Gunnn

Yeah, I've been playing with the "clear current contracts" cheat and that let's me choose the contracts I want in the order I want. It's a hassle that "clear current contracts" also clears active contracts, so I can only do one at a time and even without a decline penalty, I don't want to decline anything, because it seems to me that some contracts only appear once, but the way I'm playing the game right now works. I've made my first orbit and am doing smaller contracts to afford the facility upgrades necessary to get to the moon properly (science facility upgrade, so I can keep more science from one mission and do surface samples), so I've "gotten into" the game. Thanks.

Thanks, perhaps it's better to start with default normal settings and only set the decline penalty to zero, for starters. I'll try that for a few hours tomorrow and try to stick with it for a few hours and see if I run into any problems first.

Wow, a lot of activity here! Was expecting one or two answers. I'm going to give Career mode another go and use the "clear contracts" cheats to quickly try and filter through contracts to make sure I get a sequence I want (I want a contract for testing every new engine I unlock on the launch pad, because that's something I want to do and it makes sense that I would be rewarded for doing so). The only problem is that it clears all active contracts, so I can only do one contract at a time with this strategy. Instead, as someone suggested below, I should probably decrease the decline penalty to zero and maybe use the "reset weights" cheat every now and then to make sure I'm not missing out on anything. Anyway, since the starting settings are kind of important, I think I'm going to go with these. I want an experience that as realistic as possible, but without extra grind. Normal, with these alterations: No missing crew respawns. I'll revert any flight that goes wrong in the early-game anyway and if this turns out to be a hassle, I can get my kerbals back with cheats. Entry purchases on. (Edit: actually, I looked into this and the costs are really small and seem arbitrary (3-10x the part cost), so I think I'll play with this off) Decline pentalty: 0. This will allow me to cherry pick contracts. Kerbals level up immediately. Sounds like they should! Part pressure, G-force, and Kerbal G-force limits. I don't know why this option isn't active on any difficulty setting by default. It seems to be a given to me. Resource transfer obeys crossfeed rules. I don't know how annoying this will be, but it sounds like a realistic consideration. Building impact damage multiplier: 1.0. If it dies, it dies. Require signal for control. Plasma blackout. Occlusion modifiers both 1.0. Anything that looks off about this and that's buggy, overly annoying, a legacy feature that doesn't mesh well, etcetera? Also, I don't understand why allowing negative funds and science seems to be active on Hard by default. Why should it? Oh, I didn't realize it was cost, with the green money meter missing. It looked more like mass or dV! Yeah, I've found Contract Configurator. I guess I'll use it a lot, once I figure out how it works! Ah, decreasing decline penalty seems useful. That way I could get around cheating to find ideal contracts. Interesting, but I don't know how it would balance out. Since I haven't played the game a lot (only suborbital flights yet), I don't know anything about how the balance of the economy changes a few hours into the game.

Hey, I started playing KSP a while ago, but I’m struggling to get into it, because of the contract system. The "story" contracts are great: your first flight, your first space flight, orbiting and so on. And after starting over, I got a first few "other" contracts that I enjoyed and that were immersive and "cinematic": I got contracts for testing the engines, chutes, and couplings, which is realistic, and then a contract to test the Hammer, which I combined with escaping the atmosphere to make a series of highly efficient missions. It first played almost like a scripted story. However, then the contract system started spitting out contracts that either were dumb (testing the Swivel splashed down?) or that I simply didn’t want to do: hauling the flea to 200,000 m altitude, testing the hammer mid-flight, and a ton of observational studies! Chores and not fun objectives. I would ignore the contract system, except then I know I’m going to run out of funds without any source of income and it feels like I’m not playing the game right. Also, rejecting the contracts only generates new ones that are just as bad as the old. I’m not interested in the Sandbox, because I want to feel progression and dislike full freedom. I thought, hey, I don’t care about reputations and guess I don’t care about funds: why not play Science, then? I did, but unfortunately, a few big problems still bothered me significantly: 1) I can’t see the cost of my spacecraft, which gives me no incentive (or ability) to make cost-efficient spacecraft, 2) there are two facilities without any use, and 3) all facilities are fully upgraded from the start and un-upgradable. It makes Science a lot less attractive, IMO. My question is: are there any cheats or mods that I can get around this with? Is there any conceivable way to see the cost of your spacecraft in the Science mode? Can anyone remove the administration and mission control facilities (I don’t want to look at them)? Or does any mod allow you to upgrade facilities in Science, with science instead of funds? Or is there any Career cheat or mod that allows you to create your own contracts or choose which contracts appear in the game? If I could clear all contracts and then simply create my own contracts, say, choosing “Flea”, “test at launch pad”, and then have it reward me with the same amount of funds that the game would if it had generated the contract itself, or allow me to choose an amount that could also work for me. Basically, I want to get away from the contracts system and choose my own objectives, but still want science and preferably, facility upgrades and funds (and reputation can really go either way). I’m struggling right now to figure out whether I should simply play Career, ignore the contracts completely right from the start of the game, use an infinite funds cheat (I don’t really care for funds as a constraint to what I can construct, only as a measure of cost-efficiency), and upgrade facilities when it “feels” right… or whether I should play Science, ignore the worthless facilities at the KSC (easy), pretend that I’m upgrading my facilities by simply not going EVA (etc.) until I pretend to have upgraded the facility (moderate), and forget about cost-efficiency (hard). If I could simply find a few strings of code in the Science code to show the cost meter in the Science mode VAB, manually set the upgrade level of facilities, and/or delete the 3D models of the Admin and MC facilities (without crashing) that would be great. OR, if someone can recommend a cheat or mod that allows me to customize the contracts.