Jetski

Certainly true. I don't expect that to change with the updates until they rewrite the contract system. That said, most of my career is directed by those nice Explore contracts, that pop up before you have gone anywhere near them. That's what I'm trying to track down. In stock I never get an Explore Eeloo before a Explore Minmus, looking to replicate that behavior in a planet pack.

I'm on the list! Still 10 people to go...I'll go design my module

Flights are off! I decided to resolve my lingering Explore Olu'um contract before starting a ton of missions to other bodies. Once Flak Attack and Quarta Pounder were well on their way, I took some time to put together a fairly extravagant mission to Olu'um, mainly using hardware I already had in space. I moved the science lab I had with Bob over to a Gol orbit, and brought a nice little NERVA powered lander with a big fuel stage to meet up. Once in Gol SOI, I did some quick landings and science, then stuck everything together. At this point I realized I needed another 1600 LF or so to make the mission work, so I needed another launch after all. The cleverly named craft Miner was put together and everyone's favorite engineer Bill took off towing a big lug of fuel to Gol. He met up with the Olu'um ship, topped up her tanks, and still had enough to land on Gol and start mining. Once back in orbit, I realized he had about 4.5K dV, so he's going along to Olu'um separately. The burn to Olu'um could have been handled better, I made the mistake of leaving Gol and getting into an elliptical Gaia orbit, thinking it would save me a little fuel, but after warping to the transfer window I found the ellipse to be pointed about 45 degrees away form where I wanted to be. Oh well, it's just more fuel right? It took me about 2K to get an Olu'um intercept, whereas the Miner only needed about 1.4K direct from Gol. Some warping, and now I'm just entering Olu'um SOI with both craft, finally completing the annoying Explore Olu'um contract. Contracts have now reset to normal, with an Orbit Nightmare (in Gaia SOI) popping up next. Of course, my tech tree is nearly completed with all the warping and a scilab full of samples, but it will be fun to check out the sinister football that is Nightmare after I get into a stable orbit out at Olu'um. I actually read some of the descriptions, and I'm concerned about spacecraft melting if I go too near the protostar gas giant, so I'm letting the Miner with radiators make a close pass, while the main ship with all the delicate bits does a wasteful capture burn away from Olu'um. More to follow...

After much building and warping and mining, I managed a big mission to Olu'um, and as soon as that Explore contract is complete, it goes for a very sensible Explore Nightmare (local moon and good early target) contract. I've already visited most of the other local moons, so logical and good for career progression. Just that one contract out of order...

Weirdly, this is not looking for contracts inside the home body system at all. It goes straight to Olu'um without any moon contracts or the like. Also, a very minor bug in the planetoid Nightmare, one of the biomes is labelled Elavations, which is spelled Elevations unless you are making a play on words regarding lava. Let me know if all these tiny bug reports get annoying

Good thoughts all, but I can eliminate both as this is a fresh KSP zip, fresh mod zip, fresh Kopernicus install, new career from scratch. As soon as the first 4 hard coded contracts are complete, an Explore Olu'um pops up, instead of a Mun/Minmus style local moon. Gameslinx has recreated it on his machine as well in career mode. The issue is the Explore contract (the one you can only get if you haven't already visited a body) is popping up for the wrong planet.

Sadly, we've recreated this contract issue again. Even with the config file in a different place, it's still happening. Maybe there's a difficulty multiplier we can set?

Beautifully done @Nefrums! elegant solutions as always

Things slowed down here due to an update a while back, but it has been revived spectacularly here!

I can confirm that there's definitely something amiss with Olu'um config file for contracts. Not only is the Explore Olu'um contract offered immediately after making Gaia orbit for the first time (blocking any other Explore contracts, for Gaia's moons for example), but there's another issue as well. Any Build Station contract offered for Olu'um, and any Place Satellite contract for Olu'um do not offer any funds as a reward (a paltry amount of science and rep instead) and instantly fail when you accept them. I clicked on several before realizing each time it was logging the contract as expired and failed immediately. I hope it's just a config somewhere, as it is making a career run quite challenging. I noticed Olu'um is by itself in a Gas Giant folder, maybe there's some weirdness in how KSP reads planets out of folders? Let me know if there's anything I can do to help. I started a thread here to see if anyone has any experience with this kind of thing

I think it's safe to say you are closer to an SSTE than anyone has gotten before Keep the title

I just started a playthrough of Gameslinx planet pack here, not suggesting you duplicate that, but a run through a new-to-you planet pack can be quite a bit of fun and adventure. Also a KIS pirate mission through an old savegame is about the most fun I've had at this game.

