Marclev

Definitely. I was trying to play it as if it I was brand new and I didn't have a "Must have mods list" about to be downloaded carefully put together over 800 odd hours of playing over the last few years I'm now off to download my favourite mods and spend a lot of hours with 1.0., but it just didn't make the "wow" first impression I was expecting. It's still by all accounts a marvellous game!

Err, do I know you? Anyhow wow, some people are getting defensive, trust me there really is more important stuff in life to get worked up about Good to see more constructive replies emerge below this one after I somehow personally offended some people by my post. I installed 1.0 and was left a bit underwhelmed compared to what I was expecting of THE BIG RELEASE, so much so that I thought I'd air my views in the forum and see what other people thought. No offence intended guys

So I did a vanilla install of 1.0 the moment it was available from Steam, started a "Normal" career (as I'd been put off the hard mode grind by the beta) to experience it the way it's meant to be and err ... well sort of meh. - I can't seem to find a reliable way of launching a basic rocket without it eventually just spinning out of control. Appreciate there's a new aerodynamic model, but I can't get the things to do reliable gravity turns, no matter how early or late I start and how gentle I take it. Even just pointing the rocket 45 degrees until you're in orbit seems hit and miss. We're talking nothing more than a capsule, a few of the tier 1 fuel tanks, and an engine. EDIT: From the replies it seems that this is probably more a case of me being stuck in my ways and not thinking aerodynamically enough, so I'm happy enough to retract this point. - The "Flight engineer's report" in the KAC is disappointing, in that it doesn't tell you anything about Delta V, or other things that you actually need (it's like in the bad old days before I started using KER, guessing at whether or not the rocket has enough oomph). It tells you that the parachute is on the wrong stage, but that raises the question why the game doesn't just put it in the right stage to start with. If I wasn't used to the old "break up rocket because the staging isn't as you thought it was" I could see that leading to rage quits! - The altimeter on the external view still shows altitude above sea level, not radar altitude. This has been frustrating me since the earliest days of KSP, and from forum posts, quite a few other people as well. - I can't find a comfortable exterior camera that doesn't either lead to very weird graphical artefacts or doesn't let me just spin around the craft without banking for some reason. - Without going to map mode I have no idea what my apoapsis or periapsis is. I guess I'm too used to KER showing me this stuff while outside of map view, but I would have thought for 1.0 some sort of basic flight data would be shown beyond "speed" and "altitude". - Does re-entry heat actually do anything? I launched a basic rocket to 250,000m and it sort of just fell pretty much straight down. The g counter went to max and flames every where, but not a scratch on the craft when it landed back on Kerbin. Settings where "Full entry heat", so what am I missing, shouldn't it have just disintegrated? - The contracts are a bit weird to start with. Why do I have to accept "Gather science data from the surface of Kerbin" when things like "Reach 5,000 feet" are pre-accepted. Also, it's doing the old thing of offering me contracts that are impossible to complete given my current tech level (I can't even get into orbit yet there's things in my list asking me to test a part while on an escape trajectory). Bearing in mind I'm playing on normal. Maybe I was expecting too much and haven't played enough yet (only one or two tiers up the science tree), but for some reason I was expecting more polish from 1.0. It still feels a bit beta-ish to me. Would be interested to know what other people feel like?

Agreed. It was actually the first challenge in a long time. Like a test that you were paying attention to what was going on during all the hundreds of hours you've played! I have no idea how someone new to the game would pull that off though, rescue missions seem like they really shouldn't be in anything apart from "Hard" mode until manoeuvre nodes are discovered.

SAS hasn't really caused me any real problems, but it does sure make it more difficult initially to stay on course with probes. I sort of don't mind it as it mirrors the progress of the space programme. Having said that, I never played the game with MechJeb or similar and learnt to fly "stick" from day 1. Getting the probe core with SAS was definitely one of my research priorities though. Edit: As someone else said, the new "point at" buttons are gorgeous! I agree completely about the nerfed start-up difficulty, and previously created a topic on exactly this in the suggestions forum, suggesting that some sort of "accelerated start-up" is introduced as I nearly got completely put off by the start-up grind: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/107749-Configure-upgrade-level-for-buildings-at-start?p=1678370#post1678370. It's definitely not fun as it is (and yes you can tweak settings and edit configuration files, but that just feels like cheating to me and is hardly "out of the box").

Yes, that was the part that I didn't say. After 800+ hours I'm just a bit burnt out out. It's no doubt the same thing for other people that have been playing that long and longer, there's not a lot of magic left. A new generation seems needed, but now that the game is close to release, it's in a lot of ways too much of a game, and not enough of a toy anymore, to maybe inspire the same type of discussion as it did, say pre-career mode. The volume of responses to this thread certainly doesn't suggest it's dying though!

At 822 hours logged on Steam I think I can competently argue that one of the top things KSP has going for it is long term playability!!

