Marclev

For anybody that's interested, I've now released this as a mod. I've also enabled interplanetary rescue operations (again in the code from stock, but never seem to appear) while I was at it. Link: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/97386-0-25-Lost-in-Space-v-0-1-%28Grand-Tour-Interplanetary-Rescue-Contracts%29

Download! https://github.com/Marclev78/LostInSpaceMod/releases/ Source Code: https://github.com/Marclev78/LostInSpaceMod/ Hi and welcome to my mod! WHAT DOES IT DO? This mod enables the following two contract types, that are already part of the KSP code base but for whatever reason not made available as part of the campaign: - Grand Tours, where you have to visit multiple bodies as part of a single mission. - Interplanetary rescue missions, where you get a Kerbal orbiting a body other than Kerbin and you have to rescue them. Needless to say both of these are quite good fun and in my opinion make the game more interesting. SCREENSHOTS 1. A grand tour contract: 2. An interplanetary rescue contract: NOTES 1. From the testing I've done, everything works fine. But as always with "Version 0.1", it may not work flawlessly! If you let me know anything that doesn't work, I'll try my best to fix it. Also I don't know why Squad doesn't make these availably by default, but as I said, they seem to work fine. The rewards for the grand tour seem a bit low perhaps, I should be able to adjust those if people give me feedback. 2. Grand tour is disabled in the stock game from what I can tell, full stop, but I believe there may be a debug option to generate such a contract, this mod makes them available as normal contracts from the mission screen. 3. The interplanetary rescue missions in stock, according the code, would become available with exceptional prestige and when you "complete" a planet (no idea what that means), but I've never seen them, and I've put over 700 hours into the game so far, with multiple careers completed. Seeing as I haven't seen any mention of them on the web, I think it's a safe bet that they're effectively locked in the stock game. Either way, this mod removes any special requirements around them so you'll start seeing them the moment you've reached a given planet in the career without any further effort. 4. Having played around a bit with this, I can vouch that the interplanetary rescue contracts are very good fun and can present something of a challenge (I saw a contract to rescue a Kerbal from an altitude of 10k over Minmus for example). LICENCE This is public domain, if you want you may grab the source code from GitHub and do with it whatever you like. By the same token I accept absolutely no responsibility for any unexpected side affects caused by this mod. INSTALLATION Just copy the contents of the GameData folder into your KSP GameData folder and start the game. The new contracts will become available just through playing, same as any other contract. Download! https://github.com/Marclev78/LostInSpaceMod/releases/ Source Code: https://github.com/Marclev78/LostInSpaceMod/

Yes, I'm intending to, but needs a bit of cleanup first.

You've been warned by the title! But best I can tell noones mentioned anything about this yet, so I feel sort of a bit proud for spotting it ... The "SDK" for .25 (i.e. the library you import to make a mod) appears to have a contract template in it called "Grand Tour". It's hard coded to not be available, but overriding the "Meets requirements" setting (i.e. in a quick mod I made to test this out) suddenly gives me a new contract when playing the game: "Grand tour of 4 celestial bodies"! No idea why it's disabled by default (I assume that it's not stable yet?), but hopefully this is a sign that we're getting grand tour contracts in the next version! And a screenshot to prove I'm not crazy:

Hi, Having looked all over the internet and forums, I can't find anything to help me with this, so ... Does anybody know how I would go about, in a mod, spawning a Kerbal from nothingness? i.e. just have him appear from one moment to the next (let's assume I know what to call him and where I want him to spawn)? Think along the lines of the "rescue a kerbal from orbit" contracts that you get in career mode. From what I can tell it's probably something to do with creating a new config node at runtime and then getting that to instantiate the new kerbal for me, but I don't even know where to begin with that... Many thanks in advance!

Hi, Playing around trying to make a contract mod. For testing purposes, how would I get rid of all stock contracts so that I only see my custom contract appear? Edit: Mods, please can you move this into the Plugin Development Help and Support sub forum? Thanks, Marc.

Sure, I'm posting the feedback in the hope that something gets done about it.

Not much to add except to approve of the Scrooge McDuck reference!

I agree. I think it took me a few more than 3 launches but not that much more. I was just dissapointed as I was having a great time with the challenge and from one moment to the next it dissapeared. It was a promising enough start though, I hope Squad can find a way to maintain the level of tension that comes from only having limited funds for longer in a future update (although at some point you do then obviously just want to build crazy stuff).

Umm ... yes, well thank you for the contribution. To be fair, I did put a tl;dr bit at the end for people who didn't want to read the entire thing...

I actually clapped when I read this. Great news. Here's hoping that they add some mission types on top of it as well. Rescuing Kerbal's from other planets would be nice...

