Wjolcz

Take a look at some RL examples. I, for example, wanted to have only one RTG on my probe and a big antenna. What I could do is either clip things, put them inline and strut everything or add asymmetrical thrust. And the third thing was what I did. If you look at Cassini/Huygens spacecraft engine layout you will see the designers did just what I did. The probe has two engines to counteract the mass movement before and after Huygens was detached. So if you want asymmetry use more than one engine and adjust their thrust on the go. Just think about how the CoM will move. Also KER has the thrust offset calculator, so you might want to use that too.

I actually remember playing a sort of career hard mode. It was when I tried to do my flights reusable SSTOs only and one mission yielded less money than the cost of the launch so I had to do a few of them at once, but then I had NEAR installed so SSTOs were super easy. It was pretty fun nevertheless. Felt like an actual pilot career. I know it sounds monothematic, but you can visit my modlist thread and give the modpack a go. Maybe you'll find a way to make it more challenging via settings.

What?

Or an option on the pod/probe body that changes its facing, or sth. Or a surface-attachable probe body. Much less fiddling around than attaching an in-line probe. Just slap one tiny part to the side, rotate and be done with it.

Making your own is actually cheaper. If I've done it anyone can. Hella ugly but works amazingly well. Still waiting for better weather though.

I've said I won't be risking my eyesight though. Only camera imaging involved.

Man, my syntax is poor. But yeah, that's what I meant.

@Green Baron I was actually trying to say that I don't want to take pictures in X-ray bands, but instead cut out small pieces out of the X-ray film with the picture of my hand bones. And I won't be trying to look through it myself. I'm no a madman (yet). I'll try and take a few pictures with my phone just to see how it will look. Also thanks for the tips.

Nice. Why is it so purple? Filter or something? I saw Venus about a month ago through the telescope but it was so cold holding a phone and taking the pics was near impossible (shaky hands). Now that I've made myself a phone-telescope adapter I'll try and take some maybe next week when the weather is nice. EDIT: I lack the budget and it means there's a lot of experimenting involved in my astronomical adventures. Has any of you tried X-ray film as a filter used to take pictures of the Sun? I hope pointing my refractor telescope at it won't melt it or something?

@Ser that's a lot of text and I would have to do a lot of quoting which is sth I'm not fancy right now but I will say this: I got rid of science points, based everything on rep and money and reorganized the tech tree in my career game and it's much more enjoyable than the inane, half-assed career the stock game offers. We can keep trying to derail this thread. You can prove your thing, I can prove mine and we can keep going like this until some mod comes in and takes us down. Let's agree to disagree.

OMG Can confirm. We are both in this

: OOOOOOOO

I voted the third option because I think only half people landed in the Moon. Thank you.

In KSP you do whatever to get tech. Not, as in the provided example, measure the temperature in deep space and only then build better heat protection. I actually wish KSP's research system worked like this but it doesn't, so this piece of logic is ready to be thrown out of the window. I sure do. And a lot of it. Especially when I start thinking about devs' thinking processes when they were making career mode. And that is why certain aspects of the game are so messed up. The problem is if you think about it the process of developing new tech would look like this: R&D team sits browsing the internet and suddenly one guy stands up and says "Guys! I've just found this scientific article about Mystery Goo on the Mun and I have no idea how that helps us but let's built a RAPIER engine!" In real life you need money and time to built new tech. Not data from bacteria observation over Jupiter's red spot in a sub-orbital trajectory or whatever. These bacteria won't draw you any blueprints. They don't have hands. You know who would? Someone who gets paid for it. This makes almost no sense. Why would I keep two teams if one is obviously doing more than the other? If I'm waiting for one team to develop something that will allow the other to build a part then I can simply fire the other team and let the first one work on it. Also, what kind of advancement could the atmospheric team provide to make a better girder? I really need to know. Please explain. If this kind of logic is needed to explain the research system then obviously there's something wrong with the game. This proves how more realism would actually be beneficial for the game. Otherwise we deal with plot holes and inane research systems.

I refuse to believe you are being serious. If you think about it the removal of science points would actually allow for the fusion of Science Mode and Career Mode since your tech is depemdent on money, money on reputation and reputation on things you do (science, contracts, World's Firsts). Science experiments would simply yield reputation directly. Everyone would play one mode and simply choose their playstyle since everything you do yields reputation. You could do science experiments only or Contracts only or both and still progress.

I actually meant the other thread. The one you're talking about is kind of outdated and the OP is chaotic. Now I look at it and think I overcomplicated things a little bit. But ok. Let's take the wheels as an example. This is how I'd imagine it: IRL the first Martian "rover" design actually had skids/skis because they (the Soviets) didn't know what the surface would be like. In terms of gameplay it would work more or less like this: Land a lander (on any body because regolith on the Moon is similar to the one on Mars in terms of friction and stuff and to simplify things a bit) -> take a surface sample -> develop wheels needed to traverse other worlds.

Some more stuff from a while ago. STILL TOO EARLY SSTOs aren't easy. Especially when there's no tech that allows for making them. It only went for a sub-orbital hop, but was worth a shot IMO. THESE TITLES ARE GETTING SILLY AND ALSO A DUNA PROBE Finally another transfer window has opened. This one's for Duna. Hopefully that antenna will be enough to keep the connection stable. EVEN MORE FLYING, TESTING AND MESSING AROUND Took the newly acquired Whiplash engine for a spin. And that MK2 Juno-powered atrocity was... Erm... No idea what I was trying to achieve with that. Guess it was some sort of SSTO prototype, or something. That last MAKS/Adeline-like thing is actually something I'm looking forward to. Only did one test flight and it looks like the return engine section has a messed up CoM, but that ain't nothing I cannot fix. A system like that might come in handy some day.

And you get higher funding next month because of that. It may seem complicated but it's not. If you'd like to understand how it works please check out the mod list thread in my signature.

I agree. The contracts are really silly 80% of the times. I'm really glad the only thing that matters in my modded career are World's Firsts. They should be the only thing that is mandatory. Who cares how I achieve the goal? As long as I achieve the main thing (landing for example) then I should be done with that goal. And this is what I did to complete the same contract you're trying to deal with: I landed on the Mun manned in one piece (because it was way easier than doing an Apollo mission) and came back to Kerbin. Then I selected one of my probes orbiting the Mun and just performed rendezvous with another one and all the objectives were then marked as done. It was really dumb.

World's Firsts and reputation from them.

They can get pretty close to it though.

And this is the exact reason why I got rid of science points entirely. Thank heavens for modders. Tech unlocked by science makes no sense and makes career mode very hard to enjoy. You either finish the tree in no time or experience the eternal grind. I'm through half of my tech tree, only one of my buildings is fully upgraded and I have at least one probe going to each body and all that thanks to the fact I minimized the science yield and bound tech directly to funds granted periodically based on how well my space exploration (World's Firsts = reputation) is going. It's that simple.

Science points. Everything would be simpler and easier to balance without them. The career mode would also be more enjoyable.

This is how I'd imagine it. I think contracts should be an extra thing in the career and World's Firsts the main quests. The system based on reputation and periodic funding would be simpler and easier to balance. I would talk about it more but I've already done that countless of times. There's a way to do this with mods, which I've done.

None of the ideas from this thread would make me buy KSP2.