Losing Creative Spark. Any Advice?

[Gh0stReaper]

So, I have played this game for (according to steam) 357 hours but I have been playing for at least double that and I am losing interest in the game. I see these wonderful missions to Jool and Eve and all these monstrous crafts and I want to do something like that but I'm losing my creativity. I would like some advice to "rediscover" the game and get some more replayability from it.

Anything would be great.

[Geonovast]

Do you have any mods installed?  There are quite a few that completely change the game.  Life support, part failures, and different solar systems likely being the biggest ones.

[Gh0stReaper]

I currently have KER and airplane plus.

[AVaughan]

Also worth considering is a rescaled solar system, or maybe even Realism Overhaul.

It's also perfectly normal to take a break for a few months and to play another game.

[Gh0stReaper]

Thanks guys I'll look into it

[Snark]

1 hour ago, Gh0stReaper said:

So, I have played this game for (according to steam) 357 hours but I have been playing for at least double that and I am losing interest in the game. I see these wonderful missions to Jool and Eve and all these monstrous crafts and I want to do something like that but I'm losing my creativity. I would like some advice to "rediscover" the game and get some more replayability from it.

Anything would be great.

Some solar system recommendations:

• Outer Planets.  Adds three new gas giants plus a Pluto analogue, out past Jool.  Highly stockalike style, lots of original / new challengines.
• Galileo's Planet Pack.  Completely replaces the stock solar system with an all-brand-new one, with plenty of planets and moons.
• New Horizons.  Completely rejiggers and greatly expands the solar system.  Lots of highly novel new navigation problems to solve.  The stock planets/moons are still there, but rearranged and moved into new situations along with the many new planets and moons.  Kerbin, for example, becomes a moon of a gas giant.

All of the above are really well done and give a whole new experience to exploring the solar system.

Adding a life support mod can change the way you think about missions.  I'm a fan of TAC Life Support.

Extraplanetary Launchpads can also mix things up:  allows you to mine metal and build spacecraft remotely, then launch them from wherever you build them.

Then there's Alien Space Programs, which lets you keep the stock solar system, but change the home planet to be something other than Kerbin (e.g. Duna, Laythe, etc.).  Rather a different sort of challenge when you're exploring the solar system from somewhere else. 

For additional fun, you can always impose some original "house rules" on yourself.  For example, I once played an Extraplanetary Launchpads career where I set myself the goal of creating a Mun base as early as technologically possible, and then after that, had the rule that I wasn't allowed to launch any more ships from Kerbin at all-- except for SSTOs, which were required to land again after achieving LKO.  (This latter exception was to give me a source of kerbals.)  Everything else was built on, and launched from, the Mun.

Anyway, those are just a few of the fun ways to mix things up and keep it fresh. 

[adsii1970]

Go watch some old 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s sci-fi and recreate the craft you see in them. It's a real hoot. You'll learn how bad many of the designs really are!

[Gargamel]

3 hours ago, Gh0stReaper said:

I currently have KER and airplane plus.

Oh geez... that's just a standard basic game for a lot of us.   Go digging through the Mod release forum, and just browse.   Bookmark anything that spikes your interest.   Then when you have 200 mods bookmarked, pick the few dozen you want. and build a game play set from that.  Adding Life support adds a whole logistical challenge to the game.  Station and mothership parts make orbital construction a joy, not a chore.  Utility and automation mods can make the game easier to play.  Contract packs give new challenges in game.  Visual mods give it a different look.  Base and rover mods give surface construction a reason to exist.  Planet packs give you new targets.  

Add challenges in your mods choice, while adding other mods to make it smoother. 

Run multiple installs of different mod packs.  Use CKAN to help automate the process.   When you get tired of one setup, switch to the other. 

There are so many different ways to play the game using mods, there isn't really a reason to get bored or disinterested while you still want to play.

 

All that said, sometimes you just gotta step away.  I've been on a KSP binge the last few months, hence my increased presence here, but I've gone for months at a time without touching KSP.   Then the bug starts to bite again.  I've been at this for almost 6 years now, and I can't play this all the time.  There's other distractions out there. 

 

Play when you want, how you want. 

 

[Ultimate Steve]

1 hour ago, adsii1970 said:

Go watch some old 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s sci-fi and recreate the craft you see in them. It's a real hoot. You'll learn how bad many of the designs really are!

I saw "Destination Moon" today, made in 1950, and I was expecting it to be really bad and inaccurate, but it was surprisingly good for being made in 1950.

[invision]

parts packs are a good way to jump into the mod scene without changing anything in the game, my creative idea went through the roof when i got a few packs and started playing with them.

this is a nice basic parts  pack for rockets and plane parts. ive built some cool stuff using these.

this is another cool part pack, but the best thing about is you can take ANY fuel tank and fill it with ANY fuel making all rocket parts now easier to use with planes that only use liquid fuel or rockets using only nuclear engines.

 

Tired of people telling you that its too small? not big enough? does size even matter? yes.....yes it does and this mod makes it possible for you to show Valentina how big your rocket can be

try something like those and see how you like them

[Bill Phil]

Give it a break, if you need it. You're under no obligation to keep playing this game. But it'll eat at your insides until you come back...

