Career Mode too easy/short?

[Vanamonde]

I don't believe this is the tech tree's final form, but as constructive criticism, I do think it's too short. Progress is hard at first, but after you've researched a few scientific devices, you can start cranking out points by sending one-way, automated probes with several instruments aboard. So at first it was a step at a time, but later I was buying half a dozen techs off of a single mission.

[SkyRender]

Even if Career mode were complete, I am very much not the person to ask about how well-balanced and challenging it is. On top of being a long-time KSP veteran with way more experience than probably 80 to 90% of the userbase at this point, I also have this funny habit of learning the ins and outs of a system to the point that I break all challenge.

[Galileo Kerbonaut]

It's hard to say anything about the R&D. In it's current state it's way too easy, even for a none-hardcore player like myself. I guess I've learned a great deal about the game in the last few months, but I still don't feel I'm on top of it. That being said, I can blast my way through the research tree quite easy. But I have a feeling this whole research tree is just the beginning. Nodes will be shifted around, economy will be added and I think Squad is keeping an eye out for all the feedback. Let's just wait and see for a couple of versions where this is heading to before we draw any conclusions.

[DevoidLight]

Planned features

You are welcome.

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Hmmm, that page might as well be a wishlist for all it tells us.

[nhnifong]

Yeah it's pretty much a haphazard list of things that any of the devs off-handedly said at some point and most of the time it was in a stream or the post is so old that it was subducted under the tectonic plates of the ever-crumbling forum.

[Guest]

This poll is in dire need of a "Too early to tell" option.

[TNM]

it really depends on how you play. if you go on what you know about real-rockets, only build like that, you won't get through as quickly. you won't land on every body with ridiculous large rockets doing crazy stuff. if you want to land with multistage vehicles and docking, you won't get those parts till later. that stops you from getting alot of sience early.

but yea, if you WANT to, you can go nuts and just build absurd rockets and do it all in a few missions. this requires you to know the tech tree and what to unlock, though.

EDIT: didn't vote because it just nees "difficulty modes".

[DChurchill]

It's really in need of a difficulty slider. I think Squad is making a mistake in making career mode a "for new players" thing. Games like Civilization are fun because of, among a great many other things, the tech tree. People who don't want to mess with it can ignore it and go sandbox. Just because I already know how KSP works and can get to Eeloo and make huge orbital stations, doesn't mean I won't enjoy career mode.

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

The correct choice is missing from the poll. "The Career Mode is currently incomplete and will be more fleshed out in the future."

Voted for this!

[MostlyEvilKiwi]

As a new player, having found KSP last week after 0.22 came out, I've spent perhaps 4 hours total on the game. At this early stage of development there's a lot of "what am I supposed to do now?" I did the first few tutorials which were cool, they showed me how to build a rocket, launch it, orbit and land. (Have'nt done any further tutorials yet), but my career mode consists of "huh? what am I supposed to do?" so I just attempt to make a rocket that I can put into orbit, which I finally did last night. OK, so now what? probably I'll try and get into Mun orbit. It's fun making tons of mistakes and figuring out what works, but I really don't have much idea about what are the sorts of things I should be trying to make missions for. I hope there's something further down the development pipeline that will have a list of suggested missions that start out easy and gradually progress to all kinds of funky things.

[Ariadne]

Too easy for experienced player, who construct big wide spacecrafts, which seem very stange, but in the game is efficient. But for new gamers it's more difficult, because they don't know the "game rules".

I assume, developers will add ingame money, and it will make the game more difficult.

[Rocketman1994]

Its an incomplete product.

I betcha its gonna be a lot harder when, life support, a realistic reentry model and economics starts coming into play.

[Muffinking]

This poll is in dire need of a "Too early to tell" option.

That's not an answer, merely a reason. Unless you haven't finished career yet.

[PDCWolf]

There's another option missing: "3 months for 3 parts and a half-done re-categorization for a supposed tutorial mode that doesn't really explain anything"

Other than that, I voted for too easy. And I'm definitely not liking the already suggested ways to make it more difficult.

[WestAir]

I've done:

1. Landing on Minnus

1. Landing on Mun

1. Landing on Duna

I'm not even half way through the tech tree, just far enough to get my first docking port. This is something like 10 flights in. Maybe I'm not doing things right, but I find science rather tedious to net. At this point my only option to get new science is to go to new planets and return; Space Stations and whatnot are almost pointless in comparison, and I kind of wish they [and aeroplanes] could net you science in mid-game.

[PlayMp1]

I've done:

1. Landing on Minnus

1. Landing on Mun

1. Landing on Duna

I'm not even half way through the tech tree, just far enough to get my first docking port. This is something like 10 flights in. Maybe I'm not doing things right, but I find science rather tedious to net. At this point my only option to get new science is to go to new planets and return; Space Stations and whatnot are almost pointless in comparison, and I kind of wish they [and aeroplanes] could net you science in mid-game.

The key is to load up your spacecraft with experiments and repeatedly transmit science back. People on this forum have already tested everything out and basically laid the entire science system bare, and they've found that transmitting data back only increases the number of times data has to be received at all by KSC, basically. You basically get to either return with a large load of data, but then you have to go back to get more, or transmit as much data as you can while on site.

Right now, there's not really any detriment to transmitting anything except maybe surface samples and EVA reports (because they're so difficult to get most of the time), and even then, a sufficiently repetition-tolerant player could easily hop in and out of their spacecraft to get those reports transmitted back a bunch of times.

