Auto-Reject Contracts

[Guest]

Given that we can reject contracts in career mode a nice quality-of-life feature would be the ability to set contract filters that would automatically reject contracts. For instance, once my career gets going I may have no use for contracts on Kerbin, or I may want to focus on contracts for Duna to the exclusion of all others. Alternatively, I may think that part testing contracts are utterly boring, or that I'm sick to death of putting up satellites in specific orbits to clutter up my game. Right now it is a tedious process to manually reject each contract as it comes through, looking for something interesting. Why not allow the player to automatically do that? Furthermore, this could tie into building upgrades by limiting the amount or type of filters available, or be implemented as a series of Strategies.

Get rid of the tedium, return the sandbox.

[r4pt0r]

I support it. Give players more control over their own space programs!

[cicatrix]

I think it's going to be more easy because you get paid for what you want to do anyway. But if Kerbal corporation are interested in space and are willing to pay, quite the opposite - rejecting a contract should be bad on reputation. This corp will give you a less important contract, etc.

I don't think that making the career easier for a player is a good strategy.

[John FX]

While there already is a mod for that (although it is fairly clunky), it would be nice to have it in stock. Once I am sending probes to Jool I don't want to keep getting 'test part X' contracts or contracts for kerbin.

If you have Ckan, it's called rejector

or you could go here

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/108316-Rejector

EDIT : Just noticed you are a realistic spacehippy now, when did that happen?

(Of course to the overly optimistic, that will still seem grumpy)

Edited February 23, 2015 by John FX

[Sean Mirrsen]

I see no reason to add auto-rejection of contracts into stock. It's a slapdash solution to a problem that does not exist.

If you want to be realistic, in real life you don't get to be picky about contracts you are offered. And refusing contracts repeatedly doesn't earn you any brownie points with the offering companies.

Besides that, the lesser contracts exist for the purpose of allowing you to bring your fund reserve back up in case you manage to fail several expensive missions and can't afford to build the craft required for the long-distance high-paying contracts.

If you want to have a filter, then it must be a filter for which contracts are displayed, not offered. You'll just have a lot more offers at once, but you'll have the option to not see the ones you don't need. It's more work than auto-rejection, but it's far better, more in line with realism, and will work similarly.

[Superfluous J]

I see no reason to add auto-rejection of contracts into stock. It's a slapdash solution to a problem that does not exist.

Have you never tried to get a specific contract type in the game? "I want to build a Mun base. Oh, no contracts for it. Decline, Yes. Decline, Yes. Decline, Yes... ad nauseum.

If you want to be realistic, in real life you don't get to be picky about contracts you are offered. And refusing contracts repeatedly doesn't earn you any brownie points with the offering companies.

Then rejecting those contracts should incur some sort of penalty. It currently does not. And if it DOES incur a penalty then Squad needs to seriously rework what contracts are offered. Being dinged for rejecting "Test stability enhancers landed on Eve" would be BAD.

If this proposal was put into the game I'd be very glad. All it would do in the current setup is remove drudgery. That is a good thing.

[Nemrav]

Being dinged for rejecting "Test stability enhancers landed on Eve" would be BAD.

What needs to be done is copy paste the bad Kerbal name combos script section into the contract system, and start adding as many non-landed at Kerbin stability enhanser contracts as can be thought of.... Or just plain exclude that part completely... The other contracts could be a bit silly (e-class asteroid in Kerbol polar orbit on escape trajectory) but of course not impossible.

/off topic ish

You could have a strategy to limit low prestige contracts in exchange for rep hit (media thinking you're being too proud)...

[Renegrade]

Given that we can reject contracts in career mode a nice quality-of-life feature would be the ability to set contract filters that would automatically reject contracts.

That would be nice - although I'd be careful about implementing it (there be endless loop dragons here).

Alternatively, I may think that part testing contracts are utterly boring, or that I'm sick to death of putting up satellites in specific orbits to clutter up my game.

(You can safely delete those once they're in place, FYI. I consider the deletion to be 'handing it over to the contractee'.)

