Whats the best way to get tech points and money

[Ivar]

I feel stuck in a point where I get no money and cant get it because I don't have any tech points to get better stuff. is there cheats or any tips on how to get out of this loop?

[toinkertoy]

Well sometimes I think it’s intended that you’ll just have to try an accomplish some contracts with the best you have. Whether that’s flying an aircraft with solid rocket motors or launching cubesats with inefficient pressure fed engines.

I seem to get to plenty of tech points just doing contracts (I mean of course not as many as want, I want ALL THE TECHS NOW). Because many of the contracts are set up in such a way that you accomplish milestones that reward tech points

Also I dunno where exactly you are at this point, certainly they become harder to come by as you advance (like complete 100 contracts, that’s gonna take a while). I would recommend working all ends of the tech tree at once, cars, planes and rockets.

Also don’t necessarily wait for a contract to tell you to do X. For example I sent my thingie for a Luna flyby and went ahead and put it into a highly elliptical orbit as well since it had the fuel! Got an extra 20 points that way. Many of the milestones that award points are just about do this/that/whatever X number of times!! So just go for it even if there’s no contract!

[Rasip]

Look at the milestones under the missions. Some of them are pretty easy to cheese. For example the recovery one can be done without ever lifting off. You get back pretty much everything but the pad launch fee. Which also gives you credit for the money spent one.
The exploration tab has even more milestones.
As for money, missions are the only way i have found to get any, but if you recover your ships remotely near the launchpad you can get back a significant chunk of the cost. Parachutes help, the the stock settings are totally worthless and they are insanely expensive.

[mreed2]

Completing contracts only gives TP when they happen to accomplish milestones.

Assuming you limit yourself to the rocketry tech tree, the following appears to be true (as of the date of this post):

1. Once you get past "Orbiting Drool", none of the Rocketry related contracts will grant TP until you've researched "System Engineers".
   
2. Once you've completed all the lunar missions, no contracts will grant TP until you've researched "GANT Charts".
   
3. At this point, you'll be offered contracts for TP to travel to the other planets in the system.

You won't be able to get enough TPs to fully research the tech tree only by fulfilling contracts -- you'll need to do some missions that are specifically designed to fulfill milestones, rather than contracts.

If you don't want (or can't, because you don't have any TP to unlock the nodes) to play with rovers and planes, the best bet is to work through the "Explosion" milestones. All you have to do here is to explode a vehicle -- I'm not even certain that it needs to be above the ground.

The way I used to mine explosion TP was to create a new rocket, then:

1. Create a new command disk of the smallest possible dimensions. FYI: Alt+Right Click will copy the existing command disc. As far as I know, that's the only way to get another command disc -- the part prefab is a cube for some reason.
   
2. Add Gyros to the new command disc.
   
3. Create a fuel tank of the smallest possible dimensions and attach it to the command disc.
   
4. Attach a Goblin solid rocket motor to the command disc.
   
5. Shrink the Goblin motor to the 50% of the normal size.
   
6. Attach a nose cone to the top of the command disc.
   
7. Shrink the nose cone as far as you can.
   
8. Select the command disc, then open the properties for the command disc.
   
9. Go to "Additional Settings", and select "Add Flight Program"
   
10. Add the following instructions:
    1. Rocket icon along the left ("Craft Instructions"), then "Lock heading on vector (0, 0, 1)". Click and drag on this item until it attaches to "On Start".
       
    2. Second icon down on the left ("Program Flow"), then "Wait until <>". Click and drag this item until it attaches below the "Lock heading" instruction.
       
    3. Third icon down on the left ("Operators"), then "<> > <>" ("Returns true if the left number is greater than the right number"). Click and drag this item until it attaches to the black square left from the previous instruction.
       
    4. Fourth icon down on the left ("Craft Information"), then "Performance <Mass>". First click on the dropdown next to Mass and select "TWR", then click and drag it into the black square to the left of the ">" operator.
       
    5. Type 1 into the black square next to the right of the ">" sign.
       
    6. Second icon down on the left ("Program Flow"), select "Wait <1> seconds". Click and drag this item until it attaches below the "Wait until performance(TWR) > 1" instruction.
       
    7. Delete the 1 in this instruction and replace it with 0.25.
       
    8. Fourth icon down ("Craft Instructions"), select "Set part <0> <Activated> to <0>". Change "Activated" to "Explode", then click and drag until the instruction attaches under "Wait <0.25> seconds".
       
