The Grand 0.25 Discussion Thread

[jake9039]

I love the new stock planes, but wonder if it is possible to make the old ones useable

[Aethon]

I wonder if you can get science out of them then?

I'm guessing you would have to stand on top of them if they do.

I can confirm surface samples if you get close enough. Even the walkway.

[xub313]

I really like the new strategies and I've been using them a lot in my new career save. I was desperately low on cash due to my outsourcing, so I started a fundraiser and was able to slowly climb out of my financial gutter.

Edited October 8, 2014 by xub313

[hansman1982]

If I was running squad we'd have proper reentry heating, and aerodynamics by now. And a sfx overhaul with: no sound passed the shock cone of your craft, no sound in space except through IVA, RCS sfx when firing (in IVA only), chatterer in stock, awesome launch rocket sounds that sound exactly like real rockets do and sound different in close vs from afar.

Oh and kerbal can move around in IVA and actually have to do things like: repair craft when random malfunctions occur, build things in orbit, actually have a life support system of some kind...

I can keep going...

How about proper staging recovery for dropped boosters?

IVA's for stock parts that are missing!!!!!!!!!!!

Tweakscale made stock.

More PARTS that we actually need like a quintux engine mounting? How about multiengine stacking?

Should I continue? Destructible buildings are the LEAST things I am concerned about if I was running squad at this moment... we don't even have proper MK3 parts yet...

Well then it should be incredibly easy for you to get a team of developers and create a competitor to KSP and, I'd say within 6 months be at the level that KSP is now. A year from now you should be finalizing version .75 and leave KSP in the dust.

When running a project, there are big needs, small needs and nice-to-haves. Along the way, you might be solving for a big goal and realize a nice-to-have is a tiny effort away but if you don't do it now, it will become a large effort later. From what I understand of what the devs have released about this release, this was one of their goals that was far easier to do now rather than later.

[Bandock]

I'm using Hard, and I'm glad to say, making money isn't so easy. You have to be careful what you do, and don't overbuild your rockets.

Right about that. I almost lost all the money/funds due to human error. Thank goodness I decided to take on some contracts that got me out of that fix.

[tater]

I have it set to hard. As someone who has played 2 other campaigns since starting a maybe 7 weeks ago, I see about zero difference. I've flown 2 flights, and have ~59k in the bank, and have unlocked 3 items past the starting tech.

Scaling difficulty by throttling money, etc is about the same as adding more and more attackers in some games, or bigger "end bosses." It's not a novel challenge, it's only quantitatively harder, not qualitatively harder. Unique challenges make for better gameplay.

[O-Doc]

No quarter. None.

[merendel]

Custom. Its basically hard preset with the only changes being allow quickloads (in case of kraken, wont use otherwise) and allow stock craft. I always forget to dump the craft into my save files so I almost never see them so its nice to be able to load them up and to get ideas off them. I've also had enough ships turn into kraken bait to justify quickloading on ocasion. I just only use them if a ship has an unplanned spontaneous dissassembly for no apparent reason. Clear design flaws or poor piloting I have to live with however.

Scaling difficulty by throttling money, etc is about the same as adding more and more attackers in some games, or bigger "end bosses." It's not a novel challenge, it's only quantitatively harder, not qualitatively harder. Unique challenges make for better gameplay.

Look to mods for that. They add alot of content that the game simply does not have yet. Remember KSP is still alpha, they arnt adding alot of content while the game is still not feature compleat. Especialy because the moding community adds so much for them

Fineprint adds a fair bit of extra contract types if you want more of a challange from contracts. Deadly reentry and FAR are good challange mods that make aspects of the game harder than stock. You could also do a life suport mod paird with remote tech for added challange. Personaly I'm not a fan of LS mods as all they do is add extra parts to my craft without significantly altering my design choices so it ends up just being busy work. Still some folks like them.

[Geckgo]

Setting mine up right now. Sorry to see that this thread hasn't gone further. Running RemoteTech and Life support on 24.2 I found that balancing funds started to become an issue if you launch a lot of stuff outside of the missions availible, even with fine print, so I'll probable tune up the funds, but this will be my first no-revert save, so expecting to lose some cash that way too. Can't wait for KAS and KW to update so I can toss them into the mix later on. I think if your space program is running good then there should be a feeling of sandboxyness, while a couple crashes of big ships can really still set you back without revert. Prolly going to hover around the easy settings just to even out all my mods and extra side missions.