I had a similar progression as you, but I just finished the tech tree with 4000 science to spare after doing one final mission that was a lengthy probe mission to Jool (did high and near in space for Jool, Laythe, Vall, Tylo and Pol with every possible experiment, landed on Pol and did all possible experiments - this alone netted me tons and tons of science, I don't even know how much).

My Duna mission in particular was profitable, getting me some 5000 science. Are you making sure to do as much as you can science-wise?

[boomerdog2000]

I've been limiting myself to not transmitting anything but crew reports, and data values(thermometer, etc.) except for my unmanned Eve probe. You have to do some interplanetary missions or some serious Mun biome searching to unlock it all.

[engraverwilliam]

All I can say is "I am glad that I learned how to build and fly before mechjeb. I got to mun minmus and duna before I even considered using mods. Then when I got mechjeb I paid close attention to everything that was gong on!

In career mode it is a little wiggy on liftoffs but I have now recreated my biggest deep space flyer along with the new science packages. I am headed to Duna this weekend (or tonight). I remember the positions and angles from protractor and MJ so I will light the candle and see if I can get there and back. So that maybe I can get my orange tanks.

[TheWanderer]

The correct choice is missing from the poll. "The Career Mode is currently incomplete and will be more fleshed out in the future."

this. nothing more to add

[Pulstar]

I'll reserve my judgment on length for the future, as there will be more to it than just maxing out the tech tree and there will be other factors adding to its length.

The science system has its issues, including mechanics that can be exploited quite severely via meta-gaming but the most obvious ones are going to be fixed or reworked. Re-balancing and a few new mechanics should be enough to fix it. I will give it one thing though, it does show how much easier the LV-N and mainsail+double-jumbo make everything.

I also think that a big reason why it seems to be easy apart from exploitable mechanics is because only two places have biomes. I imagine that once Duna and most medium to large celestial bodies get those, they will have a slight science yield from experiments decrease, to encourage multiple visits to the same planet or at least landing on the edge of two or more biomes. Currently one properly done Duna mission with an Ike flyby is a very easy source of a large amount of science, both with and without abusing transmissions.

[Kenobi McCormick]

I don't think it is. IT could use some changes but right now the difficulty feels more or less right where it should be. Sure it's possible to minmax your way into maxing the entire tree in two or three launches, but most players aren't going to do that.

Besides, you want it to feel like a WoW grind?

[epima09]

I thought it was too easy.

I almost completed my research tree without even going beyond the mun.(I researched sun orbit once)

And i didn't even research all the mun biomes.

[Madrias]

I'm on the fence between just right and a touch hard. The lack of proper spaceplane parts near the beginning hurts those like me who transitioned to spaceplanes as fast as possible. However, once I was able to make my very first spaceplane, things fell into place.

Any increase in difficulty will make the game less fun (assuming arbitrary "Kerbal Career Mode, now with 50% less science per mission" strategy) which is the exact reason I left World of Warcraft: it was just too tedious.

However, making it easier is, at this point, not really needed. About the most I could logically see is moving the time where you get wings, or having spaceplanes being an off-shoot from the rocket tree, available from the start, or near start.

Once resources and/or funding get involved, Career mode might need a good rebalancing, but for now it's okay. After all, I went into it without intentionally taking all the science gear and ignoring my better rocket parts.

I think about the best thing that could be done is to add a difficulty adjustment, something to make it easier or harder depending on what you want. Even if all it does is arbitrarily change how much science you get each time you do something, it'd help.

[Lheim]

I think some of the reason it seems so easy is the spam-transmit thing. If you just send up a moon rover, and transmit over and over again as you visit every biome under the sun.. I've been trying to resist the temptation of doing so, and I've had to do a fair variety of missions so far to unlock stuff.

If they tighten up the maximum amount of science you can get via transmission, they'll be in a good spot - perhaps even a little on the hard side. Remember we're also talking about a system that at least in part is suppose to help introduce new players; the old pros won't be long put off by it.

I will say I agree that the part distribution among technologies feels arbitrary. Ion engines and RTGs and nervas certainly deserve to be close to the top of the tree, and also some of the more extreme super-small and super-large refinements of engines.. but I was seriously pining for wheels, plane parts, and some more structural elements earlier on. I wouldn't agree with the idea of having straight-up categories of research, though - I wouldn't just put all the engines in a row from smallest to largest, or tanks the same way. The tree with crossing dependencies is a good way to go.

[malkuth]

I think some of the reason it seems so easy is the spam-transmit thing. If you just send up a moon rover, and transmit over and over again as you visit every biome under the sun.. I've been trying to resist the temptation of doing so, and I've had to do a fair variety of missions so far to unlock stuff.

If they tighten up the maximum amount of science you can get via transmission, they'll be in a good spot - perhaps even a little on the hard side. Remember we're also talking about a system that at least in part is suppose to help introduce new players; the old pros won't be long put off by it.

I will say I agree that the part distribution among technologies feels arbitrary. Ion engines and RTGs and nervas certainly deserve to be close to the top of the tree, and also some of the more extreme super-small and super-large refinements of engines.. but I was seriously pining for wheels, plane parts, and some more structural elements earlier on. I wouldn't agree with the idea of having straight-up categories of research, though - I wouldn't just put all the engines in a row from smallest to largest, or tanks the same way. The tree with crossing dependencies is a good way to go.

With one mun rover running around all the biomes on the mun... I would literally give all the science to any player that has the patience to do that. That is a feat that is no small task. Now a vessel with enough DV to fly to the biomes... Think that would be a much more plausible thing.