Part test contracts

[Loren Pechtel]

Yeah, I know they are random but they could use a little sanity.

How am I supposed to test a wheel in the Sun's orbit?  Wheels should only be testable while landed!

[Spricigo]

Testing a heatshield at launchpad don't make sense either but no one is complaining. 

[Loren Pechtel]

2 hours ago, Spricigo said:

Testing a heatshield at launchpad don't make sense either but no one is complaining. 

Defining a good test realm for heat shields is difficult, I don't mind them occurring anywhere.

[Snark]

On 5/26/2017 at 10:50 PM, Loren Pechtel said:

Yeah, I know they are random but they could use a little sanity.

How am I supposed to test a wheel in the Sun's orbit?  Wheels should only be testable while landed!

The short answer is probably:  it's because that's the path of least resistance for the developers.

The contract system is designed to "do random thing" with enough variety to be interesting.  When you make a system that's designed to emit a slew of random results, it's easy for it to occasionally emit oddball "edge cases" that don't make much sense.  Therefore, making it not do that is extra work-- i.e. you'd need to design and implement a system for specifying don't-ever-do-this overrides, then someone would need to sit down and try to think through all the possible combinations that a human thinks "doesn't make sense" and populate the system with those.

Is it rocket science?  No.  Would it take years of effort?  No.  But it would be a chunk of work, and they've got a lot of other features, bug-fixes, etc. competing for their attention, many of which are going to be higher-priority than this.  So it's not all that surprising that they might not have gotten around to it.

You could always post in the Suggestions forum, or log a bug.

[Loren Pechtel]

7 hours ago, Snark said:

The short answer is probably:  it's because that's the path of least resistance for the developers.

The contract system is designed to "do random thing" with enough variety to be interesting.  When you make a system that's designed to emit a slew of random results, it's easy for it to occasionally emit oddball "edge cases" that don't make much sense.  Therefore, making it not do that is extra work-- i.e. you'd need to design and implement a system for specifying don't-ever-do-this overrides, then someone would need to sit down and try to think through all the possible combinations that a human thinks "doesn't make sense" and populate the system with those.

Is it rocket science?  No.  Would it take years of effort?  No.  But it would be a chunk of work, and they've got a lot of other features, bug-fixes, etc. competing for their attention, many of which are going to be higher-priority than this.  So it's not all that surprising that they might not have gotten around to it.

You could always post in the Suggestions forum, or log a bug.

Yeah, I realize what's going on.  It's just this one would have been easy to deal with had they planned for it.  Simply specify an operating environment for a part, you can't get a part test for something out of it's operating environment.  That would also put an end to testing jet engines while splashed down.

[Spricigo]

6 minutes ago, Loren Pechtel said:

Simply specify an operating environment for a part, you can't get a part test for something out of it's operating environment.  

Not simple at all.  What make no sense for one person makes all the sense for others. Any defined operating environment will be arbitrary. 

Personally I think is reasonable to know my wheels will not stop work while still in course to the planet I want my rover to explored or that the jet engines available will not have an issue with the water. 

This is not to say there is no room for improvement,  rather that is not so trivial or even a pressing issue IMHO 

[Snark]

1 hour ago, Loren Pechtel said:

Yeah, I realize what's going on.  It's just this one would have been easy to deal with had they planned for it.  Simply specify an operating environment for a part, you can't get a part test for something out of it's operating environment.  That would also put an end to testing jet engines while splashed down.

Except... it's not completely obvious, all the time.  For example, why not test a jet engine while splashed down?  Clearly the idea bothers you, so presumably you have a reason-- but some other player may be just fine with it.

So the part-test contracts don't bother me all that much.  Probably the reason it doesn't bother me when sometimes they're kinda silly is that, well... they're always kinda silly.  (I mean, seriously, you build an engine, you can test it all you want in various conditions, but it matters that it happens to be on an escape trajectory out of Duna?  As opposed, to, say, a suborbital trajectory over Duna?)

