[0.24][WIP] Extra Contracts

[Arsonide]

I'm pretty sure that most jet planes would be unable to fly at that altitude.

If you look at modern jet airliners then their ceiling is roughly 40,000 ft or 12,000 m so I'd suggest an easy contract being between 8 and 12 km with harder ones maybe going up to 20-25?

The contract does not require a jet plane, as it can appear on any planet with an atmosphere, even if that atmosphere doesn't include oxygen.

[Burkitt]

In my experience, in KSP on Kerbin, most jets can fly stably up to around 12,000m. Some jets can fly up to around 20,000m when travelling at very high speeds, and will have difficulty turning. Spaceplane-like jets may be able to reach around 30,000m, but on a more of a ballistic trajectory rather than controlled flight.

For Eve and Jool I'm not sure atmospheric flight is really possible in stock KSP, due to the lack of oxygen in their atmospheres. You'd need to use rocket engines, which would surely run out of fuel too fast to really get anywhere within the atmosphere?

[BudgetHedgehog]

I'll just chime in here and say that I had a contract to test a part at 24000m between 400 and 600 m/s. Getting that high and staying that slow with a turbojet took about 20 minutes and I didn't even finish it - I could get that high but once I'd slowed down, I dropped too low. So for 35km high, you'd need basically either a spaceplane or an airhog. Reconnaissance planes in real life varied from Spitfires which had a maximum operational altitude of 10km up to SR-71s with a usual height of 24km. What they translate to in scaled down Kerbin, I don't know, but I think a minimum of 7km and a maximum of 20km should be well within reach of most air reconnaissance.

Edited July 26, 2014 by ObsessedWithKSP

[Snillum101]

Right, that makes more sense. 35,000 is totally fine for a space plane with a rocket engine though you'd have probably only a few minuets of fuel to hit the waypoint. (I must admit space planes are not my forte and I suck at flying them)

I personally would find it easier to have the waypoint at a lower altitude on jet capable worlds.

Edit: what the people before me said

[Arsonide]

You guys have any idea for the other planets? Jool/Eve/Laythe/Duna? I've never really been a plane guy, so I dunno, and I want the contracts to be fun, so I want to ask people with experience.

[BudgetHedgehog]

Well, the thing is, jets make it a lot easier - higher fuel efficiency means you can take your time in completing the contract. I think they should be within cruising height of most jets which means, off the top of my head:

Kerbin - 7/20km

Laythe - 5/17km

Duna - 3/15km

Eve - 10/25km

Also, for shiggles, have one for Jool at 30km

They're complete guesses but should be doable with planes.

Edited July 26, 2014 by ObsessedWithKSP

[Arsonide]

Those look plausible - on Jool is that the average, minimum, or maximum height? (Sorry I need to be specific).

[Snillum101]

I guess if you wanted to go really hardcore you could require a probe to pass through a waypoint during entry into the atmosphere. Though it would probably be fairer to get them to land near to a waypoint on the ground.

[Snillum101]

Well, the thing is, jets make it a lot easier - higher fuel efficiency means you can take your time in completing the contract. I think they should be within cruising height of most jets which means, off the top of my head:

Kerbin - 7/20km

Laythe - 5/17km

Duna - 3/15km

Eve - 10/25km

Also, for shiggles, have one for Jool at 30km

They're complete guesses but should be doable with planes.

Though without mods for storing intake air you'd only be able to use jets on Laythe and Kerbin.

[Burkitt]

I would second ObsessedWithKSP's values for Kerbin and Laythe.

For Duna, Eve and Jool, I'm really sceptical of how possible it would be to fly a stock plane between several waypoints irrespective of their altitude. I'd recommend that you test-fly them yourself before including flying contracts for those planets in the mod.

Come to think of it, flying between waypoints on the low-gravity moons like Minmus is probably easier than on Eve, Duna or Jool.

Edited July 26, 2014 by Burkitt

[BudgetHedgehog]

Though without mods for storing intake air you'd only be able to use jets on Laythe and Kerbin.

KAX has an electrical propeller, Kethane has that Turbine and there's always rocket engines. They don't need to be high TWR - the plane I was on about earlier was a beauty to fly and stayed a steady 200m/s despite having a TWR of around 0.3. So for rockets, you could easily each them with 1 or 2 x 48-7S's or similar.

