Your 0.24 mistakes

[Tortoise]

Only be nice to discuss some mistakes so far.

My biggest one is where I spent 50 thousand on a new rocket to get to the mun. I do the launch, everything is perfect. Just nominal. I land on the mun, collect science, and go back to kerbin.

Then I notice the contract said get science from mun orbit, too! -.-

I Only got ground science. all that money wasted.

[Bobnova]

Just had my largest.

Built a probe Mun lander, fairly simple thing, for the first Mun contract.

I have a contract to test the LFB landed at Kerbin, perfect!

Put a pod on top of it so that Jeb can fly it back down after separating the Mun probe.

Parachutes, etc.

Get into orbit, separate the probe, discover I put the decoupler and torque wheel in the wrong spots, torque wheel stays glued to the bottom of the probe's engine, decoupler stays glued to the cockpit on the booster. So much for the probe.

Whatever though, it's a cheap probe, the booster costs over twice as much.

Re-entering with the booster it flips from head first to tail first when the parachutes pre-deply, at 1800m/s, with FAR.

The cockpit rips off, leaving the booster to come down gently out of physics range (bye bye money) and the cockpit to come down significantly less gently (bye bye, Jeb )

Easily the largest failure of 0.24, arguably one of the larger failures in a while at that.

[boa3532]

Mine had been forgetting to do science to unlock new techs. Here I am playing and wondering why I keep doing atmosphere testing of stuff. Talk about a hard facepalm when I realized why...

Edited July 18, 2014 by boa3532

[sumrex]

My biggest mistake is thinking I needed a conventional rocket built for some of the unconventional contracts. Test your 909 engine in the water anyone??? Just mounted that sucker to the top of the capsule and tried to make Jeb a submariner.

[firestorm126]

Mine was on a rescue mission. Used an Sputnik and a empty command pod... or so i though, rendezvoused with the kerbal... and jeb is sitting in the command pod... He's now sitting in orbit waiting for me to do my manned mun landing.. i'm gunna pick him up on the way

[Mohole]

Not really a big mistake but, when I rendezvoused with a stranded kerbal I didn't correct my velocity so eventually in map view when I sped up time the kerbal vanished

because crashed into my ship. I facepalmed hard. I wanted to reload, but I turned that off;.;

[Razor235]

My biggest mistake is thinking I needed a conventional rocket built for some of the unconventional contracts. Test your 909 engine in the water anyone??? Just mounted that sucker to the top of the capsule and tried to make Jeb a submariner.

Yeah, I had to test a BACC booster (the big SRB) splashed down. With only the first two nodes unlocked in the tech tree.

It was... annoying.

[JeanHavoc]

I actually had a minor bit of difficulty understanding just what some of the missions were asking for. Particularly those that want you to test certain components under certain conditions. I was surprised to find out that merely having an engine in use within the test parameter window was NOT enough, rather the engine has to be activated during that window. Of course, it's a minor mistake in the scheme of things but it did force me to read the mission briefings more closely.

[Rufledt]

I had one mission where I was going to test some booster on take off and then test radial parachutes at some altitude, and then reach space (this was early on). I slapped the radial chutes on the booster, and planned to continue my ascent by deploying the chutes while releasing the booster, so I could continue climbing to space. About the time I was going to hit the chutes (and simultaneously release the booster they were attached to) I realized I had forgotten to put any other chutes on the capsule! I quickly changed the staging to only deploy chutes, then I had to ride it out all the way to the ground, with all of that extra fuel and weight of the original booster. Since this was all way down on the rocket, I landed nose (capsule) down at a much higher velocity than I wanted. I hit the ocean, though, and through some miracle (or through Jeb's overwhelming awesomeness) the capsule survived, though the rest of the rocket broke up! Jeb survived, 2/3 missions complete, and I recovered money from the capsule. I was mighty scared, but jeb never flinched.

