What are your quirks?

[annallia]

Every so often on this forum I see people who do things that are completely unnecessary and maybe even a little odd.

By an example something I do in sandbox games (or careers once I reached a certain point). I launch all of my rockets dry (obviously SRB's start out full). I then drive a fuel truck out to the launch pad and fuel the rocket, or several trucks really. I also leave a small structure near where I park my trucks that is really just a probe core with an upturned rocket engine on it (this thing is firmly attached to the ground) that my fuel trucks dock with to burn off excess fuel before they get parked again... you know, for safety.

Where do the fuel trucks get their fuel? From my fuel depot of course, a row of large tanks, but what about them? Well they get it from my refineries... on Kerbin. Yes, I do on occasion when those tanks run dry actually drive tankers several hours to my KSC for the sole purpose of refilling those tanks.(I do admit to sometimes using hyper edit to make the tanker suddenly appear at the KSC or just fill the tanks, can't be micromaning everything all the time after all).

So I am wondering, what other sort of odd things do you people do that really serve no purpose other than for some strange reason you like it?

[Xannari Ferrows]

I kinda do a similar thing, but I use the Liquid Hydrogen rather than boring ol' LFO. Well, then again, I made it non-tweakable...

Well, in the VAB, I always put up a HECS probe core first for some reason, even though most of the time I put it right back.

[Xyphos]

I have a bad habit of over building everything.

I'm working to get over it tho.

[Superfluous J]

I (almost) always go to Mun first in any career, and not Minmus. Even though Minmus is easier and gives you more science. It just feels... wrong to skip Mun.

[NJP]

Every program I start a program, once I get steerable wheels, I try to get all of the science around KSC asap. I also try to do most of my missions in one go without quicksaves. It started out because I first played on a Mac and I couldn't figure out how to use the quicksave feature.

[Frank_G]

I never leave Kerbins SOI in career, unless i have almost finished the science tree. I know it is easier to get more science when launching interplanetary probes early, but i cant help it... I do so since career mode was introduced, dont know why.

[r4pt0r]

I've never taken off from Duna without the aid of a pair of "Hammer" SRBs.

[katateochi]

I (almost) always go to Mun first in any career, and not Minmus. Even though Minmus is easier and gives you more science. It just feels... wrong to skip Mun.

I also head for Mun first in both career and sandbox modes.

I never leave Kerbins SOI in career, unless i have almost finished the science tree. I know it is easier to get more science when launching interplanetary probes early, but i cant help it... I do so since career mode was introduced, dont know why.

Same. in my roleplay of career it doesn't seem right to go off to further planets without first exploring the local moons and gaining more advanced tech.

Another quirk I have is a superstition about not clicking the launch button while in action group or crew editing views, I nearly always switch back to the parts list before hitting launch. (it's a hang-on from older days where I was fairly sure that a game crash was more likely if you hit launch when viewing the action groups. It totally doesn't make the slightest difference, but I still find I do it).

With aircraft I still hold down shift to throttle up (forgetting that Z now does full throttle) and often find that I'm still holding shift down some time after leaving the ground (it's like I'm willing the craft to go faster).

[GoSlash27]

Stuff I do for no good reason:

-I design all my stages so that they crash into something when I'm finished with them because I don't like to litter. It's silly because I could easily terminate them from the tracking station.

-I always put retractable solar panels on my spaceplanes, and they really don't need them. The ox-stat would be adequate.

-I always plan my missions out on paper, design to the mission with an emphasis on weight and cost, and then build them. There's no real point to this in sandbox, but I do it anyway.

-I tend to favor LKO rendezvous for my missions so I can use lighter and cheaper launch vehicles. Again, there's no budget or weight restriction in sandbox, so it's pretty pointless.

Best,

-Slashy

*edit* Oh, another: I use spaceplanes almost exclusively in sandbox. Of course, there's no benefit to using them in sandbox...

Edited July 8, 2015 by GoSlash27

[Superfluous J]

Stuff I do for no good reason:

-I design all my stages so that they crash into something when I'm finished with them because I don't like to litter. It's silly because I could easily terminate them from the tracking station.

