I was wrong

[KBMODIGITY]

After the threads that were posted about resources being "shelved" I was very much disappointed. I too was so against not having resources taken out of future updates (although I never posted about my frustration) as I thought that would add a new depth of difficulty. The release of .23 has opened my eyes though. The new challenges that are imposed to players doing career are so much heavier than they were with .22, which I love. I was able to max out the tech tree in under 10 flights before with transmission spamming. Now I am on around flight 20 and still looking for more science from the mun and minmus to finally get an interplanetary vessel going.

I think (and I am speculating) is that most peoples frustrations were that career in .22 was too easy and seasoned veterans of the game could max out the tree in a few flights. Granted new players would still have a challenge but old players felt left behind. Resources seemed to be the way to fill this gap of challenge. People that knew how to get massive payloads into orbit, mastered the art of docking, and interplanetary transfers, really had nothing to look forward to. Adding resources would have added the challenge of getting even bigger and more complex things to other moons and planetary bodies.

With the release of .23 I am amazed at how much more difficult it is. And yes I am happy about it. I am not able to unlock 10 different tech trees after 1 flight now due to transmission spamming. Instead I am forced to go back to different bodies multiple times to gather the science needed to get the parts I need to unlock for my future plans.

I am no expert player but here is a good example. Tonight I thought, well I have a good portion of the tree opened up. Let me try for a Duna mission. I wanted to get a mothership (transfer vessel) and a lander into orbit. I'm not going to go into detail but in the end I just had too much weight I was trying to push up into orbit and failed for a few hours. I never ran into this wall in the past and went back to the drawing board and decided on more mun and minmus landings to get more science to provide me with the parts for interplanetary missions.

Ok, a lot of you are probably wondering what I'm getting at and here it is. Resources would be nice and I would love them. If they are "shelved" ok cool, that's what the devs wanted. There are at least 2 groups from what I saw in the add on development chat that are working on what sound like incredibly insane mods to fill that gap for all that want it. If resources are what you want give the good people that make the mods time to come up with something that surpasses kethane (One of the best mods I've seen so far). In the mean time enjoy the insainly good way that the devs have come up with this new update. They have added more difficulty without making the game harder for new players.

On another note the devs did an awesome job with optimization. I used to CTD every time I reverted a flight with 150+ parts back to VAB or launch. In the past 2 days I haven't had a single CTD with even bigger ships (been trying to push the limit.) Only mod I run is kethane and for a while I couldn't even play with that. Now its not an issue at all. I do see a memory leak though. I can start the game and I check my memory resources used and I am at about 50%. As my flights come and go that number slowly rises. Even after I have ended a flight and removed ALL debris I check again that number does not change, only goes higher as I keep playing. Basically if I play long enough my game will eventually crash, yet I have not hit that point yet.

One last thing you all that are still upset about the "shelving" of resources have to remember is this. This was a dream made up by developers when they were small children with bottle rockets and I would guess army men. They pursued their dream and are now making it a reality. We saw this dream and all thought, wow that is really F'ing cool. That's why you bought the game, because you wanted to be able to play a part of their vision. It is THIER vision though. They are the ones that need to decide where it goes because it was theirs to begin with. They can do with it as they please. Remind you I was one very upset about the resources thing but have moved on after playing this new version and seeing mods are going to hopefully add in that new element.

Finally, remember, I cant think of anytime that Squad has let us down. Every update has been a blessing and everything keeps getting better. GO SQUAD GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[I_Killed_Jeb]

I never engaged in transmission spamming but I still unlocked everything with ~8 flights in 0.22. Unless they made the tree more expensive to unlock it's still pretty easy to spam the Mun for a gazillion science points. I agree with your general sentiment though

[KBMODIGITY]

That's great. I love that there are players better than I that through posts and videos I can learn off of. I am not that good, but still love the game. If you can do it good for you, but remember there are players of all different levels and this post isn't here for people to brag to say they can do better than me.

It was about saying as the title says "I was wrong" about being upset about resources being "shelved". But I think Squad is doing a good job in their work to give difficulty to older players and not abandon new players. Remember too if you still find it too easy, they will implement an economy and rep, can't wait for that

[boxman]

The reason I want resources is because it gives you a real reason for going places and making bases. The science is just short term gameplay that can be completed in just hours while something like resources would give you endless hours of gameplay.

There is really no reason to go back once you have drained the science biomes.

I would even be happy if resources was optional and disabled by default.

[I_Killed_Jeb]

It's not about bragging, it's simply an anecdotal refutation of your statement that the tweaks somehow significantly increased the difficulty.

[makkenhoff]

Actually, spamming won't work now, as I understand it from my limited play test. Science tools are one shot, and have to be returned to Kerbin for the best data set recovery; you can optionally add a science lab which boosts the remote transmission score somewhat, but it will now take multiple missions in career mode just to unlock the basic techs. I was actually VERY surprised at how much more difficult the game just got for me personally, and I have still not managed to fly interplanetary missions. (I did land on Duna, but it was with a mod that allowed for essentially unlimited fuel, just to see if I was even capable once I got to that point... took me 19 quick loads to land without crashing. heh.)

