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[0.90.0] Fine Print vSTOCK'D - BETA RELEASE!!! (December 15)


Arsonide

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Hi Arsonide,

First off I love the extra contracts your mod gives and congrats on being integrated into stock in the next update! I have run into a bug though. I accept a rover waypoint contract for one near kerbin, and when I reach one waypoint it immediately completes the contract and gives me the bonuses for reaching the other waypoints as well. I don't know if this is how its supposed to work but it seems a little too easy to get so much roots and science from driving for a minute.

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Hi Arsonide,

First off I love the extra contracts your mod gives and congrats on being integrated into stock in the next update! I have run into a bug though. I accept a rover waypoint contract for one near kerbin, and when I reach one waypoint it immediately completes the contract and gives me the bonuses for reaching the other waypoints as well. I don't know if this is how its supposed to work but it seems a little too easy to get so much roots and science from driving for a minute.

The rover contract is a search mission. You got lucky and found the right point on your first try. This is intended behavior. Initially the rover contract only gave you credit for waypoints you explored up until you found the correct point. This resulted in people feeling kind of cheated if they got lucky and found the first point quickly but the mission was on another planet like Eve. They'd fly all the way out there, and only get credit for one point. As a result, people requested credit for all of the points once they found the right one, and I implemented it.

However, this is also not ideal, as it results in player confusion. I tend to get bug reports from people that got the right point on their first try. Fortunately I do have a solution for this in mind. Unfortunately you will have to wait and see what it is. :D

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TAC LS calculates the LS resources used since the kerbal appeared. I have had several Kerbals INSTANTLY die when I got within 2.3Km because they ran out of supplies. So sure you can wait YEARS to go rescue them but once you enter range and LS updates they die.

EDIT: I do recall the mod thread mentioning this problem when contracts were added and I thought the mod author said something about increasing the supplies on a kerbal to allow for extended EVAs. But unless something else changed in that lastest TAC LS patch kerbals for rescue mission die if you wait to long to pick them up.

It is off topic for this thread but I wanted to point out that this is incorrect.

TACLS tracks resource consumption from the first time that you get within 2.3km of the Kerbal. I have seen others have the same problem because their orbit got within 2.3 km but it took a few more orbits before they got a nice encounter that they liked. Keep this is mind, and keep your orbit away from the Kerbal until you are ready to intercept them and you should be fine.

If that is not what happened in your case, or if it still seems wrong, please post a bug report on my thread after reading the instructions in my signature (I will need a log file). Thanks!

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I really like new contracts and contract types, on the other hand, it somehow spoiled .25 for me. The problem is, that I didn't even landed on Mun or other kelestial body and I have everything in tech tree discovered. The main issue I see:

a) enhanced spaceplane capabilities in .25 (i.e. parts from space plane+)

B) ability to trade science for money using "strategies"

( c) stage recovery mod (itself perfectly fine and logical) )

Despite the fact that I have mods to make KSP harder (i.e. TAC Life Support, RemoteTech) the result is that simple "Aerial Survey" missions and "Satellite Deployments" around Kerbin (or Mun) can give you thousands and thousands of science for next to no cost.

Typical satellite lunch to Keosynchronous orbit or to Mun, costs me some 4-5k and reward is 100.000 credits, and hundreds of science. For "Aerial Survey" missions it is even worst, they are just mundane (take some 20-30 minutes) with bit capable plane - make 2-3 strato jumbs to come to right area, find waypoins jumps elsewhere, cost for such mission is essentially just kerosene (1500 funds for enough fuel to fly around planet twice at least) but reward is 100.000 funds + 100 science - with outsourced R&D you may get "just" 80.000 funds and 700 science from single flight... that doesn't make much sense.

