Do you remember your first time playing KSP?

[ICrashRockets]

What was your first experience with KSP like? Were you immediately able to make it into orbit on your first try? Did you spend countless hours hours failing at keeping your rocket upright? Or was it something in between?

Talk about what you were able to accomplish within the first hours of being a Kerbalnaut!

(I apologize if this thread already exists somewhere, but I have looked around and have found nothing on this topic! So again, I'm sorry if this thread has been done.)

[joekidd1992]

That's easy for me. I started on Saturday or Sunday of this week, 5/10 or 5/11. I can't really remember if I made it into orbit first try, but it isn't that hard to do.

[pslytely psycho]

0.13 demo. Downloaded it from a link in a reply C'ptn Skunky left on Slashdot about games in Education.

First rocket was definitely a suborbital missile with no parachutes. I laughed myself silly watching Jeb's reactions. I was hooked.

Having played Orbiter (VERY BADLY!) I found the approachability of KSP amazingly intuitive even at that early stage.

Orbiter instruction manuals can be a mind numbing read. (And I still don't undestand a lot of it!) KSP, even in that early stage got around that nicely. It took about 20 launches before I made a stable orbit, and another 20 or so before I learned to circularize and my first Mun mission. (The only other body aside from Kerbol in that version)

Humor, easy to intuit orbital mechanics, great parts. This game walks a narrow tightrope. And as a bonus, rereading those confusing Orbiter manuals, they make much more sense now. KSP simplified the concepts without 'dumbing it down,' as you can do the math if you want. Or like me. Just Jeb and the seat of his spacesuit.

[Red Iron Crown]

It's been a while, but I mostly experimented with different combinations of rocket parts and launching them straight up. Lots of suborbital shots before getting a multistage rocket into orbit, definitely not on the first try.

Edit: Checked the version history, I started with 0.11.

Edited May 16, 2014 by Red Iron Crown

[r4pt0r]

yes, it was right after the summer sale last year. building a rocket was fun. launching a 150 part rocket at 5fps wasnt so much. so i shelved it till i upgraded my desktop.

[cantab]

Vaguely. .18.3 demo. I went through the tutorial and for lulz decided to put the fuel tank on top of the command pod. Then found the tutorial wouldn't let me launch. If it had, I'd probably have been surprised since doing that WORKS.

And my first orbital rocket had about 18 small SRBs on the bottom, because I didn't know about going too fast causing drag.

I also recall my first rescue mission. I didn't think I'd be very good at controlling the Kerbal on EVA so I *covered* the rescue ship in ladders.

[Fagiano]

Oh, it was on 0.19, didn't sleep that night. 13h of ksp till i get to the mun. Oh, First time i reached the mun my "tryhardmun" didn't have landing gear, didn't go well. Second time, didn't have light, and well...dark side, didn't go well either. Third time was the right one, crashed on the mun and crew survived: "New base on the mun", they are still there. It got me 13hours. It was the most exciting thing so far. I was truly proud.

[Duxwing]

0.13 demo in Poland in 2012. I saw an ad, downloaded the demo, and was hooked, entering a 'zen' state of trial-and-error engineering.

-Duxwing

[ICrashRockets]

Can anybody other than me relate to this?

This is pretty much my first time for the first 2 hours.

[Mokmo]

0.18, the demo (is it still that version in demo ?)

Played a few hours, got to the mun with the help of a few tutorials, saw the huuuge possibilities of the mods and just decided to get this.

Been over a year (end of april) and this will probably be the best return on investment i've ever done on a game.

[Jon Tash]

Oh boy, it was a long time ago. When the forum was just a baby learning to post treads. C'ptn Skunky making funny jokes, Harvester actively posting in the forum, responding to players. And it was when 0.8 was out that I begun this voyage to the strange Kerbal Universe (and I never got out). There was no Mun, no map view, lots of parts overheating. The dark side of the planet was the danger zone and every kerbal(only Bill, Bob and Jeb) to go there should die immediately. The ocean was hard solid like the ground (nice shaders though). You had to learn the hard way, figure out your velocity, your vector, altitude and do the math to know if you were in a stable (mostly elliptic) orbit. There were palm trees next to the KSC.

And most of all, it was fun as hell!

[goldenpeach]

Yes I remember!

It was in summer, early june.

I remember my [ironic]very efficient[/ironic] ascent path: full throttle, straight up until I exit the atmosphere, then I cut the engines, go horizontal and full throttle.

I rapidly switched to a more efficient ascent path.

(But I didn't had the idea to cut the engine when reaching a good apoapsis so my orbits where very eccentric.

[Joe32320]

I remember seeing someone post screenshots of the game on another forum, and had one of those moments where I just had to try it out, got the demo, I think I got as far as having a go at landing on the Mun, if my landing skills now are any indication of what I was like a year ago, it probably didn't end well...

Anyways I only played a few hours of the demo, before deciding to buy the full game

[Tex]

I first tried out the demo after seeing it around Steam for a little while. At first I was kinda put off by the thought of these sweet little green guys going into space, but then I tried the demo... and my head promptly exploded. After cramming my face back together, I bought the full game and here I am! Still a bit touched by the first time...

