KSP Skill level poll

[Xannari Ferrows]

Wow. I achieved a perfect score. Power plays for the win!

[Hcube]

2225 out of 10 is one hella score, all hail the Lord of Kerbal

haha sorry in france , is . so i mixed em up

(i'll assume this was a joke and you perfectly understood )

[Trann]

This looks like it would be better served by an old school purity test where the results can be dropped into your .sig

[Merinsan]

I scored 8.25

I've done everything except a Tylo return, and I use reverts a lot (playing stock), specifically because I often mess up staging while doing launches.

It's not that I couldn't do a Tylo return, just that I am lazy. I have done an Eve return, but it took me a long time to get around to it.

[Bill Phil]

This doesn't measure skill so much as what you have done.

I can land on Dres if wanted to, but I don't WANT TO (and my hardware would probably prevent it). So I have like a 2 something. But I just don't WANT TO...

[Xavven]

2225 out of 10 is one hella score, all hail the Lord of Kerbal

I know you're just joking, but commas are used instead of periods to indicate a decimal place in some countries.

---

Regarding the poll in general, while I have a score of 9, most of the points in this poll seem to be earned by landing and returning from celestial bodies. Would you consider measuring other aspects of gameplay skill? Some ideas:

Have you built an SSTO spaceplane and gotten to orbit?

Have you built a VTOL spaceplane, gotten to orbit, and landed vertically without parachutes?

Have you successfully delivered and driven a rover on a high gravity planet for a reasonably significant distance to explore a geographical feature?

Same as above, but on a low gravity moon?

Have you built a rover that can right itself if flipped?

Have you ever circumnavigated Kerbin in a rover. Tylo? Eve?

Have you built and successfully traveled in a boat?

How about an amphibious rover?

Have you built an SSTO to Laythe and successfully piloted it there?

How many anomalies have you discovered?

Have you piloted a lander manually and landed without breaking anything on Minmus? Mun? Duna? Laythe? Tylo?

Can you pinpoint land on the top of a Mun arch?

Can you land on Laythe on a specific island of your choosing without hitting water?

Have you landed on Mun during total darkness without breaking anything? Same question for every other body.

What's your heaviest lifter's payload capacity?

What's the best payload fraction you've designed for a 20 ton payload?

Have you ever completed a Jool-5 mission? Was it with or without a refuel mission?

Have you ever completed a grand tour of the whole Kerbol system with a single vessel?

Have you ever built a base on Mun? Duna?

[Lhathron the Elf]

My score was 1.4... XD

I would have gotten higher if I had ever attempted anything interplanetary, although I never have the time for that kind of thing. Plus, my rig can't handle too many mods at once. I would have almost all of those mods if I could. I do have RemoteTech though.

[OhioBob]

2 + 4 + 4 + 16 + 10 + 16 + 0 + 2.5 + 2.5 = 57 / 20 = 2.85

It looks like I need to start doing some return missions.

[Cerberus738]

Here are the questions:

Q: Have you ever achieved a stable orbit around Kerbin?(2 points)

Yes

Q: Have you ever landed and returned from the Mun?(4 points)

Yes

Q: Have you ever landed and returned from Minmus?(4 points)

Yes

Q: On how many objects outside the Kerbin system(which includes Kerbin, the Mun and Minmus) have you landed on(doesn't have to be a return mission)(2 points per object, or 24 if you've landed on all)

ALL OF THEM!!! Returned from Most.

Q: Have you ever successfully docked?(10 points)

Yes

Q: Have you ever intercepted an asteroid?(16 points)

Yes

Optional question 1(if you use mods): How many of the following difficulty enhancing mods: TAC life support, Remote Tech, Deadly Reentry, FAR, RSS; have you used at the same time in a save?(4 points per mod)

Only Used life support before.

