Kelderek

Just to reiterate what I said above, here's an example of some of the funds, science and rep I got from a recent mission: I think I gained over 3 million funds on this trip to the Jool system with a couple flybys and a landing on Bop. No contract needed at all. This is just an example from later in the game, but the same holds true for early world firsts in the Kerbin system too.

I would also add that there is a really nice strategy in the admin building called "Leadership Initiative" that lets you gain more from world firsts at a cost of lower contract gains. You will bring in more funds, reputation, and science (both from the world first and also from your experiments). You only need to account for the fact that there are no advanced payments with world firsts like there are with contracts, but there is no reason why you can't still do contracts. I have my strategy running at 60% (tier 2 admin building max) and here are the adjustments I get: 95% increased funds and reputation from world firsts 30% increased science from world firsts AND experiments ("field work gains") 45% reduced funds, reputation, and science from contracts I found that the key to playing this way is to try to go to new places as much as possible and fewer repeat visits. So for example, after I did missions to Minmus and the Mun, I went to land on Ike (obtaining high and low Duna space science too). Then I launched a new mission to land on Gilly (obtaining high and low Eve science also) and dropped an unmanned lander probe to Eve's surface to transmit science back home. By planning missions this way I get tons of funds and science and I don't need to worry much about contracts at all. I keep checking contracts in case there is an easy one available that aligns with my mission goal like "plant a flag on X" or "science data from space around X", but I don't have to design my missions entirely on what contracts are available.

Thanks for the responses. It was really frustrating -- it felt like driving a shopping cart at the grocery store when one wheel is broken. If it happens again I'll try messing with the camera controls to see if that helps.

Hmm, it's possible, but I don't recall exactly. I had just launched off the surface of Minmus and was cleaning up the science data once I was in orbit before returning to Kerbin. That seems like a reasonable explanation, but that is creepy weird that I would be right on the edge of the boundary like that.

It usually depends on how many gimballed engines I am using on a rocket. Particularly in the 2.5m engine size where they all have gimbal, I will only have one engine at full gimbal and will dial the others down. It also matters if you are using other control surfaces like tail fins. Use one or the other for steering your rocket, but not both. I often have better luck with immobile fins and a gimballed engine since the engine can still turn your ship once it is in a vacuum or in the upper atmosphere. But what can really screw things up is when you have moving fins and also active gimbal on your engine, especially with SAS turned on.

I had a really bizarre thing happen last night that I can only assume is some sort of bug or glitch. I sent my kerbal on EVA to collect some science from experiments of a stage that would eventually be discarded so that he could take them back to kerbin inside the command pod. While I was trying to maneuver around the vessel using the EVA RCS, the orientation kept changing its axis by 90 degrees in a random direction. I would thrust once or twice to the left and all of a sudden I would be facing a completely different direction. Every time I tried to correct and steer back to the ship the orientation would change again. This orientation change meant that I could no longer control where I was going - it took all my effort just to stay in the vicinity of the ship and not fly off into the void. The shift was always 90 degrees in a (seemingly) random direction and it changed the camera and navball at the same time. It also happened when I got close to the ship. The ship was a simple 1.25m command pod, service bay, materials bay, fuel tank and terrier, with the pod able to decouple alone for re-entry. I eventually managed to get close enough to hit "F" and grab on to the command pod and board, but this was a crazy few minutes that left me quite frazzled. Are any of you familiar with this and know how I might prevent it from happening again? All my other EVAs seem to go ok, so I'm not sure what made this one different - I'm not sure how to reproduce it.

[quote name='Deadpangod3']Dogmeat: la de da de da da dee. Player: DOGMEAT NOOOOOOOOOO! *KAPOW!!*[/QUOTE] Previous versions in the Fallout series taught me to avoid using companions. I'm glad this version provides a perk for playing solo too. By the way, if any of you like to read fiction and like the Fallout games, I highly recommend the Silo series from Hugh Howey ("Wool", "Shift", and "Dust"). The first book, [URL="http://www.amazon.com/Wool-Hugh-Howey/dp/1476733953/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1447951795&sr=1-1&keywords=wool+hugh+howey"]"Wool"[/URL] is one of my all-time favorite books and the story has a lot of similarities with the vault dwellers of the Fallout universe -- enough so that it would not surprise me if the Fallout games helped inspire the books, though I don't know if that is the case.

