Abusable Contract Mechanics

[Anquietas314]

Yes, a decoupler adds a tiny bit of extra mass. And if you're willing to spend a tiny bit more you can add a second probe core on the booster and deorbit it.

My point was that the mass and cost was unnecessary. Also, suppose the booster is very low on fuel? Then you can't deorbit it and it's quite likely that adding more fuel would significantly increase the cost of the rocket (rocket equation). Having a button you click to indicate you think you're done requires no additional mass or cost to be applied to the rocket, and also solves the problem quite neatly.

[CaptainKipard]

I've not played with contracts much, so I can't add a lot to the discussion, but I've noticed some exploitable mechanics too, and I'm just voicing my support. Go team.

[Kerbart]

Simple: decouple the satellite from the booster.

This is actually the most elegant solution I've seen for this problem so far. When all fuel is expended (or decoupled) the stability counter starts. And as soon as all other criteria are met the satellite can be removed from player control and you get paid.

No more exploiting of the satellite contracts and no risk of stranding your delivery vehicle in orbit.

The "decoupler" would be a clampotron jr. Wait 10 seconds, dock again. Profit!

[Anquietas314]

The "decoupler" would be a clampotron jr. Wait 10 seconds, dock again. Profit!

Also a valid reason why that doesn't work

[aeTIos]

Just thinking, what about making the contract long-term, e.g. the satellite has to stay in orbit for a minimum of 1 year, and you get paid over time? That way you can't re-use it. Also, you could somehow link the vessel to the mission, for example, you have to designate the mission as being this particular one. Not sure how that would work for multi-launches, though.

[Tex_NL]

... the satellite has to stay in orbit for a minimum of 1 year, and you get paid over time? ...

One word: BRILLIANT!

[CaptainKipard]

I think remember reading somewhere that there's some new regulation enforcing self-deorbiting for all new satellites. I don't remember exactly. Sooo the "no fuel" option doesn't sound good to me. Also it's a bit hacky.

I like the long term orbit idea, with penalties for premature cancellation.

[Tw1]

Just thinking, what about making the contract long-term, e.g. the satellite has to stay in orbit for a minimum of 1 year, and you get paid over time? That way you can't re-use it. Also, you could somehow link the vessel to the mission, for example, you have to designate the mission as being this particular one. Not sure how that would work for multi-launches, though.

I too would support introducing long term contracts. There could be a mechanism for 'research' contracts if you have a station or base with the right parts and kerbals.

But, sucking to satellites for now, I think some could run for a few years, ideally, balanced SOI Kerbin gets a start network, that you they paid for, but doesn't case saves to get over cluttered.

Then again, I've been rationalizing the terminate flight button as another 'stop tracking type thing.

Edited December 21, 2014 by Tw1

[aeTIos]

Also I just realized that this would merge perfectly with the "Failure" penalty in the contract, plus it would make satellites viable.

Edited December 21, 2014 by aeTIos

[Anquietas314]

Just thinking, what about making the contract long-term, e.g. the satellite has to stay in orbit for a minimum of 1 year, and you get paid over time? That way you can't re-use it. Also, you could somehow link the vessel to the mission, for example, you have to designate the mission as being this particular one. Not sure how that would work for multi-launches, though.

While in theory this is a good idea, I've had several contracts that required me to put a satellite in an orbit which was very unlikely to stay there for any significant length of time (high chance of encountering Mun for example). It would be quite difficult to prevent those from happening in general, plus... how do I know this is not what the company requesting the satellite wanted anyway?

[Tex_NL]

There is another benefit in the 'long duration' solution.

In my opinion currently the satellite missions are financially way too over powered. Whenever I am strapped for cash I do a few quick and easy satellites and I have all the funds I need. Paying the same amount spread over a year would make them much better balanced.

[devils advocate]Of course one could time warp a few years.[/devils advocate]

[Anquietas314]

Tex_NL: in terms of time investment the satellite contracts aren't really that far off balanced. The problem really is that they pay well over 10 times the launch costs in many cases, but then again as you do more of them the profit margin for doing them drops quite substantially. Plus, contracts as a whole are quite unbalanced at the moment; if that were fixed I imagine the satellite balance would be too.

[Tex_NL]

A simple low Kerbal orbit satellite contract paying over 150.000 and a Mun exploration paying a total of about the same. I can't really call that balanced.

[CaptainKipard]

While in theory this is a good idea, I've had several contracts that required me to put a satellite in an orbit which was very unlikely to stay there for any significant length of time (high chance of encountering Mun for example). It would be quite difficult to prevent those from happening in general, plus... how do I know this is not what the company requesting the satellite wanted anyway?

Are you saying that the contract told you to create an orbit that crosses Muns SoI? Or did you just suspect it might? What does "high chance" mean? It'll either cross it some time or not.

The relevant numbers are easy to determine This is a balance problem, not a problem with the mechanic. I'm pretty sure KSP has a range of Apo/Peri-apsises in the contract system that can be tweaked.

[Anquietas314]

Are you saying that the contract told you to create an orbit that crosses Muns SoI? Or did you just suspect it might? What does "high chance" mean? It'll either cross it some time or not.

The relevant numbers are easy to determine This is a balance problem, not a problem with the mechanic. I'm pretty sure KSP has a range of Apo/Peri-apsises in the contract system that can be tweaked.

The orbit didn't immediately cross the Mun's SoI, but given the nature of the game even if the contract specified a perfectly mun-synchronous orbit that would never intersect, it's very, very unlikely you would be able to match the semi-major axis of that orbit perfectly; eventually it would intersect. Also: I specified that time was a factor in that probability. It's difficult to know for certain whether an orbit will have an encounter with Mun after 20-100 orbits, both because it's a pain to use a maneuver node to look that far ahead, and because floating point errors will slightly change the orbit over time - even on rails.

