tater

YADC (yet another dumb contract).

Is career still broken in all the Kopernicus variants?

Once you unlock the grabber, many become missions where you have to return the pod to Kerbin. For reasons. Dumb. If it were a real craft, then the mission could be repair (something an engineer could fix, giving them a role), or refueling, etc. If it to "recover science," then collect science and put it in your own pod. Like pretty much all the contracts in KSP, these are poorly executed.

It would also be nice if they wouldn't place these contracts in every SoI you've even sent a probe to, perhaps requiring a flag plant to open that SoI to rescues. They should also be rare. I proposed a long time ago that the astronauts not be floating free, but have a craft, and now they gave a pod. It would be better if they had an actual craft. Command pod, fuel tank, engine, RCS, docking port, etc. Then the fuel and RCS are be drained (hence stranded). The recover missions might then involve refueling, then deorbiting (if they have chutes).

Same here. I do a variant of this, I push the Kerbin SoI stuff, and start sending probes to as many places as possible given transfer opportunities. Course I play with LS, so I sort of want some later stuff to send larger ships. Past the "load up on LS supplies," I also require decent hab space for long trips. A 4 kerbal crew (min for anything past keratin for me) would get 2 pilots, an engineer, and a scientist, have 2 hithikers, plus various other crewed parts (sometimes a science lab).

Tw1, having reasons to do things that are real (in gameplay terms) always trumps "points," IMO, you could not be more correct there. In a perfect KSP, the system would be randomized on replay, and you'd need to do certain science to learn things to help you plan more advanced missions. Science to let you do stuff you want to do, and the "goal" would just be to see what the heck that cool world over there actually looks like (better terrain all around, nothing less complex than the Mun). A budget system is indeed the best, IMO. I think a combination of life support (something simple, like roverdude's new LS mod), and having "budgeted" missions (not contracts, stuff your program does as a NASA analog) pay out every XX days a subset of total funds. My idea was a Minmus Month (50 days), then have a button that skips to the next fiscal month (minmonth). Yeah, you might have to skip ahead sometimes if you spend poorly at the beginning, so what, time progresses). The real 3d party contracts would be for more immediate funding, and would work as now, but would be available more rarely in time, and expire quickly. Launch a sat, get paid (and the sat is no longer yours). Future commercial missions might repair that craft, add to it (if a station), return it, etc.

I'd change everything. A possible idea... 1. Make time matter (I've posted a few simple ways to do this, or go the complex KCT route, instead). 2. Player picks a mission (land a kerbal on the Mun, and return, for example), then gets a budget of funds, and tech points, spread out over the mission completion duration (Mun might be a 1 year goal). 3. Buying new parts likely includes missions to test them. 4. Successfully competing the mission results in Rep and the science you actually gather. The quality of mission/budget/tech points you get for the next mission is based upon your success (rep plus science).

Yeah, that makes them make sense and feel like part of a real program. A fundamental issue to me has always been the whole third party nature of contracts. NASA buys stuff from contractors, they are not paid by contractors to launch a probe to Pluto (which would be the ksp model). Kills suspension of disbelief. Imagine a ww2 combat flight sim where your mission to bomb an enemy airbase came as a contract from Pratt and Whitney. - - - Updated - - - Nice ideas arsonik. I'd perhaps tie part testing in as a way to get new tech needed for the mission as well (perhaps all parts require some test for unlocking?).

I get your point on contracts as a way of doing "real" science, but they should be designed with that in mind, and sensible. Polar orbiting sats to monitor global land use as a contract. Or for communications (no need for more than just a statement that is what it is for). This is where writing, etc matters. Hence my concentration on "story." I'm open to a complete gutting of career, frankly. I mostly play career, BTW, though I also mess with sandbox. The science buys tech thing is a problem I think. I'd rather have the goals be set more by strategies (I posed a long thing about this some other thread a while ago, and sumghai has good (different) ideas as well). So you decide that the program will concentrate XX% on Space Exploration (might be sub-divided manned/unmannded), YY% on commercial launches (sats and parts testing for funds), and ZZ% on tourism. This drives the relative abundance of missions presented. Space Exploration would not be "contracts" from 3d parties, but internal missions that would pay funds (a budget) and points to buy tech (to complete the mission). In such a paradigm I would have a massively parallel tech tree, so you'd have to spend those science and budget point carefully. So you take a manned Duna mission, you need to buy the right tech with he available tech/funds available. The goal of the mission might include specific science to be gathered, else you fail those mission subsets, and lose future funds, rep, etc (making that the "you lost" moment). Other ideas are possible.

I was happy to just watch the Marix (in the theater) right up to the explanation of people being a power source, at which point I wanted to just leave, lol. A small dialog change would have made the movie less stupid. Change the idea of people as batteries to people as neural networks used for their computing power. Throw in a line about the (wrong) notion that we only use 10% of our brains being true, because the computers are stealing the other 90% for their own use. Done. Suspension of disbelief maintained. I sort of went with Interstellar past some issues until they went to the water planet (Millers?). At that point they screwed up the GR stuff and the fact the planet should be bathed in lethal radiation so badly I had trouble watching the rest.

