about gameplay before buying

[markblank05]

hi. im just wondering how far can you travel without mods, can you go to the farthest planet? and does this game have warp drive? or warp drive are only available in mods? thanks

[xXIndestructibleEVAXx]

yes, you can go to the farthest planet, but this game is mostly realistic so no warps, just real physics.

[FiesesAlien]

Hey.

With the "vanilla" KSP you can reach every planet but there are no warp-drives beside of modifications. If you like 'simulation'-Games and want to have your own Space Program, KSP is a okay game, i mean, i dont like it much... played it only 190 hours. Fun aside, i love KSP, the way it works with its own "not like the real world but as near as possible"-physics, the way you can improve your own Space Agency/Space Program. No other Game has so deep Mechanics and such a big community to double the fun.

Just look into the Mod-Section! If you play around 30 hours Vanilla-Kerbal, mods can triple, quadruple and even more this playtime. If youre not so familiar with Simulation-Games and just want Action and pre-made Stuff, KSP is not so the game youre looking for.

So, maybe just watch some Lets Plays with Stock-KSP or Vanilla-KSP, as we say in german "make your own picture" (form your own opinion)

Hope i could help a bit.

Stay crunchy.

[xXIndestructibleEVAXx]

just wait till the mods come over here, they will give you the longest explanation possible.

also, Fleses, when I first read your joke and didn't understand it cause i'm used to seeing play times in 1000s of hours.

Not me though, I can't play. My computer has a 64 mb graphics card. I'm saving for new one, but I'm still telly sad... all I can do is look at the pictures...

[arq]

-It is possible to travel anywhere in the system (or to leave it) without mods, once you get the hang of orbital mechanics.

-This game is based on contemporary technology with a few stretches (such as ion engines and combination jet/rocket engines), so there is no warp drive.

Personally, I don't use warp drives because I find that it takes away from "the journey." But the beautiful thing about this game is that you can get whatever mods you want to tailor the experience for just you, and nobody else can do anything more than whine on the forums about your decisions (and most don't).

I would get the game and play it for at least 5 hours stock (without mods) to avoid overwhelming yourself and to get a basics of it (though gaining a true intuition for the game takes tens or hundreds of hours), then start looking into the many excellent mods that the community has developed if you want to go from there.

I would strongly recommend this game. I have played it for well over 500 hours, and many players have done much more. It will probably be on sale on Steam for $18 or so during the holiday sale, or worst-case it is on sale now for $22.50.

[cantab]

So interesting thing with orbital mechanics: for other planets orbiting the sun, there's a limit to how big the rocket you need to get there. So a really far out planet wouldn't be *that* hard to get to anyway.

Except for the surface of the Sun (you blow up, dur), too deep in the gas giant Jool (ditto), or underwater (the game doesn't really do submarines), you can get everywhere in the stock system and return using the stock parts.

Mods add all sorts of stuff, including various incarnations of "warp drive". But at its core KSP is a game about space travel the old fashioned way, with rocket engines and orbital mechanics.

[Scarecrow88]

The vanilla game doesn't have warp drive but it does allow you to warp time (i.e. fast forward) so that a trip to one of the outer planets that would take days in real time only takes a couple of minutes when time warped.

[FlyingPete]

It all comes down to how you use the stock parts. Some people build a huge rocket and send the whole lot up from the launchpad in one go, by which means it's possible to get to Eeloo and back. Some people (including me) prefer to assemble things in orbit and then go. I haven't been further than Jool yet, but that's just because I like messing around on the inner planets.

[Pecan]

Although there is no warp drive there is time-warp, so if you don't have other things going on you can just 'fast forward' past the drifting-through-space parts.

In any case the KSP solar-system is on a different scale to the real one - you can get to Mun in 5 hours efficiently.

As there are no other stars in the stock game there isn't any interstellar travel and lightspeed engines aren't really an issue.

[thereaverofdarkness]

Getting to Jool or Eeloo is pretty easy within the stock parts once you have a good grasp of how to build rockets and fly them. Even that much will take many game hours as you learn, step by step, various ways to build finer things and fly in finer ways. Not long after I made my first successful mun landing, I found myself reaching the conclusion that it was impossible to build a rocket that could launch from the pad in one piece and reach Duna. This prompted dozens of hours of building refueling stations and leap-frogging my way out to Duna. By the time I had finished building the stations, I had learned enough about fuel-saving trajectories and proper use of the LV-N nuclear engine that I found it was pretty easy to make a trip straight off the pad to Jool, even. Also, I learned that having three stations in Kerbin orbit was really just a waste of fuel, and it cost the least fuel to make the full leap right from low orbit.

I am now well over a year into the game and still learning new things. I have once made a rather elaborate probe trip to Jool, have landed an air-breathing aircraft on Laythe, but have never brought a proper colony ship to Jool. There are always things left to do, learn, and discover. This game can take many hours away from you, but really brighten up your life.

As always, my biggest suggestion to you is to try the demo first. It's a few versions behind so it lacks a lot of the full version's parts and polish, but it's an excellent way for you to figure out if building rockets is your thing or not.