Right now it is a tedious process to manually reject each contract as it comes through, looking for something interesting. Why not allow the player to automatically do that? Furthermore, this could tie into building upgrades by limiting the amount or type of filters available, or be implemented as a series of Strategies.

This is a good concept too.

Then rejecting those contracts should incur some sort of penalty. It currently does not. And if it DOES incur a penalty then Squad needs to seriously rework what contracts are offered. Being dinged for rejecting "Test stability enhancers landed on Eve" would be BAD.

An easy solution to the launchclamp problem might be to simply remove their ModuleTestSubject block

[Guest]

I think it's going to be more easy because you get paid for what you want to do anyway.

Easier aside, that's exactly the point, getting paid to do what you want. I play KSP for grand missions, not putting endless little satellites into polar orbits or trying to fit a 3.75m engine on top of a plane for testing. Other people enjoy the drudgery of random contracts. This allows you to have more control over how you play the game by automating something that already exists.

I see no reason to add auto-rejection of contracts into stock. It's a slapdash solution to a problem that does not exist.

The problem does exist. I can reject contracts ad infinitum therefore tailoring the gameplay to my liking, but this boring process is not fun and takes time away from actually flying the missions that I want to fly.

If you want to be realistic, in real life you don't get to be picky about contracts you are offered. And refusing contracts repeatedly doesn't earn you any brownie points with the offering companies.

What about program proposals? I'm pretty sure NASA doesn't work contracts. Besides that, if we're going to be realistic about it you'd never send a manned mission further than Duna with the hardware in the game, and you'd just end up launching endless communications satellites or resupply missions. Testing would never be done by firing an SRM in the air; those contracts wouldn't exist because people would simply replicate the test conditions in a lab.

Also, 5thHorseman makes an excellent point about penalties for rejecting contracts.

Besides that, the lesser contracts exist for the purpose of allowing you to bring your fund reserve back up

If you're that bad off, unfilter those and then filter the big missions out.

That would be nice - although I'd be careful about implementing it (there be endless loop dragons here).

You simply remove the contracts from the generator before rolling the dice, no looping needed. Once you have filters, no reason not to put a big red X on the screen to regenerate the contracts if you unfilter (or do it automatically!)

There are better ways to limit the player than tedium. If you want to force a certain amount of unwanted contracts on the player then you just tie the filters allowed in to building upgrades or something. If we can reject contracts without penalty, infinitely, why not allow the player to have a Duna Space Program, or a Grand Adventure Space Program, or even a Put Communications Satellites Into Kerbin Orbit Space Program? If we can reject contracts without penalty then we should put the power in the player's hands to easily tailor their space program to their liking.

Edited February 23, 2015 by regex

[Kegereneku]

"I reject all contract that ask for manned crew beyond High orbit"

Joke aside, I like the idea but don't think "Auto-reject" is quite the best way.

Basically what you describe is a way to tell the Contract-Auto-Balancer "Our mission is Duna, what do you want me to do there ?"

So rather than Reject, I think "Preference filter" would be more efficient.

I'm saying that because with KSP's procedurally generated contract, "filtering out" can cut more than what you would have really wanted.

The best hypothetically would be combinational search engines option, ex : "+Duna -Low Orbit", giving only ground mission or high altitude scan.

[Thnd3r]

Biggest problem I see with the contracts is the fact that they are asking you to always test parts you haven't researched yet. You should be able to auto reject based on your current research levels. It's impossible to test something that doesn't exist...

[rcp27]

Biggest problem I see with the contracts is the fact that they are asking you to always test parts you haven't researched yet. You should be able to auto reject based on your current research levels. It's impossible to test something that doesn't exist...

You will find if you accept such a contract that you get access to that part in the VAB/SPH once you have accepted the contract, and access is removed once you complete/abandon the contract. Seems reasonable to me: a company is working on a new shiny and they want to have their prototype tested before it becomes available more generally.

[Laie]

If you want to be realistic, in real life you don't get to be picky about contracts you are offered. And refusing contracts repeatedly doesn't earn you any brownie points with the offering companies.

