Calelari
1983
I’m an amateur but for what its worth, I find I’m using the expansion parts fairly regularly in my designs. I just had to go to the wiki see what those parts were, mind. You can do just fine without them I imagine.
Not all of my crew agrees everything is fine…
My first Mun landing that successfully returned without issue in my career game.
Strollen
1984
Are most of the mods update for 1.8 by now? The three i’m most interested in are MechJeb, DockPortAlignMent, and KerbalAlarmClock
Edit I meant 1.8
Calelari
1985
Heck, most of the major mods (afaik) are up to date for 1.8 now. MJ and KAC definitely are, dunno about the docking port one.
jpinard
1986
Get the expansions. I wouldn’t want to go without the parts.
@jpinard OK, thanks. Found a DasTactic tutorial so I’m watching some of that before deciding whether to buy KSP or not.
Fozzle
1988
@Strollen DPAI Is not updated, so I have been using NavHuUD to lign up docking. it is not as good as DPAI, but it gets the job done:
This is my current mod list and I’m having a pretty good run with these:
Fozzle
1989
@Calelari I love your lander. How did you get these guys hom though? Did you have another vehicle in orbit?
Yeah, that mission was my first after I gave up on round trips and put a station in orbit around the Mun.
F’rex, this mission landed and then got stranded in orbit:
So did the first rescue mission. The second rescue mission made it back but wasn’t pretty. It was very Kerbal though!:
So I decided I needed a midpoint. Space station, make it so:
The lander on there is a newer design that can carry a rover with it. (The rover in the earlier mission landed autonomously.):
(I’ve revised the design since then so that the lander can re-acquire the rover making it reusable.)
Can the game can be fun to play without a whole slew of mods?
CraigM
1992
Yes!
I have hundreds of hours with zero mods installed. Mods can improve certain experiences (particularly on older versions), but if the core concept intrigues you it is not nessecary. Mods mostly have impact in high level play anyhow. Things like building space stations and multiple rendezvous. By the time they really would be ‘needed’, you’re likely dozens if not hundreds of hours in.
Fozzle
1994
Definitely. I play with mods now, but I’m 1000+ hours into this game! In the 1.8 version mods are mostly just window dressing. You can get by just fine without them and do some fairly complicated missions as well.
Most of my mods are visual as well. The only one I don’t enjoy playing without anymore is MechJeb. After a while certain parts of missions aren’t as fulfilling as they were the first few times (the umpteenth launch of a well-proven lift vehicle or routine docking for examples). But it takes a while to get to that point.
Do you still need to have a physics degree to manage thrust vectors, orbits etc?
I enjoy the subject casually, but found the game dry and mathematical the first time I tried it. My humanities degree in medieval lit probably doesn’t help ;-)
Diego
CraigM
1998
As an engineer I am incapable of offering an unbiased and general response :)
I will say that it did more to further my I’m understanding of orbital mechanics than all my physics classes combined. It also seems very approachable to me, and anything but dry. But, again, this is so firmly within my wheelhouse of interest that I can truly not answer.
Pod
1999
I like to play KSP “Stock”, really. I include a few things like Chatterer because they make the game that small bit more amazing.
Calelari
2000
If you want to maximize efficiency - i.e., smallest and cheapest possible lift vehicle, least amount of energy to get to your destination, etc. I could see an argument that a deep knowledge of orbital mechanics would be very useful. But you can pick up a lot of it casually.
Or just keep slapping boosters on that bad boy until it gets where you wanted it!
(See my space station launch a few posts up.)
Look at this way you can get the equivalent knowledge you’d gain from taking several college engineer physics. (Which at times is actually helpful in real life) Without,having to attending any 8 AM lectures, read any dry huge textbook, struggle with problem set, and cram for and pass exams.
Instead you get to blow things up, explore distant planets, and feel sad when you kill or strand one of the cute Kerbals.
CraigM
2002
Then feel like a god damn genius when you mount, and execute, a rescue mission that requires you to land in a precise location rather than just ‘wherever I stop’
