KSP V. 0.22: Total career obliteration.

[specs]

Well that was fun while it lasted. But seriously, am I the only person who was able to max out his tech tree in three missions?

My development curve was extremly gentle: Starting off with a successful orbital insertion into LKO; shortly after which I had blasted myself to the Mun, and then, finally, a flyby of Eve/landing on gilly.

(A picture of my tech tree. Note: the two missing nodes are parts that I never use. E.g. The Mk3 Cockpit/fuselage components *Shudders*, and ion power.)

But to show some proof, here's the landing sites:

Gilly...

And the Mun...

Now that there's nothing more to strive for, I'm actually weary of any future missions to bodies that'll actually offer science, you know, on the grounds that it's a limited commodity, and I don't wan't to be caught flapping in the wind when squad finally decides to implement resource management/ actual item benefit-to-cost analysis.

I dunno, thoughts?

[Geschosskopf]

As the devs have stated, career mode, at least at present, is mainly to help introduce new players to the game, who don't have the 1st clue, nor any confidence in their abilities. So the idea is, they can work their way along, learning both game mechanics and the capabilities of parts, and getting more confident as they progress with baby steps. You only have 2 posts but you obviously know what you're doing so don't need what is effectively a tutorial.

Bottom line is that career mode isn't intended to be much of a challenge, nor is it intended to be a long-term occupation, at least at present. And seriously, there's really no way to make it either without also just turning it into a repetitive grind. The only way to string things out is to either reduce the amount of science you get for doing various things in different places, or increase the cost of buying nodes, or make the tree a longer and/or wider by putting fewer parts per node. Once you can make it into orbit, there's no real trick to going anywhere else. Thus, you'd just have to do more missions and seriously, once you've sent a science ship to one planet, it gets old fast just doing the same for all the others.

To me personally, just doing the "Apollo thing", as in grab a handful of rockets, plant a flag, and go home, is pretty boring after the 1st time. If you can get to LKO, you can get to Mun. If you can get to Mun, you can get anywhere else, it just takes a bit more delta-V and having to wait on a launch window. If the player can do all that, why penalize him by making him prove this over and over going everywhere in the system just to get parts he obviously doesn't really need anyway?

[Pigbear]

get a custom tech tree mod. Use one of the harder ones.

[specs]

Well said. Although I think the real fix would be a more in-depth interaction with the development of tech specifically tailored to a parts physical constrain of scientific experiment. (E.g. Nuclear engines not becoming available until, I don't know, you've sent a probe, or two into the sun?) But that's just nitpicking. I'll just hold out until there's some sort of monetary system introduced.

Thank you for the response, my original thoughts had been that it was developed with the aspiring space enthusiast in mind; I think I shall remove this thread, as to not bog down the inexperienced.

[Odo]

3 missions? 0-0

It took me a dozen Mun missions, a few Minmus missions, a 3 Duna missions, and one eve missions to fill my techtree. Dafuq? Then again those last 2 parts you havent unlocked are some of the most expensive parts.

[specs]

Lot's of redundancy in my designs; for my Gilly launch I brought five Science Jrs., four Mystery Goos, and three of all my available scientific monitoring devices. Thus allowing me to stockpile crazy amounts of science points from more than one biome. With my recovered Science juniors alone I had gathered more than 3000 points.

[Superfluous J]

Try starting a new game and forcing yourself to only unlock one node per successful mission, regardless of how much science you got.

I'm doing this now and having an absolute blast. Sure, I could get a couple thousand points in a single mission and unlock half the tree. But deciding between solar panels and fuel lines for my next mission is far more fun sounding to me.

[sTiKyt]

Try Ion Cross life support. It makes early tech much harder to come by.

[specs]

Hmm... *scratches chin*

[128MB]

3 missions? 0-0

It took me a dozen Mun missions, a few Minmus missions, a 3 Duna missions, and one eve missions to fill my techtree. Dafuq? Then again those last 2 parts you havent unlocked are some of the most expensive parts.

Lol i have landed on minmus, the mun, duna AND eve and i still only JUST unlocked the skipper engines and nukes ...

I am not spamming the crew report button every 3 seconds to gather points, im only doing everything once.

It is more fun opening a tiny bit of the tech tree everytime i visit another planetairy body.

Career mode has given me alot more challenge in getting somewhere without nukes, big engines, docking or even fuel lines ...

Last week i only managed to get to duna for the first time but now im ready to go to jool!

Edited November 2, 2013 by 128MB

[Dave Kerbin]

I've nearly completed my tech tree and the only mission beyond Kerbin's little neighborhood is a half completed mission to Eve. However I haven't been spamming science (apart from the Eve mission everything has been recover rather then repeated transmission and I've actually missed out on a lot of crew reports because I forget that the feature exists). My Duna mission is almost assembled in orbit awaiting it's launch window in a few days (that's why the last part of the Eve mission is on hold, I need to time the Duna launch correctly and Eve can wait in stable orbit) and will probably finish things off.

Personally I would enjoy seeing some adjustments to how transmissions work. As most are aware you can keep re-running and then re-transmitting over and over again to get all the science. I don't want to break the idea that transmitting and then recovering on a later mission provides the same total science as recovering, but I would maybe just drop the diminishing returns and only allow transmission if you haven't already gotten science from it and recovering removes any future science from the exact same area - as biomes are added to the planets and moons this will become more essential. I would also raise the science costs of the later techs, so that there is some reason to go to other planets.

Right now there is a ton of science available right in Kerbin's backyard, both Kerbin and the Mun have their biomes already filled out, which creates many unique locations to study compared to the single biome of most the other planets. I actually sent out a short range probe to try out the new gravmeter science thing along with a proving trial for nuclear engines (my program has some roleplay). I fitted 16 of the grav instruments on my ship (no antenna, I was bringing them all back for recovery) and bounced around Kerbin's orbit to find all the unique places to take a reading. As it turned out I could have easily mounted 24 and still run out thanks to all the unique locations I kept finding to take a reading and I wasn't even landing. Total haul was over 800 science just for flying a single type of instrument in an orbital ship with no duplicate readings.

Edited November 2, 2013 by Dave Kerbin

[Superfluous J]

Personally I would enjoy seeing some adjustments to how transmissions work. As most are aware you can keep re-running and then re-transmitting over and over again to get all the science. I don't want to break the idea that transmitting and then recovering on a later mission provides the same total science as recovering, but I would maybe just drop the diminishing returns and only allow transmission if you haven't already gotten science from it and recovering removes any future science from the exact same area.

I wholeheartedly agree. Mun Farside Crater is worth, say, 100 science for a soil sample. You should be able to pick that soil sample up and transmit the data for, say, 20% of the total cost. However, you STILL HAVE THE SAMPLE in the pod with you and if you get it home, you get the other 80%. If your ship crashes (losing the sample) and you send up another ship, you can pick up another sample that is worth 80 points (because you already learned 20 points from the transmission. You can't transmit again and if you bring it home, you get 80 points.

And that's it.

Simple, easy to understand, and stops all the science spamming that people feel is necessary (but you're absolutely right that it's not).