Any suggestion to make the game more challenging ?

[Grover]

Asparagus staging has not been done in real life, and SRB asparagus cannot possibly work in KSP or real life. The critical thing in asparagus is feeding all engines from a single pair of tanks at a time, something only possible with KSP's unlimited-flow fuel lines.

There's a couple of designs with simple crossfeed to the core from radial boosters on the drawing board, but nothing closer than that to real life asparagus.

I thought one of the Ariane launchers (or at least a working prototype) used a two-booster solution, which fuelled three engines from two radial tanks, which only drained 5% or so fuel from its centre stack whilst the radial boosters were running, not perfect asparagus staging but pretty damn good, i cant do any research on it from my phone but im pretty sure it was a european launch system opersted or designed by ESA

[Michaelo90]

I thought one of the Ariane launchers (or at least a working prototype) used a two-booster solution, which fuelled three engines from two radial tanks, which only drained 5% or so fuel from its centre stack whilst the radial boosters were running, not perfect asparagus staging but pretty damn good, i cant do any research on it from my phone but im pretty sure it was a european launch system opersted or designed by ESA

That's still a prototype: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Heavy

[Red Iron Crown]

I thought one of the Ariane launchers (or at least a working prototype) used a two-booster solution, which fuelled three engines from two radial tanks, which only drained 5% or so fuel from its centre stack whilst the radial boosters were running, not perfect asparagus staging but pretty damn good, i cant do any research on it from my phone but im pretty sure it was a european launch system opersted or designed by ESA

The recent Arianes use solid rocket boosters, so they're not crossfeeding obviously. If you mean Falcon Heavy, as Michaelo90 suggests, I don't think there's a working prototype of the crossfeed system yet, but I'm hopeful they'll get it working in time for the 2015 first launch date.

Asparagus works really well in KSP's 100%-reliable-parts simulation, but in reality all those staging events and complex fuel plumbing introduce reliability issues we don't have to deal with.

[Lukaszenko]

Anybody have any tips for not using quicksaving when playing with FAR and DRE? The only way I could ever get a proper aerobrake is simply trial and error. I just can't see playing a multi-hour interplanetary mission and losing my ship because I dipped a bit low into the atmosphere.

As for an idea for making the game more challenging, has anybody tried playing where you have to use your funds for all testing purposes? This could easily make each mission multiple times costlier.

[Taleric]

Use shift+a+d change exponent to 1.12 (I think, look in DR readme and get the RSS shield cfg too.)

Should make shielding and angle essential.

[cantab]

Anybody have any tips for not using quicksaving when playing with FAR and DRE? The only way I could ever get a proper aerobrake is simply trial and error. I just can't see playing a multi-hour interplanetary mission and losing my ship because I dipped a bit low into the atmosphere.

Use pilot probes that run a bit ahead of the main ship. You may have to work to get them ballistically matched to the main ship though.

[mythic_fci]

Use pilot probes that run a bit ahead of the main ship. You may have to work to get them ballistically matched to the main ship though.

This. I usually undock my pilot/scout probes right after burning towards Duna, so that they have an extended distance from the mothership (say, 40-80km) but are still following relatively the same path.

[Lukaszenko]

Are pilot probes sufficient to figure what trajectory is needed...don't they need at least similar ballistic coefficients to be useful? Any other variables I should look into?

[LethalDose]

Has anyone mentioned DMagic's Celestial Body Science Multiplier Editor? I've used it to nerf the crap out of science values of the Mun & Minmus. I set the orbital science multiplier to 1 (same as Kerbin) for both, the Mun's surface multiplier to 1.5 and Minmus' surface multiplier to 2.

I'm still working my way through the tree, but it's pretty obvious I won't get the tree done farming the Mun & Minmus for science.

[ninjaweasel]

4 Pages and nobody has just pointed him to the realism overhaul thread? I've been playing since .13 or so and it took me two days to get a 4t payload into LEO using RO.

Lukaszenko:

For figuring out aerobrake trajectories, Mechjeb has a module for that. If you're playing for realism, having a computer do the telemetry on your flight path is a lot more realistic than eyeballing it!