How did you start your KSP learning curve?

[nobbers12345]

Those steps include:

How did you find out?

What did you do when you first downloaded the game?

I found out about it through Markiplier's Crashey McSplodey, I watched all he had on the game and moved to the insane rockets division, which quickly got boring, so I then decided to download the game and see what I could do.

Naturally, I didn't know what the hell I was doing, so I quickly watched tutorials by, of course, Scott Manley through a quick Youtube search.

I remember trying to go to Minmus just by placing my apoapsis at it with no inclination changes or A/D nodes, and orbiting for a year with no encounter.

And then my mind exploded with awesome ideas for rockets.

Scott Manley then started the IQ series, and I searched the mods he used, and downloaded most of them, and then some more.

Now I still use those mods because they are awesome.

[Guest]

Found It out Jan 2012... Kurtjmac.... 'nuff said

Build a low part ship (When I started It was 0.13.1)

I decided to get more intelligent to knowing what the hell I was doing!

[Pecan]

Tripped over a review of KSP in PCGamer or some such, got the demo, read the wiki, did the in-game tutorials, read some of the tutorials here, watched a couple of short videos (I have the ability to read books, videos have to be very short and to the point - de-umming is a must!), checked references elsewhere on the internet and in the library. Bought the game a week later then asked my first question, "what's a flag?" ^^

[Superfluous J]

KurtJMac here too. I watched all his videos until I was caught up, then I downloaded the demo. I played through the tutorials and then made a ship that got to and landed on Mun and returned my Kerbal alive. Then about 1 minute after that successful mission I bought the game.

[Spartwo]

-Nerd Cubes free games extravaganza.

-Get to orbit.

-Went to orbit(after a few hours)

-Stopped playing.

-Started playing again in december of the same year.

-Orbit again.

[TheD007]

a friend who likes indie games posted link to website for .13.1.

i think that everyone should crash several stock rockets first. the best way to learn everything short of docking and interplanetary trips is by messing up and knowing what has not worked. for more complex stuff i have found it is best to try,fail, check forum and youtube then when knowing roughly how to do it trying yourself. it worked for me.

i feel that crashing and trying new ways help new players develop intuition that will help them in the long run.

[Heagar]

My first intoduction to KSP was via the let's failer (his own description: "godfather of fail"; and yes, he is a german let's player) "xqdmhose", who was originally playing minecraft. I downloaded the demo (13.3) and tryed to get into orbit and to land on the mun (at first with heavy explosions and loosing control of the craft), and with my fifth craft installed a mod already: landing legs (witch was possible in the demo that days).

Watching "kurtjmac" and "HOCgaming" on youtoube i want this game badly. As soon it was availible via paysavecard (no need to reveal my bank-account in the internet) i purchased it on the developers website.

[Starwhip]

-Friend told me about his horrible fails ingame (Decoupled jet engines slamming into cockpit at mach 1.5)

-I went and got demo

-Spent countless nights failing at ship construction as I went for the Mun

-Watched a docking tutorial or two

-Made Mun orbit

-Landed

-Landed and back to orbit

-Landed and return

-Repeat for a few weeks, screw around with different launch styles

-Eventually buy and download full game

-Get blown away by the part choices

And from there, it took off (pun intended) until where I am today.

Go KSP!

[IcarusBen]

I learned about KSP from the Yogscast's Duncan, who did a series of KSP videos. I got an old version of the game on the internet(0.13), bought the full thing(0.17) and quickly got to work building massive rockets that couldn't get off the ground. I remember my first rocket. The Artemis 1. It couldn't even move a few inches before it crashed. Good times, good times.

[Aethon]

Was looking for rocket/space stuff on YouTube and stumbled on a vid by an unknown guy with an Indian accent, who cussed- ALOT, launching an absurdly un Whackjob contraption. Time warp 50x, several months forward, was researching the nuclear pulse rocket, and stumbled upon Scott Manley's vid. We- well I should say I, fell in love... you can see where this is going... was afraid, but eventually overwhelmed by game coolness, downloaded the demo, yada yada yada... Thanks to Scott, landed successfully on the Mun on the third try... nine months later, a baby was born.

[Eric S]

I'll third KurtJMac in a round about manner. Aaron Williams linked to a KurtJMac KSP video in one of his link dumps, I followed the link and bought the game less than three hours later, with about two of those hours spent in the KSP Demo (0.13.? at the time).