I figure the insanity should go away in a few years... :JKADS:CAH :ADJKASDL:JASKAXSJGHDXAG

[timsfitz]

I thought it looked childish with the little green dudes, but tried the demo and loved it. Bought it the same day.

[Taki117]

My first time:

"Space...the final frontier...these are the voyages of..."*record scratch* *1812 overture*

(Not my video)

[DeepOdyssey]

Had no idea about orbital mechanics, freefall, inclination, prograde/retrograde burning. My game was essentially a "build a fastest moving rocket, launching vertically" contest. Until i read the physics, moon launching tutorials.

It was back in 0.13.

[SkyRender]

Oh I remember all right. Hot off the heels of watching Maxwell Adams goof off with 0.8.4, I went and downloaded the then-latest version (0.11) and proceeded to more or less imitate his antics of making completely impractical rockets that were more meant to blow up than to get anywhere. And much fun was had, to be certain! Not for Jeb, Bill, and Bob of course, but seeing as they were the only cosmonauts at at that time and always came back to life as soon as a mission ended, I don't think they could complain too much.

[TheDarkStar]

I saw something on the Minecraft forums about it, so I took a look. It was an 0.8 or 0.9 version, and it was mostly a manned ballistic missile simulator at that point.

[Mitchz95]

Can anybody other than me relate to this?

This is pretty much my first time for the first 2 hours.

That video was my first exposure to KSP!

My first major hurdle in the game was figuring out how to launch.

[TechnicalK3rbal]

Got the demo a year ago, tried to get into orbit for three days, watched Scott Manley do it, did it in the demo, bought the full version. Then I landed on the Mun, Minmus, and docked in the next three days. Much help from youtube.....

[Xavven]

I saw the game trailer on Steam, and my first impression was, "cartoony green dudes? This is obviously not a game to take seriously." So I passed the game over without a second thought.

At the urging of two friends, I very reluctantly tried out the demo. It took some effort, but I finally got into orbit by launching straight up into space, then burning horizontally as others had mentioned. I wouldn't learn about gravity turns until much later... ahem.

Anyway, I remember getting into orbit around Mun in the demo and texting my friend over Steam chat.

Friend: Mun?

Me: Wow! Pretty cool game. Yes, I got into Mun orbit.

Me: It'd be cool if you could actually land on it though. Maybe in the full version you can?

Friend: lol you can land on it.

Me: Oh! What do I press to make the pilot do a landing?

Friend: You have to land it yourself, lol!

My next thought was, "whaaaaat?!? This has got to be impossible."

So I watched a couple landing videos and eventually tried it myself. I remember getting within a couple meters of the surface, teetering this way and that, getting nervous and going full throttle to bug out, then trying to get into a hover again. I was all over the damn place. When my landing gear touched down and I shut down the engines, I suddenly realized I hadn't been breathing for the past 45 seconds. Gasping for air, I looked at my computer clock.

2:00 AM

Wow...

For some stupid reason, I didn't rush to buy the full version. I shelved the game for a couple weeks and then bought it when it went on sale. Once I got the full game and started playing again, I was up at 2:00 AM several nights in a row. I clocked 400 hours of played time in only a few months, ending with a grande finale of a 100% stock manned return mission from Eve barely a week before the ARM/NASA update was released.

I had come a long way from my first, silly, non-gravity turn launch profile. My Eve return had to use everything I had learned:

Asparagus Staging

Thrust Plates

Orbital Rendezvous & Docking

Rovers

Manually calculating delta-v (I built a spreadsheet... hehehe)

...and a mission profile inspired by Robert Zubrin's book, Mars Direct

Ever since then, I've been much more interested in space exploration. Neil deGrasse Tyson is now my personal hero, I watch the new Cosmos every week, and I can now name the fathers of modern rocketry. KSP is now my favorite game OF ALL TIME, and it's practically the only game in my library that doesn't involve killing something intentionally.

Edited May 16, 2014 by Xavven

[Xacktar]

I remember there was a lot of explosions....

I also remember I would go straight up with my rocket, then attempt to turn WAAY out there and always ended up falling back down before getting enough momentum sideways. There was also a lot of parachutes going off on the launch pad because I didn't get the staging thing for a while. Oh, and wings! took me forever to figure out that winglets would help control the craft.

[Jas1126]

I had a blast right out of the gate. My first ship reached space and I thought "Well, that was easy". My second ship had an orbit of around 80km. I admittedly was a little disappointed but somewhat proud. But, that just drove me to see just how big of a ship I could put into orbit. Haven't gone a day without playing since. A big thanks to the modders, especially.

[Godot]

I started with 0.12 or 0.13 and nope ... my first attempts were aimed at having enough fuel to reach higher and higher altitudes (still within the atmosphere)

then my next milestone was a suborbital flight over the continent east of Kerbal spaceport.

Only then the next milestone was to reach orbit.

And after I first reached it, I didn´t orbit Kerbin for a long time anymore, because this version still lacked a persistent world, which meant that each mission started anew with a fresh universe and the Mun in always the same position ... which also meant (due to the lack of maneuver nodes in this version) that the easiest method to get to Mun was, to directly accelerate (in a known angle) towards it, without first getting into Kerbin orbit.

Edited May 16, 2014 by Godot