Beating Beta Than Ever: To 99,999,999 and Beyond (in stock)

[Kerano]

Beating Beta Than Ever

So there’s no official “winning condition†in KSP, but in my latest career (KSP 0.90.0, no mods, no cheats, Normal difficulty) I just achieved 99,999,999 funds. For anyone curious as to what happens beyond that point, your funds keep ticking upwards but the counter rolls over to 00,000,000 – i.e. missing the first digit. You can spend money to launch ships though, and the funds tick down to below 99,999,999 again. So the funds are safely tracked, they just don’t display correctly in the game anymore.

Pictured in the screenshot above is the "Supership" which I used for the bulk of my missions. See below for more details and a download link.

By this point in the game (year 39) I had 170 Kerbals in my space program - 68 at 5-star, 52 at 4-star, 16 at 3-star and 34 rookies.

Contract Statistics

The breakdown of my completed contracts:

I should note that I accepted every contract which was offered to me with a few exceptions:

- After I had reached Duna I ignored most Kerbin contracts (payout too low, more interested in interplanetary travel)

- After I had reached Jool I ignored most Mun and Minmus contracts (same reasons)

- I ignored contracts which required a manned spacecraft to land on Eve (wanted to return everyone, and it's currently too annoying to build large Eve launchers with the radial decoupler bug)

I didn't complete any Tylo contracts yet, but I have 7 active contracts I'll be getting to soon. I've already built and tested my SSTO Tylo lander+launcher with rover in sandbox, just need to build a booster capable of getting it from Kerbin to Tylo orbit.

Contracts I only tried once or twice included satellites around the Sun, satellites around Jool, gravity scans of Jool, and asteroid redirects. I found these contracts simply took too long to achieve relative to their payout. The Sun satellite in particular required an absurd amount of delta-v (~10,000 m/s from Jool, ~20,000 m/s from Kerbin) and only paid out 250,000 funds.

The most fun contracts for me were probably the orbital stations and surface outposts, mainly because my design made them relatively easy to achieve and they paid well. The requirement to build a base "on wheels" only came up twice, which was a shame as I thought it made for an entertaining challenge. The requirement to build the station "into an asteroid" came up half a dozen times, but I never accepted because the payout was far too low relative to the required time investment.

Almost all of the part test contracts were on Kerbin. It was rare to receive an offer to test a part elsewhere, and usually the payout was too low to bother with. The majority of the other Kerbin contracts were made up of satellites, visual surveys and science data from space.

Kerbin, Mun, and Minmus are underrepresented in the numbers because I ignored most of those contracts after the early game. I really wanted to do more Laythe contracts once I started building Mk3 spaceplanes, but unfortunately they were rarely available.

Contract Improvements

I posted a few suggestions on this already, but here are a couple more thoughts on improving the contract experience.

- Add new contract type: Expand Station. Requires X tonnes of fuel, Y crew members, or Z modules to be docked to an existing orbital station of yours. Only available if you currently have a station in orbit around a planet/moon.

- Add new contract type: Expand Base. Requires X tonnes of fuel, Y crew members, or Z modules to be landed within a certain range (e.g. 1 km) of an existing surface outpost of yours. Only available if you currently have a landed base on a planet/moon.

- Add new admin strategy: Avoid Body. Effect: New contracts for a specified body will not be generated until this strategy is cancelled. One body can be specified per 5% commitment. Setup cost: 250,000 funds per 5% commitment.

Example 1: Player wants to avoid new contracts at Kerbin, Mun and Minmus - pays 750,000 funds for 15% commitment and selects to avoid those 3 bodies.

Example 2: Player wants to only generate contracts at Laythe - pays 4,000,000 funds for 80% commitment and selects to avoid the other 16 bodies.

- Add new admin strategy: Avoid Mission. Effect: New contracts of a specified type will not be generated until this strategy is cancelled. One procedural contract type can be specified per 5% commitment. Setup cost: 350,000 funds per 5% commitment.

Example 1: Player wants to avoid asteroid redirects and visual surveys - pays 700,000 funds for 10% commitment and selects to avoid those 2 missions.

Example 2: Player wants to only generate part testing missions - pays 4,200,000 funds for 60% commitment and selects to avoid the other 12 procedural missions.

Supership

It's capable of transferring and returning 17 crew to any body other than Eve, Tylo and Laythe - tested and confirmed to work on Duna, Vall and Moho (as long as you're careful with the transfer windows and descent burn) as well as everything smaller.

The 4 largest booster stages are recoverable with parachutes during launch, saving about 200,000 funds when they splash down (nearly 20% of the 1,100,000 ship cost). They detach simultaneously around 45 km altitude, and I never have a problem with them moving out of physics range during the descent. The upper stage with all the crew plus the satellites is fully recoverable on Kerbin for around 350,000 funds, meaning that the net cost of a return mission is only about 550,000 funds - and that includes leaving a fueled tanker in orbit around the visited body.

Aside from the crew compartment, there are 4 ion satellites (redockable), a detachable rover (redockable with monoprop engines), and a large tanker which provides enough fuel for multiple landings on most bodies. It can satisfy pretty much any contract on the smaller planets and moons.

Variants:

- For Duna missions I swap 4 of the regular parachutes for drogue parachutes.

- For Jool missions I add 4 extra xenon containers to each of the ion satellites.

- The largest crew requirement I've had on a contract is 19 (twice), and in those cases I just add an extra crew container near the top.

If you'd like to download my Supership, the link is here.

Edited January 29, 2015 by Kerano

[KerBlam]

wow man!!.. That's impressive! How long has this taken you? IRL hours?

[Kerano]

Hard to say, I have the website version of KSP rather than the Steam one. Most of it was over the Christmas break, probably close to 100 hours over that period. Then an hour or so an evening on average since I suppose, perhaps a little more in the weekends. So maybe 120-150 hours. I guess that's about 30-40 minutes per contract? In reality most of them take only 10-20 minutes once you've got a decent setup, and many take less than 5 minutes. So you could probably do it a bit quicker if you wanted, but I wasn't really playing with that goal in mind - I was experimenting with SSTO's or otherwise having silly fun for a good chunk of the time.

[Axelord FTW]

Okay, now try to blow all that money in ONE ship.

[Kerano]

Heh... given that the most expensive part only costs 32,400 funds, that would require a minimum of 3086 parts. More in reality, because the cluster engine only has 1 attachment point so you'd need many other (cheaper) parts to allow all those connections. So you're looking at more like 4000-5000 parts minimum. If you use the largest fuel tanks (22,800 funds) you'd need 4385 of them. I don't think my computer could handle the lag.

Maybe Whackjob could give it a go though?

Edited January 29, 2015 by Kerano

[SpacedCowboy]

Ok, you win! They say there's no "end game" to KSP, but I would say you've certainly come closest to achieving that scenario. Squad ought to give some little prize or award for you, but, , , no that probably won't happen, so, have some rep. Congratulations are in order. (I'm kerbal green with envy)

[worir4]

You haven't won yet. You must reach 999,999,999 science points!

[Rolanvorxariat]

I feel you went a bit German with the title there

jk

nein nein nein nein

Edited January 30, 2015 by Rolanvorxariat

[dryer_lint]

So, that just happened.