herbal space program

So are we playing for money, science, rep, or some kind of composite of all three? You said your score was just under 85k, so that suggests it's all about the money based on your screenshot, but that's not really what you said in the challenge description....

So now when I threw together an Mk-1 capsule, three T800 tanks, and a swivel engine, the AV-11 winglets worked fine. This seems to be some sort of problem that is unique to really tall rockets without gimbaled engines. I will investigate further a bit later to see if I can isolate what causes the problem....

What I'm talking about is not at all subtle. However I was using the AV-11 winglet and not those basic fins, and my rocket was also quite a bit taller. I have to run now but I'll post a screenie later....

I had exactly the same problem with a rocket that had >1.3 TWR and took off like a cannon shot. Even if I locked the SAS prograde right at the outset and then didn't touch anything, as the rocket hit around 100m/s it started to flip and there was no way to stop it. The same rocket sans fins flew just fine. It's a problem with either the symmetry system or the aero model. In the real world, there is no reason a rocket with fins at the bottom going 100m/s through thick atmosphere would want to flip more than one without fins. Try it throwing a dart or shooting an arrow some time!

Wow, if that ship got into orbit from the surface of Eve, things really have changed! My Eve return ship weighed something like 650 tons!

I haven't made any actual deltaV calculations, but based on doing it again and again and again I'd say my most efficient orbits in the current system have involved accelerating to around 150 m/s as quickly and vertically as I possibly can, then throttling back significantly and starting to go off vertical a tiny bit at around 3,000m, keeping my heading inside the prograde marker but not quite in the middle of it, so that I hit 45 degrees at around 10km and 22.5 degrees around 20 km. I then boost completely prograde until maybe 35 km and then drop my heading to the horizon, cutting thrust at around 45 km. Usually I only need about another 300 or so m/s to circularize at a 70km apoapsis. Speedwise, as I said I go straight to around 150 m/s, then slow my acceleration so I'm doing maybe 300 m/s at 10km, 600 at 20km, and 1200 at 30 km.

Well if that works then it's pretty clear they're not modeling the fins' drag very well.

There are so many things that they could do to give the career game some real depth. For one thing, the great big Kerbolar system that they have created is essentially empty. Other than a handful of Easter eggs that are nearly impossible to find unless somebody tells you about them, there is nothing much to explore or discover on the surfaces of any of the planets. If you've seen one spot on the surface of Duna, you've pretty much seen them all. I understand that they can't populate all these vast areas with interesting detail everywhere you look, but they could certainly put a whole lot more stuff than there is now and actually give you some clues about how to find it in the process of game play. The contracts system seems like a really great way to do this, but AFAICT they have not made any attempt to use it for that purpose. For example, if you get a mission that tells you to go to Richard's Cranium Gamma, why not actually PUT SOMETHING there for the player to find? If you need to take scans of some kind from orbit, why not have them reveal the presence of some anomaly on the surface and thus automatically generate a mission to go check it out on the ground? Apropos of that, the contracts system as I see it is totally die-stamped, spewing out barely different variants of only a handful of different missions, almost none of which involve doing anything particularly interesting. Adding some more variety and some more rewards other than the game currencies, as I suggested above, to these contracts would enhance the play experience immensely and wouldn't even really be so much work. Finally progression of science, tech, and building upgrades is also totally slapped together. To make something like that work well, you need to first give it a lot of thought and then do a LOT of play testing, and the amount of time these systems have been in place has not been nearly sufficient to balance all the aspects and provide enough essential content. I'm not expecting Civ 5 or anything, but the way it is now there are whole aspects of it that just don't make sense and don't make the game any more fun to play. What is the point of having a flexible tech tree when there are giant upgrade walls that make it take so long to get enough money that you fill out everything below them in the process of saving it up? It would be much better if they just dramatically increased the entry costs for each tech node or part and either dropped the building upgrade idea entirely or made it about getting more and better science instruments instead of blocking all progress until you pay this giant lump sum. And on and on. It's just totally obvious that they put 10 times more effort into the sandbox part than into the career part, and even in the sandbox part it was all about getting their dauntingly difficult physics model to work and not so much about filling their universe with fun stuff to do and find. Now after having unloaded all of that, I must hasten to add that I don't really blame them so much for having bitten off more than they could chew in terms of creating both this incredible simulation engine and all of the game content it really needs to make it live up to its potential. It was an extremely ambitious goal, and as I said before, I don't mind paying them more money to actually finish the game they started to build. If they called it 1.0 because they figured that most people would see it the way I do, then so be it I guess. But the thing just ain't done yet by a long shot.

