No quicksave, permadeath, career game?

[ToukieToucan]

So I've noticed that I use F9 quite a lot maybe too much. I'm up for a challenge but I have only gone to a couple of planets/moons (Kerbin, Mun, Minmus, Duna and Ike) (either was too lazy to go to the other planets or maxed out on science) and I can easily rendezvous and dock. 

I kind of want an "in your face, jeb's dead because you weren't careful enough" experience but I really fear long missions that I'll forget to fold out my solar panels or something similar. 

I've never really made a good plane so thats something to work on.

 

Now based off of my "skills" above do you think I'd be ready for a "No quicksave, permadeath, career mode" save with the following mods:

 

-TAC life support (and the "deep freeze" mod for long journeys)

-Antenna Range (Because I suck at pointing dishes in Remote Tech)

-Interstellar Mod

-Some extra planets (Sarnus and the Valentine solar system)

-Last but not least: Final Frontier (got to love ribbons)

 

 

Edited March 1, 2016 by ToukieToucan

[Evanitis]

Good luck!

I started such a hard~ish career game lately (with a highly customized difficulty to keep both the grind and resource income low). What really helped me in playing this way was the Kerbal Construction Time mod. I don't care much about it's main feature, but it also has a simulator-mode. That's lovely, because you can test the crafts before actually building them - it's useful, for eliminating launch-problems with possibly catastrophic results, while still keeping the edge of -actual- missions.

[ToukieToucan]

10 minutes ago, Evanitis said:

Good luck!

I started such a hard~ish career game lately (with a highly customized difficulty to keep both the grind and resource income low). What really helped me in playing this way was the Kerbal Construction Time mod. I don't care much about it's main feature, but it also has a simulator-mode. That's lovely, because you can test the crafts before actually building them - it's useful, for eliminating launch-problems with possibly catastrophic results, while still keeping the edge of -actual- missions.

Yea I don't like science/money grind either so I think I'll go for 90% science and income.

Kerbal Construction Time seems interesting and I'll download the Ingame Notes mod (or something similar) so I don't mess up with relay sats like I did yesterday releasing my engineless probe 100,000 meters too low. 

[Evanitis]

I actually play with 30% incomes, because I love to be limited trough the whole career. To take the edge off the grind, I edited in a high-tech SSTO plane and a truck to refuel it (once fuel transfer is unlocked).

[Rocket In My Pocket]

You'll be fine right up until the game crashes/glitches/bugs out just as you are about to finish a couple hour long mission. Then I expect you'll need to purchase a new keyboard, a sturdy one at that.

In my opinion KSP quicksaving is more of a quality of life thing as opposed to a difficulty thing. I don't feel the game gets any harder without quicksaves, it just becomes more time consuming.

Just my two cents, best of luck!

[ToukieToucan]

12 minutes ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

You'll be fine right up until the game crashes/glitches/bugs out just as you are about to finish a couple hour long mission. Then I expect you'll need to purchase a new keyboard, a sturdy one at that.

In my opinion KSP quicksaving is more of a quality of life thing as opposed to a difficulty thing. I don't feel the game gets any harder without quicksaves, it just becomes more time consuming.

Just my two cents, best of luck!

It also requires more planning and attention to detail.

[Kerbin vonKerbal]

I feel as though, especially with a modded install, quick save is more of insurance rather than cheating/making easier. Especially when you've switched screens multiple times, and the only way to save would be on the Space Center screen. 

 

I like to play with no reverts/missing kerbal a stay missing for the difficulty and real consequences of flawed designs, but I couldn't do without quick saves simply because the game gets unstable with mods. Just my two cents.

[ToukieToucan]

30 minutes ago, Kerbin vonKerbal said:

I feel as though, especially with a modded install, quick save is more of insurance rather than cheating/making easier. Especially when you've switched screens multiple times, and the only way to save would be on the Space Center screen. 

 

I like to play with no reverts/missing kerbal a stay missing for the difficulty and real consequences of flawed designs, but I couldn't do without quick saves simply because the game gets unstable with mods. Just my two cents.

Right, but isnt quickloading kind of reverting?

[Kerbin vonKerbal]

2 minutes ago, ToukieToucan said:

Right, but isnt quickloading kind of reverting?

