Better Than Starting Manned Revival?

[rohanguard1]

Ok, so this is a big order.

I want better than starting manned back.

I know that people have copies of this mod on their computers.

This was my favorite mod from 2015, and I can't bear not having any downloads anywhere. If anyone has a copy of one of the more recent versions, that would be appreciated. Also I'm wondering  someone could start work on patching this mod to ksp 1.3 or 1.2. It makes me a little sad to see such a good mod with no activity about it in the past few years.

Edited November 23, 2017 by rohanguard1
Trying to be more objective

[Rocket In My Pocket]

Aren't there other mods that do basically the same thing?

I mean I don't know of any specifically but I'm assuming so...I see an awful lot of people talk about it.

Here's one I was able to find anyways:

 

Edited November 23, 2017 by Rocket In My Pocket

[kcs123]

Yep, this is same mod in it's essence, although it changed name from 2015 and old KSP version. Tech tree is a bit different too, some changes with mods that were supported/balanced, but provide very similar experience as old named "Better than starting maned" mod.

[rohanguard1]

The deal is though, is I already have unmanned before manned. I am wondering if someone can give me a link to the forum page, because I can't find it

 

[John FX]

I used to play BTSM, I have found great joy playing RSS/RO/RP-0 with Principia. It provides similar levels of difficulty if you want along with upgraded physics, limited engine ignitions, limited burn times for engines, and more to make the game more `fun`.

It also pretty much forces you to start unmanned because it is just too hard to get a kerbal up there and back without killing them for quite a while. It does however include Procedural Parts which you may want to avoid for an experience closer to BTSM.

Just a thought, hope you find it.

[rohanguard1]

I'm a little tired of rss, I am looking for something more kerbally, that's why better than starting manned seems best.

[Ten Key]

1 hour ago, rohanguard1 said:

I want better than starting manned back.

I know that people have copies of this mod on their computers.

This was my favorite mod from 2015, and I can't bear not having any downloads anywhere.

24 minutes ago, rohanguard1 said:

The deal is though, is I already have unmanned before manned. I am wondering if someone can give me a link to the forum page, because I can't find it

I love BTSM. I have an old version for KSP 0.23.5 that I still play and enjoy. 

Unfortunately, there was an incident with the forum a while ago that erased an entire page in the mod release thread, and BTSM was one of the mods effected. As far as I know the mod developer did not repost the mod.

It's also worth mentioning that BTSM was released as "All Rights Reserved".

[rohanguard1]

1 minute ago, Ten Key said:

I love BTSM. I have an old version for KSP 0.23.5 that I still play and enjoy. 

Unfortunately, there was an incident with the forum a while ago that erased an entire page in the mod release thread, and BTSM was one of the mods effected. As far as I know the mod developer did not repost the mod.

It's also worth mentioning that BTSM was released as "All Rights Reserved".

I understand all of this, I just don't have a copy, and I would like to play it.

[kcs123]

@Yemo is still more/less active in development, probably still have copy of it somewhere, but it is hard to expect for any modder to provide support for such old KSP version.
I don't recall of old links for BTSM, probably it was before setting up github account for mod development.

BTSM was broken down to several separate mods, regarding balancing, tech tree progress and so on for easier maintenance. Due to all changes made in KSP I doubt that BTSM would be possible to recreate in exactly same manner as it was before.

[rohanguard1]

Yes, maybe I didn't make myself clear, I just want a copy of the 1.1.4 mod

[Bottle Rocketeer 500]

4 hours ago, rohanguard1 said:

Yes, maybe I didn't make myself clear, I just want a copy of the 1.1.4 mod

http://www.mediafire.com/file/b7jp23327ix32jq/BTSM1-57.zip

Latest I could find, from the OP using the WayBack Machine

Edited November 24, 2017 by Bottle Rocketeer 500

[rohanguard1]

Thanks for the help.

[softweir]

Since this is about an Add-On, I have moved it to Add-On Discussion.

[weissel]

Unmanned before manned is the same as BTSM mostly in forcing you to launch probes first.

BTSM was a very tightly integrated experience (and therefore, by necessity, incompatible with about all mods --- either technically or by radically altering game play away from what was wanted.  (That does not only include MechJeb, but also any kind of dV readout, like Kerbal Engineer.  Yes, you were meant to "know" your dV by try and error.)  About the only mods that might stand a chance to be compatible with BTSM would be purely visual mods.

