Is it true that most KSP players never go interplanetary?

[RocketSquid]

I haven't sent kerbals past minmus, but I am sending a probe to Dres, since it had leftover fuel. I haven't been playing for too long (just since 0.9.0) and I've switched computers three times. I also use a carpton of mods, and have decided to go to Duna using a mothership instead of a more logical flotilla, so there's that.

I personally think its because of either the increased planning or the increased travel time. I've tried two duna missions without planning. The first ran out of fuel and power halfway there (fuel cells = bad idea for interplanetary probes), and the second was fine until RL conspired to prevent me from finishing it. Both were in sandbox, so in career it would be even worse.

[Kerbinchaser]

Yup. Been playing for 350 hours and I only ever got to Minmus. *Sigh* I'll work on changing that...

[MaxL_1023]

I didn't do much interplanetary until I got Mechjeb for transfer window planning. You can eyeball it all you want, but getting to Duna by burning at sunset when the planets are 45 degrees apart is not an efficient or reliable way to plan an interplanetary transfer. Neither is waiting until Minmus is near an AN/DN, but at least that is easier to eyeball. 

[Workable Goblin]

43 minutes ago, Lo Var Lachland said:

Yup. Been playing for 350 hours and I only ever got to Minmus. *Sigh* I'll work on changing that...

Heck I've been playing over 400, and I've never gotten to the Mun. Well, okay, that's not true, but it's approximately true...0 and, I think, five or so are almost the same...

[Diche Bach]

Counting the period I played 3 years ago, and the more recent period this summer, I wouldn't be surprised if I am in the ~500 hours played ballpark and yes: just barely interplanetary.

Recently: 12 or more probes orbiting Minmus/Mun, 1 robotic lander on Mun, successful!, 1 successful manned Mun mission (well, practiced it a dozen times probably before i got the design right).

Previously: pretty sure I landed on Mun at least if not Minmus and Mun.

Do orbiters and probes count as "interplanetary?"

[I_Killed_Jeb]

with all due respect, what are all you folk who play 300+ hours and never been to the mun doing?

[Workable Goblin]

38 minutes ago, I_Killed_Jeb said:

with all due respect, what are all you folk who play 300+ hours and never been to the mun doing?

Well, I dunno about other people, but sometimes I'll start playing and get distracted build airplanes and rovers and things like that, which obviously have some trouble getting off of Kerbin, or I'll start playing a more spaceflight-oriented game but have to quit for some reason or another and then not get back to it for a long time, so when I do get back I want to start over. And so I play a lot (in total) but don't get to the Mun.

[astrokerb]

The furthest I've ever gotten something was my Duna/Ike probe, Lucid Dreams 3 (or 4?) Before I lost that save to 1.1 I also had two probes on the way to Jool, and a Duna-capable craft with four Kerbals was orbiting Kerbin, awaiting refueling.

[CattyNebulart]

In most of my career games I will start an interplanetary mission or two (probes towards duna and sometimes eve or jool) and then turn to other closer missions while the probe is underway and then abandon the game  for some reason or another. Ussualy because I am buildign a base on minmus and get fustrated by KAS or a shiny new release comes out or other games or....

Hopefully Kerbnet will smooth the transition from short misions to long missions out a bit so I will actually do some interplanetary missions.

[razark]

2 hours ago, I_Killed_Jeb said:

with all due respect, what are all you folk who play 300+ hours and never been to the mun doing?

Well, to be fair, NASA's got many thousands of hours of spaceflight, and they've been to the moon less than ten times.

[Francois424]

4 hours ago, I_Killed_Jeb said:

with all due respect, what are all you folk who play 300+ hours and never been to the mun doing?

There's also the fact that stock there are no stock Delta-V calculator, no vertical/horizontal speed indicators, no Thrust-to-weight indicator, no AlarmClock transfer windows (not as precise as transfer window planner).

Without these things it kinda make it super hard to plan out a successful expedition and plan your lander accordingly (ISRU or not).

I was able to manage a Jool-5 fly-by of all the moons and back to Kerbin on stock, and several rover drops (one-way trips) to Duna, Pol, and Eve.  But I only started those big mother-ship missions and more complex stuff with KER.
Stock really is perfect for Mün/Minmus/Duna, but getting into more complex stuff is an exercise in patience . F5-ing like no tomorrow.

Lots of stuff to see on Kerbin as well, especially with Scatterer making it even better.

[Starman4308]

Well, on my end, having logged possibly > 1000 hours, I've planned multiple Duna missions, and landed on Duna precisely... once.

 

My biggest problem is just restarting it all; something happens like I decide to go whole-hog on realism, or it's been a while and I'd rather restart, or major performance improvements come along that make upgrading KSP (and thus breaking my many mods to oblivion) worth it, or I get frustrated by bugs. I'm pretty sure I'm on my seventh iteration of trying to get this all working. I'm trying to be systematic about it this time around, doing things like keeping a KSP folder around just with those mods I know to be stable. Hopefully this is the second time I get to Duna; I'm planning on just skipping 1.2.

[Andem]

2 hours ago, razark said:

Well, to be fair, NASA's got many thousands of hours of spaceflight, and they've been to the moon less than ten times.

Invalid. The program stopped because it was too expensive and a lack of public support. Neither of these are actually issues in the stock game.

[razark]

4 minutes ago, Andem said:

Invalid.

You're actually trying to tell me that comparing a video game with reality might not be correct?

 

I mean, one's a crazy, wacky, wild, free-for-all, where no one knows what they're doing.  The other is a video game.

