Guys, I need inspiration to play KSP again

[Fierce Wolf]

It's been like a month since I played. In my last "complete" career I visited every body with a manned crew, which left little room for inspiration.

 

My new career game needs flavor, what should I do now?

 

[Geonovast]

Maybe get a planet pack?  Kopernicus just updated to 1.8.

[Sppion1]

Yes, depends on what mod you tried before ?

Try some Kerbal Construction Time, Colonies building mod, life supoprt mods, or planet pack as @Geonovast suggested.

[kerbonara]

To me kOS is a mod which has great potential for replays. Do everything again, but now fully automated.

You my get that same old feeling “Great, I finally got into orbit!” but now it is because your script worked.

Edited February 5, 2020 by kerbonara

[fulgur]

Go crazy with BG, MH and as many mods (planet packs, GPP and JNSQ are great) as your potato or other root vegetable can handle.

[RizzoTheRat]

On ‎2‎/‎5‎/‎2020 at 5:06 PM, kerbonara said:

To me kOS is a mod which has great potential for replays. Do everything again, but now fully automated.

You my get that same old feeling “Great, I finally got into orbit!” but now it is because your script worked.

Very much this.  The sense of achievement of my first orbit, first  Mun landing, first docking, first trip to Duna, etc using kOS have all been similar to my firsts in the standard game.  Next plan is to land on Duna, something I've not done at all for probably a couple of years

Realism Overhaul is one I plan to have a go with at some point for something very different too.

[Zeiss Ikon]

Yep, Realism Overhaul is the way to go.  It works in 1.7.3 now, as I understand it (my current install is on 1.6.1, but I'm about tired of the parts bin graphics bug).  Start with sounding rockets, because that's about all you can build, and that's what the contracts call for, and work your way up.  Oh, and did I mention you're playing on a full sized Earth, in a full sized Solar System?  Once you can build a spacecraft that can get there, Mars is nine months away by Hohmann orbit.  Jupiter is multiple years.

Want a real challenge?  Play in "hard" mode, no reverts, no quickloads, no respawns, signal required, plasma blackout, lightspeed delay (twenty to forty minutes round trip for a signal to Mars!) -- well, the list of ways to make it more challenging goes on for a while.  I've bankrupted eight or ten saves playing that way, but when I finally got to Low Earth Orbit (and ready to shoot for Lunar flyby or impact) it really felt like an accomplishment (and who cares that it took until 1965 to get to orbit, right?).

[steuben]

Take conventional design and chuck it out the window. Don't go for efficiency go for style.

[LittleBitMore]

Kerbal Attachment System and Kerbal Inventory System. I once built a big rocket on the Runway with a KAS crane and KIS welding tools. It's amazing and you really should try it.

Planet packs also do wonders, as mentioned many times before. If you're not into changing from stock too much, try JNSQ-- perfectly suited for stock parts with higher difficulty.

[Warmachine]

Download a life support mod, and grab some stuff like Station Parts Expanded to give you options. I'm partial to the USI stuff, but really the idea is to force you to consider the fact that shipping a Kerbal off for 10 years without any snacks or televisions is inhumane (inkermane?).

Also there's a space station science pack that makes stations more useful. And USI has a colonization pack that adds a minigame to the ground base building.

Basically, start getting mods. KSP is a sandbox, and you're free to bring what you'd like into the sandbox to play with. Links below are to a base I'm currently building, and an interplanetary vessel I assembled in orbit, for inspiration.

https://i.imgur.com/CCjzGW2.png

https://i.imgur.com/kCFAZYR.png

Edited February 10, 2020 by Warmachine

[Klapaucius]

On 2/6/2020 at 4:10 AM, Geonovast said:

Maybe get a planet pack?  Kopernicus just updated to 1.8.

This. Galileo's Planet Pack or one of @Gameslinx's amazing sets.  Quite different gravity and atmosphere combinations on some of the worlds make for a totally new experience.

[Crixomix]

JNSQ! Jnsq is awesome. Quite a bit more challenging (5k dV to get to orbit), but not to RP-1 levels of realism.

[MechBFP]

On 2/10/2020 at 2:38 PM, Klapaucius said:

This. Galileo's Planet Pack or one of @Gameslinx's amazing sets.  Quite different gravity and atmosphere combinations on some of the worlds make for a totally new experience.

I also recommend GPP. Some of the planets are really cool. One planet requires a space plane with jets to get back to orbit as rockets literally don’t work on it (near sea level that is). 

Edited February 12, 2020 by MechBFP

[Klapaucius]

1 hour ago, MechBFP said:

 One planet requires a space plane with jets to get back to orbit as rockets literally don’t work on it (near sea level that is). 

Which one is that?

Edited February 12, 2020 by Klapaucius

[MechBFP]

Just now, Klapaucius said:

Which one is that?

Tellumo 

It’s not currently released for 1.8.1 yet but it’s in the works as per the official thread.

https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/152136-ksp-145-galileos-planet-pack-v1631-03-aug-2018/page/276/

[Mikenike]

On 2/5/2020 at 8:59 AM, Fierce Wolf said:

It's been like a month since I played. In my last "complete" career I visited every body with a manned crew, which left little room for inspiration.

 

My new career game needs flavor, what should I do now?

