Do you remember your first time playing KSP?

[DeepSpaceDutch]

Seem to remember someone mentioning it on a forum somewhere, but I did not pay any attention. Then around 1,5 years ago I stumbled on a Scott Manley tutorial video and I knew this would consume me. I must have watched every Scott Manley video, afterwards I did not even bother with the demo. The upside of all the Scott Manleying was that I had a pretty good, but basic, understanding of orbital mechanics. I seem to remember getting into orbit within the first few hours. Back in those days the Mun was far, far away and really scary!

[RobertR]

I first played this game about a year ago. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing but I strapped the biggest rocket I could find to a capsule and pointed it at the moon (literally). Most of my first ships exploded but some managed to reach the upper atmosphere. Eventually I thought I just didn't have enough power to get there, so I figured the next logical step would obviously be to add more solid rocket boosters. Needless to say, after numerous failed attempts, and several disasters, to reach the moon I turned to my old friend google and found a video by scott manley. With his help (I can't believe I never thought to turn to reach orbit) I finally got a rocket into orbit and eventually to the Mun!

I also figured this would be an appropriate place for my first forum post.

Edited May 16, 2014 by RobertR

[pauix]

I started back in 0.7.3, and all I did was compete with a friend to see who could get their rocket higher

[McFarnsworth]

It was early 2012 and me and some friends were chatting online when one of us mentioned he was messing around with KSP. Another friend said he tried it a few versions before and it was pretty cool if fairly basic. I though to myself "You mean like Lego blocks, but with explosions? This I gotta see!". After fiddling about with it for a few minutes a challenge was formed between me and the other two that were playing it, get to the Mun first. The space race was on!

The first few launches were very explodey, the rockets unbalanced (you mean there's a symmetry tool?) and missing features (parachutes, SAS and wings make the rocket slower, right?), but I was hooked. I already knew a bit about staging, gravity turns and had a vague idea how a Hohmann transfer to the Mun would work thanks to an earlier interest in space ... stuff. So despite starting the race last and getting to space last, I was the first to make stable orbit. After flinging a few rockets towards the Mun and missing I figured out when to start the transfer and promptly crashed into the Mun because parachutes apparently don't work there. *cue facepalm*

Landing on the Mun was one of the most nerve wracking things I've ever done in a game, but I got there eventually. This was before landing legs so a few pieces broke off and I was unable to return, but I had achieved my objective and won the race. Time from installation of the demo to Mun"landing": about 3 hours, which wasn't too shabby I thought to myself. I bought the full game immediately after that and it's now my most played game in my Steam library.

[Mighty1]

A lot of "Big bada boooom" in .18, then Scott Manley videos, then I space and I have been spacing ever since.

[Superfluous J]

The demo was 0.16 I think, when ... 0.19? was out. I followed the tutorials so don't know if I'd have been able to get into orbit on my first try or not, but I found the tutorials ridiculously easy so quickly moved on to trying to replicate Apollo.

[Alephzorg]

That was a long time ago.

We didn't have landing legs but it didn't matter because there was no Mun.

You couldn't land on the dark side of Kerbin or you'd explode.

But it was already incredibly fun to play and addictive. And I could make orbit (although not reliably) by the end of the first day.

[Sirrobert]

.20 I believe.

I spent like a day shooting rockets straight up into space, and wondering why they didn't stay in orbit

[JayKay]

I started around September last year. I remember I was wasting untold minutes cruising through You Tube videos and ended up on one showing amateur rocket launches. One showed a huge rocket launch, fail to stage and crash into the ground, and one of the comments said "Kerbal Space Program!!" I had to google it. A little while later, I had version .20 installed.

It took a few tries to get a ship into orbit, and a lot longer to learn how to do a powered landing (I got frustrated and installed MechJeb to do those for me, until I found a Scott Manley video showing how to do it properly.) It took a while before I actually launched a mission to another planet; I went to Mun and spent a lot of time working on space stations at first. Right now I'm spamming missions to all the outer planets at once and hope to complete the Jool 5 mission in the next couple of weeks.

JK

[lttito]

I think it was back on 0.11, I tried to launch my rockets as I saw on videos of actual rockets flying. Then I realized that more fuel doesn't mean more power. After two weeks and some videos of orbital maneuvers, i managed to orbit the Mün and then land on my tail fins. Pic related (sorry for the quality)

[EvilotionCR2]

I was playing with Nova Punch too much in 0.13...

[Red Iron Crown]

I think it was back on 0.11, I tried to launch my rockets as I saw on videos of actual rockets flying. Then I realized that more fuel doesn't mean more power. After two weeks and some videos of orbital maneuvers, i managed to orbit the Mün and then land on my tail fins. Pic related (sorry for the quality)

http://i.imgur.com/KzIxiap.jpg

Pretty sure the Mun wasn't added until 0.12, IIRC. I remember landing on tailfins when it was added, too, probably the most exciting time I've had in KSP.

[Oggula]

Yeah, back in the heady days of 0.8.5 getting into orbit- without the map and with 35km atmosphere- was a lot more difficult and involved more exploding