Where do you have your difficulty set?

[Pthigrivi]

A general curiosity but also I think an important bit of data for balancing.. for those playing career where have you put your settings? After .90 I actually started a few new careers at first on different settings to see how the rewards played out. I know a lot of people have felt the funds/science ratio is off, but mainly I found its just the funds that are lagging. The best place I found put funds penalties down to 50%, Rewards up to 150%, and starting cash up to 100,000. It took a lot of the grind out of it but still things don't quite feel right.

To my mind, as they balance things, a nice rule for a median setting would enable you advance after 3 of a given type of mission. Once you've done 3 successful sub-orbital missions, you should have the cash and science to go orbital. After 3 orbital flights you should be able to mount a Mun mission. Then Minmus, Asteroid, etc. There are people who have been playing like unlocking the tech tree is beating the game but I personally feel like you should have the current tech tree pretty close to maxed after you return home from your first interplanetary mission. That way you have all the tools you need to rock a Jool-5 or Eve and back.

Another random note on this but I kind of wish the transponder was a part and not a strategy. Like you place it on your module and you get 15% back for a flat fee of 1500 funds or so. Especially when you're loading up a huge mission paying a max of 6% at launch and getting back 15% only what comes back is not really that great. It would make more sense if we had stage recovery, but barring that I think a flat fee would scale better.

[Superfluous J]

I am enjoying flat-out normal with all checkboxes off except saves and reverts.

I almost don't do science at all, unless there's a contract for it and then it's just to do the contract. I've not put a Goo or Jr on anything and have no reason to. I put the other things on because they're massless but don't really see why, when I can get 10x the science return from a simple contract that doesn't take dozens of clicks.

I'm hoping they balance the contracts so they're not such fonts of science, but find the amount of money I get is about right. Not too much grind and I've unlocked the tech tree and all the other building upgrades I really want, and I could easily have not ground at all and just gone to Duna and Eve without the tech I wanted. The money I'll get from them would have easily unlocked that last R&D upgrade.

So IMO all that really needs done is to severely cut the science gains, and maybe make rep more transparent (I still don't know how it works even though there's a wiki on it).

[ThreeMartiniLaunch]

I'm working on a video series on Hard, but with quicksave and revert enabled...and a few mods to make it harder.

[Caelib]

My first career game was set to just vanilla "Normal". Then I started a "Hard" game (which is what I did in the previous build) ... but it's too "grindy" when it comes to funds so I basically just have "Psuedo-Hard" game that's Normal with Quicksave/Quickload disabled.

For me, the difficulty options arounds funds just make it completely un-fun.

[problemecium]

I'm on the same settings as 5thHorseman. I spammed Science like it was going out of style until the tech tree was cleared, then I gathered up a bit and spent it activating the Science to Funds strategy at 100% to ensure I'd always have income.

[OhioBob]

First time playing career in version 0.90, "Normal" with the standard default settings. When I'm ready to start a new game I'll try something harder.

[Srpadget]

I did Hard for my first save in 0.90. The Funds-grind to upgrade the facilities sucked a lot of the fun out, though, so once I established that I am capable of turning enough profit to make the upgrades, I bumped it back down to a custom game with Hard settings for the "difficulty" options (pay to unlock parts, Kerbal perma-death, etc.) but Normal contract payouts. Also a balance problem, though, as it makes the science gained from actual science missions irrelevant compared to the masses of science gained from contracts.

I'll get the settings 'right' eventually. I'm thinking next time, I'll try somewhat lower cash payouts than Normal and MASSIVELY reduced science gains from contracts, so the science from actual space missions becomes important again. (Anybody know how to set the contract payments to Hard levels without also bumping up the building-upgrade costs to ridiculously-grindy amounts?)

[TheOrqwithVagrant]

I did Hard for my first save in 0.90. The Funds-grind to upgrade the facilities sucked a lot of the fun out, though, so once I established that I am capable of turning enough profit to make the upgrades, I bumped it back down to a custom game with Hard settings for the "difficulty" options (pay to unlock parts, Kerbal perma-death, etc.) but Normal contract payouts. Also a balance problem, though, as it makes the science gained from actual science missions irrelevant compared to the masses of science gained from contracts.

I'll get the settings 'right' eventually. I'm thinking next time, I'll try somewhat lower cash payouts than Normal and MASSIVELY reduced science gains from contracts, so the science from actual space missions becomes important again. (Anybody know how to set the contract payments to Hard levels without also bumping up the building-upgrade costs to ridiculously-grindy amounts?)

Yeah... I'm playing on hard myself right now, with DR, FAR, Kerbal Construction Time & RT. I enjoy everything about it except the facilities upgrade grind. That's not hard, just tedious.

[Pthigrivi]

Yeah Srpadget you can move the science rewards, funds rewards, and funds penalties (which control building cost) independently. All of this sounds about right. Does anyone know if the science rewards effects non-contract science gathering?

Id be totally with you on the contract science value if the actual act of gathering science was more fun. Id love to see a nice pass on making real experiments. Theres a cool thread on that in the suggestions board, about making impactor experiments stock, having to load the materials bay with things collected on eva, making the barometer pay out based on how big a swath of the atmosphere it passes through while activated, etc.

[NecroBones]

Right now my career is set to normal, except I turned off respawning Kerbals who manage to die (but I can revert/quickload, so that's unlikely to happen). I just can't turn off reverting and quicksaves, when I know I've hit too many bugs in the past.

The interesting thing, is that when the "career" was just the "science sandbox" (before funds and contracts), I found that the start of the career was a bit challenging, especially as a newbie player, because the early tech tree is hard to fill out when you're still floating around Kerbin, and not getting to the moons right away. I'm find the opposite in the new career mode on Normal skill. It's easy to get the ball rolling now. It doesn't get "harder" later, but rather more grindy, since you get to a point where the last few building upgrades are relatively expensive and it just becomes a matter of grinding out contracts so that you can complete the tech tree (upgrade R&D) and upgrade the VAB. Of course the costs are even higher in the other skill levels, by default.

So anyway. "Normal" is good enough to me, since I'm not here to challenge myself with money, reputation, and ship complexity constraints. To me it's all about launching well engineered missions and getting them out there.

[klgraham1013]

Sandbox with a self imposed budget. No take backs. Dead means dead. Only reload in case of Kraken.

[carlpilot]

I set difficulty to "Easy", then disable "Auto Crew Hire", "Stock Ships", and "Indestructible Facilities".

-Carlpilot

[tater]

My current is a "normal" career with dead is dead, and maybe another box unchecked (can load it to check right now). I only ever revert or use saves if there is a bug (or I notice no chutes while on launchpad ). That's on jumbo32 (3.2X RSS setup), though, and I was unsure about what I'd need money wise (did the same with 64X). As is true in all KSP career games I've messed with funds only matter at the very beginning, then you swim in them (I don't use the strategies at all, all they do is make even more money, faster I think).

[Yemo]

I use a custom difficulty, since I m testing my mod (link in signature).

Have to buy components, 50% rewards, 150% penalties (since they are only really relevant for upgrade costs).

Edited February 1, 2015 by Yemo

[Mattasmack]

I'm playing a hard mode career, no mods. I really liked how constrained this made the beginning of the game. Since I couldn't afford to upgrade my facilities for a while, I really had to think about which contracts I took and how I fulfilled them, and there wasn't lots of margin for error. The only part that's felt grindy so far was when launchpad weight constraints meant I had to launch my Munbase with barely enough fuel to reach orbit, then fly three refuelling missions before I could send it to Mun. That said, I haven't fully upgraded my R&D center yet and that might become a grind.