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What was the hardest thing you've done in KSP?


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10 minutes ago, Vanamonde said:

It took me minutes to figure out how to reach orbit. But t took me 4 days of constant trials and experimentation to figure out how to land on Mun. But the first time I tried to rendezvous, I succeeded. But I spent about 3 months working out how to make fully reusable interplanetary ships. But making an SSTO that can carry cargo and reliably make orbit? Four years. FOUR YEARS

+1 on this.  In hindsight, I doubt I had enough TWR for a beginner landing... Also didn't have enough fuel to get back to orbit.

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For me it was relearning to make orbit after the atmo-changes.
I think that was after 1.0 dropped.

It was such a drastic change from before I had the biggest trouble adjusting my habits.

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Returning from Eve, definitely. Actually, not the "returning" part but getting the damned thing down on the surface in one piece, in 1.0.5. Getting it back up to orbit was surprisingly easy.

Next hardest, class E asteroid to Jool, for the sheer slowness required to avoid the Kraken.

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Continue playing despite the bugs and crashes. :D

 

(Does the OP mean totally ,or at the time?)

Learning to dock was a triumph. (Yesterday i did it three times before breakfast, literally)

Landing on the mun was easy. Making it back (5 rescue missions) was hard.

/but most of the time my really big plans get scuttled, b/c they keep changing builds

//Edit: once you learn dV and to practice everything at the KSC or Mun things go a lot smoother

Edited by Brainlord Mesomorph
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The one thing that was most difficult to do for me was trying to dock with a docking node for a space station which was spinning violently and didn't have any control of it's own. Of course I could've just quickloaded or fast forwarded to stop it spinning, but if Cooper could do that trick in Interstellar, why wouldn't I be able to?

Didn't take me a minute like it did in Interstellar, but I did actually manage to dock (after 20 minutes...), which was my most hollow achievement of my life. Yay!

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For me (I'm still a noob) it was the first time I landed on Mun without crashing at +600m/s. I felt sooo acomplished when I landed! Such a rewarding feeling, Now , I'm still trying to make better Munlandings but still have some issues on saving fuel and using gravity to help me. :cool:

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Well if you want to talk HARDEST - but not necessarily rewarding:

Docking two ship when they are both out of monoprop, and you have to do everything with main engines.

or when one ship has no SAS at all, even using the time-warp cheat that took hours.

 

Edited by Brainlord Mesomorph
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Probably my one and only Jool mission. 3 crew, no aerobreaking, extremely tiny dV margins, low-tech parts, no RTG, tiny solar panels and limited battery capacity. Great fun!

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On 5/9/2016 at 0:16 PM, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

Well if you want to talk HARDEST - but not necessarily rewarding:

Docking two ship when they are both out of monoprop, and you have to do everything with main engines.

or when one ship has no SAS at all, even using the time-warp cheat that took hours.

 

I once forgot fore/aft thrusters on two craft I intended to dock together and didn't figure it out until I had them both, together, rendezvoused in orbit. A tiny bit of thrust and just glide it in... thankfully my vertical and horizontal thrusters worked, but it was hairy!

Hardest for me? That Tylo slingshot (with a re-useable probe lander that was set to visit both Pol and Bop) that the folk in the gameplay q&A forum helped me with. It seems easy now, but I needed KAC, MJ's maneuver node editor and a heck of a lot of luck to pull it off.

Ended up with a sub-1000m/s burn that included a plane change to reach Pol and the extra velocity from the inefficient (read: fast) course I took on the way there.

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Sending a Rescue craft into Low Kerbin Orbit to pick up a stranded Jebediah Kerman.

Both the rescue and stranded vessels didn't have Docking ports or the Claw part (since I was on the early side of the tech tree) nor enough fuel to reach each other and de-orbit. As a result I had to spend half a Kerbin orbit piloting an EVA'd Jeb praying I wouldn't run out of EVA fuel.

 

And that mission was more tense and satisfying to complete than docking two crafts together for the first time.

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Returning a three-Kerbal crew from the surface of Eve that had been originally sent on one-way mission.  I sent the crew to fulfill contracts for an Eve base and to plant a flag on Eve.  I then forgot about them for a couple decades until I decided to take on the challenge of bringing them back home.  That was probably my toughest undertaking so far because to the overall scope of the thing (read about it here).

My next toughest mission was probably my manned Moho landing and return.  I also thought landing on Tylo was really tough.

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Well it's either a successful duna landing and return or making a good SSTO that is actually useful. I finally made a working SSTO with a payload but it was in a lower orbit. But I am close to my goal!

