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Is it true that most KSP players never go interplanetary?


KerikBalm

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I've heard it stated on these forums that many if not most of the KSP players haven't visited a body farther than minmus (and even fewer do more than land on eve/duna, and fewer still return from duna).

Is this true? If so why?

*edit*

I don't want to be rude, but as its been said multiple times in this thread: this forum thread is not an accurate sample for ksp players. There are other threads to post your accomplishments... please don't post here just saying what planets you've been to.

I want to know why some people don't go futher than the moons, if you're not one of them, then at least say what hurdle you had to overcome before you went to another planet

Let us not consider people who bought the game, but have barely played it... and only consider those that played enough to have returned from Mun/Minmus*. What I want to know is:

#1) What percent of those people have gone on to interplanetary missions?

#2) For the remaining portion: what prevented them from going on interplanetary missions next?

*Obviously, there's no point in asking why someone hasn't gone interplanetary when they haven't made it to Mun yet.

 

Suggested reasons (in no particular order):

#1 Waiting for transfer windows sucks when you can keep playing in kerbin's SOI

#2 No good way of finding out when there is a transfer window in game

#3 No good way of finding out dV requirements in game

#4 No good way of finding out your craft's dV in game

- Last two combine to make players hesitant to attempt a longer mission given expected failure rates.

#5 Maneuver node editor can be a pain

 

I propose that a small planetoid at Kerbin L4/5 would eliminate point #2 and help ease the transition to interplanetary mission. Either small enough that dV requirements aren't much more than landing on Mun and returning (so #3 and 4 aren't such an issue), or with an atmosphere so it requires less rocket dV to do a 1 way trip there

Edited by KerikBalm
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I would have to say, it's probably that past minmus requires MUCH more effort and planning than a simple mun/minmus trip. It's the point where ship construction is make or break, as in you can pretty much hodgepodge whatever you want and make it to minmus within a reasonable parameter but for anything past that you have to actually plan and put time into your ships unless you are well acquainted with Kerbals mechanics or have a plethora of addons to run the data for you. Having never touched a mod/addon in my time, I can say the biggest and steepest learning curve was certainly going to anything past minmus.

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I've heard this as well - no idea how true it is. If it is true, we can only speculate why but I have some possible reasons.

1.  The stock game only provides rudimentary tools for going interplanetary. Learning by failing is fine around Kerbin and its moons where mission times are measured in days and the map window provides an excellent tool for trajectory planning. Learning by failing when journey times are measured in months and the game provides very little information on how to even get started without resorting to looking stuff up on the internet - is much more of a barrier.

2. There's nothing to really do at any of the planets that you can't do on the Mun or Minmus for a lot less effort.

3. The graphics for other planets are dull and discourage exploration. You can see virtually all there is to see about them from the Tracking Centre anyway.

4. Where there are Easter eggs on other planets, there aren't any stock mechanics for finding them, other than the Mk1 eyeball from low orbit, which gets real tedious, real fast. I know - I tried it.

5. The tech tree is easily unlockable without going interplanetary. Again, it's quite possible to play a variant game and acquire meaningful (as in necessary to progress through the tech tree) science from visiting other planets but it's a lot more effort than simply sciencing the mulch out of Minmus and isn't helped by the poor layout of the tech tree.

In short, going interplanetary is a lot of effort for minimal game-play benefit.

Edited by KSK
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I rarely go interplanetary, even though I have no difficulty doing so with stock tools. To add my own reason to KSK's list above:

I am a tinkerer at heart. Tweaking KSP is about as much fun for me as actually playing the game is. For that reason, I don't really run long-term career saves - at some point the itch just strikes me to try something different, and it usually happens before I go further than maybe Duna or so, if I reach that at all.

