Career - Saving money

[Sublight]

I launched a multi stage rocket into the air, then staged the excess parts away.  I put parashoots on those items so they didn't explode when they hit the ground.  But I don't get credit for recovering them.  WHY does it do this, and how can I save more money?

[Galileo]

7 minutes ago, Sublight said:

I launched a multi stage rocket into the air, then staged the excess parts away.  I put parashoots on those items so they didn't explode when they hit the ground.  But I don't get credit for recovering them.  WHY does it do this, and how can I save more money?

There is a mod called stage recovery that does exactly what you want. 

[Sublight]

1 minute ago, Galileo said:

There is a mod called stage recovery that does exactly what you want. 

IM on a xbox, so no mods for me. 

I wonder if I can place a command module on them, if that will let me recover them. 

[StrandedonEarth]

When on Kerbin, parts more than 22km away in atmosphere are considered crashed debris (whether they have hit the ground or not) and automatically removed. Having a probe core onboard helps them persist once landed. If the parts have safely landed, you need to go to the tracking station, find them, and recover them. Make sure the filter at the top of the tracking station is set to show debris. The other option if you can switch your focus away from the payload long enough is to "ride" the stage down

If you are on PC, there is a mod called "StageRecovery" that will credit you the stage value if there are enough 'chutes on them.

edit: oops sorry didn't see the Xbox part

Edited August 31, 2016 by StrandedonEarth

[Galileo]

11 minutes ago, Sublight said:

IM on a xbox, so no mods for me. 

I wonder if I can place a command module on them, if that will let me recover them. 

Ah well sorry hope you get to experience the mods some day

[Sublight]

Also how much money do I get back.  Do I get everything back minus the fuel?  Could I just build something with 16 parashoots, and just keep it in 1 stage?  Its cheaper to buy a tank or 2 of more fuel, then to loose money for a single swivel engine.

[Sonny_Jim]

Just to add one more thing, iirc the money you get from recovering spent SRB stages isn't great.  It some cases it might even be less than the cost of the chutes/probes fitted to them.

[Sublight]

35 minutes ago, Sonny_Jim said:

Just to add one more thing, iirc the money you get from recovering spent SRB stages isn't great.  It some cases it might even be less than the cost of the chutes/probes fitted to them.

Do I not get money back for everything?

[Sonny_Jim]

The money you get back is less than the original purchase price of the parts and goes down the further the part is away from the space centre.

So what could happen is that the cost of the extra parts needed to recover the SRB actually outweighed the money you would get back from recovering the SRB.

[Sublight]

Oh, wow.  Thanks

[Sonny_Jim]

Note that this was is based on hand-wavey, pulling numbers out of my a**,  it may be that it's worthwhile.  My advice is test and find out!

[StrandedonEarth]

54 minutes ago, Sonny_Jim said:

So what could happen is that the cost of the extra parts needed to recover the SRB actually outweighed the money you would get back from recovering the SRB.

Ya, SRBs are dirt cheap, IIRC a 'Kickback' is $1800 fully fuelled. That makes a great cheap first stage for small sats when the thrust limiter is tweaked properly. Just needs some small fins for stability. 

[HalcyonSon]

     It's important to be careful which contracts you take.  My early rockets cost less than 100,000 funds, and a four Kerbal orbital tourism gig brings in nearly 250,000 funds depending on exactly how it's written.  I can recover between a third and a half of the launch cost by dumping the rocket and just recovering capsules.

     A Swivel really isn't that expensive.  I didn't bother much with recovery until I got to the point of using Mainsails on every launch.  At 15,000 funds a piece, those are worth bringing back.  Luckily, a Mainsail with two orange tanks attached (plus other helpers depending on payload) will make it most of the way to orbit. About 10 Mk-2-R parachutes and a probe core buried in the tank lets me successfully orbit the payload and then switch back to the Mainsail stack and ride it down.  SRBs are staged away because they aren't worth the trouble to recovery manually.

[Snark]

FWIW, @Sublight, I've never bothered with trying to recover anything, other than the returning vehicle (and even that, the only reason I'm recovering it is for the science, and of course the crew if there is one).

Reason:  it's just not worth it.

