Planning long mission in career mode

[Rylant]

Hey everyone. So my career play through is going well. For the first time ever, I am starting to hit some of the tougher encounters. I have entered the Jool system but have yet to land on any moons. Landed and returned from the Mun, Minmus, Gilly, Ike and Duna. Landed a probe on Eve. 

So one thing I am noticing is that if I plan a Duna mission, for example, I spent like a game year or even more not doing anything but that mission. I speed to the next maneuver or window. As you all know, this can be fast forwarding through months at a time. This means I am at like year 12 or something like that. I assume the Kerbals don’t age,  so that’s not a huge issue. Do you guys do this too? Do you fast forward through your hundred days to you mid course correction to Duna, or do you send your mission on its way and then do other things while you are waiting for your ship to get there?

Rylant

[Guest]

You need Kerbal Alarm Clock, the greatest “why is this mod not stock?” example known to man.

It lets you set alarms for events like start of burns, soi changes etc so you can do other things without missing the event.

[AlpacaMall]

I didn't do this for my first interplanetary save. I threw a low-tech lander at Moho on the day 40 transfer window, then spent a few days to weeks of IRL time setting up some stations and bases in the Kerbin system.

Seeing that monstrosity I sent arrive at Moho and successfully capture into orbit is still one of my proudest moments in the game. It really brings out that feeling of "wow, I just did something big".

That being said, I gave up on that save before my Eve orbiter could arrive, and I'd never put myself through that again.

[Mythos]

Yeah, use Kerbal Alarm Clock, and then whenever there is an hour of time to the next alarm, launch a new thing... Like me, you will have lots of concurrent missions and will never go past year 2 in any of your games, and will never get anywhere 

[DVQuill]

19 minutes ago, Mythos said:

Yeah, use Kerbal Alarm Clock, and then whenever there is an hour of time to the next alarm, launch a new thing... Like me, you will have lots of concurrent missions and will never go past year 2 in any of your games, and will never get anywhere 

This is me.

[Mystique]

23 minutes ago, Mythos said:

Yeah, use Kerbal Alarm Clock, and then whenever there is an hour of time to the next alarm, launch a new thing... Like me, you will have lots of concurrent missions and will never go past year 2 in any of your games, and will never get anywhere 

My problem exactly. As soon as I get carried away by "why waste time", that save is as good as abandoned, there will be 10-20 ongoing missions in the end and I won't even remember what I had in mind when I sent them

So it's better to play it mission by mission, fun and real time has more priority than in-game time, especially taking into account there are no important deadlines in this game.

[king of nowhere]

2 hours ago, Mystique said:

My problem exactly. As soon as I get carried away by "why waste time", that save is as good as abandoned, there will be 10-20 ongoing missions in the end and I won't even remember what I had in mind when I sent them

 

that's also why i stopped playing career and went to only play single missions. after getting some experience, yet another contract for bringing tourists around, or bringing parts to test around, or surveying a certain area, become tedious

[Curveball Anders]

3 hours ago, Mythos said:

Yeah, use Kerbal Alarm Clock, and then whenever there is an hour of time to the next alarm, launch a new thing... Like me, you will have lots of concurrent missions and will never go past year 2 in any of your games, and will never get anywhere 

That's almost how I play.
I rarely fast forward for more than some hours.

 

[Rylant]

Interesting. Thanks all. I have installed Alarm Clock as suggested. It is a great idea which definitely should be vanilla. 
 

Let me ask. I see it has built in transfer windows. I am not sure what I am doing wrong, but the windows seem off a bit. I used the alarm clock for a Dres encounter from Kerbin, but found that when alarm clock told me to go, the suggested time was off by like 35 days. I am sure I am just missing something here.
 

Rylant 

[AlpacaMall]

13 minutes ago, Rylant said:

Let me ask. I see it has built in transfer windows. I am not sure what I am doing wrong, but the windows seem off a bit. I used the alarm clock for a Dres encounter from Kerbin, but found that when alarm clock told me to go, the suggested time was off by like 35 days. I am sure I am just missing something here.

I recall reading that the KAC transfer window formulas don't take some factors like inclination into account, leading to them being slightly off. If you're playing in the stock system, you can switch to the "By model" setting, which uses actual in-game data instead of calculated windows.

[Superfluous J]

6 hours ago, Rylant said:

I used the alarm clock for a Dres encounter from Kerbin, but found that when alarm clock told me to go, the suggested time was off by like 35 days. I am sure I am just missing something here.

Personally I don't use the Alarm Clock encounters and instead use either Transfer Window Planner or AstroGator. Both do a wonderful job of telling you the best time to go. One gives you the information to decide on your own (with a suggestion) while the other just gives you a series of maneuvers that get an encounter.

 

[jimmymcgoochie]

@Superfluous J AstroGator? Space squid were bad enough, but space alligators!? 

I too suggest Astrogator as a nice transfer planner tool, along with WhereCanIGo to tell you if you can get there (and back!), and if all else fails MechJeb’s advanced transfer maneuver planner can get you from just about anywhere to just about anywhere else with the added bonus of a delta-V/transfer time/time until burn Porkchop plot that can sometimes highlight unexpected combinations like a much faster, but slightly more expensive, transfer outside of the normal “window” that could be available sooner.

I use KAC to keep track of everything, but sometimes time warping can overrun an alarm and sometimes I just forget to set one in the first place resulting in a failed mission .

[Guest]

I use KAC’s transfer window planner and find it pretty accurate. I usually set an alarm for maybe 20 days before it says, then when it goes off, design/build/launch whatever I’m sending and leave in orbit of Kerbin.

Then I use MJ’s Porkchop Plotter as described above and it usually ties in with the KAC prediction. I’m happy not to go for the lowest possible dV as sometimes it’ll only cost maybe 100 dV more to go in say 5 days than in 200 days.

Edit: also worth noting that Transfer Window Planner suggested above is actually another mod by TriggerAu (who did KAC) so presumably uses the same method for calculating.

Edited May 7, 2021 by Guest

[king of nowhere]

I use the alexmoon launch window planner on github for transfer windows. feels better than adding more mods