New player here.

[stripeyfox]

Hi. I'm so pleased I found this game. I kind of had this on my radar for a while but never really "got it". Decided on the spur of the moment to buy it at the weekend and wow, I love it! 

I've been trying to learn as much as I can but have had several failures already. I've been playing in career mode and managed a few sub orbital launches, followed by one which made orbit, albeit in a very elliptical one, and another which was a much rounder orbit but with no fuel left I can't return him home (I think). 

Anyway just wanted to say hi and I can't wait to get involved and hope I can get some good help here on my way to the moon and beyond! 

[Dman979]

Hey, @stripeyfox, and welcome aboard!

Everyone on the forum is helpful. I suggest perusing the Gameplay Questions and Tutorials subforum to find some help.

[stripeyfox]

Hey, thanks. I am pretty pleased with myself I just got a ship into orbit and then managed to bring him home safely. The re entry was probably a bit shallow and seemed to take a long time to come through the re entry heating but he made it!

 

[Dman979]

Awesome! I hope you packed a parachute, though. Nothing like a good mission spoiled by a bad landing.

[Geonovast]

5 hours ago, stripeyfox said:

have had several failures already

This... this is what we do.  Consider yourself part of the community!

 

[AHHans]

Welcome to the forums.

As other already mentioned: failures are part of the KSP experience.

5 hours ago, stripeyfox said:

and another which was a much rounder orbit but with no fuel left I can't return him home (I think). 

This just means that you'll need to mount a rescue mission. Once you have some more experience and are routinely launching spacecraft into orbit that will be another challenge. And don't worry about the Kerbal in the capsule, they have no problems waiting a few years in a tiny capsule for rescue.

[stripeyfox]

This game is all kinds of brilliant. Now I have got some of the basics, I decided that trying to earn money was proving a bit of a distraction so I restarted on "science" mode, but with some of the "hard" settings - including "crew don't respawn" which I assume means when they're dead, they're dead. Also, no restarting flights. Certainly focuses the mind. 

Are there any pitfalls to this method, other than having to start again when something goes wrong?

Also, does the game make any log of missions, or allow the user to do so? For this "hard" save I'd like to log every achievement and failure along the way. For instance Jebediah Kermin died on my very first launch when his parachute failed - I assume because I deployed it too early? 

 

 

[Geonovast]

16 hours ago, AHHans said:

This just means that you'll need to mount a rescue mission. Once you have some more experience and are routinely launching spacecraft into orbit that will be another challenge. And don't worry about the Kerbal in the capsule, they have no problems waiting a few years in a tiny capsule for rescue.

If EVA is possible, you could always just use the "Get Out And Push" method.

5 hours ago, stripeyfox said:

Are there any pitfalls to this method, other than having to start again when something goes wrong?

Eh.. no.  Not if you want it.  Since Science mode doesn't use money, you can hire as many kerbals as you want.  So killing them isn't a huge deal.

You can also revert flights if you like, but I have a feeling that if you're leaving kerbals dead when they die, you won't want to be reverting.  In my current career game, I have reverts and quicksaves enabled, but only for bugs.  If I screw something up, they die.  Makes me a little more careful and actually test flight abort systems - which are kind of fun to use.

5 hours ago, stripeyfox said:

I assume because I deployed it too early? 

I doubt it, unless you managed to deploy it in a situation that it ignored the "Deploy when safe" option (It's happened to me) and it got destroyed.  Hard to tell without seeing what happened.

[AHHans]

5 hours ago, Geonovast said:

If EVA is possible, you could always just use the "Get Out And Push" method.

Yes, but is that really what you want to tell a new player?

11 hours ago, stripeyfox said:

Are there any pitfalls to this method, other than having to start again when something goes wrong?

As long as you are willing to sacrifice the occasional Kerbal to the Kraken? No.

In other words: not all crashes are user error, sometimes things go wrong which aren't fully your fault. In particular when you start building larger rockets you may have to work around glitches in the physics simulation. I know that I am seriously upset by that, so I keep the ability to quick-reload / revert a failed launch.

11 hours ago, stripeyfox said:

For instance Jebediah Kermin died on my very first launch when his parachute failed - I assume because I deployed it too early? 

Well, a common newbie mistake is playing "lawn darts" with the Kerbals: having a rocket that wants to fly nose-first even when descending (re-entering the atmosphere) and having low drag in this configuration. This typically means that your rocket does not slow down enough to be able to deploy the parachutes.

