No Saves in Career Hard - Finally giving in

[Xavven]

I've finally decided to do it. I'm enabling the ability to revert, quick save, and quick load on my Hard career. Since 1.0 was released, I've been hit by a few bugs.

1. An Eve probe exploded spontaneously in v1.0.2 when switching from orbital map view to the normal flight view while in deep space.
   
2. Jebediah completed a part test on the launchpad in v1.0.4. The game decided that the vehicle was "in flight" even though it was completely at rest (and engines off), so I couldn't recover the vehicle, and it was lost.
   
3. Then I lost a satellite, again switching from orbital map view to flight view while in space and getting a spontaneous kraken.
   
4. Then I lost a crew member when his re-entry vehicle (coming from Minmus) came out of timewarp IN Kerbin's atmosphere at 30km instead of slowing down to 1x at the top of the atmosphere at 70km.
   

I never do save-scumming, but reverting over bugs seems legit to me. Anyone else in the same boat?

[theJesuit]

Don't use quickloading. Instead I quicksave every so often then if a bug occurs I can replace the peristance file with the quicksave. You have to exit to the main menu before this however.

Peace.

[lost_in_space]

I've finally decided to do it. I'm enabling the ability to revert, quick save, and quick load on my Hard career. Since 1.0 was released, I've been hit by a few bugs.

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I never do save-scumming, but reverting over bugs seems legit to me. Anyone else in the same boat?

Enable everything, and then control yourself.

[Reddeyfish]

Pretty much in the same boat; I quicksave often and quickload when a bug happens. (i.e. landing burn missed because warp to position doesn't stop)

However, I keep quickload disabled so that I have to open up the debug menu and enable it every time I want to use it.

Also, I've kept reverts enabled so that I can use them when I've deployed parachutes on a failed launch. Saves a bit of time and tedium, because I know the thing will land safely.

Edited July 19, 2015 by Reddeyfish

[FancyMouse]

Some of the symptoms sound incompatibility with some mods that haven't been updated for 1.0

[goldenpsp]

hmm Let's see. It's a single player game. So I do whatever allows me to have fun while playing the game. So if that means its more fun to quick load due to a kraken, or some other bug, I reload. If its because my fingers were accidentally shifted over causing me to hit full throttle when I meant to hit cut throttle, I quick load. If I make a legit mistake and find it would be fun to overcome that challenge then I do so.

But if you just came to be able to have everyone pat you on the back that you are still sufficiently awesome and hardcore then yea you are still plenty hardcore even if you reload to overcome a KSP bug.

[Bosun]

Admiral Ozzel came out of lightspeed too close to Kerbin's atmosphere. You are in command now, Admiral Quicksave. Do not fail me again.

Edited July 20, 2015 by Bosun

[X-SR71]

Kudos to you for trying to playing without quick load. I can't imagine it being possible without a lot of frustration though. Too many random silly things happen every so often. Parts randomly explode from overheating. Projected orbits change when SOI changing at time warp. Your silly autopilot will burn up all your monoprop. Suddenly your rover has no brakes. Joints bend and break when physic warping. Your tanks are drained unevenly for some weird reason. Jeb falls to the ground, gets up, his head propels your craft a few meters in the air only to crash down and break... etc

[Vegetal]

Are you insane? This game is way too buggy to play without quick saves. I learned the hard way to save everytime before selecting a ship to fly, the kraken claimed too many kerbal lives already....

[PB666]

I've finally decided to do it. I'm enabling the ability to revert, quick save, and quick load on my Hard career. Since 1.0 was released, I've been hit by a few bugs.

1. An Eve probe exploded spontaneously in v1.0.2 when switching from orbital map view to the normal flight view while in deep space.
   
2. Jebediah completed a part test on the launchpad in v1.0.4. The game decided that the vehicle was "in flight" even though it was completely at rest (and engines off), so I couldn't recover the vehicle, and it was lost.
   
3. Then I lost a satellite, again switching from orbital map view to flight view while in space and getting a spontaneous kraken.
   
