Your first career game

[Klapaucius]

After a lot of hours (more than I care to admit) in this game mostly becoming a master of weird aircraft, I decided I was pretty much done with that chapter, and embarked on a career game.   It made me realize very quickly that while I can make anything fly, my rocket skills are pretty poor.--though getting better.  However, I am finding it fun and I am giving myself the revert and quicksave option, since it would just be too exasperating the first time around without it.  Even with that, I've already killed 2 pilots and a few tourists, alas, Val being one of them.  Even with reverting, it is pretty frustrating to get good science, complete a mission and then destroy your capsule on landing because you were time warping and forgot to stage before it was too late.

I just earned a heap of science doing an orbit of Duna, but in the process lost a stranded Kerbal who I thought was orbiting the Mun out of fuel--I have a feeling that the orbit may have been too low and over time it hit a mountain, but the failed contract gives no details--I arrived back to find a new casualty and no sign of the lander.

But as someone who has played for a while and does not need to learn the basics, I am finding it very good for slowly introducing me to new techniques or parts I have not used in the past.

 

So what was your first playthrough like?  How far did you go?  How long did it take?  Did you impose restrictions on yourself?

[Fierce Wolf]

I hopped directly to career the first time i played, so I had absolutely no idea of what i was doing. I tried collecting every bit of science i could find on kerbin before going to other bodies, and I hit a constrain: I thought i needed more advanced parts to go to Mun, and I could not find more science to get them. I went to the poles, badlands, and every biome with a plane that only landed with parachutes. Also, I had no idea a scientist could reset experiments and still get the data, so it was painful.

After finally making a rocket to touch Mun I understood that a single trip got me like 50% of all science I got at the time, and that grinding on kerbin was idiotic.

My second career was a smoother process.

[Gargamel]

I'm still playing my first (I think) career playthrough, in 1.3.1.  I've played with the other versions, but my 1.3 version has 80 some stable mods in it, and I'm deep into interplanetary space, so I'm loathe to start again.    But after having played sandbox exclusively for 4-5 years, that first steps into career were a bit scary.  Oh noes, I don't have all my tools available!

[Guest]

On 9/27/2019 at 7:11 AM, Klapaucius said:

So what was your first playthrough like?  How far did you go?  How long did it take?  Did you impose restrictions on yourself?

My first career game... :rummages in memory palace: oh yeah, now I remember. 

I got Jeb to the Mun and back, but he died in a ball of fire as his capsule rolled down a mountainside after a short landing. Much rage. Then I sent a probe mission to Eve and Gilly, and the twin rovers Courage and Stupidity to Duna. Then I stuck Val in a pod and sent her to Duna too. She made a visit to the surface of Ike, but ended up with not enough fuel to get back to Kerbin, or so I thought at the time, and I think I ended the career at that point. (She certainly had enough fuel to get back but I didn't know about launch window planners and was eyeballing my transfers with a pretty poor idea of how they worked, so I was massively overengineering everything. My Eve probe was ridiculously huge too, practically a starship, but it did get there and the orbiter bits got back, too.)

I do not remember how long it took.

I did not impose any restrictions on myself. I do do that now however, to make things a bit more interesting, f.ex. in my current career I have no reverts, I only allow myself one save slot that I'm allowed to used for "simulations" when testing new designs, I don't use any probe cores, and I must include 1 bunk on a hitchhiker storage container for each kerbonaut on all stations, bases, and interplanetary missions. I also have Sci dialed down to 40%.

(Also, I never touched sandbox until several careers in -- that was when I wanted to figure out SSTO spaceplanes and really needed a sandbox to play in, to see what the parts did.)

Edited September 28, 2019 by Guest

[Tux1]

My first career game was probably created by accident, and then swiftly deleted. Yeah, it's not the same for everyone.

[MaxxQ]

On 9/27/2019 at 1:11 AM, Klapaucius said:

So what was your first playthrough like?  How far did you go?  How long did it take?  Did you impose restrictions on yourself?

I'll let you know when I finally start one.

(pssst!  Don't hold your breath)

[Klapaucius]

8 hours ago, Tux1 said:

My first career game was probably created by accident, and then swiftly deleted. Yeah, it's not the same for everyone.

Well, so was mine. Implied was first actual serious playthrough.

