So what ended your Career mode play through?

[Umlüx]

when a new versionis released or essential mods break. but mostly out of boredom.

so, for 1.1 i will take a different approach: modern space program!
starting in modern days with a fully unlocked tech tree but normal starting funds and reputation. kinda like space x maybe?

Edited March 9, 2016 by Umlüx

[Jeanjvs]

I'm planning to finish my first and only career mode game (i have it since 0.24) once 1.1 comes out. My goal is to send one manned mission to every celestial body on the kerbolar system and to colonize most of them.

Since 1.1 was announced, i've accelerated my space program and now only my Eeloo mission is left (mostly because Eeloo has been on a terrible position for a transfer). I'm trying to figure out what i'm going to do on my next save, but it will probably involve planet mods.

[Octa]

I ran out of memory, because installed too many part mods....i still suspect RAM usage jumped the 32Bit-Fence after i installed Kerbal Planetary Base System. Longer flights were no longer possible, so i quit KSP a few months ago and planned to came back after 1.1 and the majority of my mods were updated.

Last weekend, i browsed CKAN and found a total of about 60 mods that looked too interesting. Found that reduced texture resolution looks rather ugly, but solved the RAM problem well enough to test out the mods. So right now i'm messing around with BDArmory, BoxSats, Figaro GPS, Mk. IV-Parts, Mk. 2 Expansions and so on until 1.1 is out.

After 1.1 is out, i plan to start a new space program. And i hope the new version will assist me to actually run a complete "Kerbal Space Program", as right now it's more like "Several Kerbal Space Missions until craft management and map view will start looking messy.

[KerbonautInTraining]

I completed a mission to Gilly and finished the tech tree. After that I had no motivation to continue playing career as opposed to sandbox.

[Terwin]

12 hours ago, regex said:

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.

 

15 hours 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.

I find that if I edit the persistence file to up the max displayed contracts to a reasonable number(at least a reasonable number for an experienced player), I can steer my space program just fine.

When the list of available contracts is 30-50 long, it becomes much easier to ignore those contracts that do not fit in with your current plans, and there is much less need to discard contracts that are not currently of interest or that seem tedious.

 

Would be nice if this became an in-game editable setting, but I can understand how that could be difficult with the interdependence on the max counts of each contract type

[wumpus]

New versions have typically brought me to a re-start.

There was at least one time when Jeb was stuck in a Minmus intercept orbit and kept getting batted around by the Mun (don't ask how that happened).  I reloaded after determining I couldn't rescue him if he couldn't complete the same orbit twice.

[Sophistry]

Adding mods until the game runs out of memory in a couple of minutes. After a new update I tend to drastically slash what I have installed, but then it starts creeping up again...

 

That, and I keep getting to a point after landing on Duna where I'm a bit "Oh well, time to do exactly the same thing on all the other planets!"

[regex]

42 minutes ago, Terwin said:

I find that if I edit the persistence file to up the max displayed contracts to a reasonable number(at least a reasonable number for an experienced player), I can steer my space program just fine.

Yes, with 30 contracts available and Contract Configurator to get rid of the stupid contract classes it's kind of playable, but the randomness and lack of player direction is still a problem.

[Cornholio]

Two things cause me to start my career over:

 

1. Corrupted saves (usually from combinations of all of my mods I assume)
2. An update that adds something that I find exciting enough to restart (contracts, asteroids, 3.75m parts...... not landing gear).  Most of the time I just persist with my career until #1 happens.

[RocketSquid]

Mine generally end either when I get stuck in a shlump in the really early game, or when I switch computers. I never seem to accomplish anything in career.

[msasterisk]

I quit because I thought it was a LOT harder than it really is to get to Duna and the other planets. Then I found out how easy it is if you know what you're doing.

[SpacedInvader]

My last career ended when I realized that I wanted too many mods and just couldn't shoehorn them into 1.0.5 without using the buggy x64 build or crashing every 20 min with out of memory errors. Looks like I'll have to come up with a better end-game with the new build

[Tourist]

My last career ended, tragically with my savegame being accidentally deleted. 

I'd achieved some pretty cool things too. Landing on Lathye and taking off again in a  space-plane. A more or less reusable space program with permanent motherships, supported by crew transfer spaceplanes and mining operations around key moons. And of course, my crowning achievement, a Kerballed Eve landing and return mission.

