Contract Pack: Giving Aircraft a Purpose (GAP) 1.6.1 - Milestones, Air Flights, Coast Guard

[Evanitis]

9 minutes ago, Steven Mading said:

Am I the only one having this happen or is it happening to others?

Never had a problem with that.

[maculator]

So you're planing on repacking the whole thing, thats interesting.

So i've been playing it for a while now and I really enjoy it but there are some things than anoy me a bit:

• Most of the missions reward too little funds, The fuel im buring costs more then the reward
• The barn has ~170 parts if I remember correct, wich makes my game slow down and therefore pretty hard to fly precise. The good thing here is that it completes when you perform a low flyby.
• "Hauling" tourists to the island and back gets tedious since I'm early in game and loading and unloading them all manually through the cockpit takes a huge amount of time.

Taking the skydiving out of the core pack seems legit. But it is possible to do it without a chute since kerbals somehow refuse to die with an equipped jetpack.

[inigma]

3 hours ago, Steven Mading said:

Is anyone else finding the seaplane contracts impossible due to not being able to switch active vessel while floating in the water without summoning the Kraken?  My sea planes land in water just fine, and take off just fine, but if while they are floating in water, perfectly still, I do anything that makes them no longer the active vessel (like EVA the pilot so the kerbal now becomes the active vessel instead of the plane, or hitting the '[' to switch to a floating kerbal I'm meant to rescue), then the now no-longer-active-vessel comes apart in pieces, even though it was floating passively in the water just resting.  The F3 report claims the problem began with a part colliding with its neighboring attached part, but it's a different culprit part each time it happens, and I haven't been able to find a pattern to it.

I keep having it happen with more than one design, and it seems to make these contracts impossible, through no fault of my own (if I can't switch-to-kerbal while the plane is in water, then I can't rescue people.)

Am I the only one having this happen or is it happening to others?

 

certain wing parts and other parts appear to interact explosively with the water. this is a KSP bug.

[inigma]

36 minutes ago, maculator said:

So you're planing on repacking the whole thing, thats interesting.

So i've been playing it for a while now and I really enjoy it but there are some things than anoy me a bit:

• Most of the missions reward too little funds, The fuel im buring costs more then the reward
• The barn has ~170 parts if I remember correct, wich makes my game slow down and therefore pretty hard to fly precise. The good thing here is that it completes when you perform a low flyby.
• "Hauling" tourists to the island and back gets tedious since I'm early in game and loading and unloading them all manually through the cockpit takes a huge amount of time.

Taking the skydiving out of the core pack seems legit. But it is possible to do it without a chute since kerbals somehow refuse to die with an equipped jetpack.

I'm attempting to setup a playthrough of GAP myself and stream it to find out where the reward weakenesses are. Bear in mind that Island Tours contracts reward you in advance, not after.  Please take a look at the balance sheet here and let me know your suggestions: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vmZkfWamAaeuTsKL1_yes4l-eoMTrmJZ9zvgp3NkjaM/

The decoupling project is taking a bit more work than I anticipated, but it is getting done. GAP is stable at the moment (yeah) without very many support issues raised yet, so that's good news. I am also watching a number of streamers and youtubers play through it to watch out for bugs/inconsistentcies.  One thing I've noticed is that my craft definitions are too lose, causing contracts to fail when a player flies an unrelated mission. I will need to make stricter definitions to ensure I'm defining the correct craft. This is GAP wide.

 

Right now I'm working hard to balance Engineering Tech Tree especially in regards to aviation parts and nodes. I want to see if I can help get ETT up to speed and see if I can avoid having to do the Join SSI contract, and all other GAP contracts with early tech, and have it all make sense, as I want to recommend ETT when players get GAP.

[kcs123]

5 hours ago, Steven Mading said:

Is anyone else finding the seaplane contracts impossible due to not being able to switch active vessel while floating in the water without summoning the Kraken?  My sea planes land in water just fine, and take off just fine, but if while they are floating in water, perfectly still, I do anything that makes them no longer the active vessel (like EVA the pilot so the kerbal now becomes the active vessel instead of the plane, or hitting the '[' to switch to a floating kerbal I'm meant to rescue), then the now no-longer-active-vessel comes apart in pieces, even though it was floating passively in the water just resting.  The F3 report claims the problem began with a part colliding with its neighboring attached part, but it's a different culprit part each time it happens, and I haven't been able to find a pattern to it.

I keep having it happen with more than one design, and it seems to make these contracts impossible, through no fault of my own (if I can't switch-to-kerbal while the plane is in water, then I can't rescue people.)

Am I the only one having this happen or is it happening to others?

 

 

No, didn't have a problem with that. Reason could be that on my crafts only parts in water were landing gear, structural fuselage and nose cones.
I did have a problem though, when approaching sunk boat, it explode wildly due to already mentioned KSP bug.

