Arsonide

There is a known bug right now where researching launch clamps will make these appear early. Launch clamps have a renewable power generator inside them, which makes the contract believe you have a renewable power source available (you technically do), but obviously you can't take launch clamps with you.

I loaded your save, got a few errors because I'm running a stock install, but I plopped a new ship onto the launchpad without visiting the tracking station. Your orbit is showing up on the map, but you need to focus your camera on Minmus to see it, or a ship orbiting Minmus. If your ship is orbiting Kerbin, the orbit will not show. This is intentional, it keeps the map from getting cluttered with a lot of stuff.

It's possible, but this still isn't a good idea. There already is, check the changelog for 0.58b.

It's possible that one of the mods might have modified your save, but it's hard to say for sure without more information. Does the contract still show up in your contract app? Do you have a log file, a save, or a screenshot?

The contract wants a renewable source of power, not a finite one such as a battery. Drop an RTG reactor or a solar panel on your satellite to complete that objective.

Correct, that contract is asking for orbital scans of the planet.

Early in the game you should be getting a maximum of two surveys at a time, in addition to part test contracts. The reason EVA objectives show up on Kerbin is because you don't need the EVA facility upgrade to EVA on Kerbin's surface. However, the first few surveys you get are focused surveys, and will never ask you to do any ground surveys, such as EVAs. They don't start showing up until you have progressed in the game a little bit. Restricting the surveys until you receive jet engines would be fairly arbitrary, as they are not meant to be "plane contracts". They are very freeform, and can even be done from orbit, or suborbit with rocket test launches. (Keep in mind, you don't have to hit every waypoint in one mission.) However, if you are not happy with the way things are set up, you can actually change them by cracking open GameData\Squad\Contracts\Contracts.cfg, scrolling down to the Survey section, and modifying the MaximumAvailable and MaximumActive settings there. While you are there you might want to check out the ARM section as well, to limit asteroid missions.

It will plop a waypoint onto your navball that you can fly towards. The icon will blink when you enter the area of the waypoint. You would be incorrect. The icons do need to go in that folder. I realized that this should probably be a configurable option, but by the time I did, it was far too late to implement. Might be something for the future.

I didn't like the idea of reflecting into other people's mods. Now that I am stock though, resource mods can include module manager tweaks to the configuration file to automatically switch on ISRU contracts, delete the example RESOURCE_DEFINITIONS, and add their own resource definitions...which is probably the best way to go about it. Paging RoverDude. StationScience adds it's own contracts. I don't believe it uses the configuration options I've set up currently.

Yeah, looked at it, you have a good match here, but at minimal deviation, you need to have that periapsis within 3% of the target. The target is 6000 because Minmus is tiny, which gives you a window of 180 meters! (I said they were touchy, right?) Your periapsis is close, but it's about 500 meters off. You'll need to do a microburn at your apoapsis to get this matched. I'm thinking in the future, instead of matching periapsis, I might match a percent of the semi major axis or something. Periapsis gets really touchy with tundra and molniya orbits.

Right, I don't see a power source on that satellite, but I might not be able to see from this angle. The objective wants you to have an unmanned probe, with a power source (solar panel or RTG) and an antenna. It also needs to be new, meaning that every part of it was launched after the contract was accepted.

You have a minimal deviation Tundra orbit here, and those can be very touchy, as with a periapsis that low, smaller angular deviations can have a bigger effect. Do you happen to have a save file for this so that I can take a look?

The original wording of this objective actually was what you suggest: "Record X below Y m from the surface". The problem was also that this is unclear, because low altitude surveys cannot be completed while landed. I needed to specify that the player also be above the ground. I considered checking for atmosphere and using "in a suborbital trajectory below x m" when it wasn't present, but this resulted in very lengthy objective titles that frequently took up valuable space in the contract app window.

Change log and a legacy download of 0.59 with more warnings than a prescription label were added to the original post. As far as my plans, I am working on some things, but they aren't concrete enough to spell out at the moment. I do plan to continue working with the contract system.

No, these are the updates that went into the game already. I'm listing them for informational purposes, so that people that did use the mod know what is different.