[Superfluous J]

My first career game is insanely well documented, because I did a YouTube series on it that lasted over 100 episodes. Back then Career was what we call Science Mode now.

The videos are hard for me to watch these days because of all the stuff I get so wrong, including an insistence on calling Kerbals "Kerbins"

 

Edited September 29, 2019 by 5thHorseman

[Atkara]

When I first got the game, I took a look at sandbox, got overwhelmed by the number of parts and figured I needed a step by step introduction. I could've gone with science mode but chose career instead.

Lots of weird rocket designs, lots of trial and error, lots of rocket flips due to excessive drag, some staging errors and many, many good moments, as it was a playthrough of firsts. Mun, Minmus, Duna, Eve (probe), Gilly, Ike and Jool with touchdown on Bop. Docking ops, rescues on both surface and orbit, asteroid captures, mining, my first go at station assembly and my tries on docking with the said station (got it done, eventually)  

It was a good run and I remember most of it. It was a good run.  

Edited September 29, 2019 by Atkara

[kerbiloid]

I'm not a careerist, I'm just playing in a sandbox.

When the Career appeared in 0.21 I had already played enough to find it too boring to repeat all childish steps, and didn't require gameplay tutorials.

So, no career until KSP-2 where it will be a requirement in absence of existing KSP-1 mods.

[Atkara]

19 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

When the Career appeared in 0.21 I had already played enough to find it too boring to repeat all childish steps, and didn't require gameplay tutorials.

Thought many times about moving to sandbox -after all, the need for steps and tutorials is long gone. But every time I step into one, it feels strange... empty. While I'm mainly focused into pursuing my own goals, I like taking the occasional contract (at least the ones that make sense to me), sending my crews to get their 3-5 stars, etc. I do keep a sandbox profile where I test things whenever I need to, but my main is always a career.

Not trying to sell it to you or anything. Just voicing my thoughts 

Edited September 29, 2019 by Atkara

[Cavscout74]

I started off in sandbox & got spoiled by all the choices of parts available.  Then I tried science & couldn't get into it.  Finally, after I was comfortable with the basics I jumped to career and it was quite a shock - after the huge choices of parts, realizing I can't even make orbit with what is available to start.  Then that hard fought grind to unlock enough parts to get something into orbit.  Then I started thinking, ok this should be easy from here, I'll start getting tons of science once I can get to Mun & Minmus.  Followed by, "Is my game broken?  Why can't I set maneuver nodes?"   Eventually, I figured out I had to upgrade buildings to get the "luxury" of maneuver nodes so I learned how to get to Mun without them.

At that time, I wasn't about to impose any restrictions on myself, quickload & revert were my friends.  Parts require funds to unlock?  No thank you.  G-forces?  Nope.   Easy settings all around.  I had loads of fun with it, but it started getting boring after clearing the tech tree & amassing tens of millions of funds.  Once I had sent kerbals on Laythe & back, I started trying harder & harder settings for each new career.  Since then, other than a sandbox save for testing, all my game time has been in career.

[Wallygator]

On 9/29/2019 at 10:58 AM, 5thHorseman said:

My first career game is insanely well documented, because I did a YouTube series on it that lasted over 100 episodes. Back then Career was what we call Science Mode now.

The videos are hard for me to watch these days because of all the stuff I get so wrong, including an insistence on calling Kerbals "Kerbins"

 

Those were hilarious at times. I really enjoyed them. 

[KerballingSmasher]

@5thHorsemanthose were some of the videos that inspired me to buy the game! In fact, somehow I'd nearly forgotten them...

[Piper]

My first career game was back in the 0.23 days, when career was the current Science Mode and we didn't have funds.  Now I had come into the game having played Orbiter for years, so I already had a pretty solid understanding of orbital dynamics, but at the same time it was nice having to work a new space program up from its foundations.  The funny thing about that particular career mode, was that for my first manned interplanetary trip I basically went with the hardest I could do, which was a landing on Moho, at night.

Since then I've done a couple of different career modes, each slightly different.  In my current one, I have it set where contracts give three times as much funds, because I never was big on doing tons of contracts, most of them doing things that don't really interest me, but science results from experiments are cut down by a third as well to try and balance them out as well.  This makes the early portion of career mode particularly difficult, since you really need those science rewards to progress technologically, and without all the science experiments unlocked, you can't always gather all the science you really need.