WOW! Any vanilla hard difficulty career mode players get to the mun yet?!

[Sandermatt]

I haven't played KSP in a while, do the building costs still scale with the difficulty? If yes, this seems to be an obvious improvement to make it less grindy. It should be hard to run profitable missions, not hard to run a sufficient amount of missions. Quality over quantity.

[Acet]

It's possible to get the Science Jr + 2x Goo cans to orbit on 1st Tier facilities, but barely.

I did it using a launch stage with a ring of 3 RT-10 boosters plus a liquid engine in the centre. The orbiter was an LV-909, basic capsule, chute, plus the above mentioned sciency bits. No heat shield,

You will probably have to bring in just a little less than full fuel to keep total weight under 18t, make sure the boosters are set at about 60% throttle to avoid going too fast too early and make a shallow reentry with an early chute deployment or you risk burning up on reentry.

[Emilio]

Upgrade your tracking station early on - the first upgrade will allow you to see the patched comics and use maneuver nodes. You're going to need that if you want to go father than LKO.

I'm quite early in the career and managed a couple of unmanned Mun orbits. That small "Spark" engine is ridiculously good. As far as manned landing goes, I'm thinking a single-stage lander and a three stage rocket should be plenty enough - I'm just waiting to get to the fuel technology tech node to attempt that.

[apocom]

I've done a fly-by yesterday. Didn't had enough fuel for an orbit. I don't think it is too much grind, but I did one of the expensive POL expeditions at the flag pol, so a I cheated a little bit. Now I've only 10k credits left. Time for some transporting and science missions.

[SelectHalfling0]

Without landing gear. Launcher was 4 kerbodyne solid fuel boosters with 4 "Thuds" as the main stage. Reached orbit with that, and a terrier engine brought the ship to the mun. After de-orbiting, that stage decoupled and the next terrier landing the craft. I landed on the cusp of the engine (screw landing gear) and after collecting my science I went on a free-return trajectory back to kerbin. Aerobraking was successful (40 ablator left) and Jebediah landed successfully. It really wasn't that hard (my first time in the new update).

I think that the game is far less grindy now, which is very nice. The new tech-node dispersion is what limits your flight capabilities, because there is always a difficult choice. Should I get new engines, or electronics?

Edited May 1, 2015 by SelectHalfling0

[herbal space program]

So after stating over several times, I managed to a Munar flyby on my 4th mission last night.

Mission 1 was just the MK1 with a goo canister on top, with Bob inside. I inspected the goo, did an EVA report, and did a crew report, with the science from Kerbin and first mission contracts active. That got me like 12 science, enough to unlock the 1st tech tier.

For Mission 2, I added the Escape Atmosphere contract and launched a 2-stage rocket with Reliant engines, 2 goo canisters, and a Science Jr. right behind the Mk1 and on top of a decoupler. There were like 6 t100 tanks on the top stage and 8 on the bottom. I launched this on a 45 degree trajectory, starting a slow turn to that angle at about 3000m. With this config I was able to get to a 105km apoapsis with a fair bit of fuel left in the upper stage. I took goo readings just below 70km and then again above it, and then did the science Jr. and crew report near apoapsis. The trick to recovering the science Jr. was to use all my extra fuel to do a powered descent, alleviating re-entry heating. I basically waited until I was at about 30km then fired my engines full-throttle, slowing to <600 m/s by around 18km. That kept the Science Jr. from exploding and netted me like 40 science after splashdown. With all the records that set and the escape atmosphere contract, I had enough science and money to upgrade both the pad and the astronaut complex and unlock the swivel engine and radial decoupler.

For Mission 3, I dropped the Science Jr., added a couple of Hammers to the base of my rocket, and switched to T200 tanks (with the same amount of total fuel) and the Swivel engine for the upper stage. This stack made orbit and back pretty easily, during which I did an EVA report and did a lucrative "test radial decoupler in orbit" contract. I somehow couldn't get the "return from orbit safely" contract at this point. At any rate, after landing I was able to unlock the remaining 2nd tier tech, survivability.

