KSP frustration

[Tuck00]

I have 2 saved games I use. First is my main game were I try to play with no reverts unless I feel I was cheated by the game or some other issue. Second is my engineering save were I gave myself a ton of money and science and I keep my tech tree and facilities at the same level as my main save.

I have spent about a week building and testing a space station with a Lander to grab the science from each biome and return it to the station for processing. Sense I don’t want to do any reverts I make sure I can get both halves of my ship into orbit, make the transfer, land, have solar panels, return and deliver the science to KSC.

Day 1, Kids are in bed wife watching TV, I get both halves in Kerbin orbit, rendezvous, and docking go as planned. Just as I’m about to start my Hohmann transfer my wife asks if she can use the PC to do bills and schedule our next week. I tell her I’m about to make and interplanetary transfer but it does not impress her and I have to log off.

Day 2, wife is napping, kids watching a movie, I have time. I make the transfer with no problem. Once in orbit I make the personnel transfer to the Lander. The Lander is fully fueled and ready to roll. Docking clamps released.

Jeb makes the first biome no problem and gets back to the station to dump his science and resupply. Jeb begins the second trip down. De-orbit burn goes well. At about 5km I hear “Daddy I spilled my juiceâ€Â….F*&%. I go clean up juice from the carpet, table, and kid. When I get back to my game that I thought I had paused as I left for real life emergencies I find the Flight Results window up. The mission I have spent over a week on is now a crater.

A juice box ended the mission I have worked so hard on. Normally I would revert a kid caused KSP event, but I had not saved my game in a long time. All I could do was stare at my screen and feel defeated. I tried to explain my feelings to my wife….all I get is that’s nice dear, really that’s the best I can get after your spawn have destroyed my Lander and killed my #1 pilot. It’s hard to get any sympathy from a house full of women. I know you guys will understand my pain.

The station is still there and manned so I guess now I send another Lander out and try again. After taking a blow like that I may need a week off before I try again.

[Robotengineer]

Ouch.

[SpaceChipmunk]

I do believe the right response is "suck it up!"

No sympathy for your own error!

Now though you have an excuse to build the Jebediah Centre for Under-Privileged Children AND name a Munar base after him!

[Mister Dilsby]

My condolences. If you're not above a bit of 'cheating' to restore order after an accident not your fault, you could always use edit your save file to recover the pilot, then make a 'fresh' lander in the VAB and use Hyperedit to put it in roughly the spot it was before Little Angel had a juicesplosion.

And if you've learned nothing else from this, you should now know that you will never get any sympathy for this from anyone who does not play. Be glad (as am I) that your wife tolerates you "wasting" your time like this, when you could be watching reality TV instead.

Psst, also, I have it on good authority that women do play KSP. Maybe not in your house, but there is a tween CAPCOM in mine who would certainly understand your pain.

[Ninjahgoblin]

Yeah. I mean it sucks. WE have all been in this spot in some fashion. But F5 is a total thing. I learned after many attempts that F5 is god. If you want to play in a super intense playstyle with no reverts, expect critical errors and outcomes.

Good luck! (IMO I use Mechjeb to pilot mostly accept landing and specific orbits, while I cook and do real life things)

[KerBlammo]

I feel your pain.

I've had untold hours of effort disappear in fiery doom for many reasons (but not spilled juice) and all I can do is laugh and start over...

[cicatrix]

I think the frustration comes out of the fact that the OP did not want to use reverts and reloads. A self-imposed restriction. And now he failed. Alas, sign it off to the dangers of space. Accidents do happen... the retro-burn did not start in time and killed the pilot. You should continue on...

[Skorpychan]

Save early, save often.

Even if you don't intend to use them.

[cicatrix]

Sometimes earlier saves of persistent file are present in the saves folder. You can try ALT+F9 and see what you can load.

[eddiew]

Look at it this way; you will never again forget to do a named save at the start of every play session

[justidutch]

It isn't the first time a Kerbal has met their doom due to snack failure. It's a common hazard, and why they get paid the big kerbucks.

[regex]

Sounds more like family frustration than KSP frustration. Maybe you should be one of those "morning dads" I always hear about who get up hella early to make time for their hobbies?

[LordFerret]

Maybe if you sacrifice your first born (or the one that spilled the juice) to the Kraken..... ?

I feel your pain. I don't use quicksaves either, and rarely revert - only if it's something catastrophic right there on the launchpad at liftoff.

[TheHolyChicken]

my wife asks if she can use the PC to do bills and schedule our next week. I tell her I’m about to make and interplanetary transfer but it does not impress her and I have to log off.

I tried to explain my feelings to my wife….all I get is that’s nice dear, really that’s the best I can get after your spawn have destroyed my Lander and killed my #1 pilot. It’s hard to get any sympathy from a house full of women. I know you guys will understand my pain.

You come across as someone who has no respect for his children, wife or women in general. Is this how you want to present yourself to the world?

You didn't blow up an entire space station, you just lost a lander and pilot. You haven't even lost any science. Deal with it.

