[1.4.x] Contract Pack: Tourism Plus [v1.5.2] [2016-12-14]

[nightingale]

2 minutes ago, Death Engineering said:

Does that differ from stock behaviour?

Thought in stock they each have their own itinerary.  But I admit it's been a long time since I looked at them.

[Chris97b]

Hello All,

I'm not sure if this is exactly an issue, but is the investor contract supposed to come up particularly frequently? I've already completed it twice and have active contracts for both the Hotel and the Casino, but the investor contract is still popping up fairly frequently. I would have expected that one to be once only, or at least wait until I've completed the Hotel/Casino before it shows up again. Not sure if this is intended, but I figured it was worth mentioning

[nightingale]

On 29/05/2016 at 9:33 PM, Chris97b said:

Hello All,

I'm not sure if this is exactly an issue, but is the investor contract supposed to come up particularly frequently? I've already completed it twice and have active contracts for both the Hotel and the Casino, but the investor contract is still popping up fairly frequently. I would have expected that one to be once only, or at least wait until I've completed the Hotel/Casino before it shows up again. Not sure if this is intended, but I figured it was worth mentioning

There was a recent change to make it repeatable.  I'm working on some stuff (won't be ready for a while) that will change how the contracts are offered, which should make this less of an issue.

[Tokamak]

With Contract Configurator, and this contract pack installed, what is it that actually triggers the "load (tourist) passengers" dialogue on the launchpad or runway? I'm constantly having trouble with that dialogue not coming up when I am ready to launch the tourism mission, even though it had come up previously for other missions.

 

My save file has been edited probably more than is healthy for it, because of all of the glitches with contracts when I upgraded to 1.1.3 (which we worked out in the other thread) so I'm not trying to get you to troubleshoot the problem for me, I'd just love to know what sections of the save file to even look at. I at least don't SEE anything in the actual contracts themselves that looks like it ought to make the dialogue not come up.

[nightingale]

1 hour ago, Tokamak said:

With Contract Configurator, and this contract pack installed, what is it that actually triggers the "load (tourist) passengers" dialogue on the launchpad or runway? I'm constantly having trouble with that dialogue not coming up when I am ready to launch the tourism mission, even though it had come up previously for other missions.

 

My save file has been edited probably more than is healthy for it, because of all of the glitches with contracts when I upgraded to 1.1.3 (which we worked out in the other thread) so I'm not trying to get you to troubleshoot the problem for me, I'd just love to know what sections of the save file to even look at. I at least don't SEE anything in the actual contracts themselves that looks like it ought to make the dialogue not come up.

The pop up should show up under the following conditions:

• When a flight is being made ready (eg. new vessel in prelaunch)
• There are contracted passengers waiting in the astronaut complex
• There are enough empty seats in the vessel to fit all the passengers for the active contract with the least passengers

[Tokamak]

On 6/28/2016 at 7:37 PM, nightingale said:

The pop up should show up under the following conditions:

• When a flight is being made ready (eg. new vessel in prelaunch)
• There are contracted passengers waiting in the astronaut complex
• There are enough empty seats in the vessel to fit all the passengers for the active contract with the least passengers

Huh. Then I wonder what went wrong. Perhaps the passengers were no longer flagged as belonging to an active contract? If it happens again I'll poke at it more.

[Maltman]

On 5/28/2016 at 8:33 PM, Chris97b said:

Hello All,

I'm not sure if this is exactly an issue, but is the investor contract supposed to come up particularly frequently? I've already completed it twice and have active contracts for both the Hotel and the Casino, but the investor contract is still popping up fairly frequently. I would have expected that one to be once only, or at least wait until I've completed the Hotel/Casino before it shows up again. Not sure if this is intended, but I figured it was worth mentioning

 

That sounds nice. I went into debug and auto completed that mission the one time it came up because I couldn't get the waypoints to register to complete the contract (I should have gotten the waypoint manager lol). Anyways I don't think it functioned correctly as I don't have the mission to make the casino that I wanted. 

It isn't coming up anymore though I wish it would. 

But to quote the epic Eric Jonrosh, "we have to live in the house weve build with our own two hands"

 

[nightingale]

1 hour ago, Maltman said:

 

That sounds nice. I went into debug and auto completed that mission the one time it came up because I couldn't get the waypoints to register to complete the contract (I should have gotten the waypoint manager lol). Anyways I don't think it functioned correctly as I don't have the mission to make the casino that I wanted. 

It isn't coming up anymore though I wish it would. 

But to quote the epic Eric Jonrosh, "we have to live in the house weve build with our own two hands"

 

I'm working on something for Contract Configurator that will hopefully make this a thing of the past (ie, you'll be able to get the contract you're looking for).  In the meantime, the only suggestion I have is to spam the decline button.

[Maltman]

41 minutes ago, nightingale said:

I'm working on something for Contract Configurator that will hopefully make this a thing of the past (ie, you'll be able to get the contract you're looking for).  In the meantime, the only suggestion I have is to spam the decline button.

I love you and your mods.

 

Update: *Did a few declines and got another investor tour. Time for Las Kerbas

Edited July 2, 2016 by Maltman

[nightingale]

Updated version with better support for the new Contract Configurator UI.  Download here!