But alas. I wanted to start playing around with some mods (being generally stock only to that point.... well, stock only except for KAC and Docking alignment indicator). In particular some proper base building parts, I also wanted to have a look at this Delta V thing everybody keeps talking about (Kerbal engineer). So I installed mods, did not back up my savegame before I did it. Got a message come up saying mods were not supported, and did I want to delete the offending save game.... without reading properly, I clicked yes.

NNOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooo!!!!!

 

(technically I do have a back up, but it was made well before the Eve mission.... which I may say was an ordeal.... not because of eve per see, but getting all the equipment in place, and getting the mothership back, took way to long. Sigh)

I started a new game, but decided not to really advance it until 1.1  

Edited March 9, 2016 by Tourist

[Pikachu8204]

From the amount of money I spent, im never gonna be a director for a space program or anything

[Zer0Winds]

On 3/8/2016 at 7:41 PM, AlamoVampire said:

Career mode needs to be...well...more in story

Wouldn't it be story mode then? I suppose a story mode would be pretty cool, but Career is supposed to mostly be just managing your "career", which happens to be a space program. Career mode is managing the space program, a story mode (if they add it) would be about a story for the space program.... Hm... Story mode... Time to pay a visit to the suggestion ideas...

[uncle_jew]

I stopped out of boredom. After getting all possible tech advances, there were no more any rewards left, and contracts started kind of repeating themselves too.

The remaining fun was killed by a multipurpose spaceship I built, which contains an onboard ISRU and a mining excavator, has 5000 m/s of delta-v and costs $165K to build and launch. With such ships, I have free unlimited travel across the whole Kerbol system, and the only tasks requiring custom built spacecraft are landings and takeoffs on Eve and Tylo.

So the stuff simply stopped being challenging for me and with all bodies visited, became boring routine work.

 

[Merinsan]

My last Career mode game sort of just fizzled out. I can't remember if I finished the tech tree, but I was more or less done.

I basically got fed up with the stupid contracts on offer all the time. I wanted some fun things, but the contracts were not fun, so I was forced to grind boring contracts for funds to do the fun stuff.

Once I had shelved it, I decided to wait until 1.1, load up on mods to extend the game, ie colonization/extra planets, etc.

[AlamoVampire]

4 hours ago, Zer0Winds said:

Wouldn't it be story mode then? I suppose a story mode would be pretty cool, but Career is supposed to mostly be just managing your "career", which happens to be a space program. Career mode is managing the space program, a story mode (if they add it) would be about a story for the space program.... Hm... Story mode... Time to pay a visit to the suggestion ideas...

let me ask you this. would it be nice to have a reason to play career mode? To have a way for what you are doing to mean something more than: take this contract and do x, y, z and then move on? Would it not be nice to have a reason to emotionally invest yourself in your space program? Would it not be nice to have things to do come at you in a logical and linear way rather than, oh, you hit this point on your tree, here have all these contracts, even tho, it does not make sense to be told: fly to eeloo and set up X even tho, gotten past duna isnt a thing yet?

See, the way career is now, it provides NONE of that. Its not logical, its not linear, it makes absolutely zero sense in the way contracts are generated. See, right now, I may only be in year 7 of my current sandbox, but, it has a rich story built into it. I have an emotional investment in the goings on in my program there, I can do things in a logical progression that career mode just flat out lacks. I am not sure why career is so emotionally dead and illogical <i have my theories of course> but, it has given me no reason beyond: did they polish it? no? ok, back to the sandbox with my shovel and pale and the stories i can dream up. Again, career mode gives me NONE of this.

[gchristopher]

My careers end one of two ways:

1. Part count limit drops FPS to where I give up on whatever I'm building. That's often not a sad ending, but more of an indication I should stop trying to build a space station that's also a rock concert stadium and pay attention to real life for a while. 

2. The aimless contract system kills the game from boredom, similar to what many others have noted here. The only reasonable way to deal with the contract system is to spam decline until you get something interesting and meaningful for whatever stage you're at. Mods can improve that some, but the system is aimless and doesn't contribute much to the game once you've played it enough to recognize that it's just a random number generator with no connection to useful goals. 