EDIT

Those look plausible - on Jool is that the average, minimum, or maximum height? (Sorry I need to be specific).

Sorry, I meant it as an average. For a min/max, I'd say 15-35 or so. I've never flown in Jools atmosphere before so this is really just an educated guess.

Edited July 26, 2014 by ObsessedWithKSP

[Arsonide]

I would second ObsessedWithKSP's values for Kerbin and Laythe.

For Duna, Eve and Jool, I'm really sceptical of how possible it would be to fly a stock plane between several waypoints irrespective of their altitude. I'd recommend that you test-fly them yourself before including flying contracts for those planets in the mod.

Come to think of it, flying between waypoints on the low-gravity moons like Minmus is probably easier than on Eve, Duna or Jool.

When I say "plane" I mean a rocket with wings that it uses for lift. Wings do nothing without atmosphere. Yeah jet engines don't work on Eve, but that doesn't mean you can't fly there.

[Snillum101]

KAX has an electrical propeller, Kethane has that Turbine and there's always rocket engines. They don't need to be high TWR - the plane I was on about earlier was a beauty to fly and stayed a steady 200m/s despite having a TWR of around 0.3. So for rockets, you could easily each them with 1 or 2 x 48-7S's or similar.

EDIT

Sorry, I meant it as an average. For a min/max, I'd say 15-35 or so. I've never flown in Jools atmosphere before so this is really just an educated guess.

Fair enough, I've never flown a plane on a planet other than Kerbin so I've never had to experiment.

The first and only time I had an encounter with Jools atmosphere it went badly for me... so many brave Kerbals dead

[DMagic]

I think my science experiment contracts are ready for release. There are a few issues that I can think of, but as far as I know they will only occur very late in a career. So I think it's good enough for some initial testing.

It generates contracts asking for specific experiments and locations, rather than the very generic stock science contracts. It is configurable through the included config file; all standard stock science experiments are included except for asteroid samples.

Grab it on GitHub if you want to test it out: https://github.com/DMagic1/Science-Contracts/releases/tag/v0.1

Arsonide, if you want to combine contract mods that would be fine with me. With a few tweaks it will probably be ready for a more stable release and you can add it to your set.

[Arsonide]

If I integrate it do you mind if I modify "at a specific location" to be at a waypoint, instead of a biome?

[DMagic]

If I integrate it do you mind if I modify "at a specific location" to be at a waypoint, instead of a biome?

hmmm... tracking your vessel to see if it approaches the waypoint would be simple, but the contract completes when science data is returned or transmitted (this is another area where variety could be added, asking for transmission or recovery instead of accepting either), not when it is collected. There is actually very little that is externally visible when science data is collected, so watching for that would be a bit more complicated than watching for recovery, which triggers a game event. I suppose you could constantly monitor the vessel to check for added science data, then check to see if the most recently added data matches what you're looking for, but I'm wary of adding that kind of code which has to be running all of the time.

So I'm not sure how to measure and track both what science is collected and where. That's something that would be simple with my mod because I have full control over collection, but stock experiments would be trickier.

[porkmanvi]

Hmm, I'm running into trouble after accepting a Rover mission to chart Kerbin. The completion counter hangs at 37%, and anytime I mouseover the contract button in the top right, the game hangs for a few minutes. Checking the task manager, I see that the memory usage to KSP is going up with the cpu pegged to 50% (i.e. all of 1 core). After a few minutes it'll start working again, but by then it will have allocated anther 2-300k of RAM. Over the last hour of playing, I've got 1 GB extra memory allocated in this way. I checked KSP.log, and I get a bunch of 'Skipped frame because GfxDevice is in invalid state (device lost)' while it hangs. I hadn't seen any of these problems before starting to work on the rover contract, though I have had the mod installed for a few days (I just unlocked rovers today). Any ideas on what is going on for me?

[keenguitar]

Hmm, I'm running into trouble after accepting a Rover mission to chart Kerbin. The completion counter hangs at 37%, and anytime I mouseover the contract button in the top right, the game hangs for a few minutes. Checking the task manager, I see that the memory usage to KSP is going up with the cpu pegged to 50% (i.e. all of 1 core). After a few minutes it'll start working again, but by then it will have allocated anther 2-300k of RAM. Over the last hour of playing, I've got 1 GB extra memory allocated in this way. I checked KSP.log, and I get a bunch of 'Skipped frame because GfxDevice is in invalid state (device lost)' while it hangs. I hadn't seen any of these problems before starting to work on the rover contract, though I have had the mod installed for a few days (I just unlocked rovers today). Any ideas on what is going on for me?

