Career too hard?

[Crimson Sunrise]

This is what happens when you take a non-realistic game and apply realistic costs to it.

[kinnison]

i don't think I will do career anymore. I hate grinding

[SkyRender]

Set the funds penalty slider on the difficulty screen to 50% and suddenly the building upgrade prices go from absurd to fairly reasonable. Just a little tip for anyone getting sick of spamming bottom-tier missions dozens of times just to afford any upgrades at all.

[WanderingKid]

Well, here's one for you "experts". I took on the rescue a Kerbal mission, but alas I'm not able to target. Any tips for making a rendezvous in space without any guidance? Best to come back to this after I get targetting? (assuming I do get that skill later)

Once you're within 2.5k range of the Kerbal (or whatever) you can set target. Best way to do this is to wait until the Kerbal is directly overhead on an orbiter with a pod and an OKTO. Boost up to just behind him, just below their altitude. Circularize. When in range, target and rondevous.

[Madrias]

I play on Easy Mode with some added funds (and carefully calculated science to unlock some wings and a jet engine) so I can just jump right in and have some fun.

In previous Career games, I've never had any desire to go much further than a handful of science tiers. Now that I can upgrade the buildings from the "overgrown hobbyist space club" to "International Space Administration" I feel I have something to work toward (yeah, hard to understand that when I'm making Career mode a laugh, but I want science, unlocks, and funds with no chance to fail.) and that pushes me into enjoying my Career game a little more.

By the time I finished building my space center up, I had a significant number of parts unlocked and had started to treat it as sandbox with cash and science and contracts.

[Bandock]

One thing I can say is that Hard difficulty is definitely more challenging than before. Is it impossible? Of course not. Now, playing Custom with extreme penalties and very little reward might as well make the game near impossible to progress.

I already played through Hard Career mode twice since I have been playing it like Hardcore except it involves the fact if I lose any of the main Kerbals (Jeb, Bill, or Bob), it's game over. It's a great way to try new things and start fresh since there are times you could even run out of money due to poor decision making. For those playing on Hard and have enough funds, stick with a 5% or 10% Outsourced R&D. It still gives a lot of science.

[Janos1986]

First thing to upgrade IMHO is Mission Control.

You can then proceed to craft shapeless abominations built specifically to complete 3-4 contracts per launch.

From then on the cash isn't really bursting in from the windows, but at least it's something.

I'm playing with cash and science flow on hard, by the way.

[andruszkow]

I dont get the hazzle I read about here.

I'm in no way an expert player. I started a normal carreer game, and towards upgrading the VAB, launchpad, R&B, Mission control and Tracking station, I didn't really do any mission twice (or more, aka grinding). I cut my costs a lot and handpicked my contracts. I did the first "Explore the Mun" mission without patched conics, with a ~$16.000 vessel (which BARELY had enough fuel to make it back).

From there on out, the timing of things was just perfect. I combined the "Test the Poodle enigne" mission, which pays off fairly good, with more Mun missions, eg. "Plant a flag on the Mun", "Measure the temperature at x and y on the Mun" etc. After that mission, I could afford the $510k R&D upgrade, and Duna/Ike contracts started coming in.

Advice: Make silly contraptions. If you're asked to test the BACC SRB between 16.000 and 19.000 meters, at a speed of 300-650m/s, build the following (from top down):

Parachute -> Mk1 Pod -> Stack Decoupler -> BACC SRB -> Stack Decoupler -> FL-T800 Fuel tank (or something similar) -> LV-T30 Engine.

Before launch, empty the BACC SRB completely from fuel. I think its a bit lame that you can complete objectives even when engines never really ignite, but that's how it is. Else, leave as little fuel in the BACC as you can, and set the thrust to as low as you can as well

[Kesa]

The strating cash slider on custom difficulty should go high enough to unlock the tier II buildings.

[ddenis]

I don't understand people who say that career is too hard when they have all levels to set it right. And, by the way, nobody except them can set difficulty level...

I think that ksp lacks separate setting for prices, separate from penalties. But in all other cases...

I don't see a point in creating your own career with settings that you have chosen and then saying that it's too hard... if it's to hard, than start a new career with easier setting, don't overestimate yourself. Maybe normal level it's really normal level for average player in the KSP, and hard level means that it will be hard...

Stop selecting hard difficulty and then saying that it's too hard.

Edited December 18, 2014 by ddenis

[Dunbaratu]

Has anyone managed the polar (and other specific orbit) missions without maneuver nodes? I don't see how those are possible without tons of extra fuel and a LOT of maneuvers to tweak things. I sure never get them the first try.

