Is it true that most KSP players never go interplanetary?

[The_Rocketeer]

 

1 hour ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Needing a "launch window" is exactly why the principle is different. Get into Kerbin orbit and you can play with a node until you get a reasonably cheap intercept with Mun or Minmus. Same can't be said for going to another planet, if it's the wrong time of year then no amount of node fiddling will make it cheap.

The issue is that the game tells you exactly nothing about when those transfer windows occur. And it's a very tough thing to trial-and-error.

To be fair, learning to interplanetary is perfectly do-able inside Kerbin's SOI, by learning to transfer from Mun to Minmus and back - this is the best and perhaps only justification I can think of for giving Kerbin 2 moons instead of Duna. Launch windows aren't relevant if you plan to enter LKO at all, which mayb it's just me but I always like to have a thorough check, and probably a top up the tanks, before I set sail for distant worlds. As with all things in KSP, from ascent to docking to hoffman transfers to re-entry, intuition is more rewarding than any amount of preparation and planning. How to we learn this intuition? By screwing up, a lot.

[Red Iron Crown]

3 minutes ago, The_Rocketeer said:

As with all things in KSP, from ascent to docking to hoffman transfers to re-entry, intuition is more rewarding than any amount of preparation and planning.

Speak for yourself. Guesswork/intuition is unsatisfying to me, but when things work out just like I planned it's like this.

[The_Rocketeer]

Just now, Red Iron Crown said:

Speak for yourself. Guesswork/intuition is unsatisfying to me, but when things work out just like I planned it's like this.

I guess some were born to Ground Control, and some were born to BadS. For me, BadS wins every time.

More seriously, I like the times when the plan DOESN'T come together but all my guys get home anyway. This is more or less the premise of every great half-decent work of science fiction ever.

Edited May 17, 2016 by The_Rocketeer

[Sandworm]

(1) Career mode is all about grinding out quick contracts.  Going a long way takes time.  So you "win" much faster by staying near Kerbin.  This is a vanilla game design error imho.

(2) We lack many of the tools necessary to travel interplanetary.  There is no in-game launch window planner.  There is no in-game DeltaV information.  Without such things, travelling into deep space is at most trial and error, but on average suicidal.

 

But maybe that will change with the Transfer window planner mod is updated.

Edited May 17, 2016 by Sandworm

[razark]

I've orbited Eve once.  I've orbited Duna twice, and landed a probe on it.
Everything else I've done has been within Kerbin Local Space, and I've been playing since 2012.

I started with a rather low-end computer.  It wasn't worth the trouble to me to go interplanetary.  I also restart the save game every update, and I tend to drift in and out of playing, so I've never gotten far enough for interplanetary to make sense.

[ElWanderer]

This is the kind of question where Steam (or whatever service) achievements can be very useful for roughly gauging how far people get in a game.

For example, if I look at the global Civ V achivement stats, 76.4% of all Steam players have the "discover an ancient ruin" achievement indicating that they've at least launched a game and moved one of their starting units a few hexes. But only 26.5% have completed the full tech tree. (I would look at winning the game, but there is no single achievement for that - they're tracked for each map type and for each difficulty level). So of those who started playing, 2/3rds either stopped playing altogether or kept playing, but only the early years (some aggressive Civ play-styles don't see the late years of the game!)

The first Firaxis XCOM game has something similar: 75.9% have the most common achievement of completing a mission without losing anyone, but only 26.9% have the achivement awarded for winning the game on any difficulty.

If KSP had achievements for "launching your first rocket" and "leaving Kerbin's SoI" (or "landing on another planet"), I wonder how those numbers would look, but it wouldn't surprise me if we see a similar skew of 'most players have started, few have gone far'. Given the technical nature of KSP, it'd probably be even more skewed.

[TheSaint]

Huh, interesting. When I first bought KSP (back in June of 2013) I got into orbit pretty quickly, after only a couple of failures. Within a few days I decided that I wanted to travel to Jool and land on all five moons in one mission. (I didn't even know about the Jool 5 challenge at this point, this was just something I decided I wanted to do.) And after a couple of months of trial and error I had achieved it. The idea of staying in the Kerbin system never even occurred to me. And until I read this thread I assumed that most other KSP players were like me, and that the ones who stayed in the Kerbin system were the occasional oddity. Weird. 