ContractPack-Tourism 1.5.0

• Rework for Contract Configurator 1.15.x

[Deimos Rast]

I've been having a bear of a time trying to get it to register suborbital trajectories over, say, the South Pole.

• I've tried sub-orbital, but with a Pe below 70km (62 in the latest), Ap above 70km.
• I've tried trajectories that land me inside the territority, or take me through it low.
• Finally had to use Hyper Edit to finangle it. Even that was finicky.

I used Haystacks to monitor when I was classified as on a "suborbital trajectory" (which incidentally was a 70x70), and when it said I was, the contract picked it up just fine, so I suspect the issue might not be this contract pack at all, but something else. I seem to remember having these issues way back in 1.0.5 as well (just remember having to use HyperEdit then too).

Thoughts?

[nightingale]

On 25/07/2016 at 4:55 PM, Deimos Rast said:

I've been having a bear of a time trying to get it to register suborbital trajectories over, say, the South Pole.

• I've tried sub-orbital, but with a Pe below 70km (62 in the latest), Ap above 70km.
• I've tried trajectories that land me inside the territority, or take me through it low.
• Finally had to use Hyper Edit to finangle it. Even that was finicky.

I used Haystacks to monitor when I was classified as on a "suborbital trajectory" (which incidentally was a 70x70), and when it said I was, the contract picked it up just fine, so I suspect the issue might not be this contract pack at all, but something else. I seem to remember having these issues way back in 1.0.5 as well (just remember having to use HyperEdit then too).

Thoughts?

@Deimos Rast - Sorry it took so long for me to check this one out.

Looks like it worked okay for me.  In KSP to be sub-orbital you need to:

• Be above the atmosphere (ie. vessel is above 70km)
• Have a Pe below the atmosphere

If your vessel is below 70km, you will be considered as flying - regardless of what your Ap is.  Is it possible that was the issue?

[Deimos Rast]

For some of them, sure (like I said, I used Haystacks so it showed me when I was registered as flying vs orbital). I'm pretty sure this isn't an error with the contracts, as when I managed to get Haystacks to register me as Suborbital, the contracts registered me as well, which tells me it's working as intended. I just had a lot of trouble getting to that point.
 If it works okay for you, then I guess we'll chalk it up to "user error" or something. Between HyperEdit and the DebugMenu, it's not like I'm about to fail one of these anyway...

Thanks for the response.

Quote

If your vessel is below 70km, you will be considered as flying - regardless of what your Ap is.  Is it possible that was the issue?

Probably this. That did not occur to me.

[nightingale]

@Deimos Rast - I changed it for the next release to also have a minAltitude check so it's more clear for future generations.

 

[severedsolo]

So, I am having a really weird issue with TP.

When I try and do the Tito Kerman mission (that is, hit launch), it glitches out and depletes all of my life support (TAC). Other tourists do not have this issue, I bypassed it by doing a stock tourism mission and then accepted a "orbit kerbin" tourism plus contract - the new kerbal worked fine. However, when Tito is on the vessel, the LS gets depleted the moment I launch. This is the same whether loading him through the stock interface, or the passenger loader.

I've included a log and a save, but I don't know how helpful it will be, as I couldn't see any exceptions etc.

Edit: I fixed it. Looks like for some reason TAC saved Tito as not having an update for over 10 days so it was depleting the LS as soon as he loaded, because it thought he had not been consuming. I fixed it by deleting the TAC settings in my save, and it seems to be ok now.

Edit again: Thinking about it. Probably my fault. I ragequit when I killed Tito the first time... so TAC probably didn't get a chance to save. Ignore me, carry on

 

Edited August 3, 2016 by severedsolo

[CaptKordite]

On 8/1/2016 at 0:37 AM, nightingale said:

You're really meant to be using the 16-Kerbal crew cabins (as if I remember correctly they're by far the lowest mass per Kerbal) to make it economical

The Mk3 Passenger Module may be the most mass efficient (6.5t or 0.41t per Kerbal) but they also cost $30,000. That's $1,875 per Kerbal, one of the more expensive modules on a per-seat comparison. To use my example before before where 39 Kerbals want to go to my space hotel and will pay $123,364 for the contract, that one part alone is sucking up half of the pay.

If this is to be economical, I need to cut my costs a lot. And the way to do that is with the Mk1 Crew Cabin. One ton for two Kerbals is 20% more heavy per Kerbal but only costs $550. That's only 15% the per passenger cost of the Mk3.

My 16 passenger Eloi 19 costs $70,228 total. That's $4,389 per Kerbal. My attempts to put a Mk3 into orbit cost me twice that much. But even that has me loosing $1,000 per seat on the 39-Tourist contract. I'm not sure it is physically possible to cut my costs enough to be economical (unless I figure a way to strap all the tourists into Command Seats).

However, I let that contract expire and another contract came up. This time it was 15 tourists and a contract paying nearly as much as the first contract; $120,959. That has them paying a touch over $8,000 per seat. Now THAT is a tidy profit. So, the economics of these contracts is to turn the low paying ones down. The Eloi doesn't fly for less than five grand a seat.

