Glockenspiel Hero

Get science data from a probe around Kerbin. Yeah, yeah, until I had the Kraken eat a probe going to Duna, flipped back to the little orbiter I use for these missions and suddenly find out it was in solar orbit where the Duna probe should have been, doing some absurd velocity back to its old orbit. Things ended badly until I reverted a few autosaves back. I'm quite fond of the "Test huge engine" missions- the first one I got took about five launches before I figured out the exact stack needed to get it to the right speed/altitude, but it funded a good chunk of the final research building upgrade, and I love pairing one of them with the little doughnut tank just for lulz.

Had a mission to put a satellite in orbit around Minimus. No problem. I had a new probe core to try so I built the usual probe + solar panels + antenna +thermometer, attach it to the stock probe booster and send it off. Get it into the correct orbit , get the points and then a mission to do a bunch of temp readings on Min pops up. Great- free points. One's on the surface, but I've got tons of DV and Min has low gravity, so I can grab it Halfway in I wonder why nothing's working anymore. In my haste to try out the new core, I forgot batteries. I'm in shadow, my probe's out of juice and I do a very nice lithobrake 20 seconds later. Should have known better to send a probe to do a Jeb's job.

Ok, I've been playing career for a while and it's a huge boost to the game- very well done. However, I think the way contracts are handled seems off. For example, I had a mission on the way to the Mun for the first time. The science and fund rewards for making it to the Mun and back were less than for a simple parts test on a suborbital flight I ran while the Mun mission was in flight. There's something wrong with that. I'd suggest breaking up contracts into three types, and having the rewards from them be primarily devoted to one of money/science/rep 1) Exploration missions like planting flags, reaching orbit/landing on new bodies, etc, should give tons of reputation. Further missions to the same body should give declining amounts 2) Science missions (Send back science data from X, temperature reading, etc) give mostly science. Ditto on declining amounts- this will stop the "Satellite with thermometer and antenna" auto-complete 3) Parts testing and satellite launching should give cash. The latter especially should be lucrative: it's how the commercial space industry makes money. Given the immense and growing costs later in the game, don't have the missions give less, but make them harder

Ahh, thanks. Now I understand- I (re)installed the game on the PC a couple of days ago and started playing, so that was before the upgradeable buildings update. I had everything prebuilt there. Might have to start another game just to make it harder. I'm guessing the science building is the one to upgrade?

I have a weird bug where my Kerbals can't take surface samples or plant flags. I start Career mode normally, launch a single pod, get Jeb out and he can't do anything but an EVA report. It works fine in Science mode, and on my PC it also works fine. (I also don't see most of the buildings, which I'm not sure is part of career. My PC shows them all, but I get cut down versions on the Mac) KSP: v0.90.0.705 Beta, through Steam System: iMac, 21.5", late 2013. 16GB RAM OSX 10.9. The same bug also occurs under Parallels running Windows 7 on the iMac Log file: http://public.gettysburg.edu/~eremy/Player.log (I can't remember if I have MechJeb installed on this log- it happens with or without it.) Am I missing something obvious? Thanks

Actually, I'm a bit beyond that- I've got unmanned probes to every planet and manned missions headed for Duna and Eve (orbital only), and about 70% of the tech tree unlocked. Once I get some of them back I'm going to give this a try- my biggest challenge right now is not having the Mainsail and some of the advanced construction parts, so my heavy lifters are pretty awful and under the rules I can't use my refueling stations. As far as the challenge, I'm interested in the trade off between easy science and maxing out the tech tree, as well as the challenge of building a large, multipurpose ship. (My current ships aren't much more than minimal setups with a nuke engine and as many experiments as I can fit/power) If it doesn't work feel free to let me know

I'm a new player as of .23, and I've been playing career mode rather than sandbox, so for me every mission is about the science return. While I'm a noob, let me know what you think of this idea for a challenge Challenge: Jebadiah Kerman's long lost, ultra rich Warren Kerman uncle desperately needs a tax break and has decided to take advantage of an obscure loophole in the Kerbal tax code that allows a 100% tax credit for personal research and development. As such, he's decided to fund a mission to the planets to write off as much as he can, but he can only manage to save as much as he can return in science value Rules: 0) 0.23 stock parts only. No mods that allow performance improvements, extra science or similar. Mechjeb, Engineer and the like are ok. No console cheats 1) One launch only: Warren doesn't have time to build multiple ships before the tax man cometh. The ship may come apart into pieces such as landers after launch. 2) Jebadian Kerman must be on the mission. You may bring as many Kerbals beyond him as you wish Scoring: +1 point for every science point the mission brings home, either by recovering the ship on Kerbin or transmission. (screenshot for instrument transmission+ screenshot of recovery as proof) +1000 for each unique planet (including Kerbin) scanned with at least one instrument from space +1000 for each unique planet (including Kerbin) scanned with at least one landed instrument. Instrument must return non-zero science to count. (A crashed unmanned lander without antenna would not count even if instruments were working, for example) +500 for each unique moon scanned with at least one instrument from space +500 for each unique moon scanned with at least one landed instrument, same non-zero science requirement -1000 for each Kerbal stranded on a planet/moon/in orbit -5000 for each Kerbal KIA Difficulty: since science only works in career mode, this might take some time to plan. To get enough science to manage serious missions you have to burn through most of the "easy" stuff like Kerbin orbit, Mun and Minimus landings and so forth. There will be a balance past that point- to get some of the goodies like the higher tech instruments or the Mainsail engine requires a lot of science, so you might have to do this without a lot of tech higher up the tree. Feel free to criticize or offer suggestion; I've been having fun trying to work my way through the tree from scratch as a player and I've enjoyed reading the challenges. I'm curious if anyone thinks this one interesting.