Well, I helped myself to a copy of Kerbal Space Program during the Steam holiday sale.
I’m completely and utterly hooked.
The story so far: My Kerbals have managed to get a couple of satellites into orbit around Kerbin, plus the first two stages of a space station. There’s been six manned (Kerbaled?) Mun landings (one of which didn’t have enough fuel for the return trip and necessitated a rescue mission, which was happily successful), the first manned mission to Minmus, and most recently the first stage of MunBase One was dropped (after substantial trial and error attempting to land an irregular shape) onto the Mun’s surface.
There’s also been uncountable disasters, ranging from routine crashing to a probe that landed only its computer core when I didn’t pay attention during the design phase, and attached the parachute directly to the probe core. As soon as the ‘chute opened, the stress on the link from the core to the rest of the probe caused it to break, so the core parachuted safely down while the science modules crashed into the surface and were obliterated. Another fun disaster involved half a dozen booster rockets flying off on their own and leaving their payload on the launch platform! Sometimes the disasters are more fun than the main game.
I’m playing the stock game, plus Kerbal Attachment System to give some added zing to EVAs (and to allow refuelling at surface bases without having to dock directly), MechJeb for piloting assistance (I did my first few Mun landings without it to learn how) and L-Tech Science Parts to give my Kerbal Scientists plenty of things to poke at. Will probably add the Kethane mod next to allow expansion of my Mun operations. I’m thinking maybe an orbital refuelling depot around the Mun allowing me to operate a reusable interplanetary mothership without worrying about fighting Kerbin’s gravity all the time. Oh, and I’m using career mode so I have to research things before they’re available to use in designs.
Here’s a shot of KerbStation One, orbiting Kerbin:
And here’s MunBase One, complete with rover!
Yeah, bit of a bad decision on landing site, but I managed to get it down somehow!
If you’re wondering what kind of launch vehicle that took, here’s a shot of it going up:
