Arsonide

Stavell I just wanted to voice my support of this mod. I've been looking for a simpler life support mod for a long time. I like the idea of life support, but modeling liquid waste AND solid waste? A bit extreme for me personally. I like the one "life support" value. Kudos to this, please continue to develop it.

If you're trying to match at any apoapsis or periapsis, then you will have trouble, because you need to specifically match the apoapsis and periapsis of the orbit shown. Those aren't visible to you, (read my signature), so you will have to eyeball it carefully. It's a pretty simple affair to visually match an orbit. If you want one side to be further out, burn prograde on the other side. If you want the inclination to match, find where the orbits form an X, either side, and burn normal or antinormal (the purple handles on a maneuver node), using the maneuver node to match it up.

Updated the text of the main thread, the Curse description, and the KerbalStuff description with more accurate, more updated, and more consistent information. Added a signature below my posts that says what I am working on, so people know without having to read the whole thread.

Actually they wouldn't be available in the persistent file right now. I don't save anything about the orbit other than the type. They are all generated from a seed at runtime. Displaying more information is a work in progress. I just have some record keeping to do before I get started on the new version. Organization, paperwork, formatting...blegh.

I did not forget, I just noticed the pull request after I made the release. It will be in the next version.

With planets it kind of makes sense, keeps the contracts for their moons invisible and such, but for the sun it doesn't, technically the planets orbit the sun, so I can understand the confusion here. I'll add an exception to this logic for the sun.

It shouldn't break the logic of any mods, unless they aren't tracking that logic properly. I try to give plenty of warning that this will happen. Originally the refresh was something I encouraged people to do manually, but I kept getting false bug reports from people who were not refreshing, so the autofresh has become a necessity. It only happens if I change existing missions in a big way, to clear any old data out of the save file, so it doesn't happen on every patch. It's a ghost contract. When the board gets refreshed, contracts still appear in the active tab and in the app on the toolbar until the first scene load. They aren't actually there, and you don't have to decline them. This is stock behavior, and it gave me headaches for a while. Don't worry about it. I try to post this as much as possible, in as fancy a formatting as I can muster: we are working on it. Are you targeting the sun? I delete all waypoints for anything you are not targeting. (Or unless you are targeting something in orbit of the sun.)

All contracts, accepted or unaccepted, stock or not, will be cleared to refresh the board. There might be a way to make this just affect my contracts when it happens, and it doesn't happen every patch. I will look into that.

Right now there's just the tracking station and eyeballing it. We're working on it. Our artist finished some node art today, I just have to hook it up to logic.

I've released version 0.55a, it's up on KerbalStuff already, and will be up on Curse when it is approved. Here are the changes: Applied vigorous OCD to the usage of the word "the" before the words "Sun" or "Mun". Rewrote cupola parameter to be more generic and now look for any specific part on a vessel, this allows me to use it for cupolas, or sensors, which I used in the satellite missions. Fixed rover contracts taking over the contract board occasionally. Flight and rover waypoints will no longer appear in the tracking station when their contracts have been completed. Fixed random satellite deployment orbits extending beyond the sphere of influence of their planets, thus having impossible to reach orbits. Added much more constrained orbits to the satellite deployment mission, which now includes random orbits, in addition to equatorial orbits, polar orbits, geosynchronous orbits, geostationary orbits, Molniya orbits, and tundra orbits. These are given out at appropriate difficulty levels. Due to the aforementioned cupola change, satellite missions can now request part additions to the satellites. Harder missions have a higher chance to ask for this, and for now it includes any sensor type and the goo, as the goo is reminiscent of our fine frisky Russian gecko satellite friends. Satellite missions will pay more as they get harder, they pay more based on location, they pay more based on how many parts they ask for, and what kind of orbit they ask you to deploy into. I know that people want more information displayed on the GUI for these missions, and that is a work in progress, but I felt generating more exciting (and more importantly - possible) orbits was a more immediate need. This patch changes save information, and will automatically refresh your contract board. This means that you need to complete any active contracts before patching, or they will disappear. This is necessary to keep the update process smooth for you.

If anything, Molniya orbits get more ridiculous. However, I did add more reasonable possibilities (equatorial, polar, geosynchronous) and they now take up a good chunk of what used to be "random" missions. So the answer here is that it's more balanced, but these missions will still appear from time to time, and for me that's a good thing. I like a little crazy now and again. I also managed to get in random part attachment requests for the satellites, which for now is limited to environmental sensors and the goo. I'll look into this in the future. There's a lot on my plate currently with the extra info on the orbits.

New patch will now have Molniya and Tundra orbits as well, these orbits have very low periapsis', and I've taken to calling them suicide orbits. Molniya has a period of half a day, and a low periapsis, in Russian it literally translates to "lightning orbit". It gets fast, and scrapes the atmosphere very close. The point of a Molniya orbit is that Russia doesn't get too much coverage from equatorial geostationary satellites, as their latitude is too high, keeping the apogee high and the period low means that the satellite "hangs" at the apoapsis longer, giving Russia longer coverage. This is evident in this screenshot by the icons bunching up around there. Keep your hands and feet inside the satellite though, as you might hit a passing rock or tree on the way by.