Essentially, I am the guy who has a great car but almost never drives it, instead preferring to lie under it with a wrench just for the heck of it :P

Edited by Streetwind
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I don't know about "most" or "never", but I've been playing since 2013 and the farthest I have been is Duna! Oh and I've sent a one-way probe to Eve, the Kerballed lander I sent never made it, was some sort of Kraken lurking and soon after abandoned that build until the next major update. One probe flew by Moho as well, but failed to capture. The rest of the time has been spent on the Mun and Minmus, have had some useful stations every now and then, a brief stint with a mining base and some mucking about with spaceplanes.

All of the time in between was either spent tweaking a mod build or waiting for the next big patch!

 

*edit*

 

16 minutes ago, KSK said:

...it's quite possible to play a variant game and acquire meaningful (as in necessary to progress through the tech tree) science from visiting other planets but it's a lot more effort than simply sciencing the mulch out of Minmus...

I don't know if it is, much. Mostly the difference is in time, which can be easily skipped past. I think it is more of a psychological barrier than real extra effort, the other planets *seem* a lot further away but when you can accelerate time by 100,000x that becomes moot (and the required manouvres are largely the same as compared to a Mun/Minmus trip well), but not to the mind. Nobody really likes to have their virtual space centre to be "abandoned" for several years whilst a planetary transfer is skipped through, or at least I don't. Make any sense?

Edited by p1t1o
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When playing career games I often try to follow a somewhat realistic(-ish) progress.

So I start with mission in orbit, then Mun and Minmus before heading out to Duna/Ike and then to bodies further out (or in).

I'm also a bit of a sad puppy so I tend get delayed in my plans by saving Kerbals in distress all the time.
(In my current, and rather new, save I've got 24 active Kerbonauts, without actually hiring a single one.) :wink:

All in all it leads to me taking a bit bit of play time before I leave the home system, but after a while I head out.

Edited by Curveball Anders
Gramer
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3 hours ago, KSK said:

I've heard this as well - no idea how true it is. If it is true, we can only speculate why but I have some possible reasons.

1.  The stock game only provides rudimentary tools for going interplanetary. Learning by failing is fine around Kerbin and its moons where mission times are measured in days and the map window provides an excellent tool for trajectory planning. Learning by failing when journey times are measured in months and the game provides very little information on how to even get started without resorting to looking stuff up on the internet - is much more of a barrier.

2. There's nothing to really do at any of the planets that you can't do on the Mun or Minmus for a lot less effort.

3. The graphics for other planets are dull and discourage exploration. You can see virtually all there is to see about them from the Tracking Centre anyway.

So... for #1, would you say part of the problem is the difficulty in finding transfer windows?

Journey times in months aren't such a problem for sandbox games... there's the timewarp function after all. It does make tinkering a little tedious, and I've found HE enourmously enhanced my gameplay just for tinkering purposes (now in 1.1.2, I'm back to getting to orbit, then editing the save file to change the reference body and SMA... a little more tedious for tinkering, easier than all the timewarping to windows and all the stuff to get to a planet to test though... like I did with my first duna missions)

#2) This may be true for Dres, but there's no moon with an atmosphere, some of the aerostuff is fun, but then you may say that can be done on kerbin... there's nothing to really *do* anywhere except see the sights, and conquer the challenges.

#3) Is this not true of Mun and Minmus, or do you consider those two more detailed?

3 hours ago, Streetwind said:

I rarely go interplanetary, even though I have no difficulty doing so with stock tools. To add my own reason to KSK's list above:

I am a tinkerer at heart. Tweaking KSP is about as much fun for me as actually playing the game is. For that reason, I don't really run long-term career saves - at some point the itch just strikes me to try something different, and it usually happens before I go further than maybe Duna or so, if I reach that at all.

Essentially, I am the guy who has a great car but almost never drives it, instead preferring to lie under it with a wrench just for the heck of it :P

If you don't run career saves, then you should have no problem starting a sandbox save and just time warping to the time and through the transfer... if something else strikes your fancy, it doesn't have to be in the same savegame, you don't have to put off the timewarp to a transfer window or through the transfer.