    9. Change both "0"s to "1"s.
    Done. Isn't programming fun?
    Now, save your program back to the craft file (click on the top most icon on the left, then "Save to Craft").

I call the itsy bitsy rocket that you produce a "Firework". :)

Back on the original command disc:

1. Shrink it vertically as far as you can.
   
2. Attach a side-interstage to the, well, side of the command disc.
   
3. Shrink the side-interchange as much as you can.
   
4. Set the "Detatchment Force" for the side-interchange to "0".

This is the "Firework Launcher". Hmmm....

1. Attach the firework you created earlier to the side interstage you created.
   
2. Select the side-interchange again, and change its symmetry to "Radial 6x".
   
3. Using Control+Right Click, create a copy of the side interstage (with the firework attached).
   
4. Attach the copy to some of the free space on the side of the original command disc.
   
5. Set the symmetry of the copied side-interstage to "Radial 6x".
   
6. Repeat the above process until the command disc is fully encircled in side interstages. If you wish, you can expand the command disc to fit more side interstages onto it.

Once you have attached all the fireworks you can (or wish to), go to the staging editor and combine the two stages that were autocreated.

Save the craft, then launch it at the Juno Village Pad.

Hit the space bar to stage. Each firework will both separate and ignite its Goblin engine. The small program will ensure that they fly up (kinda) then explode after 0.25 seconds. Since each of the fireworks has its own control point (the command disc) they are considered independent craft. When each explodes it counts as exploding a separate craft for purposes of fulfilling the "Explosions" milestone.

I'm not sure that this is an exploit or not -- even the 2nd tier of the Explosions milestones requires 50 explosions, and doing that one explosion per mission seems... Hard? To say the least? The last milestone is 10k explosions, and that seems utterly absurd unless you do something like this. And its pretty tedious even if you use a firework launcher like this, because you can only fit so many fireworks onto a single launcher.

Whether or not its an exploit or not, it does work, and its a reasonable way to get TPs.

[mreed2]

Also, note that each planet has its own set of repeatable milestones. For example, you'll get:

• 10 TP for the first craft to fly-by Brigo (the closest moon of Drool)
  
• 20 TP for having 5 unique crafts fly-by Brigo
  
• 30 TP for having 10 unique crafts fly-by.
  
• 40 TP for having 25 unique crafts fly-by.
  
• 50 TP for having 50 unique crafts fly-by.

To see the possible TP awards for other planets, click on the career button, then click on the compass, click on a planet or moon, then click on a specific milestone (e.g. "Orbits".

I didn't bring that up in the original post, because (assuming you only work on the Rocketry tree), you'll almost certainly run out of TPs before you can reasonably perform missions to the moons.

[HuskyDynamics]

A few of the earlier contracts themselves (particularly the "Drive x kilometers" ones) are pretty easy to cheese as well. For the 125km one I basically made a battery tube with wheels and a solar panel. I spawned it at the Juno runway, set the Pitch and Roll sliders so it would drive in a circle, put the game in fast-forward, and then went and made dinner.

[toinkertoy]

Originally posted by HuskyDynamics:

For the 125km one I basically made a battery tube with wheels and a solar panel. I spawned it at the Juno runway, set the Pitch and Roll sliders so it would drive in a circle, put the game in fast-forward, and then went and made dinner.

I just read that someone else did something quite similar and k was left thinking “damn it why didn’t I think of that!”

[ElmoBond]

Originally posted by mreed2:

I didn't bring that up in the original post, because (assuming you only work on the Rocketry tree), you'll almost certainly run out of TPs before you can reasonably perform missions to the moons.

It took me around 150 TP to create a reasonable, cheap rocket capable of moon missions

[mreed2]

The problem was never getting to the moons for with the TP granted by only doing rocketry contracts. The problem was actually getting the contract "Flyby Luna."

In any case, the developers much improved this sometime ago, and unlocking "solar panels" is no longer a pre-requisite for the "Launch a pre-built satellite into Drool orbit" anymore. While not extremely lucrative, it is possible to make money with these contracts and thus avoid getting stuck.

But in the 1.0 release, a rocketry only playthrough could easily end up in a situation where the only contract available are the fireworks contracts. Sure, you could choose to go to a moon of your own initiative (without a contract) but that seems like a bit much.

Even in the current version it is easy to miss the need to unlock "GANT Charts," and the lunar contracts are gated by this tech as it unlocks manuaver nodes. If you don't realise this someone could easily research the 2nd tier engines (and / or other rocketry techs) and still get stuck in the contract progression. Much less likely and yeah, at least part of it falls on the player, but still a problem.