Career game playing style - staged recovery, FRMS, or none

[dorin6565]

When I play career mode I mostly have staged recovery installed to help recover money from launch stages. I have played using FRMS to land the stages as well. It usually kicks in later in career when you get inline probe cores.

I was wondering if others use either of the mods in their games or use no recovery mods and plan their rockets where they can go suborbital allowing time to switch back for re entry and landing after the payload is in orbit. Or, they don't worry about recovery at all?

[Hotaru]

My current strategy is to build my early-game expendable lifters as cheap as possible, and use reusable SSTOs as much as possible in the late game--generally that means space planes for light cargo and passengers and single-stage reusable rockets for medium to heavy cargo. In my current (1.0.2) save, only the absolute heaviest payloads get sent up an expendable boosters.

I'd love to use FMRS--mainly because it would allow for fully-reusable two-stage-to-orbit designs like Aerospaceplane or early Shuttle concepts--but I've never had much luck getting it working reliably. Will probably give it another go after 1.1 comes along.

[Axelord FTW]

StageRecovery for me.

I've done enough manual recovery to know I am pretty darn reliable so automating the process just saves me time and let me focus on more important stuff without affecting the funds/rep/science side of things.

[steve_v]

StageRecovery should be stock, IMO. Feels nicely balanced to me, and saves a lot of boring debris recovery.

[Zephram Kerman]

I try to avoid mods. Dunno why, I just can't help it. So my rockets tend to be as fully recoverable as possible, and I do it all manually. Even my heavy lifter is 95% recoverable; only its SRBs get destroyed. I used to be all about reusable space planes, but SpaceX's Falcon changed my world.

[mrclucks]

i saw both stage recovery and FRMS on that Scott Manley video a while back. FRMS seems like alot more time investment than KSP already is and i just wanna get going with my missions. stage recovery takes a little bit more planning than just vanilla launches but it works in the background. it's always nice when you get a notification that your stage that cost half the launch, has been recovered and most of its cost is refunded to you.

[GoSlash27]

My current strategy is to build my early-game expendable lifters as cheap as possible, and use reusable SSTOs as much as possible in the late game--generally that means space planes for light cargo and passengers and single-stage reusable rockets for medium to heavy cargo. In my current (1.0.2) save, only the absolute heaviest payloads get sent up an expendable boosters.

This is the way I do it as well. For my heavy boosters I discard the main tank to burn up on reentry and recover the expensive bits.

Best,

-Slashy

[Warzouz]

I use recoverable SSTO maunchers I created for that purpose. They are also easier to fly than staged launchers....

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/123195

[Sharpy]

I use his launchers. ^^^^

[dorin6565]

Thanks everyone, my feeling is the same on the time savings. It takes a little extra planning on the booster, but the automatic recovery saves a lot of time over FRMS and lets me get on to the main mission.

I didn't know about your launchers Warzouz. I will look at them and test them out in a new save.

[Randazzo]

Funds usually aren't a concern, so the majority of the time I go wasteful and dangerous, dropping huge boosters willy-nilly over Kerbin. If I feel like spending 5-10 minutes watching a booster re-enter the atmosphere, I'll make a recoverable one.

I do prefer to have boosters that can either deorbit themselves or a second stage to circularize while the booster falls back down to the surface, just to avoid too much clutter.

[Hotaru]

If I feel like spending 5-10 minutes watching a booster re-enter the atmosphere, I'll make a recoverable one.

This is why I'm probably going to err more on the side of StageRecovery or just using expendables in my next career save (which might actually end up being a science save anyway, I'm a little tired of the career grind but I still want tech progression). The first time I watched one of my reusable rockets reenter and land safely was exciting! The fiftieth time, not so much. In fact I have one reentering at this very moment, which is why I'm on the forum posting about it and not in KSP doing something interesting.

[magico13]

I've built a few different rocket SSTOs before to take up to 10 tons into orbit and then land near KSC. But lately I've just been adding parachutes to any liquid fueled boosters I drop (solid fuels are usually cheap enough that I don't care, but liquid fuel engines are expensive) and using StageRecovery to recover them. The main stack, and anything else that get's dropped during or after circularization, is completely discarded (often with retrorockets, aka a few sepatrons pointed backwards). I'm not usually strapped for cash enough to need everything to be 100% recoverable this playthrough. I am working on a two stage to orbit spaceplane, and would like to have both stages be recovered (mostly for KCT, so the build times on them are super short).

[regex]

Recovery is too much of a design hassle and significantly reduces payload, so all my lifters are expendable.

[Tannerz]

I use StageRecovery extensively. I have done the manual route enough to know how to do it, so now, I use it to save time on the game play time ( i have very little available to me), and have the fun that I want to have. I use MJ in the same way, and only for activities that I can do with my eyes closed. Many of my mods are designed around saving me time in game, and only after I say 'hey, this piece of work is actually boring, is there a mod that makes it less boring'. I only play career mode though.

[Kurld]

I play sandbox and rely on my imagination to fill in the rest.

I did play a career game for a while and wound up with so much money that worrying about it seemed silly. The way Squad implemented "science" and the tech tree seems fundamentally wrong to me. So, I went back to sandbox and my life is a lot more enjoyable.