Anyway... I do play career a lot, and the reason I haven't visited Dres, Jool, or Eeloo/the outer planets (OPM mod)... is time and the transfer windows. I don't like timewarping doing nothing in career when there's other stuff I could be doing... so... my eve mission is just arriving now, my moho mission just got back, my dres mission is nearly there, my jool missions are still on the way (the probes are nearly there, the kerbals just left kerbin and will take a while), my Duna mission is awaiting the return window.

The only planet I've been to and back from(Edit: in this career save) is moho.. because its the shortest, and the transfer window happens the most often.

To me, the main thing that puts me off from launching or completing interplanetary missions (outside of sandbox), is the transfer window. When I think of all the time my kerbals will spend there waiting for the return window as well, I then want to make it a more substantial mission, which rapidly snowballs into a very major effort.

I wonder if a planetoid at L4/L5 would be a good addition as the next step after mun/minmus, but before Duna/Eve.

While the transfer would be quite different from what one does for other missions (making its "training value" dubious), the advantage would be that there is no transfer window... you can depart at any time for almost the same dV (exactly the same if it has absolutely 0 inclination and eccentricity)... just like Mun and Minmus.

It could at least get players comfortable with going farther away from kerbin, and the more complicated way that one returns to kerbin.

Edited by KerikBalm
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I wouldn't be surprised if this WAS true.  When I first started playing KSP, it took me a while before I even figured out just how this orbit stuff works.  Months it had taken to get to the Mun as well, and that was using Mechjeb.  The way I initially thought it worked was, and I'm not joking, launch, and then point towards the Mun.  And I did that far to many times to even find it funny.  Perhaps I should have read a tutorial? 

In my 300 or so hours of KSP, just recently have I visited Moho, Dres, Jool/moons of Jool, and Eeloo.  This rapid progression was mainly as the result of finding out that Nuclear engines really were useful, and not just some crappy engine that takes a long time to get you anywhere.  Except for the fact that I went to Dres without using the Nuclear Engines, somehow.  And although I really want to go back to Jool or Eeloo, I always find myself asking the same question.  Why?  What is their that I haven't seen?  Once you've landed on  a planet in KSP, you've seen all their is on that planet except for Easter eggs.  Only reason I even considered going to Bop was because of the Dead Kraken easter egg.  Other than that, I wouldn't really want to bother going to these planets, unless it's something incredibly cool, like my planned Eve station, which is going to be worked on soon. 

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"visited" with drones:
Near every planet (jool had destroyed his drone :( )

The ion-engine is a good engine :D

Visited with kerbals:
Only the moon, minmus...

If i had managed to build a station on Duna, then i would send some Kerbals...

(i would install a good kolonisation mod, that can be used by drones... terraformer/Xenon ftw :D )

 

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Considering how Steam (and in particular sales on Steam causing people to buy games they're only mildly curious about) works, I'd guess that most of the people who bought the game haven't left Kerbin's ATMOSPHERE, little alone its SOI. I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of owners haven't even played the game.

Well I'd be mildly surprised at that last part. But still.

(Note: This is not a commentary on KSP. I'd suspect similar is true of MOST games on Steam)

Edited by 5thHorseman
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I have only got one planet left to visit (tylo) wih kerbals, I play with life support mods, so missions take planning! normally I only get to one planet before doing a new save! I can see why people don't do interplanetary, it can take weeks for a casual player to do one (my eve mission was started planning a month ago, with launching of the engine module, hen refueling, then sending up the landers (all of which had to be tested and redesigned and tested!) and sending the eve ascent vehicle!

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I've sent probes to all the planets, and some of the moons.  But the last few releases, I seem to get to a kerballed interplanetary launch right as a new version drops.  Happened with .90-> 1 release.  That said I've only got one kerbal to Duna, and it was a disaster.  The drop tanks on the outer sides, when dropped actually caused the rest of the station to fall apart.  I think I had put them attached to the cupola, and not the section below, so when it popped it caused the cupola to separate too.  Then 1.1 dropped.

