Missing Explore Minmus Contract

[Arsonide]

Hmm, perhaps it was bad luck then.

I think you should change the one-time "Explore X" contracts to be treated like the "World First" contracts - i.e. automatic credit the first time you orbit/land on a new body. Otherwise you're punished by never being able to gain the benefit of the one-off "Explore X" contract just because you visited a body before the game told you to explore it. It's the same problem that the altitude contracts used to have - a penalty for being ambitious.

All one-off contracts should be automatically awarded, IMHO.

Think of it as an incentive to be ambitious, rather than a penalty for being ambitious. If you go to the Mun, there's always Duna, and if you go to Duna, there's always Jool. The contract system pushes you to do things you haven't done, and that is very intentional. There are billions of contract possibilities, so halting your game progress to wait for a particular one to appear is going to slow you down considerably.

The auto-accept mechanic would not help here, as the contract has to generate to be accepted, automatically or otherwise.

Edited May 9, 2015 by Arsonide

[richfiles]

Think of it as an incentive to be ambitious, rather than a penalty for being ambitious. If you go to the Mun, there's always Duna, and if you go to Duna, there's always Jool. The contract system pushes you to do things you haven't done, and that is very intentional. There are billions of contract possibilities, so halting your game progress to wait for a particular one to appear is going to slow you down considerably.

The auto-accept mechanic would not help here, as the contract has to generate to be accepted, automatically or otherwise.

I strongly disagree.

At NO POINT should ambition be punished because you forgot to check for contracts! "Oh, I can just get the next one" is not an excuse for the early game rewards that are lost with losing such a BIG early contract!

You can certainly go to Minmus as well as Mun... Heck, back when I was playing .25, my first flyby of the moon ended up having enough leftover Delta V that I turned it into a flyby of Minmus... and then I landed on Minmus, collected science from 5 biomes, and returned home... I didn't even plan on having a ladder or landing gear! I set her down on the engines! Thing was, I actually snagged my Minmus contract on that play through, and was FINANCIALLY, SCIENTIFICALLY, and REPUTATIONALLY rewarded for the deed. Had I failed to return to the space center (while in transit) to check for open contracts, I would have missed that reward.

It is NOT an incentive to be ambitious when I lose rewards and notoriety and credit cause I "forgot to do some paperwork"! That'd be like Yuri Gagarin not getting credited for being in space first, cause the USSR forgot to file the paperwork for it to be internationally recognized... Sure you KNOW he was first, but in the game, it would be like getting no additional funding, no credit in the record books, nor political recognition, and not getting any scientific knowledge from the deed... It's absurd, and that's basically how the contract system is currently set up!!! CRAZY!

The World's Firsts should be expanded to INCLUDE all celestial body Explore contracts. The triggers would be simple. The next bodies in line for typical exploration would automatically be generated at the appropriate times, but would also be generated early based on simple SOI interactions. A SURE fire way to trigger Exploration contracts would be for the game to simply watch if your orbital path takes you to into an SOI encounter with any celestial body, even for a moment. That should automatically trigger the contract (successful encounters, post burn, not maneuver node projections... You should have to actually have the Delta V to succeed in the trip). Basically, Mun would auto appear after you achieve your first orbit, but Minmus would auto appear in one of two ways: If you get an SOI encounter with it, OR if you complete the Mun contract. This way, you can take things a step at a time and do them sequentially, or you can do a double Mun + Minmus mission (like I did), or you could go to Minmus first! Super simple!

Carrying on that idea, the contracts for Duna and Eve would appear automatically, after you complete both Mun and Minmus contracts, OR earlier, if you exit Kerbin's SOI. It could even be based on if your orbital velocity is greater than or less than the velocity of Kerbin (lower would trigger the Eve contract, while higher orbital velocity than Kerbin would trigger the Duna contract) Ike would appear as a contract the moment you encounter Duna's SOI, and Gilly, the moment you encounter Eve's SOI. Moho and Dres would auto generate after completing Eve or Duna (respectively), and then Jool, it's moons, and Eeloo. Again, any orbital burn that causes you to have an orbital path that crosses the SOI of a body should also trigger it's Explore Contract.

