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How to plan the perfect mission


MSA

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Sometimes When I get on to KSP, my mind goes blank. I have no idea what I want to do. So that’s why I came up with these steps, to help you plan the perfect mission.

1. Where are you going?

This step should be easy. Pick your target. This could be a planet, moon, spacestation, and the list goes on! Let’s go to Duna.

2. What are you doing?

You now need to decide what you want to accomplish. Now that we know we are going to Duna, let’s say we want to find an Easter Egg.

3. Design 

We now know we are going to find an Easter Egg and land by it. To find the Easter Egg we need a probecore to get KerbNet. Let’s say we want to find the Egg and then deploy a crewed lander to take a sample of the Egg. This means we need to have a ship with enough Δv to land, ascend and rendezvous with an orbital fuel tank.

4. Build

5. Fly

6. Preform mission 

7. Come home

I hope the steps help you the next time your stuck. Happy Flying 

 

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17 hours ago, putnamto said:

My  problem  is  I  do  this  all  in  my  head  at  work, then  forget  by  the  time  I  get  home

What I do is write down a list of all the possible places to go and science instruments then pick what ones I want to do.

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  • 3 months later...

I take "as real as possible" part even further, probably because I am a real-life project/program manager :)

I try to plan out a whole sequence of missions in advance, not only to get somewhere but also to operate and maintain my outposts regularly. I end up retroplanning backwards from what I want to achieve in the end and then derive all the steps required to get there. This results in long chains of dependent missions and tasks which are interlinked. That way, I tend to be constantly busy in KSP and never have to think about what I want to do next. :) 

Current example:

Goal: Put my most experienced crew on a mission to orbit and land on Duna

  1. Build parts
    1. Science lab and station
    2. Lander
    3. Transfer stage
  2. Launch parts and assemble on orbit
    1. Ummm.... three launches? Could we use an SSTO to save some money on bringing the stuff into LKO? Yes, we could, so
    2. Design an SSTO launcher 
    3. Test fly 
    4. Carry out three launches to put stuff in orbit
  3. Move the crew from Minmus
    1. Upgrade all crew members to "plant flag on Minmus"
    2. Build a transport to collect them at Minmus and bring them to LKO to meet their new station
    3. Oh wait, who is going to occupy Minmus then? 
  4. Move the crew from Mun to Minmus
    1. Upgrade all crew members to "plant flag on Mun"
    2. Build a transport to collect them at Mun and bring them to Minmus 
    3. Oh wait, who is going to occupy Mun then? 
  5. Move a fresh crew from Kerbin to Mun
    1. Build a transport... Oh wait, why not use the same transport to bring one crew from Kerbin to Mun, then the other crew from Mun to Minmus, then the Minmus crew back to LKO? Ok, let's do that and 
    2. Rather build a transport to make the round trip
    3. Hire or rescue a fresh crew. Oh wait, rescue...
  6. Acquire rescue contracts and pick some Kerbals from LKO
  7. Work through the list from 6 down to 3
  8. Transfer the station and its new crew to Duna
  9. Land, collect science
  10. Resupply the Duna station
    1. Build a tanker
    2. Build the transfer stage for the tanker
    3. Why not rotate the crew again?
    4. Hire fresh crew
    5. Move fresh crew to Mun
    6. Move Mun crew to Minmus
    7. Move Minmus crew to LKO
    8. Transfer crew to Duna together with the tanker and bring back the Duna crew to maybe go to... Eve? Restart the list at point 1.

You get the idea. That's what the word "program" in Kerbal Space Program means for me. If you want to follow along, I post in the Mission Reports forum: Mission Reports

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