In real life, I'm under no obligation to accept or even consider every contract that is offered. Some just are impossible or can't be done at a profit. The only proper reaction is "nice try, go away". For gameplay purposes, being outright boring is another valid (dis-)qualifier. There are contracts I don't want to see, and they have no right to sit even in my secretary's inbox until they expire.

You may limit the number of new contracts coming in, so one can't just discard contracts until he sees something he likes. But no punishment for declining contracts.

[BudgetHedgehog]

In GameData\Squad\Contracts\Contracts.cfg, for each contract type (ARM, Flag, Base etc), there's a MaximumExistent entry. Change it to 0 to stop those contracts showing up (like stock does for ISRU ones). But I agree, there should ideally be more control over it.

[Sirrobert]

I think it's going to be more easy because you get paid for what you want to do anyway. But if Kerbal corporation are interested in space and are willing to pay, quite the opposite - rejecting a contract should be bad on reputation. This corp will give you a less important contract, etc.

I don't think that making the career easier for a player is a good strategy.

You can already do it by simply rejecting them individually, or (if you'd give rejecting some penelty) just not accepting them. You get new contracts after you finish the one you are doing anyway.

So all this does is take out an annoying step

[KSK]

In real life, I'm under no obligation to accept or even consider every contract that is offered. Some just are impossible or can't be done at a profit. The only proper reaction is "nice try, go away". For gameplay purposes, being outright boring is another valid (dis-)qualifier. There are contracts I don't want to see, and they have no right to sit even in my secretary's inbox until they expire.

You may limit the number of new contracts coming in, so one can't just discard contracts until he sees something he likes. But no punishment for declining contracts.

Agree with all of this. Apply a penalty for failing a contract by all means* but not for declining to accept one. Also, in real life you generally get to negotiate contracts rather than having them handed to you on a take it or leave it basis. I'd definitely like to see some sort of contract filtering, for all the reasons mentioned in the original post.

* And even then, real life 'penalty clauses' can be legally dubious.

[Sean Mirrsen]

In real life, I'm under no obligation to accept or even consider every contract that is offered. Some just are impossible or can't be done at a profit. The only proper reaction is "nice try, go away". For gameplay purposes, being outright boring is another valid (dis-)qualifier. There are contracts I don't want to see, and they have no right to sit even in my secretary's inbox until they expire.

You may limit the number of new contracts coming in, so one can't just discard contracts until he sees something he likes. But no punishment for declining contracts.

edit: misread the phrase

I'd honestly prefer that system, as I've said above. There should be no limit to the amount of available contracts, and rejecting a contract shouldn't cause more contracts to automagically pop up. Instead you should just be able to hide the contracts you don't want to see (that don't pay enough, are boring, or impossible to complete), and only have the contracts disappear from the list when the offer expires, with new contracts appearing at a set pace according to whatever the game decides.

In other words, there should be no correlation between the number of contracts you can take, and the amount of contracts on offer. If you reject a contract, or ignore it, should not have an effect on when another contract pops up. Being able to abuse the randomizer to get what you want to have defeats the purpose of the whole contracts system in the game.

[Renegrade]

You simply remove the contracts from the generator before rolling the dice, no looping needed. Once you have filters, no reason not to put a big red X on the screen to regenerate the contracts if you unfilter (or do it automatically!)

Of course. I was just throwing out an anchor to windward as Squad could very well see that and implement it AS a cancellation.

HarvesteR: Wow, that's literally a three minute fix! *typetypetype* There, done! It compiled, ship it!

KSP.exe: *endless loop*

HarvesteR: D'oh!!

Anyways I'm definitely for filtering.. and I'd also like to see the launchclamps issue addressed heh.

In real life, I'm under no obligation to accept or even consider every contract that is offered. Some just are impossible or can't be done at a profit. The only proper reaction is "nice try, go away". For gameplay purposes, being outright boring is another valid (dis-)qualifier. There are contracts I don't want to see, and they have no right to sit even in my secretary's inbox until they expire.

Precisely. "I'm sorry, but we're not going to Laythe anytime soon. There is a launch window for Eve coming up, though, and we do have a few spots open for projects that require 25 kilos or less..."