I'm wondering if it's maybe hard coded into the bodies themselves. For example, am I getting an impossible contract because the body is a modified Minmus perhaps, and the game thinks Minmus should be an early contract, not realizing that the modified body is beyond Jool? Or is it perhaps the order that the planets are listed in a config file somewhere? Maybe @Red Iron Crown or another wise voice could point me in the right direction? Upon investigation of the mod folders, it looks like Olu'um is based on Jool, but is in a separate folder than the other planets in the pack. I've gotten a few contracts for orbital stations and the like for other planets, but still mystified why that contract is listed first.

The first interplanetary flights are underway. After loading up KAC to check transfer windows, it seems like the first 2 are for Flak and Quarta. Flak looked like a fairly routine deep space mission, so I setup a low tech (Terrier powered) 2-Kerb lander with a pilot (Jeb of course) and a scientist. I of course named it Flak Attack, and after an uneventful launch I made a hard burn for a Flak intercept. All is well, and in 3 years I'll have a nice flyby and hopefully landing. Quarta appears to be a tougher nut to crack. According to the orbit lines, it actually seems to be traveling RETROGRADE around the Sun, and moving at around 3.5K m/s. Nothing for it but to put together a large NERVA-powered asparagus beast, with a small lander that detaches and uses one of the NERVAs for a landing engine. Rather than deal with 2 crew, I sent a single pilot on this mission. Inevitably named the Quarta Pounder, this beast waits in low orbit with a Mainsail powered transfer stage ready to send it off to meet Quarta. Once the transfer burn is complete, I hope to have nearly 10k Dv to allow an intercept with Quarta, and if all goes well, a landing. Unfortunately, KAC isn't dealing well with computing a window for a retrograde planet, so I'm warping 5-day intervals and setting a node. At least 20 days to go, so I'm looking into a low budget probe to Sonus in the mean time. Meanwhile, Bob is doing some research in his own little scilab orbiting Gol, slowly bringing Kerbal tech up to an effective level.

I'll see if I can recreate it - I've had ships wander out of the edge of an SOI before in stock as well, so not a big deal. Retrograde polar orbit both times, and conics show no intercept with Olemut. Could have been an interaction that didn't show up as an intercept, just happened anyway really fast because of retrograde orbit.

The vessel that hops out of the SOI is always the one that isn't focused on, and usually happens outside physics range, if that helps. The accelleration issue appeared at close docking range, in a lower orbit. Also more mission updates

Today Bob returned safely from the Polar moons, although he did have to get out and push in high Gaia orbit due to a slight miscalculation on a burn. Next up I loaded up KAC to look at upcoming transfer windows. Lots to do, many places to visit! Still about 40 days until the next planetary window, so I decided to do a few quick contracts so I could afford NERVAs. With the vast distances to many of the planets, it will be a while before my antenna tech is sufficient to send probes, so I'm expecting to have to send a few pilot/scientist teams to faraway lands. With that in mind, I did a half dozen Rescue contracts to bulk up my crew roster, and a few Station and Satellite local contracts (including a surface base on Olemut) to add some much-needed funds. Nothing groundbreaking, but now I'm ready for some serious interplanetary exploration! On a side note, I landed Bob at the poles, and was expecting a nice splash down in the pretty blue water. Imaging my surprise when he was able to get out and walk around on the hard surface! Netted a nice "Landed in the Ocean" surface sample to go with the "Splashed in the Ocean" samples I had already obtained.

Got another fairly minor bug report here. Dockings in Olei's SOI are turning out to be tricky. Twice I've had a ship in a stable orbit just outside Olemut's orbit hop out into Gaia space and back. As a workaround, I'm just handling all manouvers in a much closer orbit to Olei. More critical, I've had some rendevous issues - twice I've had a ship showing a nice closing velocity of 10 m/s or so on the navball, while on the screen as soon as I get to around 500m away, the other ship shot away from me, rapidly increasing distance out to 3-4 km. A bit odd. If I go to the Tracking Center quickly and back, it's all fixed, so also still playable. But there may be some weirdness with the SOI around Olei

I'm stoked to see this back up and running! nice job guys

Hi guys, I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask, but I'm curious how KSP decides which planets should be offered next for Explore contract. How does it know the Mun should be offered before Jool, for example? I'm asking because I'm working on a playthrough of Gameslinx planet pack, and the order is off, wondering if there's a way to edit this. Any of you modding geniuses know the trick to this?