Two 909s is plenty to land this from a circular orbit at 10k, BTW. Regarding kneeling, is it possible to have a 2-stage leg? Maybe first "g" folds down, next "g" telescopes it. Then in reverse. Kneeling gear of a sort. Instead of a complex ramp, what about a SHORT ramp that sticks straight out just below the floor (or even) like a tongue? Then you kneel the lander until the "tongue" ends up supporting it (the whole lander inclines the plane, in other words). In the image above, imagine the area on the floor of the cargo bay with the steps was to just slide straight outside the door.

MarsOne is a scam. Aside from that, they'd basically have to pay the actual cost of doing the real mission, the tourist contracts pay about what first class to asia costs from the US vs many billions. Reasonable scientific curiosity? Test any engine on a suborbital flight over the Mun. Explain using reasonable science why an engine test would care if it is in space arbitrarily above the Mun vs arbitrarily above Minmus, Kerbin, or any other body. Every single one of those contracts is dumb. Nonsense. Suborbital requires an arbitrary height of 70km. If you need data from some particular altitude, then state it. Suborbital is silly. (sorry, I read Kerbol as Kerbin. Suborbital from the Sun? Irrelevant. Set an altitude for the observation. You could argue perhaps moving slower than Kerbin with respect to Kerbol... for reasons. Not terribly reasonable. Meanwhile, good, interesting scientific missions are mostly nonexistent. Makes no sense whatsoever. The game has no actual difference between ores (add the difference, and comparison becomes meaningful, but presumably you'd need a lab to compare them). In addition, you are not to collect ore at the other place, just to "bring it there." Why not sample returns from each? All ore movement contracts are idiotic, period. That would be nice if any of them actually made sense, but they mostly don't. Testing landing legs on the Mun would be sensible, for example. Testing a engine landed might be reasonable (worried about sending debris into the bell, etc). They've already gotten rid of the "test X splashed down" and "test a basic jet engine on the mun" nonsense, I'd expect them to do the same with the other bad contracts. See above, silly. Since science buys technology advancement, rocket science really should be the only science that matters, since a crew report from orbit above Jool does exactly nothing to help design a new rocket engine. The contracts FEEL random (because they are). The goal should be random contracts that feel like they are part of a progression (note that many "contracts" should really be "missions" internal to your space program---if you launch something by "contract," you should lose ownership).

The entire point of a "career" mode is exactly that sort of limitation and storyline. If you want the contracts basically random and pointless, as they all are now (the few "Explore" contracts excepted), then why not do sandbox? Add a "generate a random, stupid project" to sandbox. Done. The point of something called "Career" is explicitly to trace a career. A career is a professional progression, basically. The player is presumably the director (for life) of a space program. If the career mode does't feel like a career, it needs a new name. Perhaps the current "career" mode could be renamed "random kerbal hijinks" mode, anything more descriptive than career (which it isn't). The goal of campaign/career play in a game like KSP that lacks any real management content (not a necessarily a bad thing) is really to set up novel craft design and piloting situations that feel like they have a context. Being spammed with rescue contracts constantly with no context of a space race, or competition with other programs is bizarre, for example. If you want to feel like you are exploring, you better send the first mission to any SoI manned, because sending a probe will trigger rescues there. Send a probe to Jool, then 5 minutes later 5 other companies have kerbals there. Yay, contracts! Career! Immersion! Great game design!

For clarity, I don't mean a scripted story, I mean that in retrospect the player can create a story in their mind that makes some sense. If the contracts are or seem entirely random, their is no way to rationalize them into a sort of storyline in your head. For example, when you send a probe to Eve, then immediately start getting contracts to rescue kerbals there, ore transfers to or from Eve, or tourists asking for rides there. Sure, you ignore them, but as "director" of a space program, you are turning down contracts which are telling you "other kerbals are already at Eve," "Acme Corp needs ore Moved to Gilly from Eve" (which implies they must have a base or something on Gilly which bizarrely needs ore from Eve, and you as player have only managed a probe at this point), or that many tourists demand trips that are effectively suicide trips since you've not demonstrated the ability to get there, much less return. All of those examples kill immersion, which kills the internalized "story" of your space program. I agree on filtering out bad contracts, that would help a lot. I am reading you suggestion as something that ALWAYS happens (the game removing really stupid contracts), vs a filter where we as players turn off seeing tourism, etc (which would also be a good idea). The whole career paradigm is broken. Talking about tourism makes me want the "strategies" to actually be strategies. I would like "Tourism" to be a strategy in that office, and if I don't pick that as a strategy, I don't get tourism contracts. You could do this for sat launches, base construction, etc (though for 3d parties, the player should not own the result, but he could get resupply/expansion/repair contracts for that facility). I've typed many pages on this in other threads though, I guess I'm too lazy to retype a year's worth of posts mostly on this very subject in this thread .

