Kerbal Space Program: Making History (DLC)

Kerbal Space Program: Making History is the first official paid expansion for Squad's orbital-physics sandbox, and it arrives with three distinct pillars: a node-based Mission Builder for scripting your own scenarios, a History Pack of seven pre-built missions riffing on real Space Race milestones, and a batch of 69 new parts including Soviet R-7 fuel tanks, a Vostok-style capsule, Titan II skins, Saturn V stage hardware, and Space Race astronaut suits. All of those parts drop straight into your existing career or sandbox saves, which is the most immediately useful thing this expansion does regardless of whether you ever touch the Mission Builder. Let me be the one person who actually defends the Mission Builder's complexity, because the criticism that it is "unwieldy" is only true if you approach it expecting a simple wizard. It is a node editor. You drop condition blocks onto a canvas, wire them together with logic lines, and chain them into multi-stage scenarios: launch weight limits, timed objectives, scripted malfunctions, branching rescues, even scoring parameters so the community can compete on your creation. Think of it like a Paradox event script, but for rocket trajectories. Yes, the tutorial under-explains the minutiae, and yes, building anything elaborate from scratch takes a few sessions of trial and error. But the ceiling is genuinely high, and the community has produced impressive scripted missions, including multi-part scenarios and disaster sequences that the stock History Pack never attempts. The sharing system lets you download and launch missions directly from the main menu, which at least removes the friction of hunting through mod sites. The History Pack itself is the weaker half of the deal. Seven missions is a thin number, the briefings can be obtuse, and the unforgiving save system means a single botched stage separation on mission three sends you back to the very beginning. That last point cuts against KSP's low-stakes sandbox spirit in a way that will frustrate newcomers and bore veterans. The scenarios modeled on Apollo, Soyuz, and a Gravity-inspired EVA rescue are fun for one or two runs, but experienced players who have already replicated Apollo on their own will find little surprise here. The History Pack is best treated as a structured warm-up for players returning after a long break, not as the main event. So who actually benefits from Making History? Players with 50 to 200 hours in the base game who want a reason to build something they have never built before, and who like the idea of setting formal objectives rather than just poking at the sandbox. The new parts alone are a reasonable justification for a purchase at a discount, especially if you want Cold War-accurate aesthetics for your rockets. If you have zero interest in building or playing community missions, the value proposition shrinks considerably. Veterans who are already deep in the mod ecosystem should also know that most popular mods do not require this DLC, so it is not a prerequisite for anything outside the Mission Builder pipeline. The companion expansion, Breaking Ground, is generally considered the stronger pick for players who want mechanical depth, but Making History is worth grabbing alongside it when both are on sale.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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