Set all my money stuff to 200%, including penalties, and only have allow stock vessels and quickloading checked. Starting funds 250k and 0s on rep and science.

Edited October 8, 2014 by Geckgo

[tater]

I have 2 modded installs as well (stock system with FAR/DRE/etc), and RSS/RO. Comments on 0.25 I will reserve for the stock game, particularly those that relate to gameplay, as the devs shouldn't count on everyone modding up. Even mods I have looked at only make the tech system better, in terms of career. I think the mod that deals with construction times looks interesting, I'm gonna add that one. Life support hugely changes the way the game plays… still, the contracts need loads of work.

[Riph]

For those of us who use lots of air breathing engines but never install wings, the Shock Cone Intake is by far the best part of 0.25.

(Except maybe Outsourced R&D. Getting 4000 science from a flight is pretty cool.)

But you may be squinting at its stats and thinking, "Seems better than the Ram Air Intake. But I have no idea how much better."

Well my friend, I can tell you. It's 2.6 percent better. How do I know?

Because this drone...

..flew to an altitude of 249,310m with the old Ram intakes, and flew to 256,007m with the new Shock Cone.

Science!

[metaphor]

It looks to me like the "hard" and "moderate" presets are pretty much the same as normal in terms of science, funds, and rep. The only significant difference seems to be whether you can revert/quickload and things like that. In my opinion it should go something like 100%, 60%, 30% for normal/moderate/hard, instead of what it is now, 100%, 90%, 60%.

This is what I'm using:

Allow Revert Flights: ON I like to test and quickly get back to the VAB.

Allow Quick Load: ON Kraken reasons... and I wanted more of a building/strategy challenge rather than a piloting challenge where I have to restart the entire mission or game if I accidentally press the space bar.

Missing Crews Respawn: OFF Makes sense.

Auto-Hire Crewmembers before Flight: OFF This doesn't really matter since it doesn't cost anything to hire new crew.

No Entry Purchase Required on Research: OFF This adds an extra use for funds leading to interesting decisions.

Indestructible Facilities: OFF This makes launch clamps valuable since you can blow up the pad if your big rocket starts right on it at full thrust.

Allow Stock Vessels: OFF Less crowded in the VAB/SPH loading menus

Starting Funds: 0

Starting Science: 0

Starting Reputation: 0 It seems like it would be too hard starting at negative rep but I haven't tried it yet.

Science Rewards: 10% Lowest it would go... not sure if it's enough to unlock the entire tree but we'll see.

Funds Rewards: 10%

Reputation Rewards: 10%

Funds Penalties: 1000% Highest it would go

Reputation Penalties: 1000%

It seems pretty challenging so far, but definitely doable. There's a lot of interesting decisionmaking involved in which missions you have to do, like picking out good part contracts and choosing the right admin strategies. Got my first Mun mission going.

It actually seems similar to what real space programs would face in terms of resource scarcity and huge penalties for messing up.

Edited October 8, 2014 by metaphor

[megatiger78]

wait how did we stop the hypetrain?

[Geckgo]

Meta, if you get into trouble unlocking the tree and don't want to edit a persistant file you could always put custom biomes on there. Expands your chances for science a bit.

[ChrisHale]

I found out that Kerbins Poles are no longer flat. My ship fell over on a snowy hill a few kilometers from the North Pole.

[I_Killed_Jeb]

Pretty unimpressed with the explosion effects thus far...

[SkyRender]

So I've been toying about with strategies, and have quickly discovered that they can be quite the game-breakers if employed properly. To wit: I set up a simple Research Outsourcing plan at 25% funds to science as soon as I could reasonably afford it, and suddenly discovered that I never needed to go anywhere to collect science ever again. Even low-end contracts with that setup give you a solid 50 to 100 science, and the absurdly valuable ones (my favorite being "launch an S3 KS25x4 on a sub-orbital trajectory"; can do!) can give you as much as 3000 (!) science cumulative for completing them. That's just at 25% funds to science, mind; you could easily max the tech tree in one uber-valuable contract if you had it at 100%. (Just make sure you can afford that tactic, as it's more than a bit risky...)