FWIW I had exactly the same problem. When I started a career game in 1.0 I had a big tall rocket made of all tier 1/2 stuff, and when I put four fins either on the bottom or in the middle, it would start tipping on me as it gained speed and altitude no matter what I did. There were no side boosters. Taking the fins off left me with a sluggish but totally flyable rocket. I tried taking them off and re-placing them a bunch of times and still no matter what the fins made the rocket unflyable. I have no idea why some people are having this problem and others not, but I never had this issue with fins before the new aero model took effect.

I think that 1.0.2 is close to having the aerodynamic model right. Some things still exhibit silly behavior, but it's way better than 1.0.0 was. And there's nothing wrong with all this tinkering by Squad except for them having decided to call these releases 1.0+. I guess I can understand their eagerness to draw some kind of a line under their efforts, but even once they get the physics model perfected they game is still pretty sorely lacking on the content end. There are lots of things they can still do to improve that aspect that won't be nearly as difficult for them to implement as getting all this physics right, but they nonetheless really need to be done IMO before they can reasonably call the game complete. I suppose it all boils down to business for them, i.e. that they are feeling that they shortchanged themselves with this early access model and now they want another 20 bucks from everybody before they really finish the thing. I don't actually begrudge them that, but that doesn't change the fact that the game is really still only half finished and they know it.

Although there are a few problems with the simulation engine that should probably have been fixed before calling the release 1.0, I think where the devs really fell short is in providing enough depth and play-testing to the career part of the game. They have a fantastic system of building and flying simulated spaceships, but in the end really very few interesting things out there in the Kerbolar system for you to go and explore. Moreover, the whole system of contracts, tech acquisition, and building upgrades has a slapped-together feel to it and just seems like an afterthought. It's based on incomplete development of all those features, which have been around for way less time than all the essential aspects of the simulation engine, that I feel like this release really shouldn't have been called 1.0.

Yes that, and the whole klunky system of fuel transfers should be overhauled. Fuel gauges on tanks should be active sliders that you drag to transfer fuel to/from other selected tanks instead of having these excruciatingly slow and difficult-to-control on-off buttons.

That would be great, and also in general I think that linking the ability to do EVAs and take surface samples would make a lot more sense if it was tied to acquiring parts rather than upgrading buildings. Ditto the ability to place maneuver nodes. That should be some kind of navigational computer vessel part.

It's funny, I've played like 1200 hours ad been all over all kinds of bodies, but I have yet to come across one of the Easter eggs. Apropos of that, I think that some of those exploration contracts should actually lead you to them! That and maybe there should be some kind of new scanner part that alerts you to the presence of anomalous surface features if you fly over them. The devs could really add a whole lot of depth to the game play experience by implementing more stuff along those lines. And of couse EVA reports at the Easter egg sites should give you science!

For my part, I think that the best solution for overall gameplay would be to have the contracts actually carry somewhat larger science rewards, but that just like for exploration-based science, you can only collect the rewards the first time you do them. That way players would not be able to grind out the same mission over and over again to keep getting more science (who wants to do that anyway?), but there would be more than just a money motivation to do a variety of different types of missions. Grinding out EVA reports in every last biome in every body in the Kerbolar system is IMO just as boring as doing the same inane part-testing contracts over and over again. The devs IMO should really try to focus on creating a system of rewards that motivates players to take on all sorts of different challenges, and not just have a randomized system that endlessly spits out barely different versions of the same thing. They really haven't even scratched the surface AFAICT of the sorts of things you could put in the contract system.

