I finally picked up KSP during the recent sale on Steam and have been playing the heck out of it. After doing the tutorials I went straight to Career Mode and have loved it. The KSP wiki was an enormous help, particularly the two pages Science and Biome. After figuring out how to get to orbit I did a number of sub-orbital missions to the different biomes once I got the Mystery Gooâ„¢ Containment Unit. I'd parachute down, do the Crew Report and Goo activities, and immediately recover the vessel. You can do this since you're on Kerbin, and you get the full value of the science by returning instead of transmitting. It's slightly grindy but pays off both with the science and the flight experience. Some of the biomes are challenging to reach. I didn't try doing EVAs/surface samples as I assumed it wasn't possible without a ladder. If you can get out/down on Kerbin without a ladder you'd get science really quickly. I still haven't gotten the lower atmosphere stuff for most biomes, as I figured I'd wait to get the 2HOT Thermometer and use a spaceplane, which I've only just started messing around with. In space I did flybys of Mun & Minmus for more science, and then I finally landed on Minmus, did an EVA, and returned to get 500+ science for all the activities there, as well as the first successful completion. This got me 5 of the 90-point techs, making a major dent in that tier. Tip: Once you have several science components you can put all the activities in one custom action group. Then you can do all your on-board science with a single keypress. While I agree that figuring out how to make progress through the tech levels is difficult at this point without info from outside the game, the fix should not be a questline of missions. Rather, the opportunities to gather science should be better explained. Ideally the biomes should be displayable on the in-game map with an indication of which ones still offer points for doing science. With better information it will be possible to figure out what to do while still having complete freedom to do anything your tech level permits. This freedom is an important reason why I like KSP and I'd hate to lose it. KSP is already very good and isn't even done!
