Game's (almost,but) completed

[The Destroyer]

Sometimes it's best to just take a break from KSP. But here are my suggestions:

Land on Eve and return.

Land on Eve and return with 1 launch, 1 ship.

Do a grand tour.

Another thing: 0.22 is coming soon!

[Alfondoo]

Yeah you do seem to be unfairly prejudiced towards modding. All manner of great things have come out of modding games (counterstrike to name one of the biggest success stories).

I would seriously try out the robotics mod, this brings the biggest engineering challenge - make a base that deploys and folds out to create a massive kerbal utopia/jungle-gym but can also fit inside a 2.5m space. Or a cargo bay + robotic arm that deploys your satellites for you, the possibilities for this game are endless with mods.

I understand that there ARE unfairly balanced mods out there, but like you said, you've won the game. Who are you being unfair to if you install a mod now? You've achieved everything apart from fun....

[Epthelyn]

Just keep on putting millions of satellites, bases, space stations and manned rockets on and in orbit around every body in the Kerbol system.

I have to agree with those saying "Why no mods?" because the game becomes many many times more varied if you make use of community created parts. Why do you think some of the mods become popular? It's not because they add an 'unfair' advantage to the game, but because they are realistically balanced with stock parts and improve the game. I even recall some Squad-affiliated person saying at some point that mods are the content that Squad would love to add but don't have the time to implement. If you hate mods entirely, remove all parts added in the last couple of updates or so; they were all originally mods. Even MechJeb isn't cheating, since it can't do the impossible.

If you go into the challenges section of the forums you will notice that most challenges provide rules and separate scoreboards for modded crafts. It's literally impossible to cheat at a sandbox game.

Ultimately it's up to you, but if you want more to do, there's your answer.

[Wallace]

You clearly have nothing else to live for so build a kerbal rocket in rl and blast yourself off into space.

[BostLabs]

You clearly have nothing else to live for so build a kerbal rocket in rl and blast yourself off into space.

Be sure to wear your sunscreen.

[Spatzimaus]

Sigh. Threads like this keep popping up, and each is just as dumb as the one before it.

There is no "completed" to this game. It's a sandbox. Landing on a planet or moon is just the first step; building a base there, setting up rovers and such, those take FAR more work. Or do a Grand Tour, if you prefer to stick with the spacecraft operation. Or make a spaceplane that can land on airless moons and fly it everywhere, just so you can. Build a network of spacestations and fuel depots, to support your future explorations. Find all of the anomalies on each planet or moon. Land on Minmus without using a ship. You can always come up with more to do.

And disparaging mods is just stupid. In a completed game you can do without mods because the core game will have all of the necessary features to enjoy, but here? Every major system that gets implemented into this game was in a mod first. Rover wheels, subassemblies, reentry friction, mapping, the upcoming resource system, you name it. So people who use the well-balanced mods right now are just getting a head start on what everyone will be using in the future. The resource system is a great example of this; folks who've been using the Kethane mod are already familiar with putting drills, empty resource tanks, refineries, etc. on their designs. So once that system gets officially released, mod-using folks will have an easy transition; sure, the official system will be much more complex than Kethane's one-resource setup, but the basic designs will be the same. To say nothing of mods that simply add larger parts, so that you can have the same capabilities with lower part counts to avoid the massive lag. If they ever get Unity to do multicore support this'll be less important, but for now it's a practical necessity for complex designs.

It's fine to want to start off mod-free, to learn the basics. And you should keep a close eye on which mods to add, as many include inherently unbalanced parts or trivialize certain parts of the gameplay. But mods, as a whole, are a good thing.

[Silverchain]

yea, playing a game which focuses on modding

(citation needed)

The focus of KSP is on little green men and their rockets. It happens to be easily and frequently modded and it happens that there are various modders involved with Squad, but that doesn't make it a game focused on modding; I'm not sure what would make a game focused on modding. I've heard of games where modifying the ruleset is an intrinsic part of gameplay, maybe that would count, but that isn't the case with KSP; it's just a thing you can do, not something you're obliged to do.