Not silly at all. Everybody could just hyperedit stuff into orbit but we all launch everything anyway. "Don't just delete stuff you don't want anymore that could cause issues in the future" is a perfectly valid gameplay choice. At least, it better be. I've made the same choice

[Sharpy]

Same. in my roleplay of career it doesn't seem right to go off to further planets without first exploring the local moons and gaining more advanced tech.

I don't send any kerbed missions there. But a couple small probes is mandatory.

As for quirks - I usually set aside an hour or two to play in the sandbox doing useless but fun projects (that sometimes bear useful fruit, but more often - not.)

Things like fancy fireworks, a huge crossbow for launching capsules 300m up by power of flexibility alone, a tiny SSTO that can make it to the orbit but not with any meaningful payload and not anywhere beyond the LKO, some guided missiles, electric motors etc. Some of these don't pan out, others do - the "thruster" of the SSTO seems to show a lot of promise, I'll try to include several copies of it in a larger craft where not all payload weight will be eaten by the necessary infrastructure.

[keeper]

In my career play I'm proper tight with the budget, overkill on accepting contracts and watching my millions mound high.

When I'm building my ships I skimp on everything except science equipment, they all end up looking nearly the same, and somewhat universal hunks o metal but it's nice, it's right.

[Landwalker]

I (almost) always go to Mun first in any career, and not Minmus. Even though Minmus is easier and gives you more science. It just feels... wrong to skip Mun.

+1 to this. Any flyby, orbit, or landing at Minmus has to be done at the Mun first.

(Once both moons have been properly landed on, of course, there's no reason to require a Mun base/colony before a Minmus base/colony, though. Not that I've ever made it far enough to start building bases or colonies, or for that matter even orbital stations.)

[Scotius]

I like to build land and water vehicles propelled by rockets and jets. Even when i have proper rover wheels unlocked. Also, every time i have a crew on Minmus, i'm sending one of my Kerbals on the top of highest cliff in the vicinity - and then i make him jump and bodyslide all the way down

[Aegrim]

Do an Apollo style mission before going anywhere else whenever there's a new feature to incorporate into it.

Also even though I'm in sandbox I try to follow a tech progression and send basic probes and orbitors then rivers. Then maybe have one big manned project because I'm not a fan of sending kerbals beyond the mum in one tiny command pod.

[MartGonzo]

I (almost) always go to Mun first in any career, and not Minmus. Even though Minmus is easier and gives you more science. It just feels... wrong to skip Mun.

me too, I'd like to have vehicles around the KSC too but frankly I can't spare the framerate,

it's bad enough when launching large rockets already.

I suppose the only completely unnecessary thing I do is rotate space station crews every once in a while just because I like rendezvous and docking with them.

[Geschosskopf]

I put TAC Self-Destruct charges on all my boosters, transfer stages, and anything else I don't need forever, so that not only do I have debris-free space, but all my launches are punctuated by cool explosions .

I frequently use stack separators instead of decouplers so that when the upper stage fires, its exhaust fires the separator into the lower stage at high speed, causing another explosion. This destroys the separator, and then the booster's self-destruct goes off, so 2 explosions per stage .

I use RCS Build Aid to make it so the CoM of my SSTOs never budges despite fuel consumption or payload loss/gain. This frequently results in butt-ugly spaceplanes but I find they have a certain rugged charm (and of course fly superbly) .

I always try to make my lifters, no matter how massive, as SSTO rockets. When this is impractical, I add an initial SRB-only stage to carry the monstrosity the first few kms up before main engine start. Such things of course need mucho RCS to orient for the circularization burn, and then I have this huge stack of empty tanks in LKO. But that's why there's TAC Self-Destruct, and the bigger the assembly destroyed, the more spectacular the explosion. Plus, doing this in orbit lets about 1/2 of Kerbin's population on the ground see it happen .

[Terwin]

My main quirk is that I don't let Kerbals die/stay dead.

Any deaths must be reverted or have a previous save loaded, even when it has bee a long time since I saved.

(loss of bits and pieces of hardware don't matter much, just the Kerbals)

[T-Bouw]

All my planes always get equiped with a parashute on top at the COM.

You know...for safety.

Or when I'm feeling lazy to make a proper landing.

But they always have them, even the ones in Sandbox.

[Plume & Akakak]

I talk to my screen with my nose pinched.

...

"Hey Bill ! I think we're out of fuel !"

"It's your turn to get out and push, Bob !"

Come on. I know you do it too.