Victory! After some careful adjustments, Bob managed to get his original Moon Lander back into an Olei orbit and meet up with Better Lander. After a daring spacewalk to catch up with the lander as it streaked past at 68 m/s, he proceeded to explore Olei and Olemut. Living up to it's name, Better Lander safely managed both bodies with dV to spare. Landing on Olemut was interesting, at first glance the flat areas appear to be Minmus-style frozen lakes. Just to be cautious, Bob landed near the edge of a lake, and just dipped a single lander leg in to test the waters. Sure enough, the diabolical @Gameslinx has provided liquid oceans on this vacuum moon to lure the unwary landers to their doom. Perhaps a quick reading of the planet's description could have revealed this, but it was more fun to find out for myself. Surely the Kraken must lurk in these inky depths....

OK, initial report so far so good. Removed EVE and it improved gameplay quite a bit. One bug I found is if you EVA in a polar orbit near Gaia the space around Bob starts flashing psychedelic colors rapidly. It doesn't appear to matter if a planet or rings are in the frame, and it doesn't happen in low orbit, but it's a bit startling when I was harvesting high orbit sci. I can't get a screenshot as it is flashing on and off, but fairly easy to recreate. Part of the problem is my laptop is an actual potato. Likely a low-end graphics card issue or something. Edit: I now can't recreate this issue - Bob can now EVA to his hearts content out by the orbit of Olei. Maybe it's only active inside the radius of the rings or something My other suggestion is to see how the game decides to offer contracts for bodies in order. I barely made LKO and the next contract was to Explore Olu'um, which is far out of reach, kinda like getting offered Explore Jool before the Mun or Minmus. Not sure if this is something you have any control over, but would be better to get some contracts for the local moons first. Great job on the surface textures by the way, some of the shots I'm getting look like art

My woefully underfunded mission to the polar moons has not gone perfectly. I spent every penny I had to get Bob and a little science lander into a polar orbit and intercept the moon Olei. With a basic tracking center, I felt like I was back doing the Caveman Challenge - trying to get an intercept on a tight dV budget without nodes or patched conics is challenging. Finally I got an intercept, and got into orbit, netting about 100k funds to from World Firsts bonus. I ended up in a retrograde polar orbit around Olei, and prepared to manouver when disaster struck. I accidentally jettisoned my full drop tanks with the landing legs attached instead of the empty engine stages I had used for transfer. Bob is stranded with only his get-home fuel remaining. Using the 100k funds and some transmitted science from high orbit, I built the aptly named Better Lander and sent it with a probe core to go meet Bob. Still no tracking center, so I was really struggling to meet him in high orbit of the moon, and disaster struck again. Bob and the original Moon Explorer strayed too close to the edge of the Olei's SOI, and while I was warping the empty Better Lander to meet him he was thrown back out into Gaia orbit! As I was pondering what to do with my 2 landers and my limited funds, KSP crashed... My current plan is to send Bob home with what he has (if I can do it with his scanty 400dV remaining), leave Better Lander in orbit around the Olei, and send Bob on another ship to finish the exploration and harvest that juicy science. Stay tuned to see if he survives this debacle!

Unfortunately my next Explore contract after making orbit is for Olu'um, which is far beyond the reach of my current technology, and on the far side of the Sun, quite a while for a good transfer window. Here's a quick tourist mission, also grabbing Materiels Bay Science up to LGO. Now to see what I can do to up my tech for an Olu'um mission. Trying to decide whether to try a one-way probe (research heavily into antenna science) or a manned mission, which will require better rockets. http://imgur.com/a/dZZIx I opted to hoover up a little local science, and put the research into bigger fuel tanks and solar panels. Still can't get any decent contracts (lots of Gaia part testing small stuff, and a few atmospheric surveys I don't have the wings for). I'm going to make a run at some of Gaia's moons on my own dime, and see if any good contracts come out of it.

Starting a mission thread here so I don't keep spamming the thread So far Gaia looks amazing, I'll keep updating the mission report as I explore the system. I'm getting a little lag so I may have to throttle back my graphics or dump EVE and scatterer, I'll keep you posted. Totally playable though.