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The No Contract Career Challenge


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5 hours ago, xendelaar said:

Just wanted to let OP know that I've finished the challenge!

Welcome to the winner's circle! Well done on the challenge, and I've linked to your thread in the post.

You mention not getting as much money as you expected. I'm not sure but I don't think you got the rendezvous/dock/crew transfer World Firsts in many of your missions. They're the key to my 2nd attempt at this, I'm hitting each world ONE TIME only and getting every single World First so I never have to come back. Except Eve Landing, which I'm not doing unless I'm super out of cash and then I may just send someone to plant a flag and then live there forever :D

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3 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

Welcome to the winner's circle! Well done on the challenge, and I've linked to your thread in the post.

You mention not getting as much money as you expected. I'm not sure but I don't think you got the rendezvous/dock/crew transfer World Firsts in many of your missions. They're the key to my 2nd attempt at this, I'm hitting each world ONE TIME only and getting every single World First so I never have to come back. Except Eve Landing, which I'm not doing unless I'm super out of cash and then I may just send someone to plant a flag and then live there forever :D

Thanks for adding me to the hall of fame. :D

I’m missing 65,879 funds. In my pre-calculations I didn’t include rendezvous and crewtransfers. I only discovered those achievements when I checked out your video last night haha. Maybe I made a mistake in the pre-calculation or I forgot to do something?  Ah well.. luckily I had enough spare cash to finish the job.

I do want to state that this one of the best challenges I’ve ever done. It feels really natural or something. As if the makers thought about it themselves when they introduced the world first achievements.

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  • 4 weeks later...
1 hour ago, RoninFrog said:

Done!

Holy cow! I recall seeing this thread title but I never clicked on it because I don't tend to read mission reports. :o

I'm reading through it now. Love the pinpoint landings near (or at!) KSC of the boosters.

I almost came back here to tell you that sadly you broke a rule, when I realized this is not Kerpollo so it's perfectly fine to go to Eeloo before coming back to Kerbin from Duna.

This looks to be totally stock?

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Just the Facts, man

Il2FBPnm.png

I don't know what effort this is going to require, as I haven't done career since 1.4.x, and that was very modded. Anyways, I'm in!

Entry:

  • Pure Stock (GFX only)
  • Custom settings (changes from 'Normal' default):
    • Missing crew do not respawn
    • Allow other launchsites on
    • Part Pressure limits on
    • Part G-Force limits on
    • Kerbal G-Force limits on
    • Always allow action groups on
    • Require signal for control on

 

Edited by Death Engineering
added the flag, man
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Il2FBPnh.png

Progress update and some new restrictions

Full(ish) documentation available on this thread

Playing stock career is something I've never done, so this is quite a change. Even in an intentionally mod-hardened career, funds were only relevant very early on. With this challenge, I think funds are going to be very tight (based on the calculations I've seen others post). I even tried to recover the Minmus spacecraft, but kept losing the Science Jr., so let nature take it course and watched it turn into smoke.

So, new rule: 'I'm not going to drive myself nuts trying to recover everything'. This goes along with a few other restrictions I've implemented as noted below (changes from initial post are bold italics). Most notable changes are disabling other launchsites, banning ISRU entirely, and pledging not to send Kerbs interplanetary in a Command Seat.

Self-imposed Restrictions:

  • Pure Stock (GFX only)
  • Custom settings (changes from 'Normal' default):
    • Missing crew do not respawn
    • Allow other launchsites on  Decided it was too easy to get these science points
    • Part Pressure limits on
    • Part G-Force limits on
    • Kerbal G-Force limits on
    • Always allow action groups on
    • Require signal for control on
  • Self-imposed rules:
    • No science lab
    • No ore conversion Was initially going to allow ISRU but no selling of Ore for funds. Instead...
    • No ISRU/drill use of any kind
    • Crewed flights with no strandies (Crewed missions where possible and everyone flown gets home safe or they snuff it)
    • No admin strategies (tentative - may flex this rule if pressed) Removing this restriction
    • No space-travel in Command Seats (everyone needs a place to store their snacks, right?)
    • Not going to drive myself nuts trying to recover every part