BTSM started with giving you the small Kestes solid rocket and the Kestes boosters.  (Estes is a very successful solid toy/hobby rocket maker, they produce their own solid fuel engines ...)  No steering at all, not even winglets.  No changing the amount of fuel or the thrust.  So you need to stage properly, and be balanced.  And have the batteries to send back your science before your crash or burn-up --- no parachutes yet. And, as you might soon find out, there's a thing called "going too fast", and you need to learn to wait the right amount after each booster burnout (and did I mention, side-attached separators come very late in the game, as do fuel lines?) before staging the next one, if you want to go high enough.

Soon(ish) you'll be running an experimental bi-propellant liquid engine, the aptly named "Death Wish", and you may have some movable fins.  The Death Wish will overheat and explode about 8 seconds after take-off from the pad, and it is only capable of sustained ~50% throttle in space (no air to pass heat to), so you have to play with the thrust. While manually keeping the rocket on the suborbital course you want[1].  Carrying a gravity detector and a dozen or two batteries (which are emphatically not made from potatoes with wires stuck inside.  Unfortunately: they would give you more power then. Though you could recharge them ... if there was any way for you to produce power in space.  You'll be graduating to long suborbital flights --- you want tundra and pole biomes from low space, because that't the only place the detector works.  (Note: there is no science to be had at all below something like 10 or 15km height!)  And then try to get an orbit.  With only movable winglets for steering.  Which only work in lower and middle atmosphere. (All the probe bodies have zero reaction wheels, and the capsules only enough to get to a heatshield forward attitude at reentry time.)  You also only get the FT-800.  Full.  No way to have a half-full tank (unless you burn the fuel off before launch). 

You may then graduate to vertical staging (Saturn V, not boosters detaching), and you will have fun with no struts.  You may gain a small RCS tank and nozzles, finally some attitude control in space.  But they do have very limited power in the lower atmosphere.  Now you may be ready to do a Mun flyby or even orbit.  Unmanned of course.  With the probe cores you have you will find that Hohmann transfers are ssslllooowww and that means a much increased weight in batteries ... and you start considering if you can lighten that weight ... and how ...

in the meantime, some old cockpit from an old war has been found and you might want to launch some kerbal up there ... only to find out what "not pressure tight" means.  You will also be a bit creative when it comes to attaching parachutes (the attachment rules have been worked over, so many attaching methods are not possible.  You cannot mate 2 or 3 Kestes rockets side by side, for example ... only the boosters.)  Soon you'll have a pressurised cockpit (not vacuum proof) and then the Mercury equivalent.  It has about enough life support for one orbit and a bit --- life support is really heavy, and suits and early pods and capsules go through life support in an alarming rate --- and you better make a nice and shallow reentry with the heatshield you have.  And do not carry anything but heatshield, parachute and capsule.  Not even a single thermometer.  If you want to survive, that is.  Do not even think about polar or retrograde reentries at all, unless you can do propulsive braking.

Struggle after struggle after struggle ... and yet, even choosing the "worst" next node will not paint you in a corner (you just might have to be more creative) and if you are low on money, there are a few grind missions to get you back up from even a totally empty purse.  You will want some of those missions to finance your science missions; and the stuff is from "sending up a sounding rocket with a thermometer and a barometer for weather checks" over "deliver this warhead to that point" (from suicide crash to dropping them as bombs on multiple targets (not just on Kerbin) --- the military needs to be prepared against big pale aliens from outer space invading, the public demands it) to "deliver this heavy MacGuffin to this and that orbit" and possibly "and now shift the orbit to there and there much later".  Of course, you can combine missions and the more efficient (in Funds) you build, the more is left for you.

Most contracts are "must be done on the next flight", so not getting that cool engine for a test sometime later and use it a lot in the meantime.

 

I do not think any other mods have made that much of a challenging game with the rewards that come from overcoming difficulties.  Most of them go for some realism (which is fun), but ... a properly designed game with progression is something else than a wonderful sandbox and there is space for both.

 

[1] not even a SAS hold on these early probes, but to balance that they are really heavy and eat electricity like there was no tomorrow.  Oh, no hibernation.  You can switch them off and on --- if you have a running probe core or a kerbal to do so..  And even 0.1s without electricity is an insta-kill for a running probe core or a kerbal.  Also, solar cells come really late and are initially heavy and bulky and inefficient as hell, but fragile like thin glass, so your manned Mun landing will be done on batteries only.

