So what ended your Career mode play through?

[Yakuzi]

• Lack of immersion
• Lack of meaningful progress
• The contract sidequest^tm system that get's in the way of my actual space program

Edited March 8, 2016 by Yakuzi

[Kerbol Macrosystems]

My careers always end when a new version comes out, and I want to try all the new goodies.

[JoeNapalm]

 

I build rockets, not spreadsheets.

 

-Jn-

[eddiew]

32 bit memory limit.

I wanted all the graphics mods, all the planet packs and all of the parts packs, and I couldn't have them. Stripped down to a bare minimum I was prepared to play with, ended up launching to 2.7gb memory on the menu, or about 1 hour of play time. With a 5 minute startup from an SSD.

So I'm waiting for stable 64 bit on windows

 

Prior to that... only major versions, and the decision to let go of Remote Tech. While I found RT to be a very well put together mod, it introduced challenges and problems that ultimately didn't interest me (primarily speed of light and signal occlusion). Different strokes and all

[Terwin]

Generally I start a new career with each new version, although I may return to an old career once my preferred mods are updated.

My last abandoned career was abandoned because a mod updated and all my interplanetary ships and bases/fuel depots vanished due to missing parts.  Before that I stopped my game because I had visited Gilly, Moho, Duna, Ike, Dres, Val, bop, pol, and Eeloo(most with the same ship), and wanted to start over without using Atomic Age or Near Future engines to repeat the process(possibly visiting Lathe, Tylo, and even Eve).  I also decided to start using a life support mod to make the challenge more interesting.

Not sure if I will come back to my current game or start a new one after 1.1, probably depends on how far I get before my preferred mods get updated(scansat, UKS-LS, UKS-MKS, tweakscale, and KER round out my 'I'm only half playing without these' mods)

[Randazzo]

9 hours ago, Aperture Science said:

Boredom ended it for me.

This, many times over.

I will usually get as far as "Explore Bop" and "Explore Pol", and then I'm bored. Two year transfer times, already sent up tons of satellites, already have stations, tech tree completed or very nearly completed, just not a lot left to entertain me. At this point I will typically try a new set of mods in a new career.

Edited March 8, 2016 by Randazzo

[Choctofliatrio2.0]

This is a science save, but whatever. Everything was going well. Interplanetary probes to Duna and Eve were en route, and the Kerbin system had been conquered. Until I got a contract. Extract ore from Minmus and deliver it to Kerbin orbit. Easy, I foolishly thought, as I started planning. First, I built my mining lander. It was the Silent Eclipse, a shuttle capable of hauling 1500 units of ore to Minmus orbit. I then landed it and started mining as I set up the rest of the operation. It was... a debacle. The Silent Eclipse was unmanned and used 4 small drills, so mining took ages. I had power issues where only 3/4 drills could run at a time. Electrical storage was limited, and the only reason it ran through the night was through an accidental glitch. 

I was meanwhile preparing the station. I had a small station in Minmus orbit, and I added to it. I launched a double mission. One module had a few large containers to hold ore, the other module was a crewed capsule designed to dock to the Silent Eclipse when it returned to orbit. It had an engineer, giant batteries, and several solar arrays to fix the problems the ship had been having. It was at this point I realized I had used up all the Jr. Docking Ports on the ship, which was a problem since the Silent Eclipse required one such port. I sent up a truss with many of the ports. Then, on that fateful day, the Silent Eclipse returned to the station. I docked it fine, and transferred the ore to the holding tanks. Due to me being dumb, in order to attach the upgrade to the mining lander, I needed to undock the tanks and move them. It was at this point I realized the upgrade module had no RCS, and was now floating freely. The Silent Eclipse chased after it as fast as a giant, lumbering ore tanker could go, but it was futile. I then tried to salvage the mission by redocking the tanks.

But it got worse.

In my designing, I knew that the upgrade's batteries would be sufficient for both it and the tanker, and once it was on station power it wouldn't be a problem. I had no batteries on the tanks. I quickly tried to redock it, but to no avail, and I watched helplessly as its power drained to zero. 

