MacroNova

I think it makes sense to get reputation from completing a contract, but I agree that perhaps we shouldn't get science from completing contracts. Certainly not in the amounts we currently get. I'm not even talking about the Admin building strategy that drowns you in science. Just completing contracts that you need to do anyway nets you hundreds and hundreds of science.

This. It's very frustrating that Moho is the first launch window and one of the last explore contracts to appear. Bad design.

You get science a lot more easily in a full career game, because so many of the contracts give big heaps of science (I have a contract to test a splashed-down part that gives 100 science! That's an outlier, but still...). Even so, I think turning the gain down to 30% is overkill. Just don't use the Admin Strategy that turns money into science. It's completely broken, balance-wise. Cantab is 100% correct. There is a ton of science available in the Kerbin system, but it involves exploiting all the various biomes on Kerbin, Mun and Minmus. After your first couple of orbital stations and outposts, you'll be ready to go interplanetary. The first thing you should do is send out a probe to Moho, since I believe it has the first transfer window after you start a new game, assuming you have the spare cash, since you probably won't have a contract for it. Otherwise, everyone else's advice about Duna, Ike, Eve and Gilly is spot on. As for mods, those are basically the ones I use. I second the motion for procedural fairings in combination with FAR. TAC Life Support and Remote Tech are sweet. The flight computer from Remote Tech is better than the advanced probe cores in stock!

1. People have already mentioned Precise Node. It's invaluable! I'll add that you can do fine adjustments by dragging the opposite node inwards. Example: You want to increase your prograde burn slightly. You can get finer control by pushing the retrograde node towards the center of the maneuver node. You also asked about having to hover your mouse over things to get readouts while planning nodes. In fact, you can click your projected periapse and apoapse markers and their displays will persist when your pointer mouses away! 2. I'm not 100% certain what you're asking, but it sounds like you are having trouble orienting your craft with the controls. The NavBall is your answer. Just remember that the center of the Navball is where your ship is pointing, and that (a) moves the pointer left, (d) moves it right, (w) down and (s) up. Then recall that pointing to the "top dot" on the navball means your ship is pointing directly away from the planet's center, aka straight up at the sky. I use this info all the time when I'm landing. Instead of looking at my ship and trying to guess which control input will keep it straight, I look at the navball and use the directional control that points the nose of my ship toward that top dot. 3. Again, people have given you good advice here, but I will add that you can be certain of the direction of your encounter fly-by by mousing over the Encounter and escape indicators. You're moving away from the encounter indicator and towards the escape indicator.

Gameplay wise, there really isn't one. The only conceivable use would be to have a Kerbal live in it so he could plant flags for contracts. Maybe you could use it as a resupply station for when you revisit a particular biome with more advanced scientific instruments. Of course, there is more than enough science scattered around the Kerbolar system that this isn't really worth it. In real life, you'd want an outpost so you could study a particular area over time and do experiments that have a non-instantaneous duration, neither of which are concerns in KSP.

Satellites not only require lower tech and fewer funds, they also require less actual play time to deploy. Flying an aeroplane half way around Kerbin to do crew reports is just so much more time consuming and tedious than launching a rocket, planning a couple of maneuver nodes, and then time accelerating between them.

I waited until I unlocked landing gear, then drove my survey plane around getting the surface reports.

This is the internet. If modders were having their work stolen, they would quickly get the word out and Squad would lose reputation faster than a space program cancelling contracts. An extraordinary claim such as that requires very strong evidence.

IMO, this is the best way to make the larger antennas truly relevant. The other avenues are power consumption and the time it takes to transmit. But the communotron would have to take a lot longer and suck a lot more juice before it became impractical, and then it would be hard to use in the early game. Perhaps the transmission time and power requirements could be tied to the distance from KSC (so a communotron at Duna will take a lot more time/energy than one at the Mun), but that's getting pretty complex.

That's how I do it too. The original FinePrint mod gave a percentage deviation instead of using cryptic terms like "moderate" or "minimal." When the apoapsis is 8,000,000m, a 3% deviation ends up being a pretty generous amount, and smart players will recognize that right away. Shoot, I remember getting credit for contracts when I felt like I was still pretty far off; while I was setting up my maneuver node I got the notification.

Got a new pet peeve after playing some last night: Kerbals not holding onto the ladder when you EVA them. It was pretty annoying having to thrust back to the capsule after each EVA report.

Are you sure? I feel like that's not always the case. Sometimes the rocket seems surprisingly rotated from what I expected.

It bugs me that multiple parachutes clip through each other.

For a while I was really frustrated by the Kerbin Tundra orbit contracts. Waiting for the planet to rotate so the KSC was underneath the orbital path, and launching at an inclination made a huge difference.

Some people are talking about how probe cores having SAS functionality makes pilots irrelevant, and I suppose they are right, but is that necessarily a bad thing? I launched some early rockets and crewed them with my engineers and scientists to try to level them up, and I have to say that doing anything without SAS was a miserable and frustrating endeavor. I was basically forced to stare at the navball while making constant, finger-fatiguing adjustments to my trajectory. Not fun at all. So I'm forced to conclude that having SAS is a basic gameplay feature that is necessary for an enjoyable experience, and having it tied to one of the three classes was just not a good idea. Those of you who enjoy piloting without SAS and/or don't find it difficult can leave it turned off, but I think most players, especially newer ones, will want it available all the time.

So I completed a rescue and it does add the Kerbal to your permanent crew, even if you are already at max capacity.

1. If you haven't upgraded the EVA suits yet, will the stranded Kerbal still have a space-worthy EVA suit? (Don't want to get up there and discover I can't switch to him!) 2. If you have maxed out your Kerbonaut capacity, will you still be able to recruit the stranded Kerbal after you rescue him? Thanks!

If you attempted to deploy the chutes as you say in your OP, then you should have gotten a Contract Completion notice in the upper right, assuming all test conditions were met simultaneously. In other words, you need to be flying in the altitude window at the same time you're flying in the specified velocity range, and then deploy the chutes via stating. If you see the number in the upper right increment, you got it.

I am experiencing something similar. Stuck between 650 and 700 reputation. I complete contracts worth over 100 reputation and barely move. I am using the administration strategy where I turn some rep into science, but nowhere near enough to erase it all.

George Lucas claims that it was intentional. Since ships in Star Wars all travel in HyperSpace at the same speed, the ships that are best at plotting courses and maneuvering around gravitational obstacles (like star systems) will get you to your destination in the shortest distance and hence the least time. Of course, this knowledge has questionably utility in Kerbal Space Program!