First thing I did in game was to create the ship that quickly earned the name "death rattler." Kid you not, that thing, even when it wasn't exploding, was swaying, shifting, shaking like something out of an old black and white cartoon. The second thing I did was discover struts. That's when I started making it to orbital altitude, though orbit came a bit later because I wasn't being remotely close to aggressive enough with my gravity turn. Made it over half way to the Mun before I managed an orbit.

A little practice with my gravity turn, and I was reaching orbit, though my first orbiting craft didn't arrive with enough delta-v to deorbit. Once I actually made it to orbit and returned, I hit up the KSP store to buy the game.

The next day, I had my first munar landing (using someone elses design) on my first attempt, though due to hitting the space bar to launch (a staging step that shouldn't have happened until reentry), it didn't return. The next few landings were definitely more impact than landing, and I think it was my fourth attempt that actually returned. Then I started designing my own craft. We won't discuss the fact that my first self-designed munar flyby had landing gear, but I did manage to land and return a craft of my own design on the next mission.

I had to overengineer everything back then as landing on the Mun was 1km/s (or more) of delta-v rather than the 650ish it should be (piloting issues, not game changes), transfers were never accurate enough to avoid major corrections once I hit the target's SoI (and I didn't know efficient ways to make those corrections), etc.

Edited May 31, 2014 by Eric S

[magnemoe]

Somebody linked the game on an general gaming discussion, I downloaded the demo made it into some sort of orbit and bought the game, 0.18 at that time.

I did a grand tour in 0.18 with kethane mining.

[Pursuedtank]

Discovered it through Kurt J Mac here as well, I started off in 0.16. I bought the game within the first day of discovering it, it was just such a good fit with what I enjoy in games. Started off with simple rockets before progressing to landing on the Mun and beyond.

[Immashift]

I too found the game through Kurtjmac. Then I found Scott Manley about an hour later and had the game maybe 20 min after that.

First thing I did was stick a booster on a pod and see what would happen. Course that didn't go too far, so the next steps got me to orbit.

After that I started doing flybys of the moons of Kerbin, and after that a landing on both (Mun furst). Then flybys of Duna/Eve, and a landing on Duna.

Can't remember much after that specifically till I really got going. I know I did a Laythe station at one point early on.

I overengineered everything back then too. Still do tbh

[Felsmak]

I was already familiar with orbital mechanics when I started, so I just had to learn how to do everything properly in KSP. It took me a while before I could do anything confidently, however. I started out by simply watching MechJeb fly everything for me, and then I eventually decided to just fly manually and copy everything I had seen the computer do.

[Redrobin]

My uncle got me into it late summer of '12. We were at Universal Studios because of the new Despicable Me ride. We loved despicable me. He showed me KSP where you launch dudes that look like minions. I fell in love with it and almost 2 years later I still play it.

[Itchono]

I actually found the game back in the days of 0.8.4 (June 2011) (from this guy called "JJ5x5"). No Scott Manley or Kurt at the time.

There was no orbital map, no Mun, no planets, no time warp, no (functional) wings, no fuel lines, no 2.5 m parts, the atmosphere ended at 34500 m and the ocean was solid.

The first thing I did was attach a SRB to the capsule and see what happened. I then progressively went bigger and bigger until I made it past 100 k. Since there was no orbital map, it was very hard to orbit

(Scott actually managed it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RvVjysJKB4)(Keep in mind the atmosphere ended at 34500 m and it's density was consistent going up). As we got new parts, time warp, and the map, I was able to orbit Kerbin

(or Kearth, as it was referred to at the time). In 0.12, they added the Mun. I remember it being very hard to reach it since I had only just mastered orbiting. The closest I could get was an encounter that scraped the edge of the SoI. As 0.15 and 0.16 came around with Minmus and 2.5 m parts, I started experimenting with even larger rockets in hope of eventually returning the 3 man pod back from Minmus. As planets were introduced in .17, I was not able to reach any of them except Duna. With docking in .18, I went back to LKO. I learned how to dock (no Mechjeb docking autopilot at the time) and eventually started constructing interplanetary vessels.

So basically, start small and go bigger. Over engineer everything if you can. I was particularly lucky since the game's development slowly taught me.

[Chiboko]

Found it through Kurtjmac bought it 20 minutes later.