Bold text, two pages back. Read it please. Hotfix will be out before tomorrow that fixes this, and to make it up I've been able to add geosynchronous and geostationary missions as well as specifiers for polar and equatorial orbits. I'm just putting the finishing touches on all of it now. Also I fixed completed contracts in the tracking station showing up.

As the bolded text on the previous page attests, the unachievable missions are being worked on. As for the rest of your post, you can check missions in the tracking station before accepting them.

The ContractSystem has not been modified at all, and it chooses which contracts appear. It chooses at random, and any patterns you may have noticed are coincidental. My mod has actually placed restrictions on how many of my contracts can appear to reduce any coincidences, but they can still happen.

The "test" missions are stock, and will give you parts you haven't researched yet. There is no more information on the orbits as of yet, I'm working on it. Please do not report satellite contracts generating apoapsis outside of the sphere of influence of their bodies, making those orbits impossible. It is known and will be fixed very soon in a hotfix. For the moment just take a good look at satellite contracts in the tracking station before you accept them.

Specific purpose oriented orbits were planned, as a side objective in the next patch. (Geosynchronous, geostationary, etc) For now I need to fix up these random orbits. I think I know how to do it. If I clamp the eccentricity choice to how much space is left in the SOI after the periapsis choice, it should never produce an apoapsis outside of it right? (This would mean the closer the periapsis gets to the edge, the more it is forced to be a circle. Right now eccentricity is random between 0 and 0.5, the upper end of which varies depending on difficulty.)

Hrm, I had this issue with the orbital waypoints, but fixed it. I see what it might be, and I'll have it fixed by monday.

You nailed it, it calculates periapsis within an acceptable low point and the max point of the SOI, picks an eccentricity, then uses the eccentricity and the periapsis to calculate a semi major axis, which determines where the apoapsis is. It determines the semi major axis by adding the radius of the target celestial body to the desired periapsis to get the periapsis radius, then divides that amount by (1-eccentricity). My understanding was that this calculation of the semi major axis would produce an apoapsis within the sphere of influence, but I'll need to cap it off. Inclination and longitude of the ascending node are chosen at random, with some limits based on the difficulty of the mission, and weights to equatorial orbits. Argument of periapsis, mean anomaly at epoch, and epoch are all ignored by the algorithm, effectively, it chooses a number very close to one.

This likely has a lot to do with it, do you have logs available?

The orbits show in the tracking station, so you can look at them, actually. Generating outside the SOI should be mathematically impossible, but I will check it out and include some orbital parameters in the summary. Deviation means deviation, how much you can deviate from the orbit to be considered successful. With inclination it would be 7% of 90 degrees, with LAN it would be 7% of 360 degrees, and with periapsis and apoapsis it would be 7% of the height.

Took a bit of wrestling, but I fixed it. What a terrible interface. Thanks for the heads up - the file was available through CurseForge but not Curse, since it was set to "Alpha" instead of "Release".

This update should not wipe your board, as no save data for existing contracts was modified. EDIT: Aaaand we're on Curse!

I've released version 0.54a. I am working on getting this onto Curse, but for now, it'll be on KerbalStuff. Here is the changes: Added orbital waypoints that show a ring and are animated to show you which direction the orbit goes. These show up in the tracking station for all currently posted contracts, and in game on the map for any that you've accepted, just like normal waypoints. Added satellite deployment contracts. They do not show up until you have technology for probe cores, power sources, and antennae. These contracts will ask you to build a new unmanned probe with an antenna and a power source, then put it into a very specific orbit, shown on the map with the new waypoints. The mission will ask you to put it into a certain deviation of the orbit shown, and the deviation gets smaller as the difficulty goes up. You need to match everything: apoapsis, periapsis, inclination, eccentricity, the whole nine yards. The orbits also get less kosher as the difficulty goes up, more eccentric and inclined, and the burns required to hit that deviation window are very minute. It's challenging, but the pay goes up as well. This mission type prefers Kerbin, but can go to other planets as well, especially at higher difficulties. On Kerbin, the reputation and fund rewards are tripled, but the science is cut to a third. This is to emulate a commercial space program on Kerbin putting up satellites for clients. That doesn't mean it will pay as well as putting a satellite around Moho, it just means it will be comparable. Added new "neutralize controls for a period of time" objective. This objective requires you to cut your throttle, and turn off any controls, such as RCS or SAS for a certain period of time. This was added to asteroid recovery missions, base building missions, station building missions, and satellite deployment missions to prevent the mission from completing before the situation has...stabilized. Adjusted the way that distance calculations to waypoints are calculated, specifically in regards to altitude. For aerial waypoints this means that you can now fly anywhere within the height envelope shown on the contract and still complete them. For rover contracts, it means that if a waypoint spawns at an odd height, it doesn't matter, as you just need to drive to the general area. Drastically reduced the distance required to trigger rover waypoints. This was made possible by the previous change, and means that you now have to actually drive around within a rover cluster. Fixed the cupola objective plaguing some station missions, a big thanks to Burkitt for helping me track this issue down. I'm interested in feedback on the satellite deployment missions, and any bug reports.

Virus scan, reinstall, reformat, submit a report to the appropriate forum. I mean, it's hard to say without more information. What were you doing when it disappeared? Nothing in Fine Print is capable of anything like that, the only things in the persist files it modifies are contract entries, which go through the stock configuration code like anything else, and it does nothing with parts. It sounds like you have bigger issues than mod configuration.