Once you have your tech tree maxed, that's where things get extra-fun, of course... Net 2700 extra science, then switch to the strategy that exchanges science for funds instead at 100%. Now all that "useless" extra science you get from your missions to other planets and moons becomes cold hard cash.

[Superfluous J]

First I started on "Hard" and turned on quickloading. There are still bugs in this game. Then I dialed lots of things down:

• Starting Funds: 0
  
• Starting Science: 0
  
• Starting Reputation: -1000 (all the way to the bottom)
  
• Science Rewards: 10%
  
• Funds Rewards: 100% (Not a typo. See below to find out why I may want more funds than other things)
  
• Reputation Rewards: 10%
  
• Funds Penalties: 1000%
  
• Reputation Penalties: 1000%
  

Then I sent Jeb out on the launch pad in a mk1 capsule, and then I threw whack-a-kerbal balls at every structure that wasn't absolutely necessary to function. I saved the launch pad, VAB, Mission control, and the Science Labs. Everything else has been razed to the ground. Even the mk1 capsule statue.

I call it "Harderer Mode"

Edited October 8, 2014 by 5thHorseman

[juanml82]

Pretty unimpressed with the explosion effects thus far...

The problem, I think, it's the square plane particle acting as debris. Me thinks it should be some irregular 3d particle with the color of the exploding part. No idea how hard or easy is to make that, though.

[SkyRender]

I made a custom Hard one for kicks. Only differences: 0 starting funds, can quicksave, can revert from launch. I didn't even need the quicksave one, as it transpires, because even with those kind of limits, strategies can break the heck out of any difficulty curve.

[Monger]

We already have a thread about difficulty levels, but I think "hard" actually deserves its own topic, because I think the game feels significantly different on it.

I had some very interesting experiences yesterday while playing it. Being unable to save or revert really shifts your perspective. I am choosing my research much more carefully now, striving towards unmanned flight first before anything else.

I lost a kerbal due to a bug: i was fast forwarding while deploying the chute. For some reason, the capsule didn't slow down and just crashed with high speed into the terrain.

My experiments tend to get much more careful now. For example, I got a contract to test the mini thrusters on ground. Sounded simple, but I wasn't sure. I didn't want to ignite them on the ground, because I feared that lifting the capsule might destroy it, and the chute wouldn't have enough time to unfold. Therefore I thrusted it via booster up in the air, ignited both mini thrusters manually, landed via chute back on the ground, and then launched the stage with the mini thrusters (which gives you the science bonus, but kind of feels like a hack).

Which leads me to the conclusion: why didn't I just rotate the thrusters to thrust towards the ground? *Slap against forehead*

Anyway: I think the combination of destructible buildings, low science and money output (not that easy to gain money on hard) and "perma death" makes you rethink every little step twice before acting, which makes KSP quite a different experience.

[KingPhantom]

why is there no setting for the "scienc penalty with sending them"? i would like to set that like in "BTSM"

[merendel]

Which leads me to the conclusion: why didn't I just rotate the thrusters to thrust towards the ground? *Slap against forehead*

You wana go for a double forhead slap? Ask yourself this. Why didnt you just tweek the fuel to zero? No fuss no muss and you dont even have to pay for the fuel. 100% recovery on the launchpad after the test.

[Bandock]

Yep, Hard mode definitely makes it a much more difficult game not only because of Permadeath (which was feasible before through debug), Revert Disabled (same as the former), and Quick-load/save Disabled, but also due to the fact like you said you get rewarded much less (just slightly above half compared to normal). Penalties are much stricter (though I rarely have that happen). Taking the wrong contract could end your career very quickly (due to lack a funds, especially at the start if you play it slow). Wouldn't be surprised that a certain custom configuration could make the game impossible to play should there be a single mistake.

Edited October 8, 2014 by Bandock
Correcting an error.

[Bomoo]

Sorry for the late reply:

http://i.imgur.com/SP24SVw.jpg

This is all spot on. Baffling why they don't contract him to work on any additions to the KSC, as the dude clearly knows what he's doing vastly beyond whatever new hire or intern they have trying to unsuccessfully duplicate his style. Lately seems that consistency has become an alien concept at Squad.