And the difficulty is not as simple as that - there are orbits with an apoapsis/periapsis as far out as Mun which never the less will never intersect Mun's SoI. Highly elliptical inclined orbits are a good example of this.

Edited December 21, 2014 by armagheddonsgw

[CaptainKipard]

Highly elliptical inclined orbits are a good example of this.

Fixed. Eccentricity is not relevant here.

I should have specified I meant low e orbits below or above the Mun SoI.

Edited December 22, 2014 by Cpt. Kipard

[Anquietas314]

Fixed. Eccentricity is not relevant here.

I should have specified I meant low e orbits below or above the Mun SoI.

Actually, eccentricity is VERY relevant here. a polar orbit at mun's distance from kerbin does intersect mun's SoI.

[CaptainKipard]

Actually, eccentricity is VERY relevant here. a polar orbit at mun's distance from kerbin does intersect mun's SoI.

Oh I just understood what you were saying. Ignore me.

I've just thought about it more and it's really difficult to think of an algorithm for avoiding Muns orbit for all cases without restricting the orbits too much.

Edited December 22, 2014 by Cpt. Kipard

[SkyRender]

The main reason why people tend to abuse the spammable contracts is that, quite frankly, a lot of the other options are not viable or even remotely as rewarding. Do an aerial survey that will take at least an hour of real time and reward you less than something you can do in less than a minute with science spam? No thank you. Do a mission to Duna that requires you to wait for a planetary alignment 200 days from now? I'll spam the Mun and Minmus science contracts, thanks.

I think a lot (and I do mean a LOT) of the annoyance with the early contracts could be resolved just by putting Duna and Eve's starting points in their orbits closer to a Kerbin alignment. As it stands, Duna doesn't align until half a Kerbin year after the game starts, and Eve takes until some time in the second Kerbin year. That's a long wait, even with time acceleration to skip ahead.

[Bill Phil]

Yeah. Maybe some baseline could be used... A certain number of Minmus transfers maybe...

[thereaverofdarkness]

Fix for flag thing: first flag goes anywhere, later flags must either be placed in a specific biome (each biome is only used once for this per game) or to a specific location on the body. The more specific flag-planting contracts will show up more later and will pay better.

Another method to get multiple satellite contracts (done this twice): accept more than one and complete all from the same launch. Easy if they are all around the same parent body.

Edited December 22, 2014 by thereaverofdarkness

[allmhuran]

So I'm playing KSP again.

I like the idea of contracts that pay out over time. This could work for satellite as well as base contracts, although early on the base contracts hopefully don't get too long or you'll quickly run out of kerbals.

I also think Skyrender has an excellent point. The "take surface sample here, here and here" or "take crew report flying there, there and there" contracts do take way more time investment than the others for not comparably way more reward.

As far as the "return science from x" contract "exploit", I don't think it's much of an exploit. If I choose to leave a flight in orbit around a body shouldn't I benefit from that? It's costing me resources to leave it there (the resources I haven't gotten back from recovery) and potentially it's costing me Kerbals too. While that's probably not enough of a cost, I hope that as things develop a little more the "problem" is fixed by increasing that cost, not by requiring me to launch a whole new flight back to the same exact place.

I just wish there was a better UI for showing what the requirements of a contract are, both in the contract screen and when in flight. Scrolling up and down a ridiculously narrow text box that is also not tall enough and has teeny little text looking for extremely specific sets of instructions that look a lot like all of the other instructions in the list is horrendous. I will happily "exploit" the easy contracts as long as the harder ones are harder mostly because of bad UI design instead of difficult gameplay.

Edited December 22, 2014 by allmhuran

[Rusty6899]

I think that the "science data from space" contracts problem could be solved by making a couple of adjustments.

It's important that newer players get to play these "easier" lucrative contracts as they are just starting out, but I think there should be a set limit to the number of times they can be used.

After that maybe there could be more restrictive stipulations included in the contracts. E.g. Mystery goo study between 100,000 and 110,000 over Kerbin.

This would mean that a player could save time by building a space station with a Lab and a small probe capable of undocking, moving to a new orbit to perform an experiment and then redocking. It would also require refuelling periodically.

It would still provide a steady stream of funds, but the player would have to set up the infrastructure to exploit it to its full potential and it would provide a new function for space stations.

It isn't a perfect solution, but it may be better than what we have now. A limit to how often these contracts came up could also help. Maybe if you accepted one of these contracst it wouldn't come up again until 3 different contracts had been completed.

[Rusty6899]

I think a lot (and I do mean a LOT) of the annoyance with the early contracts could be resolved just by putting Duna and Eve's starting points in their orbits closer to a Kerbin alignment. As it stands, Duna doesn't align until half a Kerbin year after the game starts, and Eve takes until some time in the second Kerbin year. That's a long wait, even with time acceleration to skip ahead.

Well, the obvious problem with that is that Duna and Eve transfer windows come about pretty infrequently. If new players take a while to get off their feet they could well miss the first transfer window and then they'd be waiting a fair while to make use of the Duna/Ike/Eve/Gilly contacts, which are typically the easiest interplanetary contracts.

I'm guessing advanced players could manage to make it to Eve without a direct transfer window for a little extra delta-V, or at least trying it would offer a nice challenge.

[Anquietas314]

I'm guessing advanced players could manage to make it to Eve without a direct transfer window for a little extra delta-V, or at least trying it would offer a nice challenge.

Technically you can get anywhere at any time, it's just that trying to do it (far enough) outside the transfer window is very, very expensive. A 5km/s transfer during the window could very easily become a 20km/s transfer if you're far enough outside the window - and that's the best case.