Edited October 8, 2013 by Silverchain

[Gailardia]

Try building a city around the second space center on Kerbin and populate it with Kerbals.

[Eric S]

Mods are unfair.I really hate then on every single game *erp*

Well, if you're going to stick with that, then you're reducing your options on finding interesting stuff to do. I'll be the first to admit that some KSP mods are overpowered, but for the most part, the common and popular ones aren't so much, especially the ones that give you more to do or require you to alter the way you do it rather than just giving you more parts.

For example, one day I was in the mood to try something simpler but tricky, so I settled on installing RemoteTech, and then launching a three-node communication satellite constellation using a single unmanned ship. RT requires you to be able to communicate with unmanned craft in order to control them, so most people put up their first satellite network with manned ships. I wanted something more challenging, so I found two ways to put up a three-node constellation in a single unmanned launch.

If you're going to ignore that content, then I'd suggest taking a look at the weekly challenges in the KSP subreddit. Most of them don't allow mod use, so they should all be within your reach.

[acealeam]

Instead of a sky crane, make a glider. Fun project I've been working on.

[Monkeh]

Still banging on about mods, but here's me and my efforts from one night of having a few to play with, (only just started getting into this amazing mod thing myself).

I wanted a lander with a cargo bay holding a rover. It will be placed into another cargo bay of a larger interplanetary stage on a lifter at some point. But yeah, so much stuff in my head solely because of these mods I downloaded, opens up a whole load of new stuff to do.

Oh yeah, the mods you can see here are the KerbPaint, B9 lights and some fuel tanks and mini rockets from AIES I think. Not to mention the Magic Smoke Robotics piston thingy. So good.

Edited October 8, 2013 by Monkeh

[kiwi1960]

I'm actually giving up for another reason.... too many game crashes... a few entire restarts with new games....

The crashes are annoying, I build a new ship and then... game crashes... nothing saved...

I spend ages getting my ship close enough to dock, and game crashes or locks up...

I spend ages to get to a moon or planet, save the game, go back later and ship has vanished... or a flag has....

Sorry.... but I give up. Back to playing Fallout.... its better behaved even though I've played it to death.

[PotatoOverdose]

(I'm planning to land on eve, and jool moons,but I find that boring,just a routine: build a rocket.fly it.crash it.upgrade.fly to a planet.land on it.plant a flag.Pretend to be happy.Takeoff.fly home.tah dah. )

Do this challenge: http://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/1lyfv8/weekly_challenge_eve_and_back/

Single launch manned roundtrip to eve and back. That will keep you busy for a while.

Also, ignoring all of the Jool moons, eve, and other planets is like saying "Oh I put something into orbit, I've overcome every challenge this game has to offer, I win." Not even remotely close. You've just scratched the surface.

And once you accomplish all of that, do the grand tour in a single launch.

[Rainbow-Dashie]

I used to be a bit unsure of using mods, but I was kind of stuck in the game, been to the Mun and all that but still to new to make it to another planet. So i installed Kethane which would give me a bit more to do just in Kerbin's SoI.

[Kerbart]

And so there's nothing to discover. I've been on mun,minmus,duna,eve,gilly,moho,dres,jool,eeloo,saw tylo,vall,pol,bop,laythe...

What to do next? (please don't suggest mods)

(I'm planning to land on eve, and jool moons,but I find that boring,just a routine: build a rocket.fly it.crash it.upgrade.fly to a planet.land on it.plant a flag.Pretend to be happy.Takeoff.fly home.tah dah. )

No mods... well, a purist. How about going for that extra step of keeping the came clean--stop using time acceleration; that's another form of cheating after all.