Optional question 2(if you don't use mods): Do you rarely(in less than half of your career saves) use reverts/reloads? If only your revertless/reloadless worlds were counted, would the amount of 'yes' answers to the above questions be roughly the same?(+0.25 points for every 'yes' answer to the above questions that would remain the same, not including optional question 1)

I've had KAS and KER installed since i bought the game so i guess i can't answer this?? Also i don't really get it.

Q: On which of the following objects outside the Kerbin system have you done successful return missions: Duna(2.5 points), Ike(2.5 points), Dres(5 points), Moho(5 points), Gilly(5 points), Laythe(10 points), Vall(10 points), Bop(10 points), Pol(10 points), Tylo(15 points), Eeloo(15 points), Eve(30 points)

Duna, Ike, Gilly, Laythe, Vall, Bop, Pol, Tylo, Eve.

159 Points!!

7.95 skillz!!!

[Owen5595]

6.4

eh, not bad I guess

[xrayfishx]

My score would be 4.1, because I just couldn't be bothered to go to other planets. I know damn well I could go to Tylo or Eeloo and return if I wanted, I'm quite sure about being able to go to Moho and I think I could return an Eve surface sample without too many failed attempts.

I use all the listed mods and more, being an RO player.

Answers to all yes/no questions were yes.

[PB666]

I've been wondering for some time what the average level of skill is in the KSP community. When I was attempting a certain mission a few days ago and failed miserably, I started criticising myself for not being able to do what a bunch of other people apparently managed to do. However, then I asked myself:"Are there really that many skilled people around here?", and then I came up with this questionnaire. It is basically a series of questions regarding your achievements in KSP.

Optional question 1(if you use mods): How many of the following difficulty enhancing mods: TAC life support, Remote Tech, Deadly Reentry, FAR, RSS; have you used at the same time in a save?(4 points per mod)

Optional question 2(if you don't use mods): Do you rarely(in less than half of your career saves) use reverts/reloads? If only your revertless/reloadless worlds were counted, would the amount of 'yes' answers to the above questions be roughly the same?(+0.25 points for every 'yes' answer to the above questions that would remain the same, not including optional question 1)

^These^ are kind of dumb, IMO.

have you made your own mod 10pts

scale mods 5pts

reshape mods 10pts

denovo parts 30pts.

retexture mods 5 pts

reduce-complexity mods 5 pts

move-node mods 10 pts

Combination of 3 or more of the above in the same part 50pts

if your mod is essentially copied in the next upgrade 50pts

have you removed most of your game slowing mods so your game loads in less than 5 minutes 10pts

have your replaced those mods with your own mods that are much faster 30 pts

Do you principally use career mode 5 pts

Career mode hard 50 pts

Have you landed and returned from ........ without using a navigation mod like MechJeb 5 pts per celestial.

Have you discovered workarounds for bugs in KSP

1 10 pts

2 20 pts

more than 2 30 pts

Your Typical revert is:

Commonly craft collapses on launch pad -50pts

Commonly craft explodes on launch -30pts

Commonly craft falls over beyond a certain speeds -20pts

Commonly craft fails to reach orbit -10pts

Commonly craft reaches orbit but fails critically -5 pts (forget electricity, kerbals, docking port, etc)

Commonly craft reaches destination but fails to return - 2pts.

Commonly craft does not fall over but flexes like a fishing rod with a heavy weigh on line -2pts

Commonly craft looks like a tumourous spiderweb that weighs > 1 Kt -1000 pts ( you will not go to space today)

In career mode hard, how many facilities have you upgraded 5pts for each KSC facility upgrade.

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

tldr

[Axelord FTW]

Some of these questions are about skill or at least difficulty.

Other are about proficiency and how far into you have played.

Going to Duna or Dres is about as hard, yet they both give out points and the same amount while if this was about skill, a successful encounter and capture would yield a certain amount of point but only once. Some planets and moons might have multipliers and such but the only multiplier you have is linear and only applied to the whole result (which does not change anything but the numbers in the poll (same scale)).

Some examples of skillz:

Aerocapture.

Asteroid encounter.

