How has the new career mode changed how you build?

[Strangelove444]

So hideous, yet so beautiful.

[Technical Ben]

Virtually all of my launcher vehicles are made up of mostly SRBs now. I also used planes for atmospheric part testing, but I recently switched to putting a re-usable probe with the part to be tested on top of a SRB, since it's not as boring and can do most non-orbit part tests. My interstellar probes are much more efficient now, with improvements like replacing atomic motors with much lighter 48-7S engines.

Practically real life then.

With the new mechanics, it seems we jump to either cheap rockets, or reusable so as to recoup costs or limit losses.

[John FX]

I have a HUGE first stage with a probe core, some batteries and at least 4500Dv in it which can put the payload into LKO and have enough Dv to put itself back at KSC. Either the payload does not drop anything and all of it gets returned to KSP or it is very small and cheap and gets left at the destination.

I overbuild the first stage because I get all that money back, even on spare fuel, if landed right.

I have a dedicated `orbital rescue` craft which is SSTO and can land itself back at KSC. There is a second version which can land and return from mun after picking up the victim, sorry pilot.

Sometimes, lately, a flight is a pod and (insert random part here).

This is my 13.5T reusable launcher landing back at KSC

[bdito]

My ships are obviously smaller. And I try to recover as much of my launch stages as I can now. Far fewer throw away stages.

I never got into SSTO spaceplanes. I imagine I will now.

[Geschosskopf]

Now that Kerbin is no longer a socialist utopia with limitless resources and nothing to do with them but launch them to space, how have your career mode builds changed?

Not much if any. I have never been in the MOAR Boosters crowd so I didn't have to change my ways there. Nor do I care at all about trying to save as many parts as possible. First, I don't care a bit about the environment. Second, based on the track history of the shuttle, I don't think we should be getting very much back for used parts anyway. But despite all this, contracts (at least the select few I accept) always pay enough to keep me comfortably in the black and pay for my science missions that don't generate income.

[Frank_G]

Well besides building more efficient now... the new career mode brought me back to those nice small rocket designs. It just reminds you, that building big is not always best... and they are fun to fly

[Franklin]

i've gone from never bothering with space planes, or SSTO rockets, to now having to always build them because that's how i don't lose all the cash from my lifters. i don't know if this is a good thing yet, because frankly i find space planes dull, but that's mostly the fault of the lifeless planets.

[Franklin]

also boosters went from ideal and easy lifters for me, to avoidable cash sinkholes. i hope Squad hot patches it so debris can be recoverable soon.

[Skorpychan]

SRBs up the wazoo. Quite literally. I've taken to using the really long ones to 'launch' straight into my gravity turn.

Otherwise, planning. Planning, planning, and planning.

[Vindelle_Sunveam]

It didn't change my designs. If anything, I realised that I was a very cheap constructor. My first Mun lander was 25K, and the one I like is 32K.

I didn't know about the "send science from" that asks you to leave sattelites around every celestial body, so my Eve lithobraking probe is not equipped with a small thing that I shall meave into orbit before impacting.

I currently am redesigning my Duna probe to support an Ike lander and sat, plus a Duna sat.

I still use massive lifters, as I'm swimming in funds. As I do not like spamming missions, I still have difficulties with science.

[Spatzimaus]

It didn't change much. I've always been a fan of large SSTO lifters (not spaceplanes, SSTO rockets), where the booster has enough delta-V to put a payload in a circular orbit and then deorbit itself to prevent debris. The only difference now is that I make them fully recoverable. Like so:

(This was taken just after unlocking 3.75m parts in the tech tree. Yes, those are mostly mod parts, but they're at the appropriate techs. I just like the aesthetics better.)

That lifter has about 5000m/s dV with that payload, and is really easy to fly. It's just like a low-tech version of my old designs but now, I've got enough parachutes on it to safely land afterwards. Since it'll be descending from an orbit and not a suborbital trajectory, I can easily aim for KSP to get the maximum return on investment. (It lands on the front to prevent damage to the engines.)

The lander is also fully reusable. With its LV-N it's got over 6200m/s of delta-V, so it can go a LONG way; its only flaw is the low thrust, which is enough to land on Mun but not quite enough for Duna (TWR of 1.1 on Duna when fully fueled). The next version fixes that.

[corvustech]

also boosters went from ideal and easy lifters for me, to avoidable cash sinkholes. i hope Squad hot patches it so debris can be recoverable soon.

I haven't tried this with the Klaw. It could make salvage missions worth it instead of just letting wreckage and dropped stages drift. Has anyone tried using the Klaw as a salvage device? Did you get paid when you landed?

[Wanderfound]

Now that Kerbin is no longer a socialist utopia with limitless resources and nothing to do with them but launch them to space, how have your career mode builds changed?

In 23.5 I was using flashy overpowered asparagus things, but they're way pricey now. So I shifted to cheap and nasty solid booster based designs, but I'm no longer using them. Three reasons.

1) I don't like them. Not as much fun to fly. Liquid fuel rockets just sound better.

2) Launch failures can turn cheap rockets into false economy. The inability to throttle solid boosters significantly increases failure risk, and solid booster failures are much more likely to be fatal.