I think comparing them is perfectly fine.

[Andem]

3 minutes ago, razark said:

You're actually trying to tell me that comparing a video game with reality might not be correct?

 

I mean, one's a crazy, wacky, wild, free-for-all, where no one knows what they're doing.  The other is a video game.

I think comparing them is perfectly fine.

Oh, not the comparison in general, but that specific comparison doesn't really mean anything when the reasons behind the two situations are so different. Either way, it doesn't really matter, I'm just an antagonistic person sometimes. 

[GregA]

 

6 hours ago, I_Killed_Jeb said:

with all due respect, what are all you folk who play 300+ hours and never been to the mun doing?

Well im at 1300 hours, and I got bored exploring planets like a 1000 hours ago.  Im looking forward to version 1.8, and stock Matrioshka Brain and Dyson Sphere components.

[XB-70A]

On 17/09/2016 at 3:36 PM, InterstellarOrbit said:

I've played for about 6 months and the farthest I've got was Duna. 

 

Be honored. It took me a year and half of Mun/Minus flights and some solar orbits before I finally take the decision of "Let's do it!" and realize my first trip to another celestial body. And like you it was Duna, (more due to the closest launch window) then Moho a month after, and I should land a rover on Eve soon.

[looper_1234]

A planetary transfer window warning would be nice.

I don't feel comfortable skipping month and years just for one mission.

 

[-ELF-]

Playing since version 0.16, year 2012.

The farthest I got was Duna(manned+return) outwards, and Eve(unmanned, one way) inwards, both in 2015.

I felt very accomplished for both of those, but it would be plain impossible without KER, as I was surprised how big I had to build to get my return spaceship to Duna. It was a monstrosity.

I do not like to build big, as the more I build, the more I feel it will explode straight away. So, each new release, I am deleting my save file and start from scratch again. Making planes for Kerbin exploration, making Mun and Minmus ships and rovers. Building space stations in LKO. Starting to think about interplanetary, but another new version comes out. So, I delete my old saves and start from scratch again... Thus, I never really felt ready to go interplanetary before new release...

[Boots]

I've had three major career saves and generally I spend 80% or more of my time in Kerbin's SoI.

The other 20% of the time is mainly unkerballed missions, because they are a) cheap, and b) you can send a standardised probe on mission-specific but still relatively small boosters. I've flung probes at Moho, Eve, Gilly, Duna, Ike, and achieved orbit around all of them. I've sent two missions to Jool, but had both saves eaten by updates before they arrived.

I've only ever sent two Kerballed missions to Duna. One exploratory mission in an Apollo-like mission profile, the other a huge space-station like ship that was built to orbit for years and process science in situ. My third one - the most comprehensive and well-planned - was eaten by an update.

Here are my reasons:

1) Learning Curve. One of the things I love about KSP is the way that every step on the learnign curve is hellishly difficult. Circularising your own orbit is as hard after reaching space as reachign space is from your first launch. At that point, rendezvous seems nearly impossible and docking seems actually impossible. But once my basic skills were bedded down, interplanetary flight wasn't as interesting as building space stations. So from there I wanted to build multi-launch interplanetary missions, but that led me to my next problem:

2) Mods. because orbital assembly was the thing I found the most fun, I started adding mods to make building large ships more interesting - Near Future and MKS to start, followed quickly by KER, KAC, and suddenly I have like 20 mods, and could build really interesting ships. This was about the time I started going to Duna a lot, but it ultimately led to problem #3:

3) Community Tech Tree. Once you have that many mods, the game gets too easy unless you spread the new parts out a bit. So I added CTT. With tha larger steps between science 'levels,' I needed to collect a lot more science, so probes to Eve and Duna and Moho and Jool were attractive prospects. But it also meant that the parts for the boosters were harder to get to, and delayed the development of larger ships. Saves took longer to 'mature,' which led to problem #4:

4) The update cycle. With mods and CTT powering 12-20 launch porbitally-assembled behemoths, I was spending hundreds of hours per save. This meant I started losing games to updates and part redundancy in mods. My latest save got to Mun operations and M.O.L.E space stations before I got a bit bored and wandered off. Maybe I'll make Duna a priority in my post 1.2 save. I dunno.

[FreeThinker]

On 17-9-2016 at 8:36 PM, InterstellarOrbit said:

I've played for about 6 months and the farthest I've got was Duna. 

So then when do you plan to go into interstellar oribit, InterstellarOrbit? I suggest you grab KSP Instellar and head full throtle with an Interstellar engine to nearby star and get into orbit  so you will finally be able to justify your name. How else is anyone going to take you serious?

Lol, sorry I couldn't control myself

Edited September 19, 2016 by FreeThinker

[KerikBalm]

Or just reach escape velocity for kerbol... that should eventually lead to a fly by of another star

[Bev7787]

I've only went interplanetary recently, and that was in RSS. Launching rockets is way too fun.

[Curveball Anders]

(to put it in the correct thread)

In 2 1/2 years I've landed on Duna, Ike and Dres (the latter just for the heck of it) in career mode.

My mild OCD tends to make me wanting to do things the right way (at least what I perceive as the right way right then) which delays my advance.

I've also restarted several times because I've been struck by a new 'story line' (all in me own head) that I wanted to play out.

[boborene]

True for me.

It is a very long expedition and preparation for any outside kerbin. I had reach with some autoprobes Moho and Duna, but that was all. Each time when I try to get there is some updates or new release, and I have to start my career from start.