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After what milestone should you be able to call yourself an expert at this game?

mr_yogurt

By mr_yogurt
in KSP1 Discussion

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What defines an Expert?  

  1. 1. What defines an Expert?

    • If you can reach Duna and return
      56
    • If you can make an SSTO
      22
    • If you can make a trip to Tylo, land, and return
      77
    • If you can land on Eve and return
      123
    • None of those. You must do something HARDERZ!
      100

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brdavis

brdavis

Posted
Posted
...The day i can calculate DeltaV, understand TWR and what relation ISP has to it all without mods that do that for me, and actually grasp all the info i getting from various sources, then i start considering myself expert status...

Sort of ironic. I could do all those things long before KSP… so "expert" is in the internal eyes of the beholder (no, I'm *NO* expert, but I play one while teaching physics :) ).

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Xaiier

Xaiier

Posted
Posted
And Mac players don't have either to begin with :)

Actually, you do, you just have to switch your keyboard settings to make the function keys act properly. Not that that stopped me from becoming a pro at no-failures allowed missions. :P

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User Unrelated

User Unrelated

Posted
Posted

I called myself a pro after I landed on the Mun in one piece

but then I tried docking and realized there was still much to learn

I called myself the king of outer space after I mastered LKO docking

but that feeling lasted but minutes until I tried landing on another planet

I then called myself the best KSP player alive when I landed a small probe on Eve

But thinking about how to get it back really baffled me and ruined the excitement

I deemed myself the master of the universe when I pulled off a tour of the Jool system

but then trying to land a base on Laythe really pushed me to my limits

And then, one day, I decided to concrete myself in the history books as the greatest Kerbonaught of all time

so I legally changed my name to Scott Manley

but my mom made me change it back

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sdj64

sdj64

Posted
Posted

I think that a good measure of KSP mastery is the Jool-5 Challenge (Land on all 5 moons of Jool in a single mission). It incorporates all of the aspects of KSP: launching large payloads, orbital assembly, interplanetary travel, aerobraking, docking and rendezvous, atmospheric and non atmospheric landings, high gravity (Tylo) to low gravity (Pol). If you can do the Jool-5 challenge you can definitely do anything in KSP.

Before anyone asks, yes I have done it. Though I still quicksave and quickload frequently. Both my Jool-5 attempts would have ended in disaster if not for that. I don't think I would fault anyone for not knowing the perfect aerobraking altitude on their first try, or trying to judge a pinpoint atmospheric landing from orbit. Trying it a few times until you get it right is better than using Mechjeb, in my opinion.

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Jouni

Jouni

Posted
Posted
I think that a good measure of KSP mastery is the Jool-5 Challenge (Land on all 5 moons of Jool in a single mission). It incorporates all of the aspects of KSP: launching large payloads, orbital assembly, interplanetary travel, aerobraking, docking and rendezvous, atmospheric and non atmospheric landings, high gravity (Tylo) to low gravity (Pol). If you can do the Jool-5 challenge you can definitely do anything in KSP.

Doing it in three different ways would qualify in my books:

  1. Build a lightweight ship to complete the Jool-5 challenge. Use gravity assists extensively to save fuel.
  2. Use spaceplanes to build a modular ship in orbit. Complete the challenge with this ship.
  3. Build a gigantic rocket that launches five independent interplanetary ships. These ships depart for Jool in the same launch window, and each of them goes to a different moon.

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LexiSilva

LexiSilva

Posted
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I think that a good measure of KSP mastery is the Jool-5 Challenge (Land on all 5 moons of Jool in a single mission). It incorporates all of the aspects of KSP: launching large payloads, orbital assembly, interplanetary travel, aerobraking, docking and rendezvous, atmospheric and non atmospheric landings, high gravity (Tylo) to low gravity (Pol). If you can do the Jool-5 challenge you can definitely do anything in KSP.

I haven't done that before. I'm gonna try it! Thank you!

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Tidus Klein

Tidus Klein

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I say that when you can choose a planet that you want to land on, build a lander that you think will work...WITH NO PRIER TESTING! go and land on said planet and return.....all while using the same basic design for all your other missions.

and land on all the planets and return.....

I will say thou I haven't done an eve return yet but then again I've never tried. :)

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  • 1 month later...
RocketBlam

RocketBlam

Posted
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Master level? Landing a Kerbal on Eve and returning him. That was the toughest for me, and I can't see any other greater challenge out there.

I've landed on every planetary body except Jool and Tylo. Tylo is hard, but it's not Eve hard.

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Felsmak

Felsmak

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There is no milestone. You're not an expert because you've landed on Eve and returned; you're an expert because you were able to land on Eve and return. There's a ton of feats one could potentially accomplish in KSP, and arbitrarily designating any single one of them as the gateway to experthood just doesn't make any sense. An expert is simply someone who has learned everything there is to know about the game and knows exactly what they're doing. They may not have gotten around to return Kerbals from Eve yet, but they certainly could if they wanted to.

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nadreck

nadreck

Posted
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My 2 cents:

An expert KSP'er is someone who has mastered a number of aspects of the game so that they can accomplish picking a goal (Jool 5, flying a space plane down into Joolian atmosphere and returning out of it, Eve landing and ascent, high speed Eloo return mission, building a lunar base that docks together with a landing platform and not all on wheels, etc as examples not the be all and end all list) and then having picked the goal can pick an approach (RPing consistency, in game efficiency, out of game efficiency {that is minimum of human effort}, engineering elegance, flamboyant style, etc as examples) and then accomplish it directly without trial and error and without massive over engineering (ask me in a little while how my first Eve landing/ascent goes).

Just doing something because you got there by iterative trial and error isn't expertise, however, learning by trial and error and then applying what you learned to the next problem and being able to do it without trial and error, that, is expertise.

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