KSP 0.9 is NOT fun to play

[BaronVonchesto]

Well, the SAS part is by design I guess. Whether a good decision or not, you're not supposed to have that capability at the beginning. I get were you're coming from, it happened to me too, but it's not that hard. It's a pain sometimes yes, but overall I think you might be doing things wrong, because it doesn't seem that bad to me, ie: I can fly the things and point them where I want to (and keep hitting keys to keep them straight, yes) expect when I don't have the tech and thus not much control authority.

The grind at the begging, yes, I agree it might be a little tedious, specially because what parts you can unlock don't make any sense IMO. But just keep flying, you'll get enough moolah sooner or later. I recommend hitting the Mün and Minmus over and over to, well, grind the science out of them. Yes, that's grindy no question. Satellites contract also offer a good ROI.

Also, don't forget to play with the difficulty options, maybe you find a balance that works better for you.

BTW, FYI, if you use Mechjeb, the Smart A.S.S becomes available a lot before the advanced probe cores with SAS. So that's a way to have SAS even when you don't.

Yea I know the SAS part is by design. Im saying its bad design because it increases tedium and makes thing less fun. Ive been playing KSP since 2012 so I can put up with it though i dont quite enjoy it, but a newbie may very well get put off due to the way it is now. If you want to be realistic about it you shouldnt be starting out with manned flight and gyroscopy is one of the earliest things developed in controlled rocketry so the order is totally off. But at the end of the day it just makes things unnecessarily hard and tedious

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What is the TWR on your rockets? I notice most of my rockets start flipping out if they accelerate too fast within the atmosphere. If I keep the TWR and acceleration under control I hardly notice any problems.

Well since its very early in the career mode TWR is pretty high (especially when using probes not MK1 pod). Im aware that turning the engines down helps a fair bit with stability, as long as your speed doesnt go up too much its somewhat manageable.

Stil cant figure out why theres rotation, especially when using the solid motor. That thing just loves to spin! but really any booster adds rotation to the craft.

[Nitrous Oxide]

Yeah, I found the grind to be pretty terrible too.

Aye, and the new SAS makes it especially painful. Thankfully there's mods to make the start fun again (thanks RoverDude).

Also, why would I launch a satellite with a pilot? Doesn't that defeat the whole point of an unmanned craft? Also, career has a 30 part restriction, so that makes satellites a no go until my space program is well established considering it takes more parts to add a pilot and return capabilities that I might as well just do the whole damn mission manned... wat. Apparently humans went into space first to check if we could launch Sputnik...

[Commander Jebidiah]

To get more experience with manual flight go into sandbox mode I play very little career or science modes because they bore me.

Also the current version is 0.90.

0.9 was released about 4 years ago.

[Motokid600]

Hmm... How bad is the rotation? Like others have said yea you have to manually pilot the sputnik, but it really shouldn't be that hard. And afaik it shouldn't really be spinning much on its own. Could be something wrong... Maybe do post a pic of the craft. And what other relavent mods are you using besides FAR ( I know you tried without far, but is there anything else ? )

And.. y'know mechjeb is an option. You don't get ascent guidance and SmartAss till a ways down the tech tree, But you can change that. I get it right off the bat because the module manager config I use to incorporate mj functionality into my probes without the part.

You say your not a manual pilot, so.. give it a go. It's not cheating. No more then the new piloting system. I just let it do my ascents and manouver nodes. Rest is all hands on.

Other options are actually cheating. Take an OCTO core and move it to the starting node.

[ColourOfFire]

Well since its very early in the career mode TWR is pretty high (especially when using probes not MK1 pod). Im aware that turning the engines down helps a fair bit with stability, as long as your speed doesnt go up too much its somewhat manageable.

Stil cant figure out why theres rotation, especially when using the solid motor. That thing just loves to spin! but really any booster adds rotation to the craft.

I use a lot of solid rocket orbiters in early career, it really seems to help to add some fins in the upper stage and put the trust limiter down to a TWR of around 1.75 at liftoff and have the last solid booster stage kick you into orbit at full trust. Also, some fins on the last solid rocket motor made things hell of a lot more stable. With liquid fueled engines I usually only use full thrust at take off and lower the throttle to about 50% pretty quickly to keep my acceleration under control, I aim to be between 200 m/s and 250m/s at 10.000 meters, after that I slowly open up the throttle. Sudden acceleration makes rockets uncontrollable, which to me makes a lot of sense if you look at it from a physics point of view.