It's not too hard, it's just not developed in a way that makes it as fun as it could be. The building upgrade system gives way too much too quickly for some things (like the VAB and Launchpad), and keeps some things out of reach for far too long (like the maneuver node and surface sampling). Also, the tech tree doesn't have nearly enough flexibility, with two giant across-the-board building upgrade walls basically defeating the purpose of having a tree at all. I believe the devs really need to re-think a lot of this, and should not have jumped to calling this game 1.0. Looking up the thread I can see that this is a widely held sentiment among experienced players. - - - Updated - - - - - - Updated - - - That's really weird. from LKO I've exploded a couple of times coming in far slower. One time I flipped my command module for just a few seconds before righting it and it then blew up in the lower atmosphere. Any engines and tanks I've had mounted also pretty consistently explode off if they are the leading parts. Clearly something is screwy about the way they calculate this. - - - Updated - - - What gives? I try to post new replies and no matter what I do they get appended to my first post.

I totally agree that the way they limit what techs you can get now allows too few meaningful choices. Rather than having to spend one gigantic lump sum to unlock a whole tier of techs, it would be much more fun if you could pay for each node individually, with higher-tier nodes costing both more money and more science. The total cost of each tier could be more or less the same, but you'd have way more options for how to advance your capabilities. You could even keep the building upgrade as a separate thing, but maybe have it be tied instead to how much science you can get to do different things, what sort of science missions you can do, or what capabilities your scientists have. In fact, it would probably be best if every single upgrade in capability for every building were separately purchasable, or maybe if upgrading things like your tracking station were to cost science as well as money.

Precisely. The best (i.e. least boring and repetitive) option I had for getting the money to upgrade the VAB was to take three different Munar survey contracts at the same time. On the plus side, designing a 30-part vessel that could make a low Munar orbit and return was challenging and satisfying, as was figuring out how to get it into the required near-polar Munar orbit directly from LKO without the benefit of patched conics or a maneuver node. On the minus side, grinding through all those temperature scans and crew reports, most of which had to be done from very low altitudes, going around and around and around and around the Mun on excruciatingly slow 10X time warp (or else constantly flipping back and forth between the tracking station and the mission), was really not any fun at all. Then, once I had the money to upgrade the VAB, I immediately got enough parts to do pretty much every other basic exploration mission in the whole game except maybe Eve Rocks, although that would be possible with multiple launches as well. Given that I had not yet even landed on the Mun, that seemed like way too much too fast. It would have been much more satisfying if completing just one of those grindy survey contracts had gotten me just enough of a VAB upgrade to build a Munar landing mission, which in turn would have given me enough funds to go to Duna, etc.

Was that ordained by God? I am trying to make a suggestion here about how to improve the game. That's what this sub-forum is for, isn't it? This kind of response by the forum regulars defeats the purpose of having such a place for discussion. If you think what I'm suggesting is not a good idea, then address it on its merits. Don't just tell me to pound sand like you own the place and I have no right to express an opinion. I am certain that is not what the developers intended to have happen here.

For a skilled player, there is nothing satisfying about having to do the same boring mission over and over again in order to get the ability to do more interesting ones. "HARD" IMO should mean less margin for error, more need to strategize effectively, and a STEEPER progression to more challenging missions, that need to be done with fewer resources. It should not mean getting stuck with very limited options regardless of how well you allocate your money or design your ships. The way they have it now, I believe the VAB is at first too limiting in that regard and then not limiting enough. Moreover I think that while the devs have done a fantastic job of implementing this awesome parts collection, play space, and physics system for spaceflight simulation, they have relatively speaking phoned in some other aspects of campaign-oriented game play. The good news is that fine-tuning these represents far less overall effort than getting the other parts to work right, but that does not make it less important to do so. Anyway, you may feel differently but having played this game for 1200+ hours, I really don't feel like I deserve to be treated with that degree of condescension for making this (I think quite valid) observation.