KSC Upgrade Status:

[■] [ ] Administration Building

[■] [ ] Astronaut Complex

[ ] [ ] Mission Control

[■] [ ] Launch Pad

[ ] [ ] Research and Development

[ ] [ ] Runway

[ ] [ ] Spaceplane Hangar

[■] [ ] Tracking Station

[ ] [ ] Vehicle Assembly Building

Admin Strategies:

  • Patents Licencing - 48%
  • Leadership Initiative - 48%

Funds in the Bank: 75104

Science points available: 135.1

Tech Tree:

qezKauRl.png

Edited by Death Engineering
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Just did the first Mun landing and with two strategies at 48% seemed to earn a tonne of kash.  I might roll the save back to before the launch and not use those strategies, or scale them down. Don't want to make this too easy!

Edit:

Confirmed.. I'm going back to before the Admin bldg upgrade and set the Strategies to 25%.  

Edited by Death Engineering
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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 month later...
On 8/3/2020 at 8:51 AM, VictoryNeverFail said:

*Casually does a bunch of "Bail-Out Grants*

Done!

From my observations, the law of diminishing returns on that makes it so that (on Normal mode at least) you can't get much more than 150,000 total (including the starter cash) before you're basically getting nothing per grant. 150k isn't enough to unlock everything. In fact it's not enough to unlock many buildings' first upgrades.

And reputation is far from easy to get when you don't do any contracts.

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3 hours ago, IronMaiden said:

base building

Huh I didn't know that gave you funds. You're right about those, but I don't know the cash amounts offhand so until I get them I'll leave them off. If you (or anybody out there who sees this) knows them or how to find them, Let me know.

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On 9/16/2020 at 12:26 AM, Superfluous J said:

From my observations, the law of diminishing returns on that makes it so that (on Normal mode at least) you can't get much more than 150,000 total (including the starter cash) before you're basically getting nothing per grant. 150k isn't enough to unlock everything. In fact it's not enough to unlock many buildings' first upgrades.

And reputation is far from easy to get when you don't do any contracts.

...Well then

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this is taking longer than i planned. i know i will make it, because i have the ship ready to visit every planet and everything...

the problem is, i'm still limited to 30 parts and 140 tons per launch, so building a 200 ton ship in orbit one 20-ton piece at a time, then deorbiting the launcher taking care to land it close to ksc for maximum recovery funding is a long endeavor. i spent the last days launching ship parts, docking ship parts, deorbiting launchers, reloading games because the launcher landed too long, or too short, or landed in the mountains and crashed down a ravine, or reloading because i forgot to deactivate SAS and now my launcher (on which i was unable to put solar panels because of 30 part limit) is out of battery....

then i launched and went up to jool, spent hours trying gravity assists to minimize fuel consumption, realized i would be out of fuel at the end of it, so i reloaded back to duna and i'm now assembling another 200 ton ship to provide extra fuel for the other one...

it's a lot of work. but it's very satisfying when progress is made

Edited by king of nowhere
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I've seen other people do it, so I am posting my attempt in the mission report section.

A part of me feels bad about it. Who am I trying to impress? I'm no scott manley. Do I think I'm good enough that people will want to look at my stuff?

then again, the exhistance of the mission report section, and the variety of posters there, shows that yes, there are people who may be interested in it.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
On 10/13/2020 at 1:18 PM, king of nowhere said:

Challenge completed. details on the mission report. I did indeed use only 3 missions, and I overstepped the target by a fair bunch

Welcome to the finish line... a week late. If there was a challenge for maintaining challenges, I'd probably lose it.
Congrats! Well done and well documented. It was a pleasure to read. :)

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  • 1 year later...
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