Nah, getting to a target orbit without maneuver nodes is easy. The hard part is getting a rendezvous mission without the closest-approach chevrons. It's the lack of those chevrons that's the problem. I don't think the game should be giving you the "rescue this guy from orbit" missions until after you have them available, because that's just going to punish new players who don't realize how hard it is to do when they pick the mission. You only have 2 active missions at a time, and you pick a rescue mission as one of them and you've effectively just locked out that mission slot for a long time because you didn't realize you needed a better tracking center first. For new players that's really punishing. Experienced players can pull it off without the tracking center help but it's quite hard. Hard enough that an easy-mode or normal-mode player shouldn't be presented with those missions deceptively early like they are.

[Dunbaratu]

It's not like KSP just has 3-4 options like medium-hard-eas etc. to chose from. They implemented the difficulty panel exactly for this reason: EVERYBODY has a different OPINION and enjoys different things. In the difficulty panel you can adjust all the values yourself.

None of those sliders fix the root problem, which is that Funds are the only thing that matters in Hard mode, and the other 2 things aren't important at all. Those sliders can only alter how fast you accumulate the 3 types of "currency". They can't change the fact that all the building upgrades require purely just Funds and not any Science or Rep. THAT is what cause the Hard mode to be grindy.

The game balance problem comes not from how fast you get the 3 types of "currency", but from the fact that one of them, Funds, is about five times more important than the other two, Science and Rep, such that there is exactly one and only one right strategy in the admin building - increase funds and decrease science and reputation. The other options are presented to you but are wrong to pick because you'll hit the funding problem long before you'll encounter any problems from the limitations of the other two.

If you get science faster than funding, there's no point, because you can't spend the science as fast as you get it without an upgrade to the R&D building that you cannot afford for quite a while yet. If you get Rep faster than funding, there's no point, because you can't actually perform the nice missions you're getting as a result.

That's what makes it feel grindy. Instead of balancing the 3 things, you really just deal with one of them and one of them only - the funding. And that means doing the *same* thing over and over and over, instead of doing new and interesting things.

It's not impossible to fix it - it just needs some tweaking, and perhaps much more interesting contracts given out at low tech levels.

If the Funding grind wasn't DULL it wouldn't be a problem. But it becomes dull only because you're limited to only about 2-3 kinds of mission for a long time, so you'll end up doing the same mission again and again to get the funds up to unlock the more interesting stuff. It would be better if there was more variety to the low-tech starting part of the game.

And that would require balancing the parts tree a bit better. Don't wait for tier 4 to let you make planes. Instead unlock bad plane parts early and better ones later. Don't wait for teir 4 to let you have wheels. Give you the tiny wheels early and better ones later so you can start doing some rover missions early on around Kerbin. Increase the *variety* of gameplay at low tech levels and the initial grind for Funds won't feel annoying anymore.

And for the hard of thinking : A complaint about the grind and a complaint about the difficulty are NOT the same complaint. Any post that makes the argument that people shouldn't complain about the difficulty if they set the slider to "Hard" is sort of ignoring the fact that most of the complaints about Hard mode have actually been more about the grind than the difficulty.

Currently, setting the slider to Hard has TWO effects:

1 - it makes it harder.

2 - it adds a lot of dull grinding up front in the early game.

The challenge is how could SQUAD tweak it so that you get #1 without #2. I've offered 2 suggestions up above:

A - Make building upgrades require some use of the other 2 types of currency as well, not just exclusively funds alone. That way you're not just accumulating science points and banking them doing nothing with them for a long time like you have to do now

B - Add a lot more variety to the early-game missions so that grinding for funds isn't as annoying anymore. What makes it annoying the the repetitive nature of them. "Survey this set of spots" are all pretty much the same mission, and "put a satellite in this particular strange orbit" are all pretty much the same mission, and "test part Foo at altitude Bar and speed Baz" are all pretty much the same mission. Give you earlier planes and rovers and then you can have early missions like "Land a rover here on Kerbin and drive it 2 km away from where it landed to test the rover system", or "Try to fly as flat and level as possible so you keep your altitude within a 200 meter window for a distance of 5km over this location", and so on. More *types* of low-tech missions would turn the dull grind into "fun grind" instead.

Edited December 18, 2014 by Steven Mading

[ddenis]

I agree with you that the game need to be tweaked to be balanced for average person from the box. But even more every person has enough power to balance the game for himself because:

1) funds, science, reputation can be set separately... If someone think that funds are too low comparing to the science -it's possible to set 200% for funds and 75 for science. And so on..