Between the last release of Fine Print the mod, and the release of 0.90, there have been innumerable changes and additions. To keep everybody up to date, now that everybody's had a chance to try the patch themselves, I will try and recall the changes here in a change log. I'm sure there will be a few small things I overlook, but these are the ones I can recall. Aerial Survey and Rover contracts have been merged into Survey contracts. These contracts still have a cluster of waypoints, but the waypoints each ask you to do an experiment on the ground, at low altitude, or at high altitude. These restrictions are very loose, and there are no restrictions on the player's vessel. This gives the player much more freedom in deciding how to approach each objective. High altitude waypoints can even be passed over in orbit if desired. Each waypoint might be at a different altitude, with a different experiment - even within the same contract, though generally the surveys are themed. Right now there are five "themes": temperature scans, visual surveys (crew reports, EVAs, surface samples), gravimetric scans, seismic scans, and atmospheric surveys, which include atmospheric analysis and pressure readings. Certain themes can only happen at certain altitudes, so atmospheric surveys are very similar to aerial surveys, and seismic surveys are very similar to rover contracts. Each objective completes the moment you initiate an experiment in the correct location. You are not required to transmit it, giving you the option of keeping the data and returning it to Kerbin. Overall, the system is much more robust. "Neutralize Controls" objective relaxed significantly. It should no longer matter if your controls are neutral, your trim is active, or if SAS is on. As long as the craft is stable, it will complete. Reworded text to make this clearer. Several contracts now scan the entire planetary terrain to calculate the highest peak before picking a periapsis or minimum height, resulting in less ballistic trajectories. Base and Station contracts will no longer target the same celestial bodies. Number of survey contracts available starts at half, and raises to the normal amount after the player leaves Kerbin. This is to prevent overcrowding the map, when surveys can only show up on one planet. Legacy atmospheres are now supported by Fine Print's calculations. When entering trigger zones for surveys, there is now a more visible message, and the navigation icon on the navball will blink while you are inside the zone. Since satellite contract deviation meant different things depending on if you were talking about angles or distances, it was removed in favor of more general phrasing, now you will be asked to meet the orbit with "reasonable", "marginal", or "minimal" deviation. Fixed a lot of glitchiness with orbital matching and display of ascending and descending nodes. Generated solar orbits are now more mod compatible. Ascending and descending node for target orbits now shows even when suborbital. Rescue contracts now slightly more interesting by using a gentle variant of the Fine Print orbit generator for harder contracts. This rarely creates time limited rescues, if the generated orbit encounters a moon. Easier contracts still generate as they did before, and are designated in the contract text as "Low Orbits". Unless it is your first flag on a planet, flag contracts will no longer appear for planets that have Kerbals on them already. Once the kerbals move off of the planet, they will appear again. All stock contracts other than the World First ones now have configurable availabilities and configurable rewards. Tweaked Part Test altitudes to be more compatible with modded celestial bodies. All stock and Fine Print contracts adjusted to be aware of facility upgrade status. ARM contracts will not show up until the Tracking Station can display asteroids. Flag contracts will not show up until the Astronaut Complex allows kerbals to plant flags. EVA objectives in visual surveys will not show up off of Kerbin until the Astronaut Complex allows EVAs off of Kerbin. Surface Sample objectives in visual surveys will not show up until R&D allows surface samples. All Fine Print contracts that are not surveys will no longer show up until the player has orbited Kerbin, to avoid interference with the tutorial contracts. Surveys show up pre-orbit much like part tests, but are tied to a special progression. They keep an eye on player progress, and start in "focused survey" mode, that will be a single waypoint survey that rewards the player for suborbital test launches. As the player progresses, these will open up into normal survey clusters. Note that while focused surveys are easier, you are not rewarded for the individual waypoints as you are with clusters. You only get contract completion rewards. ARM contracts will no longer appear until the player has orbited the sun. Base contracts weighted towards planets the player has landed on, though harder contracts may suggest ones he hasn't. Station and satellite contracts weighted towards planets the player has orbited, though harder contracts may suggest ones he hasn't. Waypoints are now displayed in a much more user friendly manner, with bubble pins, much like stock. The waypoint icon now represents the experiment required at that location. Waypoint colors should be more varied. Waypoints now have a fading animation when they pass behind the planet. Waypoints also fade out when you zoom away from a planet. Waypoints now display tooltips with the agency of the relevant contract, this is to make correlating the waypoint to a contract on the board easier. Waypoint tooltips are now colored based on contract status. Orange for offered but not active, green for active. Waypoint navigation activation and deactivation now pops up a menu, much like setting a target in stock. Waypoints now scan the terrain height before they pick an altitude. No more subterranean waypoints. Fixed half completed surveys showing all of their waypoints in the Tracking Station. Lowered site designation length slightly. (Site X1A-BAJKBDKB) Added a few more prefixes to non-unique sites for variety. (Area 51) Modified how site clustering works. Surveys can spawn a mixture of ground and aerial waypoints. If a survey spawns waypoints that are all on the ground, they will be designated alpha, beta, gamma, etc. If the survey is mixed, but there is more than one ground waypoint, they will form a designated cluster as well. Added a ridiculous number of new suffix names to the name generator. Suffix chosen now depends on planetary structure. Land names no longer appear on water, neutral names like "basin" no longer appear on the sun or gas giants. Fine Print's old configuration file can now be found in GameData/Squad/Contracts as Contracts.cfg Added Module Manager support. Added MODULE_DEFINITIONS section, which allows mod authors to inject their own modules for things, effectively removing all hard coded references to things like wheels, power sources, and antennae in Fine Print. Changed "FSWheel" to "FSwheel" fixing a long standing incompatibility with Firespitter. As previously mentioned, all stock contracts now have their own sections in the configuration file. Added PART_REQUESTS to station, base, and satellite contracts, allowing mod authors to add their own objectives to these contracts. Added RESOURCE_REQUESTS to ISRU contracts, allowing them to support more than one kind of resource. Added Karborundum and Karbonite examples. Added SURVEY_DEFINITIONS to Survey contracts, allowing mod authors to utilize the waypoint system for their own experiments. If errors get thrown, they are now more descriptive. Removed Fine Print's "patch reset". I am replying with this for a bit more visibility, but I will be adding it to the original post as well.