Ehhhhhh, I suppose you could justify that. I use it primarily before I switch screens, because kraken.

[ToukieToucan]

4 minutes ago, Kerbin vonKerbal said:

Ehhhhhh, I suppose you could justify that. I use it primarily before I switch screens, because kraken.

Right, but if you make a stupid mistake do you reload or not? 

[Kerbin vonKerbal]

 

2 minutes ago, ToukieToucan said:

Right, but if you make a stupid mistake do you reload or not? 

Not really, no. It all boils down to player preference I guess. I COULD use it for that, I just choose not to.

Edited March 1, 2016 by Kerbin vonKerbal

[Nich]

You know I used to think quick saving and reverting was not hard core enough but then I realized that real astronauts would train their entire career for 2-3 missions.  At that point I realized if I spend 2-3 attempts doing something it is still a hell of a lot less practice then a real astronaut would have gotten.

[Buster Charlie]

Because of the amount of crashes and bugs in the game I've decided for self control vs handicapping myself.

So my rules are, manned missions are about crew survival. I've had several failed launches due to rocket design errors, and I've suffered the consequenceso of staging off the capsule for recovery,  knowing my rocket was going to splat. If the crew had died, even though I have reverting and saving enable, I have a brain and and self control, so I didn't revert because the failure was part of my game, not caused by a bug.

 

I had an unmanned  launch, the satellite stage had no parachute because it had no crew and no recovery plans.

Alas one of the srb crashed into the core and the entire rocket broke up into a dozen fragmenta. Miraculously  my 2nd stage was unharmed, I had enough reaction wheels to steer it and tried to do a propulsive landing even though it had an vacuum rated engine. I almost pulled a engine landing, but I was off by about 50ms and it splashed hard.

 

The next launch worked fine, and I suppose I could now put abort chutes on a probe to save it during a launch abort.

 

I guess my point is, just because I can revert or abort, doesn't mean I am forced to.  Like others have said sometimes the game throws you a curve ball.  

 

I might revert a flight if there is something stupid like the launch clamps being on the wrong stage, ill justify that as a launch pad abort, the rocket didn't take off, it's just a faster way to recycle the launch for me to revert to launch, move down the clamps, and retry. 

[Rocket In My Pocket]

I'd say you are better off using the honor system and just choosing not to reload/revert/quicksave rather than actually locking yourself out of being able to.

Maybe I'm biased from personal experience, since my first and only attempt at an "Ironman" career ended a few hours in when Jeb bugged out and fell through the ground on an EVA near the KSC and promptly died.

In my opinion, If you haven't done anything wrong and the game crashes or glitches out, I don't see any harm in undoing what is clearly not your fault.

[Vim Razz]

5 hours ago, ToukieToucan said:

Now based off of my "skills" above do you think I'd be ready for a "No quicksave, permadeath, career mode" save with the following mods:

tbh, "skill level" doesn't really matter.  Learning to play without quicksaves or reverts involves developing it's own set of habits and paranoia that otherwise don't have much relevance to the rest of the game.

The real question is whether you're ready to deal with several nights worth of work getting wrecked in a hearbeat through some stupid mistake, clumsy fingers, or a game glitch.  Some people just cant handle it.

[Guest]

I just forget to quicksave because pressing F5 means I also have to press Fn.

[Waxing_Kibbous]

I tried this method recently, and everyone mentioned the Kraken yet I didn't believe them because I generally have a very stable experience in KSP. YET, when playing like this (no F9 + permadeath) I had some issues- a "warp to node" slammed me into Minmus for instance, something that hasn't occurred before or since. I play with F9 now, but try to exercise as much restraint as possible. It'd be nice if a major incident like a Kerbal death triggered an option to go back to previous persistent save, or say a set number of persistent saves (even just 2) would cycle so players could get some kind of emergency revert.

Edited March 1, 2016 by Waxing_Kibbous

[kotomikun]

Just yesterday, one of my kerbals slipped off a two-meter-high base on Minmus and poofed, apparently because I was looking at something else. That same base had its mining rig completely vanish not long ago, due to some sort of loading glitch, and the same thing happened to an entire interplanetary mission a while back. I left two kerbals in a ship attached to an asteroid for a long time, and when I checked back they were buried inside it; the ship exploded as soon as I detached the claw. (Luckily the kerbals were able to EVA right through the asteroid to a rescue ship.) My Laythe lander fell over when I walked too far away from it. I could go on... this is all in one save, by the way.

