My Disappointment in Career mode and 1.0 in a Whole

[Speedbird]

Hi guys as the title says career mode has left me disappointed. In order to launch missions, I need money, and while that all sounds great at first, it actually is not, and that is the missions themselves fault. They are ridiculously specific, making them take a lot of time and energy to accomplish, but they are also ridiculously boring! Have you ever seen a space agency fire a rocket 17000 meters high just to test a jet engine? The money system and the boring missions combined keeps me from doing things I really want to do, like flying to the Mun, gathering science, building space stations, launching satellites ect. You could suggest that I download mission mods, but the thing is no mods fulfill what I want to do! I do not want to get a mission to build a station! I do not want to build stations for the sake of fulfilling missions, I want to build the stations to gather science! I want missions that use the stations, not missions that make me send up stations! Whats more, even if I do find some good mission mods, chances are I will be flooded with boring missions! I could just play Science mode, but then the boredom of being able to launch how ever many ships I want, no matter the outcome, strikes me hard! Its not just career mode that left me disappointed, its the whole of 1.0! Many of my favorite mods have not been updated, but that is not Squads fault. Deadly Reentry, one of my favorite mods is obsolete! The new version is good, but it no longer displays my ships temperature! I hate it when a bar appears on the top of my spacecraft whenever it gets too hot or aerodynamically stressed! I need advice, is there anyway I can make this game fun for me again, or has this game just taken a course that does not appeal to me?

[Temstar]

 

9 minutes ago, Speedbird said:

Have you ever seen a space agency fire a rocket 17000 meters high just to test a jet engine?

They actually do do this in real life:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/aeronautics/features/hifire.html

[Kerbart]

38 minutes ago, Speedbird said:

Hi guys as the title says career mode has left me disappointed. In order to launch missions, I need money, and while that all sounds great at first, it actually is not, and that is the missions themselves fault. They are ridiculously specific, making them take a lot of time and energy to accomplish, but they are also ridiculously boring! Have you ever seen a space agency fire a rocket 17000 meters high just to test a jet engine? The money system and the boring missions combined keeps me from doing things I really want to do, like flying to the Mun, gathering science, building space stations, launching satellites ect.

(...)

I need advice, is there anyway I can make this game fun for me again, or has this game just taken a course that does not appeal to me?

I've rebooted career many times, over many different versions of the game. I'm a weekend-warrior space agency director and not a semi-pro like some here, so maybe my advice is unsound. However, I've learned that part of the challenge of the game is to make career mode work for you. Use the contracts to get paid for the things you want to achieve; don't execute the contracts merely for the sake of executing contracts. In many cases I'd except a contract that goes along the way of what I want, wait for another contract to show up to make some extra cash along the way and then use the contract to build a space station, or an addition to it, etc.

A science mission to the Mun? Not unless I have a tourist to pay for the ride. Stocking up fuel in orbit for my shuttles to Mun and Minmus? Not unless I find a contract to extend a station with a ridiculous amount of fuel. Testing parts? Usually when I'm sending a probe up for a contract, and let the part hitch along anyway.

I have a notebook full of notes, rotation schedules for the crew to get them all experienced, etc. It's a big puzzle but I enjoy figuring it out.

[Plusck]

In addition to what Kerbart said, the contextual contracts also pay you good money for going slightly out of your way when you already have your own, fun missions going.

For example, I went to Eve and Gilly just to check the place out. After getting a couple of Kerbals there, I was asked to move orbit around Gilly (15m/s expenditure in fuel, for 160,000 cash!) and rescue a stranded engineer (can't remember what I'll get paid, but that third seat on the pod back was empty and now probably pays for the cost of the entire mission).

I'm on medium difficulty. I've accepted a ludicrous contract that'll cost me millions if I fail it but which has set me a 32-year target of getting insane amounts of ore up from the surface of Eve. And in the meantime it's pushing me to really get set up around Eve, test atmospheric entry and mining ship designs, and so on and so forth. 