The grind is a bit boring, but I think that's mostly because since you've been there, done it all in the earlier versions and with probably loads of new career starts in every new version it feels very grindy. I honestly think this is more because of the game being in early access than 'bad design'. As a new player this would be experienced a lot different. For a new player there's a lot more excitement about unlocking parts you've never had before etc. If you've been playing a lot longer it's just more of the same boring get to orbit stuff. In my latest career game I gave myself a 500 science and 100.000 credit head start as I didn't feel like going over all of the early stuff again. And as I understand, there's still a lot of balancing in the works.

Edited February 9, 2015 by ColourOfFire

[GusTurbo]

What kind of missions/contracts are you attempting where you don't have SAS?

I agree that the tech tree is no good, but I don't understand why it's making things so difficult/annoying for you.

[Alshain]

A lot of the "grind" caused by having done it before, I feel is because there is only one way to do it... at least early on. I've found this really helps.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/105956

[godefroi]

What is the TWR on your rockets? I notice most of my rockets start flipping out if they accelerate too fast within the atmosphere. If I keep the TWR and acceleration under control I hardly notice any problems.

Indeed! Saturn V had a TWR of ~1.2 at launch (I believe), and the center engine on the first stage actually cut out half a minute early in order to keep that TWR down during ascent. High TWR makes it very difficult to control your rocket in the atmosphere!

So I did a little math, and assuming the numbers I started with here are correct, the TWR started at ~1.15 at engine ignition, and was ~1.88 by liftoff ~9 seconds later, and climbed to ~2.9 at about 142 seconds in. At that point, the center engine in the S-IC cut out, and the TWR dropped to ~2.4, and then continued climbing until it peaked at ~3.5 at MECO about 168 seconds.

Edited February 9, 2015 by godefroi
Added image

[SkyRender]

I can very much relate to the topic creator's woes, as they were what made me initially quite leery of 0.9. I have found a few workarounds, however. For the SAS issue, always stick an OKTO or HECS on your craft. They're small and not that heavy, and the OKTO is unlocked pretty early on the tech tree. It does suck that pilot Kerbals get such an enormous leg-up over the other classes, but that's just how it is now. For the expense issue, most of that is due to building upgrade costs being two times too high. You can scale them down to a reasonable rate by halving the penalty slider's value. Yes, really; it makes no sense whatsoever that this is how you adjust building costs, but that's how you do it.

[LordFerret]

I'm really not that fond of them, they should have some attitude tolerance. As it is now all my ships pointing somewhere are starting to jiggle due to constant correction of the heading, it behaves like the old SAS IMO.

Likewise. I'll use them to put the ship on the desired path, and then click on the 'Stability Assist' button to hold it. The Retrograde hold is nice for descents, on the way down anyway, but you need to click on that Stability Assist just before actual touchdown or else the ship gets all wonky - same if you accidentally apply too much thrust and start ascending.

It would be nice if these buttons had some 'brains' with them. Rather than grossly overshooting the intended mark, having to swing back and forth no less than 3 times to hit the mark. Manual is better.

[Ippo]

This one's a simple problem: If this is correct, then I assume that your rockets are very top-heavy, and once the CoM shifts out of line with the rest of the rocket, it will indeed flip out of control. Try for heavier bottom stages or lighter payloads, or especially both.

This is the literal opposite of a good advice. Top-heavy rockets are more stable.

[rcp27]

Top of my pet peeves are the changes to the SAS system. I want to start off by saying that I absolutely HATE them. I dont know why, but since 0.9 all my rockets seem nearly impossible to fly without SAS and the fact that only OCTO probes and pilots have SAS

The only probe core that used to have SAS in 0.25 to have lost it is the Stayputnik. All other probe cores have at least basic level SAS, and can be used exactly as they could in 0.25. All pilot Kerbals, even totally inexperienced level 0 ones, have SAS ability with the same capabilities as 0.25.

with no means to externally add it in majes for a very frustrating experience as getting into orbit is so TEDIOUS if not nearly impossible.

