New Career Settings

Time to enter the sounding rocket business. So you have a stable install of RP-1, and want to start a new career. What settings should you use to experience RP-1 as it was intended by the devs?

Set Up Your New Career

Select the Correct Difficulty

In contrast to older versions of RP-0 and RP-1, the current version is balanced around Normal difficulty, so that's what is recommended for experienced players. However, new players (including those who have not played RP-0 or RP-1 in a while) are recommended to start on Easy due to a combination of the complexity of RP-1 and difficulties in properly managing spending (e.g. deciding whether to spend on staff, launch complexes, new facility up, tooling/unlocks, etc.)

Hard is only recommended for masochists and those who have been near the top of the leaderboard in one of the Race Into Space competitions. (lpg and Maxsimal, I'm looking at you.)

Note: If you're a veteran of RP-0 or older versions of RP-1, this new version will seem to progress much more slowly. This is a deliberate design choice, as it was possible in previous versions to advance far faster than happened historically, such as making orbit before the end of 1951. While it's still possible to beat many historical milestones, it will be by smaller margins. A well managed career may not reach orbit until 1957 or later, especially if one chooses to wait for access to the historically accurate parts (e.g. 1956-1957 orbital rocketry, Isogrid Tanks etc.).

Start the Career

Accept the settings, select an appropriate flag and career name, and then start. Once you're in the space center scene, there will be a big popup window to guide you through your space center setup

Select the location of your Space Center

By default, this is Kennedy Space Center in Florida. If you would like to start somewhere else, open the tracking center and select your preferred location. Kourou and the Satish Dhawan Space Center are the two easiest options, as they have the lowest inclination. Higher inclinations will make the Moon and geostationary orbit harder to reach, especially with Principia, but with some extra delta-v and by using the Lunar Transfer Planner mod you can make it work from any launch site.

Choose your Starting Programs

The admin building starts with room for two starting programs, and you should take advantage of this. Before deciding which two, do note that aircraft design in RO/RP-1 is very different from stock KSP, so you probably shouldn't accept the X-Plane Research program unless you've already figured out aircraft design in simulations or a sandbox save. As for program speed, note that each program requires confidence to activate at a speed other than Normal, so your choices with your starting amount of confidence is between one sounding program on Breakneck with another on Normal, or putting both of them on Fast. The Fast deadlines are usually not too hard to meet.

Parting Notes

Familiarize yourself briefly with the various App icons, particularly the ones for Space Center Management (the gear) and for Space Program Management (the RP-1 logo). Much of the management of your space program will be through the windows accessed by these two icons.

You're now ready to begin. Let's go!