Rescue missions that involve only kerbal in EVA didn't cause any problem and I tried with both, seaplane and helicopter.

[Speedster159]

What does "Barnstorm" mean? o.0

[kcs123]

1 hour ago, Speedster159 said:

What does "Barnstorm" mean? o.0

This.

[Speedster159]

18 minutes ago, kcs123 said:

This.

Oh... Fly through it.

Too bad I canceled the contract... 0.0

[GhostMonkeyNKHI]

On 2/7/2016 at 11:27 PM, inigma said:

GAP is not recognizing your craft as valid to the contract, hence why this craft can't complete the next parameter. I see you have multiple other contracts active. GAP assumes that if you accept a contact, that you will immediately do it, hence it's its possible that GAP is looking for a previously launched craft as its defined expected "your craft must" - which to reset this function, simply recover any active vessels you may have launched after you accepted the contract, or perhaps less invasively, simply cancel the contract and start over.  I will make sure future GAP versions will have the craft pass other conditions before defining the craft used to prevent multiple contract multiple craft conflicts.

i wonder if ur running into the same as above... multiple contracts, multiple crafts active? maxAlt simply means the parameter wont pass if you are above the alt which in this case means just at the roof of the hangar.

I see!  I run Kerbal Construction Time, so it's rare for me to immediately fly a contract.  I typically have to accept a contract long before I have an aircraft built to contract specs.  The exception is I have to plan ahead and keep SAR vehicles stored in the hangar for your Coast Guard missions, because of the short timers.

I will have to think what I'm going to do about this...

[inigma]

GAP Dev update:

I have a three day weekend to do some work on GAP, assuming I don't get dragged into the fantasy world of developing a tech tree that is more to my playstyle...

Up first: GAP decoupling/diversification project. I've done about 30% of the required work (not counting mapping it all out).

Up second: fix bugs and investigate the reports you all have submitted

Up third: I'm looking for ways to better define GAP contract crafts. A number of you here and in streams I've seen, contracts fail because GAP is quite liberal in its craft definitions. I want to set tighter definitions so that only specific craft can trigger later GAP contract parameters. I find that people often accept multiple contracts, much to the chagrin of the complexity of GAP parameters, which lead to cases where the wrong parameters trip when working a craft that is not intended for a GAP mission.

@nightingale I really wish there was a way for the player at launch to designate a specific craft for a specific contract mission, before any other triggers begin tripping.

[GhostMonkeyNKHI]

Is there a reason that Barnstorming the first Hangar isn't the thing that attributes a craft to the contract?  That seems like it would be the unique thing to that contract.  Similarly for other "visit" contracts.  The defining moment of the Helipad contract is to land on one of the helipads.  Etc.

[inigma]

1 hour ago, GhostMonkeyNKHI said:

Is there a reason that Barnstorming the first Hangar isn't the thing that attributes a craft to the contract?  That seems like it would be the unique thing to that contract.  Similarly for other "visit" contracts.  The defining moment of the Helipad contract is to land on one of the helipads.  Etc.

The issue is that I want to check for if the player launches a craft with intent to complete the contract, to fail the contract when that craft crashes. That means defining at launch, but not later, mainly because the player could technically crash before the definition and get away with such a crash. 

It's a catch 22 though. Your idea though is spot on, as I think I may need to do so anyways since conflicting crafts is a more annoying situation than not failing a contract on crash.  I'll give it some more thought.

[nightingale]

2 minutes ago, inigma said:

The issue is that I want to check for if the player launches a craft with intent to complete the contract, to fail the contract when that craft crashes. That means defining at launch, but not later, mainly because the player could technically crash before the definition and get away with such a crash. 

It's a catch 22 though. Your idea though is spot on, as I think I may need to do so anyways since conflicting crafts is a more annoying situation than not failing a contract on crash.  I'll give it some more thought.

That would be my recommendation as well, as I suspect that a great majority of the players are going to revert on crash regardless of whether the contract fails.

[inigma]

1 minute ago, nightingale said:

That would be my recommendation as well, as I suspect that a great majority of the players are going to revert on crash regardless of whether the contract fails.

Makes sense.

hey @nightingale any possible progress on negative reward contracts? https://github.com/jrossignol/ContractConfigurator/issues/149

[GhostMonkeyNKHI]

Whether people revert or not, a crash on the way over to the island doesn't seem relevant to the contract.  Crashes during/after the barnstorm are interesting, because safe landing both signals the end of the contract, and is an objective measure of successful barnstorming - you didn't hit the mountains behind the hanger.