Contracts provide a lot of money.  With proper rocket design (and prudent choice of contract), the reward of the contract is always far higher than the cost of the rocket.  If I get paid 120,000 funds for a contract, and it only costs me 20,000 funds to build a rocket to fulfill the contract, it's simply not worth it to bother recovering any cash from the rocket itself.  If I recover 0%, I have 100,000 funds profit.  If I could somehow recover 100%, I would have 120,000 funds profit.  120,000 is just not that much better than 100,000.  The money's all in the contract reward.

Bear in mind that the limiter here is your time.  You could point out to me "well, yeah, but 120K is still better than 100K, right?"  That's true... except if I spend a lot of time and effort to try to build something recoverable, it means I spend more of my time on that 120K contract.  If, instead, I just say "to heck with it", don't bother recovering anything, and just focus on trying to complete the contract as efficiently as possible, then I save time that I can then use to do the next contract.  And that next contract is worth a lot more cash than any extra funds I might have saved in recovering stuff.

It boils down to this:  How many funds per hour of your time can you earn?  I contend that "recovering stuff" is a worse return on your time than "do more contracts".

 

...Of course, the elephant in the room, here, is that I'm assuming that you have a reasonably efficient rocket design, and that it only costs you 20K funds to build a craft for that 120K contract.  If it's taking you 80K worth of rocket to do the contract, I can see why you'd be concerned.  But if that's the case... the answer is not to "recover parts".  The answer is to design the rocket more efficiently in the first place so that you can get the contract done with something small and cheap that you don't need to recover.

I bring this up because a classic problem of folks who are new to KSP is overbuilding.  The rocket equation's a harsh taskmaster.  If you're doing things in a somewhat-inefficient way (as we all tend to do, when we're new), then the mass and expense of your rocket tends to blow up in a hurry.

It may be that your problem isn't "I'm not recovering stuff", but rather "I'm overbuilding".  In which case your question should be not "how to recover?" but rather "how to build smaller and more efficiently?"

It's hard to say without more specific information about your situation.  Could you give us an example?  For example:  "I have a contract to do <thing>, which pays <amount>.  I built a rocket that costs <price>.  Here's a screenshot."  If you could give us a post like, that, we could do a much better job of advising you.  Maybe your rocket is overbuilt.  Maybe you're not flying it the right way.  Maybe you've picked a contract that has a crappy reward, relative to the effort involved.  There are a lot of potential problems.  Help us help you. 

...oh, and welcome to KSP! 

 

[juanml82]

The other thing you can do, a bit related to Snark's comment about contracts, is to combine contracts. (removing the penalty for rejecting contracts when starting a career helps with this)

Let's say you have the following contracts:

Fly tourists around some orbits within the Kerbin system

Build a space station in Kerbin's orbit

Plant the flag on Minmus

2 Rescue contracts in LKO and another in the Mun's orbit

You design a rocket with plenty of crew space which feels the "space station" requirements (docking port, power, antena and a certain crew capacity in the 1/2 starts ones, the 3 stars might require heavier stuff), you load it up with tourists and kerbonauts in need of training. You use it for the LKO rescue (at that point, you've probably achieved some of the tourist contracts requirements), you depart for the Mun, do your rescue there, then using the same ship you head for Minmus, you land there (and you do some science if you still have science to collect there), plant the flag, take off and go for landing at Kerbin.

You got your kerbonauts some training, you may have completed all the requirements of the tourist contracts, snatched three free kerbonauts, made a lot of money and recovered some money from the original ship.

As for how to build something so versatile, the MK3 crew cabin (capacity, 16), MK3 liquid fuel only tanks and about four nerv engines mounted on radially placed mk1 fuel tanks are a rough idea of what to build. Remember you can land on the MK3 fuel tanks, as those have a 50 m/s impact tolerance, although they have a tendency to bounce.

[Corona688]

5 hours ago, Sublight said:

I launched a multi stage rocket into the air, then staged the excess parts away.  I put parashoots on those items so they didn't explode when they hit the ground.  But I don't get credit for recovering them.  WHY does it do this, and how can I save more money?

If you don't land it yourself, nothing will land it for you, so, those stages are gone.

[OhioBob]

7 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Having a probe core onboard helps them persist once landed. If the parts have safely landed, you need to go to the tracking station, find them, and recover them. Make sure the filter at the top of the tracking station is set to show debris.

