Has anyone else not bothered with career mode?

[MatttheCzar]

On 5/2/2015 at 1:35 PM, RedPine said:

Select career mode.

Alt-F12 for 5 seconds.

Cheat in 300,000 funds every 30 Kerbal days. Ignore contracts.

Use "Note+" mod (or spreadsheets, paper, etc...) to keep track of goals, cheapest craft that accomplished a given task, etc.

My current setup is to build three different craft by three different "companies", designed to accomplish the same mission, launch them all at once, and then see what works best/cheapest. Even without throwing in stock missiles or BDArmory, competing with yourself helps make things more interesting. Trying to do the same thing three different ways also helps me find surprisingly efficient methods I normally wouldn't try.

PS Yes, I do attach stock missiles to competing designs on occasion...

I like this idea.  Having regular funding sounds like you need to please a group of government men to keep the cash flowing.

[Jhawk1099]

I love the Career mode. I have around 150 hours into this game and almost all of them are in career. It is fun for me to feel like I actually grew my space program from just the mk1 cockpit and a solid booster to going to eve! (Which I just did but I only landed on gilly) I have used the sandbox mode but building a massive rocket and crashing it is pretty much all i see in it because if i do that in Career there will be consequences. 

[regex]

I'm still waiting for career mode to actually feel like running a space program and not just grinding out random side quests.

[Yakuzi]

25 minutes ago, regex said:

I'm still waiting for career mode to actually feel like running a space program and not just grinding out random side quests.

Same, personally I find there's hardly any immersion in the current career mode... no weekly/monthly/annual budgets and other time-based mechanics, no real incentive to create infrastructure throughout the solar system, no meaningful science to explore and understand the planets and star(s)...

Based on current career Squad should reconsider renaming Kerbal Space Program to Kerbal Space Side Quest

Edited February 2, 2016 by Yakuzi

[Evanitis]

Comparing the current stock career mode to real life space exploration is a different thing than comparing it to other game-modes. I like built-in limitations, and this one has the most of them. Never said it's prefect or exceptionally immersive. But for me it's more immersive than building a 600t high-tech rocket on day 1.

Though the beauty of KSP is the vast possible options one can try to find enjoyment in. Even only in stock, not mentioning the plethora of mods. I could say 'to each of their own', but I rather explore other people's favorite settings too. I wanna build a huge Overland style land-train one day for a circumnavigation.

Edited February 2, 2016 by Evanitis

[lodger]

Well, I used to start with science mode in 0.25 and played it for over a year now, having started a new science mode game when  1.0.4 was released. However, recently I find myself spending more and more time in sandbox mode. As for career mode I think that it just isn't what many people, including me, thought it would be.

[regex]

18 minutes ago, Evanitis said:

Comparing the current stock career mode to real life space exploration is a different thing than comparing it to other game-modes.

It isn't about comparing it to "real life space exploration", it's about comparing it to compelling gameplay, which it isn't.

[Evanitis]

By 'it' you mean you tried every combination of the starting conditions with every mod that potentially alters career gameplay and you found none of those compelling?

If that's the case, I just accept that the 'to each of their own' mentality is sometimes the correct answer. I rather continue on my neverending KSP quest to find the setting I like the most at any given time, in any given version.

[regex]

24 minutes ago, Evanitis said:

By 'it' you mean you tried every combination of the starting conditions with every mod that potentially alters career gameplay and you found none of those compelling?

I thought we were talking about stock/vanilla gameplay?  Or are we moving the goalposts?

RP-0 with KCT played fairly well, but I'd have preferred time-based budgets and more ability to steer the space program.

[Evanitis]

Can't say I read the whole thread, but I never noticed it's about stock. If it is, I'll stop posting, as I didn't play like that years ago, thus my opinion is irrelevant. Well, it is anyways, but you get my point. Though I was under the impression that the vast majority of players mod this and that.

Vanilla career with default settings wasn't too appealing indeed, especially when I let the appearing contracts decide the direction my space-program, instead of the other way around. It took me much tinkering before I was satisfied by both the income rate of the various resources, and with the progress of goals in the game. By that time I took like 10% of the available contracts, but it became compelling. But not nearly as much when I started to experiment with contract packs, and removing the majority of the original ones.

So in the end, I agree with you. Vanilla career has annoyances that other game-modes doesn't. Hell, if a buddy of mine told me he'll start playing KSP the first time, I told them to play Science mode. But I think career mode has the best potential, and we KSP players doesn't have to wait for Squad to fix it, as we have unlimited options to do it ourselves. But when I'm lazy to explore some more, I just launch a quick sandbox mission.

