What will you do differently in your next career?

[eddiew]

Hey peeps,

So the faint whiff of 1.1 is on the breeze and we're all hoping for it in the next couple of months so's we can abuse the performance improvements and hopefully unleash all 64 of our bits.

Some of us are working hard on our current games, others are sitting out so's to be keen and fresh for the drop. I'm in the latter camp, which has given me the time to think about how I play and the choices I make and how some of them are hampering my enjoyment of KSP - which got me wondering...

What is the one biggest thing y'all will change in your next career? (AKA what did you do in 1.0.4 that was your worst enemy?)

For myself, it will be to stop collecting so many contracts at once. Usually I grab everything that I'll want to do "one day" and it leads to an awful lot of bread-and-butter Mun runs and tourist ferries while the bigger interplanetary missions go un-done for weeks (of real time). It makes me quite wealthy quite fast, but it doesn't get me anywhere new and interesting or do much to beef up my science income (which is down on 20%). I need to learn that there will almost always be a tourist mission available if I need cash, and there is no need to commit to it right now.

So instead, I will only be taking missions for one place at a time. Hopefully this will get me out to more exotic places, and let me start capitalizing on the high science/rep multipliers around Jool's moons and all the New Horizons planets (most of which I still haven't landed on).

Curious to hear other people's thoughts on how they've been their own worst enemy and how they'll try to make friends with themselves next career? Will you be adding a mod? Removing one? Turning off heating? Turning heating back on? Banning probe landers? Or just changing the way you approach the contract system? I feel like there might be untapped wisdom in your answers that others (and I) could learn from

[Bev7787]

Do less part contracts and do actual SCIENCE

[FyunchClick]

Play a career on harder mode.

[MiniMatt]

I *think* I'll probably start a career save with a life support mod from the outset.

Usually I only start going mod heavy after splurging on a largely stock start.

Probably RoverDude's USI.

[eddiew]

Do less part contracts and do actual SCIENCE

I only really get part tests when my rep is really low at the start... soon as I've been to Mun they tend to stop

Play a career on harder mode.

Definitely a good call But... don't disable quicksave! Too many things will go wrong that are not your fault and you shouldn't be penalised for them

I *think* I'll probably start a career save with a life support mod from the outset.

RoverDude's LS does look like a nice compromise, I agree. His decision not to kill kerbals means that rescue missions are still on the cards after a crash where the crew survives - whereas with TacLS any failure means the crew dies...

[GoSlash27]

I'm not going to bother using the science labs unless there's a serious rebalancing. Although they convert data into lots of science, it's simply too grindy to set up and run.

Best,

-Slashy

[eddiew]

I'm not going to bother using the science labs unless there's a serious rebalancing. Although they convert data into lots of science, it's simply too grindy to set up and run.

That's fair... I play on 20% science so it balances out again when I drop everything off at my LKO lab, but at standard settings it would be crazy OP. Had I ever gotten out to Duna or beyond, I might have been inclined to come down to 10%. And that's with community tech tree :S

I kinda like the need to plan for a proper Kerbin orbit on the way home though. Without that, I'd never have any space stations, ever - as it is, it's my science and refueling depot. Sometimes I add fuel, sometimes I remove it, on average it balances and stays ready for use

[Just Jim]

I think the biggest thing I plan on changing is not terminating debris I leave in orbit. What goes up, stays up, until I get enough science to get the Claw. Then I can plan missions around either retrieving the debris, or degrading the debris' orbit's and letting it burn up on re-entry.

[Superfluous J]

I think the biggest thing I plan on changing is not terminating debris I leave in orbit. What goes up, stays up, until I get enough science to get the Claw. Then I can plan missions around either retrieving the debris, or degrading the debris' orbit's and letting it burn up on re-entry.

Do one better, design your launches to either drop stuff back on Kerbin, crash it into your target, or eject it from the system. I derive a massively disproportionate amount of joy from keeping my space lanes clear naturally.

[eddiew]

I think the biggest thing I plan on changing is not terminating debris I leave in orbit. What goes up, stays up, until I get enough science to get the Claw. Then I can plan missions around either retrieving the debris, or degrading the debris' orbit's and letting it burn up on re-entry.

Honestly... I give you three of them before you're bored The cause is noble, but it'll be such a pain, and debris just doesn't do anything. Unless you have hundreds of pieces

Do one better, design your launches to either drop stuff back on Kerbin, crash it into your target, or eject it from the system. I derive a massively disproportionate amount of joy from keeping my space lanes clear naturally.

