Whyren

That does sound epic. My thought, though, was someone who really wanted to put some miles on a rover could always take multiple contracts for it. Try it out and let me know what you think. All I know is I'm trying to get my Minmus rover 17km back to base and I'm on day three and want to kill myself.

Version 3 is now live. If a planet's or moon's radius is less than that of Kerbin, the distance is scaled appropriately. Max distance for an Exceptional expedition mission on Kerbin is now 8km. On Minmus that would scale to 1.6km. On the Mun, about 2.5 km. This should make the missions completable within reasonable timeframes.

I think Rover Contracts will work. I intentionally did not hard code any planet names into it. The only thing is that if the homeworld doesn't have any moon then you won't get any 1-star deployment contracts. The 2 and 3 star should cover any planet/moon that has a surface besides the homeworld.

I got a new rover onto Minmus. It was way better than my last one. Took a three star mission, 15km. Would have taken me 1-1.5 hours to reach that point. I think for my next update, waypoint distance will be multiplied by the ratio of target gravity to Kerbin gravity. That way the more frustrating locales will get shorter goals.

Anyone have success yet? I tried to test out another mission on Minmus but my rover flipped out and disassembled itself forcefully. Then, my treacherous brain told me that F5 would load the quicksave. Luckily, my two explorers survived but they are stranded until I get another rover to Minmus.

I've done a couple and half speed is very generous. I've done one on the Mun where I had to climb out of a crater. Had to drive out of the way to find a better spot to climb, and still only made 1-2 m/s all the way up the slope. One I did on Minmus I had to spend five minutes braking before dropping off a hill. Right now the distances are: One Star = 3-4km, Two Star = 5-7km, Three Star = 10-12km. Looking forward to hearing back on some successful completion times.

What level do you think the funds should be at? I don't pretend to know anything about balance. Also give me feedback on the distances. I did my testing on Kerbin (bad idea) but I think actual rover missions should take 10/20/30 minutes (depending on prestige). Long enough that you have to traverse some tricky terrain, but short enough that you aren't annoyed by it. - - - Updated - - - You are a real American hero. - - - Updated - - - I won't claim any sort of creative responsibility. Arsonide had great rover missions in the Fine Print mod back in the day. I don't know why those didn't get translated over to stock like everything else did. The "survey" missions are supposed to fill that gap, but always mix up stuff like "higher than 18,000m" that make them inappropriate for a rover. The one improvement I am proud of, though, is in the ability to get the missions for existing rovers. I always hated the feeling of rovers being a one-off to play around with and then get abandoned.

I had something in mind, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was.

Okay, I just added it to Kerbal Stuff. I assume CKAN will magically absorb it at some point?

I see. That also answers my question as to why not have an Expression-based parameter. I think I'll just keep things as is. Thank you very much.

What I mean is to not generate the waypoint upfront. The use case I have in mind is that I could send a rover to a planet and once it lands at that moment I could generate a waypoint at the vessel's location and another random one near it so that the rover would be required to drive to a nearby waypoint and prove its functionality no matter where you land.

Nightingale, how do you feel about an addition to the Waypoint generator that would allow you to specify a parameter after the completion of which the Waypoint location is generated?

That's all I really wanted when I set out to make this. Version 2 is up with some tech requirements and heavily nerfed rewards. Since the Rover Expedition is infinitely repeatable and gets you science I think it is important for the reward level to be very small so you don't clear the tech tree with one rover.

I'm sorry! I didn't search the development forum before getting to work. I didn't mean to step on your toes. I agree about the wheel requirement, I'll put that in for the next update.

Thanks for the great feedback! Rover Expedition missions generate for as many rovers as you have, but I left the deployment missions only on rover-less places because it seems like exploring new places would be a scientific priority, as well as more interesting and fun for the player than having 10 rovers on the same planet. I really wanted to avoid sending rovers to a place and then abandoning them or returning them. Your second point is one I started with, but the only way I can think to make that happen would be to mandate a specific waypoint. I didn't want to tie anyone's hands as to deployment location. For instance, people playing with Life Support mods may want a manned rover, but that would only be practical if they deployed it near an existing base. I also didn't want to do something like "check for four wheels" because that would stifle people's creativity to make RCS Hover Rovers or something creative like that. I don't want to offend anyone that self-identifies as rover-kin! I welcome ideas on how to do that without restricting the landing location. For now, I think of the situation of landing a damaged rover like the Chinese YuTu rover. They landed it, it didn't work right. It was still a great accomplishment and they did good research at the site, but they weren't able to take any rover expedition missions like they had hoped. - - - Updated - - - Thanks, Nightingale. I'll look into that stuff maybe tonight or tomorrow. For now, I need to get a rover somewhere besides M-F-Minmus and have a little fun!