 

[nightingale]

2 hours ago, CaptKordite said:

The Mk3 Passenger Module may be the most mass efficient (6.5t or 0.41t per Kerbal) but they also cost $30,000. That's $1,875 per Kerbal, one of the more expensive modules on a per-seat comparison. To use my example before before where 39 Kerbals want to go to my space hotel and will pay $123,364 for the contract, that one part alone is sucking up half of the pay.

I'd argue that the cost of the crew capsule can be made irrelevant - as you can make some or all of that cost back depending on where you land it.  But I did do a quick dump of costs and came up with this table:

Part	Cost	Mass	Seats	Mass/Seat
Mk3 Passenger Module	30000	6.5	16	0.406
MK2 Crew Cabin	4200	2	4	0.500
Mk1 Crew Cabin	550	1	2	0.500
Mk1 Lander Can	1500	0.6	1	0.600
PPD-10 Hitchhiker Storage Container	4000	2.5	4	0.625
Mk1 Command Pod	600	0.8	1	0.800
Mk3 Cockpit	10000	3.5	4	0.875
Mk2 Inline Cockpit	3500	2	2	1.000
Mk2 Cockpit	3500	2	2	1.000
Mk1 Inline Cockpit	1600	1	1	1.000
Mk2 Lander Can	3250	2.5	2	1.250
Mk1 Cockpit	1250	1.25	1	1.250
Mk1 Cockpit	1250	1.28	1	1.280
Mk1-2 Command Pod	3800	4	3	1.333
Mobile Processing Lab MPL-LG-2	4000	3.5	2	1.750
PPD-12 Cupola Module	3200	1.76	1	1.760

So the MK3 Passenger Module is the winner - but it's not a clear victory.  Still, for your contract that's close to 4 extra tons you're looking to haul to orbit.  If you do choose to factor in cost, then the MK1 Crew Cabin is a very clear victor.

2 hours ago, CaptKordite said:

My 16 passenger Eloi 19 costs $70,228 total. That's $4,389 per Kerbal. My attempts to put a Mk3 into orbit cost me twice that much. But even that has me loosing $1,000 per seat on the 39-Tourist contract. I'm not sure it is physically possible to cut my costs enough to be economical (unless I figure a way to strap all the tourists into Command Seats).

More solids!  That's probably their biggest benefit - they are ridiculously cheap.

2 hours ago, CaptKordite said:

However, I let that contract expire and another contract came up. This time it was 15 tourists and a contract paying nearly as much as the first contract; $120,959. That has them paying a touch over $8,000 per seat. Now THAT is a tidy profit. So, the economics of these contracts is to turn the low paying ones down. The Eloi doesn't fly for less than five grand a seat.

When I read this I knew there had to be a problem, because there shouldn't be that much variability.  Sure enough, it was using the wrong tourist count to figure out the contract reward.  It's supposed to be roughly 30k / tourist.  So your contract should've been offering around 1,170,000 funds.  The hotel/casino are meant to be late game and non-grindy (the casino pays 4 times as much).

So although I enjoyed the meta game of figuring out the launch costs to this level of detail...  fixed for next release.

[CaptKordite]

On 8/4/2016 at 11:21 PM, nightingale said:

It's supposed to be roughly 30k / tourist.

I could send them one at a time or build a rocket that bolts a dozen M1 Capsules together and still make a profit at that rate. That sort of makes my concerns of economy a bit more moot.

[WuphonsReach]

30k is a lot better (even 20k would be okay).  My workhorse capsule-based designs cost around 7.5-9.5k per seat to orbit, including Stage Recovery refunds.  Without stage recovery, it would be closer to 15-20k per seat.

Note: My costs including getting them back safely to Kerbin.

Edited August 7, 2016 by WuphonsReach

[nightingale]

New release, more sane rewards to be found here!

ContractPack-Tourism 1.5.1

• Added a minAltitude parameter on the sub-orbital flight to make it more clear (thanks Deimos Rast).
• Added loading tip.
• Fixed reward of hotel/casino tourist contract (thanks CaptKordite).

[Sudragon]

This one time, at Space Camp...
 

[nightingale]

@Sudragon - Sweet!  Mind if I add that to the first post (if imgur albums ever get fixed....)

[Sudragon]

8 hours ago, nightingale said:

@Sudragon - Sweet!  Mind if I add that to the first post (if imgur albums ever get fixed....)

Go for it!

 

[DarkonZ]

I know you mentioned raising a Github issue, but couldn't add some randomization to the repeatable contracts. Sort of like what BasesAndStations does with a Cooldown as well as a pure random number to determine if a contract even gets offered in the list. I'm working on my own modification now to fit it all into how Kerbal Construction Time will inflict a time cost to everything I do.

Just looks odd to have ALL the contracts on the list ALL the time. They really should flip flop around.

Edited August 31, 2016 by DarkonZ

[Moikle]

I have been having an issue with the first contract. I have completed it 3 times now, but every time I quit the game, the contract is reset and I have to "kick off space tourism" again. I cannot access any other missions either.