It's a "challenge" of varying difficulty that gives a payoff roughly commensurate with the difficulty, and personally I'm fine with that, for the most part-- main thing is that it does tend (for me, anyway) to break immersion a bit.  Kinda takes me out of "I'm flying rocket ships!" and more into "I'm playing a video game."

The one that bothers me more than the nonsensical part-test contracts are the flat-out impossible ones, such as wanting you to mine ore on Jool or the Sun.  Those just seem like an oversight.

[Loren Pechtel]

8 hours ago, Snark said:

Except... it's not completely obvious, all the time.  For example, why not test a jet engine while splashed down?  Clearly the idea bothers you, so presumably you have a reason-- but some other player may be just fine with it.

So the part-test contracts don't bother me all that much.  Probably the reason it doesn't bother me when sometimes they're kinda silly is that, well... they're always kinda silly.  (I mean, seriously, you build an engine, you can test it all you want in various conditions, but it matters that it happens to be on an escape trajectory out of Duna?  As opposed, to, say, a suborbital trajectory over Duna?)

It's a "challenge" of varying difficulty that gives a payoff roughly commensurate with the difficulty, and personally I'm fine with that, for the most part-- main thing is that it does tend (for me, anyway) to break immersion a bit.  Kinda takes me out of "I'm flying rocket ships!" and more into "I'm playing a video game."

The one that bothers me more than the nonsensical part-test contracts are the flat-out impossible ones, such as wanting you to mine ore on Jool or the Sun.  Those just seem like an oversight.

Jet engines have this annoying property of not working when full of water.  It should not be possible to test a jet while splashed down, yet they work fine so long as you have an air intake place high enough.

I do agree that where in space you are shouldn't really make a difference on part tests but I'm more willing to let the game have that one as it's not obviously nuts.

[FancyMouse]

Well, everything else is better than testing launch clamp in orbit.

Edited May 30, 2017 by FancyMouse

[bewing]

On 5/30/2017 at 2:06 AM, Loren Pechtel said:

Jet engines have this annoying property of not working when full of water.  It should not be possible to test a jet while splashed down, yet they work fine so long as you have an air intake place high enough.

 

Jet engines made by humans maybe. Jet engines made by kerbals work just fine when completely submerged, and the intake is sucking in pure water. Do you understand that's how you make a KSP submarine? And, of course the manufacterers of those jet engines need to have that feature tested.

And yes, the randomness of the contracts is part of what makes the game silly, and being silly is a big part of what makes it fun.

 

Edited May 30, 2017 by bewing

[Spricigo]

54 minutes ago, bewing said:

Jet engines made by humans maybe. Jet engines made by kerbals work just fine when completely submerged, and the intake is sucking in pure water. Do you understand that's how you make a KSP submarine? And, of course the manufacterers of those jet engines need to have that feature tested.

And yes, the randomness of the contracts is part of what makes the game silly, and being silly is a big part of what makes it fun.

 

Technically, the contract don't ask to test the jet while submerged, just for the vessel to be splashed down. So seaplanes are reasoning enough to explain this contract's parameters.

[Loren Pechtel]

On 5/30/2017 at 10:37 AM, bewing said:

Jet engines made by humans maybe. Jet engines made by kerbals work just fine when completely submerged, and the intake is sucking in pure water. Do you understand that's how you make a KSP submarine? And, of course the manufacterers of those jet engines need to have that feature tested.

And yes, the randomness of the contracts is part of what makes the game silly, and being silly is a big part of what makes it fun.

 

Huh?  I've not been able to do splashed-down jet test contracts without putting an air intake above the surface.  Maybe that changed a while back and I didn't notice it, I don't do many part test contracts.

[Spricigo]

Just now, Loren Pechtel said:

Huh?  I've not been able to do splashed-down jet test contracts without putting an air intake above the surface.  Maybe that changed a while back and I didn't notice it, I don't do many part test contracts.

I wonder what prevented you to complete those since in all my contract to test jet engines there was no air intake in the craft at all. That was since version 1.1 if I recall correctly.