What is the point of careerplay?

[Dugeusclin]

Probably just ranting ... but anyway.

You start a career, set up sattelites, everything else you need, get the science, etc. No problems there.

Then after a while (only 25 vessels in space), this game ALWAYS starts to crash to desktop (I have 50 crashlogs on this save, most of the time nothing).

Buttons stop working, ships randomly dissapear or explode, orbits shift (I can deal with that).

So after all those hours of playing you end up with a broken save and you can start all over again.

So, what is the point? By the time you are ready to finally go to the other planets, stuff is so ....ed up that investing the time to reach them is just a waste (relaysats have dissapeared etc.)

I'm not going to reinstall this game every other day because stuff doesn't work anymore ...

Offcourse I can play sandbox, and use hyperedit to get everything in place quickly.

Sure I can use an older save and set me back just a little bit, but I'm just sick and tired of doing everything three times, just because this game screws up.

How many work-arounds is one supposed to use or be aware of?

How are you supposed to do anything?

I don't even try to build spacestations or anything complicated anymore, because it's simply a big waste of time.

And no, my vessels don't have too many parts (less than 50 in space and less than 150 on the launchpad))

No I'm not complaining about new features or atmosferes or whatever ... I just want to play, save my game and find everything back the next day, the way I left it, still working.

Sure I can post in the support section and whatnot ... but, hey, I'm not playing to be a beta-tester, I'm not a programmer or very computersavy.

The common solution is ussually, "Hey, man, I geuss you just reinstall everything ... "

Ridiculous.

End rant.

(been playing since before 0.18, so I'm aware that there are problems. I have given up a couple of times already and I geuss now I will again (which is sad))

(Not attacking anybody, people are doing what they can and are always helpfull)

[Thegamer211]

What is your mod list?

When I tried to install clouds, it was too much for my game, and always crashed.

You can also try active texture management.

[Just Jim]

My guess would also be mods... I'm almost 500 hours into a career game, with half a dozen huge space stations like this one, and I haven't had a crash yet.

But the only mods I'm using are asteroid day and chatterer, which I know are up to date. I would check to see if any of your mods aren't updated to 1.0.4 before trying anything like a re-install.

[tater]

Career was added without a real plan as far as I can tell. There is no "arc" to it, and unless you play on "hard" (which is really "grind" mode), there is zero chance of "losing." Most contracts are absurd, and have little rationale to bother with doing them.

It really needs "a point."

[Just Jim]

Career was added without a real plan as far as I can tell. There is no "arc" to it, and unless you play on "hard" (which is really "grind" mode), there is zero chance of "losing." Most contracts are absurd, and have little rationale to bother with doing them.

It really needs "a point."

From what I read, 1.1 is going to address the contract system

[PB666]

From what I read, 1.1 is going to address the contract system

The reason you have the other modes it to prepare you to play on hard mode and for a plan. If moderate mode is easy for you, then you should be playing hard, if its too hard you should be playing easy mode.

Play against the bugs, demonstrate an engineering and execution skill, achieve all ones desired science. If moderate mode was easy to lose, then hard mode would be unplayable.

Yes, Unity has alot of problems, they are apparently working toward unity 5 which allows more processing capacity, potentially 64 bit operation.

[panzer1b]

I never cared about career as i started playing this well before evne science mode existed, so ive always been playing my own way, setting up interesting scenarios with Hedit and then trying to do something abotu it.

Right now i tend to do alot of military stuff (which has no place whatsoever in carrer mode as its money being thrown out after someone gets shot apart). I run one campaign save that has 3 factions sofar that are hostile to each other, and then i have a sort of cost limit that allows each faction to launch x amount of vessels per turn so to speak. Then i basically swap between each faction and attack others, try to set up colonies/bases/satations, destroy that stuff when i take control oif a different faction, ect. Its kinda like roleplaying, except i also spend alot of time developing new vessels, armor schemes, weapons, ect based on previosu experience from the combat i do.