4. Then I lost a crew member when his re-entry vehicle (coming from Minmus) came out of timewarp IN Kerbin's atmosphere at 30km instead of slowing down to 1x at the top of the atmosphere at 70km.
   

I never do save-scumming, but reverting over bugs seems legit to me. Anyone else in the same boat?

You can copy the [game] directory at major stopping point give it new name and it will take care of it show up in your saved game list in the game. I have been doing this since 0.90 because there were so many bugs, particularly in EVAs and ground missions. I generally backup the game after every 10 or so missions. And frankly if I restart hard mode, I am not going through all the pre-Mun stuff again its a grind and basically SSDD. I mean there are only so many tedious ways to Max out KSP science and shoot rockets 2 km to land on water, shores and grasslands.

You have to watch your warping some ship designs will spontaneously explode during or after warping. With the 0.90 features of part compression/expansion and rotation and all.

If you find an error on the launch pad, you can recover your vessel at no cost. If you hit alt-F4 it will restore your ship to the launch pad if under acceleration (clearly a cheat). Though not in all cases. one of my vessels lanuched but the SFRB was literally glued to the floor of the launch pad. I found out that if the winglet barely touches the pad it will get stuck.

- - - Updated - - -

Kudos to you for trying to playing without quick load. I can't imagine it being possible without a lot of frustration though. Too many random silly things happen every so often. Parts randomly explode from overheating. Projected orbits change when SOI changing at time warp. Your silly autopilot will burn up all your monoprop. Suddenly your rover has no brakes. Joints bend and break when physic warping. Your tanks are drained unevenly for some weird reason. Jeb falls to the ground, gets up, his head propels your craft a few meters in the air only to crash down and break... etc

I guess it depends on how you play. I don't see as many in 1.0.4 as I saw in 0.90. However, as I posted back then kraken alters the way you play the game in ways you don't even realize. Its a subconscious kraken avoidance mechanism. In general I see a critical bug about every 20 missions or so.

Uneven tank draining I have traced, its usually do to an assembly error. I place a cubic strut under the command module (its a physics-less part) door, and then two going sideways, when jeb gets out he lands o the strut, Then i can hit R and get then [shift] and s and he recedes from the ship. Again, the bugs alter the way you play. RCS I never use except for dedicated docking ships and refining intercepts, keep it off until you need it. So for example, suppose I am fine tuning a planetary intercept (focus planet) I first try to get close using my engines, then switch to RCS and use these to refine proximity. Once the orbit is refined I turn off RCS, because if you don't before warping or after warping the RCS will kick in and change attitude, but by doing this it applies differential thrust that will alter your orbit. To be safe you can shut off both the reaction wheels and RCS. If I do this I never have a problem and the ship intercepts where it is supposed to. If you design your ship where each thrusters along 3 axis are exactly the same distance from the center of gravity this should not happen, but this is difficult to do.

[uglyduckling81]

I had a Mun lander suffer a Kraken attack resulting in it's engine going missing, it slammed into the ground shortly there after. The game then crashed and when I reloaded I had a capsule for that ship sitting on the surface of the Mun with the Kerbal inside. A rescue mission is now needed.

The I had a Minmus lander arrive for landing which I messed up and clipped a high point on the surface at 300+ m/sec. This resulted in the ship disintegrating but the capsule bouncing back to 10k sub-orbital height, I then EVA'd and put the Kerbal into an orbit with his jet pack. I was quite chuffed with my effort to save one of the Kerbals on-board (the others in the crew can died on impact) requiring a rescue from orbit. Then the game crashed and when I reloaded the ship was in stable orbit before the impact.

I can live with the Kraken attacks as it sometimes leads to interesting scenarios but the constant crashing from a memory leak is extremely annoying. I have to save constantly and I keep the Windows resource use window open on the second monitor so I can occasionally save and quit before the crash at a more opportune time.

