Launch a unmanned probe requirement change.

[Aeroboi]

In general I'm annoyed by the "strict" mission rules of certain contracts. Many of these strict rules make absolute sense and for the most part this game has it the right way around.
There are several of them that I find ludicrous, and one of these rules makes so little sense I want to complaint about it and suggest it to be fixed in a later release. 

The satellite missions that start with "Position a sattelite in [any type of orbit] of planet/moon.
The first mission requirement is, which is to strict, annoying and what this topic is all about... "Build a new unmanned probe that has a antenna and can generate power"
Seems simple right? IT IS! Sometimes these missions are so simple I as a player like to complicate things a little bit, and I find I should be able to. This game forbids it unfortunately as I will explain below.

What I like to do is do many contracts all at once. Sometimes mixing manned and unmanned missions into a single launch.
In my previous playthrough I had 7 contracts. 2 x rescue contracts, 4 tourist to Mun orbit, 1x sattelite deployment mission to the Mun, Plant flag on the Mun, Science data around the Mun and Science data from the Surface of the Mun.
So for the satellite contract I took one with me on my Mun rocket with a manned lander module where the satellite was attached in a fairing shell ready to be deployed at the destination. As I tried to deploy it didn't register and while browsing the web while finding threads on this forum also I learned everything has to be unmanned right from the launchpad.

So the entire launch vehicle including all the modules it consist of must also be unmanned otherwise the attached satellites aren't registered as being unmanned even if they are by themselves. Either that or I shouldn't bring a pilot on board, I'm still not clear on that one, but so far I made my point I think. There is this mission requirement check that becomes green but only if everything is unmanned right from the launchpad.
The contract requirement sentences are a farce and if I take it for how things are written I'm at no fault whatsoever. The contract says to build a new unmanned probe. It doesn't say build a new unmanned launch vehicle with a unmanned probe on top of it. If it were to say that I would see my mistake, now I don't. For all I care what I tried to accomplish seems right and this game fails to tell me the exact criteria for deploying a unmanned satellite. 

It also doesn't make sense from a real life perspective. The Hubble Telescope is unmanned, but it was put there by people in a shuttle. So why can't I do this in KSP when following the satellite contracts in career mode? 

Shouldn't this be fixed?

[Kesa]

It sounds very strange to me, I've heard of people reusing old probes to complete contracts by just docking and undocking them. It's an exploit, but it would tend to suggest it should be working properly for decoupled satellites.

 

I'd suggest you do some testing at the launch pad (or in LKO) to try to satisfy "Build a new unmanned probe that has a antenna and can generate power" :

- with a completely unmanned vehicle, to make sure it is the "unmanned" part which is not fullfilled.

- with docking ports instead of decouplers

 

Also, "Build a new unmanned probe that has a antenna and can generate power" really should be several conditions instead of 1 :

1. the craft has to be new.
2. it has to be unmanned (I think it means not having manned modules, even empty)
3. it has to have an antenna
4. it has to be able to generate power

The new part should be statisfied even by an old craft via docking. If you use any modded probe core, antenna or power generator, or mods that change the behaviour of stock ones (like remote tech for antennas), make sure it's not the cause of your problem by making a quick launchpad test with the probe without launcher.

 

If the issue persists, I'd say it's worth reporting as a bug under "technical support".

Edited June 19, 2018 by Kesa

[Aeroboi]

 

3 hours ago, Kesa said:

It sounds very strange to me, I've heard of people reusing old probes to complete contracts by just docking and undocking them. It's an exploit, but it would tend to suggest it should be working properly for decoupled satellites

I'm aware of this, I did it to, but it's a cheat and a overcomplication to manage something that shouldn't be complicated, hence mysuggestion. 

3 hours ago, Kesa said:

1. the craft has to be new.
2. it has to be unmanned (I think it means not having manned modules, even empty)
3. it has to have an antenna
4. it has to be able to generate power

Thanks but I knew that also. I'm posting a suggestion on the basis of scrapping the 2nd rule and altering it to suit my needs and hopefully of others also.

I already tested and a "unmanned probe" requirement only registers if the rocket at launch was unmanned to begin with. It makes no sense that a rocket at launch has to be fully unmanned and remotely controlled to deliver a satellite. A satellite can be brought up into LKO with a Kerbal in a command pod just as well. I think these requirements are flawed and nonsensical. That is why I post this topic here.

So please scrap that requirement. Only have the rule that the probe itself at the target orbit has to be unmanned, not the rocket itself or any of the ascent stages prior to jettisoning the actual satellite payload.