Asteroid return (+multiplier for where it is returned, low for kerbin, better for the Mun/Minmus, high for other planets)

Asteroid capture (recover/landing) (+multiplier).

Efficient planetary transfer.

Direct planetary transfer.

SSTO (TWR <1 ideally/spaceplane).

Difficulty enhancing mods.

Rendez-vous and docking.

PB666, you are on the right track but I wouldn't take modding as a metric for KSP skill.

Screwing up (or using an auto-pilot) doesn't factor into a player's skill as long as he can reliably perform without. Same goes for reverting/quicksaving/quickloading and the debug menu. If someone has performed a lot of aerocapture maneuvers but missed most of them (far from the target final orbit), then he should not award himself any points for it because the question of reliability is more important than HAVE YOU DONE X ONCE. Ten thousand monkeys, ten thousand typewritters and so on. A long term player could have more points than a better player.

According to the poll, I would place myself in the 6-8 category but I still do not place any value on that metric. If it were to actually rate myself I'd probably place myself in the upper 80 percentile in relative skill. While my impression of my skill level is hardly impartial, it's still better than what we have here I think.

[Barklight]

Q1: Yes (+2), Q2: Yes (+4), Q3: Yes (+4), Q4: Five (+10), Q5: Yes (+10), Q6: technically, Yes (+16)

Optional 1: TAC/RT2/DRE/FAR (+16)

Optional 2: Not sure how to answer that. I never use quick saves and only revert my launches if I forgot something super important.

Optional 3: +5 points

[Wombats_&Co.]

(2+4+4+(2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2)+10+16+(4*4))/20 = 3.4 for me. Having never done a return mission from outside of Kerbin's SOI (well, outside it's near orbits, too... thank you Kerbol for your lovely science), my score is kinda low for how much I have done, and that without reverting past stupid failures on ascent. (I pretty much never quickload)

But still a good poll. Needs tweaking, perhaps, but still a decent comparator.

[Flixxbeatz]

So according to this, my skill level is horrifyingly low (counted 1.3)

I find the lack of SSTOs (and Spaceplanes) in the equation disturbing.

[Renegrade]

I find the lack of SSTOs (and Spaceplanes) in the equation disturbing.

Super quick reminder here; force-choking people is against the forum rules

[celem]

Came out at 7.25. Never landed on Tylo for some reason, never returned a sample from there or Eve, otherwise yes to everything with 3 difficulty enhancing mods at peak. (FAR/DRE/RT) (nearly 1/4 of the total score is tied up in tylo and eve sample returns...)

I quickload because i miss nodes a lot even with alarm clock, heavy timewarp finger. It's very rare that I need to quickload a failed suicide burn or similar and I never revert.

Edited March 1, 2015 by celem

[Valley]

I got 1.1 - I spend much of my time near Kebin or the moons, have only gotten to Ike by accident. Was heading towards Duna with a ship and the moon got in the way.

I don't play with space planes but did a shuttle challenge once, and made one that worked, so think both space planes and shuttles should be added to the poll - they take their own set of skills to create and use. Its not hard but you do have to kind of switch gears.

[WWEdeadman]

Well, I wish I could re-answer. My score is 6.1 by now. Mainly cause I finished actually getting everywhere with at least a probe, and I got a Kerbal back from Eve's surface. Also I now use RemoteTech FAR and Deadly re-entry in my current save.

[Frozen_Heart]

I have a rather pathetic end score of just over 2, despite having played this game consistently since I got it in 0.17.

I'm more of a builder myself and prefer designing new craft to doing missions.

[Vector-5]

I scored a 2.6, although that should be higher. Because of my Duna expedition craft's wonky clamp-o-trans, I couldn't dock the two halves together. *sigh*

-Vec

[Brofessional]

I've done everything but return from Tylo/Eve and land on Dres. Not that I lack the ability to do so, I just haven't gotten around to it.

[Noname117]

I began playing the game in version .13

my score is a 2...

I am really displeased with myself now (then again, I have spent most of the past year just building fighter jets)