Edited July 8, 2015 by Plume & Akakak

[cantab]

I've been doing the whole manual fuelling as part of my Kethane Space Program, but that's a gimmick for that one save really.

More generally, I usually if not always use do destination orbit rendezvous, ie a separate orbiter and lander a la Apollo, even though for the Mun and many other places it's not the most mass-efficient.

I enjoy building to size and sometimes mass constraints. For example my Moho lander was built to fit in a 2.5m flush fairing, even though I could perfectly well have made it wider and expanded the fairing. Back in .90 I specifically opted for fixed-size fairings rather than procedural ones.

And I always like a good gravity assist. Whether it's a flyby of Eve to make getting to Moho easier, or a clever Tylo assist to capture into Jool orbit without the perils of aerobraking, I'll spend the time and effort to get things just so.

[Bishop149]

I design all my stages so that they crash into something when I'm finished with them because I don't like to litter. It's silly because I could easily terminate them from the tracking station.

I do that too. . . all my lifters are designed to put the payload in a ~ 100km apoapsis / 65km periapsis Kerbin orbit, I then do the final push to 0 eccentricity using a tiny amount of the payloads delta V, leaving the lifter in a decaying orbit.

Whats more if I am unable to do that, I usually attach a nice slab of C4 (KAS/KIS) to the bit that will end up as litter and send a Kerbal on EVA to blow it up after payload separation. NO LITTERING!

- I have a habit of rather ummm overdoing the deltaV of my missions . . . . if a mission in theory requires minimum 4000k d/V and I'll take 6000. . . . often more like 8000. Call it paranoia, it does give my missions a large amount of flexibility and tolerance of screw ups and I've yet to strand a Kerbal anywhere so maybe paranoia is good.

- Its a hang over from when I couldn't do docking (now I could do it in my sleep) but I STILL have a tendency to design all-in-one interplanetary stage / landers. Its dreadfully inefficient and I really must get over it.

- I dislike long periods of high time acceleration, you know to hurry along interplanetary transfers. It always feels like somehow wasting time and that my space program really should be DOING something rather than twiddling its collective thumbs until that probe gets to Jool. . . .

Edited July 8, 2015 by Bishop149

[Wjolcz]

I always go for planes first and leave rockets for later, although they are useless in early stock career. I use them to train crew and overall joy-flying. Figuring out early jets/rocket-powered planes is pretty fun IMO.

I frequently use stack separators instead of decouplers so that when the upper stage fires, its exhaust fires the separator into the lower stage at high speed, causing another explosion. This destroys the separator, and then the booster's self-destruct goes off, so 2 explosions per stage .

Same.

I (almost) always go to Mun first in any career, and not Minmus. Even though Minmus is easier and gives you more science. It just feels... wrong to skip Mun.

Same.

EDIT: I also hate to send Kerbals on interplanetary missions with low-tech. And never send them alone. At least 4 per mission.

Edited July 8, 2015 by Veeltch

[micha]

I've watched too much Scott Manley and been a bit influenced. So, I never delete junk, what stays up stays up unless I deorbit it. So either I put expensive probe cores on everything to autonomously deorbit it, or plan maneuvres so spent stages drop back to Kerbin or impact the destination. I also go to great length to make reasonably "realistic" looking rockets - as little as possible sticking out all over the place during atmospheric ascent/descent.

I've also not yet gotten out of the Kerbin SOI, except one or two sandbox missions just to test the theory of it. I play quite slowly, usually with MANY simultaneous missions (no more than a couple of days of time warp at a time), and every time I've gotten my space program to an interesting point Squad released a new version of KSP and I almost always start from scratch.

[justidutch]

Seems I have some quirks that are opposite of others here…

I never do probes. When I get the "explore xyz' contracts, it's a full manned mission with crewed Science Lab to land on the surface. If one is able to do the full enchilada right away, why not? Also, all big missions like that include an engineer, even if they have absolutely no purpose. It just seems like the right thing to do.

As soon as I am able to explore other planets, I'm outta here. I don't feel the need to explore Mun or Minmus fully before any other location, in fact I feel the need to do the reverse ASAP.

It seems lately that I'm always including a heat shield on any vehicle that is returning to Kerbin, even though I know they don't really need them. And I also include way too many parachutes, something about the union's safety regulations...