While i do like career as it does make thge game interesting in its own way, i rarely play it as i enjoy setting up my own scenarios and missions rather then executing ones that the game gives me. Guess im just too creating and imaginative, and i find that career is imposing too many limits, and doesnt really fit the style of many players playing the game before it was implemented.

now for the majority of player,s career is great, as it gives them clear and concise goals to achieve, and contracts/missions that have a simple and clear objective. This is what career gives, a clear and concise objective, each success then allows more complex and advanced contracts/objectives to be unlocked. Now there are bugs and some of these contracts are outright stupid or bugged, while others are not very fun or exciting (how many times do you want me to right click a part and run test at x altitude or speed?), but in egenral it works.

that said, im glad sandbox does exist, the game would be so booring (or would require constant money/science hacking) to let me play it the way ive always enjoyed.

[tater]

From what I read, 1.1 is going to address the contract system

They are adding "contextual" contracts, right? Maybe that will help. The problem is that even within the current system, all the contracts are awful. There are mods that add sensible contracts, so clearly the people writing them for squad have some issues with writing contracts

I fully expect to see bad contracts replaced with bad contextual contracts, sadly. I'll be the first one to praise them if they surprise me.

That said, at least some will improve. I fear we will get spammed with build station contracts, AND resupply/add on/whatever station contracts. And that won't address the fact that if you build/launch a station/sat/whatever for some customer, they should own it. Maybe mods will make career better, and with 64 bit, we can perhaps add more mods without crashing.

- - - Updated - - -

now for the majority of player,s career is great, as it gives them clear and concise goals to achieve, and contracts/missions that have a simple and clear objective. This is what career gives, a clear and concise objective, each success then allows more complex and advanced contracts/objectives to be unlocked. Now there are bugs and some of these contracts are outright stupid or bugged, while others are not very fun or exciting (how many times do you want me to right click a part and run test at x altitude or speed?), but in egenral it works.

Career gives no clear and concise goals. It spams you with random tasks that make no sense, period, and even less sense within the context of a "career."

The goal of career should be limitations that force novel design decisions. The notion that sandbox requires more imagination is silly. It's the difference between designing a house on a specific site, with a budget, and designing a house with any site you like, and no budget. Both can be creative, but the limitations of site/budget force you to make interesting decisions that you would not have to make with no limitations. They are different, not quantitatively different.

[theend3r]

Asking what is the point of anything KSP is like asking what is the point of life. To have fun.

While I agree that the current contract system is lacklustre, I haven't played sandbox since career was released as it shows you at least some kind of progress (money).

[cantab]

Crashes, bugs, and save corruption suck, but remember they aren't what Squad were trying to do! The main goal of career mode seems to be to create challenges by adding restrictions.

[severedsolo]

There are mods that add sensible contracts, so clearly the people writing them for squad have some issues with writing contracts

I fully expect to see bad contracts replaced with bad contextual contracts, sadly. I'll be the first one to praise them if they surprise me.

As strange as this sounds, I hope you are right. If the "add a lab to your space station" contract they were talking about goes the way I think it's going to (pretty much like the stock contracts, keep adding labs ad-nauseum, and launch even more stations), I will be happy, as it means I can keep working on KSS.

Of course I'll be happy if you're wrong too, because Squad will have finally made space stations useful. You'll just hear me swearing more, as I'll need to do a major re-write.

[problemecium]

A: What everyone else has said. Even if it's full of flaws now, large improvements are imminent.

B: Challenge and reward. I like arriving at the Mun or another planet and being rewarded with a whole pile of Science, Funds, and Reputation, even if they're just meaningless video game points. It makes unremarkable accomplishments like Mun landings just a little less unremarkable.

C: TBH this looks like a question about Career mode in the title and first sentence, but the OP quickly devolves into yet another "KSP is too buggy to be playable" complaint. You have our sympathies if KSP is unstable for you, but it's worse for some than others. There are things you can do to improve the situation (see the dozens of advice threads in the Help forum), and you should always remember that KSP is a game that needs your love and patience.

[Motokid600]

There needs to be a new "Campaign" mode in the future imo.

[mikegarrison]

There needs to be a new "Campaign" mode in the future imo.

I don't know if I would say "needs to be", but I do think it would add a nice (optional) plot element.

People say you should make up your own campaigns, and that's fine. But I like reading novels written by other people even though I can make up my own stories. I consider "campaign modes" to be stories made up by other people that I get to experience.

[Dugeusclin]

No rant today ... and I apologize for the one yesterday ...

And yes, ofcourse I use mods (sorry, but the stockgame is still seriously lacking on content (on which people are working, so I understand, not complaining)).

It's nobodies fault that I don't manage to find a stable configuration (I just don't understand why it is stable for a while and then the next day it no longer seems to be, which is obviously very frustrating).