Actually, yes. All Satellite, Base, and Station contracts now support PART_REQUESTS in the configuration file. Any mod author can set up a module manager profile to inject their parts into these contracts in a similar way to the lab/cupola requests/sensor requests.

Right, the probe needs to be unmanned, it needs a power source, it needs an antenna, and every part of it must have been launched after the contract was accepted.

Yes sir. Also I added the ability to handle multiple resources, so if you aren't using Karbonite+ you'll want to delete the resource definition for Karborundum.

I found the source of this "bug". It's behaving as intended, kind of. It's not unlocking the contract because power parts are next up for research, it's unlocking because the launch clamps have a generator module on them for some reason, which makes the contract consider it a power source. Obviously you can't take launch clamps with you, I'll be adding an exception for this.

Hurray! *passes out* Your R&D department is not sophisticated enough yet.

Waypoints do not require any facility upgrades or debug trickery to see. They are available in the tracking station and the map in game. They are only visible if you are looking at the right celestial body, and they fade if they go behind the planet as you rotate your camera. Also, yes it helps to click them in flight, as you can engage navigation to plop them down onto your navball.

Yep, check in GameData\Squad\Contracts\Contracts.cfg

I suppose I could drop them on a mirror somewhere. It wasn't part of any agreement - I just thought it'd be confusing for some people. I won't be putting them on any major mod hubs though.

Look at my SURVEY_DEFINITIONS in the configuration file malkuth. I spent a good amount of time getting that working specifically for modders to have access to the waypoint system. It even allows you to specify your own waypoint icon. As of now, the waypoints are implemented in surveys and satellite contracts. I thought about using them in base/station contracts, but giving a specific orbit objective to a station essentially makes it a satellite contract with a larger payload, and I wanted all the contracts to feel unique when played, so I left stations with the ability to freely orbit, but gave them wackier side objectives.