Who else doesn't Time Warp to Interplanetary Transfers?

[CoriW]

Well, during my career play through's I've never really gotten to many other planets because I usually don't time warp up to interplanetary transfer windows. Instead I just do Kerbin/Mun/Minmus missions until a transfer window presents itself, and usually spend several Kerbin days or weeks preparing ships and such for the journey.

I'm not entirely sure why I do it this way, I guess I just don't like the idea of a year of Kerbin time going past and literally nothing happening during that period, it just feels wrong to me.

Now the couple down sides to this play style is that firstly if I build a ship that has some flaw or is missing some part and send it off to another planet, only to realize the flaw half way through the trip or once I've landed on the planet, I just have to live with it until my next transfer window comes up. Secondly this play style tends to make me get bored of the game before I go out to many other planets as doing Kerbin/Mun/Minmus missions can only be entertaining for so long before the boredom starts to kick in, which is why I only end up with a couple years of Kerbin time passing before I stop playing all together.

So out of curiosity, does anyone else use this play style, and regardless of that what are your opinions on this sort of play style?

[More Boosters]

You need Kerbal Alarm Clock.

People who don't have Kerbal Alarm Clock have the exact problem you described.

[CoriW]

You need Kerbal Alarm Clock.

People who don't have Kerbal Alarm Clock have the exact problem you described.

Oh I should have mentioned I have Kerbal Alarm Clock. I schedule it with all the transfer windows.

EDIT: I think part of my thing too with not getting to many other planets is because of how long it takes me to get the tech tree unlocked to a point where I have all the parts that I consider necessary for going to other planets. (I also don't use the stock tech tree, I use OpenTree)

So I end up spending a week unlocking the Tech Tree within Kerbin SOI and then starting to shift my focus to other planets, by which point I've started getting bored. (I'll also note I spend hours designing ships to be perfect in the VAB) Then again I overplayed KSP back in 2013 when I discovered it and was totally addicted to it for months. So that probably is part of the reason I get bored of KSP kind of quickly now a days, that and the fact I don't use part mods to widen the experience, although I've been considering using some of them.

Edited September 11, 2015 by CoriW

[More Boosters]

Oh I should have mentioned I have Kerbal Alarm Clock. I schedule it with all the transfer windows.

Alright, fair enough and I see the get-bored-before-interplanetary bit for sure, but you can alternatively send probes on less than optimal missions as they don't need to return to begin with. Personally it's about the mission count; I don't mind skipping long chunks of time if I have multiple missions going on, I mean otherwise I could fire my sounding rocket and grind science from Kerbin space every 5 seconds; which is an exaggeration but not that dissimilar to going to the moons over and over again. Alternatively use that time to build infrastructure, fuel depots, stations, and stuff.

[stibbons]

Time warping for weeks and weeks with nothing happening just feels like wasted time to me. I know that it's a very arbitrary thing but I still don't like doing it. So I end up spending all of my time launching and maintaining stations and bases around the Kerbin system.

[KerikBalm]

I do it that way too, and yes, I have the same problem.

I'll launch all this stuff up to LKO.... and then it just sits there as I wait for transfer windows, and biome hope at Mun/Minmus, launch some redirect missions... etc.

Its even worse now that I've started doing some training runs to get my kerbal crews (I send them off in groups of 6, 1 male and 1 female of each specialization), which results in a spaceplane going to Mun, multiple landings (I should really send a bigger Munlander so I can take all 6 down in one trip, rather than 6 landings+ascents+ dockings), then a transfer to Minmus, then I often skip rendevousing with the station and using a docked lander, and just Eva my kerbals down to the surface and back up.

Then my SSTO departs from Minmus to heliocentric orbit, then retroburns back to kerbin.

It was even worse when I'd just SSTO to LKO, and then rendevous with a dedicated crew transfer vehicle to take them to destinations beyond LKO (its still floating out there, unlikely to be used again as SSTOs are so convenient within kerbin's SOI)

I do that 3-4 times.

1x 6 kerb crew for duna. 1x 6 kerb crew for laythe+ the Jool system. a 3 kerb crew for Eve and Gilly, a 3 kerb crew for other destinations (though maybe I'll send the eve rew to moho, and the Duna crew to Dres).

1x 6 kerb crew to relieve the crew on Duna.

...

And as a result of the asteroid redirects and crew training.... I've only just launched my duna mission, and I've got to recover 1 training flight still, and I've got 2 asteroid redirects underway...

Somewhat to get around this, I send small probes outside of transfer windows.

I've at least got an orbiter for Eve (that also landed on gilly), and a rover on the surface.