[TimePeriod]

I stopped playing that mode when I realized it didnt bring me any more kind of fun. Now I mess about in sandbox, building things I like and enjoy.

Nothing else matters.

[rcp27]

2 hours ago, regex said:

I'm still waiting for career mode to actually feel like running a space program and not just grinding out random side quests.

What exactly do you imagine a "real space program" looks like?  There are something like 2200 artificial satellites in Earth orbit. That compares with 135 space shuttle missions, 17 Apollo missions and fewer each of Gemini and Mercury. It seems to me that a "real space program" is overwhelmingly taking on contracts to put satellites in specific orbits, with a little bit of building a space station and the very occasional unmanned probe to another planet. If anything the KSP career has much more "go explore" and far less "grinding side quests" than a real space program.

[regex]

10 minutes ago, rcp27 said:

What exactly do you imagine a "real space program" looks like?

I don't recall ever asking for a "real space program" feeling, for the exact reasons you state.  What I, personally, would like is more ability to direct my space program, to actually "run" it, to define it, to set a "mission statement" for my "company", so that, hopefully, the contracts that appear for me don't feel like tacked on side quests but the result of my decisions in regards to my space program.  I want to direct my space program, for instance, to focus on commercial launches to Duna and get contracts that focus on that rather than utterly random side quests.

And no, the upcoming "grind contracts to weight the system" is not really my idea of defining my space program.

E: Would be great if we could somehow deal away with contracts in the first place, since they're a huge problem, but I don't see a budget system happening.

Edited February 2, 2016 by regex

[jonrd463]

14 minutes ago, regex said:

I don't recall ever asking for a "real space program" feeling, for the exact reasons you state.  What I, personally, would like is more ability to direct my space program, to actually "run" it, to define it, to set a "mission statement" for my "company", so that, hopefully, the contracts that appear for me don't feel like tacked on side quests but the result of my decisions in regards to my space program.  I want to direct my space program, for instance, to focus on commercial launches to Duna and get contracts that focus on that rather than utterly random side quests.

And no, the upcoming "grind contracts to weight the system" is not really my idea of defining my space program.

E: Would be great if we could somehow deal away with contracts in the first place, since they're a huge problem, but I don't see a budget system happening.

I agree with your points completely. I mean, points to Squad for effort, I suppose, as the current implementation has brought a lot of users to the game, but I like a more defined direction. I'd like a career game to have you set an ultimate goal, or at least milestones along the way. I.e., moon mission for example. In order to put a Kerbal on the moon, you first need to develop the technology, practice docking, survey for landing sites, etc. So the missions you get follow that path. Leave a little wiggle room open for side jobs, for example, like SpaceX. They want to colonize Mars, but in the meantime, they butter their bread by launching commercial and military satellites. So sure, have a contract here and there to send payloads to orbit in order to make side cash, but the core "campaign" structure should be more goal oriented, and user-tailorable to let you define what those goals are.

[fireblade274]

All I do is career mode. out of 1500 hours, id say 1400 spent it in and 100 hours in sandbox before career came out. It got too feel way too pointless to instantly have everything available to you with no funds to manage; after about 100hours.

Edited February 3, 2016 by fireblade274

[GDJ]

2 minutes ago, fireblade274 said:

ALL I do is career mode.

Same.

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

I would like to point out that the "end-game" of Career Mode, IS Sandbox.

Once you clear the tech tree, assuming you've even the slightest bit cost-effective, you should have millions of funds and all the parts. 

I wrapped up my last career game with a sandbox-style mission: sending 12 ships to Jool.

Edited February 3, 2016 by Brainlord Mesomorph

[Just Jim]

44 minutes ago, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

I would like to point out that the "end-game" of Career Mode, IS Sandbox.

Once you clear the tech tree, assuming you've even the slightest bit cost-effective, you should have millions of funds and all the parts. 

I wrapped up my last career game with a sandbox-style mission: sending 12 ships to Jool.

No, they're not the same.  Even if you get to where your tech tree filled up and you have cash rolling in, Career still gives you contracts and tourists to play with, and some of the contracts can be pretty outrageous, and quite a challenge, even in  a later game.  "Build a space station into a class-D asteroid around Jool, with the following requirements...", for example.  That's fairly tough even in the later game.  And you can lose a butt-load of $$$ and reputation if you screw it up.
Sandbox gives you nothing to do, just a bunch of free parts to play with.  IMO... boring!
Yes, I've read people saying they create their own missions and challenges... but sorry, IMO, making your own challenge isn't the same at all as someone else, even if it's the game itself, issuing it to you. 
I want something to throw a mission at me... a challenge... that I totally did NOT think up myself. 
I want to be surprised, and put to the test, and given something so hard and ridiculous that I stay up nights thinking of how it can be done.

