The Grand Career Settings Collection

[SkyRex94]

The Grand Career Settings Collection

As we all know you can change different difficulty settings in career. But if you only have an idea of what a type of career you'd like to experience, you're kinda forced to try the settings you think would give you this experience and play it through. If you don't like it you have to do another try. So I thought let's make a Thread where everybody can share their experience with specific settings and tell their opinion of what it felt like and how they liked it.

I'll try to include the most significant ones, and it's player experiences here in the OP, to create some kind of collection where undecided individuals with an idea of what they want can go to look up which settings might sweet their taste the most.

To get started:

Funds:

It's a little money watching at the beginning of the career, but if you use contracts, especially the 'Explore' ones, they'll still give you a huge amount of money compared to mission cost. So Money still becomes more of a no brainer, the further you progress in Career. The same for penalties: if you don't screw up every second accepted contract it is no issue.

Science:

Becomes a little more grindy than stock, especially at the beginning you won't be able to use the parts you'd like for a specific mission ( like first mun landing). But it isn't 'absurdly' hard to get the Science, if you squeeze out all the possible science from the mandatory contracts you're doing anyway, you'll gain all the science you need on the fly and don't have to bother with Extra-Science-Missions.

Reputation:

No problem, as long as you try not to kill anyone.

Additions:

The special in this settings is the No Reverts and no Quicksave. You have to think twice if you'd like to lauch a craft. But since money isn't that big of a problem it's not required to make everything reusable or land exactly at the KSC. You should take some error-fuel with you in case anything goes wrong, and every crewed Launch HAS to be equipped with a some sort of Lauch escape safety feature if you don't want to kill anyone. Special difficulties arise when there are One-Try-situations: like an Aerocapture or a Tylo-Landing, keep in mind you can't reload and have to be conservative at some points. But this also adds a new sense of immersion to the game: You know, this is it, if it doesn't work somebody gets killed. Or if something goes wrong you have to deal with the consequences, send rescue missions and such.

Additional idea is, to test Craft ,planned to carry crew, with a probe first, to see if especially the launch goes well and the craft behaves as intended.

Closing thought: The money etc. settings don't even have such a great impact if you're already a little advanced in ksp. The most recognised change is the no Revert and No quickload. It can add to the immersive experience, but also keep in mind you might also encounter the Kraken. But a last tip for that: You are infact still able to quicksave, so hit f5 every now and then, and if something Bug related happens you can change the difficulty, load your last save, and turn quickload of again.

So share your opinions about the settings you tried and tell us the expierence.

P.S. keep in mind people can also have different opinions about something, so don't rage at anybodys opinions just because you think different. Better aproach: If you think different make your own post about the same settings, so the community can see different viewpoints on something.

P.S.S: a little personal question, if anybody has played with 10%-20% Funds but with >60% Science, could you share the experience? I'm right now trying to decide on a setting where Money starts to really matter, while keeping the experience diverse and not to turn it into a Science grind.

P.S.S.S.: Am I blind, where is the button to wrap spoiler tags around something?

Edited December 17, 2014 by SkyRex94

[Jovus]

Personally, I'm playing with custom settings based on hard settings, though I allow quicksave and revert (for two reasons: spaceplanes and bugs). However, the main difference is I keep 100% science, but disable all science from contracts.

I'm finding it enjoyable; it forces me to decide my upgrade tree pretty well. (I don't grind the moons, and I have a couple of other mods sucking down science, like KCT.)

[John FX]

I have set every setting to its hardest (10% funds, sci and rep) no quicksave, no revert. No starting funds, sci or rep. I use FAR, DRE, KCT and RT.

It`s doable but really only just. I have to limit what I achieve so I maximise contract returns (5000m, 11000m, 22000m etc rather than go as high as I can). I`m not sure if I am making enough funds to be able to continue playing far into the tech tree. I have to recover every part of every craft to have enough funds for the next launch.

Might go for 20% funds if it ends up not working out. Maybe 20% sci to speed things up, not sure though.

EDIT : There is no spoiler button AFAIK.

You have to do this

[noparse][spoiler=this is a spoiler]spoiler is displayed now[/spoiler][/noparse]

which makes this

spoiler is displayed now

You may find this page helpful, it`s the BB Code List

Edited December 12, 2014 by John FX

[Torquemadus]

I recently abandoned my 20% rewards save, because it was getting too easy. I'm in the early stages of a new save on 10% rewards. I've had some nasty encounters with bugs recently so reverts and quick saves are staying turned on.

[Superfluous J]

I had a 0.25 save with every gain at 30% and every penalty at 200%, and all starting stuff at the bottom. Later I restarted with starting rep 0. I thought it was quite challenging but a bit grindy.

Now in 0.90 I started a new game on "normal" because I wanted a good baseline. My next playthough will require me to purchase parts off the tech tree (I thought that was on in Normal, frankly) but may bump funds gains up a little bit to counteract the early grind. I may also disable reverts and make a pact to not restore from quicksaves. I leave quicksaves on to combat bugs and have found I have the wherewithal to to use them when I screw up

I'm pretty happy with "normal." I think it's a solid experience and well worthy of the name.

[Xavven]

I'm on Hard career with no custom settings. The game is challenging when you have only level 1 buildings, but I think that after upgrading the launchpad, mission control (for maneuver nodes), and the VAB, getting to Mun is quite doable. Money is a little grindy to get funding for the VAB and tracking station. However, I don't think it's too grindy and I like that it's not handing me building upgrades on a silver platter. Hard should be actually hard, and it is!

