Ant P

*someone* It does seem a bit out of place to have a static name readout amongst all of the diagnostics but I guess it's useful?

I don't know what the actual dV difference is but my first Mun landing effort resulted in running out of fuel a couple of times during landing, quickloading to before intercept, changing course to Minmus, landing and returning to Kerbin with fuel left over.

So, I was looking at some rocket designs incorporating the LES, which made me think "I've never used this," which made me think "that's because I normally just revert in a disaster," which made me think "successful launches would be much more satisfying against a backdrop of consistent failure." So I'm going to start a career on Hard. Other than keeping an eye on my dV/TWR during launch (I have installed Kerbal Engineer) and trying to complete multiple contracts at a time where possible, what are some techniques I can employ to optimise my performance in Hard mode? In particular, what is a good way of escaping the habit of launching multiple suborbital test flights before committing to a specific design (do I try and launch unmanned rockets first for each new design... or do I just need to be more thorough when designing in the first place)? (not sure if this is the best place for this thread since it isn't really an "answerable" question).

Better still - Jeb falls over on the Mun... ... I'll go get a coffee.

The first time I landed on the Mun, I forgot the separator between lander and pod. On re-entry, my lander exploded and sent my pod spinning - luckily the weight of the heatshield brought the spinning to a halt just in time. On my trip to Duna, I panicked during landing, blew most of my fuel and used my pod's chute instead of my lander's (there was no engineer on the ship). I wound up aerobraking my way back to Kerbin with empty tanks and landing upside down in the desert. What are your narrowest escapes? Bonus points for stupidity.

Good point about mods - I'm still getting myself comfortable with the vanilla game for the time being (although I have just installed KER and PreciseNode) but I will take a look at some gameplay mods soon. I do think there's a lot of potential for strategic depth that could come with some incentive to co-ordinate more missions at once... may have to have a look at the SDK!

I've just sent my first unmanned probe to Duna in career mode. It's due to arrive there in 191 days. It feels as though - in the meantime - more stuff should be happening. Like I should be launching shorter missions while my Duna probe is in transit. Is there any real benefit to being "active" during the interim versus just warping and getting on with it? As far as I can tell, the only difference is that the career timer will be higher for subsequent missions. If that's the case - has there been any talk of adding any incentive to more "efficient" use of career time in future versions (in-game rather than challenge-based)? It seems like it could add a real strategic dimension to the game...