Why is this game so hard and so addictive.

[Boris_T_Roach]

Took me 23 evolutions of my mun rocket to make it to the mun and back on stock parts in the 0.12 release

ALthough the tricky bit was always the actual mun landing... killed and stranded lots of kerbals,

It was so annoying after 30 mins perfect flying to land with slightly too much sideways drift and knock an engine off.....

and taking off on 2 engines rather than 3 just ment your kerbal's suffering was shorter.

Best way to land I found is to aim for one of the big craters as its fairly flat in there, and fly your craft to a complete stop at about 3000-4000M up, then drift down controling the decent all the way,

and remember you can use the RCS system (i,j,k,l) to control any remaining sideways drift.

and then the cheer you give when you land safely is loud and annoying.

Boris

Followed by the groan as you pressed the spacebar to launch from the mun when you should have throttled the engines back up

[Vespasianus]

Followed by the groan as you pressed the spacebar to launch from the mun when you should have throttled the engines back up

[deadly654321]

press f5 where you want it to load f9 to loaded it there

[fusty]

THANK YOU SO MUCH!

That tip would have saved me reloading my quicksave 30 times just trying to find about what altitude the ground was actually at while attempting a dark-side landing without any sunlight yesterday. That ground just looked like it was never changing.

[tsakali]

I always build my rockets with efficiency and a low carbon footprint. That has been 80% of the fun for me. After getting machines capable of landing and returning home, my next step was to fine tune them to be as green as possible.

I think there are still a few pounds I can shave off my current rockets, but I'm pretty sure I'm getting down to the absolute minimum right now.

One question on that point: how come from the bigger fuel tanks, the half capacity one is so much cheaper than the full capacity alternative? was that an oversight or is there a sound explanation for it?

[Cowzgomooz]

I have tested maybe 5 rockets so far. Each of them got me sub orbital or not even off the surface but explosions are fun to watch:sticktongue:.

[UKDan89]

It's a challenge! Once you land on Mun for the first time you'll feel amazing! Then after some more attempts you will gradually gain the technique to land every time, then you will set your eyes for Minmus which is much easier once you have the technique learned from the Mun! This game is great and I've played it every night since January which is when my friend told me about it

[EndOfTheEarth]

It's the learning curve; I feel like kerbal space program (and to a limited degree, space IRL?) is designed in such a way as so that you become more masterful at different elements as you go along. First you orbit, then you learn how to get to Mun orbit. Then you learn how to land. Then you learn orbital inclination corrections to fly to minimus, along with selective landing (assuming you haven't already done that with the comparatively flat Mun), and how to pull all of this off with spaceplanes. In .17, we'll also have to learn how to do interplanetary transfer, and set up planetary missions, which are surely even MORE complex that what we've been doing up until this point.

However, once you've done it once, it becomes easier to do with repetition. I remember back at the beginning how getting a rocket into orbit was a horrible challenge; some thousand launches later I can now do it in my sleep. The first five of my ships bound for lunar orbit either failed to reach it or crashed; and this I can now similarly do in my sleep. The first dozen of my landing attempts crashed, and my first successful landing actually encountered a bug and froze during ascent. But I had another three landers waiting in munar orbit to give it a shot, and these landed successfully. In a similar way, I overshot minmus twice before getting six times into terribly useless polar orbits. Now I know the inclination, and I actually have a small 'base' set up on one of the ice plains so that when my first spaceplane voyage there crashed horribly at last second, I had a way to get my astronauts back home.

But the point is, practice makes perfect. You'll get there eventually if you learn from your mistakes, and there's always a higher star to reach for.

[Jeebs24]

If the game was too easy, it wouldn't be much fun. We've all been there where we have difficultly even getting off the launch platform but once you get the hang of it and know what design's work and what doesn't, it'll be easy peasy lemon squeezy. Like other's have said, less is more.

[darkwolfpaw54]

i loved it even if i get coufused with the soild and water boosters ive been addiced to the game when i was little and i did the 0.13 demo then when i got to 9 i had 0.15 then teen 0.16 my life with ksp

[Dizzle]

i loved it even if i get coufused with the soild and water boosters ive been addiced to the game when i was little and i did the 0.13 demo then when i got to 9 i had 0.15 then teen 0.16 my life with ksp

Um... what?

[figmentius]

Right now I'm trying to do the interplanetary simulation challenge. My rocket is beautiful and fully capable. I know I can get there and make a perfect touch-down. And then the Kraken raiseth its ugly head and I'm forever lost in space and I have to get up and not play for the rest of the day. I LOVE this game but I HATE that bug.

