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Do you worry about time?


EdFred

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Not how much time we spend on KSP, but do you keep an eye on the game clock? Do you just warp ahead to correct phase angles and not worry about all the "wasted" time? One career mode I noticed I was 46 years into it, and I thought that was a lot of wasted time considering I was only doing one mission at a time. Warp ahead to get Duna in position, warping while going to Duna, warping while waiting for Kerbin to come back into position. Well that was a few wasted years. Repeat for Jool and Eve. So I decided to start career mode over. I will now only warp the time it takes to get Mun. While waiting for the other planets to get into position for transfer, I'm simply constructing bases on Mun and (soon) Minmus. I'm only 30-some days into my career the tech tree is completely knocked out in 9 Kerbin days, and I have a Mun base with 23 or 24 modules (all a separate mission to bring each module) and two rovers. Once the Minmus base is complete, I will start construction on interplanetary ships, and try and run concurrent missions to all the planets.

What's your approach to time? Do you do double duty? Are your Kerbals immortal?

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My with the Tac Life Support mod I now have a reason to track time. Thou it does not prevent me from forgetting my kerbals, which in turn gives me reason to get the Kerbal Alarm Clock mod so as to notify me when my crew onboard a station or ship in orbit runs low on supply's.

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I do tend to keep an eye on the game clock and do other stuff while I'm waiting for interplanetary missions. This probably also explains why I havn't been to many planets yet and usually only get part way through a game before the next patch comes out. :)

Couple of things I do to fill in the time, (apart from construction missions) is to rotate any space-station or base crews every two months or so and also to add self imposed delays on ship building and tech tree climbing. I figure that all the science data needs time to processed and turned into new tech, so I usually allow myself to gain say 5 or 6 usable science points per day.

Not to everyone's taste I know (there was a big thread about this a while back) but I like the feeling of having something happening in the background during interplanetary missions and it also makes tech tree choices a bit more strategic if I can't unlock them all quite as quickly. It makes the game seem more like an actual space programme somehow rather than just a string of arbitrary missions. I can have early probes in transit to Duna or Eve whilst I'm still building Munar capable ships and researching the tech for *better* Munar capable ships.

Like I said, purely self imposed and not for everyone.

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Even when not using Life Support I pay a lot of attention to time.

I try not to "waste" too much time warping thru it, I feel it's bad for Kerbal psychology or something, So if I've sent a mission to Duna, I work on other launches like space station improvements while it's flying.

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I try not to "waste" too much time warping thru it, I feel it's bad for Kerbal psychology or something, So if I've sent a mission to Duna, I work on other launches like space station improvements while it's flying.

This. I also try to map out the launch windows for the year (except for Moho, you can get to Moho pretty much anytime you want) and then decide which ones to use.

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There's no way I could have done what I did this career without Kerbal Alarm clock. Of course when you have 9 landers en route to Mun or Minumus simultaneously it gets difficult to juggle a periapsis adjustment, an orbital burn, a de-orbital burn, and a suicide burn all at once - especially when they start to overlap each other.

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One of the reasons I keep restarting is I don't like waiting for windows to open up and I don't like wasting months with time warping. I also got frustrated trying to juggle multiple missions, especially when asteroids got in the mix. I installed Kerbal Alarm Clock before my newest save, and it really helps manage those gaps and multiple missions. I have my queue of ships in their parking orbits, the "in progress" flights, and timers on asteroid entry all alarmed. I can mess around with stations and bases in Kerbin SOI and not miss opportunities. KAC is one of those "how did I get by without this?" mods.

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In terms of playing time I really care.

I don't want to do to much to quikly. I don't want to land kerbals on lets say the kerbin moons, duna or any 3rd planet all within the first year.

But I also don't want it to take a decade before I land on my first planetary visit.

So I keep it somewhere in between.

I "heard" about Kerbal alarm clock.