What about this idea?  You could play "ATC" and have staging area / holding pattern waypoints to signal when a plane is intended for some of the contracts.  To take barnstorming again, "ATC" might allow your stunt, but first you have to proceed to Waypoint X and receive clearance.  Hitting that waypoint would identify the contract vessel.  If you pick the waypoints well enough, there shouldn't be many people hitting them by accident.  If they did hit it by accident, or didn't want to go through with the stunt, they could still always safely land and recover to free the tag (right)?

[nightingale]

10 hours ago, inigma said:

Makes sense.

hey @nightingale any possible progress on negative reward contracts? https://github.com/jrossignol/ContractConfigurator/issues/149

I'm going to try to get a release out this weekend, I'll include that one in the list.

[inigma]

17 hours ago, GhostMonkeyNKHI said:

Whether people revert or not, a crash on the way over to the island doesn't seem relevant to the contract.  Crashes during/after the barnstorm are interesting, because safe landing both signals the end of the contract, and is an objective measure of successful barnstorming - you didn't hit the mountains behind the hanger.

What about this idea?  You could play "ATC" and have staging area / holding pattern waypoints to signal when a plane is intended for some of the contracts.  To take barnstorming again, "ATC" might allow your stunt, but first you have to proceed to Waypoint X and receive clearance.  Hitting that waypoint would identify the contract vessel.  If you pick the waypoints well enough, there shouldn't be many people hitting them by accident.  If they did hit it by accident, or didn't want to go through with the stunt, they could still always safely land and recover to free the tag (right)?

GM, that's a most excellent idea!  I will try that.

[inigma]

Diversification project completed.

I think I will require craft definitions to include the first waypoint for non-passenger contracts, and passengers for passenger contracts. This should be sufficient to capture the correct craft intended for use for a GAP contract.

Edited February 14, 2016 by inigma

[inigma]

I have replaced the KerbalStuff download link with the SpaceDock download link.

 

Dev Update: after the hullabaloo that was KerbalStuff, of which I am still running forum PR for, I am happy to announce that @nightingale has finally made CC able to accept negative rewards - penalties if you will - for completing a contract. This means the SSI Start contract will finally cost you something to acquire the parts before joining SSI. It also means I'll be able to offer players some basic airplane parts if desired... for funds when accepting the Wright Glider contract.  I'm so happy I could cry.

How I will design this out is a different story. Some thought will be need to be put into how I want to start a player. What I want to do is be able go write a piece of code that will allow me to take a percentage of a players existing funds, no matter their starting difficulty, so as to take a fair bite for giving certain parts away. Ideas?

[nightingale]

11 hours ago, inigma said:

How I will design this out is a different story. Some thought will be need to be put into how I want to start a player. What I want to do is be able go write a piece of code that will allow me to take a percentage of a players existing funds, no matter their starting difficulty, so as to take a fair bite for giving certain parts away. Ideas?

There were already functions for the player's current Funds/Science/Reputation, but I've added some to get the starting values for these as well, in case that turns out to be useful here (doc link).

[inigma]

Just now, nightingale said:

There were already functions for the player's current Funds/Science/Reputation, but I've added some to get the starting values for these as well, in case that turns out to be useful here (doc link).

Thanks!  I was looking for that! You are awesome @nightingale

I've got in mind to offer an SSI-Loan contract for players with less than 5000 Funds() , to be offered StartingFunds() with all of it due back after 30 days plus 25%. Contract will complete and take out the negative funds at the end of 30 days.

I also plan to use Funds() for requiring 50% of current funds to join SSI and get access to the rest of the GAP contract tree.

Negative reward funds now means I can charge funds in exchange for parts.

If you could also finish permanently declinable contracts  for 1.9.6, this plan would go hand in hand so players could permanently decline part contracts they don't want to free up space for other contracts that they do want.

 

[nightingale]

2 minutes ago, inigma said:

If you could also finish permanently declinable contracts  for 1.9.6, this plan would go hand in hand so players could permanently decline part contracts they don't want to free up space for other contracts that they do want.

1.9.6 is out now, so nope.

I'm in the thinking process for some changes to contract generation for 1.10 (post-KSP 1.1) that may make permanently declineable contracts moot, which is why I've been putting off investing time into that change.

[inigma]

1 minute ago, nightingale said:

1.9.6 is out now, so nope.

I'm in the thinking process for some changes to contract generation for 1.10 (post-KSP 1.1) that may make permanently declineable contracts moot, which is why I've been putting off investing time into that change.

I forgot. My bad. That's just fine!

[panzerwaffe044]

On 04.01.2016 at 7:41 AM, inigma said:

contract pack compatible with all stock and modded careers (except RSS)

Does it also mean that there's no support for scaled Kerbin? (I play HSS 4x)

[inigma]

3 minutes ago, panzerwaffe044 said:

Does it also mean that there's no support for scaled Kerbin? (I play HSS 4x)

Nope. Will not be able to do so. Not without a herculean re-write and adding many lines of code.