How to Min/Max Progression Contacts in Career Mode?

[kingofproboscidea]

When I play career mode, it always seems like I'm not getting everything I can out of progression contracts. I'm talking about the contracts from Kerbin World-Firsts Record-Keeping Society that only get offered once. Usually they have the most payout for their difficulty. I tend to get past around the "Fly ny Mun" point before it just skips to something far beyond my grasp at that point, like "Explore Ike." What is the best way to make sure that I get these contracts in order, without missing them?

[FullMetalMachinist]

This is a known flaw with the way that KSP gives you those specific contracts, and is being fixed for the 1.1 update.  Jump down to the bottom of this devnote, where it starts talking about what Arsonide is doing.

In your current game, the only way I know of to ensure you don't "miss out" on any of the explore contracts is to not visit another celestial body's SoI until you have accepted that contract. In order for it to pop up in the first place is a combination of meeting certain criteria (which I'm not sure what those are) and skipping or completing other contracts to force new ones to come up, and wait to win the contract lottery.

[Geschosskopf]

2 hours ago, kingofproboscidea said:

When I play career mode, it always seems like I'm not getting everything I can out of progression contracts. I'm talking about the contracts from Kerbin World-Firsts Record-Keeping Society that only get offered once. Usually they have the most payout for their difficulty. I tend to get past around the "Fly ny Mun" point before it just skips to something far beyond my grasp at that point, like "Explore Ike." What is the best way to make sure that I get these contracts in order, without missing them?

Welcome aboard!

Anyway, as @FullMetalMachinist says, there's at present not a lot of logic in how the "explore Planet X" contracts work.  Sometimes they show up, sometimes they don't.  Best thing is to not worry about them.  Don't hold off going somewhere waiting on a contract for it because you might never get that contract anyway.

[Kar]

Maybe consider mods?

I find this one pretty good to get fun contracts and more in time of my game:

Contract Configurator

Try that one and also, add the contract packs.