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I really like new contracts and contract types, on the other hand, it somehow spoiled .25 for me. The problem is, that I didn't even landed on Mun or other kelestial body and I have everything in tech tree discovered. The main issue I see:

a) enhanced spaceplane capabilities in .25 (i.e. parts from space plane+)

B) ability to trade science for money using "strategies"

( c) stage recovery mod (itself perfectly fine and logical) )

Despite the fact that I have mods to make KSP harder (i.e. TAC Life Support, RemoteTech) the result is that simple "Aerial Survey" missions and "Satellite Deployments" around Kerbin (or Mun) can give you thousands and thousands of science for next to no cost.

Typical satellite lunch to Keosynchronous orbit or to Mun, costs me some 4-5k and reward is 100.000 credits, and hundreds of science. For "Aerial Survey" missions it is even worst, they are just mundane (take some 20-30 minutes) with bit capable plane - make 2-3 strato jumbs to come to right area, find waypoins jumps elsewhere, cost for such mission is essentially just kerosene (1500 funds for enough fuel to fly around planet twice at least) but reward is 100.000 funds + 100 science - with outsourced R&D you may get "just" 80.000 funds and 700 science from single flight... that doesn't make much sense.

Outsourced R&D is brokenly overpowered; this is generally recognised. See the Sane Strategies mod for a nerf.

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I really like new contracts and contract types, on the other hand, it somehow spoiled .25 for me. The problem is, that I didn't even landed on Mun or other kelestial body and I have everything in tech tree discovered. The main issue I see:

a) enhanced spaceplane capabilities in .25 (i.e. parts from space plane+)

B) ability to trade science for money using "strategies"

( c) stage recovery mod (itself perfectly fine and logical) )

Despite the fact that I have mods to make KSP harder (i.e. TAC Life Support, RemoteTech) the result is that simple "Aerial Survey" missions and "Satellite Deployments" around Kerbin (or Mun) can give you thousands and thousands of science for next to no cost.

Typical satellite lunch to Keosynchronous orbit or to Mun, costs me some 4-5k and reward is 100.000 credits, and hundreds of science. For "Aerial Survey" missions it is even worst, they are just mundane (take some 20-30 minutes) with bit capable plane - make 2-3 strato jumbs to come to right area, find waypoins jumps elsewhere, cost for such mission is essentially just kerosene (1500 funds for enough fuel to fly around planet twice at least) but reward is 100.000 funds + 100 science - with outsourced R&D you may get "just" 80.000 funds and 700 science from single flight... that doesn't make much sense.

This is kind of an issue with how contracts are set up in general right now. Strategies really throw a lot of cash at you. The thing about the contracts is that as you move away from Kerbin, they still have to be worth the time and effort, and nerfing their Kerbin side of the scale would shift the scale such that doing missions to put satellites on Moho or fly aerial surveys on Jool would no longer be worth the effort involved.

Fortunately for you, every single aspect of the rewards is configurable. If you pop open FinePrint.cfg you can tweak these values as low as you'd like to. If you do find a better balance, let me know!

Contract to put a satellite into a low orbit around the Sun

one of the requirements is to be in line of sight of a location

that location appears to be a dish on the surface of the sun

The icon is an abstract representation of a point you need to be situated over. Not an actual dish. There are theoretical purposes to having a satellite in stationary orbit over the sun, and I can't really think of any abstract icon that would better represent a stationary orbit than a dish.

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I got a request to build a station that contains "a viewing cupola at the facility". I haven't the slightest clue what that is. Can anyone help?

it is the cockpit with the fancy windows. looks large and flatish.

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it is the cockpit with the fancy windows. looks large and flatish.

Ah thanks. I am playing with free automatic R&D purchases off so I only buy the parts I can afford or need to complete a design. I had unlocked the node but not actually purchased the Copula Command module so it didn't show up in VAB. It's that cockpit I often use for stations, but like so many parts I don't recall their name since most are just a few letters and numbers. Instead I remember what they look like and what they do since VAB display is icons and not words.