No, in my humble opinion, late game career mode is nothing at all like sandbox.

Edited February 3, 2016 by Just Jim

[kstark]

Playing about 2 or 3 weeks now and quite agree with people defending carrier mode. Played sandbox for few hours at the very start to learn about building and launching stuff and to come familiar with game mechanics. After that switched to carrier. Carrier at Normal difficulty looks not like 'grinding' at all. At very fist launch I have spend some 200 money (fuel inside flea + 2% reduced cost from landing at KSC) and got about 50K in return mostly for braking records. At least at my current tech level every mission is quite profitable and most of it even interesting to do. I need to earn less than some additional 2M funds to be able to upgrade all the KSC buildings to the 3rd level, and I'm just figuring out how to perform very first mission around Duna and not even touched surface of Minmus.

And about Minmus! Quest to take a temperature measurement below 2700 m at some point was very challenging because mountains around that point restrictive to most orbital trajectories that are that low and Minmus also rotates quite fast comparing to Mun.

[StarStreak2109]

Heavily modded science mode for me with some self-imposed rules and some mild self-imagined role play... Career mode I find tedious...

[BloodDusk]

I personally don't see the appeal of the current Career mode or the one that came before it. They way it plays and feels with weird mechanics (Artificial difficulty introduced by having different types of Kerbals, leveling up that doesn't anything other than asthetic purposes and another stat for you to micromanage, missions without rhyme or reason that feel like a bunch of Forum challenges slapped together, Illogical tech tree order, repetitive missions that seem to reward grinding, unnecessary achievements, etc.), makes it feel and look more like an afterthought than an actual feature that was planned for the game. Much like the lackluster single player campaigns they make for games that were intended to be multiplayer only.

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

3 hours ago, Just Jim said:

No, they're not the same.  Even if you get to where your tech tree filled up and you have cash rolling in, Career still gives you contracts and tourists to play with, and some of the contracts can be pretty outrageous, and quite a challenge, even in  a later game. ...

No, in my humble opinion, late game career mode is nothing at all like sandbox.

you may be right, it was several versions ago that I got that far. contracts dried up in late game.

good to know they fixed that, but I was looking forward to that sandbox-like stage later in the game (I had plans for it.)

[wumpus]

I burned out on KSP due to career mode, but much of that was due to things that I was doing with or without career mode (trying to limit costs).  Note that the game won't even tell you about recovery success without playing career mode, and I've always tried to limit costs on my rockets (you don't need to in career, but I didn't need to in sandbox either).

I'm presently switching my "career mode" playstyle to more like the old science mode.  Just unlock the science, hit the milestones and the money will be there.  Not to say I will refuse an otherwise juicy contract or more likely alter my plans to meet the occasional contract requirement (there are a few that follow my plans), but the idea is to switch to more exploration and ignore time wasting contracts.

Note to players who ignore career mode.  It is *tough* to survive that initial launch into space.  I was arguing for my favored SRBs with a KSP authority and discovered that SRBs (without liquid rockets on top) were a great way to get kerbals killed (they have more than enough delta-v for space.  They just are way to easy to burn up going up *and* down.  I killed two kerbals before adding extra stages to my SRBs).  If space is hard, getting to the Mun is even harder.  They don't give players maneuver nodes and patched conics from the start, you have to *earn* them.  New players who can make it through these challenges will learn many of the tricks old timers took a lot longer to learn (other new players will have quit in disgust fairly quickly).  Doing things with minimal parts is different when you don't have such key parts as aerobrakes, maneuver nodes, and LV-909s.

[regex]

24 minutes ago, wumpus said:

Note to players who ignore career mode.  It is *tough* to survive that initial launch into space.

But it's not, especially if you've played the game for any length of time.  Even with the current aero and thermal changes.

[wumpus]

22 minutes ago, regex said:

But it's not, especially if you've played the game for any length of time.  Even with the current aero and thermal changes.

It isn't that hard if you are going to use expensive liquid rockets.  Before, there was zero point for wasting that money as parachutes worked wonders.  Now they barely work at all and you either perform miracles with aerobraking (I haven't bothered to find if it's possible) or use liquid rockets and use them for braking (within limits: if you wait too long you will lose control and quickly die.  If you fire early you will waste them.  No idea how a beginner is supposed to know).

I'm pretty sure I managed to complete the "into space" mission with only solid rockets (might have been 1.0.2), but a quick run through in their defense left me giving up and using liquid fuels (which made it easier to haul science jr. for big science).

The problem isn't the thermal.  The problem is the chutes.  They are absolute killers compared to the old "easy mode".  Even the side chutes are "easy mode" compared to what you get in career mode for this mission.