With that, I was ready for the Munar flyby. I swapped the Hammers for BACCs, added one T200 each to my upper and lower stages, replaced the MK1 chute with a goo canister, added 2 radial chutes, and put a Science Jr. protected by a heat shield behind the command pod. From LKO I boosted prograde with the Mun maybe 1.5 Munar diameters above the horizon, to an apopapsis just a bit inside Munar orbit. This put me inside the Mun's SOI a fair ways in front of and inside of it, which put me on a retrograde trajectory that cleared the Munar surface by about 7000m and put me back in a Kerbin orbit with a periapsis of about 1000km. I had just enough fuel left at this point to drop this periapsis down to around 45km, which after a fairly tedious number of aerobraking passes got me back on the ground safely. The biggest difficulty here was that the heat shield has an alarming tendency to flip the command pod nose-first, something I sure hope the devs will fix. Fortunately, it happened fairly late in my re-entry and I was able to flip it back pretty quickly, or else kaboom.

Anyway, after all that I had enough science to unlock the LV909 and *almost* enough to get some batteries, as well as about 200k in the bank. I've got well-paying contracts for Munar landings now, as well as orbital rescues and rendezvous missions, so I don't think I'll need to do too much inane testing grind. I guess my next move will be to do an orbital rescue/rendezvous thing while spamming Kerbin biomes with EVA reports. Aftet that I guess I'll get the batteries and attempt a Munar landing. I'm pretty comfortable doing this without patched conics of the maneuver node, but I'm not sure about doing it without RCS. We'll see....

[georgTF]

Ow. I did a boo-boo. I tried a Munar pass without conics thinking it's reasonably easy to get close by burning prograde when the Mun is above horizon. That part was easy and reaching the Mun was no prob.

Once in Mun's SOI, i realised that Jeb was on a collision course. So without nodes i tried to recall how i used to do it in the past and luckilly guessed right and managed to raise Pe to 33km. Wonderfull pass, lots of thermal readings and EVA reports over the biomes. Then Jeb left the SOI and went to see how the gravity affected the trajectory... whoops i seem to have given him a hell of a slingshot. He's practically a comet now. Not dead, but it will be a looong time before i can attempt a rescue.

Fair warning to all who would skip on the expensive conics upgrade. You may reach the Mun's SOI, but you have no clue what happens next (Obviously this applies only if you're passing, not if you're landing). As luck would have it, Val got stranded in a craft with no parachutes and needed a pilot to bring her down. I hope Bob+OKTO probe can pull it off otherwise our program is out of luck. A rendesvous without conics is not too difficult to pull off, but will surely waste a lot of fuel.

The reason i skipped the upgrade is because i spent money on EVA and launchpad upgrades. That tonnage limit was making it impossible to reach orbits higher than LKO.

[Kerr_]

Ow. I did a boo-boo. I tried a Munar pass without conics thinking it's reasonably easy to get close by burning prograde when the Mun is above horizon. That part was easy and reaching the Mun was no prob.

Once in Mun's SOI, i realised that Jeb was on a collision course. So without nodes i tried to recall how i used to do it in the past and luckilly guessed right and managed to raise Pe to 33km. Wonderfull pass, lots of thermal readings and EVA reports over the biomes. Then Jeb left the SOI and went to see how the gravity affected the trajectory... whoops i seem to have given him a hell of a slingshot. He's practically a comet now. Not dead, but it will be a looong time before i can attempt a rescue.

Fair warning to all who would skip on the expensive conics upgrade. You may reach the Mun's SOI, but you have no clue what happens next (Obviously this applies only if you're passing, not if you're landing). As luck would have it, Val got stranded in a craft with no parachutes and needed a pilot to bring her down. I hope Bob+OKTO probe can pull it off otherwise our program is out of luck. A rendesvous without conics is not too difficult to pull off, but will surely waste a lot of fuel.

The reason i skipped the upgrade is because i spent money on EVA and launchpad upgrades. That tonnage limit was making it impossible to reach orbits higher than LKO.

Just think logically about how your maneuver will affect you... I've been running mun and minmus missions by the dozens over here, it's not a big deal.

[ghpstage]

So after stating over several times, I managed to a Munar flyby on my 4th mission last night.

Mission 1 was just the MK1 with a goo canister on top, with Bob inside. I inspected the goo, did an EVA report, and did a crew report, with the science from Kerbin and first mission contracts active. That got me like 12 science, enough to unlock the 1st tech tier.