You can add SAS to any ship by including a probe core that has SAS on it. That is, any probe core other than the Staputnik.

Regardless of whether I have FAR or not i get craft that rotate or drift shortly after launch, and I have checked and re-checked to ensure proper symmetry and mass distribution etc.

Neither the physics models nor the aerodynamics models were altered in the transition from 0.25 to 0.90. If your craft is unstable now, it would have been unstable before. I don't use FAR, so I don't know whether it has been altered meaningfully.

I have had to resort to modding all the probes to re-introduce SAS since this is now the only way to have SAS as the reaction wheels are no longer capable of SAS even if I mod the cfg file. I never enjoyed manual piloting and always depended on SAS for launch, but now it feels pretty much impossible to get anything done without SAS.

Not sure where you are coming from here. Stayputnik is the only probe core that does not have 0.25 style SAS. Any craft using another sort of core should work exactly like it did before.

My second issue is the sheer cost of things vs how little you earn. Starting from scratch feels completely nerfed and it is just so tedious to have to amass massive amounts of credits to unlock the most basic of skills like collecting soil samples.

It can be a bit of a grind to get the cash to upgrade the various facilities, but the custom difficulty settings let you tweak starting cash and cash rewards for contracts to give yourself an easier time. Or you can edit the save file to give yourself enough cash to upgrade the facilities. Alternatively, just play in sandbox or science mode, where upgrading and contracts aren't a feature.

[basic.syntax]

Top-heavy rockets are more stable.

In what ways?

[cantab]

Career mode does have game balance issues. The developers know that, and that's why they are working on a complete rebalance of the game for the next update. For now, I would say it's playable and enjoyable despite the issues but it really is the game mode for experienced players. Spaceflight is hard enough without having to worry about money as well, so novices will be better off in Science or Sandbox mode.

As for specifics. If you don't like flying without SAS, then don't! Unless you're attempting super-hard difficulty there's absolutely no need to. Just use a pilot in a command pod on every mission until you unlock the OKTO.

For gravity turns, if your rocket is losing control in response to a small pitch input then you have made it aerodynamically unstable. SAS may be able to handle that but you can't, so you need to design a rocket that is aerodynamically stable. In either stock or FAR this can be accomplished by adding fins, which you can easily unlock before attempting a launch to orbit.

As for money, yes the building upgrades are expensive, but they're expensive because they're powerful. The solution is twofold. Firstly, learn the tricks to making money in career mode. Some contracts give loads of money for hardly any effort. Secondly, build to your constraints instead of thinking you must upgrade. You can go to the Mun without upgrading a single building.

[Ippo]

In what ways?

Try to balance a hammer on your hand: it will be easier with the heavy part on top.

More specifically. Your control forces (thrust vectoring, and/or winglets) are applied at the bottom of the craft. The torque they produce on the rocket is greater when the CoM is higher because the moment arm increases.

See this accurate professionally-made technical schematic:

P.S: by the way, that's the reason why SpaceX is putting small winglets near the top of Falcon 9's first stage: they need to control the rocket also when it's falling down engine first, and since all the fuel is gone, the CoM is near the bottom => you need actuators near the top.

P.P.S: please note that it also applies to Stock, not just FAR.

Edited February 9, 2015 by Ippo
SpaceX!

[PB666]

I rescued a pilot with stayputnik probe on top of capsule. I think the reason its hard career because its not designed for new players. Without flight director its hard to transfer. But I practiced matching planes and transferring without the director in previous versions (when I was too ignorant to know how it worked).

Im on hard mode right now, I spend all my funds upgrading facilities, however once I made it to Minmus a whole new game opened up.

However the celestial intercepts were automatic in previous versions, now they are cryptic, and so you have to have practiced intercepting Mun or Minmus and know the dTheta between ship and celestial to know when to begin your transfer. Again practice helps. Keep an eye on how far the Apo supercedes the targets orbit and the dTheta (something like 135' for Mun or Minmus)

I stopped playing hard because of the bugs. I created two work-arounds to deal with them and managing the bugs this game.