I mainly play in career mode, and immediately restart when a new version ships.  Haven't been playing as much lately, got too many hobbies at the moment (Xcom2, learning to fly and build a quadcopter, teaching myself front web end development), so my 1.1 career is barely mun capable even with starting with extra science and funds to avoid the early game grind of collecting science in all the ksc biomes.

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Playing career and restarting with major updates puts quite a crimp in interplanetary missions. My time is somewhat limited, so before I get around to it, I have to restart because the game has changed significantly. I consider not doing career this time around simply to do some manned missions in deep space, but then again the narrative of building a space programme from 4 madkerbs and a bunch of junk is quite pleasing. Which reminds me, I better go send a probe to a first munar landing in 1.1

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17 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

Considering how Steam (and in particular sales on Steam causing people to buy games they're only mildly curious about) works, I'd guess that most of the people who bought the game haven't left Kerbin's ATMOSPHERE, little alone its SOI. I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of owners haven't even played the game.

Well I'd be mildly surprised at that last part. But still.

(Note: This is not a commentary on KSP. I'd suspect similar is true of MOST games on Steam)

thats true
:/

but i bought this game on steam :P

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I feel it's docking that holds people back, you could build an interplanetary vessel as soon as you have docking ports in career mode! Docking is a pain to learn and needs patience so a lot of people don't bother ( I know I didn't for a year! soon as I learnt I conquered the solar system!)

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5 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

I own 86 games on Steam (Including KSP) and I've played... (counts) ... 41 of them. Of those, I've played 17 enough to compare to going interplanetary in KSP.

i bought not much games...
i often get games because its sometimes cheaper to buy a whole bundle then the single game...
somethimes there are gratis games (like portal2 - i play with linux, so valve gave me this game for free)
btw: KSP chrashed very often  on linux...
i dont have ... much games...

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Something to with lack of delta-v readout *cough* and launch window planning tools *cough cough* in the game, maybe? :wink:  Two components that are, if not critical to going interplanetary, psychologically very important for people who want some reassurance that their mission will work before they launch it.

It seems very odd to me that the mechanics of going to, say, Duna, is something you have to look up online because there isn't enough information in-game. The forum community is conspicuously smaller than even the 30,000 Steam ratings (let alone the total number of sales!) so we can suspect that the majority of players never get to the stage of asking the internet how to do things, and thus run into total brick walls. I'd hazard a guess that a lot of people still think the game is in beta...

I could easily believe that @5thHorseman has it right in that it's so easy to pick up KSP when you're only mildly curious, but then you hit the learning curve/information drought and just can't be bothered.

For myself - probes to every body in 0.90. Short 1.0.5 career where I went to atmospheric targets only, and haven't really started my 1.1 career because I want to see whether Squad can fix the wheel issues...

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I have been to every world, KSP has to offer. It took me almost 2 years to do so, but i like interplanetary missions, especially planning and building stuff. The more complex and detailed a mission gets, the better :)

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6 minutes ago, eddiew said:

Something to with lack of delta-v readout *cough* and launch window planning tools *cough cough* in the game, maybe? :wink:  Two components that are, if not critical to going interplanetary, psychologically very important for people who want some reassurance that their mission will work before they launch it.

@5thHorseman

 

i build a drone, and tried to go to the planet...
if the drone is gone, its only a unmanned drone :)
 

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I've been to all the planets and moons with manned landers, and safely returned them all.  For the majority I have only done this once, though I have been to Duna and back on several occasions.  Initially I did this this just for the challenge of doing it, but now that I have, the great majority of my missions beyond LKO are just to Mun.

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37 minutes ago, Kertech said:

Docking is a pain to learn and needs patience so a lot of people don't bother ( I know I didn't for a year! soon as I learnt I conquered the solar system!)

Story of my *KSP* life...Exact up to the time...Still working on the conquering part though...

Edited by Atlas2342
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