Hard Mode Is Not Hard

[Yxklyx]

At the start yeah it was pretty challenging but once you get a satellite up (even with just a few batteries before solar panels) - all the difficulty goes away since you can just cancel and do the Kerbin Science mission over and over again. Sure it's tedious but it means you don't ever have to worry about losing it all. I had hoped this would be a challenging game but you've got make your own house rules to make it so - so we're back to it being a sandbox except for the tedium required to unlock all the content.

I played this game a lot 2 years ago - landed and returned from nearly every moon/planet. Haven't played since then but with the new release I thought I would start it up again and it was loads of fun early on.

[NathanKell]

Yxklyx: Welcome to the forums!

While it's true that there are ways you can gradually grind to get more fun, KSP is at heart a sandbox game even in career--and that means you get the most fun following the rules you set for yourself. If you want a harder campaign, add some "house rules" like never taking that contract at all, or only doing science on missions you don't have contracts for...

[Superfluous J]

The modes are misnamed. They are actually:

Not Much Grind

Average Grind

Lots of Grind

The custom sliders allow you to fine tune the amount of grind you want or don't want to do in any given playthrough.

[FlowerChild]

Kerbal Space Program: one of the few games where gaping design holes are routinely justified as somehow being the player's fault

[regex]

I just play normal career mode with permadeath, no need to bother with additional grind. KSP is pretty bad about the grind but normal mode has gotten much better in 1.0.x. With a complete redesign it could actually claim to be a decent game.

[AbacusWizard]

"Hard Mode" isn't hard.

EVERY mode is hard. This is rocket science, after all.

"Hard Mode" is grindy.

[Zild]

I never thought of that particular exploit...

A very small tweak to some of the missions to make them unexploitable could be handy. For example, make "collect science data" missions one-time only deals (like the World First Record Orbit the Mun mission). If this makes it too hard, you could add one-time missions for each type of science in each location (e.g. you could have a mission for crew report in high orbit, then later a mission for temperature scan in high orbit).

Might as well strip out all the space centre science, and missions for tests on the launchpad as well. (Although who hasn't misjudged one of those and killed a Kerbal at least once?!)

You know, this could probably be handled initially as a mod, and it is one I would be interested in working on.

[Col_Jessep]

The easiest way to make hard mode harder would be to severely decrease the amount of science you can gain from Mun and Minmus. Real Solar System is quite tough, too. Learned a lot about rocket design when I played the science mode with RSS back in 0.18 or 0.19.

[Taleric]

Kerbal Space Program: one of the few games where gaping design holes are routinely justified as somehow being the player's fault

Lol! So true it hurts

It is honestly just sad there are so many slight adjustments that could get KSP to a non-grind enjoyable challenge.

But hey that is what the MOD scene is for

I bet you are having a laugh about that PS4 port FC. Thank goodness Rimworld has been really good recently after I enjoyed and exhausted KSP 1.X.

[SAI Peregrinus]

No, the way to make it harder (as in, more difficult to complete objectives) instead of more tedious is to nerf the Isp of various engines, the fuel fractions of tanks, the torque of reaction wheels, etc. That would make the actual design/piloting harder, instead of just requiring more grind for science/spesos/rep. Or go RSS style and make things 1/1 scale instead of 1/10.

[Taleric]

No, the way to make it harder (as in, more difficult to complete objectives) instead of more tedious is to nerf the Isp of various engines, the fuel fractions of tanks, the torque of reaction wheels, etc. That would make the actual design/piloting harder, instead of just requiring more grind for science/spesos/rep. Or go RSS style and make things 1/1 scale instead of 1/10.

Yup love this, nerf reaction wheels for all but micro craft and give RCS a purpose. Look to encourage design, skill and forethought in every stage of the game. That is the way.

[regex]

No, the way to make it harder (as in, more difficult to complete objectives) instead of more tedious is to nerf the Isp of various engines, the fuel fractions of tanks, the torque of reaction wheels, etc. That would make the actual design/piloting harder, instead of just requiring more grind for science/spesos/rep. Or go RSS style and make things 1/1 scale instead of 1/10.

Like stock, once you know your way around RO/RSS isn't difficult. Simply upsizing the solar system or nerfing isp while keeping the stock parts isn't exactly difficult either, it's just excessively lag-producing. To make the game actually harder to play you'd have to introduce some random element that the player could overcome.

[AbacusWizard]

Hostile aliens. In hard mode they have photon torpedoes.

[abowl]

Do you have a suggestion for how to make it more challenging?

[Shpaget]

Try playing with Remote Tech.

You need a satellite constellation for communication with unmanned crafts, which is fairly difficult to do in early game, when you don't have the necessary parts. You also have no control over the craft when behind a celestial body (no line of sight with your communications satellites) so you need to do preprogrammed maneuvers, keeping in mind that you need to remember to plan to reorient the craft so that solar panels face the Sun. It's really easy to forget that, and if you do forget it, since you have no control over the craft once it's behind a planet, you can just sit and helplessly watch your batteries go flat. Many missions of mine have ended prematurely this way.

Also, no F9.

[Superfluous J]

Life support (I'm enjoying USI life support) to make flying around with Kerbals harder.

RemoteTech or AntennaRange to make flying around with probes harder.

Darn It! to make everything harder.

This is different than "Do 3 of each contract type or 6 of each you can stomach, or 12 of the ones you actually like" which is what Hard Mode is right now. These difficulty mods actually add something new to the game to consider.

[selfish_meme]

It needs a

[h=3]Kobayashi Maru[/h]

[Evanitis]

My stupidity provides all the difficulty I need.

I -know- how I could minimize or even eliminate the majority of the mistakes I make, but I enjoy a good failure more than an uneventful mission where I did all the testing and math before launch. Assumptions, eyeballing and field testing for the win!

[MarvinKitFox]

To change KSP from an arcade game to a *nice* challenge.

1) add RemoteTech. *with* comms delayed by lightspeed.

2) Add life support. TAC for example.

Just these two changes turns the game into a good fun challenge, with reasonably realistic limits and efforts.

As for the money situation... imho it is "broken" at present, along with the whole contract system. Fun, yes, but so unrealistic as to be useless.

[Renegrade]

Hostile aliens. In hard mode they have photon torpedoes.

Would they be Klingons, only with the first letter changed to a.. oh wait.. dammit.

[FlowerChild]

Would they be Klingons, only with the first letter changed to a.. oh wait.. dammit.

Just have to get a little more creative with the K usage and go for Klinkons

[Superfluous J]

Just have to get a little more creative with the K usage and go for Klinkons

Now all I can see is Hogan's Heroes all done with Kerbals.

[Zild]

Just have to get a little more creative with the K usage and go for Klinkons

Not Klingals then? Nor Klingols? I like Klingols...

[Tankman101]

Not Klingals then? Nor Klingols? I like Klingols...

What about Kongas?

[Zild]

It is clear we will never reach consensus on this. At least we can all agree about the Kulcans and Komulans.

(Kulkans and Kromulans? Aw damnit!)