I'd honestly prefer the opposite..... <interesting concept>

This is an interesting concept, although timewarp says hi. :/ You might miss some launch windows, but again..timewarp says hi.

(I really wish they'd gone with monthly expenses.. it would add a bit of urgency and get rid of timewarping problems away..)

Edited February 23, 2015 by Renegrade

[Sean Mirrsen]

This is an interesting concept, although timewarp says hi. :/ You might miss some launch windows, but again..timewarp says hi.

(I really wish they'd gone with monthly expenses.. it would add a bit of urgency and get rid of timewarping problems away..)

Missing launch windows is one thing, and another thing is that you might miss out on good contracts while you're waiting for bad contracts to go away.

Monthly upkeep would be great, by the way. Would really put the "space program" side of the game more into focus.

Maybe with monthly funding going in to offset the costs, depending on your prestige...

[John FX]

I'm in favour of more time based mechanics and maybe monthly costs and contracts that appear at regular intervals although I appreciate the difficulty in balancing them with gameplay if you have to deal with time on the scale of hours as well as days, months and years.

[cicatrix]

Easier aside, that's exactly the point, getting paid to do what you want. I play KSP for grand missions, not putting endless little satellites into polar orbits or trying to fit a 3.75m engine on top of a plane for testing. Other people enjoy the drudgery of random contracts. This allows you to have more control over how you play the game by automating something that already exists.

Fly sandbox then, or science mode. The whole purpose of the career mode is making your life difficult, making money scarce.

[KSK]

Fly sandbox then, or science mode. The whole purpose of the career mode is making your life difficult, making money scarce.

But he's not asking for anything that you can't already do in-game - he's just asking for a quality of life improvement to the UI. If anything, by foregoing 'those tedious satellite' contracts, he's actually choosing to make things harder for himself.

[Guest]

I'd honestly prefer that system, as I've said above. There should be no limit to the amount of available contracts, and rejecting a contract shouldn't cause more contracts to automagically pop up. Instead you should just be able to hide the contracts you don't want to see (that don't pay enough, are boring, or impossible to complete), and only have the contracts disappear from the list when the offer expires, with new contracts appearing at a set pace according to whatever the game decides.

Something else that might be nice is to generate contracts per body and then have a science center-style selection screen for easy filtering. This makes it easier to filter them for the user.

I would still prefer being able to outright reject certain types of contracts because they're utterly boring in terms of gameplay, but I suppose we have to have the requisite amount of sadism in order to continue calling it a "game".

Of course. I was just throwing out an anchor to windward as Squad could very well see that and implement it AS a cancellation.

I was avoiding the "amateur-hour" joke in the interests of being nice, so thanks for saying it.

Fly sandbox then, or science mode. The whole purpose of the career mode is making your life difficult, making money scarce.

No. I have no problem with scarce money or the challenges provided thereby, and find it fun, my issue is that I've been playing this game for nigh on two years and the last damn thing I want to do in the game is launch another polar freaking satellite into Kerbin orbit, or slap a 3.75m engine on top of a stupid plane to grind money (or, for that matter, being forced into some sort of stupid "progression"). Let me choose the means to make my money easily, especially since the other last damn thing I want to do in this game is "select contract, click X" over and over to find a contract I actually want to do for money. The game lets me reroll contracts to my heart's content, I should be able to have it do that automatically to my own specifications.

[TMS]

To be honest, 90% of KSP contracts are equivalent to those cruddy 'fetch' quests in Skyrim.

I'm not sure how many contracts I'd have left after filtering them...

[Guest]

To be honest, 90% of KSP contracts are equivalent to those cruddy 'fetch' quests in Skyrim.

I'm not sure how many contracts I'd have left after filtering them...

I completely agree and I can't really argue with that, but there are a good chunk of contracts that fall under "what I already wanted to do", and they're fairly high-paying to boot. If I could tailor them to be specific to a single planetary body and remove all the chaff the career system might actually be fun. Right now, as you say, it's just playing a bunch of "fetch".