[KerikBalm]

To be fair, I got the game through steam, but I don't launch it through steam, and I hate when a steam game requires a connection to steam to run.

I don't know what % of players are like me... but if its not multiplayer (KSP multiplayer, its in the works, I know... whatever), steam has no business connecting. I'm glad Squad didn't make a steam connection a requirement... but it is a variable to consider when using steam achievements... I'd have none of the steam achievements either.

Its not like I lack the skill to put the mass into orbit and assemble/dock it all:

(Just one part of my jool mission that I launched ... and is on its way to Jool, but stuff in other SOIs has prevented me from warping to actually get there)

[Green Baron]

41 minutes ago, Sandworm said:

(1) Career mode is all about grinding out quick contracts.  Going a long way takes time.  So you "win" much faster by staying near Kerbin.  This is a vanilla game design error imho.

(2) We lack many of the tools necessary to travel interplanetary.  There is no in-game launch window planner.  There is no in-game DeltaV information.  Without such things, travelling into deep space is at most trial and error, but on average suicidal.

 

But maybe that will change with the Transfer window planner mod is updated.

Hi,

i'm with you about the grinding. Over the time i shipped hundreds of passengers (they bring money) and landed dozens of tripods on mun and minmus just to get thru the science-tree before going further.

But tools (am using KER, KAC, PreciseNode and the LaunchWindowPlanner) are not *necessary* to go interplanetary, they just make things easier, espacially when a whole armada is sent out to distant bodies. But we could as well calculate time and angles on our own (not mentioning dV because it's trivial)), it's not magic, many did so and probably still do so. It's not trial and error and not kerbacidal.

btw. AlexMoons calculator works fine, you don't have to wait for the in-game version if that's what holds you back ;-)

Sorry to disagree on that :-)

 

Edited May 17, 2016 by Green Baron

[Dfthu]

6 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

Huh, interesting. When I first bought KSP (back in June of 2013) I got into orbit pretty quickly, after only a couple of failures. Within a few days I decided that I wanted to travel to Jool and land on all five moons in one mission. (I didn't even know about the Jool 5 challenge at this point, this was just something I decided I wanted to do.) And after a couple of months of trial and error I had achieved it. The idea of staying in the Kerbin system never even occurred to me. And until I read this thread I assumed that most other KSP players were like me, and that the ones who stayed in the Kerbin system were the occasional oddity. Weird. 

Yea, I thought the same thing. Sure most of the time I stay in the Kerbin system nowadays ,  Before that I got out of Kerbins SOI pretty fast in the game. I never used transfer nodes and I still got there fine. I sent probes to most of the planets and moons.  I thought mostly everyone get our of Kerbins SOI. OP should make a poll about this.

44 minutes ago, Sandworm said:

(2) We lack many of the tools necessary to travel interplanetary.  There is no in-game launch window planner.  There is no in-game DeltaV information.  Without such things, travelling into deep space is at most trial and error, but on average suicidal.

None of those things are necessary to go interplanetary, I managed just fine without mods.

Edited May 17, 2016 by Dfthu

[Moesly_Armlis]

In the planed features Observatory: Discover new celestial bodies to visit

Would certainly be more inclined to visit the other planets but the kerbals cannot find them.  What I mean is from a RP perspective waiting to visit other places when discovery becomes part of the KSP experience.

In a sandbox game I have visited Duna and in SB mode might go interplanetary again.

[herbal space program]

3 hours ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Needing a "launch window" is exactly why the principle is different. Get into Kerbin orbit and you can play with a node until you get a reasonably cheap intercept with Mun or Minmus. Same can't be said for going to another planet, if it's the wrong time of year then no amount of node fiddling will make it cheap.

The issue is that the game tells you exactly nothing about when those transfer windows occur. And it's a very tough thing to trial-and-error.