Quicksaves make the difference between glitches being amusing diversions, and being a constant source of frustration. I don't worry too much about quickloads to fix human error, because I'm obsessive enough as it is, but some people like the extra challenge/humor of mistakes leading to disasters. Playing with quicksaves completely off, or even with just one quicksave that could easily get corrupted, seems downright masochistic.

[oglommi]

13 hours ago, Evanitis said:

I actually play with 30% incomes, because I love to be limited trough the whole career. To take the edge off the grind, I edited in a high-tech SSTO plane and a truck to refuel it (once fuel transfer is unlocked).

That seems really boring, really really boring.

[Evanitis]

1 hour ago, oglommi said:

That seems really boring, really really boring.

Not even close.

3-4 Mun-Minmus tourism runs + quick science landings were enough to unlock docking ports and MPL. That allows fruitful, reusable interplanetary missions - and I kinda' need those as science in Kerbin SoI is very low. Sent two probes to Eve, and started to assemble a complex but minimalist Duna team for a nearby launch window. Damn, I should unlock patched conics by than...
Cash kinda' goes to building upgrades and future projects - I only keep 30-40k to launch a quick tourist flight when needed. If some ugly thing happens, I still have the plane to do a contract or two.

Anyways, what I disliked in my previous career games is that money got irrelevant pretty fast, and I could unlock the whole tree with one interplanetary lab, or even without leaving Kerbin's SoI. The above solution feels fun up to this point.

Edited March 2, 2016 by Evanitis

[Brofessional]

15 hours ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

You'll be fine right up until the game crashes/glitches/bugs out just as you are about to finish a couple hour long mission. Then I expect you'll need to purchase a new keyboard, a sturdy one at that.

In my opinion KSP quicksaving is more of a quality of life thing as opposed to a difficulty thing. I don't feel the game gets any harder without quicksaves, it just becomes more time consuming.

Just my two cents, best of luck!

I have to agree.  I'm fond of very unforgiving games, and like the idea of difficulty mods and no quicksave, but the game is still too unstable for it.

[Draco T stand-up guy]

I tried a few games where I turned off only the Revert and Quick Save features - I went bankrupt killing pilots in quick order.

Will have to try that Kerbal Construction Time mod and see how that goes (seems more realistic as well as IRL they design the rockets to specification (They know the orbits and burns) before launching them. In KSB it seems that we build them and then see if they work - it's fun but not real ).

 

Good luck on your Hard Mode games.

[bonyetty]

The Kraken gave me trouble with hard mode. Now I have Luke in an Xwing on top of my computer screen. If he is watching no reverts unless the Kraken and when I am testing or mucking around he gets turned around. My wife now taunts me when Luke is watching. "Oooo lukes watching who ya gona kill on this mission".

Edited March 2, 2016 by bonyetty

[Beowolf]

I personally handle this problem via Kerbal Alarm Clock. Whenever you let KAC change ships for you, it'll create a new save. But those saves aren't convenient to use in an Ironman-style game. Loading saves is disabled so you have to close KSP entirely and rename one to persistent.sfs.

That's perfect for giving me a safety net in-case the game flakes out, yet being too much hassle to use as a quickload replacement.  

Glitches that don't destroy a whole mission I usually treat as random mechanical failures, and my Kerbals go EVA to improvise solutions with new parts from a handy KIS container.

[JoeNapalm]

On 3/1/2016 at 5:30 AM, Evanitis said:

Good luck!

I started such a hard~ish career game lately (with a highly customized difficulty to keep both the grind and resource income low). What really helped me in playing this way was the Kerbal Construction Time mod. I don't care much about it's main feature, but it also has a simulator-mode. That's lovely, because you can test the crafts before actually building them - it's useful, for eliminating launch-problems with possibly catastrophic results, while still keeping the edge of -actual- missions.

 

So, aren't you then basically replacing quicksave with a mod that basically does the same thing?

 

-Jn-