Realism Overhaul, Career or Sandbox?

[ToukieToucan]

Most of the time when I play KSP on career the furthest I go will be Duna before losing interest (due to being too grindy) and playing sandbox feels cheatsy to be making a rocket that can go to the mun or anywhere else without taking effort to first make small rockets, now I have downloaded Realism Overhaul and I need to make the decision: Should I choose Career or Sandbox (or even science mode: Kind of takes away the grindy parts of career mode)? 

[Wolfdog]

I play science. Career always seems too boring (for me), and sandbox doesn't motivate me to do anything.

[Guest]

RP-0 is a lot of fun for the progression, sounding rockets to your first R-7 replica to advanced hydrolox engines.  But then, I generally end up playing sandbox because the career still has some elements that end up being tedious.

Really up to you, but the RO/RP-0 team has made a great overhaul for KSP regardless.

[Laie]

There is no proper career in RO. Placement of items in the tech tree is a mess, the missions don't make sense, yadda yadda.

The RO career is named "Realistic Progression 0"  -- because making a RO-compatible career is such a large undertaking, RP-0 comes as a separate mod you may install on top of RO. It's currently not available for 1.1.x.

That out of the way, I'm extremely fond of RP-0 and fully recommend it. It's also a pretty descent introduction into the countless engine and fuel types (something I found positively overwhelming when trying RO for the first time); if you want to use RP-0 as an RO introduction, I'd suggest to remove TestFlight and Kerbal Construction Time.

[Norcalplanner]

If you like Science mode but also like certain aspects of career (like Kerbal experience) simply start a career game with science set to something appropriate below 100%, then set funds at 300% or higher. Science will then be the only effective constraint, but you still get some of career mode goodness.

[LeuZ]

I'm currently playing a Realism Overhaul career with RP-0 and I highly recommend it. It's great to get started because you dont have 20 Engines to choose from at the start. Also the progression makes much more sense than in stock.

But for the first time trying it I wouldn't use testflight and I disabled connection delay because I did want to do the maneuvers manually rather than using flight computer and such. I like to use Kerbal Construction Time because it makes it more realistic if the rockets and new science need actual time. Also the time progression makes more sense. Atherwise you probably would have 60s technologies in the early 50s.

At last I recommend picking normal mode or maybe moderate but with part unlocking cost and without reverting flights. Hard mode doesn't really tolerate much failures.