[Superfluous J]

54 minutes ago, weissel said:

BTSM was a very tightly integrated experience (and therefore, by necessity, incompatible with about all mods --- either technically or by radically altering game play away from what was wanted.  (That does not only include MechJeb, but also any kind of dV readout, like Kerbal Engineer.  Yes, you were meant to "know" your dV by try and error.)

This is the main reason I always questioned the "Better" in the mod's name. Different? Sure.

[weissel]

3 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

This is the main reason I always questioned the "Better" in the mod's name. Different? Sure.

"Better than <questionable design decision>" has become an in-joke for FlowerChild's mods.  Better than Wolves, Better than Giant Bees[1], Better than Sentry Turrets (which was the best he could come up with re Rimworld).

For a "meaningful, slow progression" starting with valuable and expensive Kerbals is not the right thing.  But then KSP's Career Mode is a tutorial for beginners, not a challenge even for veterans.  And there I can really see the "better than" being true --- obviously if you have different goals, your mileage will vary a lot.

[1] 7 Days to Die, a craft/build/survival game with zombies and zombie hordes coming to kill you.  They had Giant Bees as a 'flying enemy' back then, so you'd need some sort of roof, too.  The game was too easy for FC.  They added a shortness on resources, resource quality by biome (the more dangerous, the more rewards --- instead of "the higher your level and relevant skills, the higher level the rewards), slower progression, reduced the fairly OP crossbow, etc etc etc and you'd avoid zombies --- or lead them away from where you wanted to search for stuff --- because zombies now are dangerous.  A few versions later, while not perfect and still having some less than perfect things, settings to hard (zombies ruin always, shortage of everything, no loot respawn, no air drops, ...) FC found the gameplay hard enough for their liking and discontinued the mod.  (Note that FC is/was a game designer)

[Superfluous J]

2 hours ago, weissel said:

Better than <questionable design decision>" has become an in-joke for FlowerChild's mods.  Better than Wolves, Better than Giant Bees[1], Better than Sentry Turrets (which was the best he could come up with re Rimworld).

I also didn't like Better Than Wolves for the same reason. Didn't know about the Ringworm mod.

[MaltYebisu]

@rohanguard1 

I know its rather late, but I was able to find the 10.02 version of BTSM for KSP 1.04 from @FlowerChild's  [1.04]Better Than Starting Manned: Career Mode Redefined (v10.02 - Sep 21st) forum post on Internet Archive's  Wayback Machine. (The archived post)  The download link still works! BTSM 10.02 

I loved @FlowerChild's BTSM mod. It made career mode fun and challenging while maintaining the silliness and humour of KSP. Now I play RP-0, but I miss some of the "kerbal feeling" with all the realism. 

Edited March 17, 2018 by MaltYebisu
Spelling corrections and added smileys

[Jacke]

Hey @MaltYebisu, thanks for posting that Wayback Machine link.  Alas, it only has the first 6 pages of the BTSM topic.

Rather than a BTSM revival (which is legally impossible), I would rather see a new career mod, built using the framework mods now present, like Contract Configurator and the Custom Barn Kit.  I've looked at Unmanned Before Manned, but I've yet to truly test it out to see how good it is.

 

On 11/30/2017 at 4:22 AM, weissel said:

Unmanned before manned is the same as BTSM mostly in forcing you to launch probes first.

BTSM was a very tightly integrated experience (and therefore, by necessity, incompatible with about all mods --- either technically or by radically altering game play away from what was wanted.  (That does not only include MechJeb, but also any kind of dV readout, like Kerbal Engineer.  Yes, you were meant to "know" your dV by try and error.)  About the only mods that might stand a chance to be compatible with BTSM would be purely visual mods.

 

On 11/30/2017 at 5:17 AM, 5thHorseman said:

This is the main reason I always questioned the "Better" in the mod's name. Different? Sure.