[erkle64]

Sorry if it's been said already, there's a mod for spot lights, using the downward ones makes even night landings easy. And like people have been saying, your first landing should feel amazing.

[AlternNocturn]

I have a list of the hardest games I've played. Kerbal is right at the top, beating out games like Super Ghosts 'n' Ghouls and Metroid 1. This game makes me murderously angry, and yet I still love it because when something does work, DAMN, there's no better feeling in the world. It's nerve-wracking, it's infuriating, it's even at times downright impossible for something to go right 100%, but it's also infinite opportunities for endless fun. If you don't think you can do something, find a crutch and practice with it (Mechjeb autopilot, KW Rocketry pack, etc.), then when you get bored of it, build and fly a stock rocket using techniques learned through the trial-and-error with the mods. Hell, you could even use mods exclusively, there's no restrictions on what you can do in this game. There's a mod for everything.

EDIT: Here are some thing I learned with MechJeb: I learned to do a gravity turn shortly after takeoff, that I could just do mid-course corrections when flying to Minmus, how to land on the Mun, how to shift the inclination of my orbit, and even how to get to orbit without SAS at all.

Edited September 5, 2012 by AlternNocturn

[UNSC]

You should have been here before landing legs.

[LaydeeDem]

i loved it even if i get coufused with the soild and water boosters ive been addiced to the game when i was little and i did the 0.13 demo then when i got to 9 i had 0.15 then teen 0.16 my life with ksp

Water boosters? I know rocket fuel is Hydrogen and Oxygen, but this is ridiculous!

[darin23]

just install the mechjeb mod and when your in the orbit of the mun go to "landing guidance" and let mechjeb take over.

[Arran]

Its like docking, as long you havent succeded, it seems impossible hard, once you are able to do it, you bang your head against the wall wonder why o why i had so much problems with it.

I never wacthed any YT, (reason why is a complete different not on topic issue) figured most out on myself, using F5/F9 as tool for practice.

Started to play the games ages ago it seems, it was 10x harder back at 0.15 when i started to play the game, the diffilculty was the thing that kept me hooked to the game.

But landing on the mun is easy, several ways to do it, easiest approach i think is, Get to about 15/20km above the surface, bring the ship to a deadstop retrograde, let it tumble straight down, keep the retrograde marker dead centre, and let it slowly fall down.

Keep reducing speed, slowly and bring the speed toabout 15m/s once you see your own shadow appear, reduce speed even more then to about 5m/s and gently put in on the ground.

Any drift can be countered with the thrusters.

Its not the most efficient way, but i think its the easiest way to do it at first, once you mastered the easy inefficient way, you can focus on more efficient techniques

Seriously its that simple, but some suggested Minmus might be easier do practice due its lower gravity, and even though its further away, it hardly requires more fuel, as minmus landings/take-off require less fuel that compensate for the longer distance.

IMHO the addiction comes from you only are competing with yourself, and trying to mimic others ships, this game is all about your own exploration, not only of the Kerbol system, but also your inginious exploring how to solve a problem with the most strangest contraptions thats at least makes it for me addictive. The weirder my designs, the better i feel

[Hagen von Tronje]

It's great because it combines exploration of the unknown with an amazing tinkerer's toolbox and good physics.

I don't know about you, but I love making things. It feels great to conceptualize a problem you want to solve, build something from your own ingenuity, and see it function. I enjoy testing it out, working out the bugs, and then watching it all hum. KSP even takes the frustration out of failure since nothing is truly lost, so even your failures are simply an opportunity to build a better craft.

PS - Munar surfaces vary in elevation just like on Kerbin and every other body. I might suggest Mk1 Illuminator lights aimed down on your early attempts even if you land dayside (you should always land dayside your first time). You'll see the ground lit up when you're still some distance from the ground and know to cut the rest of your descent momentum.

[fireblade274]

I didn't sleep one night (or more) and for at least 15 out of 24 hours played this game. Many a curse was shouted.

[WeirdCulture]

I purchased this game a few weeks back, and i still havent been able to land on the mun. I have watched more youtube videos than i care to tell you. I have crashed into the mun about a dozen times. I absolutly hate this game and for some odd reason i cant put it down.

Why it should it easier for you then for me? Keep tryin and keep Quickloading

Where does the mun surface actually sit? is it 400m or is it 1600????

Use this! http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/76320

[SkyRender]

I'm amazed that nobody has noticed that this thread is the victim of severe necromancy...

[Claw]

Indeed...Based on the topic, I think this thread is best left back in the depths.

Cheers,

~Claw