Some of these actually increase difficulty instead of the current levels which merely increase grind.

Nice ideas, I like the KIS/KAS related abilities others have suggested, as well. Skills need to be meaningful if they are in the game. Many disagree, but as the player is functionally the "boss" of the program, I'd just assume have the option for pilots to be able to, you know, pilot craft, based upon skill level. Not a toggle of if they can pilot, but how good they are. An astronaut with no skill might have a decent chance of botching a landing (assuming the player lets him do it himself instead of landing it under player control). Ditto docking, etc. These lower skill leveled pilots might explain why the orbits of every planet the player visits is littered with wreckage (and stranded kerbals) from other programs

I can only presume you haven't bothered to check if I had done this, in great detail, on numerous occasions.

Made a tiny rover and it worked. Tried the same rover in the large service bay and it blew up the lander in a pretty spectacular way (it wasn't impinging, either). I lowered the legs on the door side to "kneel" the lander.

There are too many of them, period. Also, once you get the grabber, most switch to returning their capsule, which is just silly. Basically, like 99% of the contracts, they are poorly done.

Yes, everything has to either be 100% realistic, or just stupid, got it. Either it simulates chatting at the water-cooler level detail, or it might as well be #LOLKERBALS stupid. That's the effective summary of your argument. The current contract system is bad gameplay. Not a bad simulation of a space program, bad game design, regardless of subject. KSP could be about aliens flying around with their warp-drives, throwing physics out the window as a starting assumption, and the contract/career system would still be awful game design. Good "career" games need a few things: In no particular order: 1. They need to tell a story. Note that this doesn't mean a script, it means that looking back at the gameplay, it should have a logical arc. This engages the player. 2. If it is to be a career, the designers need to think about what role the player is assuming, and make the career take that into account as a focus. The player is not an astronaut in KSP, he is maybe the director of the space program, so that is the level where the goals, etc.should be set. 3. Rewards systems. Most games have a goal, and rewards systems in games like this tend to be getting new stuff to play with. Players unconsciously play to the reward system, period. Having the rewards end early is a problem as a game design. Alternate reward systems can be within the same game, but KSP really has just the one. 4. Replay. Ideally, no two games would be exactly the same. KSP is always the same. Better contracts might help, but random, stupid, contracts don't because you read them as just absurd, not as a challenge for a space program. Having the Kerbol system change with a new game and have to be actually explored (via and for Science!) would massively improve replay. 5. A goal. It need not be entirely set by the game, the player could have options, but there needs to be an end-goal the player has in mind. Explore everything, or begin the process of colonizing other worlds, whatever. Why does the current contract system fail so badly? The absurdity of the contracts breaks any sense of story arc unless you happen to think of play exclusively as #LOLKERBALSBOOM. If that is the only way to visualize kerbals, the game fails at this. Maybe some contracts should be destructive testing (manned) to drive this home. "See how many kerbals can safely land with one parachute" might be a good one (no reverts). "LOL, Jeb's dead!" I think most people don't play career this way, actually. Generally speaking, a "mission" system is designed to move the game forward, and to set up novel situations for the player. The current system is to spam ridiculous missions, with the player ignoring the large majority of them. This isn't a mission system, because the player gets to pick, and the player is not driving the missions (as director of a space program) because the player has no control over the direction of missions (which he should). If you think the current system is good game design, you must not have played many good career games. Note that most games get this wrong, so that would be unsurprising, computer game designers tend to think of the mechanics, but not the gameplay design. This is clear in the "sandbox" nature of KSP. They need an RPG/boardgame (old-school, hex board boardgames) geek mindset to really fix career.

They need not be "scripted," they just need to, one, not be stupid (the majority are absurd), and two, have hooks that connect contracts logically.

It's because the kerbol system is tiny. Rockets are less powerful, but not 11x less powerful, so the mun is trivial. It's actually bad gameplay, because there is not really a choice to consider. Realism is clearly better gameplay in this case because choices---that all could work---are better than it being trivial.

That's not career play. Career play shouldn't involve utterly stupid contracts like this one (or your SRB example). Why would anyone move ore anywhere, for any reason? How is vacuum on the moon, orbiting the moon, or suborbital differ from any other vacuum? Dumb contracts are just dumb, and saying "play sandbox" is simply lazy. Career is a cruddy afterthought, and almost all contracts should be scrapped and redone properly.

In case it matters, I did alter the cfg of the hab and airlock to accept science as a container, and to allow crew reports for the Hab.

Agree. Agree, it's gotten somewhat worse, but the entire paradigm is wrong, anyway. The contracts are nearly universally awful, full stop. They never cease to feel random, and stupid. Here's the thing, contracts should be generated randomly for replay interest, but they should FEEL scripted in the context of your career. Meaning they feel connected, and make sense in sequence retroactively. A progression, in other words, though it need not be the same every time by any stretch of the imagination, just sensibly connected. Even within the broken science --> tech paradigm written in stone, everything about stock contracts is a mess, there is almost nothing redeeming.