[KBMODIGITY]

This thread isn't the point of complaining about resources. If you read it, there are multiple mod groups working on implementing them.

The point of this thread was to basically say that squad did and is doing an awesome job, and rethinking the work that they did, which was incredible. And like it or not, it is THIER VISION. Imagine if Leonardo da Vinci had 10000 people standing over his shoulder telling them what each of those individuals wanted. They would never get done, get frustrated and quit. Leave the decision making to the devs so they can complete their vision as they see fit. And as I said there will be mods coming hopefully. Think of them as "extra updates"

[SkyRender]

Interestingly, one of the key aspects of my own missions in 0.22 that relied on transmission spam (a mothership in Munar orbit) still works perfectly in 0.23. Adapting my strategy for 0.23's changes required almost no changes at all (just adding a lab to it for cleaning experiments), and in fact is significantly faster and easier now that experiments can be transferred about via EVA. It also helps that Minmus has become Mun Lite in terms of science potential, of course...

[I_Killed_Jeb]

You're having a phantom discussion, frankly. No one in this thread has refuted anything about what you're saying re: squad, their job, their vision, etc.

[KBMODIGITY]

well I_Killed_Jeb you may not feel that way but I do and that's why I made this thread. You can always make your own thread if you don't feel the same and in there you can voice a different opinion.

[I_Killed_Jeb]

I think I'm free to voice my opinion within the scope of a given thread. I think most reasonable people agree that giving devs the space to do their work is the way to go.

[KBMODIGITY]

I total agree with you. My opinion was the game got a bit harder, you disagree. To each their own. But I respect your thoughts.

[I_Killed_Jeb]

I total agree with you. My opinion was the game got a bit harder, you disagree. To each their own. But I respect your thoughts.

Likewise! 10char

[AmpsterMan]

Funny enough, I had been playing with some house rules for some time that didn't allow me to spam transmissions. When 0.23 came out I actually didn't notice the difference.

[Stargate525]

I noticed. Never spammed a whole lot (usually two or three tops), but I have definitely noticed the harder caps on transmission and recovery. I wish that transmission for the small sciencey bits (which are still just numbers) was 100%. Logically, it doesn't make sense that you could get more data from looking at the actual thermometer than just its reading.

It's not so much difficult as it is annoying. I've found that I'm shooting off probes that are an antenna, probe core, and single science reader to get the one bit I'm missing from a biome, which I don't think is a good use of a player's time.

[Galileo Kerbonaut]

I noticed. Never spammed a whole lot (usually two or three tops), but I have definitely noticed the harder caps on transmission and recovery. I wish that transmission for the small sciencey bits (which are still just numbers) was 100%. Logically, it doesn't make sense that you could get more data from looking at the actual thermometer than just its reading.

It's not so much difficult as it is annoying. I've found that I'm shooting off probes that are an antenna, probe core, and single science reader to get the one bit I'm missing from a biome, which I don't think is a good use of a player's time.

At first I had similar thoughts, but then I decided to go for a different approach. If you use the new science module as a hub, you can send a ship from your space station to the surface and back to hit all the biomes, transfer and refine the data and then transmit it to Kerbin. That way you do not have to send countless rockets and return them to Kerbin in order to gather all the science.

[Madrias]

I noticed as well. Science Spam wasn't my strategy, but it was always my policy that if I popped open the science canister, I would send the data, regardless of worth. Usually I was either burning an engine or had managed solar panels, so I had energy to do it. Now I'm having to adapt everything to have that bloody science lab, that big bloody can, strapped to it just in case I don't make it back to Kerbin before I use all my experiment cans.

And now I can't even logically do multi-biome ships. I used to carry a goo-can, material lab, one Communotron 16, and whatever other sensor sciency equipment I had on hand on a plane around Kerbin to get some extra science from the biomes as I flew over. Now that strategy's gone. The science lab's too bleedin' heavy to lift without the extra weight making it worthless. Would it have killed you to have to jump out on EVA and manually reset the labs? That would've made sense for people like me. Set my plane down, jump out, reset cans, jump back in, and take off. Nope. Gotta have the science module. Gotta divert power from my reaction wheels keeping my plane flying straight to power the bloody lab. Trying to get the bloody lab on anything useful so that I can just connect to it.

As someone who had suggested having difficulty settings in Career mode so I could've made it easier in the past, I didn't mean to make everything harder first! So here I am, wasting time on the forum while waiting to see a color change in the background that tells me my plane's flying over another biome so I can get my 40% science, reset, and keep going, cause it's not worth stopping.

And why, by the Holy Name of Jeb, do I not get 100% for transmitting my thermometer!? It's bloody numbers. Do we really need to have the pilots say "Oh, the ice caps are really cold, see the thermometer, it said -10 on it." rather than ">Begin Transmission: "TEMP= -10" >End Transmission" or are we just assuming the Kerbals are that stupid?

