Posted August 11, 2015
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.
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.