For Mission 2, I added the Escape Atmosphere contract and launched a 2-stage rocket with Reliant engines, 2 goo canisters, and a Science Jr. right behind the Mk1 and on top of a decoupler. There were like 6 t100 tanks on the top stage and 8 on the bottom. I launched this on a 45 degree trajectory, starting a slow turn to that angle at about 3000m. With this config I was able to get to a 105km apoapsis with a fair bit of fuel left in the upper stage. I took goo readings just below 70km and then again above it, and then did the science Jr. and crew report near apoapsis. The trick to recovering the science Jr. was to use all my extra fuel to do a powered descent, alleviating re-entry heating. I basically waited until I was at about 30km then fired my engines full-throttle, slowing to <600 m/s by around 18km. That kept the Science Jr. from exploding and netted me like 40 science after splashdown. With all the records that set and the escape atmosphere contract, I had enough science and money to upgrade both the pad and the astronaut complex and unlock the swivel engine and radial decoupler.

For Mission 3, I dropped the Science Jr., added a couple of Hammers to the base of my rocket, and switched to T200 tanks (with the same amount of total fuel) and the Swivel engine for the upper stage. This stack made orbit and back pretty easily, during which I did an EVA report and did a lucrative "test radial decoupler in orbit" contract. I somehow couldn't get the "return from orbit safely" contract at this point. At any rate, after landing I was able to unlock the remaining 2nd tier tech, survivability.

With that, I was ready for the Munar flyby. I swapped the Hammers for BACCs, added one T200 each to my upper and lower stages, replaced the MK1 chute with a goo canister, added 2 radial chutes, and put a Science Jr. protected by a heat shield behind the command pod. From LKO I boosted prograde with the Mun maybe 1.5 Munar diameters above the horizon, to an apopapsis just a bit inside Munar orbit. This put me inside the Mun's SOI a fair ways in front of and inside of it, which put me on a retrograde trajectory that cleared the Munar surface by about 7000m and put me back in a Kerbin orbit with a periapsis of about 1000km. I had just enough fuel left at this point to drop this periapsis down to around 45km, which after a fairly tedious number of aerobraking passes got me back on the ground safely. The biggest difficulty here was that the heat shield has an alarming tendency to flip the command pod nose-first, something I sure hope the devs will fix. Fortunately, it happened fairly late in my re-entry and I was able to flip it back pretty quickly, or else kaboom.

Anyway, after all that I had enough science to unlock the LV909 and *almost* enough to get some batteries, as well as about 200k in the bank. I've got well-paying contracts for Munar landings now, as well as orbital rescues and rendezvous missions, so I don't think I'll need to do too much inane testing grind. I guess my next move will be to do an orbital rescue/rendezvous thing while spamming Kerbin biomes with EVA reports. Aftet that I guess I'll get the batteries and attempt a Munar landing. I'm pretty comfortable doing this without patched conics of the maneuver node, but I'm not sure about doing it without RCS. We'll see....

Nice.

Its amazing how quickly you can progress in the new versions career, especially if you abuse the new scientist abilities

I started a new one with the hotfix, and broke new ground.

First launch with the flea and two goo capsules, with some careful goo resetting with Bob got me 28.6 science, which was just over what I needed for the first two techs plus stability for radial decouplers.

Second launch sent Bob scraping his way into high orbit, upgraded Astro Complex and got some impressive results!

More than 60 science came from the materials bay while, only 20 came from the two mystery goos, so for future reference, perhaps it would be better to remove the goo's in favour of increased reliability in reaching high orbit, I only had 5 dV left with an orbit of 70.300 and 251,000 so it was extremely tight!

Third mission, a Munar flyby is underway. It probably won't hit the 300 I did last time as I already took the first high Kerbin materials, goo, EVA and crew data but I do have a thermometer on board this time around.

[herbal space program]

Ow. I did a boo-boo. I tried a Munar pass without conics thinking it's reasonably easy to get close by burning prograde when the Mun is above horizon. ... whoops i seem to have given him a hell of a slingshot. He's practically a comet now. Not dead, but it will be a looong time before i can attempt a rescue.

SPOILER: You don't need patched conics, you just need to think it through first. What you want to do is wait a little longer than you did before doing your Munar transfer burn. You want to put your apopapsis well in front of the Mun and just inside it, so when you hit its SOI you will be swinging around it retrograde and preferably with an ejection angle that is pointed towards Kerbin. That way, you will find yourself in an eccentric Kerbin orbit with a low periapsis. If you come in behind the Mun, you'll swing around it prograde and find yourself on the way to Duna -- a useful maneuver if that's what you want to do, but not so much if you just have a teaspoon of fuel left to get home!

