nightingale

Sorry - should've been more clear. You want to uncheck the ones named REQUIREMENT - those are the prerequisites to generating a contract. PARAMETER is the "goals" - so if you disable those, there won't be much of a contract.

On my phone, so this will be short on details... In the debug window expand the contract. You'll see a list of requirements. Click the button beside each one (I think it's an X). That will disable it and turn it red. Then force the contract system to generate new contacts by cancelling any contract.

I personally don't agree with that approach that is generally used of disallowing "old" ships from meeting new contracts. The reasons it's generally done is to prevent a lot of "farming" (like using one satellite and just moving it to meet all your "orbit" contracts). Anyway, for these contract the restriction just doesn't make sense - if you already have the RT network from before you installed the contract packs, the contract just generally won't be offered based on the contract requirements.

Also, I forgot to mention that voidheart started a contract pack mod called Better Parts Testing (see here). It doesn't look like he's been on the forums or has touched the mod on GitHub in about a month now - so it looks like it may have been abandoned.

After Contract Configurator 0.7.0 (and a new contract pack) come out, my next step will be some fixes for this contract pack (including the one you mentioned). Probably looking at 2-3 weeks, depending on whether I hit any snags in the 0.7.0 development (or real life constraints).

You can download the file directly from github and put it in GameData/ContractPacks/RemoteTech/. You'll have to cancel the current contract, and get it to regenerate (if it's not regenerating, try turning off the "active vessel" antennae on your satellites temporarily and timewarping for a bit). If you're really stuck, hit alt-f10 to go into the Contract Configurator debug window (this will void your warranty).

Been poking around that thread myself, and it's certainly given me the bug to perhaps try my hand at a part test revamp, using your idea as one of the key features. However, I'm currently working a different contract pack for the Contract Configurator 0.7.0 release, so this would be for 0.8.0 - likely looking into early April. And I may get interested in something else, so no guarantees. If someone else does want to take this on using Contract Configurator, let me know and I can tell you more about some of my ideas, as well as giving you any support with Contract Configurator itself.

Good stuff, thanks! After the next version of contract configurator comes out I'm going to do a balance pass for the contract rewards, and I'll release your changes then.

Behold! That's at least one way, although there are certainly others.

I think it's more like this scenario: Player: "I want to go to Duna. I will need x, y and z parts, which require the 3 million fund R&D upgrade, plus 1 million to build the stuff I have planned. I have 2 million. I guess it's time to take whatever contracts have the best payoff/effort ratio, even though I don't really want to do them."

I guess the question at heart is "what is Squad's design goal for contracts?" If they are meant to be a side show in the "this is how you get funds to do the stuff you actually want to do" sense, then I agree with regex - there's always going to be some level of grind. If they are meant to be missions/goals for the player, then we certainly can reduce the grind: Provide contracts that may align with the things the players already want to do (the "explore x" contracts are a a good example, although there are some issues with the implementation). This gets harder as we move into the medium and late game, as stock KSP to me seems to lose focus on what the goal is in that phase (as regex puts it, it's a sandbox game at heart). Provide alternate funding methods. I'm a believer that we should have the notion of a monthly budget from a "government" where most of the funds come from. If this concept was introduced then they could also be the ones setting the goals of the space program. Again, for a budget to work other things have to be done to make time matter. Another option for alternate funding could be through the monetization of space. Setting up commercial satellites, resource mining operations and tourist stations could all be recurring sources of revenue, rather than one-time.

I thought we were talking about a different set of laws... A Kerbal may not crash their rocket or, through inaction, allow a rocket to come to harm. A Kerbal must obey orders given it by players except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A Kerbal must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. I don't think my Kerbals have been following these laws.

I hope you're wrong, since I think there's a number of easy ways to make time matter, and even implementing some of them could make career mode better. But they do have their own system already! It's just that it's used internally to track "progress" (first launch, first landing, etc.). All they need to do is add something to track globally and then add a pretty pop up (or whatever) to say, "congrats player, you launched your first vessel!". Anyway, didn't mean to steer the thread in this direction. As far as the existing contracts, they feel too much like a sideshow - I'd like to see more "mission" contracts (as others have mentioned). Strong storylines and contracts with dependencies. Trees of contracts where you have different choices to make (perhaps by choosing one of two mutually exclusive contracts as the player). I'd also love more interesting implications for completing/not completing contracts. Random example: I have two mutually exclusive contracts - one is to do "something" (don't care what) for Rockomax, and the other is "something else" for Kerbodyne. If I choose the Kerbodyne one, I get something really good (let's say lots of funds), but I lose access to all Rockomax parts for the rest of the game. If I choose the Rockomax one, it's a "normal" contracts (just get the slim rewards). I think what I want to see more asymmetric decisions. The player has to spend more time thing... "Is it worth it to lose access to these Rockomax parts? How much are they worth to me?". This type of thing would turn career into far more than "sandbox with economy/tech unlock", which is what it sometimes feels like.