At this point, my engineer was freely floating in his capsule, no way of getting back to the station. My tank module, with the ore I'd spent months mining, was slowly drifting uncontrollably away. The Silent Eclipse sadly hovered near the station, me too distraught to bother redocking it.

That was my first and only adventure into the wonderful world of resource mining!

[Notwal]

It got boring after I discovered how to exploit the game. (meaning give myself science and funds) After that, I just resorted to Sandbox. It was really helpful in that it slowly introduced me to new parts.

[regex]

9 hours ago, Yakuzi said:

• The contract sidequest^tm system that get's in the way of my actual space program

Basically this.  Every time I go to start up a career mode game I remember just how uninteresting, unfocused, and unsteerable KSP's career mode is.  It's more random than the roguelikes  (actual roguelikes, not Steam's codeword for "includes permadeath") I so enjoy.  I mean, I'll check out the changes in the latest version but I have a feeling I'm still not going to be impressed because I still won't be able to set objectives and control the direction of my space program.

[Renegrade]

18 minutes ago, regex said:

Basically this.  Every time I go to start up a career mode game I remember just how uninteresting, unfocused, and unsteerable KSP's career mode is.  It's more random than the roguelikes  (actual roguelikes, not Steam's codeword for "includes permadeath") I so enjoy.  I mean, I'll check out the changes in the latest version but I have a feeling I'm still not going to be impressed because I still won't be able to set objectives and control the direction of my space program.

Since the rep penalty was added, I can't cancel my way into having my own direction anymore (not that that was fun *cough*), so I'm feeling this lack of direction more powerfully these days... Maybe 1.2?

[regex]

1 minute ago, Renegrade said:

Since the rep penalty was added, I can't cancel my way into having my own direction anymore (not that that was fun *cough*)

I usually used the debug window because it was so much faster than the UI.  That probably wouldn't give a penalty.

[FullMetalMachinist]

32 minutes ago, Renegrade said:

Since the rep penalty was added, I can't cancel my way into having my own direction anymore (not that that was fun *cough*), so I'm feeling this lack of direction more powerfully these days... Maybe 1.2?

Also that penalty is in the difficulty options when you start a new game. I think it's dumb so I always turn it off. 

[Graveworks]

Too many missions were simply devoured whole by the Kraken, never to be seen again.

[Waxing_Kibbous]

@regex and @Yakuzi have you ever used Contract Configurator? It lets you select which contract types are available throughout the game allowing you to sort of steer your program in the directions you want.

[nightingale]

5 minutes ago, Waxing_Kibbous said:

@regex and @Yakuzi have you ever used Contract Configurator? It lets you select which contract types are available throughout the game allowing you to sort of steer your program in the directions you want.

"sort of" being the key phrase. I'm looking at ways to improve on that for a future release.

[regex]

35 minutes ago, Waxing_Kibbous said:

@regex and @Yakuzi have you ever used Contract Configurator? It lets you select which contract types are available throughout the game allowing you to sort of steer your program in the directions you want.

Yeah, I don't like playing career without it.  As @nightingale puts it, you still can't really "steer" the space program.  The contract system is flawed at the core.

[HorusKol]

Probably on my third serious career. Lost count of the actual number of times I've restarted, though - usually because I started with new mods, and then realised they were bugged/awful/not-for-me.

First serious career ended when the new career mode was introduced and the contract system offered more direction than the original basic science mode. It wasn't too big a deal, because I'd only ever gotten as far as Minmus. 

The second serious career (this time I'd gotten probes to Duna and Eve) ended when the atmospheric physics changed, and I took a long break to forgot all my habits in building and flying rockets.

This third career - I've taken advantage of Contract Configurator, and also parts/packs like RemoteTech and ScanSat to provide more depth and direction to my space programme. I haven't seen too much of a problem with direction that the stock contracts offer - but I heard that they get less directed once you get out beyond Minmus.

[RocketBlam]

The last one, that almost ended my career, is a bug that prevents contracts from completing. I was supposed to get data from space around Gilly, and no matter where I took the data (high over Gilly, flying at Gilly, whatever) it would not complete. I've had this bug before and I've been able to confirm my game cache with Steam to fix it, but that didn't even work here.