[StrandedonEarth]

Sometimes earlier saves of persistent file are present in the saves folder. You can try ALT+F9 and see what you can load.

^Definitely check this^ it has saved me time many times

Yea, I hate it when Jeb spills his juice and it shorts out the control panel, having a family myself I can definitely relate. Fortunately I frequently make sacrifice to the gods of Quicksave. However, old man Kraken often invoked Murphy's Law, in that these accidents happen when I'm due for an F5 and haven't done so in a while.

[SkyRender]

Those who have responsibilities to attend to on a moment's notice should not forsake anti-frustration tools. Features like pausing and quicksaving were added to games for reasons besides savescumming, after all.

[Wallygator]

hopefully your child has learned a bit more about gravity through the event. :-)

[Volix]

After taking a blow like that I may need a week off before I try again.

Ah yes, I've had this feeling before. It was for this very reason that I started to use quicksave/revert as many others have said (although I still try to only use it for things that were not my fault). The one thing I have conceded on is crew respawn, I now play with it on. I'm still not happy when I lose a kerbal, but I don't feel like quitting when I do now. Also, when the lost kerbal comes back they have 0 XP again, so there is something of a penalty. Losing a load of science however, especially from interplanetary, that still makes me really frustrated.

[justidutch]

You come across as someone who has no respect for his children, wife or women in general. Is this how you want to present yourself to the world?

Nah. To me he came across as someone who has a sense of humour.

[Tuck00]

You come across as someone who has no respect for his children,

wife or women in general. Is this how you want to present yourself to the world??

Sounds more like family frustration than KSP frustration. Maybe you should be one of those "morning dads" I always hear about who get up hella early to make time for their hobbies?

That used to be me before my 5 year old starting getting up before me. If I can sleep past 6 its a great Saturday.

[lazarus1024]

This stuff kind of makes we wish we could tinker the autosave feature and have the ability to restore from X number of previous autosaves.

I rarely feel the need to restore from my own muck-ups. Having 3 kids under 8, there are enough times I've run because of "insert liquid where it shouldn't be" and accidently didn't hit esc to pause, or had to parent, head turned and look back at my screen and...crunch.

Well and I'll admit the occasional time I've invested tons of time in to something only to be 12km off a Mun landing with some impressive lander and realize...it is the night side...and Jeb forgot to pack his landing lights...opps.

Please note, that last one I managed a guess work suicide burn and managed to touch down while only crushing my engine, but the lander survived and it had a seperate ascent stage. Manage to get back to my orbiter, dock, transfer the trickle of fuel I had left in the ascent stage and get back to kerbin with 1 unit of fuel left in my TMI/return stage.

Cutting it a little close...

I've had it where things didn't work out with night landings.

I guess for me, I don't mind too much if it is pilot error, but when it is a straight up engineering boo-boo, I tend to revert. Or if I can't revert, restore a quick save...which I often fail to do often enough.

[falloutaddict]

Yeah. I mean it sucks. WE have all been in this spot in some fashion. But F5 is a total thing. I learned after many attempts that F5 is god. If you want to play in a super intense playstyle with no reverts, expect critical errors and outcomes.

Good luck! (IMO I use Mechjeb to pilot mostly accept landing and specific orbits, while I cook and do real life things)

uggggh I played for like a whole month without even know f5 was a thing...

[katateochi]

I get why people play without allowing reloads for design or piloting errors, I don't get why people would not do any saves. KSP isn't stable (nor is real life for that matter), it will glitch!! Save often, keep multiple past saves, take backups.

This stuff kind of makes we wish we could tinker the autosave feature and have the ability to restore from X number of previous autosaves.

I take this to extreme levels; Jebretary - it tracks every single autosave and quicksave (and changes to craft) in a version control system so if the game glitches or my save gets corrupted I can restore it to any point in that careers history. If I wanted to I could rewind my career right back to my first launch, that's over 4000 autosaves ago but the VC system it uses means that all those saves are stored in a fraction of the space that just taking copies would require.

[BlackAdder128]

As a father who must also sensibly prioritize wife+kids over playtime, I feel your pain. I play similarly, also using reverts for emergencies/tests/glitches but not load/save. I haven't hit too many similar situations, because I'm pretty good about hitting pause and shrinking the Kerbal Window, but it's painful to walk back and find a crashed ship and whatnot. I've definitely found myself carefully planning my missions so as not to have to quit while something I care about is in non-terminal orbit.

But there are a few times I have to just take my lumps and move on. And no, I can't expect my wife to care about it. My 10 yr old I can sometimes convince of the gravity of my tragedies. On the other hand, his favorite Kerbal pasttime is trying to become the next Danny2462. He has very little respect for little green life.

[Volix]

I take this to extreme levels; Jebretary - it tracks every single autosave and quicksave (and changes to craft) in a version control system so if the game glitches or my save gets corrupted I can restore it to any point in that careers history.

I don't have the time to fully read your mod post right now, but this looks like an amazing tool to solve many of those frustrations. Looking forward to checking it out later.