I know that's a rather negative title and I think Kerbal is really good and I'm really enjoying it. However I think the new contracts system follows the wrong paradigm, for example. "Test Rockomax BACC Solid Fuel Booster on a sub-orbital trajectory over kerbin" Altitude 78k to 83k. This is exactly what I don't want to be doing when playing the game, this is classic hoop-jumping assessment philosophy, you end up designing all of your missions just to do these silly contracts losing sight of any bigger picture. When Kennedy said "We choose to go to the moon" in 1962 he didn't say "but only if you use a stack decoupler between an altitude of 10 and 30km". Why? Because he trusted his engineers to figure out all the details and do the mission themselves. This is what IMO contracts should be all about, they should be about being given an abstract and high level task to do however you want. Want to use 10 or no decouplers? Fine. Solid or liquid boosters? No one cares. Just get it done, on budget, on time. Moreover if there were a hard mode where money was tight then you would have to be very careful, and maybe turn down contracts because you calculate they can't be done for a profit. Right now it feels like WOW, just grind for coins. Here are some examples of the type of mission I am talking about. 1) Get above x altitude (which is already in the game which is cool) 2) Orbit Kerbin 3) Place this object in a specific orbit, say circular, 100km, 23 degrees inclination (there should be loads of these which you would want to build a standard platform to do) [also on that note how about a design fee? Every time you design a new ship you pay a fee proportional to the number of components used so you want to do some calculations and then build a standard platform and use it for a long time and then, if it proves not powerful enough or you think you have a good cheaper alternative, then you redesign a new ship] 4) land a kerbal on (wherever) and return them safely 5) send a probe to (wherever) 6) Capture an asteroid. Also the amount of money you are paid for a particular mission could go down over time, so at the beginning you can make a monster to lift a few kilos but in the end you have to calculate very carefully exactly how much dv you will need. It would be great to use a couple of lifts from a cheap, standard platform and assemble in orbit and find that was cheaper than designing a monster from scratch. I want to feel like a senior engineer planning a mission when I play this game, not like a junior engineer who does legwork all day, if I want to do that I'll just get a job. I feel a worrying amount of time has gone into this system and it's not very good game design. In fact (and this is a larger issue) I think Kerbal is an amazing simulator and not a great game. Why are the astronauts measured in stupidity? What does that mean? That's a joke in the place of a meaningful gameplay mechanic. That's rather my complaint about a lot of the "gamey" aspects, there's too many jokes and not enough of an attempt to make a challenging and engaging experience. I'd be very interested to know what others think, thank you.
