Superfluous J

If. You're. Good. This is a thread about learning the game. If you're learning then you're going to have to do a ton of boring contracts for 2 reasons: You are not efficient. You fail a lot. Of course you and I don't have to do them. We're not new at the game. But for someone learning how to play telling them "The only ship you can afford can't even make orbit, so here keep doing these contracts until you can afford it" is - as I said earlier - bull%$@#.

That is a perfect idea for a mission I'd like to do. "Asteroid THX-1138 is on a collision course with Kerbin! It hits in 182 days. Redirect it or we're all doomed! Or it'll crash harmlessly somewhere. We're not sure. But here's a bunch of cash and rep to divert it just in case."

That's a fair revert. I reverted when My cat jumped on the keyboard, triggering like 3 stages at once.

Totally agreed. The forum takes a lot of BBCode (which is good!) but you can't see if it's correct until you submit.

Learning slowly and incrementally ramping up difficulty so as to aid in learning is not what I was referring to. Testing 37 random parts and ferrying 3 dozen people to Duna is what I was referring to. 1 part test contract teaches you stuff. 5 more might double what you learn. The 100 after that are grind.

bannable? They weren't removed. They don't exist on the new forum. Supposedly, the wysiwyg editor makes them unnecessary.

I did a thing. Well, I started a thing at least.

How would commenting on the pinning of the post have helped you, or anybody else? Either you know about the thread are only care about replies of substance (and "I pinned this yaaay" is not substance) or you don't know about it and will see it when pinned. I think this actually IS moderation at its best. Moderators are like waiters. They're at their best when you don't even realize they're there.

Exactly. Re-entry is no harder on hard mode than easy mode. You just have to do a whole bunch more bull%@#$ to get to that point.

Yes. I've been on a Science Mode kick lately, but that's mostly because I haven't played it since it was called "Career" and Career Mode as we have it now didn't exist. However, I can easily see getting back into Career Mode eventually. Then for one-off things there's always Sandbox of course. I like them both for different reasons, and don't like things about both as well. Then there's always "Other" which is always fun. Career mode with all the tech tree unlocked. Mods that make unlocking things different from doing science. Special contracts that lead you down a non-traditional path. Things like that. Like I said... "Yes."

No reverts is a bad idea with all the crashes and bugs in the game. I wouldn't suggest it to anybody, and especially not a new player.

Today - in my first real solid play since before 1.0.5 came out - I built 3 ships and tested them as well as I could bother to before starting a big mission this weekend. A scout probe to go to Dres and find Dresteroids. A refuelling ship for the below ship An "Astro-driver" that will capture a Dresteroid, take it down to the surface of Dres, and drive it around the surface, hopefully Elcano-style but if I get bored or it's too hard to control, just having it there will be enough for me. My only real concern (other than that I'm going insane) is that the car may need to be a bit bigger. It appears that there are no A or B class Dresteroids, and the smallest one I'll be able to use is therefore a C.

If you just learned about Maneuver nodes, you probably don't know that you can drag them around. Most people (myself included) are shocked when they learn this.

This right here is the single best advice in this thread. Science mode starts you with very few parts and you get to play with those with no real detriment. If you turn off permadeath (which I think is off by default?) then your Kerbals even come back when you blow them up. I strongly suggest doing the tutorials, starting up an "easy" run (note, it's just as hard as normal and hard mode. You are playing the same game, you just get more rewards for doing things so you can progress faster) of Science mode, and then whenever you get stuck do a search online for that specific thing you're stuck on. And yes, being great at the game isn't the goal. It's the process. Once you can do absolutely everything, there's not much else to do

I added it. The one for activating while stowed was already on it.

Yeah you don't do a mission to complete the contract. You do the contract to help pay for the mission. Or, if you're bored look over the contracts for ideas for future missions. But by no means should the contracts BE the missions.

I've yet to even set up the savegame... However Fallout is losing its luster and I'm itching to get my space legs back, so I'm hopeful this weekend will be a good one. Is your Low Gravity rover an asteroid?

We choose to go to Dres! We choose to land an asteroid that's been turned into a rover on Dres and drive it all the way around the planet1 before the end of this year2 not because it is easy. And not because it is hard. But because it is ridiculous and sounds fun! 1 Or at least drive it for a while until we get bored 2 Or not so much beyond the end of it as to be unreasonable

Wait, Dres Awareness was a challenge? I thought it was just a "hey, don't forget Dres" thread. *goes to check it out*

I don't think it has anything to do with the forums. We're in the doldrums between versions and people are just getting bored.

NEVER MIND I was doing something wrong. Though having an "apply" button with a big green check at the top of the screen caused me to miss the unadorned "Apply" button at the bottom of the screen, which I don't think was totally 100% my fault. I may need my answer in captain dummy speak. Just forewarning you. One thing for sure, I have .net 4.5 or newer. Microsoft said so. I made a fresh install of KSP in d:\ksp_105\ I downloaded ckan.exe and without an indication of where to put it, put it in d:\ksp_105\gamedata\ I ran it, and it loaded. I selected the above directory and it seemed to be happy with the choice. I clicked a bunch of check boxes next to mods to install them. I clicked "Apply" and it went to a tab that showed all the things I had clicked check boxes on as "intsalled." I saw no option to actually do this install, but it all happened very quickly and I was suspicious. So, I checked the gamedata folder itself and sure enough, there were no files in it but the ckan.exe I had placed there and the Squad folder. Well, I thought, maybe I need to start KSP. So I did so. It started up a perfectly vanilla version of the game. Well, I thought, maybe I need to exit from CKAN and it'll apply the changes on exit. No go. It just exited. I loaded it again, and all the mods I had previously selected were unchecked and nothing was shown in the "installed" tab. I'm sure it's me. It's always me. Also, I've never ever used this before so the chances I've stumbled upon a bug are far outweighed by my just missing something that is obvious to not me. So, what am I doing wrong?

I'm sorry but this is far too simple and elegant for this game. At LEAST tie it in to pilot skill or a SPH upgrade or - better yet - both.

Other than hearing that, I want nothing more from any media on the game. The second I beat Fallout I'm getting it and want to experience it myself.

Haven't played the Witcher or JC3, but Grow Home was awesome. I should totally try PA now that it's out of Beta. Or Alpha. I think it was in Alpha when I played it last If JC3 is just "JC2 with better graphics and gameplay" then it may be my game of the century

I learned KSCSwitcher syntax by taking the config provided and just fiddling with the values. IIRC you can "reload database" in the alt-f12 menu but it's been a while since I played with it, so all the specifics are gone from my brain. I do recall that lat/long are solid, but height and rotation can be tricky. I ended up just trying values until I got what I wanted. I also made a post on the KSCSwitcher thread with my dubious findings. The posts around that one have some good info too.