[No one]

When I was landing on the Mun for a second time (I had a contract to test a jet engine while landed on the Mun), I was trying to conserve fuel and thus went on a trajectory which would impact it rather than orbiting, only unfortunately it was on the dark side and I forget to put landing lights on. The good news though was that the Kerbal who died in that incident had just been rescued and thus wasn't officially a part of my space program yet.

Also I then tried again only with a probe and did the same thing. Then I tried a third time with another probe and this time was careful to land on the light side, but then I didn't have the fuel to get to Minmus which was where I was hoping to test another part in the same mission.

[JedTech]

Jeb died on one of my early sub-orbital flights. NEAR aerodynamics caused me to loose control of rotation and my ship plummeted head first into the atmosphere. Most of my craft survived the Deadly Re-entry, except my parachute. I watched in horror as Jeb plummeted towards the ground and there was nothing I could do.

Using:

DRE

NEAR

No Reverts allowed.

[sirmatthew]

my biggest error was playing it...now i can't stop! someone help me!

[firestorm126]

When I was landing on the Mun for a second time (I had a contract to test a jet engine while landed on the Mun), I was trying to conserve fuel and thus went on a trajectory which would impact it rather than orbiting, only unfortunately it was on the dark side and I forget to put landing lights on. The good news though was that the Kerbal who died in that incident had just been rescued and thus wasn't officially a part of my space program yet.

Also I then tried again only with a probe and did the same thing. Then I tried a third time with another probe and this time was careful to land on the light side, but then I didn't have the fuel to get to Minmus which was where I was hoping to test another part in the same mission.

I've pretty much just done the same thing with the mun, Finally got round to rescuing jeb from orbit around kerbin where i left him after he hitched a ride in my rescue pod...That turned out more difficult than expected because the target wasn't showing up so had to get within 100m of the ship so jeb could see it on the dark side of kerbin. but i managed it

Then got him to the mun with a little less fuel than i had wished but no problem. And then went to land him there, didn't realize i was going onto the darkside but that wasn't too much of a problem so i kept going, then i missed my crater and ended up in a ton of hills one of which the bottom of my ship hit which put me into a spin and plummeted me into the mun...

On the upside jeb still lives... on the down side, jeb is now stuck on the mun Second jeb rescue mission time!!!

[Tiakatt]

Nothing disastrous (yet). I did fail to rendezvous properly with a stranded Kerbal. Ended up light on battery power so I simply landed the rescue probe so it wouldn't get stuck. I then bought solar panels with the science that flight earned, so there's that

And yeah, I've definitely noticed Jeb sneaking onto my rescue ships. I removed him from the ship's crew manifest in VAB for a reason If I then save the ship that way, I wish it would remember if it has seats empty.

But Jeb just can't resist a chance to go to space. I can't blame the little fella, but still I need that seat for that poor stranded guy, Jeb.

Edited July 18, 2014 by Tiakatt

[firestorm126]

And yeah, I've definitely noticed Jeb sneaking onto my rescue ships. I removed him from the ship's crew manifest in VAB for a reason If I then save the ship that way, I wish it would remember if it has seats empty.

But Jeb just can't resist a chance to go to space. I can't blame the little fella, but still I need that seat for that poor stranded guy, Jeb.

My Jebs still chilling on the moon plant flags all the time making me some money... He likes flags

[JedTech]

My Jebs still chilling on the moon plant flags all the time making me some money... He likes flags

I hadn't considered that. Finally a purpose for a long term Mun base!

[Wurmi]

I play on hardmode without quicksave-load, without returning and with permanent dead. I lost Jebediah on my first rescue mission. My ship started with to less trust, then i activated manuall another SRB. The rocket fly uncontrollable around and crashed in the KSC ground. So no Jebediah in my save anymore.

[No one]

My Jebs still chilling on the moon plant flags all the time making me some money... He likes flags

Another mistake made by me: I didn't think of just leaving kerbals/spaceships in places like that, and I launched a new rocket/just didn't take the contract every time I got a contract like "get science from X" or "Plant a flag on X" (Though I made sure to do several at once).

[AlexanderB]

Physics warp ate my parachute, causing jeb to smack into the ground and explode. He's respawned though, I don't know why.

