Yemo

Hello, with upgradable buildings and the rebalanced economy, difficulty (cash shortage) has increased. This guide specifically addresses the cash/science problems when starting a new career, not the game mechanics itself. A) Information are essential. Download and install Kerbal engineer mod and Kerbal alarm clock. You can do without, but it is like repeatedly running against a wall (might be fun for a few tries, but usually leads to headaches after a while) instead of using the door. Choose your contracts carefully in terms of reward and costs (funds/time/difficulty). Combine contracts for missions and decline useless ones to get others for no costs. You have 4 missions in the beginning: Launch, 5000m altitude, leaving atmosphere and orbit. It is important to understand that very profitable altitude missions for 11km, 22km, 33km and 56km will be offered, if you do not reach those altitudes before you get the missions! To maximize profit you can do them seperately. Do not overshoot the target altitude by too much, limit fuel and/or retroburn! 1) Contracts for liftoff and 5000m 2) Contract for 11000m 3) Contract for 22000m 4) Contract for 33000m 5) Contract for 56000m and for leaving atmosphere 6) Contract for reaching Orbit (which can be done without facility upgrades and only 20 science, as shown in D) C) If you cant do a Mun landing without maneuver nodes and patched conics, save your money for the tracking station and mission control upgrade. On hard mode, science is much more abundant than funds (totally imbalanced), so it might be easier to do the mun mission with 200-245 science invested, than to do it with upgraded launch pad, see E). D) For science, concentrate on the lower branch "Basic Rocketry", "Survivability", "Science Tech". The science (Crew reports/EVA reports/mystery goo) you get from the Launch pad/flying at low and high altitude as well as the immediate surrounding biomes (shore, grass, water) should be sufficient. E) To lower costs (funds and science), minimalistic/mission built vessels with proper TWR settings (visible through Kerbal engineer mod) are recommended. Those are the 5 basic low cost designs I used, complete with dV, costs (funds and science) and max altitudes, all usable without facility upgrades: https://imgur.com/gallery/xSaSJ There is quite a lot you can do without upgrading VAB and launch pad, this is my entry for the 0.90 Mun Science Challenge: F) Being out of funds is not the end, just cancel your contracts and take new ones, there is no debt. If you dont have suitable contracts available, just decline the ones which are offered. If there are too few offered, you might want to warp forward a day. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/87138-failing-contracts-unlimited-funds Good luck and have fun!

When i forget to unfold an antenna after leaving the atmosphere (using RemoteTech2) When adding a lifter predesign to the payload and forgetting to stage the procedural fairings correctly. When Jeb managed to sneak on a mission again. (Now I have him and the other 2 parked in a rover at KSP, as tourist/public relations figures with enough TAC life support for a decade)

Yes, it has the potential. Outstanding gameplay + genre innovation + litte competition + modding MoO2 has only the first, is nearly 18 years old, but just do a youtube search... And even if it does not come to that much glory, it already is among the great pc games simply for the special game concept/play. ThemeHospital from 1997 is still the only viable game with its setting... As merendel said, modding support goes a long way. Neverwinter Nights is as old as Morrowind (12years), CS was born as a mod 15 years ago, Transport Tycoon from nearly 20 years ago lives on and is further developed to this day as OTTD and Simutrans...

Being part of KermanSachs, we do not need good lawyers, we make our lawmakers to change the law itself. In other words, we do not play in the sandbox, we shape the sandbox for you to play in (for a small fee of course). By the way, Rocketdyne still needs gov contracts, do they?

The more complex a game, the more you need roleplay/house rules to make it competitive/fun. As Scott Manley and other have shown, you can get above 2500 science on your first mission. Or you can place temperature probes in all orbits for science contracts. Or do the bankruptcy thing. Or just hyperedit. From my point of view, unmodded game mechanics can be loose to cater to a wide audience. For specific stuff, there are mods (deadly reentry anyone?) and house rules.