I started playing in (I think) 0.19, and as soon as I had successfully explored Minmus, which took me a few months of heavy playing,  the next thing I did was go to Duna. There was no question of that not being the next thing.  Not knowing about all the transfer window planning tools, I just built a ship with lots and lots of dV, launched it onto a minimal escape trajectory, and then just kept placing and deleting maneuver nodes on the resulting solar orbit until I found one that got me to a Duna encounter. It took maybe 10 minutes to find one, after which I knew more or less the right phase angle for the transfer window next time. It required no calculation whatsoever, and this approach worked fine for me to visit Eve as well. Moho was of course another matter, and by the time I got around to Jool I had found out about all the  planners you can access from the Wiki. Anyway, I guess my point is that if one is motivated enough to figure out how to get as far as Mun/Minmus, it seems odd to me that one would then balk at the minimal additional challenge of getting to Duna. RIC stated quite correctly that it's tough and very tedious to trial-and-error transfer windows from LKO, but that only matters if you already know that you're supposed to set up your transfer orbits from there because of the Oberth effect. I was totally innocent of Oberth at the time, so I just massively overbuilt my ship and did it by brute force as I described. I can't be the only player who got to Duna for the first time in this fashion.

[herbal space program]

4 hours ago, DChurchill said:

Which is why I've been to Duna and Eve using the stock system, but I won't do it again unless MJ ceases to function. The stock maneuver node system is just so painful to use in an interplanetary scale.

Really? I think that for just getting from one body to another it's perfectly fine. IMO It's when you're trying to set up multiple gravity assists at precise places and times, using as little dV as possible, that it really comes up short.

[TheSaint]

5 minutes ago, herbal space program said:

I started playing in (I think) 0.19, and as soon as I had successfully explored Minmus, which took me a few months of heavy playing,  the next thing I did was go to Duna. There was no question of that not being the next thing.  Not knowing about all the transfer window planning tools, I just built a ship with lots and lots of dV, launched it onto a minimal escape trajectory, and then just kept placing and deleting maneuver nodes on the resulting solar orbit until I found one that got me to a Duna encounter. It took maybe 10 minutes to find one, after which I knew more or less the right phase angle for the transfer window next time. It required no calculation whatsoever, and this approach worked fine for me to visit Eve as well. Moho was of course another matter, and by the time I got around to Jool I had found out about all the  planners you can access from the Wiki. Anyway, I guess my point is that if one is motivated enough to figure out how to get as far as Mun/Minmus, it seems odd to me that one would then balk at the minimal additional challenge of getting to Duna. RIC stated quite correctly that it's tough and very tedious to trial-and-error transfer windows from LKO, but that only matters if you already know that you're supposed to set up your transfer orbits from there because of the Oberth effect. I was totally innocent of Oberth at the time, so I just massively overbuilt my ship and did it by brute force as I described. I can't be the only player who got to Duna for the first time in this fashion.

Nope, LOL. I look back on my early attempts and cringe. You could just as well have called me Captain Hamfist.  

[KerikBalm]

I cringe at both the old versions of KSP, and my hamfisted-ness...

Back when I was starting to get the ambition to go to Duna, I was also experimenting with SSTO spaceplaness... which were an obsession of mine for a while. I wanted to launch my first interplanetary mission by SSTO... and i did... but I had this hamfisted idea that missions to other planets was just a matter of putting enough mass in orbit... at once because docking things together could be flimsy or really hard (I wasn't great at docking back then). The real challenge was just getting big payloads to orbit. Like NASA after Apollo/the Saturn V, I focused on something to just haul payloads to low orbit. Sometimes I actually send the payloads to another planet (most of the time I didn't follow through and actually get to the planet and return). More often I just conceived of a payload for an interplanetary mission, and tried to get it to orbit in an SSTO spaceplane.

Hamfisted enough for you? one of my first kerballed missions to Duna:

 

 

[DChurchill]

31 minutes ago, herbal space program said:

Really? I think that for just getting from one body to another it's perfectly fine. IMO It's when you're trying to set up multiple gravity assists at precise places and times, using as little dV as possible, that it really comes up short.

Honestly, fiddling with that thing is just not fun. I'll do it if I have to, but not willingly. Even in the Kerbin SOI. Pull on an arm, check the apoapsis. Too far. Pull the other arm. The only time I mess with it now is early career and when doing contracts that require a special orbit.

Edited May 17, 2016 by DChurchill

[wumpus]

Oh, ouch.  And I'm someone ready to dump career mode to finally (after a few hundred hours) to land a kerbal on Duna (I have landed probes, but only on to test a career strategy for this forum).  Some reasons:

No (in game) launch window calculator:  here's a pork chop calculator (can't get imager to work): https://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/#/Kerbin/100/Duna/100/false/ballistic/false/1/1

Just click on Kerbal to Duna and go.  Find out:

If you know your launch windows and porkchop plots you can get there for 1692m/s.