So for me, the contract system is really not stopping me from doing anything but is pushing me to do things a bit more energetically, with multiple missions going at the same time and not simply warping through single missions to the other planets.

 

[Superfluous J]

Yeah you don't do a mission to complete the contract. You do the contract to help pay for the mission. Or, if you're bored look over the contracts for ideas for future missions.

But by no means should the contracts BE the missions.

[Foxster]

I too find the whole contract system tedious. I strongly recommend playing in Science mode as a good balance of having to work through the tech tree whilst still allowing you to build cool stuff without the restrictions of cost. 

[Rocket In My Pocket]

Have you thought about tweaking the Career mode settings? Maybe give yourself more starting funds? Or increase the rewards for contracts?

Personally I've never had much of a problem with funds in Career mode, seemed like I always had enough money or more to do what I wanted.

Given that re-entry is deadly enough in stock now, I'm not sure why you'd need a mod for it? Also, F11 turns the temp gauge on/off.

[Choctofliatrio2.0]

What you can do combine a major contract with a lesser one. You could do one mission and get multiple contracts. For example, say I had three contracts: Explore the Mun, Test an engine in low Kerbin orbit, and Position a satellite in specific Mun orbit. You can combine all of these. Launch a satellite, get into the orbit of Kerbin, test the engine, fly to the Mun, fulfilling two of the four Explore the Mun parts, and then put your satellite in the correct orbit. The mission essentially pays for itself, and adds an interesting challenge.

[Caelib]

It sounds like your idea of fun is more tailored to Sandbox than Career Mode.  It's like you want the career without having to actually DO the work involved with progressing it ;D

Edited December 16, 2015 by Caelib

[Deadpangod3]

You can build science stations, like I had a contract to put up a station for five kerbals in kerbin orbit, so i launched Jeb in a cupola on the station core into orbit, and then docked a science lab with the docking stage being a crewed capsule with Bill and Bob in it, so in total the station had 5 spaces for kerbals, and i brought a scientist and engineer up too, and i can just undock and deorbit the science lab after it goes through all the science stuff it has, and launch a new one!

[Deutherius]

You know you can disable the heatbars with F10, right? Displaying temperatures of the parts on right click can be turned on in the debug menu(alt+F12), under physics/thermal.

I have quite the opposite experience in career mode. Even when playing on hard, I am drowning in millions of funds after sending a few low-cost contract satellites, all the while gaining a good network around the Kerbin system (don't have RT, but hey, I can RP if I want to). Guess I'm lucky, but I just enjoy working with the contracts (and compared to 0.90 and before, they are usually pretty sane - I haven't been asked to test a jet engine on the surface of the Mun... yet). The reputation penalty for declining a mission has also forced me to not click through the jobs I don't want, giving me a considerable delay between launches - I loathed it at first, but it made my space program much more relaxed (not to mention a little more realistic - no space agency launches 15 missions over 6 hours, constantly).

Edited December 16, 2015 by Deutherius

[tater]

The career is by far the weakest part of the game, it doesn't need tweaking, it needs to be bulldozed and rebuilt from the ground up..

[StarManta]

I'm with Choctofliatrio - the main source of fun in the missions comes from combinations. I will look over the available missions, and choose a list of missions that I can achieve in a small number of launches, or even a single launch. And getting those all squeezed onto one vessel is the fun. The first few tourism missions are a challenge because you don't yet have the tech to build a proper rocket, and stacking two capsules on top of each other is harrowing to say the least. Eventually that gets routine, you get more science, and you unlock parts that make it easier... but now instead of them being tedious and mundane, I make it harder by accepting 3, 4, 5 tourism contracts at once, and getting as many done simultaneously as I can. If a "test X thing at X feet" comes along, I try to figure out where on my rocket I can put that thing so that it can be tested without interfering with the rest of the mission.

13 hours ago, Speedbird said:

Deadly Reentry, one of my favorite mods is obsolete! The new version is good, but it no longer displays my ships temperature! I hate it when a bar appears on the top of my spacecraft whenever it gets too hot or aerodynamically stressed!

