Career mode set up

[Kurbis]

Hello, recently I have been only playing sandbox mode but have been thinking of starting a career game.

I was wondering what you guys think of career mode and the ways to play it. I have only really played science mode when I was still figuring out the game, and have not played career.

so far i have found a few different ways of playing:

-Stock

-SETI

-BTSM

-Realism Overhaul

-other misc mods/tech trees

what are the differences/pros&cons of these different games.

Thanks.

PS. And which one is your personal favourite.

[Random Tank]

Well, how much of the game have you played? If you're not super experienced at the game, I wouldn't suggest doing RO, as it's considerably more difficult... you need to do your maneuvers very efficiently, and abuse Gravity Assists and Aerobraking wherever you can, as the dV costs are so much higher (realistic).

BTSM is pretty hard too, but also quite fun.... when you like playing in Kerbin's SOI that is. It positively discourages travelling to other planets IMHO... 30 tonnes of life support lasts 1 Kerbal only 1 Kerbal year? (106.5 Earth Days, 426 Kerbal Days) What, do they eat like Kirby or something??? It's silly....

Stock works; plus it's probably the easiest (but also can be made pretty hard). As you haven't played career before I'd say just stick with Stock; it gets you used to using some parts you may not have used much before, also gets you used to flying rockets in general without making it more confusing, you don't need to mod it, and it's the best way of avoiding the Memory Leak crashes.

SETI is a good mod; I think it greatly improves the structure and flow of the tree, without warping it too far from stock nor real life; it makes the early sections of the tree focus on basic rocketry, and the later focus on the bigger stuff; plus it gives you planes earlier on which makes more sense really. I would still suggest doing stock first, but if you want to run through career again sometime later, this is the mod to pick!

I don't really know of any other tech tree unfortunately (apart from the interstellar one and Mod Orientated Tech Tree, but they're for more heavily modded playthroughs), so I can't really rate them.

[Whirligig Girl]

I'm currently playing with some mods that add some stuff to Career Mode. Nothing too divergent from the stock experience.

[Kurbis]

ok maybe i will try stock career first but are there small mods that you consider essential. I had a few but most are stock now

Edited April 2, 2015 by Kurbis

[Eric S]

I'll agree with what Random Tank said. I played through BTSM once, and thought the challenge was interesting, but got bored with BTSM before my first Mun landing in my second play through. Most of the challenge to BTSM was just adapting to BTSM rather than stock, so once I managed to do that, the second play through just felt like so much hoop jumping. Then again, I'm used to playing with Deadly Reentry/TAC-LS/etc, just not the game balance changes that BTSM made.

Personally, I'd say go with a mostly-stock career mode at first. Learning the challenges of career mode at the same time as you're learning new part balances/game mechanics might be stacking too much at one time. Play with a few UI-type mods, not anything that changes the challenge of the game if you want. Personally, I tend not to do career mode without KAC just because I tend to have more missions going on at the same time so I'm more likely to forget to check a certain craft as its transfer window approaches. KER isn't something I tend to skip either.

Once you've played through career a time or two, then you can look into alternate tech trees, tech challenges, etc. from a more informed point of view.

[Kurbis]

I don't know if should ask this here but to you do contracts feel limiting. eg all your missions are based on what the contracts tell to do. if build something without a contract eg. station, would it be "useless". or do you feel it opens up new creative ideas and ways to do things you might never have tried.

this is the reason I have mostly played sandbox.

edit:thanks, time to go play ksp I guess

[Random Tank]

I don't know if should ask this here but to you do contracts feel limiting.

Kinda agreed here; while I can happily do a mission that I don't have a contract for, having to do some (sometime quite tedious) missions just to have enough money to do said mission, or a science run, just feels too grindy and annoying for me. I'd like a sort of "Government Funding" option, where you get a certain amount of money every month, which is increased every time you do something significant; you could then have a few contracts about to do if you need bonus money... That or have very high paying contracts for stations, satellites or bases that pay over time... though I'm just spit-balling here.

The only mod I consider compulsory is the Stock Bugfix Mod, as it fixes some quite painful bugs. Some other mods that I consider very useful are Kerbal Engineer, Kerbal Alarm Clock, Tweakable Everything, Editor Extensions, RCS Build Aid, Scene Jumper, Ship Manifest and possibly Atmospheric Trajectories (just search these on google, they're usually the 1st or 2nd result). You don't HAVE to have any of them, but they do make certain things in the game much more intuitive and overcome some limitations.

[Tw1]

I don't know if should ask this here but to you do contracts feel limiting. eg all your missions are based on what the contracts tell to do. if build something without a contract eg. station, would it be "useless"

having to do some (sometime quite tedious) missions just to have enough money to do said mission, or a science run, just feels too grindy and annoying for me. I'd like a sort of "Government Funding" option, where you get a certain amount of money every month...

I have to agree with both.

This is why I would've prefered them to take a quite different approach to career mode. One where the player leads, rather than being nagged.

One where you feel like a space program director, and space explorer, not just a rocket maker/pilot with a task list, and stuff to buy,

I've been thinking about this for a while now, and have come with a system which I think irons out most of the issues with time based budget, and gives incentives to do various space exploration things that the current game doesn't really represent well.

In my ideal game mode, most of your funds would come from a yearly* payment from "sponsors". *Kerbin years

These payments would come with a little pop up thing reviewing how the year went.

How much gets paid would be determined by several factors: Historic achievements, new achievements, exploration, knowledge, research, and reputation.

What these terms mean:

Historic Achievements: A hidden stat based on milestones you've completed in the game. Achieving orbit, achieving a docking, rendezvous, reaching orbit with a vessel of x mass, planets you've flown past/orbited/landed on, etc. It would work a lot like kerbal experience.

New Achievements: Basically, the same as above, but only ones from the current year.

Exploration: How much planetary surface you've been to, taken samples of, taken photos** of, etc, in the past year. Areas not previously visited/sampled, etc in the past few years are worth more. Areas you've never been to, even more. There'd need to be a system that records area visited, I imagine it working something like how the overlay of cells in kethane worked, but perhaps with smaller cells, to encourage roving. We could this overlay invisible to the player, increasing immersion, and giving incentive to mark places with flags. Or, it could visible, highlighting places you've been, as well as places you've been recently.

Knowledge: How much you've discovered about each planet. Collected sort of like the current science is.

Research: Determined by how many science experiments you've done, their valuedetermined similar to the current system, and how much research you've done. Research would be a special sort of contract. It would be run from a crewed lab, which would need a number of specific science parts, a number of kerbals, and take a considerable amount of time to complete. This idea assumes the addition of life support, making re-supply runs necessary.

Reputation: Basically what it is now. Gain it for completing contracts, achieving milestones, etc, loose it for killing or firing kerbals. Especially, veteran ones.

Reputation, Achievements and Knowledge would act like multipliers, but if you haven't made any New Achievements, or done any exploration or research that year, you won't be getting any payment from your sponsors.

Contracts would still be there, but would play more of a secondary thing, letting you earn a few funds on the side. It's not unreasonable that others might ask things of your program, and it could be a good mechanism to implement more things, like multi probe experiments and space tourism.

Also, related: my ideal science system:http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/entries/1767-Science-is-pretty-shallow-Could-it-be-shaken-up-a-bit

**Photos are something I want to talk about in a future suggestion.

TL, DR, Basically, it would reward you for doing space program type things with your space program.

I'd love to see something more like this added in a future expansion.

Edited April 3, 2015 by Tw1