How can I fulfill a "orbit around the sun" contract?

[BeanThruster]

I accepted a contract to take a tourist on a sun fly by AND on an orbit around the sun. Now, I was expecting that just peeping out of Kerbin SOI would have fulfilled both the mission requirements (Sun fly by and orbit). instead, when I left kerbin SOI, the flyby condition was green-checked on the contact window, while the orbit condition remained grayed out. This is sort of puzzling, since I can see on the map view that my ship is on a clear orbit around the Sun.

Any idea on how the game award the condition of orbiting around the sun?

[Fierce Wolf]

Hard to say, what if you return and land on Kerbin? I remember I had some issue with this (not exactly that contract) and it was magically solved once landed.

[Snark]

1 hour ago, BeanThruster said:

Now, I was expecting that just peeping out of Kerbin SOI would have fulfilled both the mission requirements (Sun fly by and orbit). instead, when I left kerbin SOI, the flyby condition was green-checked on the contact window, while the orbit condition remained grayed out.

That sounds... wrong.

Simply peeping out of Kerbin's SoI ought to be enough.  The only "legitimate" (i.e. non-buggy) way for peeping outside Kerbin's SoI not to count as "orbit the Sun" would be if you came out of Kerbin's SoI with so much excess velocity that you actually are on an escape trajectory out of the Sun.  But that would take a lot of dV, and in any case it looks to me from your screenshot that you're not even close to doing that.

So, it sounds to me as if you've run into some sort of bug.  The first thing I'd suggest would be to try saving and then loading the game.  That's not supposed to make a difference, but I seem to recall that occasionally doing that can "un-stick" certain bugs.  So, I'd suggest trying that first.

If that doesn't work, and it still won't complete, then I'd say you've run up against a legitimate bug, which happens from time to time.  If there's a contract for which you're really sure that you've legitimately filled the requirements (which I believe you have), and it's not completing, then it's the game's fault, not yours.  In those sorts of situations-- which thankfully don't pop up often, at least not in my experience-- that's where I go ahead and use the Alt+F12 cheat menu to force the contract to "succeeded".  I figure it's not cheating if I did the thing and the game's just failing to hold up its end of the bargain. 

 

[CBase]

If you barely left Kerbin SOI: Is there an reentry with Kerbin ? I am not sure how long an orbit needs to be without intersection to count as orbit versus escape trajectory.

 

[gword256]

11 minutes ago, CBase said:

If you barely left Kerbin SOI: Is there an reentry with Kerbin ? I am not sure how long an orbit needs to be without intersection to count as orbit versus escape trajectory.

 

I ran into this not too long ago.  Just peaked out of kirbin SOI and wasn't awarded with a complete.  I do believe this was the issue as I headed back to Kirbin and did the same thing again and was awared with that second attempt.

[AHHans]

A general note: if you are on a trajectory that will encounter another SOI then the game doesn't consider you being in orbit, but as "being on an escape trajectory" i.e. doing a flyby.

From the screenshot it looks like you don't encounter another SOI (in the time-range than the games looks at). So you should have the "orbit around the sun" ticked off. My guess is that the game didn't re-evaluate your status since you got the "flyby" box ticked. My suggestion is to go back to the KSP, check what it says in the tracking station, and go back to the craft. If that doesn't help and it says "on an escape trajectory" in the tracking station, then you should change your orbit a bit, make sure that you don't encounter any other SOI anytime soon, and try again.

Edited November 21, 2019 by AHHans
fixed typo

[BeanThruster]

Thank you all for your answers. I did some tests and experiments, and I'm letting you know the results, just in case you find yourself in similar conditions. In this process I did a lot of game save and reload, and by no means the bug was fixed (this to answer to @Snark and yes, I’m rather inclined to believe that this is a bug)

20 hours ago, CBase said:

If you barely left Kerbin SOI: Is there an reentry with Kerbin ? I am not sure how long an orbit needs to be without intersection to count as orbit versus escape trajectory.

 

As you can see in the screenshot I posted above, my orbit has no visible encounter along its path. However, even small (a few tens of m/s ) DeltaVs were enough to have some very distant (in time) encounter with Kerbin, like the one in the screenshot below.

Among all the other random burning around, I also tried lowering the orbit, to remove any doubt of being on an orbit with a possible encounter with Kerbin or other bodies, but still no luck, the orbit requirement in the contract window was still locked in its grayed out status

 

20 hours ago, Fierce Wolf said:

Hard to say, what if you return and land on Kerbin? I remember I had some issue with this (not exactly that contract) and it was magically solved once landed.

Returning back to Kerbin proved to be unfruitful, as the contract remained uncompleted upon landing, even if (weird enough) the pilot has been awarded with 6 experience points for being orbiting around the sun.

The only way that worked was reentering in kerbin SOI and then leaving it (burning to get an encounter with Kerbin and then burning back to an orbit around the Sun while still being outside Kerbin SOI is not going to work, you have to actually enter Kerbin SOI).

got an encounter with kerbin in two hours

went all the way around Kerbin (it took more than 30 days)

and eventually got "the orbit around the sun" checked out.

 

I don't know if  it is my previous orbit around the Sun that was bugged in some way, or it is a matter of conflicting conditions (Fly by the Sun AND orbit around the sun), like @AHHans says. Anyway, i believe this is a bug. Hope this post may help other kerbal brothers.

 

 

Edited November 21, 2019 by BeanThruster
fixing a few typos

[BeanThruster]

19 hours ago, Snark said:

If that doesn't work, and it still won't complete, then I'd say you've run up against a legitimate bug, which happens from time to time.  If there's a contract for which you're really sure that you've legitimately filled the requirements (which I believe you have), and it's not completing, then it's the game's fault, not yours.  In those sorts of situations-- which thankfully don't pop up often, at least not in my experience-- that's where I go ahead and use the Alt+F12 cheat menu to force the contract to "succeeded".  I figure it's not cheating if I did the thing and the game's just failing to hold up its end of the bargain. 

I've got a very strict "no cheat" policy in my career games, being game reloading the only allowed cheat (and only in special cases).

After all, in this case, I can afford to land the tourist in Kerbin and cancel the contract (I'm sick of it), or wait a couple of months until the tourist completes his second trip outside Kerbin SOI and returns.

[ctbram]

I would seriously alt-f12  and cheat to complete the contract. After all you have met all the conditions and have gone the extra mile completing and re-completing it and in the end, after all your effort, you will be penalized for failing or quitting the contact that you met all the conditions for. 

As far as I am concerned that is a breach of contract on ksp's side.  Hell, you should get double credit and a free order of breadsticks!!!

[Bej Kerman]

Since the thread just got necro'd, I want to ask why the solution wasn't just to match orbits with the green guide on the map. As far as I can tell, that was the problem.