@Tortoise: Yeah, but there is no debt. So if I spend all funds and park them outside, it doesnt matter if they substract 10funds or 100000, my account cant go below 0, too big to fail I guess ;-). @nimbim: That sounds like actual work and would probably take hours... What working people call fraud, I call success! Now I just have to come up with a bogus theory how that is good for everyone. Trickle down kerbonomics or something like that. edit: just had to make a fitting avatar

Well, as in reality, getting rich does not depend on how good you are at making/using goods, but rather on how well you understand the system and your ability to play the system. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/87138-failing-contracts-unlimited-funds And as in reality, you have to decide for yourself whether it takes away from your accomplishments if someone else can get much richer much faster by being able to play the system rather than "working" within the system.

After going bankrupt, http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/86651-Bankrupt%21-No-money-no-available-contracts%21 I found out that failing contracts is a source of unlimited funds, just like in real life (when you shaped the system to make yourself system relevant aka banks). 1. you accept all available contracts 2. you use the money on whatever stuff you like 3. when out of money, you cancel all contracts 4. the contracts are offered again 5. you start over from 1. Just like in real life, the reputation goes down, but no one cares and you still get all the funds for free. And the bigger you are (research), the better it works. If you are smart about it: 1. you accept all available contracts 2. you use the money to build stuff and park it around KSC 3. when out of money, you cancel all contracts 4. the contracts are offered again 5. you start over from 1. 6. after repeating that for some time, you recover all your parked assets and cash in the funds 7. voilà, legally rich in kerbin economy Pretty realistic, just as in real life.

failing contracts means unlimited money: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/87138-failing-contracts-unlimited-funds

It is not perfect, if you spend 3 hours on 5contracts and one launch, instead of doing 10 contracts in 5 launches, earning twice the funds in profits...

After he was the first kerbal in space, I didnt want to let him go anymore (because he is a valuable propaganda asset). When he managed to sneak on the first mission to leave Kerbin SoI, I put him in a command pod, together with Bob and the other one (first Kerbals on Minmus and Mun). Lots of life support (TAC) and Batteries and parked him outside KSC as a tourist attraction... Kept him from sneaking on missions...

Thats probably the main issue. We got used to the revert to save time, but it breaks the economy if you cant fail (just like in rl ;-)).

You d be surprised with what ideas people come up with. For many games I ve seen even youtubers doing stuff I could hardly imagine, when they try out new games. In games with map sizes they pick the largest ones and wonder why they are overwhelmed, if there is automation, they think they know better and then rant at the game for being too complex, with KSP, they build vessels with 20 parts as their first one and are surprised when it fails...

Well, technically it is still impossible. Since you cant go into debt, you can just cancel the active "test" contracts. You incur the failure root substractions, but since you dont have any roots to substract from, this is very limited. After cancellation, the contracts are offered again and you recieve advances. Especially in the beginning of the game those advances might not be enough to launch a mission. But you can cancel again until the advances of the newly regenerated contracts allow you to put a crew capsule on the launch pad/runway. Then you collect science, unlock new parts and get new test missions which provide advances. Still, this is on the border of being an exploit of the no debt mechanic.

I know, I searched for snacks worth 12roots, but couldnt find any ;-).

I warped forward 30 days to be sure that there are no new contracts. Legitimately bankrupt .

So the overkerbal nemesis of many has just been declared to be a friend by some. A schism goes through the kerbal society. The rise of Krakenism, heretics to the majority of Kerbal society. Can you make a new option in the poll for the atheists, that do not believe in the Kraken?

I went bankrupt . http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/86651-Bankrupt%21-No-money-no-available-contracts%21

Please help, there are no contracts available anymore and I dont have any money left . No, seriously, I hereby claim the achievement of bankruptcy. It was easier than expected . edit: Whoops, wrong screenshot, still had science on the old one. 1. Accept all starting contracts. 2. Construct a rocket, very high costs (mine was 14k or so) 3. Launch and crash, before you reach 5000m 4. Research the next node using the 5 science. 5. Accept part testing contracts from mission control 6. repeat 2&3 until you run out of money.

KER was updated hours ago ;-)

I made a copy of my present 23.5 folder with mods. I ll try out 24 but will probably only go to minmus or one planet outside kerbin system and then I ll wait for the mods to be updated.

