tater

I am a new player (EDIT: been playing a little over 6 weeks now). I played part of 1 science career, one unmoved career, and one career with FAR/DRE/Ispfix, etc. I never came close to running out, right out of the gate. Funds is not a thing in career in my total noob experience. In my first career, my first rocket was suborbital, 2d was orbital, third was a Mun orbiter (didn't think I could land and return, so didn't try. 4th was a Mun lander. Rolling in funds at that point.

Given difficulty sliders, the default would be to have X-tech failures off. As for the failure, yeah, that's a problem. Include backups, or suffer the consequences, even if the backup is an extra chute, and you have to send a rescue mission.

I still thank that a "default" game experience should be fully functional. If a career has funds, but you never run out… not functional. Have to see what the new stuff will bring.

My experience is that is is not really any different than sandbox as it stands. The only missions that "matter" are rescue missions (still optional). I'd honestly prefer some that are not optional in one way or another. Even if it's just required for funding. As it stands money is infinite, and I might as well just do sandbox. No reason to make a station, no reason to build a base, etc. Again, all career is "optional" as there is "science" mode, as well as sandbox. I'd like to see career really differentiated. That's actually a reason I'd like to see equipment failures---as a possibility on "experimental" tech (tech you get to use for a while for contracts, but not fully unlocked). If you got new tech to do your first Mun landing (in a game where such a contract would provide temporary unlocked items), and you had some failure, you might have an Apollo 13 moment, and have to really think to make it right (or launch a rescue). This kind of thing is exciting to me.

I installed FAR, and I hardly noticed any difference. If I had not specifically done a few launches/reentries (I added DRE, too) trying to see what it took to fail, I'm pretty sure I'd be unable to tell you the difference between the 2 installs if the FAR tab was not there 99% of the time.

I mostly agree, but career doesn't really give me any limitations, the only missions are plant flag or get science from body X, or part tests. I'd much prefer seeing some contracts to build a refueling station in orbit around X, or a base on Y… anything novel. The trick is they need to be more required. I've yet to have any limitations on funds at all, and hence it's functionally no different than sandbox, and since we have sandbox, I want career to have more hurdles… if that makes sense.

I tend to agree with you most of the time, but I think this is entirely the result of bad game design. "Game" being the "career" game. A properly done career mode should have fun replay as a goal. I'd agree that the current paradigm is sort of mind numbing. I'd not con sider myself a vet, but I can finish a tech tree in short order after 1 unmodded, and 1 modded career. I like the idea of a career mode that creates novel missions to complete. The trouble is the novel missions in KSP are absurd (test a giant engine cluster landed on Minmus or something). I'm not sure I can come up with a really good idea for what they should do, but the current career is not it, IMO.

Imagine the flip I suggest... New career, and you have nothing. No tech at all. similar to a current start, you have a contract available to launch a rocket. When you take it, you might get some tech automatically, and some budget to spend, we can call what are now "science" points, "tech" points for clarity. You might be given another few goals (really aimed at training new players) in contracts, some of which might give a few tech points. Tech points might be offered upon acceptance of a contract, but could also be given as a reward for completion… An orbital flight gives data about living in space, which gives tech points... Science data points can change the types of missions you are offered, which indirectly adds to your tech (take Jool mission because your unmanned probe worked, get tech points to spend).

Science vs tech is kind of ridiculous, IMO, and in fact backwards. The technology of spaceflight has not increased due to planetary science missions, but often the technology has improved in order to DO planetary science. You should commit to a mission, say landing on Duna, then accepting that mission opens up new tech appropriate for that mission (by giving you points to spend on tech that is in a better laid out tree). If you fail, you take reputation/funding hits, and perhaps get offered less challenging contracts with fewer points to buy tech with. The cart is before the horse science wise in KSP.

I like lumping all life support into one factor (snacks, in this case), but I'd prefer to have the result of running out be fatal. Not that I like dead kerbals, but I had a mishap (walked away from a loooong burn by a nerva) that resulted in a ship in an excessive orbit around kerbol, and they are never getting rescued. I'd rather take one reputation hit, and be done with them. As it is, I guess i have to terminate the flight from the tracking station. Anyway, it would be nice as an option.

Why bother returning the lander at all? Have Jeb take the science with him, EVA to the reduce ship, and head home. Or am I missing something?

Writing a program is fine, but real landers have altitude information, it's not all time-based. Needlessly harder, is not "realistic." Yeah, doing it manually makes more sense (no delay).

