Using A Single Satellite for Multiple Contracts

[regex]

- ´Decline mission spam´: The missions that are being offered should be what you have to choose from until they expire ´naturally´. The way it is right now, is a bit like Bart playing Monopoly with Maggie: Keep pulling event cards from the stack until you find one that you like.*

In order to correct this we would need to have more meaningful contracts that were far less random and rewarded better. Also, you should be able to define your space program's "mission", what kind of things they do, and allow the player to change that at certain points or with minor penalty. Alternatively, have contracts generated per body in the solar system so that the player has far more freedom in choosing which contracts to take. If I was stuck with low-paying part testing contracts, or survey contracts without plane parts, or any other combination of "crappy" contracts, until they expired I simply wouldn't play career mode.

- Get science from X should not be possible to complete by ´harvesting´ 0 science. I actually play this way, checking my science archives each time before i accept such a contract.

Same conditions apply as with contracts expiring "naturally", especially if you've already exhausted the science. In fact, those contracts shouldn't even show up if you've exhausted the science.

Maybe, there should be fixed costs in KSP? The buildings taking some maintainance funds, the employes getting paychecks? And research taking some time? Time not mattering really irks me. Messed up your phase angles? Ah, doesnt matter much if the mission takes a week or a year, as long as you brought some extra dV.

This would be a good idea if we didn't have completely random contracts that may or may not pay well and literal progression walls like the R&D center.

Anyway, time could become more meaningful but it needs to come with some interesting considerations and missions. The current contract system is entirely inadequate for this purpose, IMO.

[tater]

Yeah, for anyone replaying career, the entire tech tree is almost certainly unlocked a long time before the first ideal Duna window (a little after day 200). Missions expire in YEARS, often.

Time is meaningless in KSP, the only time it ever passes meaningfully is long time warps for distant encounters. Period. This is OT for 1 sat multiple contracts, but it is still repeated to the "grind" of the early game. Better to have a budget per unit time, particularly in the early game. I'm fine with the facility costs, frankly, though more intermediate steps would be good (same total cost broken over more, but cheaper upgrades).

If your program were a "budgeted" thing (pure exploration/science "contracts" with a decent payoff, but payment spread over time), then the sat contracts could be more cash infusions, and you'd take it, then the sat no longer belongs to you once the contract is satisfied. Note that the contract would be offered, and might go away in XX days, and must be completed in YY days for the customer, so use it, or lose it.

Regex ninjaed me with some excellent points.

I'd like to see taking an "explore the mun" contract (mission) be what generates the munar survey missions, and have completion of at least X of those survey missions (not from 3d parties, list them as from Linus Kerman at KSC) is required ti fulfill "explore the mun." That sort of thing, so the contracts/missions exist in a context. Also, they'd not be constantly spammed as the same but randomized thing over and over.

Edited March 12, 2015 by tater

[LaydeeDem]

I'm an awful person. This is my current career mode save.

[tater]

Red or green?

[LaydeeDem]

Red or green?

Yes. There are dozens of us!

[Deutherius]

Slight OT: What's with all the hate for part testing contracts? I alway accept a whole bunch of them and see if I can engineer a contraption that tests them all in one launch. I have never been dissappointed or bored with it, mainly because there's always a different combination and I never launch the same craft twice It can be quite a challenge as well.

[Mr. Scruffy]

The test missions wouldnt be so bad, as i have pointed out in another thread, if they were always to be concluded by applying the part in question to its actual purpose, like in:

- Take landing gear to space, but afterwards actually land on it

- Take a jet engine to the moon, but afterwards test it in an oxygen atmo

...all to see if the equipment survived the stress of the journey and still works, where it actually can work.

[regex]

Slight OT: What's with all the hate for part testing contracts? I alway accept a whole bunch of them and see if I can engineer a contraption that tests them all in one launch. I have never been dissappointed or bored with it, mainly because there's always a different combination and I never launch the same craft twice It can be quite a challenge as well.

If that's fun for you, great. I find the conditions arbitrary and sometimes unreasonable, and rely on right-clicking the part in flight at the right time (always a pain) or using odd staging. I simply don't care for them. This is one of the reasons I advocate greater player choice and/or direction in the contracts that are offered, or simply more contracts that are more appropriate to the celestial body in question; everyone plays differently and likes doing different things in the game.

[Deutherius]

If that's fun for you, great. I find the conditions arbitrary and sometimes unreasonable, and rely on right-clicking the part in flight at the right time (always a pain) or using odd staging. I simply don't care for them. This is one of the reasons I advocate greater player choice and/or direction in the contracts that are offered, or simply more contracts that are more appropriate to the celestial body in question; everyone plays differently and likes doing different things in the game.

I always thought that was the point - random, don't make sense. In other words, Kerbal

I agree, everyone should be able to play however they want, be it realistic or wacky. And the right clicking can be a PITA. It would be nice if one could assign the "test part" option to an action group.

[hugix]

I had a baf experience with the "launch a new vessel" parameter. A few days ago I accepted a contract to put a sat in a Mun polar orbit. I took my very first Mun sat that was in a equatorial orbit. It had a little bit of fuel left, and with a Bi elliptical transfer (Set APA to barely inside the Mun SOI. Burn retrograde to slow down the remaining velocity. Then do your plane change. The slower you go the less DV you need in a plane change) I got the sat in her new orbit with less than 20 M/s of DV to spare.

Only to notice that the "launch new vessel parameter would not come on."... Boy was I pissed.

[tater]

Kerbalkind can fly to space and land on distant worlds, I've never gotten this whole "kerbal" thing where they are supposed to be idiots. On top of that, I very rarely lose any.

[Mr. Scruffy]

On topic (for a change ;D) : Now i did it, too. Well, that was okay, though, cause i needed to actually flip the munar orbit of my sat around all the way, pretty much, in order to make the second one. After that, i almost messed up with an eccentric one. Those arent bad.

But boy, need the buildings balancing and more increments. 5 at least for most, i´d say. I actually got the impression they confused their intended incremental benefits from one lvl to the next with what that higher lvl was intended to provide. Like in: Going from 2 missions (lvl1) mission control to 7 for lvl2, with an increment of 5... which seems to me to be a more reasonable number for what lvl2 should provide (5, not 7).

[Ar180shooter]

I'll do one launch, but with multiple satellites on a single launch.