The frame rate drop from "god rays" effects are pretty horrible. I have a new PC which can run the game at 2560x1440 with everything at ultra and I get a steady 50-60 FPS all the time... except when the god rays kick in and it drops below 30 FPS. So for now I disabled that effect and kept everything else at ultra and it's a lot smoother now. I had CTDs for the first couple days, and I'm not exactly sure how I managed to fix it, but now I can play for hours at a time with no crashes and I have been really enjoying the game. I got a character up to level 18 and then decided to re-roll a new one with different starting SPECIAL stats -- I realized that these stats matter most for unlocking perks and not as much for any bonuses they give directly. So I chose 3-5-1-3-6-7-3 for the SPECIAL attributes respectively. I've been playing almost exclusively with non-automatic rifles and I like the sneaky-sniper style of play. I also don't use power armor yet (maybe later, I have 3 full suits already) nor do I have companions with me (Lone Wanderer perk is awesome). I like the crafting a lot more than FNV, it's cool to turn an ordinary pipe rifle into a sniper rifle or into full-auto assault rifle just by changing mods. I love the Long Recon Scope - it allows me to track enemies, perfect for sniping. It would be nice to craft ammo, I may need to invest in the perk to make finding ammo be easier -- some ammo types have been hard to find for me, while others are very abundant. As a fan of FO3 and FNV, I am thrilled with this installment so far.

[quote name='Rainbowtrout']I have a slight dilemma. Christmas is coming, and I thought I'd treat myself to a PC upgrade. Problem is, I have only a rough idea of what parts work with what parts. At the moment I have [URL="http://www.adventcomputers.co.uk/product/advent-dt3411-desktop-pc"]this prebuilt PC (Running windows 10, upgraded from 8.1)[/URL]. It was good for what I originally intended to play (KSP, Civ 5, EUIV, etc) but trying to run newer releases (GTA V) is a bit trickier. I'm on quite a tight budget, which doesn't help. Despite that, I've found what [I]seems[/I] to be a decent set of upgrades. Would this work with it? Any other info is welcome :)[/QUOTE] Personally, I am not a fan of doing small upgrades to any of my computers. It's just my experience that doing a really big upgrade less often gives me results that I prefer. So I am not really used to smaller budget computer purchases. That being said, there are a couple things you will want to keep in mind for your setup: -- Will that graphics card fully support DirectX 12? This is something to research if you want to future-proof your PC better. -- The video card you selected only has 2GB of memory. If part of your upgrade plan is to run at a higher resolution, then you may want a card with more memory. Sometimes for a given GPU you can find different amounts of video card memory from different manufacturers. Also consider comparing to AMD models for the same tier - from one tier to the next nVidia and AMD often flip flop which has the better GPU for that tier. -- You may also want to upgrade your RAM memory. Depending on how old your current modules are they may be a lot slower than current DDR3 kits. I doubt a change will be required for you, but it may help with performance. -- I recommend you read up reviews and articles on Tomshardware.com, it's my personal favorite for researching PC components, and it can help you make smarter selections. I'm not sure where you plan to make your purchase, but also read customer reviews if possible, they can help you to compare between things too.

I had to go do a double check, but the records are not already stored in the contract archive either, so if you click on the delete button on the popup window for the World First records they will be lost forever. The contract archive would be another alternative home for these records, but I tend to think they have more to do with science than with contracts, so I would prefer them to live in the science archive of the R&D building.

