Rescue contracts: increase variety of derelict ships

[thereaverofdarkness]

Instead of leaving these Kerbals in a lone command pod each time, it would be interesting if they actually had a ship. It could be nice, furthermore, if sometimes that ship had some capabilities in it. Obviously it's out of fuel, or maybe it's not out of fuel but is out of power, and one way or another it's completely stuck on its own. But it could have a docking port so you could refuel it or haul it home, or keep it for yourself. A bit of ship variety would greatly improve the fun factor in doing these missions.

Some rescue missions could have lower pay if they are easier to complete due to factors such as the derelict having docking ports or other minor needs, and likewise could have higher payouts for being more difficult, such as if you have to rescue several kerbals, or you have to take the ship home intact.

Here's some basic examples:

Rescue mission #1:

Status: Kerbal is in a small ship orbiting Kerbin and consisting of a capsule attached to a couple fuel tanks and an engine. No fuel, but it does have power.

Goal: Bring Kerbal to Kerbin surface safely.

Payout: standard and you can keep the Kerbal

Rescue Mission #2:

Status: Kerbal is in a small ship orbiting Kerbin and consisting of a capsule attached to fuel tanks, engine, and there is a docking port on the ship. It has a small amount of fuel but no power.

Goal: Bring Kerbal to Kerbin surface safely.

Payout: -25% and you can keep the Kerbal

Rescue Mission #3:

Status: 4 Kerbals are in a large ship orbiting Kerbin and consisting of two large capsules, multiple large fuel tanks and engines, with other various structual components attached. Ship has no fuel, but it has power, a docking port, and parachutes.

Goal: Bring all four Kerbals to Kerbin surface safely.

Payout: +50% and you can keep all four Kerbals (plus you could optionally bring the ship to surface for extra payout)

Rescue Mission #4:

Status: A small ship powered by a probe core is on an escape trajectory from Kerbin with no power and one small docking port. Ship has nearly full xenon tanks and ion engines, lots of batteries but no solar panels.

Goal: Bring ship safely into stable Kerbin orbit.

Payout: +100% and you can keep the ship

Rescue Mission #5:

Status: 2 Kerbals are lost on the surface of the Mün riding in a rover with broken wheels. It has power, no engines or fuel. Neither Kerbal is an engineer.

Goal: Bring both Kerbals safely to a Mün base that has power, a docking port, an antenna, and room to hold Kerbals.

Payout: +50% and you can keep the rover and Kerbals

Rescue Mission #6:

Status: Kerbal is in a medium ship with engines, fuel, and power. TWR is low, remaining fuel and dV is low. Ship is on a decaying orbit over Kerbin and it barely has the resources to save itself but the pilot does not know how.

Goal: Bring the ship into a stable orbit. You can switch to the ship directly via the Tracking Station.

Payout: -35% and you do not get to keep the ship or the Kerbal. Completing this mission gives you a chance to accept a follow-up mission in which you rescue the same Kerbal and bring them to the surface of Kerbin safely for standard pay plus getting to keep the Kerbal and ship. Total pay for both missions: 165%

Edited May 20, 2015 by thereaverofdarkness
added images

[Murph]

Sane variety is good. Your examples appear to have some sanity about them in general. Not sure about all of the specific details (would need to think much longer and harder), but I think I quite like the concept as a whole.

Not certain about decaying orbits and escape trajectories, although they certainly could be interesting, it's just they place an extremely tight deadline on things, which really isn't present anywhere else in contracts, and overall KSP is mostly quite laid back and relaxed about avoiding "OMG, do it NOW!" stuff. Tight deadline stuff, or only one chance to get it right stuff should probably have a substantially bigger payout, perhaps.

[thereaverofdarkness]

I was picturing it having the periapsis above 20km so that if you don't go to it right away, you can just let it pass over and catch it on another pass. It'll stay on rails until you get around to it. It could be fun, however, to have certain emergency contracts that would pop up and give you a short time span to accept and complete them, but it might fit better with KSP to simply act like it's urgent when it's actually designed to be fine on its own indefinitely until you get to it. The escape trajectory contracts could give you a lot of time till it escapes, and you can still go after it even once it is outside Kerbin's SOI, it's just more difficult. One way to make an escape trajectory contract a lot easier is have the ship heading toward Kerbin and give it a few days before periapsis, that way you don't have to chase it down if you act quickly.

Another cool feature could be to have the ability to call other space programs to your aid. If you have a Kerbal who is stuck, you could pay money to have another agency attempt to save them. You might be taking a risk in that the Kerbal may be lost, and their ship will probably be lost, but it would be an easy way to get it done if you're feeling lazy and have lots of cash on hand.