I'm really not sure what your complaint is here. "I love X, but now X is a part of the game, so now I hate X"? Or is your complaint in the way the temperature information is presented?

[MrOsterman]

For me, I've been playing in Career mode and I've only had a few pinches in money and they were generally early in my career.  What I did do was focus on "I want to go to the Mun, what contracts are going to help me there?" and then I took contracts that are in line with my goals.  For example I had one contract that asked for a Solar Station, and I had some tourists who wanted to orbit the sun.  So I build a base, flew it up to solar orbit and then drove it back down into Kerbal orbit.  Eventually I parked it around the Mun and then finally brought the tourists home.

Part of the trick for me was realizing that some of these contracts are INCREDIBLY long.  My tourists spent nearly 8 years in space which was fine because, you know, they gave me 12 years to do what they needed before I had to bring them home.

 

[silvertree]

After I got bored with stock career in 1.0, I started with the RO RPO career mode and havent looked back since, I've been having so much fun trying to build my own space program. Nothing like the feeling of putting up your first satellite up using real life rocket parts.

[Johnny Wishbone]

1 hour ago, tater said:

The career is by far the weakest part of the game, it doesn't need tweaking, it needs to be bulldozed and rebuilt from the ground up..

This.

When career mode came out, I dropped sandbox play and exclusively went career. Every iteration of career mode has, in my opinion, gotten progressively worse. Between contract issues, the nonsensical tech-tree layout, and the constant changes to the physics and aerodynamic models, my enjoyment of career mode has declined. I tried 3 times to play through the 1.0.5 version of career mode and found it extremely grindy and un-fun. For now, I've shelved KSP in favor of Fallout 4. I'll come back to KSP when 1.1 comes out, though I'm probably not going to be as entheusiastic about the game as I used to be. KSP used to be a game that easily could suck up 12-14 hours of my time on a Saturday. Last time I played it, I struggled to get through an hour of before I was bored, frustrated, or just irritated by it. That depresses me.

 

[Pecan]

10 minutes ago, Johnny Wishbone said:

This.

When career mode came out, I dropped sandbox play and exclusively went career. Every iteration of career mode has, in my opinion, gotten progressively worse...

Conversely, I think every iteration of career has got better - but not nearly enough to compensate for the tech-tree.  Squad's problem is having to make things fun and exciting at the beginning, starting manned and all that, letting flight-simulator fans make incredibly unrealistic spaceplanes almost immediately and keeping space-fans content.  It's what the community kept shouting for, but I'll stay in my sandbox until I can take a ladder on every flight and start with rocket-launched satellites.

Having said that, I've always found it easy in career mode to get started with a few contracts/firsts and let that pay for everything else.  I don't find the limitations interesting enough to make it worth any 'hard mode' adjustments but I still find designing space-vehicles interesting.  So I'm still playing KSP after two years.

[tater]

The new additions to career have been good to a point, the problem is that the "improvements" to career are in fact fixing things that were initially wrong by slapping more stuff on, without fixing the bad initial situation.

[Der Anfang]

To add onto what Kerbart said, you need to be careful about declining contracts. Don't make the same mistake I have made; you lose reputation each time you decline one. Not a whole lot, but if you just decline decline decline decline searching for the contract you want, your reputation will drop a lot. I hadn't realised this until after I asked what happened in the forums. I was at 80% rep at one point, and the next thing I know I was at 60%.

It's not at all a huge impact if you decline one or two at a time, but I say it is just better to wait out the contracts.

[Kerbol Macrosystems]

4 hours ago, StarManta said:

The first few tourism missions are a challenge because you don't yet have the tech to build a proper rocket, and stacking two capsules on top of each other is harrowing to say the least.

I do this all the time.  There has not been a single re-entry of a double capsule that has gone smoothly.  I just realized the other day I might be able to decouple them, and use the tweakables on the parachutes to make them automatically pop at 2000m.  The aerodynamics keep the capsules pointed the right way, so if the capsules don't get too far from each other then both will (in theory) splash down safely on their own.  Something to test when I get off this work trip.