(I've played this game for 1000 hours and it's hard to make a SSTO. Why can't I be @SpaceplaneAddict!!)

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My first successful transfer outside Kerbin SOI. Trying to manipulate  that $(^%^*# node while zoomed out.

Or maybe the first successful Mun landing with a round trip.

Or the first rendezvous and docking in LKO with two separately launched vehicles.

All done before I discovered the frustration saver that is MechJeb. :D

I still do my own rendezvous and docking. Still fun every time. Flying and doing orbital transfers manually? Meh.

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Probably returning to Kerbin from a Duna flyby (I failed the capture burn) with unwieldy shuttle...which had nothing but monopropellant left in the tanks. (I'm not great at interstellar travel, much less interstellar travel via RCS.) 

One member of the crew survived reentry, via a glitch that stopped her in midair when the cockpit exploded while she was on the ladder. Then she fell into the ocean. Survived that, too. (This was after a large number of quickloads/quicksaves.)

The entire incident led me to design an airdroppable retirement bungalow. I'll try for Duna again eventually. 

 

Edited by Ehco Corrallo
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I've just finished my single launch, no ISRU Grand Tour Ship :D - the "Zoidberg". Even though I haven't had the time to actually do The Grand Tour (landing on all bodies except for Jool and Kerbol, that is), I've tested the parts individually repeated times.

This kind of endeavor has made me use up every little bit of knowledge I have ever collected in this game: from asparagus staging to inverted nosecones. The result is a craft that I will probably never be able to surpass in terms of complexity.

 

Here it is:

Some hard stuff the mission requires:

  • Putting the thing on LKO.
  • Landing on Eve and returning to space using a 20 ton lander.
  • Using <2 ton ion lander for all bodies except for: Eve, Duna, Vall, Laythe (except final ascent) and Tylo. 
  • All dockings are RCS-less
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2 hours ago, Dfthu said:

Well it's either a successful duna landing and return or making a good SSTO that is actually useful. I finally made a working SSTO with a payload but it was in a lower orbit. But I am close to my goal!

(I've played this game for 1000 hours and it's hard to make a SSTO. Why can't I be @SpaceplaneAddict!!)

It pays bad... I'm bad at rockets. WAYYYYY bad.

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On 5/9/2016 at 0:16 PM, teag2 said:

Probably my one and only Jool mission. 3 crew, no aerobreaking, extremely tiny dV margins, low-tech parts, no RTG, tiny solar panels and limited battery capacity. Great fun!

Reminds me of yesterday when I was going to Laythe in the Science mode.  Built the best craft I could with the unlocked parts.  I put all the science equipment I could on it too, and was ready to take off. 

And soon I was there, orbiting Laythe.  The only problem was I forgot to put on any parachutes, a ladder, and even forgot to symmetry the fuel linings on the lander from the main tank to the 4 external tanks.  So I ended up having to land a around 7-8 ton lander with nothing but 4 terrier engines in an atmosphere, where they are least effective, while trying to use the fuel transfer tool to get the engines tanks with the fuel they required.  Needless to say, it took a fair bit of quicksaves and reloads, before I finally landed it on the Northern Pole of Laythe. 

Edited by RandomUser
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Oh yeah, and don't forget my first Eve mission. Tried to aerocapture without a heatshield. Lost a transmitter and an RCS port to stuipidity. I did a 30+ minute (thank physwarp, it was only 10 mins real time) capture burn with my 2 remaining RCS ports, and ended up landing it in the end. (It still had a good portion of monopropellent left... I wonder to this day how much RCS dV it had...)

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13 minutes ago, teag2 said:

Oh yeah, and don't forget my first Eve mission. Tried to aerocapture without a heatshield. Lost a transmitter and an RCS port to stuipidity. I did a 30+ minute (thank physwarp, it was only 10 mins real time) capture burn with my 2 remaining RCS ports, and ended up landing it in the end. (It still had a good portion of monopropellent left... I wonder to this day how much RCS dV it had...)

Sounds just like mine.  Went to Eve using a craft designed for Duna, that I built using a tutorial (while back, was still a noob at interplanetary missions) everything worked until I got to Eve and tried to land.  That is of course, when I learned that Eve had an atmosphere way to thick to simply fly into.  Needless to say, I didn't survive and had to then redo the entire mission with a heat shield. 

Funny to look back on, cause now I know how to build a capable craft and land, all with relative ease. 

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Making a spaceplane with FAR.   Only managed to do it once, and it was barely useful, only taking a few supplies of life support goods along with a group of passengers.  It also couldn't maneuver in space since it didn't have RCS.

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