As @weissel pointed out, "Better" in the title was FlowerChild's way of saying this was his improvement on KSP.  Like a lot of us, he considered the stock KSP career damn near a joke (launch a capsule-only rocket on the pad and get science there ?!?).   His goal was a real tight gameplay challenge and he just happened for KSP to base that on being more historical and starting with probe launches and delaying crewed missions somewhat.  FC did also put in a lot of fixes for issues in stock KSP, like making right the effect of atmospheric density on rocket performance (long before it was fixed in stock KSP) and improving the handling of science (no need to hop outside of the cabin to store Crew Reports properly).

As for other mods, I could understand FC limiting what he would support as it made his support of BTSM much more complex, as well as detract from discussing BTSM in its thread.  And as he said, he designed BTSM to what he wanted.  I think he did take this metamod purity a bit too far.  He had the patience and ability to manually play KSP beyond most other people.

Some mods would bend and break BTSM because like any career mod, it provided challenges and any mods that bent or broke those challenges mean playing with them was different, sometimes radically, from BTSM without them.  But some challenges, like calculating delta-V and the like, were kind of petty, and others like manual-only flight were tedious.

So many of us would quietly and carefully include mods beyond the ones that FC approved of.  (Although once he asked me to help a disabled player add MechJeb to BTSM as that player couldn't fly rockets manually.)  As I learned through metamodding for BTSM, parts mods were usually a step beyond and obvious did break the point of playing BTSM, either through the new parts themselves or them not behaving the same as the stock parts that FC adjusted.  So new parts in mods always needed a careful look, if only to place them in a reasonable spot on BTSM's tech tree.

Some of FC's changes to BTSM to maintain that tight gameplay seemed to be aimed at killing off some of the cool rocket and spacecraft designs posted in the thread.  Kind of irritating at times.  I think BTSM's tight gameplay was too tight, as it took a whole lot of playtesting by FC to get right.  And he needed to repeat that in detail, sometimes with major changes to BTSM, whenever Squad released a new KSP version.  In the 0.90 and the various 1.0.x versions, the effort just exhausted FC.  Which is why the last version was released for KSP 1.0.4 in August 2015.

And then in 2017 January, the Great Forum Calamity destroyed the 20 threads on the front page of Add-on Releases.  And BTSM was on that page.

It was sad losing the BTSM topic.  That was a great community within KSP and we had a great time.  Without BTSM for the current KSP, people had drifted away.  But there were still comments being posted and a few people were still playing BTSM, even a year and a half after the last BTSM release.

Edited March 17, 2018 by Jacke

[MaltYebisu]

59 minutes ago, Jacke said:

Alas, it only has the first 6 pages of the BTSM topic.

I didn't check that many pages, but it seems that some of the later pages remain... On page 421 there's a post you made. 

It's funny to see because you were just shy of a thousand posts back then. 

I hadn't registered an account with the forum back then, but I enjoyed reading the BTSM thread. I miss @FlowerChild 's wit and passion for good gameplay. I also remember a let's player who had FC on voice chat with him, helping him figure out the early part of BTSM. Getting those damned sounding rockets to the right altitude without any decouplers. 

[Jacke]

On 3/17/2018 at 6:56 PM, MaltYebisu said:

I didn't check that many pages, but it seems that some of the later pages remain... On page 421 there's a post you made. 

It's funny to see because you were just shy of a thousand posts back then. 

I hadn't registered an account with the forum back then, but I enjoyed reading the BTSM thread. I miss @FlowerChild 's wit and passion for good gameplay. I also remember a let's player who had FC on voice chat with him, helping him figure out the early part of BTSM. Getting those damned sounding rockets to the right altitude without any decouplers. 

Well, how about that.  Looks like the spider from the Internet Archive dug down a few links, like what it did to get the 5 pages after the first one.  And its capture of the end pages show each of them as the last page, so it did so over a few days.

As you can see, after BTSM wasn't available for the current KSP, my activity on the forums here fell off.  BTSM was the way I played KSP and I never found a good enough way to do so after KSP 1.0.5 came out.  And with BTSM no longer current, its community drifted away.   So many of the common posters appear to have left KSP entirely.

Some are still active, besides @5thHorseman.  A few, like @Avera9eJoe, @Beetlecat, @mindstalker, @Renegrade, and @xEvilReeperx are still around.  That's a whole lot of BTSM and KSP skill and experience there.   Hopefully, they can chime in about BTSM too.

Edited March 19, 2018 by Jacke

[weissel]

If I only had the time and the spoons to make a spiritual re-imaging of BTSM... 