I think I'm at a tipping point, however. With level 2 mission control, VAB, launchpad, and tracking station, I can go interplanetary. The contract rewards are huge for exploration missions, and it's easy to put 1-way probes on Eve, Duna, and Ike. I just finished an Eve probe landing and I'm about to be swimming in cash. I'm close to upgrading the research complex at which time the tech tree will be mine!

Overall, I think the balance is just about right. Maybe funds could use a very slight buff, and the funds -> science admin strategy conversion rate needs to be nerfed by an order of magnitude.

[nadreck]

I am doing the vanilla hard mode in .90 (in .25 I was going with 50% on the science, rep and funds but otherwise all the defaults) this is definitely more challenging, particularly when I come across things that I just expected to work. For example my first lander that was going to rely on fuel transfer - OOPS. Or when I didn't expect the pilot to tip my second lander over because I choose hold prograde while on the surface of the Mun. I like the challenges so far, not sure if I am going to try to do Minmus before up upgrade my tracking station. I may just to see if I can. Note, is there any way predict/control what role 'rescue' Kerbals have? I plan on only using 'rescue' Kerbals and the original 3 in my missions (how I played 0.25), but so far have only got engineers (2).

Contracts are interesting, haven't done any of the visual surveys yet. Waiting on tech tree.

[Cocox]

Install all the science part mods that you can find and of which DMagic is a must.

Install Mission Controller.

Install Techmanager and Community Tech Tree. Edit the tech tree by multiplying by 10 every science node. Modded high tier nodes will end up costing 30000 science.

Be ready to do contracts like mad in order to advance. You will cry for money and science points. Funds to science admin strategy conversion rate with 5% will help you without being OP.

Edited December 19, 2014 by Cocox

[foamyesque]

I'm running on vanilla hard. My general experience has been that some contracts are wildly better than others; landed part tests are free money, science from space is dead simple and reliably generate a 20:1 ROI, satellite missions (which I believe unlock after solar panels) have about the same ROI but give five to ten times as much in absolute terms, but are a little more finnicky, and testing parts from the 90 science (or higher) tiers in orbit is both very lucrative and gives great gobs of science. The early rescue missions are profitable, but tricky without solar panels (alternatively you could put two capsules on, I guess, but I always thought that a. looked silly and b. was too heavy anyway).

Visual survey is a pain before you can build proper planes, and not really worth it, particularly if it's one with a flight ceiling instead of a floor; low-science part testing is worthless unless you really need the science.

Priority upgrades are the launchpad and contract building, I think. The VAB can be left for a while since, as you tech up, you can increase performance while keeping your partcount the same by using larger bits of kit (-8 tanks instead of -2s, 2m pieces instead of the 1m ones, etc), though with a T2 pad and a T1 VAB I'm starting to hit the 30 part limit when I need to add science experiments and solar panels and such to things. The larger number of contracts you can get is a godsend for moving beyond the grind.

After that, astronaut complex and R&D; the ability to EVA anywhere is very useful for science accumulation, and the increased astronaut cap lets you do something with the rescued astronauts. R&D complex for obvious reasons. The tracking station upgrade, like the VAB, can be postponed as long as you're just derping around in the Kerbin system. If you're playing on Hard you shouldn't need manouver nodes to get to the Mun or Minmus or to match 0/90 inclination orbits.

[UmbralRaptor]

It's weird just how different things are depending on what difficulty you choose.

I've been messing around with a maximally punishing career (minimum resources and rewards, maximum penalties), and 23 "launches" in... I'm probably going to get stuck in a grind dozens contracts until I can upgrade buildings situation soon. The interlocking limitations mean that small steps are possible, but the giant leaps that one can (and probably should) do at lower difficulties are out.

Money:

I currently have 28k banked, and the cheapest upgrades costs >300k. Getting everything up to level 2 will run ~8.5 million. Without a solar panel unlock, returning science from orbit requires a launch every time. This runs at least 1660 funds (more in cases where science equipment is bolted on), and at least 670 of it is lost from exploding boosters and recovery limitations. At least the typical advance is 500, and completion is 3k. It's also possible to sneak in for some other projects, which nicely reduces their effective costs.

And yes, I was very careful to get all of the altitude contracts while starting out. Working out the cheapest rocket designs to accomplish those missions and reach 69.1 or 250 km for science collection/contract completion has been immensely valuable.

Science:

I haven't completely exhausted Kerbin, but most of the easy spots are gone. The most obvious remaining targets would be desert, tundra, ice caps, and landing craft on various KSC buildings. Given the unimpressive returns on my Mun flyby (2x goo pods and a crew report from high altitude yielded a mere 3.2 science, was the multiplier was dropped from 3 to 2?), I'm unsure that attempting a Minmus flyby or a low altitude Mun mission (perhaps even entering orbit) would be a good idea. But with only Start, Basic Rocketry, and Survivability unlocked, there is a yawning need for more research. Let's see if my Kerbol flyby is successful.

General limitations:

Post-hard difficulty settings take away a lot of things. The outsourced research (and funding campaign) strategies require at least -438 rep to run at the 5% level (and more for higher commitment). You don't see any exploration contracts after the starting run (launch, 5 km, 11 km, 22 km, 56 km, leave atmosphere, orbit), part testing in orbit or splashed, or rescue contracts with deeply negative rep. The reduced rewards mean that many contracts that "should" provide token amounts of science don't. Any "test while flying" contract is to be avoided, unless you're certain you can accomplish it as part of a "normal" launch/landing. Test while landed varies quite a bit in usability (from the laughable 5+5 funds on the RT-10 to a few parts that give a point or 3 of science). Just make sure you empty out those SRBs before you activate them.