Disable contract weighting

[Hotaru]

So I've been playing career mode. I haven't been hugely worried about contracts since I'm far enough along that cash isn't much of a problem, but recently I started to notice something: I was only ever getting "science from x" and "plant flag on x" contracts.

The cycle goes something like this. I accept a contract for science from Mun surface. Easy, accept, send a mission there, complete the contract, go back to pick another one. Science from Dres. OK, I've got an orbiter there, couple clicks later that one's done and I'm picking another one. Science from Kerbin. OK, send a crew report down from my space station, done, pick another one. Science from Eve surface... wait, what the heck happened to other types of contracts? Why haven't I had a tourism contract in a while, or a satellite launch, or a survey...?

And then I remember the contract weighting system. Of which there is exactly ZERO mention in game, which is why I forgot it existed. "Science from x" contracts are easy to the point of being practically free money--> I always accept them--> game is convinced I want to do nothing but "science from x" contracts--> I stop getting any other kind.

I remember back when the weighting system was introduced, I think in 1.1. I posted my qualms about it in the Devnotes thread. A lot of people agreed with me but obviously Squad ignored me, because I turned out to be completely and utterly right. Especially since the system appears to be incredibly sensitive--accepting or declining just a half-dozen or so contracts is enough to throw the weighting all out of whack.

The problem is, there's a lot of situations in which a user might always accept a certain type of contract--but that doesn't mean they never want to do other types. My science contract issue is one example. Another would be a user who, as a rule, always accepts rescue contracts--they would rapidly end up doing nothing else. And there are undoubtedly others that I haven't encountered yet because I personally don't happen to play those ways.

For my own purposes in my own game, I'm not that bothered about it. I've already edited my contracts.cfg to disable rescues to avoid that problem, I'll probably just edit it again to disable weighting entirely. My concern is for relatively new users, users who are averse to modding for whatever reason, and users on consoles who don't have the option to edit config files. Such a user might not even know the contract system is weighted, let alone how to edit configs or selectively accept and decline contracts to manipulate the weighting system, and a few missions into career mode be completely baffled by why they're getting nothing but constant, endless rescue missions.

So here are my suggestions, in ascending order of probable annoyance to implement: remove the weighting system entirely, add a toggle for it in the difficulty options, or replace it with a system where the user can set their own priorities.

[KerikBalm]

hmmm... yea, I too find that I'm not getting an inordinate amount of rescue contracts. It used to be that these contracts dried up after a while.

I accepted 2 station contracts (1 for mun, 1 for minmus) - now its giving me contracts to build new stations around those same bodies.... really I just wanted to get paid to make the orbiting fuel depot/lab I was going to make anyway while science and anomaly farming Minmus/Mun.

The relay contracts are getting annoying too... I wanted to set up a relay network... but its up now... I had been accepting a contract, putting it in their orbit, then moving it to where I really wanted it. Now... I'd like those contracts to go away, or at least move to other planets.

- I will give them credit for Kerb net + money for finding anomalies though. Before kerbnet, I only found 2 mun arches and the armstrong memorial on my own. Now I'm using the relay sats I put up to find anomalies, and I make my landings there to earn extra cash for the science farming and kerbonaut training that I used to do.

Leadership initiative seems like it would combine well with this... but anomalies are so sparse on other bodies, at least they added "Randoliths" (so far, I haven't found any random anomalies on Mun or minmus, but I hear of them on other bodies)

[Wjolcz]

Oh, yeah. I knew it was not going to work. Another pointless addition to the career mode. And I remember people praising and calling it a remedy for how bad the career mode is.

All the contracts should be filtered by category like celestial body and their type, not some silly player "friendly" adjustment system. I think contract configurator already does that but it seems like it still takes the weighting into account.

Edited January 27, 2017 by Veeltch

[tater]

Yep. The entire "contract" paradigm is fundamentally wrong. Here's an example where "realism" would be better. 

There would be two kinds of space agencies. "National" for no better term (NASA, ESA, etc), and "Commercial," which would be a sort of blur between companies that just make rockets, and perhaps some day in the future, companies that do something with their own rockets (SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, ULA, etc).

The former would be the outfit that WRITES types of "contracts" via wanting craft that meet design specs they decide, the latter would be an entity that either takes contracts, or perhaps has its own goal (colonizing Duna, space tourism, etc). In game terms, we need the ability to make "mission" plans, which have no rewards save rep and science, and "contracts" in which 3d parties want something done. In both cases, the player should weight contracts/whatever explicitly, ideally by Body. Rescues are honestly a special case, and should never be weighted away to nothing, or in fact weighted up, either. They should be RARE, and the rep for doing one (they should have tight time constraints) should be large.

[KerikBalm]

I still want a UI similar to the research archives, where you have a sidebar on the left with the planets/moons. Then instead of filtering by biome or science report type, you have contract categories like tourism, exploration, infrastructure (bases and stations, that sort of thing), communication relays.

Then you just pick one from the menu.

If you want to take the next window to moho, then get some moho contracts before you go. Right now, its very very rare for contracts for a body to spawn before visiting it.

[Moh1336]

The problem with this system is that you get negative rep for declining, so I very rarely decline anything early in career if I am able to do it. But once I start to advance I am more likely to say "No I don't want to part test X on an escape trajectory when I haven't even made orbit yet." So the game decides I hate all part tests.

90% of my contracts are rescue or tourist now, I want to do other things, but the game seems to think I only like those. A very flawed system. It would be far better if when you have a free contract slot, it just offers you one of every type of contract and just let you pick the one you prefer. Next open slot refresh all and give one of each type again. Makes far more sense to me.

I've come to the conclusion that when I want to do something different, just use the cheat window to force a specific type of contract. I don't see it as cheating, so much as fixing a broken contract system.

 

[omelaw]

maybe weighting contracts to XYZ when launch window to XYZ is near will be better idea?

[tater]

I turn off the decline penalty because the contracts are about 90% nonsense. If they made sense, then I'd keep the penalty. But testing some random part "on a suborbital trajectory around X" is idiotic, as are all the ore hauling, etc.

[Waxing_Kibbous]

If you want more control of your space program currently the best way IMO is to install this:

and manage your contracts from the settings menu.

edit: I've proposed a system that would allow weighting contracts in the Admin building that gives more control as the building is upgraded. I doubt that will ever happen though.

Edited January 29, 2017 by Waxing_Kibbous

[Wjolcz]

On 28/01/2017 at 10:49 AM, KerikBalm said:

I still want a UI similar to the research archives, where you have a sidebar on the left with the planets/moons. Then instead of filtering by biome or science report type, you have contract categories like tourism, exploration, infrastructure (bases and stations, that sort of thing), communication relays.

Then you just pick one from the menu.

If you want to take the next window to moho, then get some moho contracts before you go. Right now, its very very rare for contracts for a body to spawn before visiting it.

This is how I'd imagine it.

I think contracts should be an extra thing in the career and World's Firsts the main quests. The system based on reputation and periodic funding would be simpler and easier to balance. I would talk about it more but I've already done that countless of times. There's a way to do this with mods, which I've done.