If it has a probe core onboard, then it will appear in the Tracking Station as a probe.  The stuff that gets tagged as debris is the stuff that has no probe core, command pod, guidance unit, etc.

[StrandedonEarth]

Details, details, just trying to cover all the bases but forgetting some details.... 

[Snark]

15 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

just trying to cover all the bases but forgetting some details

And right there is KSP, in a nutshell. 

[Warzouz]

If you don't want to go to mods but still try to recover your launcher, you can build SSTO rockets and make them recoverable. It's quite fun to design and easy to fly. This technique is VERY scalable : once you have your basic design, just double the fuel and engines and you double your payload to LKO.

The cost per ton is very low (but not as low as SSTO space planes). Beware that since 1.0.5, reentry is more harsh than before.

The following topic is some a bit obsolete now, but the guidelines are the same.

On the other hand @Snark explained very well that designs and flight plans are also dependant on the time you have to play KSP and what your like to do. So one's solution is not necessary fit for you.

[wumpus]

Here is a thread of cheap non-recoverable rocket design (you might want the older thread, as it was specific to stock rockets):

To go recoverable in stock KSP is quite possible, but difficult.  Typically I like to a few kicker SBRs (never recovered) as a "half stage" to make things easier (kickers are cheap enough to not bother recovering anyway).  The next stage has to at least get to a suborbital trajectory, and when I was recovering them I typically took them all the way to orbit.  The reason they went to orbit is that you need to be controlling them after they go below 22km, and that means your payload has to be orbiting by that time.

It takes longer to land the booster than it did to launch all the stages.  It takes even longer to design a rocket that meets all the extra criteria (and hopefully costs less after everything is recovered).  Unless your goals in KSP are to emulate Elon Musk or at least show NASA how the shuttle "should have been made", I wouldn't recommend trying to recover your boosters (I've quit for months due to burnout caused by this very choice).

If you really want a "cheap reusable spacecraft", I highly recommend a NERV (LV-N nuclear engine) powered ferry to move kerbals from Kerbin to Mun and Minmus.  WARNING: docking is one of the more difficult tasks in KSP and you won't have mods to help you.  Expect to study a few guides and start with the rescue missions (don't forget to kick Jeb out of the capsule).  NERVs are expensive, heavy, and super efficient so just having one up there to move your landers/probes/whatever back and forth is ideal.

[HalcyonSon]

17 hours ago, juanml82 said:

As for how to build something so versatile, the MK3 crew cabin (capacity, 16), MK3 liquid fuel only tanks and about four nerv engines mounted on radially placed mk1 fuel tanks are a rough idea of what to build. Remember you can land on the MK3 fuel tanks, as those have a 50 m/s impact tolerance, although they have a tendency to bounce.

Whoa whoa whoa there.  You had me until "Mk3" and "NERVs."  That stuff is WAY up the tech tree.  If you're in career mode and trying to unlock science and probe parts too, it takes a LONG time to get into Mk3 parts.  By that point, I would hope you're not too worried about recovering a few thousand funds.  I just unlocked NERVs but don't have Mk3 anything yet and have about 5 million funds.  

18 minutes ago, wumpus said:

If you really want a "cheap reusable spacecraft", I highly recommend a NERV (LV-N nuclear engine) powered ferry to move kerbals from Kerbin to Mun and Minmus.  WARNING: docking is one of the more difficult tasks in KSP and you won't have mods to help you.  Expect to study a few guides and start with the rescue missions (don't forget to kick Jeb out of the capsule).  NERVs are expensive, heavy, and super efficient so just having one up there to move your landers/probes/whatever back and forth is ideal.

I have stations around Kerbin, Mun, and Minmus, a probe going to Kerbol, and a Mun base.  Still haven't built anything that I get better dV or TWR (per KER) with nukes than with a Poodle.  Their weight and the lack of a large LF only tank in 1.1.3 makes me regret unlocking nukes at all.  Maybe they'll be useful for crew transfers to Duna or Jool, but in-Kerbin they're junk to me.