A precise orbit is not relevant, a precise period is... And using RCS adjustments and engineer redux, you can get relatively close (eg 1/10second for 1:30:00 period, 776.57 orbit). Not sure how precise the period is displayed for larger orbits, as I dont use them for such exact constellations.

Duna is at least 5Gm away from Kerbin. Using a dish with a 0.04 degree cone, at 5Gm you target an circle with about 1745km radius. If you have eg. 2 (so 1 is always unblocked by Kerbin) kerbinstationary sats (2868,75km orbit, 3468,75km radius), you will still always have blackouts (with 3 sats also, the radii are just too different). To guarantee connection (not taking Mun and Minmus eclipses into account) you need 2 sats (spaced out wide enough of course) on an orbit below 1145km for a link with 1 dish at Duna (which is pointed at Kerbin). Of course the 2 sats are not enough for com with Kerbin base by antenna, the 2 sat way only works as an extension of an existing Kerbin sat network, otherwise you would need at least 1 more. If I were you, I would put 2 Sats in 776.57 Orbit (Period of 1:30:00, so exactly 1/4 of a Kerbin day) directly across each other. This way you dont face the same problem for Eve (min distance 4250Mm, so radius of 1483km covered, thus sats should be in orbit of 883km or less). If you dont have a sat network already, put another pair (can be antenna only) in the same positions just 90° different, to form a square. Thus, all 4 only need the basic 2.5Mm antenna for a link to Kerbin base, all dishes can be used for long range com. The square also provides antenna coverage for all of Kerbins surface except the far North and far South regions.

Afaik the Kr-14 only has a 0.04 degree targeting cone. So at 90Mm (outside Kerbins SoI) your Probe targets a cone of about 31km radius on Kerbin and almost all the time, your Relay Station is somewhere else. Afaik with such mini cones you must target the Relay Station itself. Of course you lose connection when your Relay Station is behind Kerbin, Mün or Minmus... For a nearly 100% uptime at that distance you need 3 dishes. 2 Pointed at Kerbin com sats and 1 pointed at a comsat in front of or behind the Mün (or a relay station on the Mün surface opposite to Kerbin). edit: Of course the relay stations need KR-14s set to "active vessel", so they establish connection once you take command of the probe again. Permanent connection from relays to probe is unnecessary imho.

Thanks for the answers. Yes, I was just going too steep. Was using a simple/cheap 2 stage booster + command pod rocket for chute testing, going up to around 350km vertically. Atmo entry with nearly 2km/s at about 85° is just not FAR friendly... But it yielded some unexpected results using FAR and DeadlyReentry! My reentry vehicle is just the command pod with 1 cone main chute on the top and 2 symmetric drogue side chutes (until I get the 2 chutes in 1 part to put them all on the top). reentry payload mass: 1093kg (Command Pod Mk1 ) with chutes (drogues set to 8m/s): 1546kg The main chute has the normal values dependent on desired landing speed, except it - predeploys at 69,000m (for convenience, virtually no other effect). The drogue chute(s) have ceteris paribus the - target speed changed to 8-10m/s (8 is for massive entry vector screw ups, 10 is very safe already, try 12+ if you are better at controlled entry), - predeployment at 69,000m, - deployment at 69,000m and - cutoff altitude 35,000m (very important to have, you can tweak the altitude, but otherwise the drogues would slow so much, that you sit there forever with 4x warp). Result: The oversized early deployed drogues massively slow you down in the upper atmosphere starting from I guess 50km up. So the deadly reentry only leads to very minor heating (notice I have the main predeployed since 69,000m). At 35,000m the drogues cut off and you fall at terminal velocity until the main deploys. The sole reason for the 69,000m predeployment is, that I can just "fire and forget" the last stage (containing main and drogue) when coming out of time warp at 70,000m. edit: While inefficient for the command pod (which comes with heat shield), it is very usefull for returning heat sensitive stuff. I play with the house rule, that I either transmit the results of science, or return the experiment container. So no collecting with kerbonaut and getting full value, I dont think a kerbonaut can take out more data than a transmitter can... For comparison landing a mass of 1093kg with 1.25m heat shield (ditched before landing) and only main chute would result in a mass of 1669kg (compared to 1546kg with 8m/s drogues).