Don't take missions just for science, there is alot of science around KSC that can be gathered, return you ship back to launch point and get 100% recovery of parts. Try to recover as much of each vehicle from missions, it may cost another parachute, struts or other structures to preserve craft.

Engineers and scientist cannot fly, so using them as pilots is an act of courage or desperation.

[cantab]

More controllable and more stable aren't the same thing.

For a rocket to be stable it needs to have the lift and drag behind the Centre of Mass, same as for a plane. But not too far behind, or it may lawn dart. In stock the CoM and CoD will almost always nearly coincide, so you only need to worry about fins giving you a CoL. FAR is more complicated, and a draggy fairing or payload may need compensating for with oversize fins at the back, or accept the instability and use SAS and loads of control authority to keep it in check.

[Brotoro]

P.S: by the way, that's the reason why SpaceX is putting small winglets near the top of Falcon 9's first stage: they need to control the rocket also when it's falling down engine first, and since all the fuel is gone, the CoM is near the bottom => you need actuators near the top.

It would be nice if KSP had foldable grid fin stabilizers like Space-X uses (also used on the N-1 and the Soyuz launch escape system).

[Taki117]

Try to balance a hammer on your hand: it will be easier with the heavy part on top.

((Snipped for brevity))

This is correct, however, if you do not have enough control authority near the bottom of your rocket then Newton takes over and your rocket flips.

[basic.syntax]

See this accurate professionally-made technical schematic:

Thank you for this. All I could think of, was the qualification "when CoM shifts... loss of control." If you don't have stabilizing fins or SAS at the bottom, (a design problem) it is BECAUSE available torque is greater with a high CoM, that control is lost faster (when thrust is continuous, a problem more often experienced with SRB first stages that can't throttle down) than if CoM was lower.

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It would be nice if KSP had foldable grid fin stabilizers like Space-X uses ...

We might get that, in a back-door sort of way, with the new drag system. If landing gears offer more drag when extended, they could be used to simulate this

[Ippo]

More controllable and more stable aren't the same thing.

...

Sure, but let's easy him/her into it

Also, adding winglets for control also makes it more stable, plus aero stability is just meaningless in stock.

But of course, you are absolutely right.

[Berg]

So I first got the game back in the .2s somewhere along, had a lot of fun but got bored due to the lack of any sort of driving force. Started playing again and it happened to be after .9 and I have to say that I do like the roles for Kerbals and the new guided SAS stuff. That being said, it kind of irks me that when I tell my pilot to point the craft prograde, he'll overshoot it every time due to continuing to apply torque until the node is actually pointed at rather than doing a smooth transition.

[Corw]

If responding in kind to people who dismiss others as trolls and merely trumpet "HURR DURR ITS OKEH FOR ME SO U MUST BE RONGG" to a legitimate complaint about the aspect of gameplay is rude so be it.

I didnt come asking for help. I was giving feedback about the gameplay, but nonetheless I have responded as expected of a civilised person to the people who are actually offering suggestions and trying to help.

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Well actually my problem or rather grief (since it *is* possible though painful and tedious in most cases) is with any flight where SAS is not possible (pre-octo probes and flights without pilots).

You are doing exactly the thing you are mocking. "HURR DURR ITS NOT OKEH FOR ME SO U MUST BE RONGG" For some reason it is working for us, but not working for you. Post pictures or give craft file.

[basic.syntax]

plus aero stability is just meaningless in stock.

I don't use FAR - and find that adding fins does work in stock, you just need sufficient lifting force. Delta wings with elevons do good work for me (though I usually combine this with some SAS.)

SAS stuff... overshoot it every time ... rather than doing a smooth transition

Agreed! Would be a good area for kerbal skills to apply. Smarter Kerbals would anticipate getting near to the mark: less overshoots at high skill levels, and when using more expensive probe cores.

[Rizzee]

I don't understand all these comments about the game's economy being broken. There are difficulty sliders that allow you to change the reward/penalty multipliers, you can tailor the difficulty settings to suit you and how "grindy" you wish it to be. Completely pointless thing to complain about when you the player have the options available to you to change this.

As for the aerodynamic issues, Ippo and Cantab already explained that.