[322997am]

I sometimes hack in money when mission control has tourist, test, base, and other boring contracts

[Der Anfang]

2 hours ago, Johnny Wishbone said:

This.

When career mode came out, I dropped sandbox play and exclusively went career. Every iteration of career mode has, in my opinion, gotten progressively worse. Between contract issues, the nonsensical tech-tree layout, and the constant changes to the physics and aerodynamic models, my enjoyment of career mode has declined. I tried 3 times to play through the 1.0.5 version of career mode and found it extremely grindy and un-fun. For now, I've shelved KSP in favor of Fallout 4. I'll come back to KSP when 1.1 comes out, though I'm probably not going to be as entheusiastic about the game as I used to be. KSP used to be a game that easily could suck up 12-14 hours of my time on a Saturday. Last time I played it, I struggled to get through an hour of before I was bored, frustrated, or just irritated by it. That depresses me.

 

I agree with some of what you say. I geberally love playing with career myself, but the only issue I have with it is that in the mid-late game it tends to get very grindy. It's a little tedious having to build up funds for a science mission on 40k-60k a contract, especially if you are going interplanetary. Albeit, by that point I have a couple million funds or so, but still.

Even then, I like career, and find sandbox a bit boring, but I mucj around with it occasionally.

[I_Killed_Jeb]

I enjoy career greatly. It's not perfect, but having random wrenches thrown into my plans give me a challenge to design around. (e.g. hm... how DO I design a mun lander around the "test Rhino in suborbital flight over mun" contract?)

[archnem]

My biggest gripe about career mode - let ME decide what the goals of my space program should be!

I just came back to KSP after a few weeks of Fallout, so hey, I start a new career.  Early on, same old thing, grind to orbit, plan my first Mun mission.  I just landed a 6 kerbal lander and returned it and now I have this contract:

Build a new outpost on the Mun, must support 16 kerbals, be on wheels, have a science lab, 6000 units of liquid fuel, 7500 units of electric charge, 3 pilots, and a partridge in a pear tree! Don't you think this might be a bit beyond my fledgling space program, considering I JUST LANDED ON THE MUN 5 MINUTES AGO?

I want to go to Minmus, then Duna, so now I have to wait for the "Explore Duna" or "Build outpost" or similar contracts to randomly generate.  Now I can't even decline the millions of "Rescue this dumbass" or "Test this stupid part under these stupid conditions" contracts without taking a rep penalty. Agh.

In my vision, I would go to Mission Control and choose MY OWN goals/milestones, and then contracts would be generated based on those.  For example, I want to go to Duna, so I choose as my goal "Land a crew on Duna", perhaps with some other modifiers like # of crew, science experiments I'd like to do while I'm there, etc.  Then contracts would generate based on that goal - Rockomax wants the publicity, so they ask me to use their engines/parts on the upcoming Duna mission, in exchange for funds.  Tourists would ask to tag along.  The science division would like me to set up a satellite or do an experiment while I'm there. And so on.

As it is in career mode, I feel like I'm just hoping for the right contracts to generate to do what I want to do in the first place.  And I'd better hope I'm not out on a mission doing stuff when they DO generate or I might miss them never to be seen again. (*cough* Explore Body contract *cough*).  Let ME decide what I want to do!  Maybe I don't want to go interplanetary at all!  Maybe I DO want to build a huge munar base!  Let me decide and THEN give me the ridiculous requirements, not vice-versa.

In short, make contracts work for the player, not the other way around!

/Rant off.

[Temstar]

5 minutes ago, archnem said:

Don't you think this might be a bit beyond my fledgling space program, considering I JUST LANDED ON THE MUN 5 MINUTES AGO

Those type of contracts have extremely long duration though, something like 20 years to complete. I find that quite realistic - when Kennedy did his "we choose to go to the moon" speech he basically forced a contract just like this on NASA with a duration of 8 years, at a time when NASA could barely launch a single person into earth orbit on a spacecraft best described as "worn" rather than "piloted".

Plus if you don't like a contract just don't agree to it and let it expire, plenty more where they came from.