Wimpy Kerbals Career mode

[Pds314]

Start a career mode with G limits on and remove the BadS flags from your Kerbals, then set the Brave and Dumb sliders to -1.98. This will make your Kerbals *extremely* intolerant to G-forces as well as making them take awhile to wake up if they do faint.

Only rules are no cheats, no non-wimpy Kerbals except tourists, and no uncrewed/automated missions.

Here is persistant.sfs save if you don't want to mess around in the save file yourself. Just replace the existing one in your Kerbal Space Program/Saves/[your save name here] folder and load it from the escape + load save menu.

Edited October 16, 2020 by Pds314

[Pds314]

Parachute goes *snap*

[vyznev]

Hmm, this sounds potentially interesting.  I assume "no uncrewed/automated missions" effectively means "no probe cores"? In particular, sticking a probe core on a crew capsule so that it can take over if the kerbal passes out seems like it'd be at least against the spirit of the challenge. 

[Pds314]

10 hours ago, vyznev said:

Hmm, this sounds potentially interesting.  I assume "no uncrewed/automated missions" effectively means "no probe cores"? In particular, sticking a probe core on a crew capsule so that it can take over if the kerbal passes out seems like it'd be at least against the spirit of the challenge. 

Yeah basically. Otherwise this would heavily incentivize automated craft.

[vyznev]

So I downloaded your save and gave it a try. I might post a more detailed report later, once I've sorted through the bazillion screenshots I took, but to summarize, so far I've landed on the Mun, rescued two kerbals (yes, I did edit the save to make them wimpy first!) and taken three tourists for a tour around the Mun.

My general impression is that this isn't really all that different from a normal career game:

• SRBs are tricky but doable. Fine tuning their thrust takes some trial and error. I flew my first two suborbital missions using SRBs only just to see if I could, but the easy way would've been to cheese some science from KSC to unlock LF engines before even attempting flight.
• Launching on LF engines feels surprisingly normal. You do need to keep an eye on the TWR indicator during launch and throttle down when it goes above 2, but maintaining a constant TWR of about 2 actually gives a pretty nice and efficient launch trajectory. Solid side boosters on an LF core work fine too, at least as long as you don't go too far with them.
• Once in orbit, everything plays pretty much like normal. At least my vacuum stages very rarely produce more than 2 gees of acceleration anyway.
• Re-entry invariably makes kerbals pass out, but since parachute auto-deployment doesn't require a conscious pilot, it's OK. A handy trick is to raise the parachute full deployment altitude to 2000 meters — this gives the pilot enough time to wake up before touchdown.  

Also, flying only crewed missions and not using probe cores feels quite different from my usual play style. It's funny how many parts just aren't needed or useful. Probe cores? Nope, not using those. Antennas? Nah, just bring all the science home. Batteries and solar panels? Not really needed for short missions, 50 EC goes a surprisingly long way. Pretty much any "small" (0.625 m) parts? Kinda pointless until you unlock command chairs. On the other hand, the Pea command pod, which I kinda rarely use otherwise, turns out to be awesome here since it lets you bring both a pilot and a scientist (or a tourist or an empty seat for a rescue mission) in a single pod.

I haven't tried flying any planes yet, but I expect they should be fine as long as you're careful and don't try any aerobatics. That said, actually passing out while flying a plane seems quite likely to be deadly, so care is certainly required.