reason to keep playing (career)

[Perotis]

I once I've maxed out my science in career mode, I find little motivation to keep playing.  I've only ever made it to Duna and Eve, so I know there is a lot more to see and do.  But not having anything to earn/work towards just makes it feel like I'm doing it for the sake of doing it. 

[Slam_Jones]

If you are not against using mods, there are a good number of them to increase 'end-game' content so to speak, like techs past the current tree that require thousands of science to research. Also planet packs for more interesting places to explore, and part packs for more interesting looking ships. Not to mention visual mods and countless other categories. 

But yeah if you are willing to consider downloading mods, you can add a lot more content to work with. 

[Superfluous J]

Change your goal. Doesn't matter what, really, but change it from "Get all the science" to - for example - "land on every world" or "build a base on every world" or "get a Dres asteroid and make a space station around it" or whatever.

[razark]

If you're not enjoying it, stop playing it.  Take a break, go play something else for a while, then come back and browse through the mods or wait for the next update to explore what's new.

[Blaarkies]

26 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

...or "get a Dres asteroid and make a space station around it" or whatever.

How can you make a space station around something that does not exist? 

[Superfluous J]

8 minutes ago, Blaarkies said:

How can you make a space station around something that does not exist? 

Asteroids do to exist

[regex]

Stop playing career mode. I did, it's made the game playable again. I much prefer science mode or sandbox mode.

[Blaarkies]

1 hour ago, regex said:

Stop playing career mode. I did, it's made the game playable again. I much prefer science mode or sandbox mode.

Normal career mode actually turns into Sandbox mode after the first interplanetary landing, funds do not matter anymore at that point.

[Aledude Kerman]

What I do: Once I've researched the whole techtree I use a mod for converting science into funds. So I have to do more and more missions that generate science for being able to finance other mission like planetary bases or space stations.

What I did once and perfectly fits my way to play is starting a new game, editing the savegame to start with a fully researched techtree and 100.000 funds. No grinding, all parts available from the beginning and a good reason for science missions: funds funds funds

[Birdco_Space]

2 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

Asteroids do to exist

But apparently Dres does not...  At least that is what the Flat Kerbin Society seems to think.

Back to topic

The motivation I have in Career is more to accomplish everything, with the financial and research constraints imposed by the Career Mode of playing.  Sure a Eve return mission is doable, but to do it sufficiently profitably so you can afford to do it with contracts is the real challenge of career.

Career mode is not the purpose of the Game, exploration and building truly Kerbal contraptions is.  Career just creates a different experience in the path of sending the Kerbals to the stars.  

"We will build a surface base on Tylo, not because it is useful, but because it is there." - J.F. Kerman

 

[eddiew]

4 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

Change your goal. Doesn't matter what, really, but change it from "Get all the science" to - for example - "land on every world" or "build a base on every world" or "get a Dres asteroid and make a space station around it" or whatever.

That, basically. I always set out with the target of "boots on all rocks"

Though I do also turn science down to 10%, add a ton of mods, use the Community Tech Tree and Kerbal Research and Development to give me a lot more things to spend science on ^^

[Death Engineering]

Adding to the great advice above, I'll name a few mods I use to make career more interesting:

• Kerbal Construction Time
• Stage Recovery
• KRASH
• Strategia
• Tourism Contract Pack
• Station Science

Also set difficulty to medium or hard (or whatever they're called).

Thinking about playing the same way you normally do but on different planets? Galileo's Planet Pack is a complete planetary system overhaul (and it is quite beautiful!).

[Temeter]

3 hours ago, Blaarkies said:

Normal career mode actually turns into Sandbox mode after the first interplanetary landing, funds do not matter anymore at that point.

Only if you're going for bland vanilla space missins. Everything silly and over the top can easily waste all your money.