I never actually understand what it does. But I searched for it and I really want this mod now so thanks for mentioning it.

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I don't, even though I have TAC Life support.

It doesnt bother me because I can easily do emergency resupply missions (which ive never had do anyways).

I have kerbal alarm clock but I rarely use it. Only for lunch windows, mainly.

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I don't, even though I have TAC Life support.

It doesnt bother me because I can easily do emergency resupply missions (which ive never had do anyways).

I have kerbal alarm clock but I rarely use it. Only for lunch windows, mainly.

Yum, lunch windows!

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I've done this several ways.

I started out doing each mission from start to finish, with as much timewarp as needed. I could head out to Eeloo, discover a design flaw, and revert to VAB if needed (though generally I didn't revert once I was outside Kerbin's SOI).

Later I started using Alarm Clock to set up alerts for launch windows, SOI changes, and so on. And then once I had about a dozen active missions going at a time, I started to feel a bit overloaded.

Since then I've been somewhere in between with only 1-3 missions going at a time.

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In terms of playing time I really care.

I don't want to do to much to quikly. I don't want to land kerbals on lets say the kerbin moons, duna or any 3rd planet all within the first year.

But I also don't want it to take a decade before I land on my first planetary visit.

So I keep it somewhere in between.

I "heard" about Kerbal alarm clock.

I never actually understand what it does. But I searched for it and I really want this mod now so thanks for mentioning it.

It will change your life

Personally, I try to make sure the Kerbals back home don't have to sit idle for to long, though I also don't like to overwork them.

So when I'm waiting for a transfer window, I'll start designing something else (station for example). And while I'm waiting for my asteroid catcher to catchup to the asteroid (and than get back into Kerbin SOI), I'll start sending up and preparing other crafts to do something with the asteroid (like make a station out of it).

Though I don't put them to work constantly, so I'll still timewarp while randevousing, or going to mun/minmus for example

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I used to just timewarp until I got a window to my destination open... now I use Kerbal Alarm Clock and it's changed my game. Multitasking! Currently in the queue is a a transfer to Moho, retrograde burning my underpowered electric sundriver, approach tuning for Jool and Duna, and waiting ages for the first Eve window. That latter one comes by so infrequently... tempted to look into non-hohmann transfer orbits.

In the meantime, I'll probably work on circularizing the orbit of my C-class asteroid "Abigor", and maybe go grab some more Mun science or toss up the start of a space station.

Also, a fun thing about not warping for years is trying to pack as much much Mission Value into one launch window as possible. Last save I coordinated a colony flotilla to Duna. My current craft en-route to Jool will break into five different sub-vessels, to gather science from the primary and as many moons as I can manage. This was launched right after I installed FAR, so getting that much payload into a reasonably-sized fairing was a neat challenge.

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I usually try to at least launch a rocket every one or two years, which I think is reasonable. I used to try to launch one every one or two months and kept track of everything on KAC, but that kinda took the fun out of flying a mission from start to finish.

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I'm probably stingier with KSP time than I am with real time xP

I use Kerbal Alarm Clock and generally follow a rule of not timewarping more than one day at a time without doing something (launching something, transferring crew, etc.). With the ARM patch that now means Kerbal days, so it's taken me weeks of real time to clear the science tree and a mere 56 days on Kerbin. I don't want my Kerbals to get bored, you see...

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I feel that I want to run an active space program, of course perhaps it's become a hyperactive one. The asteroid mission has further encouraged that, since it creates in-game deadlines, though I suspect the initial novelty will wear off and I'll take to ignoring any that aren't going to hit. (I feel a duty to deflect the impactors, even though I know even an E class wouldn't be seriously dangerous).

The drawback is of course missions, especially interplanetary missions, taking longer. My mission to flyby Eve, Moho, and maybe beyond I started in early April and it still hasn't reached Eve. I might try and focus on existing missions a bit more once I've launched the current round of asteroid interceptors.

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