Despite the fact that I have mods to make KSP harder (i.e. TAC Life Support, RemoteTech) the result is that simple "Aerial Survey" missions and "Satellite Deployments" around Kerbin (or Mun) can give you thousands and thousands of science for next to no cost.

Typical satellite lunch to Keosynchronous orbit or to Mun, costs me some 4-5k and reward is 100.000 credits, and hundreds of science. For "Aerial Survey" missions it is even worst, they are just mundane (take some 20-30 minutes) with bit capable plane - make 2-3 strato jumbs to come to right area, find waypoins jumps elsewhere, cost for such mission is essentially just kerosene (1500 funds for enough fuel to fly around planet twice at least) but reward is 100.000 funds + 100 science - with outsourced R&D you may get "just" 80.000 funds and 700 science from single flight... that doesn't make much sense.

I recommend playing at a higher difficultly. When I first saw your post my reaction was, "What!? 100K for aerial survey I get closer to 50K".

I started a new campaign with .25 because I added a bunch of new mods to the group of mods I'm using and my old game felt too much like creative mode since I had 9M in the bank and full tech tree unlocked even though I hadn't yet discovered this mod, that was purely on stock contracts. I found getting science to be extremely easy even before contracts. So for the new campaign I have it set to 50% income on Funds/Science/Reputation and 500% Penalty for Failure to ensure I actually only take contracts I'm going to complete. I also have it set so I need to buy each part from R&D before I can use it. The science income one also effects your science parts and not just contracts so R&D is a lot slower.

I play with about 30 mods so I have a lot of extra parts to purchase in the tech tree and have not had enough money to buy all of the ones I've unlocked for a while now. Also still not unlocked the full tree yet, normally by this time I'd have the thing completely unlocked. I'm sure I could use the strategy center to convert funds to science and unlock the tree but I quickly dismissed that idea since I need the Funds to actually unlock the items once the node is unlocked.

But overall there are a lot of easy contracts with high payouts. I think part of the reason is it's also suppose to be balanced for people who don't revert flights so they could loss tens of thousands in funds if not more from a few mishaps. But if you do allow reverts than odds are every mission is going to be successful and thus earn you a decent profit.

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I recommend playing at a higher difficultly. When I first saw your post my reaction was, "What!? 100K for aerial survey I get closer to 50K".

Yup. The difficulty settings are calibrated for someone who has never played KSP before. If you've got the faintest idea of what you're doing, then you should probably be playing on hard mode.

OTOH, sandbox, each to their own, there is no one true way, the only way to lose is to not have fun, etc etc.

But if you're complaining that the game is too easy when you don't have the difficulty settings cranked up...well, there's an obvious solution there.

...

Reverts in particular absolutely destroy the contract system. Financial constraints are meaningless if you can rewind time so that you never lose a single √. If you want campaign mode to be meaningful, you need to be willing to take the consequences of your mistakes. There's no financial pressure if you don't occasionally burn √100,000 on a launch failure.

Edited by Wanderfound
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So having issues with the rover contracts. I have driven all over the way points for a few of them and have yet to see anything other than a few trees here and there and some clumps of grass. Is there something bigger I should be looking for or am I supposed go and stop at each way point?

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I can't tell for certain from the pic, but most likely: are you sure that you don't have your satellite orbiting in the opposite direction from what the contract demands?

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First off, love the mod. The new contacts are a blast to play with. That said, it doesn't play nice with 6.4K RSS resize of Kerbin. The altitudes are all off, and it's giving me lots of orbital contacts before I have even achieved Orbit. I notice that this topic has been mentioned a few times on this forum but never been addressed. Does this belong in the 6.4K thread?

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So having issues with the rover contracts. I have driven all over the way points for a few of them and have yet to see anything other than a few trees here and there and some clumps of grass. Is there something bigger I should be looking for or am I supposed go and stop at each way point?

There is nothing to see, you just have to drive by the invisible point

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