Hard mode is great!

[Marclev]

Just came on here to say this ... can't remember the last time there was any tension with a mission, now every hit of the space bar is a moment of nail biting terror. One wrong move could bankrupt the space program, with no going back. Wonderful!

No doubt it'll ease up as I acquire more funding and science, but what with having to pay for new technologies now, with any luck that won't be for a while.

[zenopath]

I totally agree.

Hard mode is actually really challenging, I liked KSP before, but now its actually a game, where before it was just a simulation.

If we looked at it one way, you could just say, hard mode is only challenging because it doesn't let you quicksave or revert, which you could have done before if you had the discipline. But its much better when its an actual mode rather than a self-imposed handicap. Now when I crash a big ship i might actually have to start the entire game over again, and the reduced science gains make it require much more effort to get all the science, so you will still be stuggling with with limited science by the time you run out of things to do on mun and minus, where before you could finish everything without leaving kerbin's sphere of influence. I've already started over a bunch of times. I never realized how sloppy my shipbuilding was until i had to do it with no "revert to hanger". Also challening is trying to test the pieces, before you could just fiddle endlessly with your ship to try to get speed and altitude right; Now that you only have 1 shot at it or try again with a whole new ship, even the manuvering without using quicksave to save your ass if you're cutting corners and taking risk is much more engaging.

[Zylark]

If I could trust the game to not get unstable and crash on me - or blow up my spacecrafts for no good reason - I'd go Hard-Mode. But my experiences from .24 have left me a bit anxious. Though (knock on wood) so far not a single glitch. The game is as stable as 23.5 was. Despite my pile mods. We'll see how it develops as I get assets perma-placed in space and the save-file grows exponentially.

So yes, playing on moderate settings. And being somewhat scatter-brained, forgetting to bolt on basic stuff before launch, I do revert launch a bit now and again... but the F5/F9 procedure is so far left untouched.

Edited October 12, 2014 by Zylark

[tater]

I'm now playing hard, with FAR and DRE added. I cranked the rewards down to 30% from the stock "Hard" 60%. I've only done orbital flights, and aside from one misstep early on (lost about 1/2 my funds), I'm now at 0ver 60k funds, and I can tell there will be no further problems in the least funds/science wise.

That's with FAR/DRE, in stock… hard is not nail biting.

[Duban]

Hard mode takes a little bit of effort to get started, but it isn't that hard and doesn't scale well once a few more tech options become available. I made 1,1250,000 credits and 4420 science on my last mission while only spending 45,000.

http://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/2j0wec/lcev1_crackling_exploring_eve_gilly_duna_and_ike/

[panfish5]

I just finished the tech tree in hardmode.

I actually did 2 interplanetary and return missions to max out the second half of the tree. one from Duna and Ike and the other from Dres.

[Russoft]

Hard mode is too easy (or rather, it's great but not quite as hard as I thought it would be). I modified it to start with maximum negative reputation, zero credits, and 50% science/money payout. Now THAT's a challenge!

[Duban]

Hard mode is too easy (or rather, it's great but not quite as hard as I thought it would be). I modified it to start with maximum negative reputation, zero credits, and 50% science/money payout. Now THAT's a challenge!

It's not that it's too easy. It starts off fine. It's that the later missions don't scale well for the highest level players. The costs of landing on Duna, Ike, Gilly, and Eve actually go down for high level players as the tech tree expands. After the first 1000 science you just start collecting insane amounts of wealth. A static % change in costs just doesn't work between different skill levels.

Edited October 12, 2014 by Duban

[Hyomoto]

Thank you for posting this so I don't have to. I used to never have any issues with funding. Reputation is still pretty throwaway as far as I can tell but a couple high-profile botched missions that took expensive craft with them punched a hole in my funding and now I'm actually looking at contracts to make up the difference. No reverting or quick saves, despite what some MechJeb players think, has a profound effect on the game.

For maximum hard mode I think you have to go with FAR and DE as well. Some would throw life support in there but, in my opinion, there hasn't been a really good, well-developed life support system that encourages planning and meshes well with the base game that I can recommend.

[PatPL]

An easy way to make funds is to put a self-sustaining sattelite and send science data from Mun if you will have this mission avaiable

[Sky_walker]

One wrong move could bankrupt the space program, with no going back.