[KerikBalm]

I'll 2nd eddiew's suggestion: KR&D will ensure you never run out of things to spend science on - although it can get a little OP'd

Past a certain point, Career is just like Sandbox - but with a budget. After you have all the science you need, you can just do 100% science -> funds conversion, and have your missions self- finance

[eddiew]

8 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

I'll 2nd eddiew's suggestion: KR&D will ensure you never run out of things to spend science on - although it can get a little OP'd

Past a certain point, Career is just like Sandbox - but with a budget. After you have all the science you need, you can just do 100% science -> funds conversion, and have your missions self- finance

Not sure it will be OP with 3.2x scale and GPP, but we'll see how it works out  

100% funding on the other hand is mental. I've not landed on Ceti (2nd moon) yet, but I have the money to unlock all facilities to level 3... I'm on the brink of staging a robbery event and scaling it down to something less obscene, because it's about to turn into science mode...

[regex]

6 hours ago, Blaarkies said:

Normal career mode actually turns into Sandbox mode after the first interplanetary landing, funds do not matter anymore at that point.

So, playing on normal mode, after I land on Duna the first time I never have to touch a contract again? All my buildings are upgraded and I can just build and do whatever I want? That's amazing!

[eddiew]

2 minutes ago, regex said:

So, playing on normal mode, after I land on Duna the first time I never have to touch a contract again? All my buildings are upgraded and I can just build and do whatever I want? That's amazing!

To be fair, with 100% science and funds, if you've farmed Mun and Minmus to the last biome, you've pretty much done the tech tree... and by that point, you've done hundreds of contracts too... I would actually believe this is possible in a pure stock game.

Even in my 3.2x career, I've got the funds to take all buildings to tier 3 without having left the homeworld's SoI with so much as a decoupler. Admittedly this on its own won't leave enough left over to take 100 kerbals out to Eeloo and back, but the default incomes are crackpot high and create no kind of budgetary challenges whatsoever. I can certainly see why people who like to manage and prioritise limited resources find career annoying, and it's not because it's hard!

 

[regex]

5 minutes ago, eddiew said:

To be fair, with 100% science and funds, if you've farmed Mun and Minmus to the last biome, you've pretty much done the tech tree...

I don't do that, it sounds terribly boring, I guess I'm playing career wrong? 

5 minutes ago, eddiew said:

and by that point, you've done hundreds of contracts too...

That sounds terrible as well, and also unlikely considering how I play.

If that's what it takes to play sandbox in career mode then it's not worth it in the slightest. No wonder I've never been able to just ignore funds after landing on Duna.

[-M-TheDoctor]

6 hours ago, Death Engineering said:

 

Also set difficulty to medium or hard (or whatever they're called).

 

I think they're called vente and grande....

[GarrisonChisholm]

@Perotis, to your original point, the "sag" in interest that you identified is something I encountered too.  My solution was to set the science values lower and play with a mod that required life support, which prolonged my next (current) game's region of interest.  Additionally, I am using the Valentine System mod which adds a second system 10Gkm away.  This is not "reachable", per se with my current technology, however it encouraged me to build a large orbital radio telescope (RPd) so I could allow/justify their investigation in the Tracking Station.

If you are playing career with slow science acquisition, life support requirements for manned (balled) missions, and mods which add additional destinations, then "game fatigue" is simply a natural byproduct of saturation.  Likely putting the game down for a while or re-starting it would be your next logical step.

I will likely play my current game out for a ridiculous span of time, until I A) upgrade my PC or B) learn of a new development which is so paradigm shifting that I simply must start anew.  However, there is no law that says you Must Kerbal.  Everything good in moderation, even Kasper would have agreed to that. 

Edited January 27, 2017 by GarrisonChisholm

[suicidejunkie]

2 hours ago, regex said:

That sounds terrible as well, and also unlikely considering how I play.

You've already done the actions that could have completed hundreds of contracts, except for the clicking 'accept' part, and the getting scorepoints money part.

You'd also have a bunch of points from the world firsts.

 

Its not grinding hundreds of part tests or something absurd like that.  Instead it is putting comm relays up, and planting flags and orbiting/landing/doing science around.  And overbuilding your rocket to the point it can carry tourists perhaps.

The sort of things you've already done in sandbox, except for the challenge of chaining combos at lowest cost with limited parts.

[Combatsmithen]

Back in the old days of sandbox we had to make our own objectives!

Edited January 27, 2017 by Combatsmithen

[eddiew]

3 hours ago, regex said:

I don't do that, it sounds terribly boring, I guess I'm playing career wrong? 