Oh come on, you do not need to do the slightest bit of maths or to get anywhere in KSP, it's meant to be a game not an lecture. And the only reason you'd need docking is if you want to land, for a straight forward fly-by, don't bother about that stuff. How to practice getting to Duna: 1. Go into sandbox mode. 2. Bung together a hugely overpowered rocket (you can worry about efficiency later). 3. Launch into orbit. Set Duna as the target 4. Plonk down a manoeuvre node at either Pe or Ap. Zoom out to see the solar system. 5. Drag the manoeuvre node out prograde. If your predicted orbit goes "the wrong way", then scrap the manoeuvre node and try again with a new one at the opposite end of your orbit. 6. Fiddle with the node until you get an intercept (this may take a few goes but soon becomes second nature). 7. You can probably figure out the rest from there!

Well no it's not ready. What's the point of pretending to have a beta programme if you abandon it after one Beta release and then shove a dozen brand new features into your 1.0 release that weren't even part of said single beta??? It actually shows quite a bit of disrespect to the community to be honest. Also lots of little things, like clouds, a new gas giant, moving around in iva will be missed too, contacts feel unfinished and I could go on about stuff that I will be disappointed to not see. I'm worried that in the obvious rush to release they've bitten of more than they can chew and we'll get a game that still doesn't feel finished.

Thanks, I had no idea this existed. But "Failure Penalties" doesn't sound like it should have anything to do with building upgrades though, what else does this affect? If all it does is control upgrade costs, it needs to be renamed. Else a standalone slider should be introduced. It would still be cool to control starting upgrades, as per my OP. I don't want to remove building upgrades completely by making them dirt cheap, just have them all start at Level 2 or something like that to remove some of the initial grind.

I don't know about others, however it can be very little fun to need to grind away at missions at around Kerbin to upgade the buildings to a good enough state where you can start doing inter-planetary stuff beyond basic probes (as in, more than 30 parts, manoeuvre nodes, etc...). It would be great to have some level of configurability over what upgrade state the various buildings start in, as in some sort of "accelerated start" feature. That way people who want the beginning of the game to last as long as possible can do so, but for those of us that want to start doing the interesting stuff sooner, we wouldn't have to grind away for a long time to get the chance to do so.

I don't agree. Hard mode for me right now is just grinding cash to upgrade the buildings as you can't do much without the upgrades. That's not a lot of fun. Even worse, I know that once I finally upgrade everything then it will be like 0.25 and just be easy. It would be better if hard mode actually introduced hard contracts (and not the "Do a survey mission without plane parts" artificially hard kind) instead of just making everything more expensive, while lowering the amount of income for contracts to the point where doing any of the test missions is practically impossible to make profitable.

Little update from me: Finally managed to get a fly-by to the mun, after which everything has gotten a lot easier. With the cash and science boost that gave me was able to orbit and land on the mun in the next mission (but with not enough fuel left to return) and things are now a lot smoother. Seems like in the previous version, making it to the mun is a turning point for funds.

Some of the people responding to this have clearly not actually tried playing Hard mode in .90 and are just spouting generic wisdom, which for a forum that used to be so high quality is very dissapointing. The fact that at the start you can only actually have 2 contracts at a time without upgrading mission control is something of a give away when people go on about having 3 contracts at the same time. And as another poster said, you can forget about anything reusable when you have a 18 ton limit and tier 1 + 2 science only because you can't even go EVA off the ground or get surface samples so your science is advancing at a snails pace. I finally got a "Get science from around Kerbin contract" after cancelling dozens of "visual survey" contracts that gave a peanut return on investment that boosted my funds enough to upgrade the launch pad. Then was lucky enough to get a "Rescue so and so from orbit" mission, which was very challenging indeed *without maneuvre nodes or the ability to target another ship*, but I did it (actually rather cool) and now I think I might be able to cobble together a mun mission but I'm finding myself limited to 30 parts, which is turns out is not a lot at all to put a decent mission together. I might be able to do a fly by of the mun, but fail to see how to put together a lander with that part count.

Can't even get to the Mun as the biggest rocket I can build lets me only very barely get into orbit. The problem is as in my OP that you can't upgrade the launch pad without 100,000+ funds (which you need in order to build a decent rocket) and you can't get 100,000+ funds without a lot of grinding on contracts that don't offer a lot of return on investment. About to give up and play on normal instead, I like a challenge but I fear this is just going to be a boring grind unfortunately the way it is now. In .25 I found hard mode a good challenge that was more interesting than normal, but could be progressed through at a steady pace if you knew what you were doing (and at around 800 hours invested in the game, I think I do), but in .90 it's just grind city unfortunately. Hopefully they can balance this out for the next update. *** Mods: I can see why you moved this into "Gameplay questions and tutorials", but it's more of a dev suggestion to have a look at a balance issue specifically around the amount of funds it takes to do the initial launch pad upgrade in hard mode, which you can't actually achieve in a reasonable time frame with the contracts you're able to complete.