If you don't wait, you can expect around 3000 m/s of delta-v needed.

If for whatever reason you wait past 400 days (but not 800), you will need 6000m/s (with a really bad part between 600-700 days with over 10,000m/s needed.

This is absolutely brutal.  Especially for the poor guy trying to use "proven Martian rockets" from Facebook or somewhere that won't work until day 236.

And that's only one of the big issues.  Take delta-v (please).  The game won't tell you (but you can calculate with a calculator easy enough (well I can't.  But I use a lot of SRBs that make the calculation complicated).  You aren't going to know when to stop overbuilding your rocket without delta-v.

A huge issue is career mode.  Career mode is designed to maximize the time you spend in Kerbin's SRB doing "the science dance".  Until you are sick of the science dance and ditch career mode, don't expect to visit the rest of the planets.  I honestly think career mode as it stands is largely possible to the "no steam medals" policy instituted from day 1 (or at least steam release one).

Docking is a biggie.  And I can dock largely because of career mode (I wimped out and used mechjeb before that).

So there we have it.  In roughly order of pain:

Launch windows

Delta-v

Career mode (and science dance)

Docking.

And Squad can fix two things with minimal code.  Fixing career mode is a bigger issue, but could largely be done my cutting down biomes (and hopefully adjusting their value so the game can progress by only getting a few biomes).  Docking is just plain rocket science (but you can wimpout with mechjeb).  So Squad's always had the tools to fix this, but hasn't cared.

[herbal space program]

18 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

Hamfisted enough for you? one of my first kerballed missions to Duna

zomg you figured out how to get that monster into orbit before you ever even went to Duna? .  For me, making my first space plane was WAAY harder than just landing on Duna. Different strokes I guess!

[herbal space program]

29 minutes ago, wumpus said:

 

If you know your launch windows and porkchop plots you can get there for 1692m/s.

If you don't wait, you can expect around 3000 m/s of delta-v needed.

If for whatever reason you wait past 400 days (but not 800), you will need 6000m/s (with a really bad part between 600-700 days with over 10,000m/s needed.

This is absolutely brutal.  Especially for the poor guy trying to use "proven Martian rockets" from Facebook or somewhere that won't work until day 236.

 

Actually, if you know your launch window you can get to Duna for around 1050 m/s. Just time warp until Duna is a little under 60 degrees (57 exactly I think)  around 44 degrees (sorry, 57 deg behind is for Eve) ahead of Kerbin in its orbit, then boost prograde from the trailing side of your 70km orbit so that you eject parallel to Kerbin's orbit. Just set your node to 1050 m/s pure prograde in roughly the right place, then drag it around the orbit until your escape trajectory and Kerbin's orbit line up. If you decide to get fancy and use a gravity assist from Mun (i.e. wait until Mun is at about 7 o' clock wrt Kerbin with the sun at Noon, then set up an encounter that swings low around it and ejects prograde), you can do it for a little under 950 m/s. Once you've done it, you'll be amazed how easy it was!vAnyway, the calculator I've always used is here: http://ksp.olex.biz/

Edited May 17, 2016 by herbal space program

[Ippo]

I have very limited time to play, sometimes I might not even launch the game for a month straight. So what happens is that I setup all my mods, start a new career, play a little bit, and by the time I have the technology to go interplanetary a new update rolls out and breaks all the mods, and I'm back to square one. At that point I usually restart the career.

In fact this time I decided to play stock and I've never gone so far so quickly before.

[KerikBalm]

well, i was soo focused on getting the payloads to orbit, I didn't pay much attention to getting down... that monster was way too tail heavy with empty tanks.

That was my first ssto capable of carrying a large cargo... i was sort of figuring that out simultaneously with going to duna... looking back, its pretty hamfisted, and in the end, I only used it to launch like two payloads... one was that "Duna main" payload... and the other was... I forget, a fuel depot or something to go to duna at the same time... I forget... it was a long time ago.

My SSTOs have progressed much since then, I kind of went overboard with them for a while...

(that was two launches docked together: http://i.imgur.com/JiHWstz.png and http://i.imgur.com/FOfPjuO.png the 1.05 updated version... that was only my 2nd full moho mission that I completed from start to finish in a career game...)

