Wow you did this in realistic mode, this is impressive. Wonder what you will cook up for Team Frontier and Hawk
I plan to perform other missions only at Realistic if it is allowed - because this is real fun! True space velocities, true space distances, true space sizes, may things are like in real world.
For example, i plan to make next Mars Frontier mission at Realistic and get back to Earth. With one launcher only and without any ion drives.
They asked to perform Probe mission and Mercury mission at easy game difficulty. Easy (Normal) level in game is utmost boring, but rules are the rules. Though sending Probe away from Sun mission was interesting, they made it very nice, it was not obvious and took some time to figure out, which optimizations i do lack to beat the threshold.
When i will finish several more Realistic challenges i plan to make big post with the most interesting challenges at Realistic level and "Intensified Realistic" level (Realistic without any bonuses). Some challenges are easy, some average, some are true hardcore, but all are very fun and doable in different ways - there is a lot of room for creativity.
With good optimization of your strategy, everything can be done at Realistic, and many of those can be done even without ion drives, many even from one single launch from Earth without any docking, orbital construction, refueling, towing, or other help from other rockets.
Most kindergarten strategies, that work fine at default Easy level in game (which is by some unknown reason called Normal), will fail catastrophically at Realistic level. You need to invent new strategies, better strategies, which will fit real space size and velocities. Or you can find those strategies in other topics if you did stuck with something in particular.
Sadly, at "Intensified Realistic" there is no way anything can be done reasonably without ion drives.
There is x1.5 engines efficiency bonus for generic in game Realistic level. And also less dense atmosphere bonus too. I suspect the developer of the game did it because he wanted to balance too small blueprint area and didn't want to make this area bigger because some reason, maybe he thought that for Easy difficulty this size is already way too much.
Or maybe engines efficiency at Realistic level is the real one and Developer did the opposite - he nerfed (lowered) engines effisiency for Easy level to make it at least little less easy.
I hope one day Developer will reconsider this and either cease engines efficiency bonus, or will make this bonus smaller, but will give some other benefits for compensation, to replace this bonus, for example, he may give a bigger blueprint area for Realistic level only. Good realistic atmosphere also is very nice and generic Realistic level lacks it a lot.
That efficiency bonus is a necessity for the time been. Because without this bonus the amount of payload, which can be delivered to Earth orbit from the ground is just way too small - this is unplayable.
At generic Realistic with good design you can deliver to orbit only around 5% of your rocket's initial size, that is if payload is big, and 6%+ if payload is smaller. That is more than 1/20 of the starting weight on the ground.
While at "Intensified realistic" without any bonuses at all, and with full dense atmosphere, i barely can deliver 1/80 of my initial rocket size to orbit as payload.
There is such nice Custom World for example:
True Scale and Distance Solar System (TSADSS) FULL RELEASE
There is full Realistic Complete Solar system, which is placed as a substitute for Normal level. Thus you have no engine efficiency bonuses and no atmosphere bonuses. And still, even there i was able to fly to the moon and get back to Earth - and all that from one single launcher from Earth. It was the hardest challenge for me so fast. Even harder, than my last Jupiter challenge (
link 1,
link 2).
At that "Intensified Realistic" it took me a lot to figure out, how to get Moon landing done (with landing on Earth alive) with two launchers (my first attempt demanded the whole three launchers). And how to do it in one launch only - that was epic quest, i enjoyed each hour of it. For example, i recently saw on the forum some old topic with challenge for Intensified Realistic, where they offered to at least get to the orbit of the Earth with a bare probe.
So unusual was such Intensified Realistic level, when somebody made it first time long ago.
I would love to see some compromise mod, which keeps engines efficiency bonus for generic Realistic as it is - x1.5, but removes all other bonuses, or at least removes thinner atmosphere of generic Realistic and replaces it with full density atmosphere, like in TSADSS.
The way Atmosphere works in TSADSS is adorable. It is the same dense atmosphere as at default Easy level in game, but it is much bigger/larger/higher, it is stretched to full real size. Density goes to higher altitudes and any high velocity burns any heat shields at once.
First time i though "bruuuh, i can easily beat that problem!", and made this nice contraption below. How naive i was!
I had four heat shields pressed on each other. So one burns out - next one starts from 0°C again. And so four times.
And they all burned like a paper one by one - almost in seconds.
If i had 20 instead of 4 - it would not change anything. If super high velocity meets real atmosphere - temperatures will be enormous, much more than 6k° C.
