jediwannabe

I don't think the claw does fuel transfer anymore, it says no fuel crossfeed in the VAB. I had a pretty awesome almost rescue as well. I had a large rover-ish type science collecting ship stuck on minmus. I made a tug vessel with 4 nuke engines with a claw. The thing looked like a crab and was supposed to land on top of the rover and the claw would attach to the science processing lab on the rover. After a few tries I managed to get the tug attached and carried it into an escape of minmus. With the vehicles attached I hit the time warp and both ships exploded. I quick reloaded and tried again, and again both ships exploded. The third time I separated the vessels and time warped, they both exploded. After about 2 hours I gave up and loaded an old save.

I consider myself pretty seasoned at KSP but not hardcore. This career mode has made me better at the game. A better pilot, better planning, more efficient designs. Gone are the days of just throwing a few more fuel tanks on, you have to think about cost, weight, and number of parts. I do agree that you can very easily paint yourself into a corner with no way out. I had to start a career over do to taking a contract I couldn't possible do and losing money. One thing that would be super helpful is more info about the part that needs testing in the contracts. There have been a few Times were I saved the game took a part testing contract realized what part it was then loaded my game from before I took the contract.

I thought it was maybe a little too hard at first. But then changed my way of thinking. In the past careers money was never really an issue and if you knew what you were doing you could unlock the tech tree REALLY fast. The idea of starting a new space program from the ground up is now how career mode feels like (not starting out being able to build 1000 ton 600 part beast in the first moments of a budding space program). If you now anything about the actual history of space exploration the way career mode is set up now reflects it better. How I started my career: Build simple ships and try to salvage as much as possible from them after each mission. Only accept contracts you know you can do. TAKE YOUR TIME. I did a little grind of the "gather science data from around Kerbin" missions, just build a really simple rocket that goes straight up to at least the edge of space do a crew report (even a zero science report counts) and then float back down. I did this 5-6 times each time making about 25,000. I also used the strategy to convert some reputation to science so I got about 18 science each run as well. Overall I'm very happy with the changes, it feels like I'm building from the ground up.