Career mode, overall game time, what is the point?

[Magzimum]

Is there any point to the Total game duration in the Career mode? It appears to me that, unless there are some unhappy landings, Kerbals can live very long lives. Jeb has been an active pilot for decades. (What a guy!).

I have now come to the point in my Career game where I start missions to the planets, which take years to complete. If you do all these missions sequential, they will take decades if not centuries to complete. Do you care about that at all?

I considered to launch some easy missions (e.g. Minmus plant-a-flag) while my guys were on their way to Duna, but finally decided to put that Minmus mission on hold, so that it doesn’t hurt me as much if I have to load an earlier save game because I screwed up the design for the Duna mission. I may do parallel missions if I have more confidence in my designing skills.

What’s your take on this? Just being curious.

[Blaarkies]

Absolutely nothing changes...except for the once in a lifetime Jool-Eeloo transfer window. If you start a fresh career, timewarp full speed for an entire day, and then come back and actually start playing...you won't be at a disadvantage. Nothing ages in KSP and as long as all your craft are in safe stable orbits, you shouldn't lose anything(except the obvious synchronization of your satelite network if you use RemoteTech and the like)

But for Role-Playing reasons...obviously it is different. Me, myself and I only cared about time when we played with Snacks! and remotetech(snacks is a simple life-support mod). My latest playthrough is interface mods only, with all returns set down to 30%, no sci labs, no asteroid sci farming, no exploiting plant-flag/sci-from-space contracts, no sci from part testing contracts...this leads to a desperate and complete disregard for any sense of time
I very rarely run small missions during my interplanetary missions(unless they are very lucrative)

[James Kerman]

Greetings Magzimum and welcome to the forums. 

I began playing the game conservatively as you are however as my skills improved I began planning for contingencies instead of reverting to previous saves.  My understanding of the game improved dramatically when I started using informational mods that give thrust to weight and delta V readouts in the VAB.  I also do a lot of testing on new designs before a mission.  You begin to get a pretty good idea of how much power and fuel you need to perform specific operations with this information.

As for the time issue - I try to rescue as many Kerbals as possible to add them to my space program for free.  Once I have a second team (pilot, engineer and scientist) I begin Interplanetary operations with my A team and use the rest for Mun and Minmus missions instead of time warping out to planetary encounters.  This tactic keeps me busy, makes me Kredits and reputation and levels up my Kerbals. 

[Magzimum]

Thanks for the feedback, and for the confirmation that the game time is rather irrelevant.

I am planning for my first ever manned Eve landing (and return!), so although I ran a bunch of tests with the craft, the real test will be the landing and take off on Eve. And from what I read on the forums and other places online, this is one of the hardest missions to do, so better not have any missions in the meantime, because the chances of something going wrong are... huge?

Btw, I have a team of 12 Kerbals (the original 4 and 8 rescued Kerbonauts)... so the HR department won't complain if I have multiple missions. I am considering to just send 2 or 3 of the same rockets to Eve. At least that way if one fails all will fail, and I have a good reason to load an old save game

My only consideration now is whether I just fast-forward to the transfer window, or whether I do a few Mun/Minmus missions in between.

But I consider this question answered! Thanks!

 

[SorryDave]

Welcome to the forums!

there is something you can do during the long waits. You could place a lab in orbit and fill it with science, crew reports, and EVAs from both low and high orbit. Every 40 days or so you get 500 science. If you do this for the orbits and surfaces of Minmus and the Mun, you could earn a substantial ammount of science while on route to other planets.

You need some hefty batteries and collectors and a decent radio dish with the lab. When my tech tree is filled, I use this approach to make money with the science to funds strategy. It's not a lot of money ~50K a base/2 months, but I enjoy building stations and bases anyway. So why not make them useful?

They can generate science from second time experiments that you otherwise can't get science from.

good luck on your journeys

Edited August 5, 2016 by SorryDave

[James Kerman]

@Magzimum  you should continue doing missions in the Kerbin system and quick-save when you get to Eve orbit.  Fear of failure and wanting perfect missions kept me in the Kerbin system for ages and made me restart my career many times.

If you think you have enough fuel to land and return from Eve then you will certainly be able to get back to Kerbin from Eve's orbit.  This is what I meant about contingencies - my plans rarely go perfectly.  The worst that can happen is you have spent some credits and visited the orbit of the most beautiful planet in the game, got the orbital science and gained some XP for your crew because as you can see - time is not an issue.