Within a week (well, half a year, to be honest) you'll be the King Of Slingshots. "Eeloo? Yeah, 20 days of gametime. Initial slingshot around Mün to gain some speed, then a 1500m periapsis over Minmus to get some serious delta-V for an escape trajectory. It would have taken longer of it weren't for that convenient Duna line-up, that shaved off another week of waiting"

[Javster]

Get into planes a bit more? Build a hangar to place somewhere, make a huge frame with a docking port, somehow move the hangar to a random place.

Establish a base on every planet and moon.

[Gravaar]

Be the first (as far as I am aware) to build an SSTO spaceplane that lands on eve sea level and returns to orbit

[Eric S]

Also, ignoring all of the Jool moons, eve, and other planets is like saying "Oh I put something into orbit, I've overcome every challenge this game has to offer, I win." Not even remotely close. You've just scratched the surface.

At the very least, do a rover somewhere before thinking you're done.

Like I said in my first post, I've done all that and more, and the weekly reddit challenges are still fun because they're making me do things in different ways, to approach problems that I've never dealt with before, etc.

And to be honest, the most fun I've had in the last few months was last night, building rockets using just the seven parts you start career mode with. That made for some very interesting design limitations.

[Black_Tomcat]

One thing to make the game (way) harder would be to set your own restrictions.

This mean you still have the same goals, but it will be way harder to reach them.

As an example, one could try building only realistic rockets

-> Single stack, fairings, no fuel crossfeeding

And yes, all of this is doable in stock.

[Spatzimaus]

Also, ignoring all of the Jool moons, eve, and other planets is like saying "Oh I put something into orbit, I've overcome every challenge this game has to offer, I win." Not even remotely close. You've just scratched the surface.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that part. To the OP, saying you're "done" because you've landed on the lowest-gravity planets and moons is ridiculous. There's no real physics limitations to landing on Ike, Gilly, Mun, or Minmus because their gravity is so low that even dinky RCS jets can do most of your work for you. (That's not to say that these are trivial; one of my hardest landings was on Ike, because I was landing in a dark crater on the night side and couldn't see the ground even with lights.) Heck, Minmus can be landed on and returned from using only the Kerbonaut's jetpack!

Duna's not much tougher; I landed on it on my second day of playing, and returned safely (barely), using all demo parts. The only real challenge for Dres and Eeloo is that they're not tidally locked, so landing on a specific spot takes some practice (if you care about that sort of thing), although getting to them takes enough delta-V that you'll need something a bit bigger than a Mun design. A couple of Jool's are similarly easy, Pol and Bop; sure, they're lumpy, but it's not difficult at all to get down. Vall isn't too bad either.

But Tylo, Eve, and Laythe are a whole other story, to say nothing of landing on Jool itself. Your dinky little moon lander would have no hope of escaping from one of these planets' surfaces, so you'd need to come up with a much better design for those landings. It's not just "routine" to do even the most basic missions to these surfaces, let alone a mission to do something USEFUL like plant a base. These sorts of things take a lot of time and practice. I mean, look at Laythe; 0.8g surface gravity, a significant atmosphere (making takeoffs harder AND limiting the sorts of landers you can use), and the surface is almost entirely ocean. Try to do THAT with the same sort of stock lander you use for other moons and you'll be doomed to failure.

So basically, you've only played the tutorial if all you've done are landings on the easy moons. You've done the most basic things, the things any competent player learns how to do within the first day or two, but which are good ways to get a hang of the basic systems. The HARD stuff are the things you've ignored as being "routine", to say nothing of all the space stations and bases the rest of us have been making. And again, mods are incredibly useful, as they're often the features the full game will add in the near future. The resource system alone will be a major game-changer, because it'll now matter exactly where on each moon you land (a concept we Kethane users are already familiar with), to say nothing of the need to design orbital or mobile refineries.

And again, landings are only a tiny part of the game. Assembling a multi-part ship in orbit, maintaining a network of orbiting fuel depots, etc. all require a lot of time and effort despite not involving any sort of landing. It's one reason I'm still playing 0.19; I don't want to remake my empire in 0.20-21 only to have to redo it again once the resource system gets implemented.