[Tortoise]

An old online friend named Kaonashi told me about ksp, so I downloaded it but wasn't too interested, but I tried a little bit. Was may of 2013.

Then months later I started playing the game again and got a little bit more interested, which was early 2014. So I started learning how to play and looked up videos and got excited. RandomJeb taught me everything, then I bought ksp for 30 bucks I think, and now its apart of my everyday life.

[Woopert]

Found out about it from Robbaz in December 2012 and started playing in January 2013. Early on I watched Robbaz and kurtjmac, but in May 2014 I had to go somewhere so I couldn't play KSP until August. Then, I started watching mostly Scott Manley.

By that time I had already developed a good picture of how orbital mechanics work and the other basic principles of rocketry. I've been pretty good at KSP ever since!

[problemecium]

I don't recall the exact date, but I found out from kurtjmac after subscribing to his Minecraft channel (which I later unsubscribed because it started getting boring). This was back when the Demo was 0.13, so my first memorable experiences were my 17-tank SSTO (there was only the one type of tank available) and my HUGE AMAZING EPIC 60-tank orbiter / lift rocket, which is of course by modern standards dinky xP

I also believe I did get to the Mun a couple times, and landed there once... maybe. Then, having consumed all available content, I stopped playing for around a year and when I picked it up again there was a new Demo that had me hooked much more strongly. Around that time I started watching Scott Manley's Reusable Space Program, which inspired me to buy the full game and impacted my rocket-building tactics ever since.

[Commissioner Tadpole]

Okay...

I was a Minecraft player back in 2012 through early 2013. The thing I loved to do the most in it was to screw around with mods. I came across a nifty mod called 'Galacticraft', which, as the name says, let you explore space. The thing about the mod that set it apart from other space mods was that you didn't simply build a portal - there was an actual rocket item that was actually capable of flying all the way to 3600 blocks of altitude from sea level, transporting you into a Space Travel GUI that let you select a planet or moon to explore, and then would send you into its' respective dimension. It's very incomplete at the time - you can only go to the Moon and to Mars so far, but it was fun while it lasted.

The community in there was small, but active, and quite welcoming. It isn't all sunshine and rainbows - we had an issue with a kid who made some bad suggestions to the game, like to have a Space Dimension in which you actually had to fly to the actual planet, and another user there was quite agressive, often clashing against the kid and causing heated arguments - but it's better than most things the KSP community believes the Minecraft community to be. It was through them that I discovered Kerbal Space Program, as some of them often joked by replacing some terms of the mod with KSP ones(I remember a thread called "A couple of ideas for Eve... *ahem* I mean Venus", and the mod's creator shot down the kid's suggestion for real-time space flight by commenting about how KSP uses Time Warp which makes Multiplayer difficult).

At first, I paid little mind to them, but after seeing enough KSP jokes, I thought "Argh, you know what? I'm going to check what this fuss is all about," and looked up Kerbal Space Program. Needless to say; I was instantly hooked. I was, however, frustrated, because at the time my computer lacked enough power to run KSP. Skip to a few months ahead, I got a new computer that still isn't perfect for KSP, but manages to bypass the bare minimum requirements, and downloaded the demo. I wanted more, and after some weeks I finally got the full game.

I still remember how I struggled to make it to the Mün in the demo and tried to simply make my rocket bigger, resulting in large monstrosities that wouldn't leave the ground...

Edited May 31, 2014 by Commissioner Tadpole

[Guest]

Holy shiz! Lots of people came here cause Kurtjmac... Then again... He got KSP popular in the first place...

[Commissioner Tadpole]

Holy shiz! Lots of people came here cause Kurtjmac... Then again... He got KSP popular in the first place...

Though I didn't discover KSP from him, he did play an important role in my pre-KSP period. After I discovered KSP, I began to watch his videos to get a clue about how KSP works. I remember when I first saw Jebediah - I immediatly thought he was from Kerbin's equivalent of Saudi Arabia.

[suclearnub]

I'm quite new to KSP, only got it at the winter Steam sale last year. So the only version I've played is 0.23 and 0.23.5!

I started very tiny, from suborbital flights. Then I cheated. A lot. All my flights were infinite fuel. My ambitions were big, my skills not so. Then it dawned on me that KSP wasn't fun with cheating. I learned real rocketry.