Finally, a career game that works...

[TheFlyingKerman]

I tried playing career before, I found that after getting to the point of building my first, simple, atmospheric plane, the game just became grinding money money with observation contracts.

This time I follow @Superfluous J's no contract career

and instead of just making money upgrading KSC as quick as possible, I am trying to visit all places, and possibly setting up a colony, using that limited income from milestones and selling science. To make the challenge less annoying, I set the building upgrade cost to 20%, and the money and science to 50%, this makes the cost of the ships more relevant. I have also enabled part entry cost, that proves to be expensive (for example a RA-15 relay costs 45k funds, while a level 2 RnD only costs about 110k), and makes researching new tech very relevant.

Currently I have landed probes on Duna and Ike, and have sent probes to Gilly and Pol. I never have more than ~200k funds in the bank, so money is finally relevant. I am not sure when I am going to fully upgrade my KSC.

I hope my rant can give other players or the game designer an idea how to make a more interesting career game.

 

[Blaarkies]

Observation contracts are a really bad way to make money that's why it feels so grindy, and getting science from MPLs is just swapping for a different grind.

Do 2 of those "rally" contracts where you flyby a probe to 5+ different places and all the money problems are sorted out. If you want to play career where funds actually matter, try the caveman challenge.

Edited November 5, 2021 by Blaarkies

[OHara]

I also change the options for the career mode, similarly in some ways, different in others.

+ enable Kerbal G-force limits
+ enable 'entry purchase required for research' to pay to unlock each part in the tech-tree,
     because I find it fun to try to build craft with limited set of parts, if I can freely choose the set
+ alt F12 cheat maximum 'Technology' (so I can ignore Science points)
+ ignore the 'Administration Building'
+ fund my career with world-firsts, satellite- station- and base placement, and rescue contracts
+ record my exploration in the form of maps from the mod ScanSat

When new players ask about career mode here, I tend to recommend a few other changes so that the early game is not significantly harder the Training missions:

+ disable Kerbal experience (making them 5-star to start)
+ enable 'Stock craft' to have examples to help choosing which parts to unlock
+ set starting funds to about 200k
+ feel free to decline a contract if you discover that you don't like it
+ alt F12 cheat 'Facilities' to full upgrade

[Kapitalizing Every Word]

45 minutes ago, OHara said:

+ disable Kerbal experience (making them 5-star to start)
+ enable 'Stock craft' to have examples to help choosing which parts to unlock
+ set starting funds to about 200k
+ feel free to decline a contract if you discover that you don't like it
+ alt F12 cheat 'Facilities' to full upgrade

At this point I would just play science

[OHara]

12 minutes ago, Kapitalizing Every Word said:

At this point [after cheating full Facilities and Experience] I would just play science

But notice also that I already cheated full 'Technology' so the technology tree is fully opened, and turned on entry-purchase for parts.

The effect is that you unlock parts as you progress in your career,
 by earning funds with missions to buy the research for those  parts,
 rather than by clicking on the science equipment to earn science points to unlock the nodes.

If you like (some of) the contracts, then you might like my setup.   I like worlds-firsts and rescues, 

If you like Science, you might prefer the linked "No contract career",
but notice that the author of that challenged uses Kerbal Environmental Institute and ForScience mods to avoid clicking on science experiments.

[Jack White]

Yeah, good points. We all are looking forward to have a proper and legit career mod. There was a lot of topics regarding this so I hope devs will listen to us and will do thier thing.

[Fraktal]

On 11/5/2021 at 12:25 PM, Blaarkies said:

getting science from MPLs is just swapping for a different grind.

Then here's a counter-argument:

• Don't use the MPL.
• Set science reward multiplier to 0.1.

THAT is how you grind. The issue with stock career is that it's too easy to get your hands on money? This is sure to make money way tighter in the early game due to the large number of missions you need to launch just to get ahead in the tech tree.

Edited November 7, 2021 by Fraktal

[king of nowhere]

 

 

On 11/5/2021 at 9:45 AM, TheFlyingKerman said:

I tried playing career before, I found that after getting to the point of building my first, simple, atmospheric plane, the game just became grinding money money with observation contracts.

This time I follow @Superfluous J's no contract career

and instead of just making money upgrading KSC as quick as possible, I am trying to visit all places, and possibly setting up a colony, using that limited income from milestones and selling science. To make the challenge less annoying, I set the building upgrade cost to 20%, and the money and science to 50%, this makes the cost of the ships more relevant. I have also enabled part entry cost, that proves to be expensive (for example a RA-15 relay costs 45k funds, while a level 2 RnD only costs about 110k), and makes researching new tech very relevant.

Currently I have landed probes on Duna and Ike, and have sent probes to Gilly and Pol. I never have more than ~200k funds in the bank, so money is finally relevant. I am not sure when I am going to fully upgrade my KSC.

I hope my rant can give other players or the game designer an idea how to make a more interesting career game.

 

yes, the no contract career challenge is a real fun one. and it's a great step to improve on efficiency.  just lowering money rewards does not help, in fact; you only need more grinding for the same amount of money. and lowering science reward just makes it more grindy.

i mean, look at crystalline nanodiamond caveman: you do a lot of launchpad testing to pay for sending a rocket in orbit just to hope to maybe deorbit in the right biome and get a single science report from that biome.... how is that a solution to grinding?

the no contract career is the only one where there is literally no incentive to grinding, and all the incentive to go new places.

i think we should make it one of the heritage challenges, just like the jool 5 or the kerpollo. is there some formal way to propose it?