Give yourself an unorthodox challenge, take yourself out of your comfort zone. Another solar system, a larger solar system, mods, and more are all available to you.

[Mjp1050]

I think the best thing to do would be to take a break.

Doing anything for a large amount of time just leads to fatigue. KSP is no exception.

Take a break, go play another game for a few weeks. You'll come back to KSP eventually. We all do 

[Gh0stReaper]

You guys are all so helpful and a common theme is more planets and Extraplanetary Launchpads so I'll look into it. Thank you all.

[Mjarf]

Try your luck at surface docking, now that's a challenge.

[KerikBalm]

On 5/26/2018 at 10:20 PM, Gh0stReaper said:

I see these wonderful missions to Jool and Eve and all these monstrous crafts and I want to do something like that but I'm losing my creativity.

Well, why don't you do something like that? What is stopping you. It sounds like you haven't done a Jool-5 or a Eve ascent. Do those? Necessity is the mother of invention, so they say... so designing craft for those missions should bring out some creativity, no?

What about SSTOs? Surface bases? what have you done in those 357 hours? I can't imagine being done with the game after that little amount of time

[Gh0stReaper]

20 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

Well, why don't you do something like that? What is stopping you. It sounds like you haven't done a Jool-5 or a Eve ascent. Do those? Necessity is the mother of invention, so they say... so designing craft for those missions should bring out some creativity, no?

What about SSTOs? Surface bases? what have you done in those 357 hours? I can't imagine being done with the game after that little amount of time

Probably my attention span. A lot of my missions have been little things like building a helicopter and going to the mun. Simple things.

[KerikBalm]

Just now, Gh0stReaper said:

Probably my attention span. A lot of my missions have been little things like building a helicopter and going to the mun. Simple things.

Ah, well, then may I introduce you to the Alt-f12 menu.

I do a lot of testing of individual "simple things", each one a component of an idea I have for a complex mission ... except the majority of the time I never end up going through with the whole mission... like sending a submarine to laythe from for example - I have still never done that. I have built subs, I have alt-f12'd them over to laythe, I have built/encapulated them to be able to survive entry and splashdown, but I've never actually gone through all the steps of launching a sub to LKO, putting it on an interplanetary transfer, and then splashing it down somewhere near an island that I'm going to make a surface base on.

FWIW, I haven't actually built a surface base on laythe in a legitimate way, but rather I used alt-f12 to test components of a laythe mission that I never got around to doing - most of my legit missions to laythe get launched, but I move on to a new save before they arrive. Duna/Eve/Moho on the other hand I've done a lot of stuff at (I'll get burned out there while my laythe mission is still in interplanetary space), and take a break from KSP, and then come back and try out new ideas using alt-f12.

So if its too complicated, then cut out some of the more routine parts (launch to LKO/wait for transfer window/transfer burn, capture), and just immediately start trying to land a rover that jumps the dres canyon or something

[CrashyMcCrashFace]

Look at other people's designs and what their doing. It's not anything bad, just inspiration.

[Jimmidii]

Laythe is an awesome target for missions if you're looking for something bigger to do.

My current long term aim is to get a large exploration ship onto the ocean there, which can be refuelled from on deck, along with the infrastructure on some of the islands to mine and refine fuel, and transport it to the exploration ship.

[KerikBalm]

Well, I started a similar project to that. I've already got a system for constructing mobile surface bases (deploying large ~2.5m diameter rovers from mk3 cargobays), which can mine and refuel stuff

Here you can see an example on Mun (that I actually built legitimately, no Alt-f12 here, but its just Mun):

and another example using the placable launchpads from the making history expansion:

anyway, my idea is to set up a base like that on an island of laythe that has ore, this would supply fuel for all operations (though an orbital fuel depot supplied from Val can also work).

However, for sea exploration, I won't be using a ship that moves along the water... thats far too slow, and you'd need a lot of fuel to cross hundreds of kilometers (I'm playing in a scaled up system, my laythe is 1030km in radius, but has some other significant changes that I won't get into)... so it seems to me that a ship won't do much more than explore the shore by the island that you mine on. Since I'll have a plane capable of moving my surface base modules anyway (all my "dropships" have a standard cargobay configuration, and I rate them to take a minimum of 40 tons to the surface and back up to orbit), I just needed to have some sea exploration vessel that I can deploy from and recover at the plane...

And I went 1 better than a ship... a submersible instead:

All taken to laythe thanks to the Alt-f12 cheat

Does this stir any creative juices?

 

 

[Daniel Prates]

Get "contract configurator"  plus any of several contract packs. It will do wonders to give you new objectives and challenges. There are mountaineering packs,  historical mission packs,  military mission packs.... it is guaranteed to give you something to do.

[General Apocalypse]

Get MechJeb - it will allow you to program most of the scut work (like IRL) and enjoy other aspects more.
Don't worry the computers is bad enough that it can't properly handle complex missions for example lifting to LKO a large space station so you'll have plenty of thing to do.