2) in game we have strategies.... Now I need science? Ok, I will convert reputation into it and so on...

Now the game gives to user all needed power for balancing it as he wish. But, of course, I desire better balancing OTB (out of the box). And I want separate price scale.

And I don't won't depending of buildings on science or reputation. Science for researches, reputation for profitable contracts have to be, as for me.

Edited December 18, 2014 by ddenis

[X-SR71]

I believe flight-plan (maneuver nodes) should come unlocked by default on starting a new career. My main concern is the gameplay difficulty to new players without it.

Also, the silly part-test contracts need to stop (ex.: testing a big solid booster in orbit). They might be accepted by a new player only to find out it's quite hard to accomplish in the beginning, driving them away from the game out of frustration.

Experienced players know how to select appropriate contracts, but imagine the confusion and frustration of new players starting a career for the first time.

At the very least, there should be a linear sequence of contracts when first starting to help new players get oriented.

Edited December 18, 2014 by X-SR71

[ddenis]

How much time new players need to unlock maneuvers nodes? On what level of difficulty? How much contracts they have to complete before it? What number of contracts they do before getting into orbit to go somewhere?

[Janos1986]

There are still Science, Sandbox and the scenarios for new players though.

[Epthelyn]

I believe flight-plan (maneuver nodes) should come unlocked by default on starting a new career. My main concern is the gameplay difficulty to new players without it.

Also, the silly part-test contracts need to stop (ex.: testing a big solid booster in orbit). They might be accepted by a new player only to find out it's quite hard to accomplish in the beginning, driving them away from the game out of frustration.

Experienced players know how to select appropriate contracts, but imagine the confusion and frustration of new players starting a career for the first time.

At the very least, there should be a linear sequence of contracts when first starting to help new players get oriented.

So since new players can potentially pick up a contract without previously looking into what it might involve, it should be removed entirely? No.

That "confusion and frustration" is called learning. There is more than enough leniency in easy to make a fair few mistakes, and if career mode is a problem for a new player they can easily switch (back) over to sandbox and get better at the game before attempting to play with a limited set of parts and limited funds.

I have yet to encounter a problem - I'm playing on hard.

The launchpad upgrade is the cheapest of all the T2 upgrades, and once you have that it's possible to land on Mun and Minmus (although without patched conics, Minmus is a pain because of the inclination. Mun is "Burn at Munrise until 11.4Mm"). Combined with the "Explore <body>" contracts, you can get a reasonable amount of all 3 currencies even without EVA, which can be upgraded into with the funds from the Mun. That, plus a few "Science data from around <body>" contracts (with solar panels, to leave transmitting probes in orbit forever) will give enough to upgrade either the VAB or the tracking station (I took the tracking, because despite playing before maneuver nodes, I was never any good at interplanetary transfers, and a land-and-return Mun rocket is a one-way Duna or Eve rocket with a decent enough launch window and/or aerobraking. After that, it's business as usual.

It's harder than it was, but "Hard" was never hard anyway. I managed all of the above without making a single mistake, but that's because I'm reasonably good at the game - I wouldn't expect someone new to the game to be able to build a 30 part Mun rocket capable of landing and returning, but at the same time I wouldn't expect that same player to start on hard in the first place. The higher difficulties are actually a challenge now.

In other words, what grind? I've practically 'completed' hard without grinding, so it's clearly possible to do so. It took longer than in 0.24, and involved a little bit of working around limited part problems and tighter funds that it did before, but it happened. If the difficulty is too hard for you or you're finding it grindy, go to moderate or custom.

*grumbles about how this is the first update in a while to make things more difficult and people are complaining about it being too hard when previously the game was "too easy"*

[Dunbaratu]

I agree with you that the game need to be tweaked to be balanced for average person from the box. But even more every person has enough power to balance the game for himself because:

1) funds, science, reputation can be set separately... If someone think that funds are too low comparing to the science -it's possible to set 200% for funds and 75 for science. And so on..

2) in game we have strategies.... Now I need science? Ok, I will convert reputation into it and so on...

None of these sliders are capable of affecting the hardcoded fact that funds are used for a lot more things than the other stuff is. They can't alter that balance problem. Lack of funds prevents you from using science points, but lack of science doesn't prevent you from using funding points. The 3 things are not equally important, which then also means that the ability to change them around with the admin building doesn't really help either. It's functionally identical to changing the sliders before you start the campaign.

