You guys are blowing this way out of proportion. First off, it's -1 reputation hit to decline a contract. This is GREAT, cause the system was highly abused to where we all were playing it like roulette, getting 3-5 contracts in a row that we could knock out with 1 launch. Seriously, raise your hand if you did not have an excess of money and reputation in career. Now realize this tiny nerf to the contract system came with the biggest buff career mode has seen yet, you get paid bonus rep/science/money for world firsts; and they got a world first for EVERYTHING, on practically EVERY PLANET. You now have a strategy where you can reduce contracts worth, to get even higher bonuses for those world firsts. So far this new change has allowed me to spend less time trying to hunt contracts I want; to just selecting a few then doing WHAT I WANT; and still getting paid the same amount with the world first bonuses. and if you want to cancel contracts go ahead; i have 250 on my new career and it took me just a couple hours to obtain. I could cancel 250 contracts now if I wanted too; and only be 0 out. The higher your reputation gets you gain a nerf to your gains, there was no real reason to have 900 points. Reputation isn't that important right now. So instead of theory crafting how terrible this decision was, actually play the game and realize it hardly affects you. Go ahead and decline away! most gains for reputation are way more for completing a contract that you won't have a problem having high reputation. And finally if it still matters, remember that strategy place that was never used? Well you can now buy reputation or trade science for it if your really worried. Thanks KSP for the design decision. I now only take contracts I really want, cancel the insane, and spend more time focusing on what I want to do. And I still have excess money, reputation, and science coming in! They allow you to get higher rated contracts too; but you really only need like 500; I don't think I've seen any benefit from above that amount. But someone else will have to chime in for some hard data.