I must agree with this... when I can't use a spaceplane, my launchers either have about 3100m/s and detach at 100x20km, or 3600m/s and get the payload into orbit, then turn round and come down for a refund. One of my earliest SSTO craft this career was basically just a rocket that could put 2-3t into orbit via a fairing on the front, then bring itself back down

[Mitchz95]

I'm tentatively planning to do an RSS playthrough in science mode. Should be interesting.

Failing that, science mode in normal KSP with a few different star systems to visit.

[cantab]

Not play career. Not even play science. Next time I start a new save I'm just going Sandbox. Early game stuff by and large isn't a challenge to me. I should be stretching myself with complex missions, it's been a long time since I did something truly impressive and challenging.

[Jett_Quasar]

I'm going to try to see what it's like on hard mode with quick-saves disabled. I'm just about that crazy... or stupid IDK.

JR

[Life on Europa]

colonize laythe,just wating for that 1.1 release...i wonder if its ever going to come out

[sewerbird]

At the moment, enjoying 1.0.4 and playing career without too much thought to 1.1.

However, I will be scrapping my save and starting over once 1.1 hits, with some new settings and changes

- No 'Recover Vessel' outside KSC biome or Island Runway : If a pod falls in the ocean, I need to send a seaplane to retrieve the astronaut. Opposite side of Kerbin? Send a lift. This will incentivize some Kerbin-bound designs and make a few tricky scenarios crop up.

- Network Mandate : By the end of the first year, the CEO wants to go up to LKO station, transfer to a transfer shuttle, orbit the Mun in a small station, land at an outpost there. Then come back the way he came. By the end of the second year, similar routes to Minmus and either Duna surface or Eve orbit must be built.

- 2500 Science at-start : I've done the early science grind so many times in career, I'm going to let myself unlock the first tier of science at the onset to keep my enthusiasm up a bit. The early suborbital flights will still happen due to contracts, but it lets me ignore entirely doing KSC science and some of the early rehash.

- 0 Funds at-start : Simple.

- 60% funds, 60% science

- KAS (chosen new mod to play with)

- Construction Time (same as in 1.0.4)

- Roverdude USI (same)

- Permadeath Kerbals (same)

[regex]

Differently? I think I'll skip the stock career and wait/help until RO/RP-0 are updated. I just can't play stock anymore, at all, even to be objective. It's just too boring.

[eddiew]

I'm going to try to see what it's like on hard mode with quick-saves disabled. I'm just about that crazy... or stupid IDK.

Unless U5 changes things completely, there's things that will ruin your mission without being your fault. Doesn't feel fair to subject yourself to the pain of them.

IMHO you're better with a personal rule of play along the lines of "Quicksave often, quickload only due to bugs. If you crash, you crash. If you burn, you burn. If your space station overheats in LKO, or your rover explodes when you switch to it on the ground, or your actual orbit isn't what was projected, reload that mother because it wasn't your fault."

- - - Updated - - -

Differently? I think I'll skip the stock career and wait/help until RO/RP-0 are updated. I just can't play stock anymore, at all, even to be objective. It's just too boring.

I know where you're coming from I load up on mods and planet packs.

[Terwin]

I am planning on switching out several mods for my next game(after my outer grand tour visits all the planets it can return from, which is hopefully everything with a surface outside Kerbin's orbit)

Adding:

Extra-planetary lunch pads(and affiliated mods)

Some sort of life support(but not one that kills kerbals)

Removing:

sounding rockets(I abuse those cardboard science modules too much)

Stage recovery(If I need the funds I can try for manual recovery)

Atomic age(love the lightbulb but I over-use it)

Near Future(might add it back in later, but want to see how far I can get without all those nifty high-isp engines)

[monstah]

I will actually explore the system instead of just Kerbin and it's moons.

[Arsonik]

Given stable 64bit support I suppose the biggest adjustment for me will be actually "completing" a file and getting all that juicy science. All of my time in career so far has been limited to blitzing the tech tree and going back to sandbox. I simply due to much mod swapping, reinstalling, and things of that nature to keep a stable career file. This is due in part to mods updating anywhere from hours to months after a new version, or simply something new coming a long that looks like it does a better job then what I already have in place for that purpose. I'm hoping I will finally be able to take my "core" of mods and run with them on Direct X with out fear of crashing and stability issues for once. I'm not looking to add much here either. Mostly just take what I already have and push it into a realism install without jumping through hoops. The performance hits for OpenGL are a big price to pay.