Career mode would certainly make more sense with victory conditions, but I don't like the ones you've mentioned because they seem like they would be boring and/or grindy and/or subject to just getting exploited even worse than what we have now. Since Squad has stated that career mode was supposed to be "like a tycoon game", I'll draw comparisons from there. The first thing that would really open up victory conditions would be a rivals/opponents. You could then have pre-built scenarios or overall goals for beating your rivals to typical space-race goals. Of course, I've never heard anything mentioned about AI opponents, and we're nearing feature complete, so safe to assume this is off the table and put it in the "dare to dream" bucket. You could accomplish the same thing by just setting a target date - you need to land a kerbal on the Mun by date X (or could have bronze, silver and gold for dates X/Y/Z). Now all of a sudden time matters. Bring in KCT-like behaviour and now the player starts having to make harder decisions... do I spend a week building a rocket for part testing to increase my cash flow so I can build a bigger rocket to get to the Mun? Or just launch a minimal one that doesn't include x and try to make it as is? Then the existing strategies have potential for meaning too when there's a time limit. Honestly, you can almost get this just by having steam achievements to the same effect... although I understand why they don't since you pretty much have to limit to no mods to make the steam achievements meaningful. Another thing I think would be neat for career would be allowing the player to pick their start site. Current KSP could be "easy" mode and there could be "harder" launch sites with higher latitudes. But I'm getting way off topic for this discussion. Back on topic - victory conditions make so much sense, and would potentially completely change the dynamic of contracts/strategies.

Hey, that's two guesses! But yeah, I messed up the IsMoon() function and hadn't noticed until i took that screenshot. The brackets in the targetBody field are just a side effect of the way stuff gets printed out there.

And by the way, free rep to whoever can spot the bug in the screenshot above....

In that case, maybe it would be interesting if the choice of strategy dictated the "type" of contract that is offered? Of course, the contract system would need far more breadth of contracts for that to be workable, but that certainly would make the strategies actually change how the game plays out. Then again, even at its simplest: NASA - No part test or tourism contracts (and give us government funding!!!) Private Contractor - No explore "X" contracts, harder to get science. But I think that's actually too dictatorial for the strategy system - I'd love to see that in place as an up-front choice the player makes when starting the game. A choice that they cannot take back​.

I think a few of you may get pretty excited about this one, since it's a pretty powerful system... but it's pretty technical in the details. Anyway, the major new feature for the next version is support for expressions on pretty much any attribute within a contract definition. The expression language has been seriously beefed up, and now supports: Referencing other attributes within the contract (@targetBody) Functions (HomeWorld()) - this one returns "Kerbin" (or "Earth" in RSS ) Method calls (@targetBody.Radius()) Ternary statements (@targetBody.IsMoon() ? 100.0 : 50.0) Randomization (rewardFunds = Random(100.0, 1000.0) Lists ([Mun, Minmus].Random()) C# style list filtering (AllBodies().Where(x => x.IsMoon() && x.Parent() != Kerbin).Random()) - select a random moon that doesn't orbit Kerbin The system is pretty much done, but there's lots and lots of breadth to be added, stuff like randomly selecting a vessel/station and applying filters to it to select it as the contract target. This is going to allow things like resupply contracts, contracts for station upgrading, etc. And since "no pics, no clicks", the debug window has also been upgraded to show the values after expressions have been executed:

This summarizes perfectly what I was getting at (or trying to get at) with my strategies post. It needs to be about the player having meaningful choice. That's why I say the "currency conversion" mechanic is broken - even if the exchange rates are corrected to something sane, it just isn't something the player will sit and ponder about. I agree with 5thHorseman's statement a few pages back that science shouldn't come from contracts. Or rather, most contracts. I could see a contract where say you are tasked with crashing a probe into a comet/asteroid to see what happens... for SCIENCE. But testing a part on the launchpad... no thank you! I'd say it should be: Science - existing system already in place (although it sounds like this will be revamped, and we may have another thread on this...) Funds - From contracts Reputation - Tie it into the achievement system. Getting FirstLaunch, reaching orbit, landing on the moon all give you reputation. It's built over time, and not gained because you tested a big part on the launch pad. And since I can't let go of my favourite contract whipping boy (Part Test)... How I'd fix Part Test contracts: No longer offered for trivial situations (launchpad, splashed). Involve multiple parts from one manufacturer. Require 2-4 different tests to be run at different locations (number varies based on contract prestige). Maybe do it as the same situation, but different biomes. Something like this would keep the "spirit" of the part test contracts, but remove the gaminess of accepting 5 ones that can be met on the launchpad, assembling a franken-rocket and collecting all the Funds/Science/Rep.

Funny, Arachnidek brought this up in the contract configurator thread too. Right now there's no way to tweak that - but it looks like you've found at least part of the problem. I'll take a look in the next few days and see what I can come up with.

Working as designed. Let me know if this is a high priority for you and I'll try to get it fixed... otherwise I may just wait until 1.0 - as there may be KSP bugs that prevent me from doing it, and if they plan on having landed ships for rescue missions, then surely it'll work right in 1.0.