[stripeyfox]

I love it, it's great. But as I advance up the tech tree, all the rocket parts become a bit.... confusing?

I assume that I can't just keep stacking taller and taller rockets so I need to learn a bit about strapping boosters etc

I did the tutorial on manoeuvres last night which kind of helped a lot as I had no real idea how to get to the Moon or beyond!

Pretty stoked that just a couple of days after discovering this game, they announce KSP 2! It looks amazing and from my limited experience if it is just KSP 1 with nicer graphics then I'd probably pay for that alone, but it looks like much more than that.

On the subject of add ons? How about the DLC for KSP? Worth it? Any thoughts or opinions?

 

Thanks guys

 

[James Kerman]

5 hours ago, stripeyfox said:

I assume that I can't just keep stacking taller and taller rockets

You can use autostrut to make your rocket more rigid (you will need to enable advanced tweekables and have unlocked the normal strut if you are playing career) and you also have the option of building stages outward instead of upwards - known as pancake rocket design (although this method introduces more drag):

[AHHans]

4 hours ago, stripeyfox said:

I love it, it's great. But as I advance up the tech tree, all the rocket parts become a bit.... confusing?

Just think of it as a big box of LEGO parts. There is no need to use all of them, you can do lots of crazy things with just the basic parts, but sometimes that one special part is exactly what you want. Or in other words: it's fine to stick with what you know, until you understand why you want to use another part.

One problem with KSP 1.x is that it doesn't do a good job of teaching new players the more complicated issues (like how to do a transfer to Mun/Minmus or an interplanetary transfer, how to land in vacuum, how to rendezvous and dock, etc.). But there is more and better information on this on the internet: the KSP wiki, the forum, youtube, etc.

4 hours ago, stripeyfox said:

On the subject of add ons? How about the DLC for KSP? Worth it? Any thoughts or opinions?

Worth it? Making History: Yes! Breaking Ground: Hell Yes!!!

But I'd suggest to wait until you are at least over the "confused with the parts" phase before buying them. Maybe even until you are over the "being pi**ed off by the physics glitches" phase.

[stripeyfox]

19 minutes ago, AHHans said:

Just think of it as a big box of LEGO parts. There is no need to use all of them, you can do lots of crazy things with just the basic parts, but sometimes that one special part is exactly what you want. Or in other words: it's fine to stick with what you know, until you understand why you want to use another part.

One problem with KSP 1.x is that it doesn't do a good job of teaching new players the more complicated issues (like how to do a transfer to Mun/Minmus or an interplanetary transfer, how to land in vacuum, how to rendezvous and dock, etc.). But there is more and better information on this on the internet: the KSP wiki, the forum, youtube, etc.

Worth it? Making History: Yes! Breaking Ground: Hell Yes!!!

But I'd suggest to wait until you are at least over the "confused with the parts" phase before buying them. Maybe even until you are over the "being pi**ed off by the physics glitches" phase.

Yeah that seems fair enough. There's plenty of "stuff" in the base game to get to grips with before adding more. I'm still finding entering an orbit hard enough! I seem to be coming out of the atmosphere too "steep" and then I don't seem to be able to "flatten" my orbit out enough to extend it all the way around the planet.

I managed it a couple of times and even managed to return again safely

But it's fine, the "narrative" in my save is that we are learning with each flight - just like our own space exploration - early test flights, launch pad tests and other experiments before going for the big one!

 

[Concodroid]

On 8/21/2019 at 1:00 AM, James Kerman said:

You can use autostrut to make your rocket more rigid

 

Forgot about that, dang it!

[bootsam]

Hi, Im new(wish) too. Learn how to coordinate the F5 & F9 saves. It can help you out of many a pickle. Ive learnt to F5 prior to launch now. So that I can only lose what blew up on that mission. I stopped reverting to saves as I went along a mission, now I F5 at the launch only. Whether that's from the launch pad or from a moon. Good luck. This game is silly. Just the right kind of silly for me.

 

NOTE: DONT MIX UP F5 AND F9 OR YOU END UP SAVING THE MISTAKE INSTEAD OF REVERTING.  Ive done this too many times...

Edited September 14, 2019 by bootsam
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[Vanamonde]

Or just spam F5 so that if you do hit F9 by mistake, it doesn't go back very far.