MinimalMinmus

Alright, my Mun Elcano is complete, I'll try making a full mission report, meanwhile here's a teaser.

In case you're morbidly curious, NCD is a lot of things at once. The pressure on science is so high that even getting every single kerbin+mun+minmus points of science isn't enough, you HAVE to go interplanetary, maybe even twice. Getting all the biomes in the KSC, as well as doing everything to the max is all but vital, and while it is possible, it is an absolutely grueling task. If you want a more reasonable, yet bigger than what you've done challenge, try Corundum. And yes, it means starting with zero fund, so be careful with which contract you take or you WILL get softlocked in just a few moves.

Congratulation @WarSprite at joinig the cave wall and the Order of the Trilobite! You are now a certified topaz caveman. ... speaking of caveman, I should try NCD again one day...

Not to flex or anything, but I landed on Kerbol https://imgur.com/a/2tYSzQo How to do this? Simple. 1) Go to the Mun's north pole with your favorite Elcano rover 2) Plant a flag directly at the pole and watch how it somehow gets shifted by 200 m 3) Try to leave that rover hell 4) Fall through glitched terrain 5) Panic 6) Get puzzled as the flag you planted explodes for no reason while you're far below it 7) Brace for the worst at -250 m 8) Watch as nothing happens 9) Wait for periapsis 10) Get YEETED at 42000 g by the singularity at the center, and reach a speed of 160 km/s 11) Exit the Mun at literal breakneck speed and watch as you are still "landed" 12) Once above Kerbin, grab impossible results such as the gravimeter while landed on water since you're at it 13) Exit Kerbin's gravity since you go so fast 14) ??? 15) (not that much of a) Profit! (no seriously I got that little science for somehow landing on a star?!?) P.S. How do you embed images with imgur? The forum's function didn't work for this link

Taking on the Mun with max scatter and EVE on proves to be a very !!FUN!! challenge... good thing I added a girder on the front, it already saved me several times...

Alright, I've decided to have another go at some of the categories, got a rover going to Mun as I speak, I plan on doing quite a few in total in my career. Small question: is it ok to have a downward facing thruster to generate some artificial gravity? It's mostly for Gilly (and maybe Hale/Ovok).

I did, in fact I fully scanned both Mun and Minmus. The option to switch the map appears just fine, but clicking on it does nothing.

I'm having a problem on the lastest version with the big map: for some reason I cannot switch it to any other body than Kerbin. Any fix/workaround?

Just for it to be clear: I am not throwing the towel, but after the last time I need a break. Also, holidays incoming. Also, it was Jeb that I lost, not val. My bad.

I use the swivel exactly once, to create an SSTO rocket. After that, you should unlock the reliant and never bother with that garbage engine again.

It looks like a pretty good system, the only flaw I see is the high part count. and the fact it is "high tech". Maybe we should do a compendium of all the possible viable lower stages.

And the Minmus monolith gives... HEAVY ROCKETRY! Because of COURSE it does. Oh, and I just lost val, for good this time, because SAS glitched during re-entry. This challenge is starting to kill me.

Tip: if you do a report on the exact same tick you leave the ground, it's actually possible to get a glitched "XXX while flying over [KSC biome]" report. It helps tremendously. One way to get them is to start rolling at 5-6 m.s-1 and do a lot of reports until you get it. For buildings, go in front of it, go towards the building, collide it gently and keep rolling. Do reports while you're rolling stationarily and you will eventually get it.

I'm just saying, but if you have the courage to, Kerbin seems to have a green monolith too. Proof (n.b. it's not mine): You can try your luck at the spinning wheel one more time. If you get lucky you could get precision engineering (better antennas and probes) or advanced electrics (better solar panels). Theorically, with the RA-2 antenna, if you build a giga-relay with 60 antennas in orbit, you could send a probe to Eve if you use two RA-2 or analogues With twice that number and 5 on the probe, you reach Duna. Of course that would be painful (and possibly laggy) but that would be possible. With the RA-15 however things are different. The numbers become 10 antennas for Eve and 20 for Duna, which is far more reasonable. P.S. Since by now the challenge has been proven to be very much possible even in its most extreme setting, I'm gonna throw an open question. "Is it possible to do it in a game with even less science?" Since this is pretty much a fantasy challenge (aka not stock), I'm suggesting the name "Mythril" (7,5% science), "Adamantite" (5%), and "Unobtainium (2.5%). I'm pretty certain Mythril is possible by stretching NCD's strategy, but it would be painfully grindy. Adamantite would probably require some brand new strategy, and I'm almost sure Unobtainum would be impossible, this time for real, really. But hey, who knows?

[Removed because I hadn't read everything in your report, whoops]

I DID IT AAAAAAAAAAAA IT TOOK ME THREE HOURS I AM SO HAPPY OH MY GOD

I just stranded Val after a wrong escape burn from Minmus, I officially have one less pilot. Time to restart. Just kidding. EDIT: okay, guys, I think it will work, but this is officially the most mentally straining mission I have ever done in KSP. I think I have rarely thrown as many expletives at KSP ever.

Do you consider WorldStabilizer to be a forbidden mod? It does technically change the gameplay, but that's because it fixes the "vessels on a surface bounce upon loading" glitch.

Could you upload a map of the various "splashed down"? Shore is easy, but where can you find the rest? P.S. It could be an additional document for @The Dunatian to provide a link to. As of progress, I'm currently at 80 science, and I just racked up all (but one, oops) low orbit EVAs. Bob is "safely" in orbit and I plan on sending a probe to change his orbit to equatorial and get desert+high orbit EVA.

I'd be curious to know too, as right now I'm trying to squeeze the last science out of Kerbin (although I'm not as hardcore as @zanie420, and that means no non-trivial splashdowns), and I will soon have to do a polar recon mission for Kerbin, Mun and Minmus.

No better feeling than accidentally getting a terrier part test when you are struggling to get the cash to go to the Mun with reliants. And you know what it means? Yes, it's true. I AM trying to complete the challenge on NCD.

To be honest, my suggestion was only semi-serious. What I was suggesting is doing it as a finisher once you're (almost) done.

Don't worry, if the error is genuine, it is generally accepted. And if it isn't, I suggest this as a redemption quest: You must land a kerbal on Dres, and bring him back home.

I'd like to know: what's the exact policy for page 2 of the options? Some say it's the same as hard, but some others such as @zanie420 allow themselves to use action groups.

Well, you're warned, even Corundum can be taxing enough to cause a loss of hours of progress if you screw it up. Diamond is extremely hard, and you must almost certainly go interplanetary. As of NCD? Good luck. You'll need it.