[More Boosters]

Play with KSP X6.4! I could normally get to most places in vanilla (not return from Moho but hey!) but now I just built a ridiculous rocket of 1.25m parts just to get to orbit and I am trying right now! Thank Kerbol we have KJR.

Edit: Haha fell short! 5 km/s orbital speed was not enough at all! I love this mod.

Edited September 30, 2015 by More Boosters

[adsii1970]

After much thought about this, there are only a few mods I want to add to the toolbox I already have. These mods are the EVE pack and the Outer Planets Mod. Not meaning to echo too much of what Arsonik said in his post on the topic, I have a bad habit of deleting mods that no longer suit my needs or that I simply felt did not live up to the hype.

One thing I have been thinking of doing is to try to set up a colony on one of the large asteroids - just for kicks.

[Blue_J]

I've been away from KSP for a few months and I'm kind of getting the itch to start a new career rather than wait for 1.1 (and then all the stability updates/mod updates.) As such, here's what I'm thinking of doing differently:

- Play at a lower difficulty level. Yes, lower. If I remember correctly, my last couple career saves (both pre and post-1.0) have been hard mode (except with loads/reverts in case of bugs.) However, the funds/science restrictions make the game a tad grindy for my tastes. I'm pretty confident by now that I can save orbiting kerbals and take tourists around the Mun, and repeating those missions over and over just to get the funds/science for more interesting missions kind of kills my attention span.

- Bootstrap missions more aggressively/stop worrying about gleaning science. KSP isn't too hard if you play conservatively. If you do a bunch of LKO missions, then do a healthy number of Mun-Minmus missions, (especially science missions), send up a science lab, run some Scansat maps, and you can have the whole tech tree unlocked by the time the fist Duna and Eve windows open up. However, I've run....not a small number of those types of missions since I started playing KSP a few years ago. It might not kill me to just let the KSC take it easy for a few months, then launch a tech-constricted chemical-rockets only Dres mission or something.

- Re-think my space stations. Ever since last year, I have kind of default class of space stations that I build in a 150km orbit for refueling and the like. They've a got a pretty healthy fuel storage capacity, (including fuels for whatever mods I have installed at the time,) lots of LS storage, living space, a big docking facility - They're a good family of stations. The problem, of course, is that I generally have to launch them in about 9 or so pieces, plus refueling missions. It takes essentially an entire IRL weekend to build/fill, and by the time I finish, I'm usually a bit bored and I tend to lose interest in career mode soon afterwards. I need to figure out a way to either get the same functionality into orbit in a lot fewer launches, or possibly even bypass the permanent facility all together for interplanetary missions.

TL;DR: I've been playing KSP for a long time and my attention span has decreased, so I'd like to avoid spending weeks running repetitive LKO launches.

[xendelaar]

I just love the science grind!

In my next career run, I will perhaps use a mod that enlarges the tech tree.i will put all the sliders on 10% and will start with 0 cash.

I'm thinking of only visiting moons and planets beyond minmus so i m forced to visit more exotic planets for science points. Maybe I'll try to do everything with ssto's... who knows

Oh yeah... and i won't use any science modules. They are way too overpowered.

Edited October 2, 2015 by xendelaar

[eddiew]

TL;DR: I've been playing KSP for a long time and my attention span has decreased, so I'd like to avoid spending weeks running repetitive LKO launches.

Yeah, I know where you're coming from there. I'm thinking about making Mun off-limits. I have done it many many times and I'm playing with New Horizons, so there are plenty of other places to go!

If you're desperate, you could hyperedit a complete station to orbit, and remove an appropriate amount of funds from your save file. You know you can get it there, you're just fast forwarding

I just love the science grind!

I use 20% science and Community Tech Tree, with some parts mods like Space Y, Atomic Age, and Near Future to flesh it out. I do use labs though, because the massive extra amount of science required is a good offset to the amount generated

2p; I agree with Blue_J above. Low science makes you go places and see planets with high multipliers, but low money just makes you repeat the same things over and over. You'll fly 10 tourist missions for every proper launch and you start hating their beady little eyes every time they smile ¬_¬