"Completing" Failed Contracts?

[Geonovast]

So I got my very first ever part recovery contract.  The game decided to go easy on me for my first time.

 

I managed to get it down alright, so no biggie.  Unfortunately, an FMRS issue sent everything back in time during the deorbit, and destroys the wing off-screen.

My mom called me right as I was recovering the landed wing, and I neglected to pause the game, so all 5 of my backup saves are of the belief I "failed" the contract.

It seems the F12 menu does not allow you to complete contracts that have failed, only ones that are active.

I can "remove" the contract, but that doesn't appear to do much other than just remove it from the history.  What's my best option here?

[bewing]

Use the debug menu to reset yourself to the proper rep, money, and science that you should have had. But there's no way to resurrect the contract. It'll always say that you failed one.

 

[Superfluous J]

And next time hit ESC before walking away!

[JERONIMO]

so that's how the pause button was created... but remember, escape will save you day.

[Geonovast]

9 hours ago, bewing said:

Use the debug menu to reset yourself to the proper rep, money, and science that you should have had. But there's no way to resurrect the contract. It'll always say that you failed one.

 

Hm.  That really sucks.  I'm not even sure what that would be.  I don't think science was affected, and I'm not too worried about the money, what bothered me most about it was my options seemed to be either leave it as "Failed" on my history or remove it entirely.  Bummer.

 

6 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

And next time hit ESC before walking away!

Normally I do, but I didn't think I had much of a reason to at this point since the game goes to the KSC after hitting the recovery button and there was nothing suborbital to worry about.

The issue was me not using FMRS correctly.  I have a tendency to forget to land the booster (using a F9 style rocket for most things), and hitting the actual recovery button with pending stuff for FMRS (see bottom right of screenshots) causes iffyness.

If I had hit ESC, I could have recovered from this, but of course the game backedup like every 3 minutes for no reason, when at times when I want it to do that, I have backups that are hours old.

Apparently I need to write my own backup script.

[bewing]

8 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

I'm not even sure what that would be.  I don't think science was affected

In your contract archives, under "failed" contracts, I think it gives you enough info to know how much money and rep you got penalized, and I think it also shows the amount of science that the contract would have been worth?

 

[Superfluous J]

5 hours ago, Geonovast said:

Apparently I need to write my own backup script

Do you use KAC? It makes lots of backups, once each time you jump to the ship. Of course you have to use its jump to ship ability...

[Geonovast]

Just now, 5thHorseman said:

Do you use KAC?

Barely.  I honestly have no interest in even going interplanetary at the moment, so I'm just using it to set up a relay network outside of Minmus' orbit, and to not forget about the 16 tourists hanging out at a "hotel" at the Mun.  Suffocating 16 tourists and 2 crew might poorly impact my rep, not to mention the literal millions on funds lost.

2 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

Of course you have to use its jump to ship ability...

Never even heard of it, so I'm guessing no?

5 hours ago, bewing said:

In your contract archives, under "failed" contracts, I think it gives you enough info to know how much money and rep you got penalized, and I think it also shows the amount of science that the contract would have been worth?

 

I didn't see it, but I'll check when I get home.  I'm sure some save file editing can fix that poor mark on the history as well.

[Kryxal]

Save file editing would do it, all right ... just back the file up first!

[Superfluous J]

26 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

Barely.  I honestly have no interest in even going interplanetary at the moment, so I'm just using it to set up a relay network outside of Minmus' orbit, and to not forget about the 16 tourists hanging out at a "hotel" at the Mun.  Suffocating 16 tourists and 2 crew might poorly impact my rep, not to mention the literal millions on funds lost.

I use it for every maneuver node and use it to jump to the ship with that node (unless I'm already controlling that ship). You just click the alarm in the list and there's a button for it. Get in that habit and you will always have tons of backups. Also, it's super convenient.

I've not gone interplanetary in 1.7 but I get impatient going to Minmus so usually have 2-3 things in progress at any time.

I even sometimes drop a maneuver node on an orbit just so I'll get an alarm for the ship, for say before atmospheric re-entry.

Edited July 15, 2019 by 5thHorseman

[Geonovast]

@bewing

I was able to offset the funds and mark the contract as completed just fine by editing my save file.  There were no science points involved in the contract.

Rep is a little different, I don't understand how that's calculated.  The contract has 12 for completion and -13 for failure.  I don't see a comprehensible number for rep anywhere other than the metadata file.

Do you know where I would find it in the .sfs and how I would repair it?  Is there a writeup somewhere on modifying rep by hand?  I couldn't find one.

[bewing]

1 hour ago, Geonovast said:

Rep is a little different, I don't understand how that's calculated.  The contract has 12 for completion and -13 for failure.  I don't see a comprehensible number for rep anywhere other than the metadata file.

Do you know where I would find it in the .sfs and how I would repair it?  Is there a writeup somewhere on modifying rep by hand?  I couldn't find one.

The rep calculation is very complicated, being an asymptotic S curve between -1000 and +1000. However, all the info that you need is in the KSP.log file in your main game directory. (The identical info is in your output_log.txt file, but that's harder to find.) If you want your Rep fixed, here's how you do it:

Look in the file, and find the Contract Failure log report -- should be something like this, except a failure:

[LOG 00:08:26.939] Awarding 5 reputation to player for contract completion
[LOG 00:08:26.939] Added 2.382732 (5) reputation: 'ContractReward'.
[LOG 00:08:26.941] Contract (Explore The Mun.): We have taken our first steps towards exploring The Mun. Let's keep going and see where it takes us!

(At the end of that line, it should tell you again what the science, rep, and funds rewards were supposed to be.)

So, in your case, the system will try to subtract 13 from your rep for the failure. In my example it tried to add 5 rep, but the 5 gets modified by the asymptote calculation. The number in front of the (5) is the number that comes out of the asymptote calculation, which is 2.382732 -- and that's the number that actually modifies the Rep. But the asymptote calculation is not symmetric going up vs going down. That is, +5 does not match -5 after being modified by the asymptote calculation.

So in your case, it will say something like -25.28393645 (-13). So now you open your Debug Menu to the Cheats tab. It tells you your exact current Rep value. Mentally add 25.2839 (or whatever your log file says got subtracted) -- to figure out what your exact Reputation was before .

Go to the Console tab, and type /Reputation 666.666

or whatever your Rep was before the subtraction for the failure. This Console command sets a precise absolute value on your Reputation.

And now for the final step, go back to the Cheats tab. Not only did it subtract 13 rep in your case, but it also failed to add 12 more. So there are some buttons next to the Rep for adding and subtracting -- but the buttons use the asymptote calculation. So click the 10 button once, and the 1 button twice -- to add back your asymptotically modified 12 points that you should have received. And you're done.

 

[Geonovast]

Well, I think I'm SOL on getting the right then, since the KSP.log from when the contract failed no longer exists.

Thanks for the info, I'll definitely remember it's here in case something like this ever happens again.

I think I'm just going to add some rep and call it good, and try to get over that it's not accurate.  I changed my SAVE_BACKUPS in settings.cfg from 5 to 50, so there's some mitigation...