I love the way the World First milestones work now in 1.0.5, but one small thing that bothers me is that if I delete the contract completion message where these are displayed, then I have no way to see these records any more. New records are added over time, but I find it's too easy to lose the records from accidentally deleting that contract complete message. This data needs a more permanent home, and the best place for this in my mind is the Science Archive. At a bare minimum... Keep an ordered list on a tab in the Science Archive, sorted by the order in which the records were completed. This would look much the same to how these are displayed on the completed contract popup, but it would be a permanent place to see all of your accumulated milestones. Taking it a step further... Incorporate the World First milestones into the pages of the Science Archive for each celestial body to exist with all of the other science data you have obtained. In the sections that filter the science data by experiment, biome, etc. there could be a new section to include any World First milestones that relate to that celestial body. An even better (and more thorough) option... Add a timeline feature to the archive to show everything that you have done for your space program, integrating all of your launches, links to vessels used, and every significant event and including all of these World First milestones. This has been suggested many, many times, so you can see more about that in other posts, but it would be an excellent home for this World First data.

I used them as an early way to have a rover - powered rover wheels come a bit later in the tree - it was useful for gathering KSC science or for simple hops to nearby biomes.

Sorry, your post made it sound like you thought there are no action groups at all in career. They are there, you just don't like where they are located and the steps necessary to enable them. I can get that, but your OP was not as clear, hence my question. I agree, it is lame to link them to building upgrades, it feels contrived.

Are you talking about the action groups that you assign from the VAB/SPH editor to do things like extend ladders, toggle engines, etc.? In career games these are unlocked by upgrading your buildings at the KSC. They should be available in science and sandbox games automatically.

I am in an early new career in 1.0.5 and I started to see my first "Build a station in orbit of X" contracts. One thing I'm noticing that is different from before is that nearly all of these now require a minimum amount of liquid fuel and/or electric charge as part of the station requirements. When I first started to see these contracts, the liquid fuel requirement is 4000 units and the electric charge requirement is 5000 units. The problem is that I'm early enough in the tech tree that this isn't really feasible. My largest fuel tank is only 760 units and the engines I have unlocked would probably not be sufficient to haul that much mass into orbit of another body, let alone LKO. Similarly I only have access to 200 EC batteries, so the idea of having 5000 units of EC seems a bit crazy. I think it might be a good idea to make a balance pass on these early contracts to make sure that the requirements are reasonable for when you receive them. I think something more like 1000 LF and EC would make more sense at the beginning and the 4000 values would be fine for later on once more of the tech tree is unlocked.

Well this explains why I now have 0 rep on my new career - I had cycled through a bunch of contracts last night before logging off and never noticed the penalty. This is not a good solution to the "slot machine" problem, especially not for a normal mode career. If you consider how many possible variations of contracts can pop up now along with how few are actually available at any given moment, it is entirely to be expected that we would want to cycle through the list to find something different. To apply a penalty just doesn't make any sense - maybe in one of the harder game modes, but definitely not in a normal career. Looks like I need to go tweak my persistence file and maybe use the debug menu to add back in some rep.

My Fallout 4 crashes every 5 to 10 minutes While it is up and running though it looks great and runs nice and smooth. It runs great right up until it crashes, lol. It reminds me of the line: "He's in perfect health apart from the fact that he's dead". I've spent too many hours today and late last night trying different things to no avail -- it looks like I just need to wait for more patches or new drivers. My computer exceeds all of the recommended system requirements (I get 60+ FPS at 2560x1440 resolution and ultra settings, the hardware is not running hot at all and all my other games have no issues).

I'll try lowering the voltage a bit, I just know from a lot of online reviews that skylake seems to handle higher voltage better than previous CPUs, and I regularly saw people running at 1.4V. Apparently Intel told their reviewers that 1.45V was safe to use. I have seen results up over 4.7MHz on the i5 6600K that are stable. @cantab: My main criteria for a case was all the features and the ease of working inside, the size and weight are not a problem for me as I will not be moving the PC at all. I just knew I didn't want a full tower case and so I focused my search to only mid-tower cases. I also knew that a window would be pointless because of how I planned to position the case on the corner of my desk - in fact the looks in general did not matter much beyond having a quality finish. I don't care much for flashy LEDs or anything like that in my PCs. Besides, by forgoing a window I get an entire side panel lined with sound dampening foam which is nice.

