Mission Help

[Daedalus One]

I have been playing a couple of days, and have hit a wall. I have done the initial upgrades to all facilities, d4one the basic missions, achieved orbit, and now am working on flying by the mun. However, I want more money before I do it. The only missions that are available to  me now are the ferry missions, testing parts, and the surveys. Most of these require very specific speeds, altitudes, locations, and " space airplanes". While these are probably fine for some pilots, I am primarily interested in actual space flight, orbits, getting there, getting back, building things etc. I keep hitting the X to remove and refresh the list, but the same type of missions keep popping up. Is there a way to get missions I would like, and not the ones they make available ?

Thanks

D One

[technicalfool]

Moved to Gameplay Questions.

(And I believe there is a mod that allows you to remove certain types of contract. Anyone?)

[NewtSoup]

Try and think of these missions as the bread and butter work you need to do to get the money.  I agree though I tend to avoid the "Test" missions unless they're particularly easy.  If you get "Rescue" missions they will be the type of mission you want and you get a free Kerbal too - you get to keep them above the limits of your Astronaut Complex.  They're also very good practice for rendezvous prior to learning to dock.

Be careful just x'ing away missions you don't want - each time you do you lose some rep.  The higher your rep the more lucrative the missions you are offered.  You'll notice that each mission has an expiry date - this is the time left before it vanishes naturally off your offered contracts list.  

I made most of my early in game money doing ferry missions as they are the most common and usually quite well paid.  I still do them.  I'm ferrying tourists to The Mun and it's surface.

Station building is also quite lucrative, just watch the requirements though!  See my thread "Going to The Mun" - I had to have 6000 units of liquid fuel on board which was quite an ask at my tech level at the time.    I actually completed a second contract to put up a station around Minmus before I completed the first one.

Upgrade Mission control too.  That way you can take more missions, specifically the ones you know you can do "later" and sit on them for a bit.  Most of them have a long long completion deadline.  Took me a whole game year to do a "survey" mission I took early in the game, I thought "above 17,000 meters would be easy.  Nope!.  What I ended up doing was putting a satellite in a polar orbit with a thermometer on it and waiting until it passed over the mission waypoints. It took me a long time to complete as I kept forgetting about it

I know this is more encouragement than an answer to your specific question but keep at it.

As far as mods go then have a look at this thread:
 

It also lists a load of contract packs that can be installed with this mod.

The latest version, according to github was released 11 June this year so it's going to be 1.3 compatible.

[TheRagingIrishman]

24 minutes ago, NewtSoup said:

As far as mods go then have a look at this thread:

It also lists a load of contract packs that can be installed with this mod.

The latest version, according to github was released 11 June this year so it's going to be 1.3 compatible.

@Daedalus One if you install contract configurator, it will allow you to toggle the availability of the different categories of the stock contracts in addition to letting you add new types through contract packs.

[Cpt Kerbalkrunch]

Totally agree with @NewtSoup on the tourist contracts. Space tourism is a big-money Industry. Those will be your bread and butter for awhile. Also agree on expanding mission control to take more contracts. This way, you can get some you want to do just for fun or the experience of it. Also, and this is a huge key, you can combine contracts. By that I mean complete several contracts with a single flight. That will bring you tons of profits; which you can use to fund whatever missions you want. Ya gotta pay the rent, though. So keep reelin' in the rubes...er tourists.

[Spricigo]

Worth mentioning that some types of mission will be unavailable until you unlock the required tech. 

Kinda difficult to build an station that can generate energy, with Antenna,  docking port before you develop docking ports and solar panels. 

[Tex_NL]

32 minutes ago, Spricigo said:

Worth mentioning that some types of mission will be unavailable until you unlock the required tech. 

Kinda difficult to build an station that can generate energy, with Antenna,  docking port before you develop docking ports and solar panels. 

Exactly. ONLY accept contracts you know you can actually complete.

Tourist and rescue missions can be a great cash cow. When going on a LKO rescue missions why not take a tourist along for the ride. Either missions reward should be more than enough to pay for it. The other reward is pure profit.
One of my current cash cows is 'new station to Kerbin orbit' (5 Kerbal, power, antenna, docking). My go-to shuttle meets all those requirements and is cheaper than the pay-out. As soon as it reaches orbit the contract completes and the cash rolls in.
As soon as you have labs in orbit processing data you can REALLY rake in the dough. You'll end up with more science points you know what to do with. And science can be sold for funds.

[Spricigo]

30 minutes ago, Tex_NL said:

Exactly. ONLY accept contracts you know you can actually complete.

While I agree with this,  my comment was about an entirely different point :the fact that unlocking some parts is condition necessary to unlock related contracts.  e. g solar panels for satellites and stations,  AGU (aka Klaw)  for asteroids. 

[Cpt Kerbalkrunch]

1 hour ago, Spricigo said:

While I agree with this,  my comment was about an entirely different point :the fact that unlocking some parts is condition necessary to unlock related contracts.  e. g solar panels for satellites and stations,  AGU (aka Klaw)  for asteroids. 

The opposite can be true as well. While I'm not a big fan of testing contracts (though they can be lucrative, and sometimes they're pretty easy), when you get a contract to test a part you haven't unlocked yet, it can be worth accepting the contract just to get access to the more advanced part. Even if it's only temporary.