Kerbal Style Contracts

[Merlin4711]

I know, there are over a dozend of Threads complaining about the contracts. I may have missed one where the opener speaks about the same idea as I intend to do. If that happend, please leave a link to that thread.

So what makes me open this new Topic?

I thing KSP starts to forfeit its humorous aspects. Its all about rocket-science right now. I have to admit that I use a more realistic flight model (Ferram Aerospace Research) which made it way more challanging to bring someting to space and back to the KSP in one piece, or even construct a flyable plane. But if it works, its way more rewarding I think...

Anyway, the last time I had to laugh really hard... uh, its hard to remember. Hmmmm.... a short time ago, there was a (long-time-hidden) object placing-accident while laying out a mun-lander, which ended up only having one landing strut when I finally came to my designation. That was a true kerbal moment... especially after I managed to land this piece of junk anyway, with its upside down and extended the lonely landing strut. (but needed another launch to get my pilot back from Mun).

Before this, I had to rescue a Vessel that lost its parachute and was out of fuel, but carried around pretty needed science data. Fortunally I had a mod running that provided me with stuff like robotic arms and another one that offered stuff like winches and grapping hooks... well, you might know, how this did end. It was pretty entertaining. And hairy, after the two objects startet so sprin around a common barycenter, just by a black rope... guess how I did provide the needed loss of delta-V.

Uh, and I had to drop a big fuel-tank during recently space-shuttle-testing. It left a lasting impression... uh, well, no, to be honest, it left a crater where once the Adminstration-Building was located at.

Ah, and there was the time I was testing a "science-utility-vehicle", which was just a science-lab with wheels attached and a robotic arm at its back. And winches. And... stuff. Well, that thing was able to pull itself at the top of the rocket assembly building. And doing science up there. But it crashed the game, when I tried to pluck a tree with its robotic arm ^^

Okay, why am I telling you this? Because that what I think the kerbal way of rocket-science can look alike.

Right now, the contracts are pretty... uh... to be honest, I feel offended by most of the contracts. Not because they are to easy, but all of them include parts I can't use right now or want me to build surface-bases at planets I don't can reach with the stuff I have at this very moment.

And placing satellites in orbits for ten seconds (which I can dump afterwards or maybe bring in another orbit), send science-data from a specific place (thats why I have probes in orbits around all moons of kerbin), or a specific science-experiment (ha, my rockets can't even lift the parts necessary for this ), or rescue someone in orbit (how did he end up there?) or do surface surveys (which are likely to crash the game because they eat up RAM like nothing) and EVA in areas, where nothing is present... Well, most of the other "make better contracts" people did mention that too.

I know, its just a Beta and these contracts do look like placeholders, but I'm afraid that in 1.0 its still the same.

But I wonder if its possible to make contract more look like this:

- Drop a Concrete-Donkey (or something else) at a specific location

- Land a probe at Mun that does have not more than 1 landing strut

- Place a random silly object (maybe a cactus, or a kerbal) at a suborbital trajectory of the sun

- Plant a flag at top of the Administration-Building

- Deliver Pizza to the guys at that island-runway without leaving the ground (or the water) wihin 30 ingame-minutes

Everything that let you think "well, that was plain stupid, didn't make any sense at all, but... moar!"

Or am I the only one who thinks that kerbal science should keep a more entertaining pace?

[BudgetHedgehog]

*~lolsokerbal~*

Better contracts are needed, yes, but ones like these aren't.. to be honest, they're not a good idea.

[tater]

Wow, more contracts I'd have to decline 100% of the time.

What we need are sensible contracts.

[r4pt0r]

they are serious in getting to space, yet have a childlike interest in exploration, discovery, and the doing of SCIENCE.

Delivery of pizzas or concrete donkeys is not in their scope of intrest I feel. Yes the contracts might be better, but don't give us missions like you suggest.

[KSK]

To the OP.

I get what you're saying. I don't agree with it, but I get it. I'm thinking though, that a lot of the humour you mentioned came from a crazy situation that happened accidentally whilst you were trying to do something else. In which case do we need deliberately crazy contracts?

Landing a probe at Mun that only has one landing strut, through some accident in flight, or odd design flaw, is funny. Deliberately building a one-strutted probe - not that funny.

Just my opinion though.

[tater]

While I don;t like this idea, it's entirely fair to say that the contracts he suggests are no more silly/dumb than a fair percentage of the stock contracts (test a turbojet engine on the mun, for example).

[r4pt0r]

While I don;t like this idea, it's entirely fair to say that the contracts he suggests are no more silly/dumb than a fair percentage of the stock contracts (test a turbojet engine on the mun, for example).

I agree, I hope I didnt come off too rough. but they are clearly capable engineers with goals higher than delivering pizza (or testing jet engines in a vaccuum)

[AbacusWizard]

I'd like to see an expansion of the "rescue" missions, based on the notion that there are other space agencies but they're all incompetent and need our help. Right now all we get is "rescue this one kerbalnaut stuck in low Kerbin orbit"; more diversity in both what needs to be rescued and from where would be great. Examples:

• Stock lander with three crew is on Minmus with no fuel (or maybe the engine broke off during landing); bring the crew safely back to Kerbin (extra bonus for recovering their lander too)

• One-kerbal command pod in low Kerbin orbit is ready to re-enter, but the stupid pilot accidentally deployed the parachute on the way up and doesn't know how to re-pack it; send an experienced engineer to help

• Duna rover broke a wheel; send an experienced engineer to repair it

• Satellite forgot to extend its solar panels and ran out of power; send someone up to manually open them

• Small Munar orbital station forgot to turn off its rockets after making a small maneuver and is now on an unwanted escape trajectory and out of fuel; send a craft to dock with it, refuel it, and put it back in the proper orbit (note that there's an implied soft time limit on this one--if you wait too long and the station leaves Kerbin's SoI, it's still *possible* to complete the mission, but a lot more difficult, so you'd want to hurry)

• We got our ground outpost all the way to Laythe and then suddenly realized we hadn't brought any science equipment; please build a small probe lander with a materials bay and a thermometer and land it within 50 meters of our base

Stuff like this would add a lot more interesting variety and keep the "rescue" contracts viable throughout the game.

Edited February 25, 2015 by AbacusWizard

[jake9039]

I just think some of the op's contracts were funny, but not cool. but some things like^^^ will be good t5o.

[Wabbit]

AbacusWizard's ideas are great... A real incentive to build ​something. I would also like to see the surface base and orbital station contracts fixed, as they are super easy to complete without making an actual base or station.

[tater]

I detailed a set of possible rescue missions a while ago.