Anyway, its easy to find lots of stuff to do in LKO, and when you get into the mindset of the challenge for any mission is just getting enough mass in orbit... you can get diverted to pursuits that keep you in the kerbin system for quite a while

[Waxing_Kibbous]

This may have been said already, but for me the whole UI process to go interplanetary is kind of painful- the constant zooming in and out, and trying to move the maneuver nodes around an orbit can be frustrating. I'd like to see this process become a bit friendlier- for instance keys to snap between user set views and making the node UI better would go a long way.

[Hrv123]

7 hours ago, Docsprock said:

Im very impressed that all of KSP is so easy for you. I do not believe I have ever watched a Scott Manley video. I did not know it was required to enjoy this game. Besides, I never said I 'cant' go interplanetary, it is extremely difficult without the use of mods or math. And there is no payoff. So, it is more of a lack of desire than anything.

I also have no idea how KerikBalms post is nested in there?

O no do use mods, kerbal engineer redux is a minimum minimum, it tell you delta v of stages while you build ship in VAB, It really really makes difference from flying in blind and do proper successful mission goals.  Still, even with out mods, once you get a hang on deploying stuff in LO in ksp vanilla its really easy to go from there. I personally go with three stages rockets, after first each second x10 heavier, ading 4th for Mun. If I would use math in game, my head would explode :/ I dont wish to play game any more without those couple basic mods, that kindy should maybe part of stock game anyway.        As for Scott M., there are lots of streamers that did game tutorials and crazy stuff with ksp, but I find S.M. to be most interesting for me, I learned so much about rocketry and science from him, only trying to learn to play this game    Now It should not required to watch all that and there are now more game manuals and player done infographics I think, but those youtube videos really helped me when I jumped into beta couple years ago and do my first save kerbal from low orbit evil mission :cold sweat:

[Ten Key]

I'm stuck in this rut too.

I have a long running career save that I've been nursing along, and after focusing exclusively on Kerbin's SOI I've finally gotten up to the point of launching interplanetary probes. Suddenly, instead of doing what I want, when I want, I'm scrambling to set up vehicles and plans for transfer windows I've never paid attention to before. I have four probes outbound to Moho. One of those probes has successfully performed a correction burn to get an intercept. That probe is also DOA, as I've since discovered a design flaw that will prevent it from functioning. The other three (one of which is a replacement for the first) still have to perform adjustments to (hopefully) get where they're supposed to be going. 

I also have four Eve probes in LKO waiting for their transfer windows to roll around. I am not confident that the Eve lander is actually going to work. 

I am trying to do this stock (I told myself I'd install precise node when I understood why I needed it, and my old save is no longer compatible) so I have that 3rd party porkchop plot generator and a little protractor I hold up to the monitor to eyeball the ejection angles. Each ejection burn and each correction burn is an exercise in frustration. Eight probes, two burns each. All five of the burns I've done so far have ended up working out, but the first Eve probe is next and I just can't make myself log in and do it. 

And on top of all that, I'm looking ahead to Duna, and how long it is between transfer windows, and the realization that I'm going to have to fire off another flotilla of probes at that point (half of which are probably going to fail for one reason or another) is just killing my desire to play. 

[capran]

13 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

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).

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

 

I agree with all 5 points. But I'm puzzled as to your L4/5 planetoid suggestion. Why would that matter? Forgive me, for I am not an astrophysicist!!

 

13 hours ago, Subalt said:

...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.

 

 Whuuuhh?? How can you possibly not try any mod ever? 

 

10 hours ago, Scarecrow said:

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.

 

I've been everywhere, although a few places (such as Eeloo, Tylo, and Dres) only a handful of times in the 3 years I've had the game. 1500 hours.

It's too hard (and takes so damn long even at 100,000x time warp) to get to Eeloo, and the payoff isn't all that. Maybe Squad should put a really cool Easter egg, or maybe some kind of "achievement" screen message/musical number if you do get there, or something so cool and rewarding I can't even imagine it. 

Tylo sucks for the same reasons. Too much time and effort to get there, and no real payoff.

Although, I suppose the same could be said for every body in the game. Perhaps they'll work on rewards in future versions. Right now, it's either just bragging rights on the forum, self-satisfaction of having done it, and in career mode, science points and funding dollars/contract fulfillment.