[Stelari]

Wait, so you really think observation contracts are a good way of making money?! Seriously? As someone said above, it has to be one of the worst ways of earning money. From my point of view, the best option to solve all of your money issues in the game is making two of those rally contracts. You can also try to find some other money glitches, but as I know, most of them have already been solved. You can also look for some cheats on iwantcheats.net, but I don't think you'll be able to find anything for this game.

[Axelord FTW]

the heck

[Bej Kerman]

Sandbox

[TheFlyingKerman]

On 11/5/2021 at 7:25 PM, Blaarkies said:

Observation contracts are a really bad way to make money that's why it feels so grindy, and getting science from MPLs is just swapping for a different grind.

 

1 hour ago, Stelari said:

Wait, so you really think observation contracts are a good way of making money?! Seriously? As someone said above, it has to be one of the worst ways of earning money. From my point of view, the best option to solve all of your money issues in the game is making two of those rally contracts.

 

Completing an observation contract costs almost nothing, just a few kerbucks on fuel. Building a semi-decent plane (I can fly my Juno powered plane at 1.8 mach at 3x warp with hardly any user input) just requires 1-2 45 pt nodes, and there is no need for maneuver nodes.  I'd argue when you have the money for a lv 2 tracking station and tech for a semi-decent rocket to deliver a satellite, money is no longer relevant.

[Blaarkies]

1 hour ago, TheFlyingKerman said:

I'd argue when you have the money for a lv 2 tracking station and tech for a semi-decent rocket to deliver a satellite, money is no longer relevant.

On normal difficulty? Yeah money was never an issue there, just take a Solar space station contract, load the launch vehicle and press spacebar. That requires no extra user input.

But on higher Caveman Challenge difficulties money is always a problem, and bundling satellite contracts have better profit margins per minute of user input, compared to survey contracts

[Scarecrow71]

1 hour ago, Blaarkies said:

But on higher Caveman Challenge difficulties money is always a problem, and bundling satellite contracts have better profit margins per minute of user input, compared to survey contracts

My issue on Caveman is not funds, but rather science.  I'm nearly out of places to get Science at on Kerbin and around the SOI (apart from attempting to land, which is a challenge in Caveman).  I can continuously grind those "test this part at this location" contracts, but that is slow going.

[Randazzo]

The best part is that everyone can play it any way they like! 

I prefer the design element over the program management, but still like to play in career over sandbox or science. 

[TheFlyingKerman]

On 12/28/2021 at 2:32 AM, Randazzo said:

The best part is that everyone can play it any way they like! 

I prefer the design element over the program management, but still like to play in career over sandbox or science. 

x2. I play career/science because that gives many interesting design challenges as opposed to just put the best parts and moar boosters.

[Beamer]

I always play career and never have money issues. I never do observation contracts. Here's my general way of starting up a new career game:

- Combine your station contracts! For example get a contract for a Kerbin, Solar, Duna and Ike station. Launch your station in Kerbin orbit, 1st contract completed. Set it on a course to Duna, 2nd contract completed when you leave Kerbin SOI. Enter orbit of Duna, 3rd contract completed. Transfer to Ike orbit, 4th contract completed. That's a couple of million worth from launching a single 5 Kerbal craft with antenna, solar panel and docking port.

- Take all rescue contracts. The financial rewards are low but more than sufficient to cover the costs of a LKO rescue craft (to cut costs further combine multiple LKO rescues per launch until you have a station in LKO to launch your rescues from). The real reward is the money you save on hiring. In my current career game I have 78 Kerbonauts, only 2 of those were hired from the astronaut complex. That's a saving of ... dunno exactly as the price of hires ramps up, but tens of millions.

- Set up orbital refueling ASAP. There are more ways to re-use hardware than to land it back on Kerbin (which technically isn't even re-use, but scrap value, unless you actually set up a refueling operation on Kerbin surface). Virtually all my 1st stage cores double as planetary transfer stage after refueling in orbit. Start with a Minmus refinery paired with a tanker to lift the fuel off Minmus and put fuel depots in LKO, Mun and Minmus orbit. If designed appropriately this can support all your Minmus/Mun/Kerbin operations until you get a few asteroids in LKO. Once you tow in a few asteroids you're off to the stars. Almost everything I launch is refueled in orbit and only a few side boosters are discarded, if any. Note: the cost savings here is not the price of fuel, but the fact that you halve the weight (and thus costs) of your launch vehicles.

In my experience saving costs is all about setting up infrastructure. I have set up sustainable refueling around every planet up to Dres (and aiming for Jool soon), which means a craft only needs the fuel to get there, which again halves the weight/cost of a craft that needs to bring along all the fuel for the return trip. Once you have something like that set up, tourist contracts are a goldmine, but that's end-game stuff really.

 

[Scarecrow71]

8 hours ago, Beamer said:

Take all rescue contracts. The financial rewards are low but more than sufficient to cover the costs of a LKO rescue craft (to cut costs further combine multiple LKO rescues per launch until you have a station in LKO to launch your rescues from). The real reward is the money you save on hiring. In my current career game I have 78 Kerbonauts, only 2 of those were hired from the astronaut complex. That's a saving of ... dunno exactly as the price of hires ramps up, but tens of millions.

I will add that you should always bring the capsule back to Kerbin, even if the contract doesn't require it.  You will still get funds for doing so, and that is just free money.