Of course we cannot (without FC's explicit, written permission) copy any of their works, as it is ARR --- all rights reserved.  And I understand why, though I wish there'd been a clause that if there's 1 or 2 years without a BTSM release or something, the licence would change to something that allows someone to keep the mod alive.  Maybe under a completely different name and making clear that this is not BTSM ... but it is as it is, and BTSM was great and taught a lot.

What we are allowed to do is to understand the reasoning for the decisions made.  Like gating technologies to have something to work towards, say, radial decouplers, fuel lines, solar cells, better engines (the aptly named "Death Wish" was ... fun.  Frustrating as hell, but still better than solid engines (especially w/o changeable fuel level and thrust limiters), and made you appreciate --- and work towards --- a better LF engine.), ...  Or the bombing missions ... something totally different from the usual fare.  Or the fact you can only try a mission once, you fail, then you fail.  Or how you would have to stack up missions to make money.  Or how there always was a 'routine' mission to bootstrap you back to some money.  Or that there were no dead ends in the tech tree, but you might have to be very inventive.
Or, for example, how the limited amount of battery power you could carry would teach you that the Hohmann transfer is a very fuel-efficient and very time-inefficient manoeuvre, and ... encouraged you to think in other terms.  (Cue back-of-envelope calculations where the minimum mass of fuel for a faster travel and batteries for the travel time was.)  Or that the life support use in the lander can was bad and in suits abysmal, which gave you tight, but doable limits ...

Yes, restrictions enable art and creativity --- and we love that (or we'd be playing in the sandbox, using the best engines and cheating ourselves into and out of Mohole and Eeloo orbit ...).  And BTSM gave you just enough that problems could be solved, in several ways ... but not easily.

Adding to that --- I had great fun playing with RP-0 and the unreliable "Ajax " engines (Taerobee), trying to make sounding rockets that would handle the failing of one or 2 of them in a stage gracefully.  Something like that --- and parts getting better as they are used more and stuff --- might have a place in ... uh ... "Kart Mode" (K-hard and K-art and cart and Go-kart ...) or whatever the spiritual re-imaging would be called.

[HafCoJoe]

9 hours ago, Jacke said:

Well, how about that.  Looks like the spider from the Internet Archive dug down a few links, like what it did to get the 5 pages after the first one.  And its capture of the end pages show each of them as the last page, so it did so over a few days.

As you can see, after BTSM wasn't available for the current KSP, my activity on the forums here fell off.  BTSM was the way I played KSP and I never found a good enough way to do so after KSP 1.0.5 came out.  And with BTSM no longer current, its community drifted away.   So many of the common posters appear to have left KSP entirely.

Some are still active, besides @5thHorseman.  A few, like @Avera9eJoe, @Beetlecat, @mindstalker, @Renegrade, and @xEvilReeperx are still around.  That's a whole lot of BTSM and KSP skill and experience there.   Hopefully, they can chime in about BTSM too.

I did have a short period of interest I BTSM I've drifted into Sandbox once again though; if I do end up playing a career mode save I'd run it with all parts unlocked at the start, and have missions based solely around funding. A "Careerbox" save, so to speak. I don't see that happening for a while though; too busy with other projects.

[Jacke]

Hey, thanks, @Avera9eJoe, for posting.

20 hours ago, weissel said:

If I only had the time and the spoons to make a spiritual re-imaging of BTSM...

I'm in the same position.  I'd like to make a new career mod for KSP that improves on it, especially with a career more like the historical progress of space exploration.  Not quite as BTSM did it, but some features would be similar.  I have a number of ideas.  But the tools aren't quite there to implement my ideas.  My programming skills are strong but there's quite a steep learning curve to getting a setup to actually turn out KSP mods.  And I haven't have the time free to progress with this.

And it appears that SETI Unmanned Before Manned is effectively unsupported.  As far as I can tell from its topic, it's reported as still working.  But it's an ARR mod and its author @Yemo hasn't been on the KSP forums since last September.

 

[weissel]

ARR means the mid/game/program dies with you — or even without you if you have to abandon it.

And that is a pretty sad thing if it hits good mods.   (You can always add a “now new versions for x time yadda yadda and the licence reverts from ARR to <a licence that lets people keep it/a variant under a different name/... alive>.)

Oh well.