No, it couldn't.

Bankruptcy is still impossible.

[SelectHalfling0]

Hard mode is terrifying. I test all my spacecraft in sandbox now.

[geb]

If I could trust the game to not get unstable and crash on me - or blow up my spacecrafts for no good reason - I'd go Hard-Mode. But my experiences from .24 have left me a bit anxious.

I have to agree with this. The scaling for funds/science/rep are excellent, and being able to turn off reverts makes flights a lot more scary, but the game isn't polished enough to turn off quicksaves yet. I've run into a few odd bugs, one which granted me some science I didn't deserve, and one which almost blew up one of my shuttles. Quicksave would have been been able to turn back time in each case and restore a fair game.

[Skyrunner27]

No, it couldn't.

Bankruptcy is still impossible.

Then tell me what happens when you have ten thousand funds and then you crash a ten thousand fund spaceship.

[Linear]

Then tell me what happens when you have ten thousand funds and then you crash a ten thousand fund spaceship.

Walk over to the contract building and grab some funds?

[Linear]

Hard mode is too easy (or rather, it's great but not quite as hard as I thought it would be). I modified it to start with maximum negative reputation, zero credits, and 50% science/money payout. Now THAT's a challenge!

50% science/funds is still pretty high

[tater]

I'm doing 30% in Hard with DRE and FAR, it's still trivial to keep going.

[Sky_walker]

Then tell me what happens when you have ten thousand funds and then you crash a ten thousand fund spaceship.

You have 10 000 + whatever you reclaimed from the wreck.

But in case you meant that you used 10 000 on your last ship that crashed - just go and get some contracts. They're paid up front. Do them, bang, problem solved.

But if you still insist of failing even that - you can grab contracts, all of them, build a ship for every single fund you have, spawn it, go back to the space center (with ship sitting on a launch pad), cancel all of your contracts, then go back to the ship, reclaim it, and voilà - you have funds back again!

[nadreck]

Another exploit is to use the aggressive negotiations and then recover your ships from the pad, cost your reputation into serious negatives but you are getting to sell the ship back at full price even though you only paid the discounted price.

[tater]

So I played a little tonight, and landed on the Mun. (FAR/DRE/etc all stuff considered "harder" (though it's really only "different")). Hard mode, with rewards down to 30%. There is zero chance I will ever be short of anything. Hard is so close to 0.24.2 play I'm not sure if I could tell you a difference, and that;s with a few mods, and the sliders set left a bunch. If I abused "strategies" it would be easier. I'm not seeing anything nail biting, and I've only been playing for a few weeks, lol.

[RocketBlam]

I agree that it is about the right difficulty for your first few missions, but later on when you get 200,000 for flying to Duna, plus 200,000 for science data near Ike, then another 200,000 for some other contract and you can do them all on a single 80k rocket, it stops being as challenging.

[Linear]

So I played a little tonight, and landed on the Mun. (FAR/DRE/etc all stuff considered "harder" (though it's really only "different")). Hard mode, with rewards down to 30%. There is zero chance I will ever be short of anything. Hard is so close to 0.24.2 play I'm not sure if I could tell you a difference, and that;s with a few mods, and the sliders set left a bunch. If I abused "strategies" it would be easier. I'm not seeing anything nail biting, and I've only been playing for a few weeks, lol.

How is hard mode close to .24 in any way?

Anyway, i respect you've lowered everything quite a bit but how on Earth is playing with 30% science fun?

[Tail_TL]

Hard mode doesn't make the game harder, it makes you grind more. 'nuff said.

[Linear]

Hard mode doesn't make the game harder, it makes you grind more. 'nuff said.

Autosave removal etc do improve hardness, but the return sliders..jeez

[SkyRex94]

i started my new career in hard mode too.

And i don't go to Sandbox for testing, yes they simulate in real life, but they also do test flights, and doing those testflights of a new design can get pretty expensive in career now. I'm also using my own T-7-TechTree which requires a little bit more Science to unlock the nodes, so until now it feels good, i really have to watch for my money, also have to gain as much science as possible and don't crash too many new designs to run out of money. And with no reverts, Probes finally have a good use: Not risking life of Kerbals until i'm sure they can survive.