[kurja]

Science system definitely got improved and it became slightly more difficult as well, but what's really going to make a difference is when money becomes an issue; now you need just one or two flights and you have solar panels, in-line and radial decouplers, struts, gimbaling engines, probe cores - anything you need for interplanetary missions really, and you can keep repeatedly sending bigger and bigger stuff to mün/minmus and duna/ike/eve etc just to max out the tech tree if that's what you want, but once rocket parts cost money you can't do that anymore.

I would expect that eventually there are missions to perform (or goals to reach by some other mechanic) and your budget is limited, so just spamming kerbin's moons and the solar system with every science instrument in town won't be an option anymore.

[Duke23]

I was a little disappointed with not being able to reuse the goo pods and stuff but I understand why they did it. It does kind of make the unmanned probes unbalanced though IMO. Now there's really no point for me to send a probe anywhere unless I load it down so it's more useful than one data transmission and a fiery crash. I've retired them to transport duty and mission testing now, I have one on an orbital tanker that doesn't need to move unless I deorbit it, I sent a crappy rover to the Mun for Bill with one, and I sent one to Minmus to make sure I could.

I just hope when they do implement the money that it's reasonable. I liked the idea someone had that you have missions to complete and a set budget then earn money for completing it so you can go over budget on the next build or do something off the record. I don't want to micromanage the Kerbal economy and worry about whether I'll have to quit the game if I biff another landing or something. Or even better, it could be a spending limit that's always there and never decreases. As in, you can build (and crash) anything you want up to a certain monetary value, until you've earned the right to spend more by proving the worth of your successes.

All in all though I can't complain, I happened to buy the game during the .23 gearup sale and I'm impressed with it (I didn't even know there was a sale when I bought it). If they quit developing it right now and said this is what you get, I wouldn't feel cheated at all... This game has already given me more play value than I expected for something that's still in development and I haven't even sent a manned mission to Minmus yet.

[celem]

Its certainly giving me lots to do. Where I thought I would be planning mega mining bases... well I'm redesigning just about every sci-payload I ever made instead. And the ever trusty Kethane means Im still planning mega-bases. Win/Win right?

I sympathise with people struggling with 0.22 and earlier designs, the way most have been handling science involved some degree of usage of the old transmission and reset logic. I still do the orbit round Kerbin biome mission and Munar biome draining that folks mentioned, it just means different designs to get it done. The rebuild of my 'Munar Hopper' which is designed to make 4-5 landings on Mun in a single mission, means it now actually touches down with 6 materials bays, but leaves with none. Those of us who didnt transmit much if at all (I'm an RT2 fan, I dont transmit sci beyond crew report generally) should be finding that some things got easier; As the Hopper jumps between biomes it drops the used bays and pods on the surface. Plus, now that i'm not returning a stack of materials bays and goo pods I dont need the Munar Hopper to be a powered Kerbin landing, I EVA all the sci into the pod and return that alone on a chute.

All said; I guess I'll take it, not what I had in mind, but works for me.

[KBMODIGITY]

love the input all, but the one question stands, did this implement of .23 not make it in anyway more difficult? Even for the most veteran of players? From what I am reading everyone has said that they have had to rethink their strategy and build new rockets and such. Isn't that what this game is all about?

[kookoo_gr]

i don't think that the game has gotten more difficult rather than time consuming to unlock the tech nodes along with the restrictions you set. I started a new campaign with the goal of having a planet's biomes visited before going to another planet and unlock all the nodes at a tier. So far i am halfway the tech tree and unlocked the science lab with the science gathered form Kerbin and a Mun by-pass. If you manage to build an efficient lander with science parts then you only need to repeat the science gathering process. If you want to add more difficulty i believe deadly re-entry is a good start.

[celem]

Yeah. It's probably a minor difficulty increase for many or most, due to the way transmission now works and the extra work to get your science-payday. If you play as much kerbal as some folks round here seem to though, then any change is always a 'shift in strategy'. The game is pretty tricky to make harder for everyone at the same time.

As kookoo mentions, mods are a good way to tweak the difficulty, and the way I think it should be handled. Lets the core game remain at least somewhat 'accessible'. (Don't hang up on that slightly seedy buzz-word. Im a software engineer, so I mean what it actually means rather than what the internet in general and gaming communities in particular would have you believe)

[Lions]

Hi

Did my first mission last night, tier0 parts got me 1200 science. I maxed out Minmus on my First mission, i think i will be able to max out science in less than 5 missions(Not sure). I did not know you could spam science in .22, so basically I'm not really feeling a difference, but the new science lab makes it more interesting.

So far i am loving .23, no issues, and the Rapier is a fun little thing

[ComradeGoat]

After the threads that were posted about resources being "shelved" I was very much disappointed. I too was so against not having resources taken out of future updates (although I never posted about my frustration) as I thought that would add a new depth of difficulty. The release of .23 has opened my eyes though. The new challenges that are imposed to players doing career are so much heavier than they were with .22, which I love. I was able to max out the tech tree in under 10 flights before with transmission spamming. Now I am on around flight 20 and still looking for more science from the mun and minmus to finally get an interplanetary vessel going.

Some of us are just not that interested in career mode, and want to EXPLORE! Having a stock way to manufacture fuel while "out there" would still be really helpful.