I just had this bug as well and I can confirm it. The only difference is that I didn't have any completion counter show up.

[Ictiv]

Hmm, I'm running into trouble after accepting a Rover mission to chart Kerbin. The completion counter hangs at 37%, and anytime I mouseover the contract button in the top right, the game hangs for a few minutes. Checking the task manager, I see that the memory usage to KSP is going up with the cpu pegged to 50% (i.e. all of 1 core). After a few minutes it'll start working again, but by then it will have allocated anther 2-300k of RAM. Over the last hour of playing, I've got 1 GB extra memory allocated in this way. I checked KSP.log, and I get a bunch of 'Skipped frame because GfxDevice is in invalid state (device lost)' while it hangs. I hadn't seen any of these problems before starting to work on the rover contract, though I have had the mod installed for a few days (I just unlocked rovers today). Any ideas on what is going on for me?

Just a note: "Skipped frame because GfxDevice is in invalid state (device lost)" is something that gets spammed into the debug menu if you alt+tab out of the game, because the game technically runs in the background, but has no access to, well the GfxDevice. (Basically, it means that the computer doesn't bother accepting its display output, since it's in the background.) The output_log in your KSP_Data (or KSP_x64_Data if you're running the 64 bit executable) folder would probably hold more answers. Of course, it could be that something else also causes the GfxDevice error, but since you mentioned that you looked into the Task Manager, I'm assuming your checked the debug log afterwards.

[Burkitt]

I'll just chime in here and say that I had a contract to test a part at 24000m between 400 and 600 m/s. Getting that high and staying that slow with a turbojet took about 20 minutes and I didn't even finish it - I could get that high but once I'd slowed down, I dropped too low.

After getting frustrated with similar missions, I've found the easiest method is to build a plane with a TWR well above 1, fly vertically upwards until you are at the correct height and speed, perform the test, cut power, turn the plane around at apoapsis, dive about 40km straight downwards, pull up and land on the runway.

Edited July 26, 2014 by Burkitt

[porkmanvi]

Just a note: "Skipped frame because GfxDevice is in invalid state (device lost)" is something that gets spammed into the debug menu if you alt+tab out of the game, because the game technically runs in the background, but has no access to, well the GfxDevice. (Basically, it means that the computer doesn't bother accepting its display output, since it's in the background.) The output_log in your KSP_Data (or KSP_x64_Data if you're running the 64 bit executable) folder would probably hold more answers. Of course, it could be that something else also causes the GfxDevice error, but since you mentioned that you looked into the Task Manager, I'm assuming your checked the debug log afterwards.

You're right on the GfxDevice error. I only checked the log after putting ksp in the background. I still get hangs when I mouseover the contract button, but it also does it after I've cancelled all rover contracts. Logs gave no clues to a problem. I'll start checking out other mods to see if I can find a culprit.

[Arsonide]

Today's work is taking my new aerial mission and porting it to what will become the new rover mission replacement, then deleting the old rover mission. Any bugs that apply to that older "drive in a straight line" mission do not apply really, as they are getting fixed by the purge, and yeah the graphics error was not an error, that happens when you alt tab.

Edited July 26, 2014 by Arsonide

[Arsonide]

New rover missions are in. Basically a ton of waypoints spawn in this smallish 20 kilometer area, and technically to complete the mission you only need to drive by one of them. The rest are all red herrings, so you'll have to search through them.

Which basically makes it:

[Algiark]

I don't know about you, but judging from this screenshot, site names made of jumbles letters and numbers gets tiring real quick. Maybe give the names a letter in the front to better distinguish them from each other, like A-4TBSKX and B-66TTSY corresponding to the contract? (So if there's 8 sites, the name would be A-this, B-that, C-this, D-that and so on)

Also, there's no need to repeat "to check it for anomalous data" for every contract checklist, since it's already mentioned in the mission header.

Don't forget to update the first post once you get it done! Can't wait to play this

[Arsonide]

The sites do distinguish from each other, the thing is that rover clusters are all considered one site, so they all have the same name. I will change the summary text to show instead the site in the title of the contract itself, and the individual waypoints will be Beta Site, Alpha Site, etc. Thank you for the suggestion.