Isn't building a new PC so much fun? Your setup looks pretty good, there are a few similarities between your build and the one I just finished. Out of curiosity, what kind of display and resolution are you using in that setup? I finished my build a week ago. Here are some images of the build from start to finish Case = Fractal Designs Define R4 CPU = Intel Core i5 6600K (Skylake, 6th gen) CPU Fan = CoolerMaster Hyper 212 EVO Motherboard = Gigabyte GA-Z170-HD3P Memory = G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 2400 Video Card = Sapphire NITRO Radeon R9 390 8GB PSU = EVGA 220-G2-0650-Y1 650W 80+ Gold SSD = Mushkin Enhanced Reactor 1TB SATA III HDD = Toshiba PH3300-U-1I72 3TB 7200RPM 64MB Cache SATA III Optical Drive = LG Blu-ray burner WH16NS40 Monintor = AOC Q2778VQE 1ms 2560x1440 27" Keyboard = SteelSeries 6GV2 Red Cherry MX mechanical Mouse = Gigabyte Force M7 Thor OS = Windows 10 Home 64bit My Thoughts on the Build I got lucky on the CPU and was able to buy it on sale at my local Microcenter store for only $213. The case was also 40% off on Newegg. I absolutely loved the case. Of course I hadn't worked with a new case in over 6 years, but I was impressed with the improvements that have been made over time. The case has room for a lot of fans (2x front, 1x side, 1x bottom, 2x top, 1x back) and I'm sure that you could do water cooling if you wanted. What I liked most about the case is the sound dampening foam on both of the sides, the top and also in the front - this makes the case very quiet. Some of these can be partially removed if you want to have more fans or just open exhaust holes. I ended up adding 1 fan to the 2 the case came with so I have 2x 140mm up front and another 1 in the rear. There are removable dust filters on the front and bottom intakes (the PSU is bottom mounted). This is a case with lots of little things done right like rubber cushions for the PSU mount and for the 3.5" HDD bays. I would totally recommend this case to anyone else. The MB install was pretty easy, I just needed to connect a couple cables along the top of the board before screwing it in place. With the huge after market CPU cooler in place the top of the case had the least room to place your hands so it helped to connect the top cables beforehand. Everything else connected very easily and there is plenty of space behind the motherboard to handle cable management. The modular cable system for the PSU is a new feature for me and I found that to be very handy. I debated between the GTX 970 and the Radeon R9 390 for a while, but ultimately the extra 4GB of memory and this great TomsHardware review made me pick the AMD GPU and specifically this one from Sapphire. I was impressed with the physical appearance of the card. It is quite heavy but that is because it is made of quality and durable parts. This particular model had a backplate which I also like. I decided to spend a little more than I originally planned on the keyboard because I wanted to have a quality mechanical keyboard. The SteelSeries model is extremely sturdy and I really like the action of the keys. Overclocking I have overclocked the CPU to 4.5GHz with a voltage max of 1.38. I know that the CPU can handle more than that, but I don't want to push it too much. I also overclocked the video card to 1090 MHz core clock and 1625 MHz video memory clock - I basically followed what they did in that TomsHardware review. Games So far I have only installed a few of my Steam games. I run everything at 2560x1440 resolution, which is the native resolution of my display. I was able to run Skyrim at ultra settings and it looks great. The real test will be Fallout 4 next week (I preordered it when I bought my PC parts), and I am also interested in seeing how Directx 12 changes things later on. KSP looks fine so far, but I haven't really done many tests with it yet - I am mostly waiting for 1.0.5 to arrive for a new career I am planning to start. I also need to figure out what mods I want to run, including any that may help me benchmark test KSP itself. I know DasValdez has a mod that shows the percentage value for the physics load in the upper left of the screen, I may find that and give that a try and anything else that would help to benchmark the game. I also picked up Ark: Survival Evolved, but I'm not sure what to expect on the graphics of that game as it is still in early access and I can tell there are still visual bugs and glitches for them to iron out. EDIT: I initially had a Corsair LM3 gaming mouse, but it was horrible and I replaced it with the Gigabyte one which is much better.