Hmm, need 104,000 funds to upgrade launch pad to support heavier craft. Need heavier craft to fulfil contracts that get a reasonable amount of funds to upgrade launch pad. Is there such a thing as "too much grinding"? I've hit 50,000 funds by getting into orbit (just), but now am struggling to get much more as the contracts aren't paying enough compared to the cost of the craft to complete them.

That docking sequence that ripped half the station apart looked rather familiar from some of my less successful docking attempts! (also those booster stages looked strangely familiar!) Edit: just noticed this is being discussed in the off topic forum. Mods, feel free to delete or merge this into there...

Batteries and solar panels are the first important milestone to get interplanetary, then ARM parts and LVNs, to give complete coverage of the system. But the tech tree right now is fairly stupid, why can I have a manned flight to Mars (err... I mean Duna!) before I can fly around in a basic jet on Kerbin for example? Someone really needs to look at that and shuffle the bits around for it to present a natural progression.

Been gaming since the 80s, in all that time: Best game ever? Deus Ex. Best sandbox and/or toy ever? KSP.

Unfortunately I didn't get a screenshot, but was impressed enough at this actually working that I thought I'd post about it. Came back to Kerbin from a trip to Jool with a lander attached to a science lab attached to a nuclear rocket (all detachable). Both the lander and the science lab had independent parachutes and landing legs, as the intent was always to break them up in LKO and then land them separately. So, long story short, I got overconfident with the aerobrake and down everything went towards the surface. With no other option, I decoupled everything from each other, activated the parachutes and legs on the lander, and then flipped to the science lab and activated the parachutes and legs on that. I was amazed to watch as they both deployed their parachutes and proceeded to gently fall to the surface in relative unison, quite close by to each other. Both made a safe landing and I was able to recover both. So now I'm wondering how many things you could safely land like this at the same time, if you actually designed a ship around it. Has anybody tried this?

The solar panels seem seriously over powered, I can power pretty much anything I need with a few of the basic flat panels in the stock game, the only thing I can think of that needs the basic folding panels is the ion drive. I can't even think of any use case that would require the giant panels, beyond role playing. The thermo-electric generator is as a result also rather pointless. It'd be good to balance all of these, both in terms of reducing the power and increasing the cost, I'd like to have to be making conscious decisions regarding how much energy I need and how much I can afford to add.

That's all well and good, but you need to actually get to Duna or Eve first before you can transfer to Ike and Gilly! You're asking the OP to do multiple transfers in the same mission when he's only just figured out how to do single ones (and the easiest ones at that). In my experience (and I'd like to think 700+ hours isn't to be sneezed at) it's one thing to design a return mission to a planet, quite another to design one to a planet's moon. Unless you're extraordinarily lucky, you have to orbit the planet first, then extend that orbit out to get an intercept with the moon, meaning you'll generally need to adjust your inclination, which means you need to worry about which inclination you're coming in on, and and and. To get an intercept with the Mun, you just take off, orbit at 90 degrees as always and drag around a manoeuvre node until you get an intercept. After a while you don't even need to think about it, it's routine. I still worry about having sufficient fuel when trying to hit another planet's moon (even though things generally work out). If you come in at the wrong angle, it can get hairy. How is that possibly easier than just coming in at a low enough altitude to aero-brake at whatever inclination you feel like and then plopping down on the surface there and then?!

Oh come on, landing on Duna is easier than landing on the Mun, you just strap a bunch of parachutes onto your lander and add a bit of burn as necessary to get your velocity nice and low. Because the atmosphere's so thin, taking off isn't that challenging either. If you can take off from the Mun and get back to Kerbin, you can take off from Duna and get back to your transfer vessel. On the other hand, for someone that hasn't done an interplanetary transfer yet, getting to either Duna or Eve, followed by intercepting their moon, followed by circularising that moon, landing and returning, and having enough fuel left to get back to Kerbin ... well, let's just say they might want to start with the planet first.

Yep, that's what I want to do next. Getting the inter-planetary orbital rescues to work has been quite educational in terms of how that stuff fits together and I think it should be possible to have the Kerbal spawn on the actual planet itself instead of in orbit with a bit of tweaking, but I haven't looked into it in that much detail yet. Unfortunately none of this stuff is documented anywhere, so it's very difficult to judge how difficult it's going to be, if it's possible. Watch this space...

I really don't know, it's also entirely possible they were keeping them for a future update and I've just ruined the surprise. I set out to make a grand tour style mod and stumbled across these while trying to work out how the SDK works. The grand tour contracts took literally one line of code to enable. The constraints preventing the interplanetary rescue missions being available were a bit more fiddly to remove, but that aside, from my testing (mainly as part of actually playing with these, they definitely make things more interesting) I haven't come across any bugs yet with either of them, fingers crossed. Next step for me with this is to enhance it to make a planetary rescue mission, where you have to actually rescue a Kerbal off the surface of a body.