[georgTF]

Thanks for the tips. I just eyeballed it and got it completely wrong. If it makes me look less bad, i haven't played KSP since ARM came out so my memory was a bit vague. I also prefered Minmus because of it's feathery gravity and never really tried a "Mun rising" burn before. Because Mun is too gray and too heavy and not made out of ice cream.

[Joonatan1998]

I have killed Valentina (re-entry), gotten Jeb stuck on low orbit with a tourist, and jeb got stuck on orbit and was later thrown into solar orbit by the Mun. (but it completed the contract to pass near Mun)

I just got the node with solar panels+the second probe core.

I have second tier launch pad.

Now I have to either get something on Mun orbit or grind to unlock second tier tracking station or VAB.

I have had to trade a lot of reputation into money.

[Jonboy]

Started a new career the day after 1.0 came out, on medium difficulty. So far we've picked the Mun and Minmus clean of science. We built a space station in Mun orbit with a lab that's generated over 1,000 science. Sent Val to Duna and returned her. She went back with Jeb, Bob, and two others to establish a permanent science station in Duna orbit with multiple landers. A nuclear shuttle is on its way right now to bring a fresh crew and send the orange team home. Plus, we just built our first SSTO spaceplane for some local tourism contacts.

Never really got into career mode before but I have to admit I'm having a lot of fun

[Istrati]

Yeap.. sence i play KSP (for about an year) i ALWAYS play Career in HARD and mods just for enhance graphic,etc, but not mods that create an effect like "cheating".. you know.. bad english and hard to explain.

[Vegvisir]

With 1.0.5 I started anew as well, and I'm playing on a custom Normal+ level. I leave reverts on because I use it, depending on circumstances, though no Kerbal respawn. I've increased the Contract monetary returns to 200% and enabled buy in costs for tech. That makes it interesting. Perhaps a bit more grindy, but I have to think about which parts do I actually need each unlock. The mods I use are just for extra stock-a-like parts, and life support. Nothing there that I thin is "cheaty". Plus, I have to buy them in the first place as well.

[xiej]

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Edited November 15 by xiej

[nadreck]

No need to upgrade the tracking centre to fly by and return, and even orbit/land/return can be done without it. I start over from scratch with a career in a slightly harder than hard career mode (50% returns rather than 60%) and play the first session while drinking a bottle of [url=https://bigrockbeer.com/beer/dead-reckoning]Dead Reckoning[/url] in that couple of hours of real world time I have accomplished a flyby, sometimes even orbited the Mun, and I don't tend to upgrade the tracking centre until ready to launch the first Minmus expedition.

Usually I get offered (and accept and complete) one or more rescues before I have the funds for the upgrade as I put the priority on upgrading the astronaut complex before I upgrade the tracking section as the science from EVA's is worth more to accelerate the early career than the patched conics. But the tracking centre is 2nd, then the admin building to allow building funds more quickly for the next upgrade, next the R&D centre so I can further accelerate science with surface samples and more science sensors.

[Kyrt Malthorn]

I'm playing 1.0.5 hard mode career! I don't have a lot of time to devote to it, but I have landed on the Mun and Minmus - manned & unmanned, and just starting to establish a rudimentary base on Minmus too.

I do use Engineer Redux if you want to count that... I'm not some crazy guy like Scott Manly who can just slap a rocket together and know without looking about what it's capable of. And okay, I admit... I have EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements mod and Chatterer. But that is just beautification. In terms of parts and capabilities, it's stock.

Edit / P.s. I have a flag cemetery north of KSC. For the ones who paid the ultimate price for science. Edited November 26, 2015 by Kyrt Malthorn

[Temstar]

Yes for early career Mun flyby you need to enter Mun SOI in retrograde direction, which means you need to have Kerbin AP beyond the orbit of the Mun.

All Apollo missions used this kind of trajectory for the same reason - flyby moon in retrograde orbit means you're doing a gravitational slingshot to reduce your velocity relative to Earth, so in the event that the service module engine fail to fire to insert you into Lunar orbit you'll just come back to Earth in 4 days without any burn required (more or less, it's more complicated than that).

If you try to insert a spacecraft into prograde Moon orbit and your service module engine does not fire (or you're too low on fuel in KSP) then you'll do a slingshot and increase your velocity relative to Earth. Some of Apollo's S-IVB 3rd stage did exactly this and the moon slung them into solar orbits where they remain to this day. If this were to happen with a manned spacecraft that would be an automatic death sentence.