None of my other interplanetary probes have reached their destinations, and only 1 of my interplanetary kerballed missions has even left Kerbin.

Though I often will run a simpler interplanetary mission... flag and footprings, without the ISRU, surface habs, space station/orbital fuel depot, science stuff, etc....

Because sandbox and timewarp is really the only way I ever visit anyplace beyond LKO in KSP.

My career modes have me take so much time doing the prep work, that the new expansion comes out before I really go anywhere.

* I could skip a lot of training....

I don't really need a lvl3 pilot, as long as the SAS stays on even during power loss (such as during an eclipse).

I don't really need a lvl3 scientist. Sure the science->funds passive income will be higher, but at this point I don't need funding.

A lvl 3 engineer is needed. I need to be able to fix landing legs, and repack chutes on my biome hoppers. I need to be able to repair the wheels on my rover that is also a small fuel truck to refuel stuff on the surface that can't make it back up to the orbital fuel depot.

And the increased ISRU output is really nice and will let me be more active there with less interruptions to go do other things while I wait for more fuel to be made.

[TMS]

Time warping for weeks and weeks with nothing happening just feels like wasted time to me. I know that it's a very arbitrary thing but I still don't like doing it. So I end up spending all of my time launching and maintaining stations and bases around the Kerbin system.

I can sympathise with this. It's purely psychological, I think, but it's definitely something I experience.

I have found that one solution is to turn time into something less than arbitrary. Kerbal Construction Time basically prohibits immediate launches and requires a certain amount of "lead time" for crafts to be built.

This does two things: one, it makes time a commodity that needs to be managed and organised; and two, it encourages you to want to timewarp in order to get the mission going.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/92377-1-0-4-Kerbal-Construction-Time-1-2-2-(8-26-15)-Unrapid-Planned-Assembly

[CoriW]

Alright, fair enough and I see the get-bored-before-interplanetary bit for sure, but you can alternatively send probes on less than optimal missions as they don't need to return to begin with. Personally it's about the mission count; I don't mind skipping long chunks of time if I have multiple missions going on, I mean otherwise I could fire my sounding rocket and grind science from Kerbin space every 5 seconds; which is an exaggeration but not that dissimilar to going to the moons over and over again. Alternatively use that time to build infrastructure, fuel depots, stations, and stuff.

I think that my problem with sending out early probes is that I don't have enough stuff unlocked to consider it worth it, I use SCANSat as well and I find that if I don't have all the SCANSat parts unlocked I tend to lean away from sending probes out as I don't see much point. Then for lander probes I don't see much point until I have all of the science parts unlocked, but even still it ends up having to be a return mission anyways to get the full science reward out of it.

I also have a problem of wanting to make all my ships "perfect" in my eyes, which usually means unlocking all parts before I do any serious missions, and I consider leaving Kerbin SOI a "serious" mission. Unlocking all of the Tech Tree inside Kerbin SOI gets boring very quickly as it's just merely a grind to unlock all the science possible from Kerbin, Mun, and Minmus.

I'm also a bit of a KSP engineer who spends hours and hours inside the VAB in order to make the ships perfect, which sometimes can get boring or even annoying if I cant seem to get a ship to be "just right", as an example I spent 5 hours one day just making a series of subassembly lifters so that I could get various payloads into orbit without having to design unique lifters for each. Now at the same time VAB work can be fun if it goes how I plan, and sometimes I even enjoy building in the VAB more than I enjoy flying the ships.

Back to the note of time warp, since I don't time warp to transfer windows, interplanetary plane changes, etc. It makes the amount of time to do say a Jool and back mission take a very long time, at which point I've done tons of missions within the Kerbin SOI and even some missions outside Kerbin SOI, this makes it get to the point where I've gotten satellites, bases, stations, and fuel depots all over the place within Kerbin SOI and am actually running out of things to do there, while the Jool and back mission is for example only half complete. I'm sure you can see how that could become quite boring.

Time warping for weeks and weeks with nothing happening just feels like wasted time to me. I know that it's a very arbitrary thing but I still don't like doing it. So I end up spending all of my time launching and maintaining stations and bases around the Kerbin system.

I definitely agree with the "wasted time" statement, that exactly how I feel about it.

[DocMoriarty]

I play the same style as the OP. I'm not accelerating interplanetary travel too much and instead do Kerbin missions until something arrives close to it's destination. And i use Kerbal Alarm Clock too for that matter. I actually guess there are lots of people playing that style.

[StarStreak2109]

Since I use Kerbal Construction Time, I don't have that problem. Then the problem is more to start working a rocket early enough so that it's ready for a given time window.

