Or rather it is definitely one of my favourite games of all time. Anyone here playing? Sub-forums look kinda dead. Been playing with for a month now probably around 120 hours or so. I went into the game with just a keen childhood interest in astronomy, but I know next to nothing about aerodynamics and space physics or velocity calculations. It does have a learning curve, but what a wonderful journey so far.

So after playing with assembling my first few rockets to go into orbit, I crashed and burned almost all the time. After a day or two, I finally managed to do an orbit around Kerbin (Earth equivalent). Felt a good sense of accomplishment I haven't felt in gaming for a long while. Just when i thought that was hard, I tried landing on the Mun (Moon) without trying to spoil myself on video tutorials. I got into lunar orbit alright, landings were another thing though. First few landings were fast, furious and explosive to put it in a subtle way. Poor Jebediah died, resurrected and died again and again from quickloads and repeated attempts. So I had to check up Scott Manley's helpful videos and there I learnt about stopping horizontal velocities and landing slowly with short bursts of fuel. And I did land on the Mun eventually, another feel good achievement, except that I then realise I didn't have enough fuel to get back home...

And so comes the rescue missions which I feel were significantly harder than trying to do an orbit or land on the Mun. Orbital rescue requires great precision. Having your Kerbals (astronauts / inhabitants of Kerbin) EVA in space to jetpack to another vessel for rescue missions is cold-sweat inducing, well at least for the first few tries. It brings out the phobia, that fear of getting lost in space forever, drifting alone. Trying to rescue a Kerbal trapped on the Mun requires as much precision to land the darn lander to near his/her exact position. Just when you thought rescue missions are definitely the hardest, you soon find out that rescue rendezvous are just a prerequisite to docking space vessels. And heck that's the point I'm at now, just managed to dock my first 2 vessels forming a mini-space station yesterday, 0.2m/s precision worthy, after much frustration about the docking magnet not wanting to pull together...

Gonna try going to Duna (Mars) and Eve (Venus) soon. Wonder what future great adventures I will have. Scott Manley's videos and Quill18's experimental gameplay series have been a great help.

If you gift me a copy I'll let you know what I think ;)

I played the test version waaaaay back and that was interesting, although you couldn't really do anything except launch a rocket.
It's pretty popular I think, but all the subforums are fairly dead-ish.
Perhaps you could check out Reddit?

It does sound like a lot of fun, but the demo I tried was a little juddery and buggy and the price is a little too high for me.
I'll probably pick it up eventually in a sale as I've heard nothing but good things about it, and really enjoy physics simulations like that.

The release version is pretty stable for me. An occasional crash to desktop that happens to most games still do happen. The initial complexity does kick in right at the start but just try to focus on launching your first few rockets and see how high it can go, don't think about anything else, just remember to put a parachute on your command pod. Learn about staging. Then you can finally move onto escaping the atmosphere (70k km) and going into orbit for the first few steps. There are actually contracts, and paid in-game achievements for those.

Yep, I already know this. Unfortunately it's too darn expensive right now, please don't bring it up. :P

I'm a bit obsessed with that game, which is an absolute jewel. I've completed the tech tree in science mode just as I was reaching Duna's orbit, and I took a break and started a career mode. Career mode is a bit more fun, but I wouldn't have been able to deal with it without having trrained in science mode. Both modes force you to start with simple basic rockets, and I'm impressed by the ease with which you accomplish intimidating tasks once you get the hold of it (I remember struggling with orbital launches, I remember struggling with orbital rendez-vous, etc... it feels like another life given how routine they've become since). It is also fascinatingly informative, and helps you appreciate much more accurately the actual feats of mankind's space programs. Especially when you take in consideration all the realism mods you don't install, and all the computing power you have at disposal (a game on your personal computer now toys with orbital calculations that were taking ages to compute in the age of spoutnik and apollo.

But really, kerbal is fantastic on so many levels. It's fun, it's hilarious, it's contemplative, it's tense, it's moving, it's gorgeous, it's clever, it's educative... It ticks all the boxes. And the "do it your way" aspect of it makes each little victory so personal, because it's your rocket with your design following you flightplan...

And seriously, when your little stranded kerbal (your own or one from a rescue contract) starts running in low gravity towards the lander that came to rescue her/him, it's worth a hollywoodian happy ending.

The scenery, the music and the kerbonaut's (slightly overacting) expressions do help. Anyway, am a fan. *plants KSP flag on thread*

Haven't tried docking yet, though. I've refuled a spaceship through the advanced grabbing unit, but it's not as demanding.

The game is absolutely worth the price!

I bought it on discount on steam sometime back. Now, I'm waiting for GOG to discount the game so I can get the GOG copy. And yeah, I know the steam version is drm-free. Wouldn't mind buying two copies to support the devs.

My new computer is supposed to get here today and the main reason I got the damn thing was to play this game! :P

Even the people in here who hate me recommend I play it and when it was released a shit load of you fine folks tried to give it to me (kudos to my comrade who actually did). Needless to say I'm sitting here pissing myself waiting for the FedEx truck which usually doesn't show up until late afternoon. :-(

I agree. One of the best games ever. I only have 29 hours into it, though. :)

I have a very similar story as yours. Mine was in alpha, so I didn't have to worry about a lot of part (no max weight, height, no missions for a long time). I worked hard to get into orbit, work really hard to get to get to the mun. Had my rescue missions like you. And then around that point real missions came out, so I did an orbital rescue. And that's where I left off.

My greatest moment was when I had just a few grams too little fuel to get home so I had to get out and push. It actually worked. I have a screenshot on my steam screenshot page if you care to look: http://steamcommunity.com/id/Tallima/screenshots/


P.S. My big moment of getting to the Mun was last summer. I just remembered. I went to Huntsville, AL where there's a big NASA museum and Space Camp. They had a diagram of Saturn V and a few things clicked with their design that would change weight distribution through the stages, and I added an extra stage or two.

Am I to assume there is an adequate save system here, meaning it keeps your designs? I'd hate to think every time I launch I have to go back to step one trying to remember where I put boosters and separators and crap.

It would be horribly inconvenient otherwise.

Tell that to the guys who spent decades working on that Mars lander and then watched it slam into the surface of the planet because they forgot to go back and recalibrate the altimeter. :P

Within one career (one "game" with set rules, and under a given name, or, if you want, one account) you can save anything you want at any point. You can even play for ages, save your modern rockets (and staging orders), and then reload a much older gamesave dating from before half of your tech unlock : your saved rockets will still be on your factory list, ready to be reloaded once you catch up again with the required tech discoveries. Not to mention you can most of time "revert" your mission back to the instant of launch, or back to the moment of rocket design. Okay, it may sound all confusing, but, let's put it that way :

1) The game is very save-friendly.

2) The game is very friendly.

Generally speaking, the game is very.

Now get out and go meet that fedex truck half way.

I just checked the tracking, it's 150 miles out, in Eagle River Wisconsin.