Wrong section for the following, I know, but just to show that I'm not overdoing things (or atleast I think I am not):

I'm already using ATM, opengl, etc.

Most mods add contracts, Dmagic science and scansat, mechjeb, FAR, UKS (because I want to build a base eventually), OPM, the visual enhancement (no planetshine), remote tech, then some parts (KAS, KIS, UKS, stationparts (I suppose I could get rid of some of them), KJR, the Setistuff, deadly reentry, distant object (limited range), science alert, contractmanager, KOS (not that I can actually program anything yet, but I'm not even going invest time in that until I can get things stable)

Precisenode and TAC are the only ones not up to date (but as I read about them, this should not really be a problem?)

Gamedata folder (36 folders inside) is 832Mb big (comparing to others this is not that impressive? (and I have 8g of Ram on an i5 [email protected], videocard XFX R7950 ... which should be more than sufficient?))

Can't figure out how to remove double parts though (that pruning thing doesn't make any difference, probably I'm doing it wrong, but it's always saying the prune was succesfull?).

I'm figuring that, as the crashes always occur when switching between vessels, or reverting testflights, it is not a ram-problem (sorry, I don't really have a clue about this).

Most contracts are silly or make absolutely no sense, yes, but you can simply decline the ones that are useless for you.

I play career/science because it forces you to come up with different designs/ideas, also to see what it is like (not great obviously, but there are ways to work around it.).

More difficulty makes it so much more interesting/challenging (I actually want it to be difficult! To have to read about different concepts and trying to impliment/understand them, be efficient, etc., I hate the kindergarten stuff/mentality (and yet I'm acting like a spoiled kid atm ... got to love the irony ;-) )

About unity5 ... I don't know anything about that, but it'll probably be like anything new ... it'll be worse before it gets better (6 months until the stock game will be stable? Just a geuss, I have absolutely no knowledge about these things.

[problemecium]

By all means, use mods, but don't complain that KSP runs too slowly or that Career Mode is broken when you have that many.

[Dugeusclin]

I didn't complain about KSP being to slow or a broken careermode.

I complained about not being able to find a stable configuration.

Also, I don't think that those are too many mods ...

How are people able to play RSS with RO then?

Total amount of mods is a lot higher?

[SAI Peregrinus]

I have over 150 mods and my KSP is stable (aside from a small memory leak in the stock game, but with GCMonitor I can easily restart when that would cause problems). I keep a glass of water at my computer: when it's empty KSP is probably about out of memory (on Windows, on Linux that would take a lot longer) so I restart it and go refill my drink. When I get back the game is started and I didn't have to wait for it.

[Asharad]

My stock game is stable. My career has 24 flights in progress, with some pretty massive space stations. Whenever I get a new space station contract, I usually join the new station to my existing one. I have a different save with a 365 part space station.

[Pax Kerbana]

Hire extremely overpriced Kerbals?

[Neufusion]

No offense, but I think your computer can't handle it. I noticed on my quad core 2.66ghz (Intel Q9450) that I can't do full warp in certain situations or the rocket will just rip itself apart.

What are you running?

Also, go into your tracking station and 'recover' or 'destroy' a lot of those parts that are floating around eating up CPU resources.

- - - Updated - - -

Career was added without a real plan as far as I can tell. There is no "arc" to it, and unless you play on "hard" (which is really "grind" mode), there is zero chance of "losing." Most contracts are absurd, and have little rationale to bother with doing them.

It really needs "a point."

Career is the shiz. You have to work with the equipment options and money available and then decide if you are going for money or science. You have to build economical ships with low tech to do what you need done. If I found this game in 'sandbox' mode, I would probably be done with it already. I enjoy having to create my own 'side missions' to collect science to gear up for the next major mission. I'm currently stoked on a mun/minimus flyby with 2 tourists that just happened but that would be meaningless if I was playing 'sandbox'.

[faethon]

Career is the shiz. You have to work with the equipment options and money available and then decide if you are going for money or science. You have to build economical ships with low tech to do what you need done. If I found this game in 'sandbox' mode, I would probably be done with it already. I enjoy having to create my own 'side missions' to collect science to gear up for the next major mission. I'm currently stoked on a mun/minimus flyby with 2 tourists that just happened but that would be meaningless if I was playing 'sandbox'.