Ehhh... hard question. I agree that stock system needs a better reason to leave Kerbin SoI. On the other hand as @suicidejunkie says, most of the contracts I do are "explore body" or "put satellite here" or "plant flag" - which are often what I'd want to do anyway, only now I get paid for it. Tourism contracts do usually suck though; be lucky if they offer enough money to cover the fuel required to add a crew capsule to a thing that is already going to their destination. Forget dedicated tourist trips because they aren't profitable. And I haven't accepted a part test contract since 1.2. Awful game balance around these, imho.

But the worst offender, to my mind, is the decline penalty. Most contracts aren't where you want them to be, which makes career feel stupid when you're ploughing through Duna contracts while your Jool window is open. If we could nominate a celestial body, and 50% of contracts would then relate to it - great! But we can't, so I turn off decline penalty, and just flick through until someone asks me to go where I want to go anyway. Doubt NASA or ESA do all the things they're asked for either - but they don't get slapped down for saying no to Sky TV's latest request.

Done right - i.e. with target nomination - career would have a nice budget management layer. As it stands, you get paid too much for doing stuff you don't want to do, so you have to tweak the options and mod it into submission. I'm enjoying my current setup whereby surface samples are worth 10x normal value, but science income is at 10%. Result - I really, really want to land kerbals everywhere I can. Which I enjoy doing   But its not the right choice if you like making large orbital colonies or ground bases or the like.

As ever - whatever you like to do in KSP, there's a game mode and a mod for it   

[regex]

1 hour ago, suicidejunkie said:

You've already done the actions that could have completed hundreds of contracts, except for the clicking 'accept' part, and the getting scorepoints money part.

Potentially, but I've also sat there looking at what the RNG is presenting to me and hoping that something comes along that fits my existing mission profile. That's what I object to. And while it would probably work to completely mod out the contracts I don't like and increase the limits on the contracts I do like, there's nothing really compelling about completing ten "plant flag" missions with one flag. I'd rather conceive a mission and do it, skipping over the entire process of searching through the RNG haze for something that may fit the bill.

Not trying to be difficult but people play differently. I don't worry too much about efficiency, aside from "can I afford it", because i don't enjoy playing that way. I get out of Kerbin SOI as early as possible because Kerbin SOI is boring to me. I don't do a lot of contracts because they don't align with my goals. Hence my disagreement with the statement that once I do a landing on Duna I don't have to worry about money anymore, that simply isn't the case the way I (and others, I assume) play. And while I may play with other difficulty options I usually play with 100% fund rewards because the contracts model irritates me that much. 50% science is a fun challenge, 50% funds is just masochistic grinding (to me).

32 minutes ago, eddiew said:

Done right - i.e. with target nomination - career would have a nice budget management layer. As it stands, you get paid too much for doing stuff you don't want to do, so you have to tweak the options and mod it into submission.

Which is why I don't bother playing it anymore. It's frustrating, unsatisfying, and doesn't allow me to direct the space program; I'm at the whim of an RNG. Science mode fits my idea of how the game should be played much better. While I'd enjoy additional stats to manage (funds, rep) the method of gaining those adds a layer of tediousness to everything I enjoy in KSP, that self-direction of sandbox mode.

32 minutes ago, eddiew said:

As ever - whatever you like to do in KSP, there's a game mode and a mod for it   

Which was my point in the first place. I'm not sitting here saying you can't play career mode or that people who play it are stupid or something, I'm saying that If career isn't working for you, try something else.

[Leafbaron]

Honestly, there is no right answer here. If you feel as though the game isn't fun anymore then stop playing. Sure you can try some of the ideas suggested but if you are still forcing it to happen. Then it won't be fun. Just put it away for a while until you wake up one night in a cold sweat and exclaim to yourself. "I must build it/ do it/ explore it in KSP!" When the inspiration comes from within, the game is more fruitful. Just my $0.02. If you are still wanting to play just not super thrilled about career mode, I suggest you head over to the Challenges and missions thread. There is some great stuff to do over there. 

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/forum/25-challenges-mission-ideas/