It turns out I had forgotten to enable XMP in the BIOS. As soon as I did that it immediately defaulted to the DDR4 2400MHz speed I expected.

I remember you saying this, and sure enough by the time I had the money to place an order Newegg was sold out. When I searched other retailers online for it I really lucked out and found that the local MicroCenter store a couple miles away had 25 in stock. So I ordered one and did an in-store pickup. Better yet, it was on sale so I only paid $213. I'm now in the process of configuring a killer new PC and will be busy with installations and screwing with settings for the next few days - something that is both fun and boring at the same time, LOL. I did manage to OC the i5 6600K to 4.5 GHz, I'm not sure if I should push it much further. Also, I have G.Skill Ripjaws V 2400 DDR4 16 GB (2x8 GB) memory that seems to be only running at 2133. Does this mean that the memory was mislabeled or do I need to OC the memory to correct it? I've never OCed memory before so I'm not sure how to go about doing it.

And there was much rejoicing, YAY!

It's perfect timing for me as I happen to be building a new PC this week (just waiting for part shipments). Fallout 4 will be an excellent new game to test out the new rig and see what this baby can do. My only gripe is the time difference between when my PC will be finished and when the game comes out (about 11 days), but I can use that time to test KSP and some of my other games. Most of my games are older though because my current PC is more than 6 years old and had limited which current games could even run on minimum settings (FarCry 4 couldn't even launch on this old bucket). It will be nice to be able to play any game I want and not have to hold back for a while. Microsoft Windows 10 Home 64bit Intel Core i5 6600K with CoolerMaster Hyper 212 EVO fan Sapphire Nitro Radeon R9 390 8GB video card Gigabyte GA-Z170-HD3P (rev 1.0) motherboard Mushkin Enhanced Reactor 2.5" 1TB SATAIII SSD Toshiba 3TB 7200 RPM 3.5" internal HDD G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16 GB (2x8) DDR4 2400 memory EVGA 650W G2 power supply LG blu-ray burner optical drive SteelSeries 6GV2 mechanical gaming keyboard Corsair Rqaptor LM3 gaming mouse VOC Q2778VQE 27" LED 1ms 2560x1440 monitor Fractal Design Define R4 blackout mid-tower case I'm looking forward to seeing Fallout 4 at 1440p and am curious how high the settings I can have and still run smoothly. It should be a stunning picture.

Turns out you were right. I came home from a long weekend vacation in the mountains ready to place my order for PC parts and the i5 6600K was sold out on Newegg. Then I did a new search and found it in stock at my local Microcenter store and on sale to boot! I was able to go buy it and pick it up for only $213, more than $50 less than Newegg's price before they went out of stock. I was also able to grab a AOC 27" 2560 x 1440 1ms monitor on sale for $299, the same price that Newegg has it, so I saved a little on potential shipping costs.

Whether you call it cheating or not doesn't really matter, just know that any mod or use of the debug menu cheats can have the potential to ruin your game experience if you over-do it. I have hyperedit installed for example, but I have enough restraint that I'm not tempted to use it during normal game play as I deem it to be essentially God-mode and if I used it too much then I would start to lose interest in the game. It's a great tool though for testing ship designs quickly. Everyone is different though, it's up to you to decide if using a specific mod has any potential to change the game to be less challenging and maybe too boring to continue playing. The flip side is that sometimes using a new mod can reinvigorate a game if the game was getting a little stale for you. Throw in some new mods and all of a sudden the game has new features and opportunities. As everyone else points out, this is a single player game, so it doesn't matter what you do.