[Vicomt]

I mostly don't timewarp, during the period when a long-term mission is in progress, the guys back at base wouldn't just be twiddling their thumbs, so I make them do something, it usually involves a rescue, or specific science gathering. Of course, if you have a lab up and running, you can't really timewarp massive period if you want to be efficient in science harvesting. (not that you really need to, unless you use a longer science tree, like me)

[CoriW]

I mostly don't timewarp, during the period when a long-term mission is in progress, the guys back at base wouldn't just be twiddling their thumbs, so I make them do something, it usually involves a rescue, or specific science gathering. Of course, if you have a lab up and running, you can't really timewarp massive period if you want to be efficient in science harvesting. (not that you really need to, unless you use a longer science tree, like me)

Just curious, what science tree do you use?

[Vicomt]

Just curious, what science tree do you use?

The Community Tech Tree, works with various different part mods. I use Near Future stuff to go with it, but I don't go the whole hog with all the applicable mods, thus I have quite a few empty science nodes.

It certainly keeps me needing science for longer than stock anyway.

[cantab]

Learn Kopernicus configs and remove Mun and Minmus from orbit of Kerbin. Problem solved.

As for me, well I keep in mind that real space programs haven't always gone at breakneck speed. For me things are likely to slow down a bit once I start doing interplanetary missions, but that's no real problem. Also, all I need to send out probes is probe cores, solars, and at least one science experiment.

In any case my current save has a Mun science station. I have to timewarp to make that make science. And it's incredibly profitable, I fed it data from orbit and two landings and I'm expecting 1500 bonus science total from that, with the option to run more landings if I like. But to be honest I don't want to keep doing the same thing over and over again, going somewhere new is more appealing.

[CoriW]

Learn Kopernicus configs and remove Mun and Minmus from orbit of Kerbin. Problem solved.

As for me, well I keep in mind that real space programs haven't always gone at breakneck speed. For me things are likely to slow down a bit once I start doing interplanetary missions, but that's no real problem. Also, all I need to send out probes is probe cores, solars, and at least one science experiment.

In any case my current save has a Mun science station. I have to timewarp to make that make science. And it's incredibly profitable, I fed it data from orbit and two landings and I'm expecting 1500 bonus science total from that, with the option to run more landings if I like. But to be honest I don't want to keep doing the same thing over and over again, going somewhere new is more appealing.

You know it's funny you mention Kopernicus... I've been working on a new planet using Kopernicus for like the last 2 weeks. On the note of science stations, I have one of those landed on Mun and Minmus but they have low level scientists in them and I also don't time warp for those either... Though I do see your point about real space programs not always doing new things very quickly, I mean look at how long New Horizons took.

[Tazin]

On my first playthrough I used to play like this. Then i started again, and broke the imaginary restrains that kept me from warping at max speed. It's much more enjoyable to manage 2 or 3 interplanetary missions, skipping whole years at a time, than it is to keep grinding mun or minmus.

[Hotaru]

I agree with the suggestion of Kerbal Construction Time, in fact I use it with the build-time multiplier set to 5 or 10 so new large ships frequently take the better part of a year to construct. The result is a lot of warping at KSC waiting for the next ship to be ready, transfer windows coming up more often (in real-time terms), and a space program that has better pacing and a more realistic, historical feel to it (no more landing on the Mun within a week of the first flight). My current career save is in its seventh Kerbin year, so even the slowest transfer windows (Eve and Duna) have come and gone several times.

[CoriW]

I agree with the suggestion of Kerbal Construction Time, in fact I use it with the build-time multiplier set to 5 or 10 so new large ships frequently take the better part of a year to construct. The result is a lot of warping at KSC waiting for the next ship to be ready, transfer windows coming up more often (in real-time terms), and a space program that has better pacing and a more realistic, historical feel to it (no more landing on the Mun within a week of the first flight). My current career save is in its seventh Kerbin year, so even the slowest transfer windows (Eve and Duna) have come and gone several times.

You know it's interesting that I've seen Kerbal Construction Time come up a couple times in this thread, I was actually considering getting that mod yesterday. After seeing what's been said about it I may actually go and install it, as it seems like it might help with passing time without it feeling like it's wasted time.

[Kerbart]

I'm glad I don't seem to be the only one who plays like this

[NecroBones]

I've gone both ways on this.

I started out warping to my windows, but when I saw how many years were going by between missions, I decided to try using Alarm Clock to interleave them. I basically planned a mission for every window that came up for the outer planets, and occasionally for the inner planets. I eventually got to the point where it was normal to have 6 or more interplanetary missions in transit.

