Suggestion: change contract payouts to be more single purpose, rescale

[Glockenspiel Hero]

Ok, I've been playing career for a while and it's a huge boost to the game- very well done. However, I think the way contracts are handled seems off. For example, I had a mission on the way to the Mun for the first time. The science and fund rewards for making it to the Mun and back were less than for a simple parts test on a suborbital flight I ran while the Mun mission was in flight. There's something wrong with that.

I'd suggest breaking up contracts into three types, and having the rewards from them be primarily devoted to one of money/science/rep

1) Exploration missions like planting flags, reaching orbit/landing on new bodies, etc, should give tons of reputation. Further missions to the same body should give declining amounts

2) Science missions (Send back science data from X, temperature reading, etc) give mostly science. Ditto on declining amounts- this will stop the "Satellite with thermometer and antenna" auto-complete

3) Parts testing and satellite launching should give cash. The latter especially should be lucrative: it's how the commercial space industry makes money. Given the immense and growing costs later in the game, don't have the missions give less, but make them harder

[ddenis]

Discussion related to this topic: Contracts must not have science as reward or contracts have to be separated by reward

[Anquietas314]

Also somewhat related: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/104193-Abusable-Contract-Mechanics, although this might be sufficiently different to both to warrant its own thread