What's your "YES!" moment when you research a part in career?

[samstarman5]

Landing on Minmus in career mode and getting the crew back has been my Yes! so far, with no rockomax parts. Never realized how spoiled I got to those until I tried a Mun mission without them. After the third crash I just up and went for Minmus instead and landed without a hitch. Then watched my Science Jr explode upon soft landing back on Kerbin*, which left just my goo and crew to get science off of. Sad Face.

*: I had provisioned enough chutes for the pod and science assembly for the return. The Kraken just wanted to remind me that it plays career mode, too.

Edited November 11, 2013 by samstarman5

[celem]

My career is usually comprised of relatively few high-science launches. So I usually know im gonna get a certain piece after a certain vehicle recovery. Takes out a lot of the 'Yes!' elation.

That said my priorities after science modules and the ubiquitous panels are 48-7S, 24-77's (rockomax small radial), inline batteries, decent legs and ladders

The big engines/fuel tanks can wait, I dont really need mainsails, or even skippers. fuel lines are nice, but i'm pretty good at manually juggling fuel as long as we are not talking asparagus launchers. I tend to stay on 1.5m parts for most of the tree and use a lot of srb's for launching so it really doesnt come up much.

[3mon]

The batteries and the solar panels, so i could start doing some serious science!

Also, there was much rejoicing the day the struts were unlocked

[NeverDrinkBleach]

Batteries. Then Solar panels. Then Struts. Then the High Altitude Jet

[TheBedla]

Solar panels of course, and when I first saw KW Rocketry's new side tanks. They fit so well that I literally cheered when my first Semyorka got a liftoff.

I am consciously avoiding LV-Ns for the moment; I think they might be one of the last nodes for me to unlock (followed only by Ions).

[Kasuha]

Radial decouplers, batteries, solar panels, skipper engine.

[Madrias]

Jet Engines and Wings. Hard to hit space in a rocket, but I can build an SSTO in my sleep. Up until I get jets and wings, I've taken to doing things completely radically. And I'm glad I put in one mod, the Hooligan Labs Airship parts. Makes Kerbin Exploring easy with a balloon placed easy enough to be useful. A cockpit, fuel tank array, LV-T45, one of the balloons to allow some lift, and some rudimentary control surfaces in the form of Tail Fin and Small Control Surface allows easy mining of Kerbin for science. Also used one equipped with a decoupler to reach orbit and touch space. Then returned with winglets to hold me up for landing.

So I'd have to say my big three: Jet Engines, Wings, and the LV-T45 Vectoring engine.

[nhnifong]

When I finally unlocked the Cubic Octogonal Strut. My designs were crippled because I was using that thing in everything. It basically allows you to surface attach anything anywhere at negligible mass cost. Squad put it on the far right end of the tech tree and I've been playing on 50x hard mode (all science experiments pay 50 times less) so I just finally unlocked it for the first time. Had to send a 3 man mission to Eeloo to get the last hundred points.

[toomuchbrew]

I would have to say docking ports. It opens up space gas stations allowing more complex interplanetary missions.

[SuperWeegee4000]

Panels and probes. Soon it will be the Mainsail.

[fatfluffycat]

Jet Engines and Wings. Hard to hit space in a rocket, but I can build an SSTO in my sleep.

who.....who are you?

[SpaceSphereOfDeath]

Science stuff, and fuel lines.

ASPARAGUS, ASPARAGUS EVERY WHERE!

[Madrias]

who.....who are you?

The crazy guy who plays flight sims and built a few RC Airplanes in my free time. Once you know the basics of aerodynamics, it doesn't take much to build aircraft, and once you've made something that can cruise around Kerbin under jet power, it's only a matter of getting the altitude up, making orbit, and remembering to pack some RCS for easy navigation. Then just use some maneuver nodes to get where you need to go.

Rocketry is a foreign concept to me, and I waste tons of fuel getting something half the size of a decent 3 Kerbal spaceplane into orbit.

[rholtsla98]

When I get the one after the default XD

[TechnicalK3rbal]

Photovoltaic panels and docking ports.

[magnemoe]

Did an speed run, the rover wheels was important, they let me get science from 8 biomes on Mun in one landing.

it was mission 4 who was more than suborbital: orbit, mun flyby, minmus landing, rover.

I focused on the bottom of the tree.

[StarVision]

Fuel Lines. Without them you can't do asparagus staging.

[Spyritdragon]

First one, and currently the largest one, was solar panels. After that, probably the skipper engine. For some reason, LV-45 or LV-30 clusters don't give me enough trust at all - skippers were a major breakthrough in allowing me to use full 2m asparagus, and currently it does all my lifting much much easier than before. NERVA was fun, but Duna was very, very dissapointing in science readings. I got thrice as much on the Mun.

[annallia]

Batteries then solar panels then docking ports.

With those three things I can pretty much get anywhere.

[Felsmak]

Solar panels. Going anywhere further away than LKO while maintaining aesthetics is a pain.

[TUFOM]

1. Fuel lines, 2. struts, 3. nuclear engine & ofcourse 3. science part's.

[CumpyLustard]

Definitely the solar panels like everyone else has said, but I was also very excited to get the Hitchhiker Storage Container to make bases and stations.

[FlamedSteak]

There were a few nice things; fuel lines, the skipper and lv-n engine but the big one was solar panels. Electricity became the big new resource with career mode, my first few Mun fly bys were butt clenching affairs trying too eek as much science as possible while still maintaining enough electricity to get back to Kerbin. Getting those solar panels meant the ability to stay off-Kerbin for as long as was necessary.

[konokono]

The fact that you get these "YES" moments is what makes career mode fun

Hope they expand the tech tree in future releases. I am one of those that wants to see some dabbling in speculative technology

[Coffeesaxophone]

Mainsail. The feeling when you finally get it is awesome.