My motive for this as I described in the OT is to do a mix of unmanned contracts (those darn satellites) and manned contracts into a single launch. I don't want to do a seperate launch next to my manned launches to get a tiny sat up there if I could have brought one with me during the manned launch.

 

 

Edited June 19, 2018 by Aeroboi

[Kesa]

12 minutes ago, Aeroboi said:

So please scrap that requirement. Only have the rule that the probe itself at the target orbit has to be unmanned, not the rocket itself or any of the ascent stages prior to jettisoning the actual satellite payload.

As the contract is worded, only the probe itself should be unmanned IMO, so in addition to making a suggestion, I would also report the current behaviour as a bug, in the technical support subsection.

 

12 minutes ago, Aeroboi said:

I'm aware of this, I did it to, but it's a cheat and a overcomplication to manage something that shouldn't be complicated, hence mysuggestion.

I'm curious, does docking only help with the "new" part, or also with the "unmanned one"?

Edited June 19, 2018 by Kesa

[Aeroboi]

45 minutes ago, Kesa said:

As the contract is worded, only the probe itself should be unmanned IMO, so in addition to making a suggestion, I would also report the current behaviour as a bug, in the technical support subsection.

That is my point, the wording describes exactly as you sayit should be, but it isn't like that. I will also make a bug report but I doubt one could call it a bug, more like bad programming or bad wording if this is as intended by Squad/take two.

47 minutes ago, Kesa said:

I'm curious, does docking only help with the "new" part, or also with the "unmanned one"?

This I will have to test to know for sure. I'll get at it.

[klesh]

6 hours ago, Kesa said:

in addition to making a suggestion, I would also report the current behaviour as a bug, in the technical support subsection.

 

If you want it to be seen by a developer, put it on the bugtracker.

https://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/

[Superfluous J]

If this is true then it's changed some time in the last couple versions.

I've completed satellite contacts by telling the Kerbal to get out of the command pad before. I've also many many times brought a satellite along for the ride to complete a contract on another world to help pay for the (manned) mission.

This is so common for me that I want to test it to verify it did change. It's like if you had said Kerbin should really have a second moon.

[Aeroboi]

27 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

If this is true then it's changed some time in the last couple versions.

I've completed satellite contacts by telling the Kerbal to get out of the command pad before. I've also many many times brought a satellite along for the ride to complete a contract on another world to help pay for the (manned) mission.

This is so common for me that I want to test it to verify it did change. It's like if you had said Kerbin should really have a second moon.

I'm watching a show right now but I'll test this soon. But I'm thinking it might have something to do with my tourists on board. You said you unboarded your Kerbal to have the satellite contract requirement activated, however, tourists cannot be unboarded. 

However, if my tourists are at fault a satellite contract also should work in my honest opinion. I think I should be able to combine tourist, satellite and any contract I like with whatever vessel I'm currently using as long as the end product (product meaning vessel) is unmanned to satisfy the satellite contract.

But I'm jumping the gun on assuming the tourist are what stops the satellite requirement to activate as I haven't tested that but since you seem to have done this many times before and you talk about unboarding your kerbal I feel it has to do something with the tourists on my vessel. Either that or something that is part of my vessel setup is completely different then that of yours.

By the way, I to thought I'd remembered I took satellites into orbit before using manned vessels. The thing is, I haven't played career in a long time. The last time was in V 1.2.2 I think, I'm not even sure if the version number is correct, but it was a while back. So it's only since recently I'm getting back into the career mechanics. Apparently according to your career play this is still possible. We're all playing version 1.4.1 I assume? Then I'm doing something wrong, I hope to find out what that is.

Edited June 19, 2018 by Aeroboi

[Kesa]

1 hour ago, Aeroboi said:

We're all playing version 1.4.1 I assume?

1.4.3 I think.

[Superfluous J]

5 hours ago, Aeroboi said:

We're all playing version 1.4.1 I assume?

I'll be testing this on 1.4.3 (or 1.4.4 if I don't get a chance before then ) but I was on 1.3 or maybe even 1.2 the last time I did this. 1.1 maybe even who knows. I do remember though that it was a trip to Moho, and the ship was a pretty standard interplanetary ship with Kerbals on board and a satellite on the nose. When I got to moho, I decoupled the satellite and sent it to its orbit and the contract completed.

When before I was talking about having the Kerbal jump out to get the contract, that was a diffrent situation. In that case, I brought up a ship with a command pod and a probe core and all the other stuff that the contract needed, and when I got check marks in everything but the "new unmanned probe" clause, I EVA'd the Kerbal and instantly got the contract.

One thing I thought of while describing it, I'm pretty sure you still need a probe core. It still has to be a probe, even if it has a(n empty) capsule as well.

Edited June 20, 2018 by 5thHorseman