Agreed! I bought KSP long time ago for 15bucks, but the sandbox just proved to be too distracting with all the available options, so I lost interest (or got overwhelmed...). Recently started playing again, and since have flown some tourists around, put satellites in orbit, and visited some nearby celestial bodies. I'm having a really great time! I would like to see the contextual contracts in 1.1 though, and curious how that will add some more grandeur to the combined effort of the missions!

[cantab]

Memory-related crashes *do* normally strike when switching between ships, going back to the VAB, etc - anything that's a "scene change". It's because that's where the game has a memory leak, upping the memory usage a little bit each time.

[John FX]

No rant today ... and I apologize for the one yesterday ...

And yes, ofcourse I use mods (sorry, but the stockgame is still seriously lacking on content (on which people are working, so I understand, not complaining)).

It's nobodies fault that I don't manage to find a stable configuration (I just don't understand why it is stable for a while and then the next day it no longer seems to be, which is obviously very frustrating).

Wrong section for the following, I know, but just to show that I'm not overdoing things (or atleast I think I am not):

I'm already using ATM, opengl, etc.

Most mods add contracts, Dmagic science and scansat, mechjeb, FAR, UKS (because I want to build a base eventually), OPM, the visual enhancement (no planetshine), remote tech, then some parts (KAS, KIS, UKS, stationparts (I suppose I could get rid of some of them), KJR, the Setistuff, deadly reentry, distant object (limited range), science alert, contractmanager, KOS (not that I can actually program anything yet, but I'm not even going invest time in that until I can get things stable)

Precisenode and TAC are the only ones not up to date (but as I read about them, this should not really be a problem?)

Gamedata folder (36 folders inside) is 832Mb big (comparing to others this is not that impressive? (and I have 8g of Ram on an i5 [email protected], videocard XFX R7950 ... which should be more than sufficient?))

Can't figure out how to remove double parts though (that pruning thing doesn't make any difference, probably I'm doing it wrong, but it's always saying the prune was succesfull?).

I'm figuring that, as the crashes always occur when switching between vessels, or reverting testflights, it is not a ram-problem (sorry, I don't really have a clue about this).

Most contracts are silly or make absolutely no sense, yes, but you can simply decline the ones that are useless for you.

I play career/science because it forces you to come up with different designs/ideas, also to see what it is like (not great obviously, but there are ways to work around it.).

More difficulty makes it so much more interesting/challenging (I actually want it to be difficult! To have to read about different concepts and trying to impliment/understand them, be efficient, etc., I hate the kindergarten stuff/mentality (and yet I'm acting like a spoiled kid atm ... got to love the irony ;-) )

About unity5 ... I don't know anything about that, but it'll probably be like anything new ... it'll be worse before it gets better (6 months until the stock game will be stable? Just a geuss, I have absolutely no knowledge about these things.

If the game is stable one day and unstable the next then, as software is rarely the cause of that sort of problem, maybe your hardware is on the verge of failure?

I`ve been having an increasing number of crashes lately but they stopped when I blew the dust and fluff from the cooling fan of my graphics card...

EDIT : just noticed you are overclocking your machine. Maybe your overclock is not as stable with KSP as it is with programs that do not stress a single core so much?

Edited August 25, 2015 by John FX

[Alchemist]

To be honest, even on hard the career is almost unloseable. I once spent almost all the money on KSC upgrades, then spent the rest on a ship and... forgot to check staging. Result: no rocket, destroyed pad, killed 5 Kerbals (fortunately, rookies - that was a training flight) and like 5k of money left.

Solution? Picked 2 satellite contracts and launched these rockets from level 1 SPH/runway. And it got me rolling again.

The early Career brings quite a nice design challenge, although at some point in the middle it may be a bit too grindy. But the late part has one big issue - there's nothing stopping you from getting everything from around Kerbin before the first window to Duna or Jool. Meaning that by the time you get to other planets it's almost a sandbox. This time I made myself a challenge of sending Duna expedition (5 Kerbals total, 3 Kerbals in the lander) on level 2 KSC (the biggest limitation being 140 t per launch, plus not all the parts I'd like to have are available), but there's nothing that makes you want to go interplanetary early on. Especially, with Mun&Minmus being so much quicker.

Also, no need for any kind of campaign with stricter time limits - that would only result in even more grinding around Kerbin