Docking isn't THAT difficult if you have a slimmer design with plenty of control authority.  Big sluggish ships with minimal / no RCS are a nightmare though.  That said, a mod like Docking Port Alignment Indicator or Navball Docking Alignment Indicator saves a LOT (TONS) (just absolutely positively HUGE amounts) of screwing around with the camera.  

[juanml82]

1 hour ago, wumpus said:

Here is a thread of cheap non-recoverable rocket design (you might want the older thread, as it was specific to stock rockets):

To go recoverable in stock KSP is quite possible, but difficult.  Typically I like to a few kicker SBRs (never recovered) as a "half stage" to make things easier (kickers are cheap enough to not bother recovering anyway).  The next stage has to at least get to a suborbital trajectory, and when I was recovering them I typically took them all the way to orbit.  The reason they went to orbit is that you need to be controlling them after they go below 22km, and that means your payload has to be orbiting by that time.

It takes longer to land the booster than it did to launch all the stages.  It takes even longer to design a rocket that meets all the extra criteria (and hopefully costs less after everything is recovered).  Unless your goals in KSP are to emulate Elon Musk or at least show NASA how the shuttle "should have been made", I wouldn't recommend trying to recover your boosters (I've quit for months due to burnout caused by this very choice).

If you really want a "cheap reusable spacecraft", I highly recommend a NERV (LV-N nuclear engine) powered ferry to move kerbals from Kerbin to Mun and Minmus.  WARNING: docking is one of the more difficult tasks in KSP and you won't have mods to help you.  Expect to study a few guides and start with the rescue missions (don't forget to kick Jeb out of the capsule).  NERVs are expensive, heavy, and super efficient so just having one up there to move your landers/probes/whatever back and forth is ideal.

Mechjeb will dock for you, but in my experience, is best to leave the ships pointing at each other and within 50-100 meters before turning over command to MJ's autopilot. It also doesn't work in fringe cases like trying to dock to ports which aren't at the edge/top/bottom of the ship.

That said, tugs should make economic sense - except that you loose the possibility to earn money by creating space stations

25 minutes ago, HalcyonSon said:

Whoa whoa whoa there.  You had me until "Mk3" and "NERVs."  That stuff is WAY up the tech tree.  If you're in career mode and trying to unlock science and probe parts too, it takes a LONG time to get into Mk3 parts.  By that point, I would hope you're not too worried about recovering a few thousand funds.  I just unlocked NERVs but don't have Mk3 anything yet and have about 5 million funds.  

I have stations around Kerbin, Mun, and Minmus, a probe going to Kerbol, and a Mun base.  Still haven't built anything that I get better dV or TWR (per KER) with nukes than with a Poodle.  Their weight and the lack of a large LF only tank in 1.1.3 makes me regret unlocking nukes at all.  Maybe they'll be useful for crew transfers to Duna or Jool, but in-Kerbin they're junk to me.

Docking isn't THAT difficult if you have a slimmer design with plenty of control authority.  Big sluggish ships with minimal / no RCS are a nightmare though.  That said, a mod like Docking Port Alignment Indicator or Navball Docking Alignment Indicator saves a LOT (TONS) (just absolutely positively HUGE amounts) of screwing around with the camera.  

You can use the MK2 crew cabins in early career (or even the MK1 one), it just means you have more parts in the vessel. As for engines, the terriers and the poodles will give you the best dV before unlocking the nervs. But, as you noted, nothing beats the nervs for heavier ships.

[Sonny_Jim]

25 minutes ago, juanml82 said:

Mechjeb will dock for you, but in my experience, is best to leave the ships pointing at each other and within 50-100 meters before turning over command to MJ's autopilot

If you are going to do that, you may as well dock manually imo.  MJ tends to use quite a lot of monoprop for one reason or another.  A very good mod for docking (should be stock) is Navyfish Docking Port Alignment Indicator.

[HalcyonSon]

On 9/1/2016 at 9:52 AM, Sonny_Jim said:

If you are going to do that, you may as well dock manually imo.  MJ tends to use quite a lot of monoprop for one reason or another.  A very good mod for docking (should be stock) is Navyfish Docking Port Alignment Indicator.

DPAI doesn't look stock at all - which is why I prefer the Navball Docking Alignment Indicator.  It just gives you that one tiny piece of information that's missing in the base game - where the ******* docking port is facing.  Everything else is already right there on the Navball.