Real fuels + 64k made the game really challenging

[DivisionByZero]

I took some time away from the game and just started to come back. I seem to never get very far when I start career modes, almost never getting past missions to the Mun and Minmus. Hell, I don't think I've landed on anything outside the Kerbin system in any career mode game and I've been playing for 2+ years. Oh well. At least the latest version seems stable so I won't have to upgrade quite immediately and hit 'reset'.

I was using the new Real Fuels alongside 64k to see how it was. They added engine ignitions to Real Fuels, though, so this makes an extra challenge. This + Remote Tech are ruining so many missions for me.

I'm right at a danger point. I took the RT mission to set up 4 comm-sats and the Munar flyby mission. However, I lost 2 satellites in the process which tosses about 50k funds. The first was lost to leaving it in the wrong orientation and it lost power. This is the one that I failed to program orientation changes to stabilize the fuel (aero+nto) and the engine failed to ignite. It's slowly decaying in orbit as the periapsis is less than 91km up. It's been up there about 30days and still hasn't lucked into a better orientation to recover power. The second I lost to a burn calculation error. I was trying to circularize for the RT mission (e<0.004) and mis-calculated my burn and wound up raising my ap WAY over my burn location. All the fuel was gone then, so it's a dud.

Now I have insufficient money to build the last two comm-sats. The next thing in my build queue is the second commsat (if it succeeds). I modified the satellite for the Munar flyby, though which has a decent payout and all you have to do is get in the SOI. I did a simulated mission to check my calculations and I think I've got it set now, but if I miss I think my career game will be over (or I'll have to cheat my funds back in). Did I mention that without the full tracking station, I have to calculate my burns by hand? Yeah... career in RT+64k+RealFuels is hard. At least it's got me playing again!

[xendelaar]

Nice report. The RT mod sounds like a real hassle. Maybe I'll give it a try when i get tired from my current career campaign.

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[CatastrophicFailure]

Managing everything can be tricky. If you've gotten far enough, Kerballed craft can be a real life-saver before your RT network is fleshed out. Your stuck satellite is still salvageable, the orbit won't actually decay if you're focused elsewhere. You could try rendezvousing with it with your munar probe before TMI and giving it a little bump to get power back, but yes that is risky. Adding more ground stations to the RT CFG is fairly easy too, one is hard early on and a bit unrealistic IMHO. If you want a less "cheaty" way of generating emergency funds, there are mods out there that let you trade funds for science/rep, or even give you an outright loan.

Welcome back to the learning curve I wish you luck.