Have contracts optional in .24 to improve save compatibility

[dlrk]

Because of the 64-bit support, the .24 update is much more critical than most. Since, I'm sure, many of us don't want to abandon our career mode saves, but do want to abandon RAM saving measures, would it be possible to have the contract system optional to allow saves from 23.5 to transfer?

[SkyRex94]

Or use the chance and do this Save-breaking update to implement some save breaking thing, like moving Eeloo. At the End most of the comunity will start a game right now with 0.24. So after all it would be a very good update to do save breaking things, as the least people will get upset about it.

[dlrk]

Why does Eeloo need to be moved? If you don't like it's location, there are many mods to take care of it

[SkyRex94]

Why does Eeloo need to be moved? If you don't like it's location, there are many mods to take care of it

Cause if Eeloo shall become a moon of a gas giant this gas giant cant be on an intersecting orbit with another giant, so Eeloo needs movement, IF they plan to make it a moon anymore -- see Huge Blue Horizon Thread-- but thats off topic...

[CaptRobau]

It's better to move Eeloo when its gas giant gets introduced.

[Twreed87]

Making Contracts optional is a ridiculous idea. We have two modes: Sandbox and Career. Science is just one tiny aspect of Career mode, Contracts are another one. The idea of having multiple versions of Career mode, where you can pick and choose which features you like, is just silly. Contracts and Funds are integral to the vision of Career mode that Squad has, they're not going to chop it up into tiny bits for every player who doesn't like this or that.

This game is very easily moddable. You can take out things you don't like, add things you want. You can just hack the save files if you want and give yourself infinite funds. I know this game has a very different development cycle to normal games, but can you imagine a regular action/adventure game giving you the option of playing through without a health bar or infinite ammo or something? No, if you want to do that, you use a cheat code, you don't expect the developers to just give you those options from the beginning.

Besides, I don't even really get why you'd want a career mode that's just Science. Science is a cool feature, but this whole time I've looked at it as just a piece of something bigger to come. With just science, Career mode is just Sandbox except it takes you a while to unlock all the parts. But once you have them, what's the difference?

[moeggz]

I think this is just one of those tough times. I get not wanting to abandon your save, and hopefully it won't break them. However, the game must move forward. Personally, I don't think making contracts optional is the way to go. Wait until the update and then learn if it breaks saves. If it does perhaps you could do some tinkering with save files or hyperedit and put all of your flags, bases, ships and kerbals into the new game. If not, well then you can keep your old save and just have to play it in 32 bit until starting a new one in .24. It's painful I'm sure, but I can't think of a way to move the game forward while catering to such a high extent to old saves. I guess I just hope for you that the saves don't break or they release a patch.

[Sky_walker]

Play sandbox if you don't want contracts.

Other than that: You should be able to migrate your save from career to sandbox just fine with some clever text editing.

[Justin Kerbice]

Making Contracts optional is a ridiculous idea. We have two modes: Sandbox and Career. Science is just one tiny aspect of Career mode, Contracts are another one.

Tiny ? Are you really sure ?

AFAIK science is EVERYTHING in career mode for now. I have probably miss something...

Anyway, why, again and again, is the need to talk about unreleased update ? Wait and see when it'll become relevant.

[vexx32]

That "for now" is really important. It's only everything because Squad can't do everything at once. Just because it's incomplete doesn't mean you should ask for it to stay incomplete forever. That's just... well, silly.

[John FX]

While nobody has said AFAIK that the next update will be save breaking, I can`t imagine a current career game being half as satisfying as a 0.24 career game.

I generally assume that my career games will die and if I want to build a system wide long term thing I should do it in sandbox.

Career games die, sandbox games live. Play accordingly.

I do not support updates being optionally reversable to preserve saved games.

[Twreed87]

Tiny ? Are you really sure ?

AFAIK science is EVERYTHING in career mode for now. I have probably miss something...

Anyway, why, again and again, is the need to talk about unreleased update ? Wait and see when it'll become relevant.

I'm talking about the eventual completed version of career. Right now, yes, science and the tech tree are the only things separating Career from Sandbox, but my point is that that's not how it's supposed to be. The completed vision for Career involves contracts and funds, science, reputation, probably things like astronaut training and who knows what else. And already it seems like contracts are going to dwarf science in scope. It seems like a much more complex feature with many more possibilities.

[KaBob]

I think sandbox mode should let you choose just how sandboxy it is. Then current career saves could just be sandbox mode with science enabled.

[MR4Y]

Cause if Eeloo shall become a moon of a gas giant this gas giant cant be on an intersecting orbit with another giant, so Eeloo needs movement, IF they plan to make it a moon anymore -- see Huge Blue Horizon Thread-- but thats off topic...

This is a speculation at this point, as NovaSilisko is not part of the dev team anymore.