 

How about ORBITAL RINGS, or rather, a massive one around the sun. Or how about a set of deep space stations.

[Klapaucius]

3 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

Tellumo 

It’s not currently released for 1.8.1 yet but it’s in the works as per the official thread.

https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/152136-ksp-145-galileos-planet-pack-v1631-03-aug-2018/page/276/

Interesting. I've never landed there, just mission buildered planes there. Very interesting place to fly around.

[p1t1o]

On 2/5/2020 at 2:59 PM, Fierce Wolf said:

It's been like a month since I played. In my last "complete" career I visited every body with a manned crew, which left little room for inspiration.

 

My new career game needs flavor, what should I do now?

 

 

Have you gone to another star yet?

Thats what is fuelling my current re-visit, using "Real Exoplanets".

I have no idea even if it will be possible, even heavily modded, at least for a decent sized payload including live kerbals and the systems to keep them alive (USI/Deepfreeze), maybe a lander.

But thers only one way to find out.

[έķ νίĻĻάίή]

Go stupid! Launch as many orange tanks into orbit as you possibly can! Make a five thousand piece craft for no reason! Make a kraken roomba!

[Death Engineering]

I'd recommend JNSQ as some other here have also. It's quite beautiful and while Kerbin-like, still not-Kerbin. The size (reportedly ~2.7x stock scale) is quite manageable with stock parts as well. I just finished putting together "Ares V"-style and "Altair"-style hardware and found the stock parts fit quite nicely into this scale without making the gameplay painful. Having done the RO to the Moon once Apollo-style just to do it, that scale pushed the fun/work balance too far away from fun for me so 2.7x is a nice middle ground.

Another thing to try is an anomaly hunt. Visit every anomaly in the game, with crew, and get some pics. Do it with life-support to crank up the challenge a bit. I just finished a comprehensive anomaly hunt and it was actually quite fun.

[XLjedi]

Use robotics to build loading and cargo transfer systems for your craft.  

[papuchalk]

hey i need new career too. i never been to Dres or other far distant planets, but in fact, long missions with years of timewarping are not so entertaining to me. What i enjoy most is the initial research, first orbit, first fly by mun, first mun landing. and basically Duna is farthest i wish to go.

 

but what i would appreciate very much is better missions regarding the real space programs from 1950s. I just wish the missions that game offers me are more logical with the technology i actually have in game, and so that game offers me more missions to do smaller steps with progress. In fact i would appreciate to have Mun landing as final stage of my career, but i would need much more missions in between, Mercury, GEmini like missions. Russian probes,  taking photos of far side of Mun, and other real missions, which were very important back in those days, but now are considered small and unimportant, because Apollo 11 made it..

 

anyone knows how to get that career? which mode? I tried Mission controller 2, lots of entertaining missions i must say, but they come up very randomly and most of the time they come long time after i already did similar mission from stock mission generator.. too sad

Edited February 20, 2020 by papuchalk

[XLjedi]

1 hour ago, papuchalk said:

hey i need new career too. i never been to Dres or other far distant planets, but in fact, long missions with years of timewarping are not so entertaining to me. What i enjoy most is the initial research, first orbit, first fly by mun, first mun landing. and basically Duna is farthest i wish to go.

I have to say, I'm with ya there...  the long time warps feel like too much of a disconnect to me and take me out of the game.  If I have missions open, I need to close them all while warping for fear of time expiration.  If I close out all the open missions the timeline feels utterly disconnected (for some reason my space program goes dormant for 15 years).  If I don't go dormant, then I can fire off those distant explorers, but I'm playing your game in the mean time and have the entire tech tree unlocked well before the first probe ever arrives at distant planet.  Distant planet missions become entirely pointless in terms of the "unlock tech tree career game".

It's something I hope they can address somehow in the KSP 2 gameplay.  On the one hand, no FTL drives, on the other you end up with long periods of dormant activity due to timewarp skips.  So I dunno, maybe no FTL drives, but we find a wormhole or something?  The time jumps just break the underlying game for me.  The only other alternative I could think of would be that each craft you launch is allowed to exist on a separate timeline?  So you launch a rocket to Eve to explore the planet, it takes n years to get there, you do your thing... and score the science on future date X.  Then you revert back to your earliest mission timeline and you maybe see a projection of spendable science plotted for the future dates?  So basically your earliest launched active mission would always be dictating what science you are allowed to spend in the here-and-now.  If you accelerate that earliest mission, the here-and-now advances accordingly and you can accel your way (in smaller more managed chunks) toward those future completed missions?  Seems a tad abstract, but it's the only viable alternative I can think of to address large skips in time without employing FTL drives or wormhole jumps.

Given your preferences...  and the fact that you are contemplating a new career, I may also have a challenge that would interest you!

Edited February 20, 2020 by XLjedi

[papuchalk]

actualy, i have been watching Kerbalism videos on youtube last few days, and it highly attracts me. Though it requires completely new career to be started, and i remember how painful are those real beginnings

Edited February 20, 2020 by papuchalk

[XLjedi]

3 minutes ago, papuchalk said:

and i remember how painful are those real beginnings

That's kinda the purpose of the challenge I have in mind...  to negate that part of play, or make the optimization of it into a game.