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I love the game. I've been playing since before there was a mun. That said I also really like the idea of career mode. It would be nice to have more challenges than just altering multipliers for science, money, reputation gain and what not. So with that in mind I have a couple ideas and others feel free to add to this or state if any reason why it wouldn't work. The thing is that the way it is now you never have to even leave the Kerbin sphere of influence to gain all the science you need to unlock the entire tech tree. At which point you 'basically?' won right. I mean after that you are playing in sandbox with something of a limit on money which at that point is pretty easy to get doing massive missions made easy by all of your tech. So like I said you can do the entire career mode just hitting Kerbin, the Mun, and Minmus. Once you unlock the lab which can be done by with some messing around on and around kerbin and a single trip to the moon. I'm sure someone else has a faster way than that. After which you just dump all the science you get into the lab and process it. The tech tree falls open pretty quickly after that. So my idea. You could consider this a hard mode or and option in career mode. Put some milestones into the tech tree. For example restrict certain points in the tech tree until certain objectives have been accomplished. Without mapping it out an initial suggestion would be that 1) You can't unlock any radial decouplers until after you have at least achieved a stable orbit. 2) No jet engine parts until you have successfully laded a vessel from "high" above kerbin (propeller based engines should be added as an early science stage with obvious high restrictions for operations) 3) The advanced grabbing unit is restricted until after you have successfully returned a surface sample from an asteroid. 4) No probe bodies which allow completely unmanned flight until after you have successfully complete 30 stable orbits and 5 transfers to another sphere of influence. (whatever on the numbers) 5) The graviolo detector should be restricted until you have returned (not transmitted) several bits of science data from low solar orbit including jr science, goo, temp, and pressure (gravioli is the most overpowered of the science instruments) 6) no rover wheels until science data has been collected from 3 adjacent bioms other than kerbin 7) nuclear engine restricted until science data successfully returned from landing on another planet or moon other than kerbin, mun, or minmus (sending a probe is fine) 8) no ion engines until surface samples returned from at least 5 bodies (obviously kerbin, mun, and minmus would be first 3 These are just some suggestions but the point is for career mode to require you to do more than just rinse and repeat the same old missions over and over and float around kerbin to win.