[sal_vager]

Actually there's a plugin that can change upgrade costs, probably other stuff too later.

[Dunbaratu]

There are still Science, Sandbox and the scenarios for new players though.

Except that's not the purpose of those modes. The devs have said the the whole point of career mode being laid out with the tech tree a bit historically backward (i.e. learn rockets before you learn planes, or worse yet - before you've invented the wheel, apparently) is that it's meant as a teaching tool so that new players are introduced to parts of the game in a way that flows from basic to complex. So given that that's the purpose of career mode, there is a problem that it tends to scale the difficulty backward now in 0.90 (No, I don't meant the difference between easy, medium, and hard, but the difference between late game and early game. It feels like the early game is the hard part now and the late game is the easier part. That's fine for experienced players but it's a bit backward if career mode was meant to teach new players the game piece by piece.)

[Wanderfound]

I believe flight-plan (maneuver nodes) should come unlocked by default on starting a new career. My main concern is the gameplay difficulty to new players without it.

Also, the silly part-test contracts need to stop (ex.: testing a big solid booster in orbit). They might be accepted by a new player only to find out it's quite hard to accomplish in the beginning, driving them away from the game out of frustration.

Testing a large SRB in orbit is one of the easiest missions around; empty the fuel and it's a featherweight payload, or trigger it via action groups / right click and lift to orbit on the SRB itself, keeping the staging for when the test is due. What's the problem?

Part-test contracts aren't the best source of √, but they frequently provide easy access to useful amounts of science.

[skyfire322]

Yeah, it took a bit of grinding through contracts to get enough funds to upgrade some of the facilities ... like getting maneuver nodes ... game is virtually unplayable for me without them!

This!!!! And testing the same part just for a 20 different companies for 2 science is a little frustrating.

Overall though, I'm pretty pleased. I think with a bit more tweaking, it'll be great. KSP has always been great, and will continue to be great!

[Dunbaratu]

In other words, what grind?

Specifically, the grind that occurs between level 1 and level 2 of the R&D center. That's the real big one. After that it's not so bad. But before that, you accumulate science above and beyond your ability to spend it, even when you're not trying particularly hard to gain science points. This is because the Funds you need to upgrade that R&D center come slower than the science comes and you can't help but accumulate science a lot faster than your funds will allow you to spend it. By the time you get the R&D center from level 1 to level 2, you'll be able to unlock about 5-6 tech nodes instantly, at the very least, from all the banked science points. They are balanced in Normal Mode, but Hard Mode made one a heck of a lot harder than it made the other, putting them way off balance compared to *each other*.

As to the suggestion to fix it by picking fund-heavy strategies in the admin building, the design of the game was *supposed* to be that you use those to push things off balance from the default if your play style is different, but currently you have to use them to repair the unbalanced default gameplay back TO being balanced again, thereby taking all the fun out of that building too since you can now only use it to do one thing and one thing only - push back against the unbalance of funds.

It's a bit like driving a car with steering that pulls to the right so badly and is so out of whack that you have to turn the steering wheel almost all the way to the left just to go straight. Sure you *can* drive straight that way, but it will severely hamper your ability to steer to the left when you need to, because you're spending most of your leftward steering power just to go straight. Having to use all of the admin building's power to try to re-establish the off balance of the Hard mode settings back to the center again is crippling its use for its intended purpose.

It's frustrating because with a little bit of tweaking 0.90 would be great. The *system* is good, but the data its populated with is a bit off-centered, so to speak. And it's the off-center balance of Hard Mode, much more so than the general average overall difficulty of Hard Mode, that makes Hard mode feel like a grind during the early game. I hope when SQUAD addresses the balance like they say they intend to, they pay attention to the multitude of complaints about this, and not to the people who engage in the strawman fallacy of mischaracterizing the complaints as merely "oooh it's too hard" and that's it.

That being said, once you get past the necessary grinding funds to get the R&D center up to level 2, the rest of the game opens up better from then on. It seems the main problem is just during that first part, where science comes in way faster than you're allowed to spend it.

Edited December 18, 2014 by Steven Mading

[z26]

unlocking the RnD isn't a grind when each big mission gives you 200k... 5 missions and you are done.

Edited December 18, 2014 by z26

[ddenis]

Lack of funds prevent me from researching, what presents me from upgrading, what prevents me from better things, what presents me from easier fulfilling of some contracts. There is always something more important than other. Of course, you can fly on rockets tear 1 without researching other tears, in this case I'll agree, the science doesn't restrict anything.