Spend ALL my funds on one longshot mission? (ultra-hard mode)

[xtoro]

Just curious because I'm about to send a huge ship with landers to Duna, Ike, Eve and Gilly to complete multiple contracts and get mega science. I'll be landing everywhere but Eve (for now) and then returning to Kerbin. But, this is literally using ALL my funds. The payout will be huge, but there'll be no quick-loading if I mess up. My biggest worry is the Duna landing. Ike and Gilly will be easy.

Anyone else take an all-or-nothing risk like this before? If it's a complete failure, I'll be trying to land and recover old probes and whatnot to cash in on scrap parts so I can maybe ferry some tourist or redo easy contracts to rebuild my bank.

I'm trying really hard to not make a copy of my save folder, just in case lol

[Rainbow-Dashie]

I once did an all or nothing Manned Mission to Duna... left me with literally 70 dollars after the ship launched...

Then I watched in terror as my entire Space Agency's budget fell out of the sky in pieces while in orbit... Damn space debris...

[annallia]

I did do an all or nothing run in 0.90 to Laythe.

It ended in disaster though, my ship snapped while breaking around Jool. I ended up de orbiting a few of my tugs as well as a few refueling satellites to get me some capital to work with again.

On the plus side it got me to finally start using the Sr. Docking ports in stead of regular clamp-o-trons for my large builds... So it wasn't a total loss.

[xtoro]

Gah, you guys aren't helping me go forward with your horror stories! LOL

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

I just spent all 6,000,000 funds I had on 12 ships I'm sending to Jool. Currently in orbit they leave in 3 days.

Right now I can't put a satellite in orbit.

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I'm trying really hard to not make a copy of my save folder, just in case lol

always backup your saves!

[mikegarrison]

I did something close to that last night, but I was playing with F5 enabled. I ended up making a ton of money on it.

[cybersol]

There are a couple of policies in the Admin building that could help bail you out. Also, "insurance" satellites in polar orbit of Kerbin, Mun and Minmus could be used to generate money if thing went bad. Plus you know Kerbals, they would just go for it!

[Randazzo]

And here I was just whining to myself about dropping 3 million on fuel base infrastructure I'll never use.

[steve_v]

Remember Murphy's Constant:

Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value.

Put all your cash in one mission and it will probably explode

[KerikBalm]

Why wouldn't you do a seperate mission to eve? It seems to me that it would be more mass and fund efficient....

And you don't "put all your eggs in one basket"..

[Warzouz]

Could you bring 2 lander along with different designs ?

When I when to Jool, I planned to land on Tylo (first time). I had an SSTO with low TWR. I wasn't sure I would be able to land and take off with this ship, so I brought along a lighter classic staged lander (thus much lighter)

In the end, both went well. The additional lander was only 4 tons more on the launch pad.

[Zild]

From a business perspective this makes zero sense.

Yes in business it can be right to take all-or-nothing risks, but in this case you have the "nothing" risk without the "all" reward; what do you stand to gain from this risk that you could not otherwise get through safer means?

On the other hand if you are looking for a reason to reset (as I always do when I accidentally kill Jeb) then that's a different story altogether!

[Sharpy]

Why wouldn't you do a seperate mission to eve? It seems to me that it would be more mass and fund efficient....

It would be more fund-efficient if these were fly-bys; burning radial/antiradial in the sun orbit you're making your orbit more elliptic thus reaching both the inner and the outer planets for the cost of a normal transfer orbit. But since you gain extra speed relative to both of them, if you plan to stop at any, it will not be more efficient; transfer Kerbin->Eve->Duna or Kerbin->Duna->Eve will be less fuel-efficient than two missions, Kerbin->Duna + Kerbin->Eve.

[Grumman]

I'm going to be doing one of these once I've got enough SCIENCE! I'll still have satellites in orbit and a few on the ground so I will be able to recover by spamming science contracts, but I will be putting all my Kerbals and all my money in LKO ready for a mission to Laythe.

[Concentric]

It would be more fund-efficient if these were fly-bys; burning radial/antiradial in the sun orbit you're making your orbit more elliptic thus reaching both the inner and the outer planets for the cost of a normal transfer orbit. But since you gain extra speed relative to both of them, if you plan to stop at any, it will not be more efficient; transfer Kerbin->Eve->Duna or Kerbin->Duna->Eve will be less fuel-efficient than two missions, Kerbin->Duna + Kerbin->Eve.

That's precisely what Kerik is saying: it would be more efficient to go to Eve with a separate mission to the one going to Duna. However, if the return and mission stages for each location can detach and get orbit during the flyby of the rest of the ship, it seems plausible that it might be more efficient to send the single, splitting mission than two entirely separate ones. It would, of course, require calculation and/or testing.

[zarakon]

You really should allow quicksaves or at least back up your save folder just in case your mission gets ruined by some kind of glitch, bug, RL emergency, etc.

[lazarus1024]

I just spent all 6,000,000 funds I had on 12 ships I'm sending to Jool. Currently in orbit they leave in 3 days.

Right now I can't put a satellite in orbit.

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always backup your saves!

This, this, this. I don't do it as often as I should, but I DO do it periodically. It has saved my bacon a couple of times. Beyond that, I sometimes port between machines. Desktop, laptop or tablet and it is nice to be able to take my current save, play on that and reload it on my main machine (desktop).

In a lot of ways, I am really looking forward to multi for this reason. Run it on my server and then I can (hopefully) have a persistent environment to run on any of my machines without tossing around the save files. That and so that my sons can start playing directly with me.

[xtoro]

Well, I did it, and it paid off! I lost 2 goo containers because of stupid design on my behalf by attaching them to part of a lander that I wasn't going to bring back with me. But all in all I got pretty much all my funds back and almost 5k in science! Starting to unlock the last tier already!

I just spent all 6,000,000 funds I had on 12 ships I'm sending to Jool. Currently in orbit they leave in 3 days.

Right now I can't put a satellite in orbit.

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I hear ya. Mine was only 3 ships but it was all-in.

always backup your saves!

Why wouldn't you do a seperate mission to eve? It seems to me that it would be more mass and fund efficient....

And you don't "put all your eggs in one basket"..

Eve was a separate mission. I had one probe going to land on Eve and do atmo/seismic/pressure/temperature/goo science (which landed fine and got all the science transmitted) and then I had one ship with a probe going to Ike, and a 3rd ship with 2 crewed landers going to Duna and Ike (for a different biome than the probe and a different contract, but also for Eva reports and surface samples). When I launched the 2 ships headed for Duna, that was the last of my funds. I couldn't really do anything else except wait for the Eve ship to land and collect science which also completed the "Explore Eve" contract. Shortly after that was the 2 Duna-bound ships. Now all I have to do is get my Ike probe back to Kerbin to collect more Biome science.

My space program is back on track!