3) Spaceplanes! Since if you land on the runway you get 100% of your money back, the only expense in flying SSTO spaceplanes is their relatively tiny fuel bill (well, that and the wear and tear on prototypes...). And because you're only paying for fuel, there's no reason not to trick out your jet with every expensive widget that takes your fancy. No need to scrimp for efficiency; it doesn't cost that much more to run a spaceplane that handles like a fighter, accelerates at 4G and looks really cool. May as well go to orbit in a Ferrari if you can.

My standard runabout costs √50,000, but it can get to orbit and back for just a couple of thousand in fuel. Ditto for the √150,000 heavy lifter. Compared to the solid rockets, they're more fun to fly (for me; each to their own etc.) and also a lot more profitable.

Edited July 22, 2014 by Wanderfound

[xcorps]

Other than some pretty nutty things like mounting a Mainsail upside down on the nose of a capsule, not much really. I do build some contraptions for testing only, but my mission ships haven't really changed much except to accommodate some new parts.

What's really changed are my returns. I'm putting a lot of effort into landing as close to KSC as I can.

[EdFred]

Not much at all really. I was already running minimalist rockets. I would only drop one stage (other than my Eve ascent vehicle) for the most part, and I only take contracts that will cover (and then some) the cost of lost stages. I had already been returning to KSC before 0.24 came out, so I was already in recovery mode.

[zekes]

I actually made a 100% reusable medium lifter, and it works really well! I'm also building smaller interplanetarry ships.

[gosnold]

I now use the SpaceX method: first stages are fully reusable

Edited July 22, 2014 by gosnold

[Franklin]

I actually made a 100% reusable medium lifter, and it works really well! I'm also building smaller interplanetarry ships.

http://i.imgur.com/tDCAuUz.png

How are you recovering these stages once they've left the 2.5K range of the next stage? Wouldn't they just disappear?

[ArchGaden]

I started out actually using solid boosters which I never really bothered with before outside of a few novel test runs. Beyond that, I now focus a lot more on efficiency. I don't send 40 ton rovers to the Mun on a whim or scatter dockable orange tank fuel depots around every celestial 'just in case'. Of course, 50 days in and I'm now swimming in funds, so I'll definitely do some crazy 'for fun' projects, but even when I do those projects, I'll keep an eye on my payload weight. Previously, I just built whatever payload I wanted and then figured out how many boosters I needed to get it where I wanted it to go.

Of course, by far the biggest change to how I build is that I now often tack on rediculously useless parts to fullfill random test contracts. I'm certainly not complaining though. The results have been great fun and those contracts are optional... so when I find contracts that are too annoying, I just decline.

[magnemoe]

I actually made a 100% reusable medium lifter, and it works really well! I'm also building smaller interplanetarry ships.

http://i.imgur.com/tDCAuUz.png

How do you retrive the SRB? I also use lots of SRB however I use them as boosters and has started to stagger them if I use 4, 2 is on 75% power, you want to keep the main engine on low power during the SRB burn but also not get into terminal speed on SRB only. main stage return to runway, uses spaceplanes for kerbals, plans to expand this to lighter cargo.

Already do kethane mining and is in the process to ramp up to orbital construction, I still have to pay for the parts but not for the launcher, Minmus orbit -> LKO is 300 m/s

[merendel]

I'm useing alot more solid boosters instead of asparigus stageing but thats about it. Generaly boosters get me up to a bit past gravity turn range. Main lift stage goes up to LKO or just short of it. Lift stage either keeps PE in atmo or enough fuel to deorbit and recover on parachutes. The only difference there is the parachutes and me actualy bothering to follow it down for the refund, previously I just deorbited the spent stages and ignored it.

[Godot]

Before 0.24, I usually tried to standardize my rockets (i.e. a standard model for bringing payload of x tons to orbit, a standard ship/lander combo for Mun landings and so on.

Now I usually integrate several test contracts into my missions, meaning that almost every rocket is different, even if it is meant for the same purpose

I also now do things that I would have never done in former incarnations of KSP ... for example just flying up to a certain altitude and falling back on Kerbin ... or getting on escape trajectory and shortly afterwards initiating a return path to Kerbin, all in order to fulfill lucrative test contracts

[JayMcJoe]

Well the biggest change for me... I am landing very close to the Spaceport now for recovery. In earlier versions I tried to catch some science from the biomes of kerbal when returning from a mission. Now its always about calculating home vector and return closest as possible.

[Frank327]

I'm not really bothered with returning as many parts as possible and landing close to the space centre. Obviously I'll try to get my most expensive equipment to be placed on whatever lands back at kerbin, but when I came back from Duna I didn't really bother with trying to rescue the nuclear reactor. When the craft costs 70k and the mission rewards 300k, is it really so important to save the 8.7k part (if you manage to somehow save it and land near the launch site)? Of course I could use one as a space taxi, but I don't trust my spacecraft being held together by docking parts.

The big thing for me is stacking those solid rocket boosters. They pretty much give you the first 10km and 250m/s for free if you don't overdo the rest of your spacecraft.

[Dat_Spacewaffle]

not really, I'm noticing the contracts give me to much money. either that, or my numerous years of Railroad Tycooning have somehow payed off.... in a space sim. I'm just as confuzzled by that statement as you are.