Goodness, these are subjects I've given lots of thought to, and I don't think I can fit everything in one post. I'll focus on just strategies and wrap around to contracts later. First, let's get the obvious out of the way: as they currently are, strategies are completely game breaking. From what I can tell, the idea being strategies was for them to be interesting gameplay decisions. So my focus is on moving them towards that goal. Currency Conversion The entire notion of converting between the various game "currencies" does not make sense from a design point of view - or at least, it's so difficult to balance to make it not worthwhile. A few reasons: There is no late game way of spending science. Once you finish the tech tree, there is no more way to spend science - so you're end up "forced" as a player to simply take the "convert science to 'x' strategies". Reputation is almost useless. Yes, it gets the player better contracts, but that's it. Compound with the fact that once you get close to peak reputation, you actually can't get more (or rather, what you receive becomes a small fraction of what the contract says you'll get). Again, the player's decision quickly turns into "convert reputation to 'x'". My option is that currency conversion strategies should get scrapped completely and replaced with strategies that are interesting gameplay decisions. Strategy Balance Each strategy right now has a "bad" half and a "good" half. For example, "get less science / get more funds" is one strategy. I don't necessarily think this needs to be the case - as the fact that you can pick only one strategy per category is a limiting factor. If you give enough interesting/varied choices to the player within a category, it will become an interesting decision to pick which one they want. Ideally these strategies should be things that aren't min/max-able. Giving more funds isn't interesting. Doing something that makes your rockets "more better" is interesting. Anyway, the point is - I'm not going to necessarily provide "drawbacks" to these strategies, but it's easy enough to come up with interesting offsets to them if necessary. Cater to Different Play Styles To meet their design goal, I think strategies should cater as much as possible to different play styles. There should be some strategies that encourage/reward building space planes, others that might encourage building big stations/ships/bases. Not sure how many different "play styles" can be come up with here... but it's something that warrants consideration in my opinion. Possible Strategies Okay, here's one big list of random stuff! I won't try to categorizes these into the current categories, this is just brainstorming. Advanced areodynamics - vessels have slightly less drag. More efficient engines - engines have a slightly higher ISP. Bigger engines - engines have slightly higher thrust. Bigger panels - panels produce more power. Better panels - panels lose efficiency due to distance from the Sun slower. Better recruiting - Recruits start with some experience. Apprenticeship - Kerbals gain experience faster when on the same vessel as a 5 star of the same profession. Advanced Rovers - Rovers drive as if they were 2x heavier. Nuclear non-proliferation treaty - No LVNs allowed. Receive more rep. Girl Power - Receive more rep for missions done with all female crews Closed borders - Cannot recover vessels that are more than 10km from KSC. Receive more funds in compensation. Low tech - Science is locked at zero. Contract funds increased by x% for each unlocked tech node. Megastructures - Receive funds for stations in orbit over a certain tonnage. (Funds over time, perhaps - if time mattered) Killer asteroids - Increased funding. Increased asteroid detection. Player receives contracts to divert killer asteroids. Failing to divert them results in game over! May need a better hook to make the player want to pick this. Baby's awake now, so I'm out of time - I could easily come up with dozens more in this vein. Some of these ideas are good, some are pretty random. The point is though - strategies don't need to be "convert x into y at a z% loss". They can be so much better! Oh, and also, many of these are gameable - so we have to pretend certain assumptions are true: Changing strategies has a cost - perhaps they take time to change over Time in KSP matters (otherwise we need another way to penalize changing strategies)

Awesome, sounds good. If this feature's there, I'd definitely need support for #3 though.

That sounds like it may do it. You need either of the two top tier antennaes unlocked (I think they are the KR-7 or GX-128). If you do have those, hopefully the contract should come up again. I assume that while shuffling stuff around from switching trees that stuff can get temporarily disabled - so that alone may explain why it it got dropped. For the next version of Contract Configurator I'll somehow change the message to give some idea of why the contract was "revoked". If you're still having issues (ie. that contract is not coming up again), please send me your save file and I'll take a peek.

Hey taniwha, my next contract pack is going to involve a new profession, and I'm planning on having KerbalStats as a dependency rather than having to solve the profession persistence problem myself. A few questions for you, although some are more about adding experience traits in general: If I add a new trait and DO NOT have KerbalStats I assume will "regenerate" professions for Kerbals in an existing save. So if a user installs my mod with a new trait and KerbalStats at the same time, professions will be reshuffled. If they install KerbalStats first, start KSP and save, then install my mod, things will be happy. Can you think of a better way, or will I just need to have BIG RED TEXT warning users about this? Do you plan to have KerbalStats do anything with the professions of the starting 3 when starting a new game. Specifically, I'm concerned that adding a new profession would change what "the 3" start with - although I haven't yet tested this - maybe Squad has magic to handle this already. I'd like the profession that I'm adding to not come up automatically for new recruits (it'll be assigned in a different way, through code). Any chance you'd have something in KerbalStats's profession module to prevent a specific profession from being assigned automatically to a new Kerbal? Or will I end up needing to code this one myself?