Ok, having posted a thread about how great hard mode was a few days ago... With a rapidly dwindling amount of credits of 15,000 I launched a rickety contraption of a Mun lander for 14,500 in a last ditch make or break attempt to boost my credit rating with the lucrative first Mun Exploration contract. With a hope and a prayer it made it there, Jeb transmitted the orbital crew report and EVA, and then touched down, transmitted the surface crew report (with which the mission was complete) and got the surface EVA and surface sample. I then checked the available contracts and found already a "collect science from space around the Mun", and "collect science from the Mun surface" so figured I'd pick that up on the return leg, along with a "collect science from space around Kerbin" for good measure. The makeshift Mun lander somehow made it back to Kerbin with fumes left in the tank and I recovered the craft to see that I now had over 300,000 funds available!!! Since then I've been raking in money as even without a permanent Mun base or satellite I can accept the flag and science missions and sent my el-cheapo Mun lander up for 15k to collect combined rewards of over 50k. I haven't bothered to go to the other bodies yet, but I'm assuming they'd give an even bigger return on investment. tl;dr: The point of this post, is that the game balance on hard mode is great up until you manage to land on the Mun and after that seems completely in the players' favour. Surely it should be the other way around (i.e. easy to start with and then get progressively harder, not tough to start with as you haven't got enough funds and then basically sandbox as you collect money left right and center)??

Just came on here to say this ... can't remember the last time there was any tension with a mission, now every hit of the space bar is a moment of nail biting terror. One wrong move could bankrupt the space program, with no going back. Wonderful! No doubt it'll ease up as I acquire more funding and science, but what with having to pay for new technologies now, with any luck that won't be for a while.

Home world?

A few versions ago I was docking together hugely inefficient ships in orbit and launching elaborate refueling mssions, just to get to another planet, and even then maybe need a rescue mission to get back. Today I can get to anyplace in the system and back (well, maybe not Eve!) without refueling or orbital docking. I definitely had more fun when I couldn't even begin imagining doing that though. The game felt a lot bigger. Anyhow, realising this got me thinking... What things do people most wish they could "unlearn" from Ksp" to make the game more fun?

Just playing around with this. Looking a contract to place a satellite in keliostationary orbit of the Sun. One of the conditions is "keep line of sight with Dawton's Emitter". What's a "Dawton's Emitter"?!

What's wrong with KER now? Removing it just adds frustration as you have to faff around switching between map view and flight view while trying to work out what's going on from the limited information the game gives you. I find the game pretty frustrating to play without KER, not easier or harder, but really annoying. That and precise manoeuvre node and enhanced navball, just to make everything slicker. Mechjeb I agree with.

I think it was before my time with KSP, or at least I don't remember it, but why did everybody have an issue with the launch tower when it was there? Occasionally it can be a pain to position launch stabilisers and a big tower to just hold onto your rockets seems like it'd be a really good idea!

Several others have noted this, but I'd hate the OP to waste money so will contribute as well ... An SSD makes a negligible difference with KSP at best. I moved the game off my "big mechanical HD" onto my SSD boot drive to try and improve loading times and I can't honestly say I notice a difference, which is certainly disappointing. SSDs are great, but unfortunately not for KSP.

Yep, Alt+ to timewarp. As someone else said above though, always quick save before you do this, it does have a habit of going very wobbly occasionally.

Up until very recently, the way I've always transferred to other planets has been to first get into solar orbit, and then drag a manoeuvre node around until I get an intercept. Very recently however,I've been experimenting with a continuous burn from LKO to get an intercept orbit. I'm not even in a transfer window, but even so, the new approach is very noticeably more efficient than the previous one. Anybody know why?

Getting to other planets typically involves waiting for a transfer window, and then either increasing or decreasing one's orbit until it intercepts the target, I.e. A Hohmann Transfer. One thing that's always slightly bothered me about this, it seems that no matter how big a behemoth of a rocket you build it will take the same amount of time to travel to the target (give or take a few minutes of initial burn time), as it will only work with a certain orbital velocity. So my question is, given some ludicrous amount of fuel and power (say enough to get you near light speed), how could one use it to vastly reduce the time of transit to a distant planet (e.g from 4 down to 1 years)?

Hi everybody! I've put countless hundreds of hours into this game, and probably have about everything figured out, but I'm consistently unsuccessful at one thing: How do you actually find easter eggs (obelisks, etc...)? So far, nothing has shown up from orbit ever that would look like being worth investigating further. Do you literally have to run a recon mission at near ground level over an entire planet in the hope of finding something (in which case I'm amazed anybody finds these things at all), or is there an easier way?

"after what milestone can you call yourself an expert" When you find yourself spending more time reading and posting in the game forums than actually playing the game.