I’m thinking about starting a new KSP career after a break… What’s the sense on RemoteTech+ScanSat vs the 1.2 update? Are the mods no longer necessary, or do they still have a role? I liked ScanSat, but hadn’t done much with RemoteTech
good question
I haven’t seen anyone use them, the KSP satellite network is legit. Haven’t tried myself, but I’m not the type to reliably get a ship into orbit so don’t even look at me.
Thanks for the replies, just to add some info … I started my 1.2 game. The stock comm net definately does everything I wanted from RemoteTech. One thing I like about stock vs the mod is that you can still stage rockets which don’t have comms, which allows for deploying parachutes and such. It may be less ‘realistic’ but it’s more fun I think. The KerbalNet scanning in stock 1.2 doesn’t replace ScanSat for me- in part because the scansat scanners show up much earlier in the tech tree.
One thing I ran into is that a lot of mods I use are still broken after the patch, most notably Kerbal Engineer Redux. The dev branch of KER seems to be working in 1.2 though. Once I trimmed out some mods I wasn’t using, (and added in USI’s sounding rockets) I’m having a pretty good time.
(I can pretty reliably make orbit, dock, etc but I’m not a super efficient player in terms of flying or design.)
After watching Tom fumble around with this game for a couple of hours, I came to the conclusion that it seems to finally be in a state where an average player can give it a shot and actually achieve something if they take a few moments to read the tutorials. I’m going to pick this up next time it’s on sale. Is the campaign pretty good? I think I’d get pretty lost in sandbox mode. I need targets to meet.
Oh geez! Tom played this. Cool! Sorry I missed it. Tom, I know waaaaaaayyyy too much about space and rocket science and orbital mechanics and KSP if you ever wanna talk about it :)
I suggest starting with the “Science” game. You start with a handful of rocket parts unlocked, then earn Science points from achieving various milestones and conducting experiments in different locations. These points are used to move up the tech tree, unlocking new parts that will allow you to explore further into the solar system.
“Career” mode is campaign-ish, with “contracts” that provide short-term goals. It also adds several new mechanics – money, crew experience, and reputation – that in my opinion add complexity but not much fun.
In “Sandbox” mode, everything is unlocked from the get-go. Probably overwhelming for the newcomer.
Regardless of where you start out, I recommend checking some of the many YouTube tutorial videos to get started. Scott Manley’s are pretty good.
Hah, that would make for a great Qt3 games podcast! Looking forward to it.
@Canuck Obviously your mileage will vary, but I’d recommend “Career” mode, and play as ironman as you feel is fun (rewind mission after crash, only if a kerbal dies, never, whatever floats your boat). After the communications expansion came out, I got about 3 solid months of playtime on a career run which went from sounding rockets to Minmus landers. I don’t pay much attention to reputation, but the money aspect does lead to being more efficient somewhat, and I like the crew experience aspect. Choose some mods* that you think you’ll like and go with it. Switch em up if you think you’d like something different.
- That run had Kerbal Engineer Redux, Kerbal Inventory System, USI sounding rockets parts pack, SCANsat, Kerbal Alarm Clock,a historical missions contract pack, and Final Frontier (which automatically gives the Kerbals ribbons when the do things).
I’m really looking forward to the expansion pack… I liked the comms update better than RemoteTech, and having the historical mission contract pack really helped having short term goals but the pack had bugs in it.
Well, I’ve been back in for a few days. Besides the usual station component launching and slowly, slowly waiting for my interplanetary probe to get to its mid-course plane change, I’ve been doing some crew transfer.
I recently put a second lander, better equipped than the first one, on Minmus, to fulfill the terms of a contract. The second lander has one crew, and the first has two. After finishing the contract, all three launched from Minmus.
I also have a station in orbit of the Mun, and a well-staffed Munar base. It’s coming up on time for crew rotation, and I have a contract for putting a crew aboard the Munar station. So, two Kerbals will take the shuttle from the Munar base up to the Munar station. That leaves the Munar base short-staffed, though. So, one more Kerbal will join the crew from Kerbin by crew transport ship.
The three Kerbals on the Minmus lander don’t have the delta-v to get into Kerbin orbit and rendezvous with the local space station, and the local space station doesn’t have enough crew space anyway. Fortunately, getting to the Mun only requires diving 100 m/s into Kerbin’s gravity well, rather than the ~900 m/s it takes to get back to Kerbin, so the Minmus crew will also rendezvous with the Munar station. The two Kerbals who have been out for the longest will go home on the crew transporter, while two will stay skyside on the Munar station, and two more will take the shuttle back to the surface.
Straightforward, isn’t it?
Last time I checked, a Kerbal’s jetpack has enough Delta V to get you back to the surface of Kerbin from the surface of Minmus. But only if you know what you’re doing :)
There were rumors that Valve was sniffing around Squad since 2015. Looks like it was true.
They’ve probably already wheeled their desks down to the room where people make hats.
Lol45
I just saw this my own self. Dying to know what’s afoot here.
Maybe Gordon Freeman will have to put his engineering skills to good use and create that spaceship in Half-Life 3.
Do Jetpacks come with parachutes pre-installed these days?
No. Reentry is an entirely different problem :P
Well you did claim surface of Kerbin, you never claimed intact.
This can’t be good.