[PB666]

I've finally decided to do it. I'm enabling the ability to revert, quick save, and quick load on my Hard career. Since 1.0 was released, I've been hit by a few bugs.

1. An Eve probe exploded spontaneously in v1.0.2 when switching from orbital map view to the normal flight view while in deep space.
   
2. Jebediah completed a part test on the launchpad in v1.0.4. The game decided that the vehicle was "in flight" even though it was completely at rest (and engines off), so I couldn't recover the vehicle, and it was lost.
   
3. Then I lost a satellite, again switching from orbital map view to flight view while in space and getting a spontaneous kraken.
   
4. Then I lost a crew member when his re-entry vehicle (coming from Minmus) came out of timewarp IN Kerbin's atmosphere at 30km instead of slowing down to 1x at the top of the atmosphere at 70km.
   

I never do save-scumming, but reverting over bugs seems legit to me. Anyone else in the same boat?

I am going to show you an example of how to save your stuff when all things go wrong in hard mode.

This is the story of a high orbit rescue mission. First thing I discovered when making my transfer burn was that my ship had no battery left, since it relies on a remote guidance it was dead. I decided to rescue this ship with a solar paneled and manned version, then transfer the man to the dead ship and use the rescue-rescue ship to do the actual rescue. This all worked well. I did a 45k atm brake and then leveled the orbit to 75 /33k orbit about kerbin with reentry over the badlands continent.

Then things started to go wrong. I hit the space bar, however instead of the decoupler firing the parachute fired (and this was not the stage order either). So I reacted by setting the parachutes pressure at 0.25, re-entry went as planned but then the dreaded message appeared that the chute was destroyed by pressure, however I was only going 250 at the time. It seems that the kraken was taking a few whacks at me here. Not sure why. I could go to a recent backup, but I had one more trick up my sleeve. The attached engine and tank still had not fallen off and appeared to be stuck. So lets let them break the fall. I went to alt-F12 and hacked gravity. This allowed the ship to slow down enough and kept the trajectory around 45' lengthening the amount of time to slow down and decreasing the small gravity vector relative to drag. I turn the ship sideways to face the wind and decided to open the storage bin doors in hope that it may help. This got the craft down to about 10 m/s, -surface relative velocity on direction and kaboom the engine blows up and slows the craft down, however the tank and decoupler still do not fall off and the ship is flipping end over end toward water and I cannot any longer control which hits the ground first. luckily the next bounce hits on the tank and the wide open instrument storage and stops the spinning, so then as the ship came to its next bounce I unhacked the gravity and the open doors of the storage bin brings it to a prompt stop. Mission salvaged and of course the decoupler, still 'fired' and still stuck. Yeah its cheaty, but when the kraken puts a few claw marks in your back side kicking him in the nuts is proper order.

[mhoram]

In my earlier days I used quicksaving a lot.

When I started playing hard-mode in Post V1.0 it became much more involved, since every maneuver mattered and a crash-landing could have a serious impact on the Kerbals. So I appreciate the quicksave-less gaming experience. For reverting from Kraken-attacks, I use Jebretary.

[Alshain]

The game and/or the mods I use are too buggy to not have quicksaves. I would never use that option.

[cantab]

I've found the game does benefit from eschewing reverts and quickloads. In my reverts-discouraged save I felt a lot more involved in the missions. Failures were meaningful, often major blows that I had to take, and that made the successes all the sweeter. It also lead to some epic rescue missions and can also get me finding solutions to the mishaps and accidents. I feel many players are too quick to hit the F9 when a problem occurs without making any effort to resolve it.

As for dealing with bugs, my approach is to have my online backup program pointed at the KSP folder, backing up the save every half hour. If I need to I can restore that backup, but of course I'll have to redo stuff so it strongly discourages trial and error gameplay.

Also bugs are often mod-related. I have a low tolerance for mods causing issues and unless the mod is truly compelling I'll be quick to drop it.

That said, sometimes reverts and quickloads are justified, especially if it's to avoid having to repeat a rescue mission you already showed works.