Tutorial:Playing Tips for Novices

Work in Progress

Which game mode should a novice choose?

Sandbox mode gives you unlimited funds and access to all available KSP parts. KSP has a lot of parts, which may make play in this mode more confusing. If you enjoy just making crazy rockets or other machines, sandbox mode is an excellent choice, but if you find the number of parts overwhelming, consider science mode instead. Science mode gives you unlimited funds, but parts can only be unlocked with research. If you want to learn about rocketry, the parts are unlocked in roughly the order they'll be useful. This helps provide a structured way to learn how the game works, and the rockets you can make will tend to be more realistic. The limited number of parts makes the game simpler to understand, and you can add more parts as you progress, so some users may find science mode to be the better choice. Career mode unlocks all aspects of the game, and in this mode it's possible to run out of money and be unable to do anything. If you choose career mode to begin with, you're strongly advised to choose an easier difficulty setting, because if you try and fail the same mission several times in a row, or if an expensive rocket is destroyed, you may find you can no longer continue.

X, not space, is the better panic key

It's very easy to press the space bar at the wrong time, and then have to watch while your valuable spaceship begins tearing itself apart. When you make this particular mistake, you may be able to mitigate the damage by pressing X. This cuts the thrust to all engines. Then when you press space to stage the rest of the craft, the engines in subsequent stages won't matters worse by lighting off. This trick does not work for solid-fuel boosters, which is a common practical reason why solid fuel rockets are only used for the first stage of a craft. When landing on worlds without atmosphere, cutting all thrust may not help much, but it's probably still better than having all your engines firing at once.

In career mode, don't take on too many contracts at once"