I have small quibbles with the tech tree, (like, why put a science-producing part at the very end of a tech tree, where, by definition, you're almost done collecting science) but really it's the contract system that drags things down. 

Individually, the contracts are fine, they just don't work together toward any cohesive whole. 

Some of the best-considered forum challenge threads (like the Stock Payload Fraction Challenge and Renewable Space Program Challenge) create up the kind of goal-driven challenge that could serve as inspiration for contract system improvements. 

[HorusKol]

2 hours ago, AlamoVampire said:

let me ask you this. would it be nice to have a reason to play career mode? To have a way for what you are doing to mean something more than: take this contract and do x, y, z and then move on? Would it not be nice to have a reason to emotionally invest yourself in your space program? Would it not be nice to have things to do come at you in a logical and linear way rather than, oh, you hit this point on your tree, here have all these contracts, even tho, it does not make sense to be told: fly to eeloo and set up X even tho, gotten past duna isnt a thing yet?

See, the way career is now, it provides NONE of that. Its not logical, its not linear, it makes absolutely zero sense in the way contracts are generated. See, right now, I may only be in year 7 of my current sandbox, but, it has a rich story built into it. I have an emotional investment in the goings on in my program there, I can do things in a logical progression that career mode just flat out lacks. I am not sure why career is so emotionally dead and illogical <i have my theories of course> but, it has given me no reason beyond: did they polish it? no? ok, back to the sandbox with my shovel and pale and the stories i can dream up. Again, career mode gives me NONE of this.

Maybe it is because I'm still in Kerbin/Mun/Minmus system - and maybe because of selected mods - but I am getting a reasonably linear progression in my contracts:

1. various things to get to orbit

2. science and tourists in orbit

3. fly by Mun

4. setup commmunication satellite network around Kerbin

5. Scan Kerbin

6. point dish at Mun - flyby Minmus - land on Mun

 

Edited March 10, 2016 by HorusKol

[AlamoVampire]

@HorusKol once you break out of the Kerbin/mun/minmus system the contracts for places like jool or eeloo for example will crop up. they need a total rework of the career mode to make it make sense.

[problemecium]

For me it's usually a new KSP patch that ends it. Even if it remains possible to just port the save file from one version to the next, every time some part gets changed or something changes in the physics engine so that lots of my ships get outmoded, so I start a new Career pretty much every time.
It makes it a really big pain to do long-term interplanetary missions :\

[Guest]

Also, another thing that has stopped me from playing KSP: the game's bugs.

It's quite annoying if you spend more than an hour designing a craft in the VAB/SPH, just so that the game crashes when you press "Launch". It happens to me way too often.

The game's performance on my laptop is also a limiting factor. 100+ parts crafts and my FPS goes below 10, making the game painful to play.

Contracts are somewhat boring, too.

Edited March 10, 2016 by Guest

[wumpus]

On 3/9/2016 at 10:41 AM, regex said:

Yes, with 30 contracts available and Contract Configurator to get rid of the stupid contract classes it's kind of playable, but the randomness and lack of player direction is still a problem.

The milestone system has basically saved career mode for me.  I've gotten to the point where contracts exist to pay extra for things that are already planned (with the occasional side job that sounded worth doing or otherwise picking up free money (test on pad)).

My best guess is that this was what career mode was meant to be (with the sliders letting people who just have to grind have their grinds), but was too hard to calibrate across all players with just contracts.

[regex]

7 minutes ago, wumpus said:

The milestone system has basically saved career mode for me.  I've gotten to the point where contracts exist to pay extra for things that are already planned (with the occasional side job that sounded worth doing or otherwise picking up free money (test on pad)).

My best guess is that this was what career mode was meant to be (with the sliders letting people who just have to grind have their grinds), but was too hard to calibrate across all players with just contracts.

I actually tried a normal "difficulty" playthrough using only milestones and I found I ran out of money pretty quickly.  They're finite, the milestone-specific Strategy is way too expensive to set up before you've picked up a bunch of milestones already (all Strategies are basically useless until you're well into the game, and even then they basically ease the end-game), and upgrading the VAB, tracking station, and launchpad to take advantage of even newer milestones will quickly run your program dry.  KSP's career mode is not very well though-out and feels slapped-together, IMO.

Edited March 10, 2016 by regex