It's not a complex thing. The game already checks certain parameters on the fly to auto generate and fulfill contracts. I see no reason it can't carry over to the Explore Body X contracts.

**EDIT**

And to clarify, I'm referring to the multi stage Explore Body contracts (One contract asking you to "Enter orbit", "Transmit or return science form orbit", "Land on body", and Transmit or return science from surface). These are the big contracts that should be automatic. The individual contracts... Stuff like "Jebs Junkyard wants you to place a flag on Duna" or "Sean's Cannery wants you to transmit science from Mun's surface"... Those would still be treated as individual contracts to be manually checked and accepted at Mission Control... I just see "settling" for the little ones as a poor excuse for accepting a flawed contract system. That doesn't include first explorations in with other World Firsts.

Edited May 12, 2015 by richfiles

[MartGonzo]

not getting any explore contracts at all in my latest career, I did Mun, Duna and Ike but since then no explore contracts are showing up, not a single one

I've not traded any rep in so my reputation is high, but they just aren't being generated.

I really think they need to be automatic, not wanting to go to any other planets just because the game hasn't generated the explore contracts and if I go there it never will is spoiling my game.

I made a thread along these lines:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/120109-Explore-contracts-should-be-automatic-and-hidden

[Sonny_Jim]

Think of it as an incentive to be ambitious, rather than a penalty for being ambitious. If you go to the Mun, there's always Duna, and if you go to Duna, there's always Jool. The contract system pushes you to do things you haven't done, and that is very intentional.

That's a fair point, but in the case of the "Explore Minmus" contract I believe it will disappear if you just do a flyby of Minmus. This means even if you haven't orbited, landed or placed a flag the contract disappears, even though you haven't done all of these things.

There are billions of contract possibilities, so halting your game progress to wait for a particular one to appear is going to slow you down considerably.

Not everybody likes to repeat the same contracts over and over whilst waiting for one they want to do to randomly appear. Yes, you can just reject contracts but in my opinion it would be nice if the game had some sort of linear progression with regard to the Explore Mun/Minmus contracts. In my mind, the Explore Mun/Minmus contracts should start appearing as soon as you reach a successful orbit.

not wanting to go to any other planets just because the game hasn't generated the explore contracts and if I go there it never will is spoiling my game.

I'm in the same boat, I don't really want to launch anything to other planets because I don't want the contracts to disappear. I stand by my original point in that the contracts *should not* appear when you've already completed *all* their objectives, but right now just entering into the SOI of another planet seems enough to make the Explore contract for it to never appear.

[gmiddlemass]

I think you should change the one-time "Explore X" contracts to be treated like the "World First" contracts - i.e. automatic credit the first time you orbit/land on a new body. Otherwise you're punished by never being able to gain the benefit of the one-off "Explore X" contract just because you visited a body before the game told you to explore it. It's the same problem that the altitude contracts used to have - a penalty for being ambitious.

All one-off contracts should be automatically awarded, IMHO.

Very much agree with this...

I'm still waiting on my explore Minmus contract to show up too and I know that i have the ability to easily get there. If these contract types were treated as world firsts, the same way as the altitude records are done now, it would just make the game so progress much better.

As others have said it shouldn't be too difficult to implement by monitoring which SOI you are entering etc.

[MartGonzo]

Very much agree with this...

I'm still waiting on my explore Minmus contract to show up too and I know that i have the ability to easily get there. If these contract types were treated as world firsts, the same way as the altitude records are done now, it would just make the game so progress much better.

As others have said it shouldn't be too difficult to implement by monitoring which SOI you are entering etc.

I agree too, it makes total sense for these contracts to be automatic, the way it stands now it just holds back the player and makes planets off limits if we ever want those contracts to show up.

EDIT - I know little of modding but I was wondering, would it be possible to do that with mods?

I mean make the explore contracts given to the player automatically at the beginning and hidden like the altitude and speed contracts?

If so I'd be very interested in getting that and making it part of my essential mod list.

Edited May 15, 2015 by MartGonzo