Edited May 20, 2015 by thereaverofdarkness

[tg626]

If you give a part a category of -1 it doesn't appear in the vab (except maybe using the filters) I wonder if such a "hidden" command pod would appear as a stranded Kerbal's ride? Further how about making an "unlisted" SM/CM using a welding mod...

This requires some experimentation!

[thereaverofdarkness]

I added some images to depict the derelict ships for each rescue mission. I built them along the lines of how an AI might build them: with somewhat randomly selected parts, primarily choosing parts that are a good fit for those they attach to, basic stacking or radial symmetry attachment, and covering the key design elements relevant to the mission. All simple designs that don't necessarily look pretty.

[sal_vager]

Don't forget rescue from craft with no chutes or heatshield (sloppy engineering), and I wonder if decent derelicts could be made using a parts table (truly random craft would be strange).

[Ival70]

I would really like doing missions like this. I want something like this added to stock. Since that may be setting my hopes too high, I'll settle for a mod.. but I don't want to make it. (pshh, as if I could.. )

[passinglurker]

Don't forget rescue from craft with no chutes or heatshield (sloppy engineering), and I wonder if decent derelicts could be made using a parts table (truly random craft would be strange).

I dunno I think truly random ships would be hilarious my question is what it's stoping ksp from already doing this? Every time some thing is spawned in orbit for you it's a single part be it a pod our a potato roid is there a reason for that?

[Wjolcz]

I would like that. Though no high part-count ships. And if the ship had a part that you haven't unlocked yet it would be kept for you to use once, unless you recovered it. Basically scavenging parts from space.

Edit: I think things like that actually happened a few times IRL. There was a shuttle mission to retrieve a communication sat, or something.

Edited May 20, 2015 by Veeltch

[thereaverofdarkness]

I dunno I think truly random ships would be hilarious my question is what it's stoping ksp from already doing this? Every time some thing is spawned in orbit for you it's a single part be it a pod our a potato roid is there a reason for that?

It's just easier to program it to assign a single part. Making the ships more complex either involves making a variety of mission derelicts, which either results in loads of work making many variants or a small list that gets stale quickly, or building an AI for putting these together that will have a tendency to make wonky and crazy designs until you tweak the parameters enough to prevent it from doing that. It's a lot more work but I think it can be done and I think it'd be worth it. Plus, that AI can be recycled for other uses: other space programs can interact with yours in more ways, with AI ships re-using the same shipbuilding AI to make NPC ships for you to encounter.

I would like that. Though no high part-count ships. And if the ship had a part that you haven't unlocked yet it would be kept for you to use once, unless you recovered it. Basically scavenging parts from space.

Edit: I think things like that actually happened a few times IRL. There was a shuttle mission to retrieve a communication sat, or something.

I figured that parts you haven't unlocked would have decreased chance to appear in NPC ships based on how far away you are from unlocking them, and that you could use them the way they are installed on the ships you find but you couldn't put them on new ships until you unlock that tech. It's an interesting idea that you could potentially reverse-engineer them by recovering them, however.

[herbal space program]

Seems like a great idea to me, although I agree with Murph that decaying orbits and escape trajectories might be pretty hard for the game to manage well. I was definitely thinking myself though that it would be great if the ships you rescued could be salvageable in some way, especially if doing so would allow you access to a formerly locked part. Just sticking a docking port on the pods might be a good start in that regard. I also feel like the game, at least the one I'm playing now, is just generating way too many of these contracts. My last four missions in my current hard career game have involved picking up 2-4 stranded Kerbals with a MK1+Hitchhiker-based bus and carting them to whatever the destination du jour is. Not only do I get to fill the roster of my space program for free this way, but they all also get lots of experience just for being along on the ride! When I land, there always seem to be 3 more rescue missions available. This seems like kind of an exploit to me, because given this possibility there is apparently no reason ever to hire a Kerbal from the applicant pool. Why pay for a raw recruit when you can get paid instead for an astronaut with instant experience? I believe the scheme you posted at the beginning for a limited number of missions with escalating difficulty would definitely have less of a Monty Hall feel to it.

Edited May 26, 2015 by herbal space program

[thereaverofdarkness]

I didn't get that many rescue missions, but there was never a shortage of new crew until I filled up on non-rescue contracts that I wasn't completing and new contracts stopped showing altogether.

[tater]

There are already too many rescues, though I am fine with them being more interesting. They should only appear within the SoI of bodies the player has planted a flag on, however.