I'm really not whining about how hard it is to upgrade the buildings, although the 450K for the VAB upgrade does seem out of balance with the others. Mostly I just don't think that the steepness of going from only 30 parts to 255 in one step supports a good flow of gameplay. At 30 parts it's really hard to do anything, and at 255 you have to be going to Jool with multiple landers before it's even an issue. Making everything cost less money in the easier modes doesn't really alleviate this problem at all, it just makes the whole idea of needing to upgrade your buildings pretty much perfunctory. If, as tater commented upthread, it's trivial to upgrade everything, then well, this whole upgrading business is trivial! Is that how the devs want it to be? I don't think so! I think they want it to be a real factor in the strategy of career gameplay, and IMO the way they have it now it's "one and done" for everything but the science facility and the tracking station, for which some essential functions cost (IMO) excessive amounts of money. I think to make it work as intended, the devs need to rebalance this aspect, and that the easiest thing they could implement to do that would be to introduce some smaller steps, especially for the VAB. YMMV.

So as I'm playing through a hard career game in 1.0, I feel like the upgrade curves for the VAB (and the Launchpad too, sort of) are too steep. You go from having only 30 parts, which is not enough to land on the Mun with a crew, all the way to 255, which is enough to do just about anything, for the exorbitant fee of 450k roots, which is really hard to earn with only 30 parts! Why not have an upgrade to say 50 or 75 parts for only150k roots, which requires far less tedious grinding? Similarly the launch pad takes you from an extremely restrictive 18 tons to a very generous 140 tons in the first upgrade. Why not have more intermediate steps for cheaper? I really think this would make the general flow of the game far more enjoyable. As it is now, you have to grind away with very limited missions to get that first upgrade, and then you're basically done. I could go just about anywhere with 140 tons and 255 parts! I think the progression should be more like 30, 75/150k, 150/450k, 450/1M, unlimited/2M for parts and 18, 50/150K, 150/450K, 500/1M, and unlimited/2M for tonnage. Anybody else feel the same way?

Howdy, Here's an odd bug I've noticed since 0.90: If you're in the VAB and you pull a part or subassembly off and set it aside, hitting ctrl-Z will replace the part but will also leave the ghosted copy of the part next to your vessel. In earlier versions, it used to be possible to grab this part and place it back on the vessel as well, as a sort of kludgy way of duplicating subassemblies. Since 0.90 however, if you do this the VAB basically freezes up so that you can't place any more parts, nor can you exit to the space center. The only way I'm able to quit the game in this situation to use Task Manager to kill it. As far as I can tell, this behavior is 100% reproducible. Obviously, I don't expect the devs to actually support such an unnatural act, but I think perhaps crashing the whole game is rather a severe punishment!

I'm playing 1.0 in Windows 8 using a Nintendo-style game controller, and I'm finding that every time I start the game without the controller plugged in (at least I think this is what is causing it), all of my joystick axis bindings evaporate and have to be re-specified for every situation, which can only be done from the outermost game menu. Needless to say, when playing hard career mode it is a real drag to find that the Kerbal you just sent out the hatch has no jetpack control! Moreover, if I'm in a situation where I can go out to that menu and try to fix it without killing all my Kerbals, I find that the interface is all messed up, and it won't let me fix it until I quit the game entirely and re-load it with the controller plugged in. This has resulted in quite a bit of annoyance for me, and has never been a problem AFAIK in any previous version. On a related note, selecting "settings" from the in-flight escape menu not only doesn't give you the option of re-specifying axis bindings, it also snaps the screen resolution to a different value, that cannot be changed, which in my case made the navball completely invisible, bringing another perfectly good flight to an untimely end. Anyway, it would be great if this presumably unintended behavior could be patched at some point. (update)...Upon reading down the forum a couple of pages, I found another thread where ThatDude624 described a very similar problem yesterday, involving both the messed-up axis assignment interface and the screen resolution glitch, so you can count me as another person experiencing the same bug!

SPOILER: You don't need patched conics, you just need to think it through first. What you want to do is wait a little longer than you did before doing your Munar transfer burn. You want to put your apopapsis well in front of the Mun and just inside it, so when you hit its SOI you will be swinging around it retrograde and preferably with an ejection angle that is pointed towards Kerbin. That way, you will find yourself in an eccentric Kerbin orbit with a low periapsis. If you come in behind the Mun, you'll swing around it prograde and find yourself on the way to Duna -- a useful maneuver if that's what you want to do, but not so much if you just have a teaspoon of fuel left to get home!