Trying to build a spaceplane with only the basic turbojet.. *facepalm*

Otherwise, it seems to be going well.

[MidwestB]

Starting out, I must have been making rockets that were more expensive than what I was earning and my funds got too low to build what I wanted for some missions. Had to do some simpler things to earn back enough. Got up to 500k Roots by the time I stopped playing 5 hours after starting though.

[Starwhip]

So far, no serious mistakes, but I can't seem to get the reentry angle for the KSC landing. Almost landed on one of the huge mountains with a rescued Kerbal in the ship, had to spend my reserve fuel and some thrusters to get further from the slope. Would have been bad if I'd killed 2 kerbals, ruined the rocket, *and* failed the contract.

What's odd to me is that re-usable spacecraft play no purpose as of yet. Maybe they will, I don't know, but so far I've stuck 2 little probes in orbit with no intention of bringing them back down, and have only returned the top stage of my rockets.

[Monger]

What's odd to me is that re-usable spacecraft play no purpose as of yet. Maybe they will, I don't know, but so far I've stuck 2 little probes in orbit with no intention of bringing them back down, and have only returned the top stage of my rockets.

Noticed that, too.

But I think this is by design. If you look at the costs, then SRBs are a lot cheaper than any kind of fuel tank. So cheap indeed that recovering them makes little sense. This creates an interesting trade-off: either create a very simple non-recoverable first and second stage, or invest more money to make it recoverable?

As in real life, chances are that recovering the first stage is not profitable, unless it is powerful enough to get its payload into orbit. Until then, the better strategy is probably to make the first stage as cheap as possible, and see if you can make the rest of the stages recoverable.

Back to topic:

Currently no single big failure, but many little ones. For example: accepting every contract at once is a bad idea. First of all, I keep forgetting how much funds I get back from them, and therefore tend to make my rockets more expensive than they should be. Second, I am really losing the overview what kind of contracts I should combine in one go, and what not.

So I need to plan my missions more carefully before jumping straight into the VAB.

[General Rarity]

I need moar reaction wheels... it was to test a SRB in kerbin orbit and to test a decoupler on an escape trajectory out of kerbin. Things failed, I lost money.

[magnemoe]

I actually had a minor bit of difficulty understanding just what some of the missions were asking for. Particularly those that want you to test certain components under certain conditions. I was surprised to find out that merely having an engine in use within the test parameter window was NOT enough, rather the engine has to be activated during that window. Of course, it's a minor mistake in the scheme of things but it did force me to read the mission briefings more closely.

Yes tried forever to get a large SRB to trigger, it did not even if it passed the height inside the speed limit.

Then found you had to activate it, at point. Strapped two liquid fuel tanks and engines on side of the almost empty booster and activated by staging.

That is another issue, some test ask you to run test other require staging.

Hint you can disable an engine put it one step up in staging and stage to unlock, very practical then testing large engines.

[Peder]

1). I wanted to rescue the kerbal stranded in orbit.. When finaly reaching him I found out there where no room in the capsul so i had to launch a new mission ;-(

2). I had a random generated mission to test the big external boosters in orbit... well rather hard to do in the start of the game where funds are limited since they are rather and into orbit since they are heavy to get up there. I tried a few times, but gave up building a rocket since it became to expensive in the start of the game.

3). test engine in water.. well I landed in water and instant fired the engine.. ( took me 2 tries to figure out I should first "stage" and activate the engine when in water since I could not see the green text highlight when touching water).

4). I staged the rocket wrong so the parashutes open when i press launch.. ( it was a big expensive rocket dooh ) but I managed to get it into the air and decouple and made an eva in 15km height to repack the shutes. It did this when the rocket go from climbing to falling and the speed was around 10m/s. It was a bit scary.! ;-)

5). I thought I do 5 missions at once and test many parts on one rocket. The big problem was however that I could not not remember what to activate at what specific height and speed while flying.... keep it simple stupid ;-)

Edited July 19, 2014 by Peder