Luckily I found that you can force complete contracts with ALT-F12, which I normally wouldn't do, but in this case, it's a bug, and I did what I was supposed to do for the contract. 

[Geschosskopf]

On 3/8/2016 at 8:22 PM, ag3nt108 said:

So what game ending mistakes have you endured whilst striving for the budget to explore space?

First off, welcome to the forums!

Anyway, for me, it's always game updates that end them.  Every update so far has broken my existing games.  Sometimes it's been Squad's doing (and they're now taking steps to reduce their part in this) but mostly its been due to mods.  Most mods have a finite lifespan measured by their creators' interest in or available time for maintaining them, so eventually a day comes when a given mod won't be updated to work in the next version of KSP  Then there's no going back to that game.

Now, you can take precautions against this.  KSP has no DRM (not even the Steam version) so you can make multiple copies of it and thus have many different, obsolete versions of the game, each with its compatible mods, all on your HD at once.  It's thus possible to keep playing an older version long after the game updates.  However, even though I've gone to the trouble of setting this up several times, I've never actually played the old version after the new one comes out, because the new version always has shiny new features and/or parts that I want to play with.  New toy syndrome, you know.

So the bottom line is, updates end my ongoing games one way or another.

[Zargg]

Either completing all the Explore contracts, or when a new update comes out, whichever is first!

[bewing]

I start over when I learn something that I consider important about the game, that tells me that I was doing inefficient and foolish things from the beginning.

Some examples: * When I learned that MK1 parts are significantly better than MK2 parts for spaceplanes, or any other use.

* When I finally learned how to use a Panther.

* When I first learned how to use an MPL.

* When I figured out the correct way to use an MPL (for my style of gameplay).

* When I found out that rover wheels have no traction, and are either useless or very difficult to use.

* When I figured out that I don't need RCS in any form to do docking maneuvers or anything else -- I can do it all with just the main engine.

[Renegrade]

8 hours ago, regex said:

I usually used the debug window because it was so much faster than the UI.  That probably wouldn't give a penalty.

I've done that myself in prior versions - always thought the cancel UI was a bit underpowered.  Heck, I really wish there was a "trash ALL the contracts" button as there's often a whole screen of "NOPE" staring me in the face.

7 hours ago, FullMetalMachinist said:

Also that penalty is in the difficulty options when you start a new game. I think it's dumb so I always turn it off. 

I've been tempted to do just that.  I do like playing with defaults though (I run under the assumption that the defaults are the intended gameplay settings and also the best balanced. That second thing falls on it's face fairly often though ), and the bloody thing is enabled by default

If 1.1 still has issues (and I also suspect it will) with respects to steering the career, I might very well commit to a no-penalty-cancellation save (well, once 1.1 is fully and properly released).

Hopefully they can work on the steering issue, as I would normally support a cancellation penalty if I wasn't being asked to rescue some sap from the surface of the Mun for the umpteenth billion time when I'm spooling up for a Duna run.

[ag3nt108]

There is not much love for the career mode contracts I see.  I find them to be quite reasonable most of the time and I always use tourism as a source of funding my space program.  I admit they are repetitive and need some balancing (some contracts seem to have a much greater financial reward that isn't in line with the difficulty of the task).  My main gripe with contracts would be the satellite placement missions mostly.  I find the requirements are often fairly absurd.  In my recent career I have an option to accept a contract placing a satellite arround Kerbin in what is basically the same orbit as the Mun.  

[SofusRud]

I got fed up with the low performance of my pc in 1.05 and recently built a new SteamMachine for gaming.  This necessitated restarting my career game as I couldn't be asked to transfer the save file, especially since it has been a while since I last played, might as well restart.

[Jetski]

I start a new career every update, and also whenever I see a new combination of mods I like.  Typically I'll either finish the tech tree or get to a point where it's clear I'll be able to, then "SQUIRREL!" New start, new mods. I've only quit a career in frustration twice, once after some epic fails in BTSM, once after a 1-launch grand tour with science got really grindy around Jool.