While Kerbal Alarm Clock made that manageable, I ran into a few consequences of this:

• I would sometimes forget what I was doing in a particular mission. If there was something specific that I wanted to do when I got there, or whatever, I might space out on the details.
  
• My screenshot folder became a jumbled mess, because they were no longer mission-contiguous.
  
• Sometimes I'd launch a vehicle for a mission and leave it in parking orbit for a long time, waiting for its window, possibly years at a time. I might have unlocked new parts, or come up with a cool new solution, or new way of doing things, and the ship is obsolete by the time its window comes around.
  
• It forced me to get really detail-oriented, and make alarms for absolutely everything, or else I'd miss opportunities or forget to do things. It was just very hard to keep track of a mission without doing so.
  

[Woksaus]

I used to play like OP, because I feared that by timewarping too much, I would miss out on interesting interplanetary missions. However, I found that my progress after Mun and Minmus started to stagnate, since I kept being stuck with doing lots of the same (rather boring) Kerbin missions. I use timewarp much more often now, although I do still try to use it as efficiently and sparingly as possible. I usually have one big mission (2+ years), two medium missions (1-2 year) and several small missions (1-2 weeks) running neatly together.

I have found that my ships in waiting orbit sometimes disappear after excessive timewarping though, so I always frantically back up my savefile before timewarping.

[LostOblivion]

Well, during my career play through's I've never really gotten to many other planets because I usually don't time warp up to interplanetary transfer windows. Instead I just do Kerbin/Mun/Minmus missions until a transfer window presents itself, and usually spend several Kerbin days or weeks preparing ships and such for the journey.

I'm not entirely sure why I do it this way, I guess I just don't like the idea of a year of Kerbin time going past and literally nothing happening during that period, it just feels wrong to me.

Now the couple down sides to this play style is that firstly if I build a ship that has some flaw or is missing some part and send it off to another planet, only to realize the flaw half way through the trip or once I've landed on the planet, I just have to live with it until my next transfer window comes up. Secondly this play style tends to make me get bored of the game before I go out to many other planets as doing Kerbin/Mun/Minmus missions can only be entertaining for so long before the boredom starts to kick in, which is why I only end up with a couple years of Kerbin time passing before I stop playing all together.

So out of curiosity, does anyone else use this play style, and regardless of that what are your opinions on this sort of play style?

We're entirely in the same boat, brother. I've never been outside the Kerbin system on my current save because of this very gameplay style. For the last RL months, I've only been preparing a craft to go to Duna and testing it.

[tater]

I play with LS, so I also play like this. Sometimes I also use KCT, but right now I'm cutting my mods a little to avoid issues.

[panzer1b]

You need Kerbal Alarm Clock.

People who don't have Kerbal Alarm Clock have the exact problem you described.

I dont use KAC (its transfer windows arent exactly accurate for whatever reason when i play). I almost always manually set it up in the trackin center (its not hard to eyeball angles and if you are off by a few degrees its not like thats a major hit to efficiency provided its within say 3-5 degrees of ideal.

Anyways, to answer the OP's question, it heavily depends. i will warp to a transfer windown if i want to do that mission, but i also tend to optimize this by ammassing a entire fleet worth of ships to send them there all at once (if i want to send one thing to say jool, i think before i do that if there is anything else i want there, launch that to LKO waiting orbit, and then sequentially eject them all from kerbin and have them come in all at once. This takes more work, but since KSP's warp is capped at a rather low speed making waiting for transfers annoying, it is still more time efficient and less work for me total to send everything i want at jool there in the same transfer window.

As for single missions, i still do those. Just sent a fighter to duna and i had nothing else to send there.

That said, i tend to be opportunistic unless i have a very particular mission set up. I occasionally look into the map and check planet positions, if i notice something coming up, i think whether im interested in sending something there, and if so i launch whatever i want to send to the next planet that will be lined up and either continue my usual mun/minmus battles, or if i prefer warp to window.

[Randazzo]

If I have something else I want to do in the meantime, I'll do it. Usually I'll warp ~150-200 Kerbal days at a time, then go transmit science from my stations. When necessary I send the crews down to collect more data to process, or rotate crews. Otherwise, it's just warp to the window.

The explore contracts are what mostly interests me now, as the joy of launching satellite after satellite or flying to some random spot for zero science is long gone for me.

Everybody must use time warp to some degree. If you didn't, that means you could be waiting three to four real months for windows to arrive, assuming you left KSP running 24/7.

Edited September 11, 2015 by Randazzo