I know Kerbal Space Program is not a roguelike, but damn it feels like one sometimes, so I'll share my latest exploit here anyway.
After some successful landings in Minmus (a smaller, but slighly more inaccessible natural satellite around Kerbin), I decided it was time to try to get to Mun's surface. I tried some modified heavier designs of my Minmus lander, but I would always have them tip over (and explode) when reaching the Mun, so I got sick of it and decided to try the Apollo approach: a heavy capsule stays in a Mun orbit, prepared to go back to Kerbin, and a lighter one descends into the Mun with the scientific equipment, does some tests, and then meets the command capsule in orbit before getting discarded.
But because what's life without challenges anyway, I decided to go farther than that: instead of just sending a command module and a light lander to the Mun, the command module would come with a lab to process the tests done, and a large stock of fuel so that the lander could do more than one descent into the Mun. Of course, I had never managed to land anything successfully on the Mun surface, and I hadn't even tried any orbital rendez-vous beforehand. So everything was expected to go smoothly!
After a first prototype whose landing capsule didn't carry enough fuel for my hubris (with, huh, unfortunate consequences for poor Jebediah), I attempted it again with a more streamlined version of that capsule, that carried a little bit more fuel. Meet the Composite Mun Lander Mk II:
My calculations were still a bit off, though. I expected the main stage (the one with the four small rockets and up) to get to a Munar orbit while hardly touching the central fuel depot (the one those 4 rockets are attached to), but by the time I got there, I had only enough fuel for 5 refuels of the landing capsule, instead of the 10 that were initially planned.
Not like it really mattered, because I landed so inefficiently that the lander (the upside down thing on top that kinda looks like a virus) ran out of fuel before it could properly finish the orbital process. So with my complete inexperience in orbital rendez-vous matters, I used most of that left fuel to move the massive main stage towards the highly excentric orbit of the lander. Still, I had enough fuel left for one refuel and the trip back home, plus some extra, just in case.
To my dismay, I realized shortly after starting the second descent that I hadn't properly finished the refuel, so I was at only 90% of my fuel capacity. So I didn't really expect to come back from it, but I did my best to be as efficient as possible with what little I had, and somehow managed to go back into a low orbit; I had to get rid of the lab and fuel facilities of the main stage so that it would be light enough to meet up with the lander again with what fuel I had left.
Landed on Kerbin some time afterwards with all my Kerbals alive and quite a bit of science. That was
A-MA-ZING.
The thing I took out from this is how counter-intuitive orbital rendez-vous are. It's the only thing I had to learn how to do by checking the wiki and youtube (everything else I found a more or less suboptimal solution by simple trial and error).
