agreed. Yes, once you know how to get a rocket to the mun, your knowledge does not change. However, having to go to the mun without solar panels, a part limit, re-entry heat (and possibly no heatshields), no manouver nodes, no patched conics showing up on the map, etc. gives you additional challenges. It forces you to create different craft than you would build normally. One which may require some creative thinking and might not be as optimal as you would like it to be.

secondly: career mode is indeed grindy for people who are long-time vets of KSP who find no satisfaction in building crafts which must adhere to what to them must feel like artificial constraints. However, as a mode for people who have never played KSP before, I think it's pretty darn good. It has a learning curve and introduces you to the ways of rocketry in a step-by-step way.

Basically: any single player campaign in almost any game becomes a grindy bore once you're so good at it that you can do it with your eyes closed. Vets can build to their heart's content in sandbox, that's kinda why it exists.

[Jovus]

My question (2nd post) was a real one. Thanks to those who gave me a real answer, "Yes, this grinding was fun."

Perhaps you should use a different word than 'grinding', since it carries negative connotations. I dunno.

"Hard" just translates into "More grinding"

The actual difficulty curve of the game doesn't really go up. If you know how to send a rocket to the mun, then you know how to send a rocket to the mun. The only difference will be how much boring stuff you have to do beforehand.

I get the feeling we have at least two different camps on this issue. Me, I sympathize heavily with the above statement. Toodling around anywhere doing repetitive tasks feels like work to me, not fun. Specifically, in this case, I play this game to play around with getting to and being in space. Having a bunch of other stuff to do beforehand is like doing chores before I get to play my game.

However, perhaps this is a matter of variable tolerance. I recognize the impulse toward delayed 'earned' gratification. I do enjoy a slight lead time before getting to space - maybe no more than an hour. There are people here who seem happy with 5 or 6 hours. Now I'm curious: how far does that go? Do people enjoy 10 hours of 'grinding'? 15? 25? etc?

[spyker92]

About 7hours in total, finally did a munar fly by and upgraded the launch pad. 30th mission or so overall. The grind is real. Science is incredibly hard to come by until you can make a heavy SRB rocket that can break orbit / return (though this resulted in me making a almost entirely SRB rocket to get a munar flyby). Money isn't a real bottleneck since all the early stuff is so cheap (especially SRBs, which are pennies for a dollar considering what they can do), it's science that seems incredibly slow.

Not landing on the mun till I can EVA / Surface sample, which will take another dozen or so contracts till I have enough funds for both building upgrades.

[herbal space program]

Career in a nut shell so far.

I must say that when I played hard career in 0.90, there was more to it than just grinding. Managing an orbital rendezvous to recover a stranded Kerbal without any of the maneuver node stuff, the target indicator outside of a couple of km, or even RCS was a real piloting challenge!