[numerobis]

Hard mode has really changed how I play. I am way, way more conservative. For example, designing a tourist ship, I actually did a few test flights with working escape mechanisms for Jeb. In one test flight, I hit the escape when I meant to hit the parachutes, and the passenger compartment splatted. Fix: remove the escape.

Next session I'll design a more efficient tourist ship. I'll test it empty, at a cost of thousands, before taking on passengers. I'd never have done that before.

Next session I'm also sending my first probe to fly by the Mun. I've been grinding science to get a good probe core, because I don't trust a kerbaled mission to work out until I try a few robotic ones first.

[Caelib]

I've found that the canned "Hard" mode is more like "Grind" mode ... which illustrates the beauty of the custom settings. Personally, I prefer to make "Hard" mode the same as normal without Quickload or Revert enabled.

[evileye.x]

Here my rule set for "hard" playthrough:
Science - 40% (I use Dmagic Orbital Science mod)
Funding - 70% (or 80 don't remeber exactly)
Penalties - default
Don't like to grind contracts for money. Contract should give general direction and incentives. Too low fund ratings are frustrating.
But in general, I like to take cost of the rockets in account, and build effective launchers. And I use almost all contract configurator packs for contract diversity and sense :)
Reentry heating - 120%
Don'r use cheaty strategies from admin building. I mean don't use it at all.
Reaction wheels saturation mod
All RW torque - 5% from default.
TAC lifesupport mod
Persistant rotation mod
EVA fuel mod (EVA fuel is taken from monoprop) - this makes rescue missions nearly impossible without KIS|KAS and engineer. Also I use cool USI DERP pod (which is fit in 1,25 service bay) for actual rescue.
Remotetech mod.
KCT mod. Really great addition to the game. With TAC LS it's tons of fun for planning and backing up your missions. So I have spare orbiter in the VAB (just in case) and will build 2 mun direct landers - if first one lands hard on the engines, guys will have chance to come back home.
No revert on "real" launches - only in KCT simulations (you pay money for that btw) and no quickloads. Dead is dead, no ressurections. Even when I upgraded to 1.0.5 and 2 my kerbals burned up on standard reentry in Gemini (HGR Radish) like capsule - consider it failure in ablator layer.
Every manned mission should rely on pilot to have SAS. I've found adding probe cores for stability assist as cheating. That makes pilot vital part of crew.
Every manned flight should have escape system. HGR mod have wonderful launch escape tower (as well as inline chute) for gemini/mercury style capsules. Only my very first launches were without LES (Vostok style). And crew always has personal vanguard parachutes.
Connected Living Space mod - prevents teleporting between capsules without sensible crew passable connections.
No resource transfers via KAS winch or klaw, only via pipes and docking ports.
KIS | KAS mod - just great addition to the game. Giving so much to do in EVA :)

Unfortunately FAR, KJR, Deadly Reentry and Real Chutes don't play nice with my modpack (which is also 64bit win installation) so I don't use them yet. But I will eventualy.
I'm sorry, I just have noticed "vanilla" in topic. But... without KER and precise node (hate stock nodes handling) I just cannot play. Then goes planet beautification (Better Atmosphers, better kerbal heads) and then .... PARTS ...
Really stock KSP is a great game for 1st week or month, but then everybody should go crazy with mods. Mods - this what makes KSP best space game ever. Edited November 27, 2015 by evileye.x

[Mallett]

I've always only played hard mode career without any mods. Anything else is cheating imho and you don't really learn the game by using hack mods like mechjeb etc.

Just my opinion though...

[Ozzallos]

Lrn2asparagus.

A lot.

[RocketBlam]

On 4/28/2015 at 8:13 AM, spyker92 said:

About 7hours in total, finally did a munar fly by and upgraded the launch pad. 30th mission or so overall. The grind is real. Science is incredibly hard to come by until you can make a heavy SRB rocket that can break orbit / return (though this resulted in me making a almost entirely SRB rocket to get a munar flyby). Money isn't a real bottleneck since all the early stuff is so cheap (especially SRBs, which are pennies for a dollar considering what they can do), it's science that seems incredibly slow.

Not landing on the mun till I can EVA / Surface sample, which will take another dozen or so contracts till I have enough funds for both building upgrades.

Landing probes on the moon is a good way to get fairly early science. Either transmit from surface or return the probe to Kerbin. You're not losing anything... you can always go back with a Kerbal, although you'll probably send your Kerbals to other biomes.