A minimal RO install alone is 64 points, lol.

People who don't care wouldn't know if it was right as it is. How would they? Having the math right doesn't make it harder, it just makes the math right.

Why would anyone care? You can always make a clean install, and only update that one to 0.25, and keep a copy of your 0.24.2 if you are really attached to it for some reason, right?

I paid the $27 without even thinking about it, and in about a month of play, I feel like I've gotten at least that much enjoyment from it (in just a few weeks). Having already paid, I'd happily part with more for an add-on at some point as well. The devs nixed their own version of resources, but I honestly think that would be perfect for an add-on game (requires base KSP) that goes from "exploration" to "exploitation" of space. I'd pay for that, too.

Games frequently end up in situations where "realism" to the letter in one respect destroys realistic outcomes. This sounds like one of those times to me. Signal delay is realistic, but without the appropriate systems to allow some autonomy, it makes realistic probes impossible as landings are not remotely controlled with insane delays, the orbiters are designed (as said above) to measure altitude, and land by themselves.

There has been discussion about RSS/RO in this thread numerous times (I read all of it), and there had been a file available for download by one of the frequent commentators about RO in his sig, but the file has a modification date that is several months old (pre 0.24 even, I think?) so I did not DL it. BTW, I might have asked in the RO thread, but the page 1 read me explicitly puts this mod in a group that will receive mocking should I have asked in that thread, so clearly off-limits there. I figured someone who uses this excellent mod might do so with RSS (they had in the past, clearly), and maybe one might help me, and where else could I ask?

The parts are there when I tried this in my RSS/RO install, but the craft files don't survive the RO rescaling, I think. All the parts are there, but no longer attached to each other. Is there a trick to getting it to play nice with RSS/RO? This is very cool.

I think the real complaints were more about hype than features. We also need to recall that good players would never see it… that statement alone should have defused hype about it. The rest looks pretty awesome. I have yet to crash into anything without things being destructible. I've never checked for stages falling, however… People might need to start a slight turn early to be on the safe side, even in stock.

Awesome. I only tested the Dragon V2 so far (Stock) (Kerbol system, with FAR/DRE/etc). The craft file has the ship rotated from the KSP norm by 90 degrees. As it's sort of hard to tell which way is which on the capsule, I found my first launch confusing Once I figured it out it was fine (I rotated it 90 in the VAB just so I didn't have to think about direction, or do a roll immediately).

Waste that is not recycled can be spaced, no need to store it. Urine vented to space was apparently pretty to watch according to a story I read (might have been from Skylab). While I realize it is certainly more "realistic" in some sense to track each life support need, I think I'd ideally want a somewhat simpler version that folds all the various LS needs into "man-days of LS" (man-hours, man-minutes, whatever) and have it be easier to plan with a little less micro-managing. Obviously others will have a different preference.

On the gameplay side, Squad's notion of "trial and error" to orbit in the stock game never worked for me (I only ever killed any astronauts later due to a warp mistake on one, and not knowing I couldn't reenter 2 craft at once for the other. RSS/RO, OTOH, I actually had the "blowing up rockets" experience that people talk about for stock that never happened for me (even in stock with DRe, FAR, etc). I searched for a craft repository, but they all seemed to be more complex than I wanted for basic, minimal craft that work in RSS as benchmarks.

I had exactly the same problem a few weeks ago when I started. If someone has to ask, the UI is bad (for that function), period. It's not intuitive, and even the idea of switching between craft you own would not be intuitive in this case, because when you try the usual mechanisms to switch for a noob (tracking station or clicking in map view) the game explicitly informs you that you cannot switch to units you do not own, so why would you think you could switch with ][?

Unrelated to development, I orbited last night after much trial and error (I guess I need mechjeb to see dv while building). On Topic, it might be nice to have a couple .craft files in there that give examples (only "stock" stuff in the mod, nothing even "very highly recommended"---if such is required, make those mods required). Perhaps a simple satellite with launcher, and maybe even a manned ship. Actually, he's an idea for your current outline of "required" vs recommended for noobs. Perhaps Required is annotated to say that it's the minimal required to function properly, and then the next tier is the minimum required to actually play with a halfway decent user experience ("Required for acceptable gameplay"). When I installed, I decided to try the minimum first, partially concerned about possible performance issues. If 10 of the "recommended" mods had been "Required for acceptable gameplay" I'd have installed them as my minimum, if that makes sense. I might add more mods in on your list, I'd just like a clear install picture (which I now think is "all of it" ).